Atheism and evil

Resha Caner said:

An interesting comment. Sort of a zen thing. So what does one do when there is no workable solution?

With that, I will note I said I haven't seen a human-based solution.

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Recognize other people may disagree with you and compromise as best you can.

When compromise reaches it's limits, then agree to disagree.

Resha Caner said:

Which means what? Segregation? Or forced integration?

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We have laws for a reason. When people disagree, we have laws to clarify.

If one doesn't like the law, there are processes to challenge them.

Resha Caner said:

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I repeat it here for you, but if you choose to explain, please avoid asking me questions if at all possible. I'm not really interested.

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Questions. They are so awkward.

Resha Caner said:

No one has been able to demonstrate anything else yet.

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Nor is it likely that anyone will anyone ever in my opinion.

Values, ideas, beliefs, all require a subject and thus are going to be subjective things.

God doesn't even make evil objective, it just provides a more convincing subject to define it with respect to.

True Scotsman said:

Take that to its logical conclusion. If good and evil are subjective then anything goes. Human life is not an anything goes proposition. It requires a specific course of actions if it is to be sustained and any other course is harmful. The basic principle here is that there is never any justification for the initiation of force. Taking food from someone who has produced it by force and giving it to someone who hasn't earned it is a violation of individual rights. There are some issues on which there can be no compromise.

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Agreed.

Individual rights is one of those issues. Once you abandon the principle of individual rights you are operating on the premise of death and it is only a matter of time before you end up with North Korea or Pakistan.

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Not sure. Depends on which rights you want to assert and defend.

True Scotsman said:

Take that to its logical conclusion. If good and evil are subjective then anything goes. Human life is not an anything goes proposition. It requires a specific course of actions if it is to be sustained and any other course is harmful. The basic principle here is that there is never any justification for the initiation of force. Taking food from someone who has produced it by force and giving it to someone who hasn't earned it is a violation of individual rights. There are some issues on which there can be no compromise. Individual rights is one of those issues. Once you abandon the principle of individual rights you are operating on the premise of death and it is only a matter of time before you end up with North Korea or Pakistan.

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I think you are equating subjective to whimsical. Many things are subjective but not at all whimsical. Subjective morality does not mean that one just picks whatever one likes to be moral or immoral and changes it as one desires to suit one's mood or one's inclination at the time. That is a complete lack of morality. Yes it is subjective, but it is not subjective morality it is subjective amorality. If one is discussing morality one is discussing IMO a subjectively arrived at standard by which to judge behavior. Subjective not in the sense of deciding by preference or by one's mood at the time or by what one simply wishes to do right here and now, but subjective in the sense that one judges what is right, wrong , good or evil rather than simply recognizing something that is inherently the case. We do so by comparing what we see as the malevolence or benevolence of results of that behavior and compare those results to the results of other behaviors that we consider to be beneficial behaviors. The whole process requires that we make value judgements and we categorize things and actions into one of three possibilities. There is no way to make an objective value judgement as we cannot remove ourselves from ourselves or completely divorce ourselves from our human POV and the biases and prejudices we are genetically and environmentally endowed with. When we see, we see from the POV of our total human experience when we consider we consider through the lens of our total human experience and when we categorize we do so from that same lens. It is not a whimsical process but it is also not an objective one.

It seems to me that every time someone tries to explain to me how the concepts of good and evil could be objective they are explaining how some such action or thing is seen by them as either beneficial or malevolent to individuals or groups that they either are similar to or belong to. If good and evil were objective than there would be no POV involved at all a thing or action would be intrinsically good or intrinsically evil or intrinsically neutral and apply in all possible cases. In reality, things and actions are all intrinsically neutral and only one's POV will categorize them as either good or evil. something that is objectively evil could not be seen by one person as good and another as evil unless the one that saw it as good had some sort of mental illness or was in some other way so extremely dysfunctional in recognizing objective morality as to be akin to a person blind from birth telling one what color a thing was.

Resha Caner said:

Yeah. I doubt taking a philosophical approach will ever be able to make God the touchstone. But I'm surprised you would say he is "a more convincing subject". Obviously He is convincing to some, but I would expect not convincing for you.

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I'm being charitable by granting the premise that God exists to examine it's implications for morality.

Given a God as theists tend to describe it, it would simply be more able to make a compelling case for it's subjective views of Good (it might be even be capable of simply compelling them in the first place).

It's views would still be subjective though, it doesn't solve that problem, as God would be a subject.

What you would have to pick though is where God and other subjects disagreed about what good and evil were, and more importantly why, and what they based that judgment on.

Resha Caner said:

Indeed, it does present a challenge. And I know people are looking for human-based solutions. I just don't think anyone has found it yet.

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We have found it. It is called liberty. If you are looking for perfection you will not find such a system. people are not perfect. They make mistakes and they also evade reality. A Human based system is exactly what is needed. A system that holds the individual as sacrosanct. The problem we have had for thousands of years is that our systems have all been inhuman, in contradiction to Human nature. Since we are talking about Humans then it seems self evident that that system must be consonant with the requirements of Human life.

I know as a pragmatist you don't believe in absolute principles, but I think all of the problems we have in society have as their root the rejection of the absoluteness of individual rights. Once this principle is compromised there is no stopping a government from instituting more and more controls over the lives of its citizens until you have a totalitarian system. On what basis could one object to any government control once the principle of individual rights was abandoned? None.

The dominant moral system throughout history has been altruism which stands on the principle that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that he must sacrifice his own good for the good of others. When you teach men that they are just sacrificial animals it is no wonder that the world is in the state that it is. Only a profound lack of self esteem could allow one to hold his own life as of less value than the life of any random stranger. Every living thing, in order to live, must be the beneficiary of its own actions. To separate what a man has to do in order to live from what he must do to be moral and to make the two diametrically opposed, is evil.

variant said:

I'm being charitable by granting the premise that God exists to examine it's implications for morality.

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Charity is nice.

Given a God as theists tend to describe it, it would simply be more able to make a compelling case for it's subjective views of Good (it might be even be capable of simply compelling them in the first place).



It's views would still be subjective though, it doesn't solve that problem, as God would be a subject.

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Agreed. If you are charitably granting as a given that God exists in the way that the Abrahamic religions view God. then God would seem to have the advantage over humans in possessing the means to formulate a conception of good and evil that would be more likely to apply universally. It would not however be objective but God's subjective choice. It would be subject to God rather than independent of Him. I cannot say if this would apply to all religious belief systems as it seems to me that polytheistic systems would leave more room for disagreement upon the concept of good and evil among the gods and therefore they may be no more reliable as arbiters of morality than humans are.

What you would have to pick though is where God and other subjects disagreed about what good and evil were, and more importantly why, and what they based that judgment on.

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Now, again if we are assuming that charitable given of the God of Christianity actually existing in the way Christianity says that He exists, i.e. the God that created everything from scratch from nothing with a specific purpose in mind for that creation, it seems that one has two possible choices. One must either accept that the view of that God is immensely superior to one's own extremely more limited view and therefore become willing to conform one's own views to that of the God we are speaking of or one must rebel against that God even in the face of one's own belief that God is much more qualified to make such determinations. All other POVs would not include a sure belief in the God we were speaking of. The problem then is not so much comparing the views God to the views of others , but discerning exactly what God's views are from the evidence that has been provided. That continues to cause differences of opinion throughout the Christian community, So if Christians cannot agree on all aspects of morality which we all claim comes from only one source, why would we expect the rest of humanity, that rejects that source in favor of other sources, to end up in total agreement with us? Likewise why would those other human beings expect us to be in total agreement with them if they know our conception of good and evil comes from a completely different source than theirs? The fact that we end up being in agreement so often ought to be what amazes us, not the fact that we have a few things that we do not agree upon.

grasping the after wind said:

Now, again if we are assuming that charitable given of the God of Christianity actually existing in the way Christianity says that He exists, i.e. the God that created everything from scratch from nothing with a specific purpose in mind for that creation, it seems that one has two possible choices. One must either accept that the view of that God is immensely superior to one's own extremely more limited view and therefore become willing to conform one's own views to that of the God we are speaking of or one must rebel against that God even in the face of one's own belief that God is much more qualified to make such determinations. All other POVs would not include a sure belief in the God we were speaking of.

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You're a bit off the mark there. We are thinking things that have subjective views on morality regardless. We would have to determine what God's reasoning is, and if it is acceptable, not simply make a decision whether to blindly follow or not.

It's more important to my point that God would have reasons for it's determinations which it could share with us. Making it perfectly capable of making the inter-subjective case between two beings very well.

The problem is that even if we grant the premise that God exists, it certainly does not explain itself or its reasoning properly in any source we have.

This means that it is subjective on our case which source of "God's ideas" we accept and the interpretation there of.

This makes the morality that comes from the divine subjective three times, once in God's subjective view, twice in the subjective presentation of God's views by one who can assess them, and three times in the interpretation of that work.

The problem then is not so much comparing the views God to the views of others , but discerning exactly what God's views are from the evidence that has been provided.

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Yes, God is free to exist as primarily a described and have been poorly understood in terms of divine commands of morality.

That continues to cause differences of opinion throughout the Christian community, So if Christians cannot agree on all aspects of morality which we all claim comes from only one source, why would we expect the rest of humanity, that rejects that source in favor of other sources, to end up in total agreement with us? Likewise why would those other human beings expect us to be in total agreement with them if they know our conception of good and evil comes from a completely different source than theirs? The fact that we end up being in agreement so often ought to be what amazes us, not the fact that we have a few things that we do not agree upon.

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My point about morality being subjective regardless of source is thus proven.

Morality is arrived at by assessing values from ones perspective and reasoning them through. They work to the extent that the reasons hold true regardless of how your perspective changes.

If we had a God sitting here before us it could make the reasoned case for a more expansive and idealistic philosophy of morality, and I bet it would be very interesting and convincing to all involved, but what we get from religion is much more poorly thought out and steeped in man's perspective regardless of the existence of God (but just not being terribly honest about that).

So, why is it hard to get religious people to get to admit they are using their own brains a lot when they decide what they think is moral?

Resha Caner said:

As an atheist, do you think something can be objectively established as evil? If so, how?

Subjectively, do you think there is evil?

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Why is it important if something is objectively true? Moreover, if something is objectively true, how could we prove it?

I'll call something evil when I see it, with the justification I see fit. If you don't share my viewpoint, well, that's your problem. Believe in yourself first ,or no one else will.

FireDragon76 said:

Why is it important if something is objectively true? Moreover, if something is objectively true, how could we prove it?

I'll call something evil when I see it, with the justification I see fit. If you don't share my viewpoint, well, that's your problem. Believe in yourself first ,or no one else will.

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Excellent points and excellent question.

Resha Caner said:

As I've said, I don't think we, as finite humans, have the ability to prove something objectively true. With that, I think you have some circular reasoning going on in your statements here.

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You're a conservative Lutheran, you should understand these things better. You've chosen to accept that reality has paradoxes as part of your church's theology. I do the same, the only difference is that I accept that reality has a few less than you.