The problem of evil and free will
A well-known "solution" to the problem of evil is that god allows evil because he desired to bestow free will upon us. Thus, we, possessed of free-will, have the liberty to do anything and "sometimes" we do evil and hence there is evil in the world.
However, if you go by the existence of the law and the police, we come to the conclusion that evil comes naturally to us and we've recognized this fact of our nature. Ergo the need to put a rein on our immoral tendencies by enacting and enforcing laws. In other words, contrary to the free-will explanation for the problem of evil, there's no need for us to have free-will in order to be evil; In fact it's the opposite: we need free-will to go against our innate tendency for immorality and be at our best behavior.
The free-will explanation for the problem of evil is wrong.
However, if you go by the existence of the law and the police, we come to the conclusion that evil comes naturally to us and we've recognized this fact of our nature. Ergo the need to put a rein on our immoral tendencies by enacting and enforcing laws. In other words, contrary to the free-will explanation for the problem of evil, there's no need for us to have free-will in order to be evil; In fact it's the opposite: we need free-will to go against our innate tendency for immorality and be at our best behavior.
The free-will explanation for the problem of evil is wrong.
Comments (219)
In the words of Plato; All men desire the Good.
Every person desires what they think is best for them.
The problem is that people's perceptions are hopelessly deluded, for which I think the biggest culprits are upbringing and societal factors.
Draconian laws were harsh - death penalty just for loitering.
Modern laws may be more humane in terms of the absence of torture and very strict regulations on the death penalty, but laws exist and are quite severe in terms of years of freedom deprived. Why the need for laws if it wasn't for our immoral tendencies.
Just for the sake of argument, suppose that evil isn't our default moral stance. That would imply that the law and the police are redundant but they're not. Ergo, as I said, evil is a natural tendency.
Nonsense. Engines don't naturally kill people. Put one in a lifeboat and it contributes to saving thousands of lives. Put one in a tank and it contributes to death and destruction. It's not about the engine, it's about where you put it.
Just because humans in a modern agri-industrial mass society need policing, doesn't mean humans in every society ever need the same treatment.
Quoting Isaac
Can you give us some examples of these other societies?
For one, laws often account for the outliers and not the mean, because it has to account for a great deal of insecurity. For example, because maybe 0.1% of the population are potential murderers, 100% of the population needs to be subjected to laws against murder, since we don't know who the potential murderers are.
Secondly, I don't see how your argument proves evil is an innate or natural tendency. At most it proves it is a tendency under specific circumstances.
Well, in my humble opinion, the existence of deterrents in any form, even just the thought of it, is ample evidence that there's trouble in paradise.
Look at it this way. Either good or bad is natural tendency. If good is a natural tendency then there's no need for free will. On the other hand, if evil is a natural tendency we'd need free will to be good, not bad. So, either there's no need for free will or we need free will to be good, not bad.
Let's delve into the nature of legal punishment. It is or is best when it is:
1. Retributive
2. Deterrent
3. Rehabilitative
The deterrent factor is what concerns me because it's universal in scope. Yes, it has or is supposed to have its greatest use against murderers but I'm quite sure, if the law didn't exist, murder rates would sky-rocket; after all, even with the death penalty still in use, murder exists. Imagine what would happen without it?
Quoting Tzeentch
History suggests that people can behave in the most extreme way given the circumstances. And if they aren’t the ones committing the crime then they’re turning a blind eye. We really don’t know how badly people are capable of behaving. Most would think cannibalism was rare, but it turns out under the right conditions to not be so unusual. I don’t think it’s an act of evil, but it indicates how we understand little of our capabilities, or prepared to admit.
Ok, lets suppose there would be an increase. How would that make evil a natural tendency?
I think nomadic hunter-gatherer societies provide an interesting example, but I wasn't really thinking about it empirically (as in 'every society that's ever been'), I was more thinking about it modally, as in 'every society that ever might be'.
Free-will, used in this sense, is a completely incoherent concept, so there's no traction with it here. If the desire to act in a 'good' way somehow drives our actions, then that is part of (not opposed to) free-will because it is us acting according to our desires, not according to someone else's. Thus we are free, in any meaningful sense of the term.
I find it difficult to imagine any society that would not have some form of policing, even if it came in the form of myths and stories passed on down about behaviour and consequences and instilled in members as they grew up.
Natural tendencies will predominate our behavioral repertoire - what comes natural to us will feature prominently in our conduct but only if there are no restrictions. For instance, it's natural for us to desire happiness and the majority behave in ways that show that is the case. Similarly, if there's a surge of immoral behavior when restrictions are removed, it's evidence that we are so inclined.
But the limits to your imagination aren't evidence of anything, are they? Let's say people do need policing, let's say they're motivated to act badly. Why would anyone consider policing? Why write the stories, make the rules, support the law?
If the argument is that policing toward a better society has always existed, then it cannot simultaneously be the case that we are all motivated by evil as our default moral stance, otherwise from where did the universal motive to police behaviour towards better ends come from?
If, as some kind of compromise, you say "sometimes we're motivated by good, sometimes by evil", then you're stuck explaining the switching mechanism. If it's us who do the switching, then what motivates us to switch to being motivated by evil? If its something outside of us, then you're back to my proposition - remove that thing from society and you'll have one entirely motivated by good.
Quoting TheMadFool
There’s certainly a lot of behaviour by soldiers in wartime that would not happen without the restrictions they normally lived under being removed.
Yesterday I was watching a true crime documentary where a man, after a history of robbing gas stations and stealing from money from his family, beat his loving 80 year old grandmother to death with a baseball bat because she wouldn't give him more money for drugs and then he baldly lied and blamed it on his friend for years.
He wasn't mentally ill and he seemed of at least average intelligence. He mentioned that while he was stealing and robbing gas stations that he will well aware of the path he was going down and continued.
I use to think what you thought.
The notion of natural tendency is important. If I'm correct then there's a widely held belief that animals are slaves to their natural tendencies i.e. they aren't as free as we are, presumably possess some kind of control over our basic instincts. Therefore, it seems that we actually need free will to resist our natural tendencies rather than give them free reign over us. Ergo, since our natural tendency is to be immoral, we need free will to be and do good, not to be evil, as the free will defense for the problem of evil claims.
And from where did anyone learn which of our tendencies are 'natural ones' and which aren't? I've studied fMRI scans and EEG. I didn't notice any labels.
Quoting Isaac
That’s just me being diplomatic instead of asserting things as if I know everything.
Quoting Isaac
I don’t believe it’s our default stance. It’s that we are capable of evil, as so many primates are as well. The whole idea or development of morals was that at any time we can chose to act according to those morals. But then much of this rests on the idea of whether or not evil comes from within or without, ditto morals. But for me it’s morals that act as the policing agent in societies, but we still have to chose to act on those morals.
So what motivates that choice? Why do we choose sometimes to act according to morals and other times not?
I doubt that. You either missed or chose to ignore an important nuance, namely;
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Isaac
Why do we chose to ignore our morals when we are moral creatures? I’ll have to think about it.
Who is "us"? Does this "us" include all the people who would not act immorally if left to their own devices? These 'natural tendencies' seem little more than broad generalizations. Those may be sometimes useful as a practical tool, but often fail to describe accurately.
Is it your position that God exists and gave us free will, or that it’s part of our evolutionary development?
The guy knew exactly what he was doing. Not all evil is the result of ignorance.
Quoting Isaac
We are quite capable of acting on existing inborn tendencies towards evil. Our tendencies towards goodness are not infallible, after all we’re only human. Maybe our tendencies towards evil are older than our morals, or maybe they’re just the opposites that exist within us. Why do we chose? because that’s who we are, that’s the whole terrible thing about free will.
I don't know his exact brain state at the time of the killing. I don't know. He murdered his own grandmother with a baseball bat.... I think it was over $300 which he used to get high. I suppose it's possible he could have been thinking "I am doing this in pursuit of the Good" but I think that's extremely unlikely in view of other factors.
I just don't find it helpful at all to be like "oh well if he only knew eudamonia or whatever or was aware of the existence of, I don't know, higher pleasures.... I'm sorry but it's just babble.
Read about Carl Panzram if you want serious psychological insight into a sadistic serial killer. He wrote a book detailing his thoughts. The man fundamentally hated humanity. He hated the universe and he had a deep-seeded rage. Understanding this misanthropy and rage will take you much further in terms of understanding evil than someone misunderstanding rationality.
I also think it's very questionable to give any sort of universal prescription for what 'happiness' amounts to as if it were just the same for every human being.
By natural tendencies I mean that, ceteris paribus, humans, like all living organisms, have preferences born out of desires which are observed to be common to all e.g. the universal desire for pleasure and desire to avoid suffering influence our thoughts and actions in ways that make us exhibit behavioral patterns that can best be described as natural tendencies.
Civilization, as we know it, has been shaped by our natural tendencies. Look at the millennium development goals of the UN/WHO which reflect the concerns of the entire planet - disease mitigation or eradication, reduction of morbidity and mortality, providing education to women and children, empowering women, eradicating hunger and poverty, etc. All of the above originate from our desire for pleasure/happiness and to avoid suffering, a natural tendency.
As you might have already noticed, many if not all of the millennium development goals can be achieved by controlling and/or eliminating some of what may be described as our "negative" natural tendencies e.g greed in re environmental destruction, gender bias which is an age-old problem with respect to women empowerment. A bit simplified but you get the picture.
Therefore, the existence of the law must be to put a tight leash on another of our "negative" natural tendencies - a proclivity for the immoral. We don't need free will to be immoral; we're programmed to be immoral. Ergo, the explanation that evil exists because god wanted to give us free will is untenable because evil is in our nature and if free will has anything to do with morality it's that we need it to overcome our natural tendencies and overcome our programming i.e. free will only makes sense if god wanted us to be good, in defiance of our nature.
Quoting Tzeentch
Kindly read my reply to Isaac above.
Quoting Brett
I don't know if we have free will or not.
Quoting TheMadFool
My question, really, was whether you were coming at this question believing in God.
If, in that moment, he was not convinced his actions would be good for him, why would he have committed his crime?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I think it is safe to assume the man's actions did not make him happy. Can we therefore not say the man was ignorant of what brings him happiness?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Why couldn't a serial killer be guided by a flawed perception?
The person you describe doesn't seem like a happy person, nor does he seem to make decisions that would turn him into one. It seems to me he is hopelessly lost.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I don't think I'm doing that.
I am, however, making an educated guess that the persons you describe are unhappy people. I also think I'm correct in that regard.
It seems like you interpreted the quote I shared earlier as 'every person desires to be a morally good person', but that is not what the quote says and not how I explained it.
I'll ask again, what about all the people who do not exhibited those tendencies? Are they not human? And if they are, then apparently the tendencies aren't as natural as you consider them to be.
You've missed/dodged the actual issue. If you're claiming we have free-will, then something within us must cause us to choose to act according to 'evil' desires or according to 'good' ones. That thing itself cannot be 'evil' because otherwise it would not sometimes choose to act according to 'good' desires. So that thing must either me amoral or outside of us, hence it is impossible that we are 'naturally inclined to evil'. Your suggestion was that we needed policing. That implies that some force outside of us is required to persuade us to act morally. If that's the case, then we don;t really have free-will do we? Put policing in place and the effect is that we act more morally. Our actions have been dictated by the environment. If we really had free-will, then policing would make no difference at all. So that rules out the 'choosing' mechanism being entirely within us.
So what we're left with is that humans sometimes act in a way which other humans think is 'good', sometimes they act in a way which other humans think is 'bad' and the balance of these actions is determined by the environment they're in. It therefore cannot be true that we're always prone to evil. It has to be the case that our environment causes such tendencies.
You've just introduced the word 'natural' there without any warrant at all. Show me the evidence that the tendencies the millennium development goals are controlling are 'natural'. All you've got is your idle speculation on the matter. Other things that the countries affected by the millennium development goals have in common (other than being populated by humans);
They're all agricultural societies
They're all to some extent urbanised
They've all at one time been colonised
They're all part of a capitalist global economic system
They all have industrial economies
They're all settled communities (not nomadic)
They all have an institutional education system
They all have (or have had) a formal religion
I could go on.
Any one of these common factors could be the cause of any one of our common behaviours (good or bad). You have absolutely no justification for insisting that its 'in our nature' other than your own dogmatic refusal to entertain any other viewpoint.
Quoting Isaac
That’s not what I said. This is what I said.
Quoting Brett
Glad you asked: I've seen plenty of interviews with murderers and these explanations a couple of the more recent ones were "my mind blanked" and "I just did it" or claiming to be scared or surprised... I believe it's rage in some them and for the very worse they derive enormous pleasure is causing people pain but I haven't too many interviews with these tier of killer. The explanations are varied. One of the last interviews I watched I'd guess the guy had an IQ of around 75 and at that level it just seems like they don't do very much thinking in general. Neither of us inhabit that worldview of having an IQ of like 70-75.
I've only heard a few say that their action was good. Of course an action could be beneficial for someone (say, if they rob and murder someone), but most murderers won't think that action is Good. If a criminal genuinely cannot tell the difference between right and wrong he could plead the insanity defense.
If you're interested there's an interview with Richard Kuklinski on youtube and plenty of material about Ted Bundy on netflix recently.
Okay, lets be clear here:
-Everybody has flawed perceptions.
-By "guided" I'm taking that term to be motivated... some killers do seem to be guided by flawed perceptions, but this isn't the case for all of them. In the case of a more evil killer he might sexually get off to his action and he just doesn't care about his victim. That's his motivation - not a flawed perception.
It's okay to call him "lost" but I would also call him evil.
This is fair to say in, I think the vast majority of cases. I sometimes wonder about Ted Bundy though who was just a severe narcisisst.
Would you care to explain it again? Is it just every person does what they perceive to be good for themselves?
In sum, I'm just saying it's just not right to let rationality (or someone lack of) take center stage when other motivations or drives of action take a much bigger role. I feel like this is such a "philosophy" thing to do - to let rationality take center stage especially when it comes to motivation which is much broader. I feel like we should first and foremost be considering the evidence and then maybe consider the dead 2000+ year old philosopher. Not the other way around. America has a very, very comprehensive body of knowledge when it comes to killers and especially serial killers.
I believe that we can't universalize i.e. say that all of something is a particular way but we can generalize in that we can say most/almost all/the majority of some particular class of objects are
I'm not saying everybody has a taste for immorality but most of us do. If that's true then giving free will to allow evil is meant for the few that have a good nature and that sounds more like an experiment, an evil one, where a handful of good folks are tempted with a choice to become evil and the rest of us, the majority, naturally evil-natured are like extras in a movie - just there to fill the scene and nothing else.
I'm agnostic, almost atheistic.
Yes.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Such as?
As far as I am concerned your examples change little about my premise, except for the fact that some very mentally ill people may not fit the bill. Don't you find it telling that you need to go to the extremest of examples in order to find a fault in my argument?
Tell you what, if you agree that 99.9% of people are motivated by what they believe is good for them, I will agree with you that 0.01% may not, because they suffer from some brain malfunction.
I can see the practical merit in that, but not the philosophical one.
Once we agree that some people aren't naturally evil, aren't we drawn to the question why that is so?
I’m trying to work out whether you’re looking at this as God having given us free will? Is that right?
I'm in two minds about whether god exists or not but defending the existence of evil with god's desire to give us free will is untenable.
So, the majority of us just around as backdrops in a theater where the main actors, the good folks who struggle with the option of doing evil because they have free will, play their part?
I just don't consider evil to be a natural tendency, but a tendency born out of ignorance.
Quoting Tzeentch
Would you agree that some primates commit evil acts?
But lets say, for the sake of argument, that they do commit evil acts.
Quoting Tzeentch
Would you regard that, then, as a natural tendency and not one of ignorance?
If it’s instinctive then I assume it’s natural. Therefore evil exists without the cause being ignorance. And why would murder be instinctive?
For an animal, perhaps. I would not extend this line of reasoning to humans.
Quoting Brett
Perhaps. Like I said before, I don't consider animals to be capable of evil or good.
Quoting Brett
Sustenance?
Other motivations or drives would be jealousy, hate, a sexual motive, or just the implicit recognition that the life of the victim doesn't matter and that murder could be convenient. I honestly believe the choice to murder in some cases is essentially just someone saying "fuck it" to the universe and moral instruction. I honestly believe that to be the case. They are choosing to turn their back on that. I have had this thought process but obviously on a much smaller scale.
Most psychologically healthy people conduct their lives in a way that they pursue what they believe to be best for them. However, we are talk about evil here. Lately I have seen a number of interviews from convicted murderers so if you want to talk about evil that seems like a good resource. Most of us just don't encounter evil in everyday, civilized life.... so yes, on some level I am talk about "the exception."
I do think it's a grave mistake to chalk up all evil to ignorance. It would imply to me that you could sit in front of, say, Ted Bundy and explain to him "well if only you knew the wonders of Philosophy and...."
Ok, but why aren't these motivated by a perception of what is good? (or maybe 'not good', in the example of hate).
Surely, when someone pursues a sexual relation with someone else, isn't it obvious that this person does so because they believe it benefits them?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I don't think it is that simple.
A lot of psychopathic behavior can be directly linked to abuses people have endured when they were children, for example.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
The initial premise of the thread included that evil was a natural tendency in all humans. So that is broader than just the sort of extreme evil committed by the world's worst criminals.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I occasionally watch those. They are interesting. But such persons are often extremely manipulative and/or narcissistic. There's no real way to tell if they are lying or telling the truth when they talk about the things that went on in their heads when they committed their deeds.
Often it is related to sexual pleasure or some form of power fantasy, though.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
When people are left to their own malignant thoughts for too long, it may be really difficult to ever drag them back into reality. Sure.
However, I do not believe people are born that way. Ted Bundy had a troublesome youth. There's no telling what may have happened to him during his youth that could have been the catalyst for his behavior in later life.
But he too derived sexual pleasure from his acts, leading us back to the person always pursuing what they think benefit them and deluded perception.
It's fine, you can doubt this. I've personally experienced this and I make that link when I hear the description of others but neither us have direct access to their mental states; we only have direct access to our own. Especially when I was a moral nihilist in my teens I would just do things because "fuck it" - there was no standard of morality present that I could even ever meaningfully violate.
I do believe that the vast majority of men, in their hearts, know that certain things are absolutely wrong but they just choose to ignore it or deliberately violate it.
I'm well aware that abuse and maltreatment plays a huge role, but ultimately one's troubles are their own.
Why is that a deluded perception? It did benefit him. He got off, sexually.
I can respond to the rest later if need be, I just want to focus the discussion.
You were testing your convictions on your surroundings, trying to validate them. The benefit you were seeking seems obvious to me, even if you may not be convinced yourself.
Things like "fuck it" are exactly the kinds of motivations I'd expect an angsty teenager to express, trying to look cool. No offense.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I believe so too. Which I why I do not agree with the notion that humans are naturally evil.
Perhaps I'd phrase it slightly different, but only to highlight my point. I think most people are (perhaps unconsciously) aware that their actions violate moral principles, but they do not care because they do not see the direct benefit of behaving morally.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I'm not saying they do not carry responsibility for their actions. But when we understand the process they went through to arrive in their twisted state, we have an easier time recognizing where and how their perception was deluded.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Every person desires to be happy (or content). ("every person desires the Good")
Our perception is what we use to guide ourselves to this goal.
Did Bundy's actions made him a happier person?
Well, we can't look into the man's head, but I'll wager an educated guess that he was probably deeply unhappy.
I would say that I was living out my principles at the time, which were moral nihilism. I do believe a true moral nihilist - one who actually lives their ideology - is someone to be very careful of. A true moral nihilist would believe that those inbuilt moral ideas are basically illusions either put in place by society or evolution or whatnot.
I do not believe that humans are naturally evil either. I would describe myself as someone who's a little more cynical about human nature, but I definitely wouldn't describe humans as naturally evil. I'd be more inclined to say that humans are inherently more self-interested or maybe self-focused and morally probably more neutral. I definitely wouldn't say that humans are inherently good either.
I also consider one's views towards humanity to be a foundational belief. And by that I mean foundational in the sense that it influences or impacts many other beliefs.
We're now experiencing difficulty at this notion of "happiness."
From what I understand about a really evil guy like Carl Panzram is that he may have reached this "happy" state if the entire universe burst into flames.
I feel like you're pushing a different notion of happiness though. I feel like you're pushing one that's a little more universal, maybe something more in line with Eudaimonia? I thought I suggested this idea to you earlier but you shot it down.
Happiness is a difficult subject though. Something might make you happy in the short term, or it could be unpleasant in the moment but form a good long-term memory. I would usually view happiness/content as a subjective thing, but I'm not totally closed off to the notion of some sort of Eudaimonic happiness either.
I do believe there is something like 'true happiness', maybe close to the Greek idea of eudaimonia. (I do like classical Greek philosophy in general). Or perhaps maybe something close to Buddhist ideas of enlightenment.
Everyone is looking for this sort of true happiness (consciously or unconsciously), but very few find it. Many look for it in the wrong places. Western society teaches people such happiness can be found in material things. I doubt that, but to each their own.
Also, I think true happiness, morality and reason are closely connected. If our reasoning faculty is deluded (perception), we get led onto false trails on our quest for happiness, which can have dire consequences for ourselves and others.
I would simply counter the problem of evil with the problem of good:
If the Devil exists:
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is benevolent.
Is he willing, but not able? Then he is impotent.
Is he both able and willing to prevent good? Then where cometh good?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him Devil?
Quoting Tzeentch
Does this then mean humans are naturally good?
Quoting Tzeentch
I didn’t say animals, I said primates. If you don’t think they’re capable of evil or good then how would you define good, is it something only humans are capable of?
:up: God, thought of as omnibenevolent, is duty-bound to stop the devil but he wouldn't want to impose himself on us - that would be rude to say the least. Hence he gives us free will so that we may choose freely which side we want to be on.
This fits beautifully with how Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, although tempted to breaking point by the serpent-devil, chose "freely" to partake of the forbidden fruit. It seems that disobedience is an essential feature of free will and freedom in general. I remember in my discussions on free will that negation/denial/rejection (disobedience) is a crucial element for free will. Slaves, paragons of lacking freedom, obey their masters.
This state of creators being worried about the possible disobedience of their creations is instantiated in the present, raging debate on AI (artificial intelligence) taking over the world. This is what I call the creator complex.
So, it does seem reasonable to believe that god, being omnibenvolent, ignored the creator complex and imbued Adam and Eve and ergo all of humanity with free will, knowing full well that Adam & Eve would at some point disobey his command and take a bite of the forbidden fruit.
In that sense, the devil played a critical role in making us aware of our freedom. Yes, we were punished, quite severely it seems (death), but we were now free men and women. It seems God and we must thank the devil for doing the dirty work of revealing our freedom to us: God will be happy to know those who chose him did so freely and we are happy because nothing was imposed on us.
Quoting Tzeentch
Evil recognizes no boundaries in my humble opinion: parents have slain children so we can forget about strangers shooting you in a random act of violence. Evil is not restricted to only the ignorant.
If you don't mind me asking, what do you think comes naturally to us, good or evil or both, and why?
Thinking a bit more on the issue, I feel we need free will in order to own up to our actions whatever they may be.
If we're good by nature - programmed to be so - then the notion of a good person is at stake: we can't be good if we didn't choose to be good. Free will would be necessary in such cases but then we'd have to deal with problematic people who choose evil. Such a world would have good and evil
On the other hand if we're programmed to be evil then giving us free will makes sense only as a means to allow us some goodness i.e. the choice then is not to do evil and do good. Such a world would have good and evil.
The difference between the two worlds is that in one free will enables goodness and in the other it enables evil.
Perhaps our natural tendencies are balanced between good and evil and we're morally ambiguous creatures. In such a world free will would certainly assure responsibility for both our good deeds and bad deeds. Such a world would have good and evil.
Which of the three possible moral worlds do we live in?
Quoting TheMadFool
I should clarify what meant earlier by natural in reference to evil. It sounds like I meant evil exists in nature. What I meant was that evil is one of our tendencies, that it is not introduced to us through ignorance. The issue of serial killers has been raised and how their childhood condition contributed towards evil acts. But not all children mistreated go on to become serial killers.
We have both evil and good tendencies, we can act on either of them. We are not faultless angels programmed for only good. But our good tendencies create more benefits for us than our evil tendencies. It’s in our interests to chose good over evil. But that doesn’t mean everyone will act that way, and nor does it mean we ourselves don’t sometimes behave badly.
Our culture, built on our moral principles, constrains and conditions us in terms of behaviour. Our parents introduce us to ways of behaving. Part of that is making choices, living with consequences. The overriding factor in this melange of good and bad tendencies is free will. Free will is proof of us having these tendencies. If evil was introduced to us from outside, ignorance or abuse, then it means we are empty vessels, without good or bad tendencies. We would never have to chose, never think freely. And where would the idea of evil come from, even if it did come from outside? Culture might manage our tendencies but it didn’t create them.
My problem is trying to establish how and when, in evolution, we developed free will. Or was just it just simple choices that became more sophisticated as we evolved, the development of consciousness.
"Man is somewhere in between the gods and the beasts" - Plotinus
Quoting IvoryBlackBishop
That’s a tough performance.
I think we are morally ambiguous, and that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are relative. We are therefore responsible for both our good and bad deeds, but I don’t think they’re ever evenly balanced - depending on the personal value system you subscribe to.
I agree with @Tzeentch in that most of what we refer to as ‘evil’ comes down to ignorance: a stranger shooting you in a ‘random act of violence’ is expressing a generalised hate and is ignorant in their actions of your individual humanity. A parent slaying their child is often expressing self-hatred and is ignorant in their actions of the potential of that child as a uniquely developing human being.
I think for the most part we are ignorantly contributing to evil in pursuit of a limited perception of potential in the world - although we are comparatively more aware, connected and collaborative than most other animals. It is vastly more common in the universe to ignore, isolate and exclude what we don’t understand, but in our best interests long term and collectively speaking to instead increase awareness, connection and collaboration whenever those opportunities arise and despite the risks.
As long as we determine and initiate our actions according to what is most frequent, most popular, and most convenient, then we will continue to tend towards ‘evil’ - ignoring, isolating and excluding opportunities to relate to the universe, until there is nothing left for us but fear and non-existence. I think it’s our capacity to determine and initiate our own actions that is free insofar as we are aware of the choices available and our collaborative potential to make them.
Those who continue to do ‘evil’ despite their apparent awareness of alternative actions are arguably deliberate in their ignorance, isolation or exclusion. The most frequent, most popular and most convenient methods of preventing or stopping this ‘evil’ is by employing exclusion, isolation or ignorance ourselves. But despite the best efforts of law enforcement and war, evil cannot cancel itself out. The most effective solution IMHO, long term and collectively speaking, is to strive to increase awareness, connection and collaboration whenever the opportunity arises and despite the risk. Easier said than done, but still...
That would be an interesting thought to explore, but for now I'll stick with neutral.
Quoting Brett
I consider good and evil to be closely related to rationality and reason; the higher faculties of mind that only humans are capable of. Humans are capable of understanding the consequences of and motivations behind their actions to a far greater degree than animals. Humans are also capable of self-reflection.
So yes, to me morality is something that only concerns humans.
Quoting Tzeentch
That may be so. But there is evidence of primates murdering. I don’t imagine they think in terms of morality. But if the killing was unnecessary then it’s probably regarded as murder.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2119677-chimps-beat-up-murder-and-then-cannibalise-their-former-tyrant/
Hmm.. I think our definitions of ignorance may differ.
I'll give you a short version of what I discussed with others in this thread;
I believe humans are motivated primarily by a desire to be happy. When a person's actions do not contribute to or even undermine their happiness, I consider those actions ignorant.
In the case of a parent hurting their children, they obviously must be quite miserable to begin with. Their misery clouds their perception, to the point that they believe hurting their children will improve their situation. It's safe to say that it won't. It probably makes them even worse.
(My strong suspicions are that) Evil actions cannot contribute to a person's happiness. Thus evil is necessarily an act of ignorance.
Quoting TheMadFool
I lean towards people being either naturally neutral or good.
People desire to happy. They want to love and to be loved, prefer positive emotions over negative emotions, etc. However, due to all sorts of factors, like upbringing and societal norms, people often end up pursuing this goal in the wrong way (ignorance), and this may lead to them undermining their pursuit of happiness. These may be neutral actions (pointless actions, basically), or they may actively undermine other people's happiness too, which could be considered evil actions.
Whether a fundamental desire to be happy is enough to call people fundamentally good is an interesting question. I'd say it makes them neutral, at least.
I realize I'm making some big jumps. Just trying to give you a general outline of my thoughts, and we can go into more detail if you're interested.
Most importantly, there must also be an awareness of a moral dimension. I don't think animals are capable of that.
Similarly, can a child who is unaware of the consequences and moral implications of his actions be called evil?
Quoting Tzeentch
Improve in what way?
If you accidentally press the Send All Nuclear Warheads button, you might not be punished for your evil deed.
However, the action is still evil.
I don't think all evil is punishable; if contained, evil can complement good.
Take teeth, they kill things to feed the user. They also are used to chew non-living food. However, I think, they show that some evil is okay.
It's natural for evil to occur in universe conditions.
The good phenomenon are super-massive and the chances of evil being too great are small.
So animals have an element of moral freedom.
Quoting Tzeentch
Then why would they act badly? A good person will only act in a good way, so it’s only the neutral people doing all the damage? If they have no side of them that is no good then where does this bad behaviour spring from?
We're getting into psychology here, and this question would be answered differently depending on what person we're talking about.
A possible motive would be that a parent is projecting their failures onto the child, and punishing the child instead of themselves. The "benefit" would lie in the fact that the parent does not have to acknowledge their own failures.
Another could be that the parent blames the child for their lot in life, and they use the child to vent their frustration.
These hypothetical situations are of limited value, though. Every person is different and other things will explain their behavior. It's important to note that some of these processes may happen subconsciously.
Quoting Brett
Ignorance. That's basically the point I've been trying to make the whole time.
They desire happiness (or 'the Good'), but simply haven't the slightest clue of how to get there.
Ok. So if evil is in our nature and we have "tendencies" then doesn't that mean, since "tendencies" sounds like we have no or little control in the matter, we lack free will? If we don't have free will and can't make choices against our "tendencies" which you say can be both good and bad, then how does that weigh in on the free will defense argument for the problem of evil? We're simply being led by the nose by our "tendencies".
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting Tzeentch
So, I'm knowledgeable (not ignorant) when I know how to and act in ways that make myself happy? Evil is an act of ignorance. Does that mean that if I don't know how to make myself happy, which makes me ignorant, then I'm necessarily evil? All unhappy people, because they're ignorant, are necessarily evil then?
Quoting TheMadFool
I don’t think it means that. We have the tendency to be angry but we can chose to override it.
Are you saying most people are angry most of the time? That seems a stretch. Most people I meet aren't angry most of the time.
Personally I prefer the term wisdom as the opposite of ignorance, and knowing how to make oneself happy, and acting accordingly, is one aspect of wisdom.
Quoting TheMadFool
I don't really believe in evil people, but ignorance may or may not lead one to commit evil actions. It may also lead to actions which are simply neutral.
For simplicity's sake, lets call good actions those which bring happiness, evil actions which take it away, and neutral actions those that do not affect our happiness.
I’m usually only angry when I’m watching cable news or when people shit on me (figuratively, of course).
Sure, but that is too simple. A perceived bad act by one may not be perceived as bad by another. A perceived bad act can cause a perceived bad act by another, which to yet another might be perceived as justice.
Why would you think that? I’m talking about a tendency and obviously of varying degrees.
And it was in relation to free will.
Free-will, points to having a choice to be either honest or dishonest.
Well, if we have a tendency to anger then we'd be angry most of the time. That's what tendency means. Otherwise we'd have a tendency to non-anger wouldn't we?
No. We get angry at particular things. It’s a response.
Sure. I was trying to clarify your use of 'tendency'. I've always used it to mean 'a typical or repeated habit, action or belief' so to have it associated with 'us' and 'anger' seemed excessive, a anger is hardly typical. If you just mean "sometimes we get angry, but we act civilly nonetheless" then it makes more sense. I'm not sure I understand the point you're making there though.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting TheMadFool
I was making the point that just because we have “tendencies” doesn’t mean we are owned by them or that we lack free will.
I see. Wouldn't you say that seeing as acting civilly despite our emotional state is the thing which we do most often, that has most prima facae justification to be called our natural 'tendency'? Why would we call something which we exhibit least often a natural tendency?
Quoting Isaac
What else could it be? Unless you want to say it’s cultural. Hence my reference to primates that also behave this way. It wasn’t our culture that influenced their actions of aggression.
You can’t just cherry pick human tendencies.
He’s saying it’s not a tendency. Behaviors and feelings are different things. You’re both arguing past each other.
Straighten us out then.
But primates spend the vast majority of their time not-angry too, so why make anything other than the presumption that they too suppress one potential emotional response to favour another?
We have several incentives and potential emotional states on the go at once and we select the behaviour we think is most conducive to the circumstances. As do primates. I'm not seeing the difference between anger something which both we and chimps exhibit from time to time (you're calling a natural tendency) and social civility something which both we and chimps exhibit far more often (but which you're not calling a natural tendency).
We've got two modes of behaviour, both are exhibited by us and other animals, both serve a purpose, both are mediated by brain activities,, yet one is natural tendency, the other is and wilful act of suppression. I'm just trying to get at how you've reached that distinction.
I don’t think we select behaviour. It rises up according to conditions. I think we chose when and how to let it assert itself through our free will. We can be good or bad.
Social civility (I don’t know how that got in there) is a set of cultural actions; chimpanzee or human. Those are actions of free will, maybe imbedded in culture over time but not inherent in us, they’re learned. You can break those civilities any time you want.
Let’s say that evil is the absence of good. Those are the two primary tendencies we swing between. These are inherent in us, not culturally acquired.
Who’s to say what is good? I’m thinking of the old Taoist parable. Also the story of Adam and Eve who thought they could gain such knowledge by eating the forbidden fruit (knowing better than God). Would it have been bad to kill Hitler in cold blood? Perhaps you might argue that’s murder. Perhaps you would call it justifiable homicide. Perhaps someone more evil than the murdered Hitler had hypnotized the Germans during their time of runaway inflation caused by the winners of the First World War. My point is that people have differing views on what is good and what is bad. Also that there are no absolutes. Perhaps you think you’re generally a good person. I doubt the world’s dolphins swimming through the pollution and plastic you’ve contributed to would think so.
I think that’s just relativist thinking, it doesn’t help me at all.
To dismiss it as “just relativist thinking” doesn’t do away with its strength. My response should have been directed to the thread as a whole, not just you. Didn’t mean to single you out, although that’s exactly what I did.
But all creatures like us are embedded in a culture, so how would you know that angry behaviour isn't also the product of culture, learned during childhood? You can break anger responses any time you want too.
They used to give lobotomies for that.
Now they just lock you up.
:up:
Quoting Isaac
That’s where we’ll never agree.
You don't think chimpanzees have a culture?
My earlier posts deal with the matter of perception.
What is the process by which one overrides our tendencies? How do you which are your tendencies?
How does this relate to the free will defense of the problem of evil? You said ignorance leads to evil. What exactly do you mean?
:grin:
I disagreed, stating that humans have an innate tendency towards being happy, but that their ignorance leads them pursue things that do not make them happy and to do things that are immoral.
Who's to say what is good?
I'm not sure that's the best interpretation of that story, but that's a separate topic entirely.
I was planning on reading up on the laws and rules of war, just as Just War Theory hypothetically, had the Allies assinated him, i t wouldn't have been "murder" or killing in cold blood.
True, but I'd argue that, much as a person with 20/20 vision as opposed to one with 20/200 vision, that there are objectively better ways of discerning what is good or bad.
A person who thinks that exterminating people with concentration camps is "good", could be reasonably inferred to be a very horrible idea of what is "good".
If you mean, there's no "exact science", or 'perfect' mathematical formula for discerning the good and bad of every individual scenario, then yes (e.x. in theory, "murder" is morally wrong, however in practice, there is no perfect way of defining it, which is why courts of law have definitions, rules of evidence, and so forth which have developed and been in use for a long period of time, and rely on the subjective judgments and discernments of the judges, juries, etc).
But you're saying that the statement "there are no absolutes" is an absolute.
Much as, as far as the Tao is concerned, Lao Tzu obviously holds following the Dao to be an "absolute", and superior to not following it and it principles, whatever they consist of.
Even then, you're inferring that "polluting the ocean" is "bad" in some absolute sense, if there are 'no absolutes' (other than, ironically, the 'absolute' that there are no absolutes), you can't even say that polluting the ocean is "wrong" in any inherent sense to begin with.
Or that it is "absolutely bad" to put one person's view of good and evil over another person's species, etc.
Hypothetically, what if the death of the dolphins prevent them from preying on other marine life, would said marine life look up to us as war heroes?
Am I the only one on this forum with self-awareness? It seems that everyone here feels they are guiltless good people. I try to be good to the best of my capabilities, but I often fail. Is everyone here a saint?
As far as that goes, I believe most would argue there are different degrees of "goodness and badness". (I'm not aware any legal or moral system in which all wrong acts are considered 'equally wrong', whether one wished to reference the Bible, the contemporary Common Law, or otherwise, obviously some wrongs are considered worse or more severe than others, and punished in a harsher way).
Most people aren't a saint, like Jesus, Ghandi, or someone of that nature, but they aren't a Hitler, a Gacy, a Dahmer either.
So why does falling one righteous act below 'perfect' Sainthood make one a 'bad person', yet if one wanted to be an even worse person, they would have a lot of work cut out for them if they wanted to achieve a Hitler, a Gacy, a Dahmer status?
I meant for someone to kill Hitler before the concentration camps or even before he took power.
My point is that it’s all about perception. Certainly I have views about what is good and what is bad, as the dolphins probably do. Mine differ from theirs, however, I’m sure. Furthermore, I believe that Hitler was evil. As certainly the Jews do. Did the Nazis know they were evil?
You completely misunderstood me. Also, to say there are no absolutes is an absolute is like saying the fictional unicorn is an actual unicorn.
[/quote]
No I believe it fits, it's holding that premise or 'prime truth' to be an absolute.
I would argue no on that one, as far as courts of law and the moral philosophy they're based on is concerned.
But here you're arguing that the statement "it's all about perception" is an absolute independent of perception (or else, then the statement "it's all about perception" is a matter of perception as well).
My argument is that it could be reasonably inferred that there are better or worse ways of perceiving things than others; much as how a person with 20/20 vision, and one with 20/200 vision might but perceive the same event, however the person with better vision would be more credulous in regards to that than the person with worse.
As far as courts go, obviously it's at the perception or delegation of the individuals participating the court (e.x. judges, juries, etc), however this doesn't mean that any and all perceptions or subjective judgments are considered equally valid, which is why the court has rules and procedures, and is built on a system of checks and balances to help ensure better and more rational judgment, as opposed to mob rule, or blood feuds, or more primitive systems of resolving conflicts which modern courts and legal systems 'evolved' out of.
Okay. The one absolute is that there are no other absolutes than this self-referring statement.
Also, you continue to misunderstand me. If, for example, this turned out to be the best of all possible worlds where in others the Nazis blew up the world with nuclear bombs, would this world not be good compared to the others?
Okay. The one absolute is that there are no other absolutes than this self-referring statement.
[/quote]
Why?
But you said it's about perception, so then blowing up the world with nuclear bombs isn't immediately "wrong" to begin with, yet you seem to be inferring that it is so.
My point is: compared to what? Some fiction where people don’t suffer? If there is an absolute, then it is in Heaven with God. I’m sure you don’t believe that, though. To God there are absolutes. Everything is good to Him. To us self-centered humans, there is relative good and bad. I think my life is bad, but to someone living in Haiti it is probably very good looking from their perspective.
Clearly, I think exterminating people is bad. To the dolphins, it would be very good.
To us self-centered humans, there is relative good and bad.
[/quote]
What is "wrong" with being self centered.
I understand that, but that's just a matter of comparison, and doesn't attempt to substantiate what things contribute to either situation to make it 'good' or 'bad' for the percipients.
For example, even if a man losing his finger isn't "as bad" as losing he entire right arm, but would be different degrees of injury or loss, and there would be similarities between the two of them which could be compared and contrasted.
Fair enough then, so "to the Nazis", putting Jews in gas chambers was "good", who's to say there was anything wrong in that perception?
So based on your absolutes, it would be a "greater evil" to impose your judgment on the Nazis, than for the Nazis to exterminate Jews? Okay...
What about to the guy who hates him?
People can actually knowingly commit evil, at least in the sense that they're fully under the impression that they're doing or about to do is wrong but they do it anyway.
What about him?
As far as the woman who was raped, what about the satisfaction of the rapist?
etc...
Nope. You’re still not getting it. Humans are not the center of the universe as you might think. To us, it is bad. To them, it was good. There is no right or wrong without a percipient. I’m not denying that. When did I deny that?
Most people want to live in a world without suffering. Of course. But to some other conscious beings what are we? We all must suffer to experience and learn from life, as well. That is my ontology. How much we suffer is a matter of perspective.
If you lived under me, you'd be good by my standard; you'd have privilage to be evil, under me, but my voice should ring in your head 'but that's not good, is it?'.
You take my idea good.
You take the ideal human's idea of good.
In any case, there is no order lest there be justice.
You CANNOT say something is good or evil, and it hold any logical weight, unless there is a judge.
Perhaps because most of the universe is growing and focused on health, this points to the righteous judge. He/she would say, 'destroying the planet - that's not good, is it?'
Nope. You’re still not getting it. Humans are not the center of the universe as you might think.
Basically you're asserting that putting humans at the "center of the universe" is absolutely wrong, so that's another flaw in your argument.
And as far as that goes, whether we were talking "humans" specifically, or a race of aliens or androids who were comparable to humans in terms of their inherant faculties, I believe that the same scenarios would apply.
I think that most people would reasonably agree that a "rock" doesn't have the rights that humans do not because of human "preference" but because it lacks sentience.
Or in regards to animals, even if they weren't viewed in strict "human or animal dichotomies", but in terms of complexity hierarchies (e.x. molecules combining to create cells, cells combining to create organs, etc) - humans would have more rights due to being at a higher degree of complexity.
(Much as how more complex animals, such as Tigers, have "more rights" than less complex ones, such as insects).
I agree with this, but probably not in the way you think. Humans have no business judging absolute good and bad. Only God has that authority.
Well, as far as the legal systems of any 1st world nations go, humans can and do judge good and bad, so it's your word against theirs, unless you claim to be "god" or to speak for god.
What's the value of rationality to you?
I rationalized most of the universe is focused on healthy progression, and I would rule anyone who is against it as evil.
Am I the/a righteous judge?
Humans aren’t absolutely good or bad. Likewise, there are no absolutely good behaviors. You might give money to the poor. Something you and I think is good. The poor then buy consumer junk that ends up in landfills, just like you and I do. The poor may use that money to heat their homes. That causes global warming, etc. etc.
I don’t think humans can be rational. Everything about us is irrational.
Of course I don’t speak for God. I think you are confusing me with you.
Quoting Tzeentch
Well, I don’t agree with this part. We think we want to be happy, but for the most part we don’t even know what it IS to be happy. I think our strongest motivation is fear, but I believe there is an underlying impetus to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, which can operate at its fullest capacity in humanity - although it rarely does.
Ignorance, for me, is refraining from interaction with new information as it becomes available, on the grounds that we might not like what we find. The various ways that we do that, we refer to as ‘evil’: hatred, oppression, violence, destruction, aggression, force, abuse, etc.
Quoting TheMadFool
Tendency is not a lack of control - I’d say it’s more like a movement that occurs when we let go of the steering wheel, so to speak. I think like most animals, we’re genetically disposed to a certain level of awareness, connection and collaboration without conscious effort. Beyond that, we have a capacity to increase our awareness, but a tendency towards fear: avoiding interaction with any new information that may cause experiences of pain, humility, loss or lack.
Could you be more specific with what part you don't agree? Because to me it seems like we're mostly in agreement.
Maybe I would add that fear and happiness are closely related, in the sense that fear almost always directly interferes without our desire to be happy.
By what absolute is there anything "wrong" with speaking for God?
Do I have a perfect scientific or mathematical formula for what everyone should do in every situation? No.
But yes, I do believe asserting some absolutes, or that some perspectives on them are better than others is good or doable; such as asserting that perspective of a Nazi who wishes to exterminate Jews is much "worse" than a perspective which supports rights and so on and so forth.
Quoting Isaac
Maybe you’re being amusing. But in any case I mean we’ll never agree over the whole nature/nurture thing.
Quoting TheMadFool
Free will. We don’t have to be angry. We can chose to manage it, or not. We can take something lying around that’s not ours or we can leave it. We can lie or chose not to. We can chose to fight or not to. The tendencies, like I said, swing between good and the absence of good, which is evil. Your problem, it seems to me, with this is that the three cannot exist in one person: evil, good and free will.
This goes against the claims of most contemporary neuroscientists, who I grant aren’t infallible but have lots of evidence to back up their claims. In some individuals the prefrontal cortex doesn’t override the impulsions of the limbic system no matter how much they try. Their emotions are in effect uncontrollable. You might experience this if you ever had to fight for your mortal life, in fact. It is very, very difficult if not impossible for some victims of early childhood abuse to control their emotions all the time due to impeded brain development from the trauma, for example. That’s why it’s not good to stress these people out too much.
Now I agree to an extent that we have free will, but our version of consciousness as humans is a relationship between mind and brain, whatever the relationship is truly we may never know, but damage to the brain causes changes in behaviors. It is now proposed that the brain can heal itself to a degree (possibly mind over matter), but there are really strong limitations to this. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe strokes and aneurysms come to mind.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Well I think that contributes towards my feelings about natural tendencies. And it’s the damage done to people by childhood abuse that makes it difficult to control those existing tendencies. And it’s clear to most that our fight to preserve our life is not taught but instinctive. So these tendencies are inherent in us.
Of course not all people who have been through such childhood experiences are unable to manage their impulses, or they at least manage it to the degree it’s not destructive.
Depends on the type and duration of the abuse, the individual physiology, and what you mean by “destructive”.
Yes of course. But that’s not really my point. What I mean is that acts of evil are not necessarily caused by outside influence , or culture. Otherwise all those that were abused would commit acts of evil. I can’t prove that without data of course, or without knowledge of the degree of abuse. I don’t know if anyone can prove that. My feeling is, still, that humans have the potential for evil, it doesn’t need to be introduced to them from outside.
Edit: for me you would need to find evidence that all people who murder have been damaged in some way.
It certainly seems that way, doesn’t it? But our desire to always ‘be happy’ (whatever we understand that to be at the time) invariably results in ignorance - we suppress, isolate or exclude information, and even feel justified to attack or hate potential interaction with the world that threatens our ‘happiness’. When we do this, we perpetuate and contribute to evil, but because we have excluded this information, we ignorantly believe ourselves to ‘be happy’. It is our fear of not being ‘happy’, and our relentless pursuit of this temporary interoception of positive affect at all cost, that most contributes to evil.
Increasing awareness, connection and collaboration enables us to face specific fears, but not to eliminate fear altogether. Joy comes and goes - we will always find it where we are so long as we’re not afraid of experiencing pain, humility, loss or lack. But ‘happiness’ is not a permanent state to strive for - there is no permanent state except non-existence, and success in achieving a state of ‘happiness’ entails an ignorance of the inevitability of change.
This is very enlightened. I just prefer the theistic bias as opposed to the atheistic or other bias. I think there is something in us that continues on after our bodies die. I have no proof of this in a scientific sense, but what would that proof even look like? I have my reasons which are sufficient for me.
What is happiness?
Quoting Possibility
What do we fear? Do we fear to be unhappy, whatever that means? In my book, we seem to fear suffering, itself and its cause, generally identified as evil. If so, do you think fear is conducive to free will? Can we fear and still be free? What about the problem of evil? If our motivation is based entirely on fear of evil (suffering & its cause) does it make sense to claim god allows evil so that we may be free?
Quoting Brett
All I'm saying is there's no need to carry coal to Newcastle. If evil is a tendency then god allowing evil so that we may have free will doesn't make sense. Imagine I create a robot and program it with a tendency towards evil. Now, if my explanation for whatever immorality that follows is that I wanted the robot to have free will, then people will not buy my argument. The robot is evil even without free will; in fact if free will has any role, it would be to allow the robot to be good, not bad.
Suffering is baked into the cake because people are so selfish that they think they are entitled to a creation for each individual’s desires. We were given a “Garden of Eden” and managed to live in harmony with it for tens of thousands of years. Don’t blame God for humanity’s hubris that we should all be entitled to creations for each individual taste. We think we know better than God. You are a puny human who should be grateful that you are even alive in this man-made hell.
Yes, an innate tendency for happiness but at the expense of others.
I am grateful but the free will defense for the problem of evil is wrong.
I can’t really look at this through the idea of God creating man. So i suppose I shouldn’t be here.
Quoting TheMadFool
I can’t think of anything that’s only bad. So when you create a robot that’s bad then it’s not a very realistic proposition. God or nature did not create a bad creature. They created a creature capable of being good and bad, that is they were whole, complete. Whether you believe in God or not they have free will.
Probably so. So what? What did the Church and the Apostles mean by “free will” anyway? The ability to choose evil? That’s simplistic bullshit. If you’re going to read any sacred text, you can’t check your mind at the door. You have to know how the text came about, which parts were chosen to be included and why and by whom, and you have to search for truth in it. It takes a critical mind. It’s not all bullshit, but some of it doesn’t serve God but instead serves the corrupt men responsible for its distribution. The Bible is part truth and part propaganda. You have to have world experience to know what’s what. I’m sorry that “Christians” have ruined God for you.
Quoting TheMadFool
I just want to clarify this. You mean that in order for free will to exist, to be given it by God, we must be evil and good, there must be two opposites to chose from otherwise there is no free will. If we are just evil then there is no other way of acting and vice versa.
So therefore to have free will we must have a tendency for evil. So yes, God allowed for evil so that free will could exist.
Edit: but it’s an interesting notion that God gave us free will when he could have just made us good. Only in terms of the God, story though.
Would we have been complete if we were only good?
No, because we had to be free otherwise we were not complete.
That’s fair enough - I have a problem with ignorance in preferring either bias, but otherwise I think it’s possible for a both/and approach to this question of existence. I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘something in us’. Personally, I think it’s our perceived potentiality that continues on in the minds of those with whom we’ve connected in life, which enables ‘who we are’ to interact with the world after our bodies die. So, for me, it’s not something in us, but the immaterial and irreducible qualities of our relations with others that we should be maximising while we’re alive.
This is also a good, honest philosophy. I can’t say I find fault with it.
The way I see it, ‘happiness’ refers to an interoception of positive affect in the organism. What we do with that and how we conceptualise these instances in our subjective experience is continually up for debate. We like to think of ourselves as an essence that doesn’t change over time, and we prefer ‘happy’ as a more permanent state for that essence, so we attempt to attribute this positive affect to more observable/measurable concepts or ‘causes’, like wealth and property, friendships and family, work-life or pleasure-pain balance. ‘Happiness’ may be relative to all of these (or none), depending on the unique combination of value systems we subscribe to. The problem is that nothing is permanent, and so we spend all our energy trying to conceptualise a sustained state of ‘perfection’ that doesn’t correspond to reality.
Quoting TheMadFool
I think our fear of ‘suffering’ or ‘being unhappy’ and therefore associating these instances with ‘evil’ is where we create a distorted perspective of reality. Like ‘happiness’, we also attempt to attribute the negative affect from ‘suffering’ (pain, humility, loss or lack) to more observable/measurable concepts or ‘causes’ that we are motivated to ignore, isolate or exclude from our conceptualisation of the world. When we label something as ‘evil’, we’re no longer trying to increase awareness, connection or collaboration with it, are we? In fact, we even value an ignorance of evil as innocence, or a hatred of evil as righteousness. This is fear talking.
Experiences of pain, humility, loss and lack point to the reality of our relationship with the universe in contrast with our conceptualised predictions. If we fear these experiences, then we are motivated to ignore reality in favour of retaining the concepts we construct, and we limit our capacity to interact with the world. This where our will is free only insofar as we are aware of our capacity to interact with whatever it is that we fear.
In my view, we cannot exclude ‘evil’ from our understanding of ‘God’ and still claim to be free. But I think we also need to recognise that ‘evil’ is a category of our own making, not of ‘God’’s. We won’t eliminate ‘evil’ from reality by excluding it from our concepts. I think the hardest part about understanding ‘evil’ is realising that the only ‘evil’ in the world from ‘God’’s point of view is in humanity’s fearful interaction with the world.
Awesome! Like the Psalm that goes “I shall fear no evil...” You’ve been brilliant in this thread. Just don’t let it go to your head, as no state is permanent! :wink:
Without getting into modern or even classical Calvinism (there are like 10 different versions of Calvinism or reformed faith), you are 100% correct. Failure is always found by those who actually have the ability to see reality for what it is. I'm not saying we need to go out of our way to be sad but the saying goes like this "ignorance is bliss". This is why some people go sky diving or shark fighting. I wish you all the happiness in the world my friend.
Are you talking about modern humans or human nature since they stood on two legs? At what stage do you think a desire for happiness entered the picture?
There were only two parts to the post to which you responded. One was an assertion about animal culture...
"But all creatures like us are embedded in a culture"
The other was a question...
".. so how would you know that angry behaviour isn't also the product of culture, learned during childhood?"
Since you can't very well disagree with a question, I could only presume that our disagreement was over the assertion - that animals have a culture.
If that's not what you disagree with, then I'm at a loss to understand your reply, I'm afraid.
I'm not an expert on ants, but ant colonies are comparable in a lot of ways to human cities.
Quoting Isaac
I understood your post to mean us and animals.
Embedded in culture was the point. Your post suggests that we are our culture. That was what I could not agree on. My position is that we create our culture, not the other way around.
I see. You'd said that...
Quoting Brett
... as a means of distinguishing anger (as an example of a 'natural tendency') from civility (which I introduced as a convenient catch-all term for what you were describing as choosing sometimes not to assert anger).
Since all intelligent animals have a culture, then all intelligent animals have the possibility that the behaviour they exhibit is 'learnt behaviour', yes?
So what I'm asking is - if any exhibited behaviour could be learned behaviour (including the behaviour of other animals), then how do you know that anger-associated behaviour is not learned (but rather is a 'natural tendency'), but civility is learned?
In other words - all you can see is behaviour, you are divining the origin of that behaviour (natural vs learned), I'm asking what features you're using to make that determination.
Tricky subject, but I think that it's well documented, such as by biology or evolutionary psychology that not all behavior is "learnt", as in the outdated myth of "Tabula Rasa" (which even during the day and age when it was popular, was known to be nonsense by legal theorists, such as Holmes in "The Common Law").
As far as "civility" or the law is concerned, the premise of the legal philosophy seems to be that some things are more or less rationally discernable, such as once a person enters the "age of reason" (e.x. that rape and murder is illegal and immoral), and a person can't claim "ignorance" of the law or "bad parental upbringing" as an excuse for their behavior.
Quoting Isaac
Anger = natural tendency
Civility = free will applied, creates cultural styles
Quoting Isaac
Not necessarily. Not all behaviour can be learned. Cultural norms are learned, passed on through mimicry.
Quoting Isaac
Anger could be learned as a tool to get what you want. Animals may mimic their elders. But you have to possess that anger first. It’s real, not an act. It’s like our mind learning to speak or write, there has to be something inherent in us to approach those possibilities.
Quoting Brett
How would you describe the world in terms of good and evil? Balanced? More evil? More good? Examine the prize and the punishment on offer. That which we don't want to do but we should be doing needs incentives and being good earns you a ticket to heaven. That which we want to do but shouldn't do needs disincentives and being evil assures eternal torment in hell. The way the reward-punishment system in religion is structured suggests in no uncertain terms that we prefer not to do good (why promise heaven?) and, not surprisingly to me, that we prefer to do evil (why threaten hell?). Why would god offer an incentive to do good if people wanted to do good? Why would god threaten people who didn't want to do evil? It is precisely because people don't want to be good and people want to be bad that we have an incentive/disincentive scheme. Ergo, people have a, if you wish, a greater tendency to be evil. Some very wise person once told me that being good is like climbing up a hill, tough and being bad is like walking down a hill, easy.
Fear is extremely important to my point because hell/jail/the gallows serve as threats to prevent people from doing what they want as opposed to heaven, tax breaks, recognition, respect, all rewards to encourage people to do what they don't want. Since it doesn't make sense for god to incentivize something we already want to do and threaten us with dire consequences for something we don't want to do, the concepts of hell and heaven, reward and punishment testify to what our nature is: we're disinclined to do good, thus the reward and we're innately evil, thus the punishment.
Quoting TheMadFool
Like I said, if it’s all based on a belief in God then I can’t really engage with this idea of heaven being a reward.
Quoting TheMadFool
I would say balanced and leaning towards good.
Quoting TheMadFool
But the gallows doesn’t stop that.
I’m sure there’s meaning there but I don’t get it.
‘Want’ is an unhelpful way to describe it, IMO, because what we want right now doesn’t always correspond to what we want a year from now, or over the course of our lifetime, or what we want for our children or our community. This is the main reason for morality and incentives: that we recognise what we do as connected not just to the present, but also to past and future interactions with the world and with other moral agents. The capacity we have to anticipate or dread, to value the potential of events, actions and experiences in relation to time and in relation to the experiences of others, enables us to predict long-term collaborative benefits in a behaviour whose immediate or short-term value to the individual is negative, for instance, and to then incentivise that behaviour so that it appears more valuable to those whose awareness, connection and collaboration with the world may be more limited. Or alternatively, to predict long-term or widespread harm in a behaviour whose immediate or short-term value to the individual is high, and then to attach a threat to that behaviour so that it is devalued sufficient to deter those whose focus is more limited.
So I don’t think it’s a matter of being ‘disinclined to do good’ or being ‘innately evil’, but rather that these values of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are at the very least relative to the variable 4D relations between events.
To begin with, I want bracket off all moral theories other than religious morality in this discussion. Within the realm of religious morality, it is an undeniable fact that goodness is rewarded and evil is punished and it is this that gives us a glimpse of how we've assessed our own nature: a tendency towards evil and a reluctance to be good. If we are good by nature, why would we need positive reinforcement? Had we not the tendency to be bad, why would we put in place deterrents?
Look at the ten commandments below:
1. I am the Lord thy God
2. Thou shalt have no other gods before me
3. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
4. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
5. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
6. Thou shalt not murder
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery
8. Thou shalt not steal
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor
10. Thou shalt not covet (thy neighbor's house, wife, slaves, etc)
In the context of this discussion, we can add the phrase "or else...hell" after each of the commandments.
As you can see the Decalogue is primarily concerned with preventing immoral actions as indicated by all moral injunctions that have a place in the modern world beginning with the phrase "thou shalt not". This clearly shows that religious morals are essentially deterrents; in other words they exist to put a lid on a natural tendency, the tendency towards evil.
I wouldn’t say it was an ‘undeniable fact’ that any reward or punishment is carried out (by ‘God’) according to ‘goodness’ or ‘evil’, particularly within the realm of religious morality. It is a claim that’s often made in Christian morality (not so much in the OT, though), but it’s a deniable one, surely. Not to mention that it’s openly questioned by biblical writings such as Job and Ecclesiastes. Its uncertainty and deniability is why this kind of religious morality often struggles in modern thinking, but that’s not the point.
The unwritten implication of “or else...hell” was added to religious morality many centuries after the ten ‘commandments’ were written - the Decalogue itself refers to a set of principles expressed in the reduced format of behaviour guidelines in a bid to reduce the perceived potential for ‘evil’ within the community. A series of “or else” deterrents were added in the rest of Deuteronomy - which effectively reduced these recommendations even further to enforceable ‘commandments’ or ‘Law’ as we understand them. But any individual judgement, rewards or punishment pertaining to the Decalogue at this stage were imposed by the people/priests, not by ‘God’.
Given that what we describe as ‘evil’ is mostly ignorance, the idea that we seem more ‘evil’ by nature suggests to me only that we’re acting in ignorance of our potential. To increase a tendency towards ‘good’, we must increase awareness of our potential for ‘good’. The Decalogue refers to an awareness of human potential beyond murder, adultery, theft, deceit and jealousy (behaviour common to most social animals), and towards previously unfamiliar notions of love, loyalty, respect, humility, courage and patience. The idea behind preventing those ‘immoral’ actions we’re familiar with - yet know to be destructive long-term - is to challenge us to increase our awareness of what else we can do instead, without setting an upper limit to our potential.
Let’s say, for instance, that instead of the Decalogue as a set of DON’Ts, we were given a set of DO’s. Would that have increased our potential to interact with the world, or stifled it - given that most people at the time would not have understood what it even meant to act with courage, love or respect?
I think we often take for granted our capacity to understand these concepts of ‘goodness’ as beyond what was once a far more ignorant perception of potential in humanity. I think we have a tendency to be ignorant of our ultimate potential, which translates to an apparent tendency towards ‘evil’.
Quoting Possibility
I was thinking about that. So kind of you to bring it to my attention. It does seem that every don't can be rephrased as a do e.g. thou shalt not kill can be expressed with the equivalent thou shalt value life. The intriguing question is why were most of the 10 commandments expressed in the negative, "thou shalt not" rather than in the positive, "thou shalt"? A possible answer is that people were ignoring, most probably out of ignorance, the positive forms of the negative injunctions which had the undesirable effect of what were classified as immoral behavior being common practice. Thus the need to clearly spell out what not to do rather than what to do. For instance, to tell someone not to smoke makes sense only if that person had a smoking habit. Ergo, people were murdering, stealing and coveting like no one's business which translated into the don't, thou shalt not format of the 10 commandments.
It's a good thing you brought up the issue of ignorance and while I accept, given that morality needs an understanding of what has moral value, that ignorance has a role, it's neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for immorality; after all many immoral people have a very sound knowledge of ethics and yet choose to act in violation of moral principles and I haven't heard of people who're mentally challenged, the quintessentially ignorant person, being accused of immorality.
This is my view as well. The kind of "free will" that people like Plantinga (originator of the free will theodicy) use is incompatibilist, where it just means non-determinism, which is to say, randomness. They say that without free will, humans would have been like robots, and so not moral agents, just doing what God programmed them to do. But take a robot and then add randomness somewhere to its programming. How does that make it in any way better, or more of a moral agent? It randomly does otherwise than it was programmed to sometimes. What use is that?
On the other hand, a modern compatibilist conception of free will like that of Susan Wolff's is basically equivalent to the ability to conduct moral deliberation: it's the ability to make rational judgements about what to do, and for those judgements to be causally effective on what you actually do, rather than just reacting to stimuli in an instinctual or socially conditioned way without thinking about it, without any ability to recondition your own behavioral patterns.
That kind of compatibilist is free will is something that could in principle be programmed into a robot, and it would make the robot more good, not more evil. The incompatibilist kind of free will that Plantinga thinks of would simply allow the robot (or robot-like proto-humans that, we presume, God would have otherwise programmed to do only go) to randomly fail to do what it was supposed to, i.e. to do evil. But that latter kind of "free will" is useless -- why would it be better to have that than not? The former type, on the other hand, is the quintessentially human thing that makes us moral agents capable of being virtuous or vicious.
Of course, on such an account, all wrongdoing is essentially a failure of free will, or else ignorance: it's either the lack of connection between self-judgement about what to do and what we actually do, some failure in the process of conducting that judgement, or lack of sufficient information to accurately conduct that judgement. So by giving humans stronger free will, of that kind, God would be ensuring that humans are more virtuous, not just letting us accidentally, randomly stumble into evil, like Plantinga's incompatibilist free will would do.
So there is no justification for God allowing evil on account of free will, because the two are not in opposition.
Personally, I think the key here is potential. Humans evolved with the mental capacity to be aware of abstract concepts such as ‘value’ and ‘life’ - but no initial understanding or knowledge of them, and certainly no words for them (ie. ignorance). We needed to gradually develop an awareness and understanding of this ‘value of life’ in relation to observing others first, before we could apply it to our own behaviour, recognising a potential to interact in a way that values life. But you can’t just tell someone to ‘value life’ when they have no way to relate those concepts to observable behaviour. You have to build these concepts of ‘good’ behaviour out of randomness - show people their potential.
We do what we recognise as effective behaviour in others - that’s how we learn without language. The ‘morality’ of a person who is mentally challenged becomes the responsibility of those who model for them and demonstrate the value of ‘good’ behaviour, as with a child. As for those with a sound knowledge of ethics, it is their capacity to blatantly ignore, isolate or exclude information that they personally don’t value (such as predicting the potential pain of a fellow human being) that enables them to violate moral principles. These are, for me, the three ‘gates’ of the will that determine its freedom. Ignorance/awareness is just the start.
Thanks for your valuable comments. Like you said, ignorance is a very important player in the field. Just think, if evolution is true then we began as ignorants, unaware of the concept of morality and lacking the capacity to process such abstractions in any meaningful way. Slowly, we began to understand, in step with our growing cerebral capabilities and having thus dispelled our ignorance to the best of our abilities, we gained an appreciation of the notion of morality. This seems to be an ongoing process as we have yet to completely comprehend what the nature of the good or the bad is, as amply demonstrated by many mutually inconsistent theories on the subject.
Agreed. I thought A Seagull’s statement is apt here, too:
Quoting A Seagull
The concept of ‘God’ has been another key player here, providing a relational scope to this ignorance as we strive to overcome our fear of what we don’t yet understand. If there is no ‘God’ then we can still relate to the ‘unknown’ and strive to understand it - we’re just more likely to convince ourselves that any uncertain or ill-conceived relations with the universe don’t matter.
If there IS a ‘God’ (however we understand it), then we’re inspired to relate to these uncertain relations with confidence - but our ignorance comes from those who have attempted to ‘define’ or reduce this notion of ‘God’ to something they can share, and then lost sight of the irreducible relation to a more inclusive potential of humanity (and ultimately all possibility) that it points to.
The omni-benevolence of ‘God’, for me, is not so much that anything ‘evil’ is something other than ‘God’, but that our perception of something as ‘evil’ suggests a limited understanding of ‘God’. So ignorance lies not only with those who do ‘evil’, but with those who call it ‘evil’. That’s the challenge to our understanding of ‘God’, I think.
:ok: Indeed, even if religions claim that the notion of good and evil are derived from the supernatural, a case can be made that these are man-made concepts, ergo could be mistaken. However, realize that god is supposed to be a being who's concerned about our welfare and one of our concerns is good and evil. Granted that we may be ignorant of what good and evil actually are, but surely we have a satisfactory handle on its basic form which is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. I believe you mentioned happiness somewhere.
Not ‘supposed’ to be, but perceived to be. The idea here is that ‘God’ is personal: that is, “knows, loves and relates to us all”. We commonly interpret this as ‘a being who’s concerned about our welfare’, but there are two points to be made here.
The first is that this is not the only way to interpret this attribute in relation to ‘God’, although it’s probably the easiest to relate to in return. The more we understand what it means to ‘know’, to ‘love’ and to ‘relate’ beyond the limits of an observable, measurable universe, the less necessary this notion of ‘God’ as a being becomes.
The second point is that being ‘concerned about our welfare’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘God’ is concerned with what we’re concerned with - that is, the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
I’m not sure where I mentioned happiness - it may have been another thread. I think that seeking ‘happiness’ or pleasure and striving to avoid pain, as well as this distinction between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, all point to a limited understanding of ‘God’ - to ignorance. When we can fully grasp the concept of ‘God’, I think we then understand all of these limited value concepts as relative to anthropic experience at best. That doesn’t mean we don’t strive to alleviate pain and suffering or choose what is ‘good’ rather than settle for ‘evil’ in how we determine and initiate action. But when we’re inclined to ignore, isolate or exclude something as ‘evil’, then I think we need to stop and ask ourselves not why an ‘all-good God’ allows such ‘evil’, but why we call it ‘evil’ when, from ‘God’’s perspective, all is ‘good’?
Interesting point of view but you said 'good' instead of just good. Why? Is your, god's 'good' different from good as we recognize it? Quoting Possibility
Less necessary for what? In what way does god become unnecessary?
Most likely, yes - considering I don’t think ‘evil’ is even a concept in an omniscient perspective, but only an indication of ignorance in our own. As value concepts, both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are always relative to the subjective experiences of the language user. I don’t think there is such a distinction in the perspective of ‘God’. The statement ‘God saw that it was good’ is how one might express this inclusiveness that transcends our own limited experience of the universe.
You’ll notice that I use quotes for the notion of ‘God’ as well. The way I see it, these are all placeholders for relative concepts - I won’t presume that my conceptualisation of ‘God’ is exactly the same yours. I often feel the need to make this clear with certain words in a discussion, to avoid assumptions.
Quoting TheMadFool
Sorry - this is my lack of clarity. It is the notion of being that becomes unnecessary, not the notion of ‘God’. Recognising that we are known, loved and related to by ‘God’ is not contingent upon the property of being.
And while I consider myself less than average in terms of intellectual capacity, I've heard people who're patently more intelligent refer to less endowed people as "stupid" or "moronic", ignorant by your reckoning.
What I do want to mention though is that people sometimes say that there's a thin line between genius and madness. Could you intepret that for me in re god? God, being omniscient, has to be a genius par excellence. My question is how do we know he isn't mad/insane?
Ignorance is not related to intellectual capacity, but to awareness and information. The informal use of the term is derogatory, which does confuse the issue. When I say that those who we think are ‘evil’ are ignorant, I’m certainly NOT saying that those we think are ignorant are therefore also ‘evil’. Ignorance is simply a lack of awareness or information - there is no judgement implied by my use of the term at all. This is a point I have clearly failed to make: I don’t find moral or value judgements such as ‘good’ or ‘evil’ to be at all helpful in understanding ‘God’ - which for me is a relational concept, not a being. In relation to the notion of ‘God’ we are each lacking in awareness, but in relation to each other that lack of awareness shows our diversity, the maximum possible awareness, connection and collaboration of which IS ‘God’.
Quoting TheMadFool
If we think of ‘God’ as an intelligent being, then this saying is quite apt to describe how we relate to omniscience. When we reduce our understanding of ‘God’ to this potentiality, he is simply a mind of infinite capacity, which is subject to our positive/negative judgement just like any other potential we relate to. To answer your question in this context: it’s relative. Genius refers to perceived intellectual and creative potential; madness refers to potential perceived as unexpected or abnormal. So it’s always going to be relative to subjective experience.
If we relate to ‘God’ as a concept of absolute possibility, then it’s neither - and both. It doesn’t really matter. This may seem like a way to avoid the argument altogether, and no doubt would frustrate atheists out there who prefer a Being to argue against. But aren’t we more than just an intelligent being, too? If I’m considered a mad/insane genius, isn’t this only one way to relate to my potential as a fellow human being? Am I not still capable of giving and receiving love? Of sharing my unique knowledge and perspective of life, my diversity, and connecting and collaborating with others? The genius/madness potential shouldn’t be ignored, of course, when you interact. But just like with quantum particles, if you treat my potential as unexpected and abnormal, then that’s what you’ll get.
A good observation in my humble opinion. I've never heard people call animals or those mentally handicapped (is this terminology still acceptable?) ignorant. However, you seem to attribute evil to ignorance, even going so far as to say that there is no such thing as evil and all is 'good' in god's eyes. I naturally concluded then that the relationship between god and us is essentially based on intelligence/knowledge - god being the superior, perhaps infinitely so, intelligence-wise. This point of view basically endorses a view that evil, in all its forms, is nothing more than a misunderstanding of god's omnibenevolence and that evil is simply good in disguise in a manner of speaking.
If so, can you explain how and in what way the holocaust, in which roughly 6 million jews, men, women and children, perished, was good? There are an innumerable number of atrocities, cold-blooded murder to genocide at a grand scale, that beg for an explanation as to how they are good.
Okay, let me clarify. In god’s eyes, there is no such thing as evil, but that also means there is no such thing as good - there is no such distinction between good and evil in god’s eyes. When I say ‘from god’s perspective, all is good’, I’m referring not to a judgement (because I don’t believe he makes such a distinction), but to his capacity to relate to and love all as we would relate to and love what is good, ie. beyond moral judgement.
I attribute acts of evil to ignorance, isolation and/or exclusion at the time. But god doesn’t judge acts in time, because in his omniscience he sees the potential of all. I’m not saying that ‘evil is good in disguise’ at all. More like it’s at a point where its potential is unrealised.
Quoting TheMadFool
You’re isolating a collection of events in time and focusing on the death of innocent human beings - of course that isn’t good. If you think that god looks at each atrocity in this way and judges it as ‘good’, then you’re failing to understand the concept of ‘God’ entirely.
The holocaust was a manifestation of how Europe tended to conceptualise the world at the time, just as Trump’s presidency is a manifestation of how America has been conceptualising reality (particularly their concept of presidential leadership) up to the moment he was elected. Unfortunately we have often needed to see our capacity for ignorance, isolation and exclusion actualised before our horrified eyes before we will take steps to critically evaluate and change how we conceptualise the world.
The problem is that we won’t fully learn from our mistakes as long as we continue to ignore or exclude this capacity as isolated incidents of ‘evil’. Hitler was an ordinary human being who managed extraordinary things, but he didn’t manage it alone or in isolation. It was many little acts of ignorance, isolation and exclusion by other international leaders and ordinary human beings that contributed to his rise to power, his attitude towards Jews, his political ideology, his popularity, and his capacity to orchestrate atrocities against innocent people. Such is the potential of humanity.
We can learn a lot about ourselves and our potential from the holocaust, if we include the ‘evil’ as well as the ‘good’ without judgement either way. This is what I mean when I say that ‘God’ is a concept that points to the inclusive potential of humanity, and ultimately all possibility.
Quoting Possibility
:chin:
Quoting Possibility
What is this potential you frequently mention?
Quoting TheMadFool
Potential refers to how one relates to existence beyond what is actual. Value, knowledge, significance, quality, morality, logic, emotion, memory, language, ideology and many other abstract concepts describe this relation of perceived potential, usually within a limited structure. It ties in with quantum potential, and is always limited to the perception or experiences of the interacting subject. Except in relation to the concept of ‘God’ as absolute possibility, in which all potential is infinite.
But ‘God’ is not a being - it’s a relational concept that enables us to aspire to maximal awareness of, connection to and collaboration with existence, and to check this progress. So our relationship to ‘God’ is always a manifestation of the difference between this absolute possibility and our perceived potential.
How would god perceive this universe?
Quoting Possibility
What is absolute possibility and perceived potential?
I would think that god perceives the universe as an interrelation of all infinite potential. That’s my understanding of it, anyway.
Quoting TheMadFool
Absolute possibility refers to the meaning of ‘God’: this all-encompassing concept of the All, the One, the Infinite.
Perceived potential refers to what we believe we are capable of.
If what you say is true then there's no evil and you even went as far as saying there's no such thing as good. Good and evil are illusions created by the limitations of our perceived potential which prevents a full appreciation of god's absolute possibility. Here I'd like to provide you with an analogy. A chimpanzee may not understand a human just like we can't understand god but we humans understand full well that chimpanzees are essentially hedonists and refrain from causing them harm to the extent that we're fully aware of that fact. Why is it then that god, infinitely knowledgeable as he is, allows evil, the primary cause of much suffering? Basically, god should not allow evil to exist to the extent that free will is irrelevant just as we either avoid causing, or are reluctant to cause, pain to beings (animals) that have less perceived potential than us.
This is how everything relates: as a difference between two systems. I agree it is highly unlikely for the difference to be bridged, but I wouldn’t say never - I have reasons to believe in an obscure collective potential to manifest improbable possibilities. We are, after all, existing at a number of levels in our current capacity on the slimmest of odds.
Quoting TheMadFool
First let me ask you: Do we refrain while chimpanzees cause harm to each other, or do we need to step in and prevent every instance of pain, simply because we can? You seem to be equating ‘allowing evil to exist’ with directly ‘causing them harm’ or pain, but I think there is a world of difference here.
Should we not allow chimpanzees to cause each other harm to the extent that their will as chimpanzees is irrelevant? Would that be more benevolent of us? Should we impose our own moral standards on the actions of chimpanzees, and if so, how would we even enforce it, and how would those actions then affect our apparent benevolence?
On the other hand, is it responsible if we neglect the concerns of the wider ecosystem to always provide for and ensure those chimpanzees who abide by our standards are perfectly happy and content? Aren’t we then perceived as ‘benevolent’ only from these ‘good’ chimpanzees’ perspective?
A chimpanzee’s relationship with us is not the same as our relationship with god, though. God is not a being, so we cannot interact with god at this level of being. God is not in a position to simply disallow the existence of ‘evil’ because only we perceive it and we create it - although we have certainly attempted to achieve this on ‘his’ behalf, with often disastrous results. The problem of evil, therefore, is our problem, not god’s.
Our perception of a chimpanzee’s potential would be greater than his perception of his own. As such, we have the capacity to interact with chimpanzees in such a way that they realise a potential they would never have been aware of without this relationship, so long as we meet them where they’re at in their own limited perception, recognising that we also have the capacity to limit their perceived potential in order to benefit ourselves.
God, on the other hand, wants nothing from us, because it isn’t a being, but an absolute concept.
My question is simple: how intelligent do we have to be or how much of our perceived potential must we overcome to gain insight into god's absolute possibility and come to the realization that there is no such thing as good and evil? What kind of rationale could render the putrefying corpses in the ovens of Nazi concentration camps into something neither good not bad, as amoral as playfully kicking a stone down the road?
Come to think of it, it seems to me that it's exactly the opposite of what you've been claiming all along. Non-human animals don't have the concept of good and evil and their behavior shows that's true and surely you won't deny that animals have less perceived potential than humans? Ergo, our greater perceived potential should get us closer to the truth than theirs: morality is knowledge, not ignorance as you seem to be suggesting, knowledge of a shared heritage, one of the universal desire to promote happiness (good) and prevent suffering (evil). God's absolute possibility would then necessarily reinforce this truth and not contradict it.
Well, I think that’s an oversimplification which effectively encourages ignorance, so no, that’s not really my view. But I do believe we are generally missing information that enables us to conceptualise the world accurately, and I think a large proportion of that ignorance has to do with the distinction we make between good and evil.
Quoting TheMadFool
It’s interesting that you offer ‘playfully kicking a stone down the road’ as an example of ‘neither good nor bad’ - I understand that this is rhetoric. I’m certainly not suggesting that the holocaust wasn’t significant. The profound significance of the holocaust was and continues to be immense. What we have learned and are still learning now, and certainly what we will continue to learn from interacting with the many and varied experiences of that event - especially about our potential as human beings - is precious and irreplaceable, whether we see that information or those experiences as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Because of that, we simply cannot afford to ignore, isolate or exclude any of it as ‘evil’. To do that is to risk not learning from the lesson.
So I don’t think it’s about intelligence, but about awareness. And I don’t think it’s about ‘overcoming’ perceived potential, but about increasing it.
Quoting TheMadFool
It always brings a smile to my face when people make this observation. Here’s the loophole that lets us back into the illusion that ‘human morality is the highest pinnacle of knowledge’. Phew! That was close, wasn’t it? Morality is knowledge in relation to animals, but it’s ignorance in relation to god.
Non-human animals lack the capacity for awareness that enables them to distinguish between different value systems. To most of them, there is only one value hierarchy, which corresponds to a positive or negative affect in the organism. Most cannot distinguish between ‘good for you’ and ‘good for me’, or between ‘good for me now’ and ‘good for me in ten years’ - let alone between ‘good for me now’ and ‘good for the ecosystem in a hundred years time’. So yes, our capacity for awareness is closer to the ‘truth’ than theirs.
But you refer to ‘happiness’ and ‘suffering’ as if we all know precisely what you mean by those terms, even though there is no clear distinction here, let alone some one-dimensional linear progression from one concept to the other. What you’re talking about is often an assumption of shared heritage, masquerading as ‘knowledge’ that is both eternal and somehow defined. The relativity of morality is more pronounced and complex than that of time, and yet we seem to think that the words suffice to accurately define a concept at this level of awareness.
What would be interpretation that would do full justice to your position? Read God moves in mysterious ways; the relevant abstract is presented for your consideration below:
[quote=Wikipedia]The first line of the hymn has become an adage or saying, encouraging a person to trust God's greater wisdom in the face of trouble or inexplicable events, and is referenced in many literary works[/quote]
Quoting Possibility
Ok. Here's the thing. For animals, morality is a non-issue but for us, humans, morality is an important aspect of our lives; at least we make a show of it. This is explicable with your theory of perceived potential and infinite potential - humans have greater perceived potential than animals. My contentions was that since god has a greater potential s/he would arrive at a greater/better understanding of morality that includes our beliefs on morality and not come to a conclusion that contradicts our discoveries in the moral sphere, if we can call it that.
You seem to disagree with this and are of the view that we, humans, [s]could b[/s] are wrong and good and bad are merely illusions caused by our limited perceived potential. If that's so then one thing strikes me as odd: animals have no notion of morality and by your reckoning god too knows neither good nor evil and so doesn't that mean animals, since they too don't recognize good or evil, are actually god? This is clearly a contradiction since animals have less perceived potential than us and yet their understanding of nature is equal to that of god who in your theory is of infinite potential.
Quoting Possibility
Indeed we don't have a precise definition of what happiness or suffering means but what I appeal to here is the basics - pleasure and pain. Surely there can't be confusion at that level. I've never heard of people being confused about the pleasure of love fulfilled or the pain of breaking a bone.
First of all, and I thought this might be clear to you by now, I don’t believe it is god who ‘moves’. Secondly, I have not suggested that we simply ‘trust God’s greater wisdom’, but that we consider the possibility that a greater wisdom may enable us to resolve such a ‘problem of evil’ in relation to ‘free will’. The idea is that we increase awareness of the universe without closing our minds to the possibility that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are of our own making, and therefore NOT founded on some eternal or absolute distinction/dualism that extends beyond the human experience. It takes courage to test the theory - keeping in mind that it isn’t a matter of ignoring information that leads us towards a negative judgement, but of reserving our judgement and instead remaining open to awareness, connection and collaboration anyway.
Quoting TheMadFool
You appear to assume here that morality exists not just beyond humanity, but beyond god, who I imagine you still consider to be a being. For me, god as an absolute concept also doesn’t have potential as such, but I think I basically follow your contention, here. My response would be that god does have a better understanding of our sense of morality, including our beliefs about this morality, and also understands how limited we are in this perspective - in much the same way as a ‘sphere’ can see the limited nature of a ‘Flatlander’’s perspective, for instance.
Animals having no notion of morality is a lack of information. God has all the information we use to determine morality, but he also has all the other information we’re not aware of - such as unperceived potential. When we label an event or person as ‘evil’, we close the door on opportunities to increase awareness, connection and collaboration with that event or person, and instead contribute to more ignorance, isolation and exclusion, such as hatred, oppression, violence and despair.
One big obstacle to such a point of view is it fails to satisfactorily explain "evil" in the conventional sense of the term: for instance it would be extremely insensitive to tell Jews that the holocaust wasn't evil and the same applies to other cases "understood" to be evil. Nevertheless, it's not clear, in the context of your theory, whether this "understanding" is simply gut feelings or is there a good reason to call such things evil at all. Good too becomes a doubtful category of reality.
Consider the science of ecology and the idea of the food-web. I'm sure you know how evil has been closely associated with predation and good with prey; for instance we call criminals "predators" and we say things like "as innocent as a lamb". These maybe poor examples but hopefully sufficient to convey a "primitive" grasp of ecology and, in line with your thoughts, morality too. In modern times, we've come to recognize that predation is natural and a part of ecology, necessary for harmony and we've managed, only partially in my opinion, to delink predation from evil and maybe we also see the absence of a necessary connection between a lamb and good. Doesn't this square well with your theory?
Having said I'd like to bring to your attention the fact that morality is basically a dissatisfaction with what is as evidenced by consisting of mainly what ought to be. For simplicity and hopefully without failing to make my point I'd like to refer you to the reality of pleasure and pain. These two feelings/sensations are undeniable truths of our world. Combine these with the another fact, we like pleasure and we dislike pain and we have the seed for any and all morality.
It maybe possible to say that pleasure and pain have no moral import for god but it surely isn't possible to deny they exist and we like one and not the other. This, the existence of pain-pleasure and our preference as pertains to them, forms the foundation of, let's say, human morality. I guess I'm saying that even if the truth, as knowable by god, is that there's neither good nor evil, we are justified in believing that good and evil exist for the simple reason that we feel pleasure and pain, liking the former and disliking the latter. It makes sense doesn't it then that a defining element for god is omnibenevolence, rejecting as it were your conception of god as a being with infinite potential - we want god to be benevolent rather than capable of everything/anything.
You’ve been challenging and questioning my theory thoroughly and respectfully, so I thank you for this rare opportunity. Personally, I think it’s both lack and error in understanding that contribute to our perception of unnecessary ‘evil’, which is our best indication that reality doesn’t quite relate the way we’ve conceptualised it at this level of awareness.
Quoting TheMadFool
I agree. One needs to tread carefully when questioning whether ‘evil’ is a necessary concept.
Quoting TheMadFool
It does. It seems the further we are removed from suffering, the easier it is to put aside these notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and consider the value/potential of an event from different perspectives. This is why god as an absolute concept (not a being) can be useful in increasing our understanding of reality. As a being, particularly one who supposedly acts in the world, god’s omnibenevolence is questionable - he must be seen to ‘allow evil’ by doing nothing to prevent or respond to it. It is this inaction that appears most unconscionable. As an absolute concept, however, god relates to us the possibilities and invites us to perceive the potential, but it is us as beings who determine and initiate any action in relation to god or this perspective of absolute benevolence.
The free will explanation of the problem of evil imagines that alternatively God could have created human beings so that it was impossible for us to do evil. Whether evil was natural for us or not, it could have been impossible for us to carry out evil acts (the sword would instantly turn into a flower or something like that).
Another alternative could be that God could have created people so that evil was unnatural for us.
It is assumed that God doesn’t want evil, and the only way it can be explained that God doesn’t get what He wants is to say that He rather wants people to be able to act the way they want – that is, they are given a free will.
What God wants and what humans want are different, but God lets us have it our way in some cases. So, assuming you are right that evil comes naturally to us and that we are evil by nature, that doesn’t contradict the explanation. In that case, God lets us act according to our evil nature although He could have stopped us if He had wanted to – that is, if He had not given us a free will.
Imagine you build a robot and program it to like green objects. If you were then to claim you gave the robot free will in order that it may "choose" to like green it wouldn't make sense right? Replace robot with humans and green with evil.
Good is not technically one thing which is the point of your analogy.
Programming a robot to only like good, is not simply targetting one thing.
The word good deludes you.
To only like evil would be like, inter alia, spinning endlessly, to only like good would be picking up, wisdom, running, etc.
If you're good for the world then you maximize your potential?
It's to do with numbers AND concepts.
What's the stupidest I can be bar belief in 1 or 1ism?
I believe I've solved it, at least for myself, but I prefer not to get cocky in that assertion.
The free will is not about what you choose to like but what you choose to do. In the case of robots that distinction would be blurred since a machine doesn’t have feelings and consequently it cannot “like” anything. We may perhaps say that a robot that moves towards green likes green, but that would be a figure of speech.
The robot couldn’t act contrary to its liking since for it the same thing is meant by action and affection, but for humans that is quite imaginable. They could have been made to like evil, but also so constructed that it was impossible to do evil. However hard the person tried to do the evil it loved so much he would be drawn away from it if he didn’t have a free will. Let’s say it was physically impossible to do evil or however you would imagine it. If that is the alternative, it makes sense to say that free will makes it possible for us to do evil, even if you think that it is our greatest desire anyway.
Free will makes it possible to do both evil and good and for that to happen it’s quite irrelevant what our natural inclinations might be.
What do you mean? There is a sense in which doing is different from liking but does one ever find onself doing without some form of thinking beforehand? Doing traces its origins to a thought does it not? What constitutes this thought but a like and if you say sometimes we do what we don't like then you forget or are ignoring this too has a reason which, as far as I can tell, must be based on what one likes/dislikes. There is no escaping the necessity that whatever one does it ultimately tracks back to our likes/dislikes.
So, sorry, the basis of your claim, viz. that doing is free even if liking jsn't, isn't convincing as I'd like it to be.
Sure, this extreme behaviorist assumption that we only do what we ultimately like doing, does have some truth to it. (Students like taking exams, since they like getting a degree, a job, money etc.) But if the liking is to be traced back to the ultimate goal of the action, how could you prove that we like evil more than anything? People do a lot of evil, but their final goal is rarely that bad, is it? A murderer kills to achieve something else, to get money for example, and that in itself is not evil. People use evil means to reach good or neutral ends.
Basically.
Were like mice being played with by a cat. Solute the cat so he eats you quicker. lol.
Once i'm inside the cats stomach and am digested, i go to mouse heaven.
all jokes aside i try to enjoy life as much as possible.
Well, have a look at the decalogue - as everyone knows it lists some do's and don't's and it only takes a moment to notice the don't's outnumber the do's. If one then takes into consideration the fact that the decalogue is just a list of oughts which are basically corrective measures to be applied to the existing status quo, it becames patently clear that more bad things were being done than good things. I take this as evidence that we're, let's say, more devilish than divine in dispostion.
Any conceivable moral rules would have to focus more on what people are not allowed to do. That would be true a priori, before knowing anything about human nature and how human beings actually interact in the world. The basis of all morality is ‘Don’t hurt people’, and that would be the case even in a society of angellike creatures who only occasionally did something wrong.
The do’s are always conditional. If you find yourself in such and such situations, you have to do this and that: If you have a child, you have to feed it. If your country is at war, you have to defend it.
The don’ts are basically unconditional: Don’t ever steal. Don’t lie.
If I know nothing about you, where you are and what you do, I would give you this general rule: ‘Don’t steal’, but I wouldn’t oblige you to give money to the poor if you are poor yourself.
Duty ethics (like the decalogue) is essentially about negative duties (the don’ts) and the positive duties (the dos) are secondary. It’s possible to be morally perfect with respect to the negative duties: you just refrain from acting, while the possible positive duties are unlimited in number and therefore can’t be fulfilled.
This would be the case whether human nature is good or bad.
Imagine this: There's a world of balls of a variety of colors. You don't like this world all that much which corresponds to our dissatisfaction with the current moral situation of the world. You wish now to do something about this, developing an idea on which colors are better i.e. good and which colors are bad; this corresponds to the origin of moral oughts.
You will eventually come up with a list of oughts the color of the balls should be. Thinking in terms of do's and don't's how would your list look? Surely, if there are more colors that've earned your disfavor (bad) compared to colors you favor (good) then , the there should be more don't's and less don't's, right? More of "don't be this color" than "do be this color". The decalogue has more don't's than do's. What is your inference?
I’m inclined to agree with Congau here - plus, I think your analogy is too simplified.
The decalogue seems more like a set of top-down limitations on otherwise open-ended behaviour allowances. If it was a comprehensive list of do’s and don’t’s - like your list of ball colours - then I imagine it would look very different.
Let’s say there were 265 different ball colours, including a few patterned effects - surely your aim would be to simplify the list of do’s and don’t’s as much as possible, rather than list all 265 options as either a do or a don’t.
DO be only one hue (ie. don’t be green-and-red-striped or pink-and-purple-polka-dotted or rainbow-coloured, etc);
DO be a bright colour (ie. don’t be grey or black or brown or some dusty or muted shade);
Don’t be green;
Don’t be orange;
Don’t have stripes of different thicknesses;
Don’t be speckled.
That still leaves plenty of colours and patterns to be, and it isn’t accurate to infer that there are more colours you disfavour compared to colours you favour.
How about if I get at this from another angle. Firstly, what is morality? It seems to me a product of dissatisfaction not with anything but with the way the world is, right? It's nature as oughts/ought nots indicates a wish to, if nothing, alter the staus quo - the way the world is. In other words, at the very least, the essence of morality can be summed up with "not this world but this other" referring to the aforementioned dissatisfaction. Ergo, there has to be more that we're unhappy about (bad things) than that we're happy about (good things). Had we been satisfied as would've been the case if the good exceeded the bad, we'd never have ought thoughts, thoughts that arise from facts about the world that we wish were not.
:ok: thanks for your comments