[Dolmen 2.0]

Augustine, a great christian apologetic was at one point christianitys greatest critic.

In his pre-convertant argument against christianism he pointed out that he could not understand how a God of goodness, as a christian God is depicted, could allow or even tolerate all the evil that exists. technically speaking having one deity create all things alludes to one God that made both the good and the bad. How can such a God be seen as good? Most people find christianity contridictory on this point, and I must admit part of me raised the same question.

In my research I found that the question of evils nature must be addressed. Evil is explained by augustine and his mentor as an aspect of absence. Evil is nothing more than the absence of good. where evil occurs good cannot be and vice versa, thus God creates the oppurtunity for good but overlooking this good pertains to evil-doing etc. etc.

Now the heart of the matter:

based on the christian view of things man is inherantly evil and must seek good out through a higher form or reason as pertains to your religion and belief etc.

On the otherhand general world view sees man as inherently good. apart from a few exceptions most of us seem to want to be nice to each other, helpful to the world and honest in what we do. Generally we all seem like stand up people in a crunch, reliable when need arises.

My question is this, which do you think makes more sense? are we inherently evil seeking good or are we actually all naturally good prone to corruption? I understand there is also the chance we are a mix of the two as in taoist beliefs, this I think is also a fair point of view but the arguments behind it are varied, I trust those who see things this way will explain their own reasoning as they see fit.

This post has been edited by Dolmen: 16 June 2010 - 11:04 AM

[Silencer]

I like Epicurus' take on things:


“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

To me, this pretty much sums up how God is either malevolent or fiction. Sure, he gives us 'free will' - the by-line of most Christian religions. Then again, whenever people die, that changes to "it's all part of God's plan". This is also, imo, a contradiction of the faith, rather in line with what you describe above. Either there is a plan, or there is not.

Then, of course, the fall-back is "you cannot comprehend the will of God". Well, if that is the case, then all attempts to do so, including the Bible and the Ten Commandments, are flawed and should be cast aside.

Now, as to the topic question, I think humans are born neither good, nor evil. We're shaped by our upbringing, from the moment of our birth onwards, and the very concept of what is good or evil is a social construct predicated on what our ancestors have chosen in the past to be beneficial or detrimental to themselves either as individuals or as a group, so how can we say whether one way or another is inherent, when we clearly choose over the years what defines them both? In the end, what we find reprehensible today was considered morally obligatory in cultures of the past, and even in contemporary cultures, which we usually call 'evil' - but that is really a matter of perspective.

So I want a 'neither' option on your poll, good sir.

[Dolmen 2.0]

I think Epicurus' is limiting the idea of God a bit here.
will and ability shouldn't be the only factors.
If God is benelevolent there must be an intent to our being.
that intent must be involved in the subject of being who
you are, otherwise why bother supporting life to begin with?

If God supports life then living must be governed by nature of a kind.
At the end of it christianity seems to encourage the view that we live
to be good but struggle to do so. One can take it that an entity such as
christian God wishes humans to live with the option to enable evil or
pursue good. in essence not a dictator as the first testament often
painted him but as a nurturer.

A gardener doesnt plant weeds with his roses but weeds grow regardless.
God I think is the provider of the nourishing soil (humanity), what grows
from it I would understand is entirely up to the human.

Here then I think I can follow Silencers argument. a human chooses to live according
to what society presents to him as bars to measure his worth. what we
end of calling good and evil are merely units of that measuring bar.
to a new born with no understanding of these measurements I assume there is no decision to be either good or bad...but this does lead to an odd paradox:

If we are warped reflections of our experiences why do people in terrible situations arise to be wonderful people and why do wonderful conditions at times produce terrible human beings?

This post has been edited by Dolmen: 16 June 2010 - 11:23 AM

[Silencer]

Dolmen, on 16 June 2010 - 11:20 AM, said:

I think Epicurus' is limiting the idea of God a bit here.
will and ability shouldn't be the only factors.
If God is benelevolent there must be an intent to our being.
that intent must be involved in the subject of being who
you are, otherwise why bother supporting life to begin with?

If God supports life then living must be governed by nature of a kind.
At the end of it christianity seems to encourage the view that we live
to be good but struggle to do so. One can take it that an entity such as
christian God wishes humans to live with the option to enable evil or
pursue good. in essence not a dictator as the first testament often
painted him but as a nurturer.

A gardener doesnt plant weeds with his roses but weeds grow regardless.
God I think is the provider of the nourishing soil (humanity), what grows
from it I would understand is entirely up to the human.

Here then I think I can follow Silencers argument. a human chooses to live according
to what society presents to him as bars to measure his worth. what we
end of calling good and evil are merely units of that measuring bar.
to a new born with no understanding of these measurements I assume there is no decision to be either good or bad...but this does lead to an odd paradox:

If we are warped reflections of our experiences why do people in terrible situations arise to be wonderful people and why do wonderful conditions at times produce terrible human beings?

Thanks Dolmen.

I do propose one issue with your gardener metaphor (just to be pedantic) - a 'good' gardener weeds his garden. Seems to me God did that once or twice and gave up (the Flood, Jesus, maybe). Also, the idea of allowing us to be evil is encompassed in what Epicurus says - he simply isn't willing to prevent it. And due to the great harm evil causes, that makes him malevolent, even if such is not his intention (though perhaps a fairer term would be distant. He simply doesn't care enough to interfere, or is so beyond our comprehension he thinks we need the evil...still, from our perspective, this is neglectful malevolence).
Oh, and your point about the difference between the Old Testament and the New, and their portrayal of God...yeah, that's exactly what I mean about contradictions. One has to be right, the other wrong. :S

I think your latter point makes a couple of assumptions. That is to say that one experience can be defined to be a shaping moment (i.e. the terrible situation), where I would contend that, even someone who has lived a life of crime, if they rise to the occasion...say that prisoner in the Dark Knight who throws the remote out the window - it is because they have still been shown by society what is 'right', and in the stress of a terrible situation, they choose to do what is right because there are limits to their bucking of the system.

Which leads me into my next point about good conditions producing bad people. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, yes? A person can choose, at every step in their life, which way they will lean. Societal norms, or deviancy. Sometimes a person will jump from side to side, sometimes deliberately (and this is not an indication of any inherent nature, but rather an indication that nature is not fixed - the child who stands up to the bully is making a choice based on their experiences just as the bully is) and sometimes because they lack what I've heard termed 'moral wisdom', but what is really meant is that they don't know which outcome is the right one, as they have never experienced the situation before, or they made the 'wrong' choice in the past. However, simple good role models is not enough to prevent someone from feeling left out, or belittled.
Consider the idyllic life of a millionaire's child. These humans often become spoiled, or find the smallest refusal to be a personal insult. The basic problem with utopia is that it cannot be achieved - we will ALWAYS find something to be slighted by. If we have everything, we will want for new things. If we have nothing, we will envy those who have. So on, and so forth.

The greatest evil can be caused by the best intentions, basically. By showing someone the right path, they may follow it to a natural end, or they may follow it partway, or on and off throughout their lives, or they may choose to avoid it altogether - either to spite you for showing them, or claiming it is the right path, or simply because it does not appeal. This does not make someone inherently evil, or inherently good, it just defines whether they are a follower, or a rebel, or a wanderer. Especially once one realises that good is defined by society...then what point in being good? Define your own 'good'. Some simply just do what is normally good, because they don't want to go against the system, even when they realise this.

Which is why I find it all to be relative, and believe that there is no inherent good or evil.

^just a slight elaboration on my previous post, there. XD

[worry]

Humans are born with the instincts of high primates and the capacity to be better than that, so that their worst instincts aren't limitations. I do believe empathy is a natural element of development though, and that ultimately people are naturally good. Or maybe good with the big stuff and petty with the small stuff. Nurture alters these tendencies to varying degrees. But while some sociopaths are made, I'm sure some are born too. And cultures and customs can certainly bury that goodness under tons of rubble.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 16 June 2010 - 11:52 AM

[Dolmen 2.0]

@ silencer: I think yours is a very stable point of view but I still feel there is a higher wisdom behind our nature because of the miracle of the universe itself. life, as explained by allied sciences, is really an uncannily perfect chain of events, consistently governed by laws that show a rationalization science only now begins to comprehend. I tend to lean to the point you make that there is an aspect of the God ideal that wilfully avoids "weeding" humanity after what we interpret as reboot attempts. Is it possible to assume the characterization of God learns? that would shock everyone, but what if he does? perhaps The God aspect has a goal for human existence (a lab approach if you will). A greater intention could mean there is a slow process of trial and error going on. a universal test to determine what humanity can endure, create, destroy, re-invent etc.

my view Im afraid is supported poorly by biblical scripture but I think through this perspective of God one can explain a lot about the human nature perhaps carrying alot of the points you raise about life essentially being a dialogue between conformation & rebellion, trial and error, survival or death. Lets call my view a method in the madness approach if you will.

@ worrywort: I assume you refer to ideas of evolution as a means of preconditioning? I kind of like that idea, being good based on genetic conditioning does make sense. perhaps we are born with a "pure" knowledge written within us? as you point out the nature of that knowledge would lodge itself in our genetic history. we could even see living as a dialogue between our inherent knowledge (Pure & genetic) vs our biased knowledge (impure & experential)

[Satan]

Dolmen, on 16 June 2010 - 09:18 AM, said:

In my research I found that the question of evils nature must be addressed.

I'm rather curious as to what sort of research it is that you do? From the amount of (in my eyes) non-scientific vocabulary bandied about, I'd assume you're studying theology. If that's the case, would you really be interested in hearing the arguments of atheists (which most of the members of this board seems to be)? If you do, then I suggest you dispense with "good" and "evil" as the archaic and misleading categories that they are (as intimated, I think, by Silencer). They adhere to a sort of platonic, idealistic idea that abstractions can exist outside the individual. They're universalistic, without thought of who made the categories and for what purpose (yes, you point to Christianity, but that is a huge group and purpose doesn't seem to be central to your study).

[Silencer]

Brynjar, on 16 June 2010 - 03:15 PM, said:

Dolmen, on 16 June 2010 - 09:18 AM, said:

In my research I found that the question of evils nature must be addressed.

I'm rather curious as to what sort of research it is that you do? From the amount of (in my eyes) non-scientific vocabulary bandied about, I'd assume you're studying theology. If that's the case, would you really be interested in hearing the arguments of atheists (which most of the members of this board seems to be)? If you do, then I suggest you dispense with "good" and "evil" as the archaic and misleading categories that they are (as intimated, I think, by Silencer). They adhere to a sort of platonic, idealistic idea that abstractions can exist outside the individual. They're universalistic, without thought of who made the categories and for what purpose (yes, you point to Christianity, but that is a huge group and purpose doesn't seem to be central to your study).

Yes, yes I did intimate that absolute good/evil are outmoded social constructs that have no real meaning other than what we attribute to them. Cultural relativism ftw.

Dolmen, on 16 June 2010 - 01:39 PM, said:

@ silencer: I think yours is a very stable point of view but I still feel there is a higher wisdom behind our nature because of the miracle of the universe itself. life, as explained by allied sciences, is really an uncannily perfect chain of events, consistently governed by laws that show a rationalization science only now begins to comprehend. I tend to lean to the point you make that there is an aspect of the God ideal that wilfully avoids "weeding" humanity after what we interpret as reboot attempts. Is it possible to assume the characterization of God learns? that would shock everyone, but what if he does? perhaps The God aspect has a goal for human existence (a lab approach if you will). A greater intention could mean there is a slow process of trial and error going on. a universal test to determine what humanity can endure, create, destroy, re-invent etc.

my view Im afraid is supported poorly by biblical scripture but I think through this perspective of God one can explain a lot about the human nature perhaps carrying alot of the points you raise about life essentially being a dialogue between conformation & rebellion, trial and error, survival or death. Lets call my view a method in the madness approach if you will.

See, we now begin to diverge from the initial post, but the argument to impossibility you take with regards to the chain of events leading to life is something I've always found fascinating. Take the Big Bang. One alternative hypothesis for the 'beginning' of the universe, which I find no more or less likely than the existence of an omnipotent deity who hasn't shown their face for 2000 years. I often ref this in my debates, but let me just put it out there again. My friends and I once spent half a year during class debating the big bang vs God. After going through several merits and flaws in each idea, managing to convince some of my friends that religion was awfully convenient as a law-enforcement method, we got down to "What came before?".
See, religion says unequivocally that nothing came before God. Nothing created God, nothing preceded God. However, my friends (I was the only atheist involved in the debate) insisted on asking me, if the big bang occurred - "What came before all that coalescing matter?". They could not, for the life of everyone they hold dear, come to grips with the possibility that, just like God, nothing may have preceded that matter. It just wasn't possible. And yet, for God? Perfectly acceptable. It took weeks to get everyone to agree that both this scientific theory and religion had the exact same stumbling block. Put everything else aside, the final question neither one has a reasonable or, perhaps more importantly, unique answer to, is "what came before?".

I argue that it is equally unlikely that an eternally existing supreme being decided to create a giant void of space, fill it with useless stars that are likely moving away from each other, dot it with planets, take one of those planets, fill it with life, nuke the first occurrence by throwing the only human occupants out, let them breed, nuke them again a bit further down the track apart from two of every animal, then let life play on its little course, intervene once and get some people to write a book about you, then leave the world to its own devices for the next couple of millennia.

My point? Either choice is a form of comfort, and it's one of those choices we make day after day, one way or another. But I'm glad you can see that my point of view is stable, as that is what I strive for in my perspectives. Your choice to believe in a higher power doesn't really affect my thesis, after all, unless he is a meddling power, in which case it all goes out the window and our nature is determined on his whim.

I think the scientific sandbox theory has been approached before, though. It's interesting, but once again something that is beyond our comprehension of the idea of God, alas, and so fairly arbitrary. We do think that people who do animal testing are morally questionable on a regular basis, after all. XD

[noothergods32]

Silencer, on 16 June 2010 - 09:37 AM, said:

I like Epicurus' take on things:


"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"

Well, first of all Epicurus makes a few assumptions which are problematic.
1. He assumes that the understanding of good and evil of an Infinite Divine Being (the argument assumes the existence of an Infinite Divine Being even in arguing against it) is equivelant to the human understanding of good and evil.
2. He assumes that the point of view of an Infinite Divine Being is limited to that of a finite human, which is an extention of the above assumption.
These assumptions are at best unprovable.

Silencer, on 16 June 2010 - 09:37 AM, said:

To me, this pretty much sums up how God is either malevolent or fiction. Sure, he gives us 'free will' - the by-line of most Christian religions. Then again, whenever people die, that changes to "it's all part of God's plan". This is also, imo, a contradiction of the faith, rather in line with what you describe above. Either there is a plan, or there is not.

Then, of course, the fall-back is "you cannot comprehend the will of God". Well, if that is the case, then all attempts to do so, including the Bible and the Ten Commandments, are flawed and should be cast aside.

The argument for both the free will and 'a plan' is not contradictory. It simply allows for the existance of free will within a plan. Now, for those Christians who argue that 'the plan of God' equates to determinism than this becomes a problem. However for the majority of Christians who believe that 'God's plan' makes allowance for the existence and practice of human free will it is not a problem.
Furthermore, the argument that 'if we can't comprehend the will/plan/nature of God then we should throw out belief in God/The Bible/Christianity' is akin to saying that 'Since we don't know everything about astronomy or quantom physics then we should just stop believing in stars, protons, and nuetrons.'
Saying that a lack of comprehension in a certain subject is reason to reject that subject completely is not an argument, it is an assertion of willful ignorance. While, as a Christian, I am interested in the arguments of athiests against my beliefs and my religon I am going to ask that you treat the intelligent thought of others as such. Now if a member of this forum replied to your post, 'God is God an thats all there is to it' then I would say go ahead and flame him.

As for the subject at hand, it is my belief that men are naturally evil. However this may not be defined as any particular cultural evil but as the inherent inability to please God due to the failure of our ability to achieve the perfection which is his standard. Just my opinion.

I would say more but honestly...it's 2 something in the morning here and I have to deal with some crazy people on a consistant basis where I work so...my brain isn't working that well right now.

[Silencer]

noothergods32, on 17 June 2010 - 06:20 AM, said:

Well, first of all Epicurus makes a few assumptions which are problematic.
1. He assumes that the understanding of good and evil of an Infinite Divine Being (the argument assumes the existence of an Infinite Divine Being even in arguing against it) is equivelant to the human understanding of good and evil.
2. He assumes that the point of view of an Infinite Divine Being is limited to that of a finite human, which is an extention of the above assumption.
These assumptions are at best unprovable.

1. You ever read TV Tropes? "Blue and Orange Morality" is a good one. Despite the fact that God's perception of good or evil may be different from ours, that doesn't change the nature of what he does from our perspective. Hitler may have viewed himself as perfectly good and doing the best for humanity, does that make him any less 'evil' to the rest of the world? No.
2. Once again, because it's simply an extension, it falls prey to the same rebuttal. Just because we live longer than cats doesn't mean we can cause them great pain in the name of science and call it moral, does it? There may be arguments for it from our perspective, but not from the cats', and that is the point.
And as for unprovable assumptions...we're having a debate over God, good sir, so bring your arguments of unprovable assumptions to the table by all means, but you tread on unstable ground...
(Oh, and I don't think Epicurus was arguing against the existence of God per se. Merely pointing out that, assuming he does exist, there's something seriously wrong with the way he operates. It's hypothetical and not by any means a proof or argument, it merely sums up a position).

noothergods32, on 17 June 2010 - 06:20 AM, said:

1. The argument for both the free will and 'a plan' is not contradictory. It simply allows for the existance of free will within a plan. Now, for those Christians who argue that 'the plan of God' equates to determinism than this becomes a problem. However for the majority of Christians who believe that 'God's plan' makes allowance for the existence and practice of human free will it is not a problem.
2. Furthermore, the argument that 'if we can't comprehend the will/plan/nature of God then we should throw out belief in God/The Bible/Christianity' is akin to saying that 'Since we don't know everything about astronomy or quantom physics then we should just stop believing in stars, protons, and nuetrons.'
3. Saying that a lack of comprehension in a certain subject is reason to reject that subject completely is not an argument, it is an assertion of willful ignorance. While, as a Christian, I am interested in the arguments of athiests against my beliefs and my religon I am going to ask that you treat the intelligent thought of others as such. Now if a member of this forum replied to your post, 'God is God an thats all there is to it' then I would say go ahead and flame him.

1. If God has a plan, bearing in mind he is omniscient and omnipotent, then the outcome is likely fixed. While it is quite reconcilable with the idea of Free Will, if the outcome is fixed we are essentially incapable of making any significant change, yes? If God is treating this as an experiment in the hands-off, see-what-comes-of-it sense, then he doesn't have a real plan. Hence my statement.
2. Slightly different, in that the Will of God, if incomprehensible, will never be understood and could in fact be completely misinterpreted with ease, whereas the scientific phenomena you describe are not incomprehensible, and can be understood with time. The statement that we cannot understand the will of God is a follow-on from the contradiction with free will/a plan, however, and is a common argument amongst Christians I have talked to. The reason for rejecting the Bible or other scripture only follows if they are in fact correct. That being said, I never said to throw out belief in God, just the mortal attempts at comprehending his Will.
3. See #2. It's not lack of comprehension, it's inability to comprehend. One could say we should still follow God's teachings, but those teachings must inherently be incomprehensible if God's Will is incomprehensible. I.e. we assume he wants us to listen to his Word, but that could very well be wrong because we cannot comprehend his Will. See?
I don't think there was any flaming in my post at all, merely a reasoned argument on a series of rebuttals I have heard people state. I've also heard people claim "God is God and that's it", and trust me, I WILL and have flamed that assertion.

noothergods32, on 17 June 2010 - 06:20 AM, said:

As for the subject at hand, it is my belief that men are naturally evil. However this may not be defined as any particular cultural evil but as the inherent inability to please God due to the failure of our ability to achieve the perfection which is his standard. Just my opinion.

Now this is a stance I can appreciate. Though one could argue that religion is part of culture, and so your stance is still culturally relative, it is more in line with the discussion at hand. Though I'm curious as to how an unappeasable God would treat humans - is there a follow-on to this belief in regards to Heaven/Hell, or is he still benevolent and forgiving at that point?
/curious.

[noothergods32]

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

1. You ever read TV Tropes? "Blue and Orange Morality" is a good one. Despite the fact that God's perception of good or evil may be different from ours, that doesn't change the nature of what he does from our perspective. Hitler may have viewed himself as perfectly good and doing the best for humanity, does that make him any less 'evil' to the rest of the world? No.
2. Once again, because it's simply an extension, it falls prey to the same rebuttal. Just because we live longer than cats doesn't mean we can cause them great pain in the name of science and call it moral, does it? There may be arguments for it from our perspective, but not from the cats', and that is the point.
And as for unprovable assumptions...we're having a debate over God, good sir, so bring your arguments of unprovable assumptions to the table by all means, but you tread on unstable ground...
(Oh, and I don't think Epicurus was arguing against the existence of God per se. Merely pointing out that, assuming he does exist, there's something seriously wrong with the way he operates. It's hypothetical and not by any means a proof or argument, it merely sums up a position).

You are probably right about Epicurus's argument, I haven't read that much of him.
1. The problem with this is the assumption that our pov is the dominant one. When speaking of Hitler's pov then yes, we can say that while he may have considered himself good, our estimation is of equal (as a group more) importance than his and he was wrong. However when we are dealing with a postulated Infinite Divine Being then our pov, our subjective opinion of what constitutes good and evil, is by definition less valid, less important than his.
2. In this point I will disagree. While experimenting on another human and causing great pain is most certainly wrong (without prior informed consent), I believe that testing on an animal in such a way is not immoral. Now causing great UNNECESSARY pain I believe is wrong, however if the pain has a specfic purpose that will advance our understanding and ability to aid other cats or to aid humans in a significant way...perhaps even in an insignificant way (with significance being defined as greatly improving the quality of life, e.g. Better techniques for heart surgery=significant, better mascara = insignificant for the purposes of this post) then I see nothing wrong with it.
3. Yes, the idea of God is an unprovable assumption, however it is not an invalid assumption which I will argue that Epicurus's arguments are.

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

1. If God has a plan, bearing in mind he is omniscient and omnipotent, then the outcome is likely fixed. While it is quite reconcilable with the idea of Free Will, if the outcome is fixed we are essentially incapable of making any significant change, yes? If God is treating this as an experiment in the hands-off, see-what-comes-of-it sense, then he doesn't have a real plan. Hence my statement.
2. Slightly different, in that the Will of God, if incomprehensible, will never be understood and could in fact be completely misinterpreted with ease, whereas the scientific phenomena you describe are not incomprehensible, and can be understood with time. The statement that we cannot understand the will of God is a follow-on from the contradiction with free will/a plan, however, and is a common argument amongst Christians I have talked to. The reason for rejecting the Bible or other scripture only follows if they are in fact correct. That being said, I never said to throw out belief in God, just the mortal attempts at comprehending his Will.
3. See #2. It's not lack of comprehension, it's inability to comprehend. One could say we should still follow God's teachings, but those teachings must inherently be incomprehensible if God's Will is incomprehensible. I.e. we assume he wants us to listen to his Word, but that could very well be wrong because we cannot comprehend his Will. See?
I don't think there was any flaming in my post at all, merely a reasoned argument on a series of rebuttals I have heard people state. I've also heard people claim "God is God and that's it", and trust me, I WILL and have flamed that assertion.

1. No, I would agree that there was no flaming in your post, I did not mean to implie there was, but upon rereading it I realize that the implication was there. Apologies for that.
2. The idea of Omnipotence and Omniscience is problematic. However if one accepts that there is a difference between foreknowledge and determinism then the problem is greatly lessened. If I see 'God's Plan' as a stamp placed upon all of history and existence that THIS WILL HAPPEN, then I am leaning towards determinism. However is I see 'God's Plan' as a reaction to my own choices decided upon before the fact then Free Will remains intact within the plan. Within this reasoning there is is fixed outcome, both for all of life and existence and for my own life, however this fixed outcome is a result both of the choices which I made and the response of God to those choices, both of which were known before the fact. The idea that an Infinite Divine Being knows my choice before I choose it does not make it in any way less my choice.
3. Within the sciences it is quite apparent that we do not know things, the problem is that we do not know what, or how much, we do not know. The belief that we will someday have a full can clear understanding of them is, in my opinion, based wholly on faith. We are growing in knowledge on all these subjects but we do not know the extent of the knowledge yet to be gained and it may, plausibly, be of infinite extent such that we will never have complete knowledge or understanding on these subjects. However this does not mean that we should reject the knowledge which we have gained. I will argue that the same is true of any potential Infinite Divine Being, though we may never be able to know everything about him nor fully grasp his nature or his plan this does not mean that we cannot know something about him. Now the knowledge one accepts will necessarily be dependant on the belief that said Infinite Divine Being communicates some measure of his nature, plan, and desire in some way. However, assuming the existence of an Inifinte Divine Being who is not removed from his creation then it is fully plausible that he would communicate in some way with said creation, the only question remaining then become which one is correct.
4. Flaming that they rightly deserved I'm sure.

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

Now this is a stance I can appreciate. Though one could argue that religion is part of culture, and so your stance is still culturally relative, it is more in line with the discussion at hand. Though I'm curious as to how an unappeasable God would treat humans - is there a follow-on to this belief in regards to Heaven/Hell, or is he still benevolent and forgiving at that point?
/curious.

Ah, and this is the beauty of Christianity. In the Orthodox Christian religion it is taught that God is unappeasable because his standard is perfection. Thus there is no way to escape the just punishment of which imperfect beings are, in the judgment of a perfect God who seeks perfection, fully deserving.
However, being a God of both perfect Justice and perfect Love, God saw fit to provide a means of release from this punishment. In orthodox belief God came in the flesh, as Jesus Christ, taking on a fully human nature while remaining fully divine so that he might:
1. Live as an example to all men as to how to please him
2. Die as a worthy sacrifice to take on the punishment rightfully waiting for men
3. Rise from the dead, invoking power over death so that those who follow him might be covered by his perfection in the eyes of God, perfected through their lives and their deaths, and become worthy to enter heaven.

The idea of God as being benevolent and forgiving and the idea of God being wrathful are both common in Christian teaching, however the connection between the two is rarely seen outside of Christian circles....crap...a lot of the time it's rarely seen within Christian circles...I lament the sad state of theological thought in the Christian church today.

[Silencer]

noothergods32, on 17 June 2010 - 09:11 AM, said:

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

1. You ever read TV Tropes? "Blue and Orange Morality" is a good one. Despite the fact that God's perception of good or evil may be different from ours, that doesn't change the nature of what he does from our perspective. Hitler may have viewed himself as perfectly good and doing the best for humanity, does that make him any less 'evil' to the rest of the world? No.
2. Once again, because it's simply an extension, it falls prey to the same rebuttal. Just because we live longer than cats doesn't mean we can cause them great pain in the name of science and call it moral, does it? There may be arguments for it from our perspective, but not from the cats', and that is the point.
And as for unprovable assumptions...we're having a debate over God, good sir, so bring your arguments of unprovable assumptions to the table by all means, but you tread on unstable ground...
(Oh, and I don't think Epicurus was arguing against the existence of God per se. Merely pointing out that, assuming he does exist, there's something seriously wrong with the way he operates. It's hypothetical and not by any means a proof or argument, it merely sums up a position).

You are probably right about Epicurus's argument, I haven't read that much of him.
1. The problem with this is the assumption that our pov is the dominant one. When speaking of Hitler's pov then yes, we can say that while he may have considered himself good, our estimation is of equal (as a group more) importance than his and he was wrong. However when we are dealing with a postulated Infinite Divine Being then our pov, our subjective opinion of what constitutes good and evil, is by definition less valid, less important than his.
2. In this point I will disagree. While experimenting on another human and causing great pain is most certainly wrong (without prior informed consent), I believe that testing on an animal in such a way is not immoral. Now causing great UNNECESSARY pain I believe is wrong, however if the pain has a specfic purpose that will advance our understanding and ability to aid other cats or to aid humans in a significant way...perhaps even in an insignificant way (with significance being defined as greatly improving the quality of life, e.g. Better techniques for heart surgery=significant, better mascara = insignificant for the purposes of this post) then I see nothing wrong with it.
3. Yes, the idea of God is an unprovable assumption, however it is not an invalid assumption which I will argue that Epicurus's arguments are.

Ah, well, there I will put down our differences purely to religion. I can empathise, but I cannot put someone else's point of view above my own in terms of importance. Not without evidence that they know more than I, and have my best interests at heart. Comes down to faith, I guess.
Just out of curiosity re #2, why is experimenting on humans wrong, but animals not? God surely teaches that all life is sacred, so to rank human life above any animal life is wrong? I personally don't see anything wrong with animal testing if it doesn't cause significant discomfort, but your stance seems strange to me.
Well, invalidity would stem from the fact that God is not human. However, to hark back to my other point, from *our* perspective the argument is perfectly logical and valid. But that's been dealt with already.

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

1. If God has a plan, bearing in mind he is omniscient and omnipotent, then the outcome is likely fixed. While it is quite reconcilable with the idea of Free Will, if the outcome is fixed we are essentially incapable of making any significant change, yes? If God is treating this as an experiment in the hands-off, see-what-comes-of-it sense, then he doesn't have a real plan. Hence my statement.
2. Slightly different, in that the Will of God, if incomprehensible, will never be understood and could in fact be completely misinterpreted with ease, whereas the scientific phenomena you describe are not incomprehensible, and can be understood with time. The statement that we cannot understand the will of God is a follow-on from the contradiction with free will/a plan, however, and is a common argument amongst Christians I have talked to. The reason for rejecting the Bible or other scripture only follows if they are in fact correct. That being said, I never said to throw out belief in God, just the mortal attempts at comprehending his Will.
3. See #2. It's not lack of comprehension, it's inability to comprehend. One could say we should still follow God's teachings, but those teachings must inherently be incomprehensible if God's Will is incomprehensible. I.e. we assume he wants us to listen to his Word, but that could very well be wrong because we cannot comprehend his Will. See?
I don't think there was any flaming in my post at all, merely a reasoned argument on a series of rebuttals I have heard people state. I've also heard people claim "God is God and that's it", and trust me, I WILL and have flamed that assertion.

1. No, I would agree that there was no flaming in your post, I did not mean to implie there was, but upon rereading it I realize that the implication was there. Apologies for that.
2. The idea of Omnipotence and Omniscience is problematic. However if one accepts that there is a difference between foreknowledge and determinism then the problem is greatly lessened. If I see 'God's Plan' as a stamp placed upon all of history and existence that THIS WILL HAPPEN, then I am leaning towards determinism. However is I see 'God's Plan' as a reaction to my own choices decided upon before the fact then Free Will remains intact within the plan. Within this reasoning there is is fixed outcome, both for all of life and existence and for my own life, however this fixed outcome is a result both of the choices which I made and the response of God to those choices, both of which were known before the fact. The idea that an Infinite Divine Being knows my choice before I choose it does not make it in any way less my choice.
3. Within the sciences it is quite apparent that we do not know things, the problem is that we do not know what, or how much, we do not know. The belief that we will someday have a full can clear understanding of them is, in my opinion, based wholly on faith. We are growing in knowledge on all these subjects but we do not know the extent of the knowledge yet to be gained and it may, plausibly, be of infinite extent such that we will never have complete knowledge or understanding on these subjects. However this does not mean that we should reject the knowledge which we have gained. I will argue that the same is true of any potential Infinite Divine Being, though we may never be able to know everything about him nor fully grasp his nature or his plan this does not mean that we cannot know something about him. Now the knowledge one accepts will necessarily be dependant on the belief that said Infinite Divine Being communicates some measure of his nature, plan, and desire in some way. However, assuming the existence of an Inifinte Divine Being who is not removed from his creation then it is fully plausible that he would communicate in some way with said creation, the only question remaining then become which one is correct.
4. Flaming that they rightly deserved I'm sure.


That's good then, was worried there was some flaming in there somewhere, lol.
I dunno, the fact that a choice can be known prior to the moment of decision makes me question it as a valid choice. If the outcome is known, the outcome is fixed, hence you had no real choice whatsoever beforehand, as you couldn't have chosen differently, so therefore no free will. I get what you're trying to say, I really do, but to me that just transcends the idea of free will.
While I agree that if we know some of what our hypothetical divine being's will is, then to offhandedly discard it because we do not know all of it is foolish. However, as I say, I'm talking specifically of the argument that 'we cannot comprehend God's will', as being an example of why free will/a plan conflict. In that case, we don't actually know any of God's will because it is incomprehensible, so we can't use anything we derive from his supposed will as rules to live by or whatever. It's a very specific case - in the general I agree with you that a partial knowledge is still knowledge and so useful - it's just in this specific case which I have had thrown at me several times over the years.

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

Now this is a stance I can appreciate. Though one could argue that religion is part of culture, and so your stance is still culturally relative, it is more in line with the discussion at hand. Though I'm curious as to how an unappeasable God would treat humans - is there a follow-on to this belief in regards to Heaven/Hell, or is he still benevolent and forgiving at that point?
/curious.

Ah, and this is the beauty of Christianity. In the Orthodox Christian religion it is taught that God is unappeasable because his standard is perfection. Thus there is no way to escape the just punishment of which imperfect beings are, in the judgment of a perfect God who seeks perfection, fully deserving.
However, being a God of both perfect Justice and perfect Love, God saw fit to provide a means of release from this punishment. In orthodox belief God came in the flesh, as Jesus Christ, taking on a fully human nature while remaining fully divine so that he might:
1. Live as an example to all men as to how to please him
2. Die as a worthy sacrifice to take on the punishment rightfully waiting for men
3. Rise from the dead, invoking power over death so that those who follow him might be covered by his perfection in the eyes of God, perfected through their lives and their deaths, and become worthy to enter heaven.

The idea of God as being benevolent and forgiving and the idea of God being wrathful are both common in Christian teaching, however the connection between the two is rarely seen outside of Christian circles....crap...a lot of the time it's rarely seen within Christian circles...I lament the sad state of theological thought in the Christian church today.

Right, so it's the normal redemption position then, that follows logically. Just checking.

My responses in red.

[General King]

The big bang was theorised by a Roman Catholic priest.

Also the bible has mistranslations from the ancient hebrew to latin and then mistranslations from there.

I mean it not six days but six ages of creation.

Age in Hebrew is not defined it is just a period of time, it can be a day or billion of years.

There is a jewish branches based on the teachings of the Kaballah. But Kaballah taught jews argue that god and the devil are one, (idea of matter and antimatter maybe) or creation (represented by big bang) verses destruction (represented by big crush).

The Kaballah say that god is made of Sefirot, there are ten of them, that means there are not ten gods but one god with ten different perceptions of how you can view it. Thye ten Sefirot also refer to ten levels of creation.

The fact that there is ten dimensions in which we can percieve this universe itself.

I don't see god as some guy with a white beard sitting on a cloud. God is creation, he the tiny anobae, the fungi, the flowers, the trees, all the animals, us, the earth, all the planets, all the stars, everything forms god.

Now here the argument, atheists would agree with an idea that god may have been the word used to represent everything but the idea that everything including the rocks form sort of a will that we now form a part of they would disagree with.

But in my mind the only way to be god, to be everywhere, to see everything it has to be creation itself, so that every human is a part of god.

The evil of religion is to allow someone to tell you what to believe, believing in a creator or believing that it was really a coin toss that led to us being here now is neither right or wrong as long as you have searched your soul for the answer that you know to be true to you. You should also be free to express your views no matter what in friendly discussion, sure you may believe that your right but that a faith in yourself in what you believe to be true, but so does everyone, it doesn't matter what matters is that you listen to what they say.

[noothergods32]

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 09:47 AM, said:

Ah, well, there I will put down our differences purely to religion. I can empathise, but I cannot put someone else's point of view above my own in terms of importance. Not without evidence that they know more than I, and have my best interests at heart. Comes down to faith, I guess.
Just out of curiosity re #2, why is experimenting on humans wrong, but animals not? God surely teaches that all life is sacred, so to rank human life above any animal life is wrong? I personally don't see anything wrong with animal testing if it doesn't cause significant discomfort, but your stance seems strange to me.
Well, invalidity would stem from the fact that God is not human. However, to hark back to my other point, from *our* perspective the argument is perfectly logical and valid. But that's been dealt with already.

1. I have found that, if I am going to be honest, any plausible Infinite Divine Being must by definition have a pov which is superior to my own. The question then comes down to whether he has my interests at heart and whether it matters if he has my interests at heart. Ultimately, if he is an Infinite Divine Being which is malevolent in nature then he will not allow me to exercise my free will and I am a toy. If he is an Infinite Divine Being which is benevolent in nature then he is worth listening to even if I don't understand what he is doing. So yes, it does come down to faith.
2. From my pov all life is important...I would not say that all life is sacred but I think you and I are defining sacred differently. I believe, due to the teaching of scripture, that men are made in the image of God and therefore we are more important that animals.
However on a purely logical basis it comes down to the matter of pov. The cat being experimented on cannot understand the nature, or importance of the experiment. Informed consent is not possible in any way and so the choice must be made by a being which is capable of understanding the nature and importance of the experiment. In the case of a human being, informed consent is possible and the choice may be made by the human himself. E.G. A given experiment will likely yield a cure to cancer. The experiment is extremely painful and may leave the subject with permanent scars. A human being may look at the positive vs. negative consequences of the experiment and make an informed decision whether or not the pain and scars are worth curing cancer. Some will be willing while other will not be willing, those who have a person of significance currently suffering from cancer or who has recently died from cancer will be more willing than those who have had no experience with cancer. The cat is incapable of understanding the positive vs negative consequences of the experiment, it cannot weigh the decision from a rational, informed point of view and a human must take on that task for the cat.

Silencer, on 17 June 2010 - 06:59 AM, said:

That's good then, was worried there was some flaming in there somewhere, lol.
I dunno, the fact that a choice can be known prior to the moment of decision makes me question it as a valid choice. If the outcome is known, the outcome is fixed, hence you had no real choice whatsoever beforehand, as you couldn't have chosen differently, so therefore no free will. I get what you're trying to say, I really do, but to me that just transcends the idea of free will.
While I agree that if we know some of what our hypothetical divine being's will is, then to offhandedly discard it because we do not know all of it is foolish. However, as I say, I'm talking specifically of the argument that 'we cannot comprehend God's will', as being an example of why free will/a plan conflict. In that case, we don't actually know any of God's will because it is incomprehensible, so we can't use anything we derive from his supposed will as rules to live by or whatever. It's a very specific case - in the general I agree with you that a partial knowledge is still knowledge and so useful - it's just in this specific case which I have had thrown at me several times over the years.

My example here is simple. Assuming that I am a WWII scholar and that I am given the chance to travel back in time to before WWII and be present as the war unfolds but unable to change to course of events (to be rid of the potential moral issue for the purposes of this example). Being present I know the outcome of events, Hitlers actions are foreknown and their consequences are foreknown. The outcome of the war becomes fixed, yet the choices made remain both the choice and responsibility of their choosers. Their free will remains intact because
1. They have no knowledge of the fixed outcomes
2. There is no outside force directly causing their choices (E.G. I am not forcing Hitler to invade Poland.)
3. In my opinion both a cause and a consequence. They retain the responsibility for the consequences of their choices.

[General King]

Also the argument of why does a god allow poverty, famine, disease, war and anything else that bad.

Would you really want to rely on a god to solve all the problems of the world, it would lead to human stagnation, if a being so powerful was to come and solve all our problems. We would become reliant on them and thus stop evolving socially, technologically, philosophical ideas.

If you were part of a race that advanced would you want the duty of having to baby sit 6 billion humans, I wouldn't. I'm surprised that Humanity survived the cold war despite the lack of logic of both sides having enough nukes to destroy the world how many times over, no one was going to win that type of war yet they still put probably trillions into nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons can only be used at small yields or limited deployments. The sort of intelligence behind the cold war could easily be seen in children fighting in the playground.

Nowif I was God creator of everything I would actually put in some simple rules that meant that a intelligent species had the ability to survive.And most of us have the intelligene to see certain parts of the system that is wrong the problem is the guys in power won't want a change that will decrease their power. The attitude is that they are the leaders, the top dogs, how many politicians seem to act like they are a servant of the constituency that they represent. Some seem to act more with the attitude it should be our honour to sere them.

And that attitude comes from partly when Religion and politics were one and the same. Look at ancient egypt the Pharoh was the head of the body politic and representative of the nation to the gods and ensured that the gods recieved the devotion they deserved.

The Greeks, especially the Spartans their armies never went to war unless the priesthood gave a favouable foretelling of victory if they launched the attack. Of course Spartan military ability meant that no one was really wanting to start the attack on them.

The Jews, they claim they are descended from abraham who had a special relationship with God, Moses lead them out of Egypt but introduced all their religious laws that are important.

Romans how many of the Emperors claimed to have the powers equal to a god.

Medieval Europe Kings were classed as chosen by God to rule over the nation as long as they didn't disobey the church.

Humanity has this way of thinking that a leader has to be someone truly unique and different, for a long time the idea that they have a special relationship with God or understood the creator will.

Now a days it who is able to move the masses with the power of their voice.

When Gordon Brown left and Cameron went into number 10 I actually listened to the speeches that were given. Very powerful speeches, very moving, hell I had tears in my eye but not because of what they said, it was the thought at the back of my mind that no matter what, they are a politician and they say what is needed to please the crowd, not what they believe to be true.

And here the question I think all humans should ask what makes men like Gordon Brown or David Cameron more qualified to represent this country more than a person from the street, or a mum who has worked all her life to support her kids with all the things they need, but is still able to read them a bed time story. Is it solely because they are educated men from some of the great schools in this country, that not a qualification the greatest politicians can easily come from the working class the NHS was brought about by Bevan who was the Labour's minister of health after the war.

He had a vision for a entire free health system, unfortunately he had to allow doctors to retain private patients not enough agreed to give up their private patients (private healthcare is a leech on the NHS not just on resources, it mainly NHS equipment and hospitals they use, but private patients get bumped to the top of the list, which put delay patients who are more in need of the surgery) but at the time that wasn't such a problem. His main promise to the people about the NHS to the people was it would be fully supported in the tax, it was more expensive than what government anticipated and insisted on prescription charges, as it went against his promise to the people he resigned his post.

Here a man who kept to his promise, he failed and resigned from his post, that level of honesty and ability to accept he failed is what makes a truly a great leader.

Where did such a man come from, not from the upper class, he was the son of a coal miner. He just had the strength of character to fight for what he believed in. If mankind is to progress we need leaders like him.

For Humanity to evolve as a civilistation it has to come from us and not an external force, Britain changed after World War 2 as the population didn't return to the society that lived before, the people said it should be a better society we live and they voted for a party that agreed with it and held them responsible. Now a days our society doesn't seem to scrutinise the parties as much, we allow them too much freedom partly because humans like to give responsibility away as long as we are comfortable.

Obama I see a chance for greatness but I see a chance of failure in that elements of the powerful will oppose Obama and the people will not rally behind Obama as being human they assume he will be able to solve these problems by himself. The Americans have to be able to show to the elements of the rich and powerful that if they were to object to what Obama and try and stop they will support Obama and will fight for his ideals. It was that determination that allowed the Americans to gain their independence from Britain and as a nation I think they have lost that as a whole.

That not just for the Americans, it is something that all humans have to consider, poverty, war, famine will not stop because of the rich they are rich because of these things, their wealth is based on selling arms ensuring that everyone is power and that more people die so that they free up resources. That is all we will ever get when a capitalistic system is managed by individuals instead of a society.

But if Humanity continues the trend of forming into larger and larger blocks Capitalism will eventually fail cause by the time we form into a planetry government there is no outside money to acquire all we will be doing is passing money around, there be no new wealth made. There is no new resources to acquire, everything has been acquired it will be just trade, or if we are really smart projects will get resources based on the importance and the impact it will have on society.

Also as you start to merge countries slowly but surely what used to keep them seperate will start to disappear, it is kind of hard to have a hatred of indians if you are neighbours to a inidan family and your kids play with theirs, when it gets to that point how would the leaders expect to control the rest of humanity as their are less things to use to turn us upon one another.

Well this happen in the century maybe not, but I actually see that very likely happening if we don't destroy ourselves. That change will come from us, we don't need god to do these things.

Hell I think after creating everything God deserves a freaking holiday instead of having to micromanage not just 6 billion humans but everylife form and every spec of dust in the universe. Hell no, if he is watching and he made us then I think he is curious to see what happens, sure in my view as every part of creation adds up to from him in theory he could accurately predict the future ( to do that his consciousness would have to be aware of every single particle like we are aware of each finger in fact if he can control said particles like how we control our fingers, he would be able to see the future, change the future, but if he was to start changing too much we could ultimately ensure that there is no life on earth, he actually undoes himself).

If that the case he won't interfere as it be interfering with own self as it goes about it natural inclination.

Also if god is such a being then he will have all knowledge of the universe and it laws, why would such a mind go about and map all of history unfolded and live it in one moment, surely it would be interesting to see what happens as it unfolds. It might sound cruel but has no one here watched a spider or an insect move over our hand in interest?

[Dolmen 2.0]

hMMMM.....Firstly wow, a lot of great debate going on, I am pleased that the nature of God has been delved into to this degree however I just want to remind those participating in the talks to try not veer too far from the debate of the inherent human nature.

Its fine to debate the four parameters listed in the poll but please try not to respond to anyone without refering your views to the question of the human moral condition.

Now:

Quote

Brynjar said:

I'm rather curious as to what sort of research it is that you do? From the amount of (in my eyes) non-scientific vocabulary bandied about, I'd assume you're studying theology. If that's the case, would you really be interested in hearing the arguments of atheists (which most of the members of this board seems to be)? If you do, then I suggest you dispense with "good" and "evil" as the archaic and misleading categories that they are (as intimated, I think, by Silencer). They adhere to a sort of platonic, idealistic idea that abstractions can exist outside the individual. They're universalistic, without thought of who made the categories and for what purpose (yes, you point to Christianity, but that is a huge group and purpose doesn't seem to be central to your study).

I am not a theologian but I have studied both criticisms and supports for mono-deistic, poly-deistic and anti-deistic belief systems as a matter of personal importance and self education (having close talks with theologans in my family makes it impossible to ignore religion). I am in favour of a mono-deistic approach, as mentioned above I agree with the perspective that "God" is one with or inseperable from creation. being a believer doesn't make me a biggot though. I like to listen to intelligent atheistic perspectives because they provide me with fresh perspective for my personal studies.

1. Now the nature of good and evil is not so much archaic as it is ahead of its time. moral systems that provide clear definitions between the objectionable and the encouraged are seminal to civil balance and function. You could never have a society that values order without constructs of good and evil. One could argue without a pursuit of order and a search for what is just, we wouldn't even have science and philosophy, key elements to the development of human intelligence and cognitive ability. One could then argue that these platonic ideals as Brynjar puts them are as seminal to the discussion of human nature as the invention of the wheel was seminal for the development of the bugatti Veyron itself.

2. I believe to this point the individuals that initiated this construct are irrelevant as they had no vision for what their construct would ultimately become just as the inventors of the wheel could never imagine the complex monstosities they advented. good and evil as a concept has undergone innumerable change and should be respected as a refined yet poorly understood social enabler. take for example the prison system. It serves a vital role and pivots around our collective understanding of good and evil. the prison system is employed throughout the world with varying degrees of success because the need for punishment is just as necessary now as it was 2000 years ago and it probably will be 2000 years from now as well.

Notice how I am sidestepping religion here. The justice system is proof that good and evil exist outside of the religious elements. we merely interpret them as right and wrong. they surmount to the same thing. For atheists my question can be thrown then in this light: Are we born with an inherent need to do right or an inherent subversion to do wrong?

This post has been edited by Dolmen: 18 June 2010 - 05:31 PM

[Silencer]

Dolmen, on 18 June 2010 - 05:26 PM, said:

hMMMM.....Firstly wow, a lot of great debate going on, I am pleased that the nature of God has been delved into to this degree however I just want to remind those participating in the talks to try not veer too far from the debate of the inherent human nature.

Its fine to debate the four parameters listed in the poll but please try not to respond to anyone without refering your views to the question of the human moral condition.

Now:

Quote

Brynjar said:

I'm rather curious as to what sort of research it is that you do? From the amount of (in my eyes) non-scientific vocabulary bandied about, I'd assume you're studying theology. If that's the case, would you really be interested in hearing the arguments of atheists (which most of the members of this board seems to be)? If you do, then I suggest you dispense with "good" and "evil" as the archaic and misleading categories that they are (as intimated, I think, by Silencer). They adhere to a sort of platonic, idealistic idea that abstractions can exist outside the individual. They're universalistic, without thought of who made the categories and for what purpose (yes, you point to Christianity, but that is a huge group and purpose doesn't seem to be central to your study).

I am not a theologian but I have studied both criticisms and supports for mono-deistic, poly-deistic and anti-deistic belief systems as a matter of personal importance and self education (having close talks with theologans in my family makes it impossible to ignore religion). I am in favour of a mono-deistic approach, as mentioned above I agree with the perspective that "God" is one with or inseperable from creation. being a believer doesn't make me a biggot though. I like to listen to intelligent atheistic perspectives because they provide me with fresh perspective for my personal studies.

1. Now the nature of good and evil is not so much archaic as it is ahead of its time. moral systems that provide clear definitions between the objectionable and the encouraged are seminal to civil balance and function. You could never have a society that values order without constructs of good and evil. One could argue without a pursuit of order and a search for what is just, we wouldn't even have science and philosophy, key elements to the development of human intelligence and cognitive ability. One could then argue that these platonic ideals as Brynjar puts them are as seminal to the discussion of human nature as the invention of the wheel was seminal for the development of the bugatti Veyron itself.

2. I believe to this point the individuals that initiated this construct are irrelevant as they had no vision for what their construct would ultimately become just as the inventors of the wheel could never imagine the complex monstosities they advented. good and evil as a concept has undergone innumerable change and should be respected as a refined yet poorly understood social enabler. take for example the prison system. It serves a vital role and pivots around our collective understanding of good and evil. the prison system is employed throughout the world with varying degrees of success because the need for punishment is just as necessary now as it was 2000 years ago and it probably will be 2000 years from now as well.

Notice how I am sidestepping religion here. The justice system is proof that good and evil exist outside of the religious elements. we merely interpret them as right and wrong. they surmount to the same thing. For atheists my question can be thrown then in this light: Are we born with an inherent need to do right or an inherent subversion to do wrong?

I would love to respond to GLD's massive post, but I honestly couldn't be bothered reading it after maybe the tenth line, lol. But I'd suggest you're generalising quite a bit, and that the objection to God is not one who fails to solve our problems, but one who fails to give reasons, and moreso expects his very existence to be taken on faith. Indeed, a parent/child relationship is a good analogy - the parent is there, and helps to guide the child, but still lets the child experience pain on occasion to make sure they know why they're not meant to do something. However, the problem is with the fact that God just doesn't show up. Oh, he did, back in the day. How nice for those people! That's like choosing to have 6 billion kids and only talking to 10 of them, which would be considered neglect in our society. Personally, I think the Greeks got down to this a few millennia ago - all their myths and legends told of Gods directly interfering in mortal lives, great heroes and demi-gods, and then...they realised that nothing like that had happened to them or their friends in the modern age. It was ALL myths and legends. Which is pretty much the stance I take to things like the Bible - I just feel that we've had long enough without any interaction that surely, we must start to doubt. Anyway, now I'm generalising, so I'll stop.

However, I think you misinterpret what Bryn and I are saying, Dolmen. Good and evil as standards, as labels are not outdated, but the idea of an absolute, universal GOOD and EVIL is. The belief that some natural scale of the universe that measures someone against a system we can come to understand is fair enough, however what history has shown us is that cultures define what is good and evil for themselves. Laws are a clear example of this, where in some countries, things that are illegal in another are perfectly lawful.
It's not accurate to say that we have surpassed the ideas of good and evil, for we use these terms all the time. It's just that to say "are people born good or evil" is to assume that the same standard of good and evil applies universally, where Bryn and I disagree with this latter part.

Obviously as a person who is guided by your religion, you would argue that God defines what good and evil is (and alas, poor civilisation that didn't get that memo), however to then expect non-religious people to subscribe to the same vision of Good and Evil that you hold is wrong, if you get my point.

And my answer to your reworked question is the same, we are merely heaped with expectations to do 'right' by our society.





*****


@noothergods32 - which is quite possibly the reason you have faith in God and I do not. The difference, I guess, is that you are willing to assume that God exists and has a more important perspective than your own, while I find such notions to be beyond my own ability to accept. *shrug*
However, if you look at your WWII historian example, you point out that he has no power to change events. If this were God, he would then fail to be omnipotent. I understand why you have to prevent him from changing events, that would ofc be substituted for by God's own decision to not interfere, I'm just being pedantic. But more to the point, while it is entirely possible for God to be a being that spans time, he would still be forewarned of the outcome, and if I'm not mistaken in a previous post, you mentioned him changing events to deal with people's decisions? To me, this would, at some point, have to involve a breach of free will. Forcing someone to choose one path, directly or indirectly (by setting things up so that no other choice would even occur to this person) in order to get the outcome he desires. Like if you could see all the ways a rat tries to run a maze filled with poison, and the rat chooses to take a left instead of a right, leading to the rat's death, which is unacceptable (as your plan is for the rat to make it out of the maze) so you either block off that path, or remove the poison at the end. It still boils down to removing 'free will'. Like 'choosing' to go to uni, when in fact for your desired job you have to. It's not really choice, imo.

[noothergods32]

@ The Board: To the entire good vs. evil debate I would argue that truth=reality, if such an assumption is accurate then there must be a truth behind the abstract ideas of good and evil. In other words there must be an absolute good and an absolute evil for these concepts to exist within the scope of truth=reality. However, the idea that these concepts must exist as truths does not mean that we are able to find such absolutes. As a Christian I would argue that scripture gives us an idea of the absolutes of good and evil (that being that that which pleases God, that which is perfect, is good and that which does not please god, that which is less than perfect is evil), however this does not mean that my belief is a correct depiction of the absolutes of good and evil in the context of truth=reality.
I would argue that what we see as a subjective progression of social agreements is actually man's stumbling attempts to find the absolute concepts of good vs. evil.

@ Silencer: I would imagine it is the difference and we each have every right to hold our own opinions.
The analogy does breakdown, as they always do. The purpose of my historian analogy was to show that it is possible to conceive of the future being known, of having a fixed result, without negating the concept of free will.
In response to the rest of your post I wish to add a general disagreement with some of your statements @ Dolmen. I disagree that God is not active in the world today, you argue that he fails to communicate, I would argue that he does communicate and you fail to hear. A parable from the Gospel give a good example of what I believe to be God's attitude on the subject, in the parable a poor man and a rich man both die, one goes to heaven and the other to hell. From hell the rich man begs for the poor man to be sent back to tell his brothers the truth and the response is, 'If they do not believe Moses and the prophets then even a man risen from the dead will not sway them.'
If one makes every attempt to explain away the attempts God makes to communicate with oneself should one really expect him to keep communicating with oneself?
On the other hand many Christians will tell you that God speaks to them in a myriad of ways, again those who do not believe scoff at this as either an overactive imagination or the beginnings of lunacy.
In the same way I will argue that God is active in the lives of his believers, and a part of that belief is a submission of the believers free will to the will of God. So yes, there is an aspect where God's will conflicts with the will of the believer and the believer's free will is co-opted, however this is because the believer's free will has already been offered up to God so that God may co-opt it whenever he likes without deviating from his desire to allow free will to man.

[Silencer]

noothergods32, on 19 June 2010 - 03:55 AM, said:

@ The Board: To the entire good vs. evil debate I would argue that truth=reality, if such an assumption is accurate then there must be a truth behind the abstract ideas of good and evil. In other words there must be an absolute good and an absolute evil for these concepts to exist within the scope of truth=reality. However, the idea that these concepts must exist as truths does not mean that we are able to find such absolutes. As a Christian I would argue that scripture gives us an idea of the absolutes of good and evil (that being that that which pleases God, that which is perfect, is good and that which does not please god, that which is less than perfect is evil), however this does not mean that my belief is a correct depiction of the absolutes of good and evil in the context of truth=reality.
I would argue that what we see as a subjective progression of social agreements is actually man's stumbling attempts to find the absolute concepts of good vs. evil.

Ah, well you're leaning into Plato's theory of forms, then. I'm not sure if I've already posted this, 'cuz my Philosophy 102 essay on Cultural Relativism/Deontology the other day closely followed some of this thread, but I feel that even if there is an absolute (for anything), if it is impossible to know when we've found this absolute, then no-one can rightly claim that they know the 'truth' of the subject matter. For example, due to the way cultures work, one will always believe that your own notions of morals are the correct ones, and yet this is merely a default stance because to operate on any other assumption, for most people, invites madness. You see, you could be completely wrong about what the morally correct thing to do is, and yet because it is what your culture says, then it must, perforce, be the correct thing to do and all other cultures are wrong.
You can combine this moral realism with a sense of fallibilism, to be able to escape claims of arrogance or whatnot, but all that does is say "Well, I might be wrong, but for the time being I'm going to assume I'm right and you're wrong". Not that there is anything wrong with this stance, it simply doesn't help anyone to be friends.
Basically, no matter how close to the truth you get, there is no way of knowing you've found it, so the Greeks could have had it right in 1500BC but didn't notice. To me, this just leads one back to cultural relativism.

@ Silencer: I would imagine it is the difference and we each have every right to hold our own opinions.
The analogy does breakdown, as they always do. The purpose of my historian analogy was to show that it is possible to conceive of the future being known, of having a fixed result, without negating the concept of free will.
In response to the rest of your post I wish to add a general disagreement with some of your statements @ Dolmen. I disagree that God is not active in the world today, you argue that he fails to communicate, I would argue that he does communicate and you fail to hear. A parable from the Gospel give a good example of what I believe to be God's attitude on the subject, in the parable a poor man and a rich man both die, one goes to heaven and the other to hell. From hell the rich man begs for the poor man to be sent back to tell his brothers the truth and the response is, 'If they do not believe Moses and the prophets then even a man risen from the dead will not sway them.'
If one makes every attempt to explain away the attempts God makes to communicate with oneself should one really expect him to keep communicating with oneself?
On the other hand many Christians will tell you that God speaks to them in a myriad of ways, again those who do not believe scoff at this as either an overactive imagination or the beginnings of lunacy.
In the same way I will argue that God is active in the lives of his believers, and a part of that belief is a submission of the believers free will to the will of God. So yes, there is an aspect where God's will conflicts with the will of the believer and the believer's free will is co-opted, however this is because the believer's free will has already been offered up to God so that God may co-opt it whenever he likes without deviating from his desire to allow free will to man.

Indeed, and it is marvelous that this entire debate has stayed so civil. It must be because certain members have not weighed in yet...
And while I appreciate the stance, I disagree with the argument. A 2000 year old book written by men - note, by men, who claimed to be writing the Word of God, it is known that men can be evil, deceitful, manipulative and so on, and that even the devil can quote scripture, etc) is not a reliable source on which to base my faith. I would also contend that a man risen from the dead WOULD sway me, if I knew that he had died and was now walking around again spreading the word of God.
For example, while I might explain away past events which I was not witness to, and am privy to only via a potentially biased source (putting aside how unfair it is to judge all of mankind by past men's failure to accept things like Jesus when he was walking around in the flesh performing miracles), I have said, on several occasions, both to other people and privately to myself, that if God were to, say, strike that tree over there with lightning right this moment, I would quite happily believe in God and spread his teachings. And yet, every time, such has failed to happen. You cannot claim that I'm not being open to communication here...I just want something other than what happened to maybe twenty people over two thousand years ago. Perhaps God's immortality/time-spanning nature has made him unmindful of the problems with having a mortal race...I also don't buy into reader reviews that a website teaches you real wizard-style magic, but you have to sign up before the people running the site will give you a demo. Is that so wrong?
Sorry if this is getting off-topic/potentially antagonistic, I'm just liking your responses and want to hear more.
(Also, am I reading the last sentence right, when I read it as: The only way to have true free will is to not believe in God, because if you do believe in him he basically reserves the right to manipulate you? O.o)

Responses in red, again. This is a good, if somewhat tangential debate.

[noothergods32]

Silencer, on 19 June 2010 - 04:24 AM, said:

Ah, well you're leaning into Plato's theory of forms, then. I'm not sure if I've already posted this, 'cuz my Philosophy 102 essay on Cultural Relativism/Deontology the other day closely followed some of this thread, but I feel that even if there is an absolute (for anything), if it is impossible to know when we've found this absolute, then no-one can rightly claim that they know the 'truth' of the subject matter. For example, due to the way cultures work, one will always believe that your own notions of morals are the correct ones, and yet this is merely a default stance because to operate on any other assumption, for most people, invites madness. You see, you could be completely wrong about what the morally correct thing to do is, and yet because it is what your culture says, then it must, perforce, be the correct thing to do and all other cultures are wrong.
You can combine this moral realism with a sense of fallibilism, to be able to escape claims of arrogance or whatnot, but all that does is say "Well, I might be wrong, but for the time being I'm going to assume I'm right and you're wrong". Not that there is anything wrong with this stance, it simply doesn't help anyone to be friends.
Basically, no matter how close to the truth you get, there is no way of knowing you've found it, so the Greeks could have had it right in 1500BC but didn't notice. To me, this just leads one back to cultural relativism.

I am leaning towards Platos forms and I generally agree with your statement with a couple of important differences. While this does lead back to a form of Cultural Relativism it must have an eye toward truth. The modern idea of cultural relativism presents a world without absolutes where anything is potentially right or wrong depending on a person or society. For instance there is an aboriginal tribe...I want to say in southeast asia but I'm not positive (I have this on authority from a friend of mine who spent a year living with the tribe) in which is was considered acceptable, even laudable in some cases, to rape unmarried girls between the ages of 12 and 18. By 18 the girl was generally given in marriage and it was not acceptable for any man but her husband to rape her. In a world without absolutes this societal behavior is not wrong, while we may condemn it we do so on unfounded grounds of our cultural superiority. Please note that I am NOT saying that Cultural Relativism will inevitable lead to anarchy, in general cultures have been able to regulate themselves fairly well. However when confronted with a culture that is obviously in the wrong this becomes a simple case of might makes right, the culture with the bigger guns wins.
The understanding of the existence of absolutes is a necessary foundation for any potential understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, righteousness and sin, even if said absolutes cannot be fully known.
My second difference is with an implied, though not stated, understanding within your post. A sense of fallibility can and does lend the ability to be friends to two people with radically opposing views. While I might wish that you would change your belief and agree with me and I have no doubt that you wish the same of me a willingness to 'live and let live' can allow to have a civil, even enjoyable, discussion about matters which are of importance to both of us.

Silencer, on 19 June 2010 - 04:24 AM, said:

Indeed, and it is marvelous that this entire debate has stayed so civil. It must be because certain members have not weighed in yet...
And while I appreciate the stance, I disagree with the argument. A 2000 year old book written by men - note, by men, who claimed to be writing the Word of God, it is known that men can be evil, deceitful, manipulative and so on, and that even the devil can quote scripture, etc) is not a reliable source on which to base my faith. I would also contend that a man risen from the dead WOULD sway me, if I knew that he had died and was now walking around again spreading the word of God.
For example, while I might explain away past events which I was not witness to, and am privy to only via a potentially biased source (putting aside how unfair it is to judge all of mankind by past men's failure to accept things like Jesus when he was walking around in the flesh performing miracles), I have said, on several occasions, both to other people and privately to myself, that if God were to, say, strike that tree over there with lightning right this moment, I would quite happily believe in God and spread his teachings. And yet, every time, such has failed to happen. You cannot claim that I'm not being open to communication here...I just want something other than what happened to maybe twenty people over two thousand years ago. Perhaps God's immortality/time-spanning nature has made him unmindful of the problems with having a mortal race...I also don't buy into reader reviews that a website teaches you real wizard-style magic, but you have to sign up before the people running the site will give you a demo. Is that so wrong?

Well, first let me take the issue of scripture, this is another belief on which we disagree. I believe that the Bible is the word of God and that the message it contains has been preserved and protected as such. You, if I understand you correctly, argue that it is a book written by fallible men of many conceits and prejudices just like any other text ancient or modern. Believing that I will say that it is completely reasonable to reject it, it is not you rejection of the bible as the book you believe it to be that I disagree with but your definition of the bible as a whole.
Let me say as well, because I have no doubt that this question will come up, that my belief in the bible is predicated on my foundational belief in God. In an epistomological structure belief in God/the Supernatural would be a foundational belief upon which is predicated my belief in the bible and, following that, many of my beliefs about God.
As for your own belief, I do not wish to disagree with your own self-analysis but I have heard many athiests, and even agnostics, say the same and yet whenever evidence for God is show them they reject it, finding some way to explain it. I have seen this done with the rational proofs for God and the authority of scripture, with anecdotal evidence for God from a first person witness, and with direct experiential evidence (in this case a man who had a near death experience in which he spoke with God, he later wrote off as a chemical misfire in his brain, though I know of a couple others which are less extreme). In my experience those who have chosen not to believe in God or the supernatural are loathe to change their minds on the subject, a position which I can understand as I did not convert to Christianity until I was almost 19. I had already formed foundational beliefs by this point and many beliefs on top of them, it is not an easy thing to give them up.
The difference between the website and prayer is that the websites primary purpose is to get you to buy their product. God's primary purpose, at least as I see it is scripture, is not our salvation, we have a tendency to assume that we are all important to God when such is not the case. This is not to say that we are not important to God, simply that we are not the MOST important to God. While you would expect the website to bend to your whims because convincing you to buy their product is their primary purpose we cannot rightfully expect the same thing of God.
When I read the Gospels I see in Christ both a profound desire to see people come to him and a complete willingness to let them walk away if they are not willing to give what is required. (Again this assumes that scripture is the word of God and also demonstrates my understanding of scripture not necessarily the absolute true interpretation of scripture). Your agrument depends upon the assumption that God needs us and so should be doing whatever it takes to convince us of both his existence and scripture's truth even if it means humbling himself in the process. However the God we see in scripture desires us, but he does not need us. He wants us, but we come to him on his terms, not on ours and if we are not willing to come then he is willing to watch us walk away.

Silencer, on 19 June 2010 - 04:24 AM, said:

Sorry if this is getting off-topic/potentially antagonistic, I'm just liking your responses and want to hear more.
(Also, am I reading the last sentence right, when I read it as: The only way to have true free will is to not believe in God, because if you do believe in him he basically reserves the right to manipulate you? O.o)

Actually I don't find your questions antagonistic at all. I think they are perfectly rational from your point of view and, more over, they are good questions to ask from any point of view. I wish more Christians would ask them...even though it means there would probably be fewer Christians over all.
As for my last statement you are correct. In my understanding a large part of salvation is submission, allowing one's will to be subsummed (not sure I spelled that right) into God's will. In our natural state we have free will and yet we have no ability to do good, to please God because God's standard is perfection. In choosing to submit to God well allow him to control us (though I do believe we retain the majority of our freedom of choice, God certainly does not control my every action but at times he forces me to go a certain way, whether through circumstances or through...perhaps the best way to describe it is implanted impulse...an overwhelming desire to do something abnormal to my natural inclinations), with there there is also a certain release of identity. I am still myself, not a clone or carbon copy, however as a Christian my mission is to become like Christ. The more like Christ I become the less I am like who I was...probably a better way to phrase that...anyway, I think that this is one of the reasons that we see so many people, even in scripture, having such a difficult time choosing to follow Christ.
It is a not just a 'oh, well I'm going to believe this now' statement, it is a complete change of foundational beliefs about myself, the universe, and my place in it along with an equivalent change in priorities. Admittedly this normally happens over a period of years or decades not all at once, but the change is still difficult to accept.

This post has been edited by noothergods32: 19 June 2010 - 07:28 AM