Page 5 of 5

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:09 pm
by john9blue
tzor wrote:
AAFitz wrote:If I kill one person is it evil?
If I kill one person and it saves one person is it evil?
If I kill one person and it saves two people is it evil?
If I kill one person and it saves 1000 people is it evil?
If I kill one person and it saves 1 billion people is it evil?
If I choose not to kill a person, and it kills 1 billion is it evil?


The answer to all of the above is NO. (Well technically the answer to all of the above is UNDEFINED.)

Without knowing the result of the action on you personally, it is impossible to tell if the act is good or evil.


tzor wrote:It was clearly "evil."


lol. how can you reconcile these two positions?

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:19 pm
by tzor
john9blue wrote:It was clearly "evil."


lol. how can you reconcile these two positions?[/quote]

Because in the case of the terrorists, we know their personal gains and losses from the actions; in killing themselves they were (they believed) guaranteed a specific number of virgins in the afterlife.

(Note that if they seriously did not believe what they were told then they were idiots; neither good nor evil; just stupid.)

The question of killing x to save y doesn't indicate the gains/losses of the person doing the act.

That's how I reconcile; good and evil is based on the relationship between the actor and the other; who gains and who looses. If both gain or both loose the question becomes moot.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:06 pm
by stahrgazer
AAFitz wrote:
stahrgazer wrote:Just because the benefit or detriment is in the eye of the beholder, doesn't change that there is a benefit and there is a detriment.

Your argument against mine is that you personally can't figure out whether it's "good" or "evil."

Just because you're not omnicient enough to figure it out, doesn't mean that good and evil doesn't exist.

And just because my definition is simplistic doesn't make it wrong.

A kindergartner can add 1 + 1 =2 because it's very simplistic; and the kindergartner would be right.

Anyway, so good and evil exist, and what's "good" benefits humanity and what's "evil" does not - and we'll agree that humans are flawed and can't always predict whether an outcome is more good or more evil.

The "laws" or "rules" in the bible were meant to help man understand which acts might be considered more good and which might be considered more evil.


Unwittingly, you basically agree with everything I argued with this post here, and confirm it to be true. What you have argued, is that you have a definition that you perceive and believe, and have no way of knowing if it is right or wrong, which essentially, makes it fiction.

It may very well exist, and that may very well be "reality", but your argument is that you perceive it to exist, which makes it reality, and is therefore the faulty logic.

Certainly good and evil might exist, but it is hardly the fact that some perceive it to exist, that proves its existence.

In fact, the fact that people perceive it differently, might go to prove it can't possibly exist, in any reality whatsoever. It doesn't, but that argument is even more valid than yours, that good or bad exists, because you think it does, which really isn't logic, but a simple faith, with no supporting evidence whatsoever.


Wrong.

People perceive actions differently, yes.

But people can see that evil is not the same as good, even if they prefer one or the other.

Most people would agree that homicide is wrong.

Most people would agree that multiple homicide is even more wrong.

The only "trip up" is whether preventing a homicide now is more "good" if, to prevent that homicide, it means killing; or whether it's more "evil" to kill to prevent the homicide because of the loss potential "good."

Or, you could take the argument that some would not agree that multiple homicide is "wrong" at all (Jeff Dalmer, Son of Sam, Al Quaeda/Twin Towers.)

But just because some folks will always be twisted, or because humans cannot see the future, doesn't mean good and evil don't exist.

At the very least, all of those knew there was a difference between letting folks live and killing them.

As an analogy: just because Stevie Wonder cannot, himself, see, does not mean vision does not exist, and it doesn't mean that there isn't a light spectrum; and just because some folks are color-blind, does not mean that the light spectrum doesn't allow reflections of various colors.

You want to "define" good and evil using examples by the blind and the color-blind; or at least, use the blind and the color-blind to disprove "good" and "evil."

You're just wrong.

It's as wrong as the mathematically challenged being unable to add 2+2 to equal 4.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:29 pm
by crispybits
OK stahrgazer, lets assume you're right for a moment and that good and evil are real things, what, in your opinion, are they?

What I mean by that is that we know light is a particle/waveform. I'm not suggesting you have to point out a particle of good/evil or a good/evil wave or whatever, but if you insist that these are real things independent of human conception, then what are they? I can describe how my model of good/evil works, that as human constructions they are reflections of societal or cultural abstracts of things that are good or bad for society or individuals or both. I'm completely lost on how this external and existent thing you're describing actually works.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:56 pm
by BigBallinStalin
tzor wrote:
john9blue wrote:
tzor wrote:It was clearly "evil."


lol. how can you reconcile these two positions?


Because in the case of the terrorists, we know their personal gains and losses from the actions; in killing themselves they were (they believed) guaranteed a specific number of virgins in the afterlife.

(Note that if they seriously did not believe what they were told then they were idiots; neither good nor evil; just stupid.)


Sorry, but you're completely wrong here. The gains in the afterlife may be convincing, but to fight for a cause against perceived oppression to the brink of annihilating oneself is not at all stupid. It's completely rational: choosing a particular means to successfully attain an end. American soldiers do this as well--in those great times of need. So do civilians at times. There's nothing stupid about self-sacrifice--maybe for you it is, but you have completely different ends and face completely different opportunity costs.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 12:54 pm
by PLAYER57832
stahrgazer wrote:Just because the benefit or detriment is in the eye of the beholder, doesn't change that there is a benefit and there is a detriment.

Your argument against mine is that you personally can't figure out whether it's "good" or "evil."

Just because you're not omnicient enough to figure it out, doesn't mean that good and evil doesn't exist.

And just because my definition is simplistic doesn't make it wrong.


Correct, but in each case the converse is also true. Because anyone cannot figure out good or evil doesn't mean its not there... but it also does not mean it IS.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2013 7:20 pm
by stahrgazer
crispybits wrote:OK stahrgazer, lets assume you're right for a moment and that good and evil are real things, what, in your opinion, are they?

What I mean by that is that we know light is a particle/waveform. I'm not suggesting you have to point out a particle of good/evil or a good/evil wave or whatever, but if you insist that these are real things independent of human conception, then what are they? I can describe how my model of good/evil works, that as human constructions they are reflections of societal or cultural abstracts of things that are good or bad for society or individuals or both. I'm completely lost on how this external and existent thing you're describing actually works.


Forms of energy, aka, forms of particle/waveforms.

If someone is "good" enough, you can feel it; if someone is "evil" enough, you can feel that, too.

If you've never felt either one, that's a shame.

Re: Christianity, Atheism, and Original Sin

PostPosted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 7:49 am
by crispybits
OK, so we'll run with that. (I'm not convinced, but in the interest of keeping an open mind and all that)

If good and evil are particles/waveforms, then we should theoretically be able to detect some physcal effects from them right? So how would we go about designing an experiment, under scientific conditions, to attempt to do that? Do we actually have good and evil people and try and measure everything we can about them? Do we try and isolate good and evil actions and measure everything we can about them?

None of these questions disprove your hypothesis, but for anyone else to accept that hypothesis as proven reality, there needs to be some way in which to demonstrate it. You claim that it's a form of energy, fair enough, but how does that energy react with all of the other forms of energy and matter, how does it change or influence or cause or get caused by other forms of energy or matter? Why does it seem to mostly be limited to human actions and interactions? We sense no evil when a leopard eats a gazelle, that's just the way of the world, but if a human ate a human..... Do we have some special sort of biology for this?