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.