morality == religion? Sez who?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
1. Is it possible to have evil without a concept of a moral absolute?

Speer's answer here, would be no. The only other option is some form of relativism, where things can be considered personally wrong, but not wrong for everyone. In this, one can hardly label such things as 'evil' since they are not totally devoid of good.

Why not? Darth Vader was evil, despite having some good in him

First of all, it cannot be ourselves. Anything that is good has to come from outside of ourselves, in fact, it cannot exist in nature. Everything here is flawed to some extent.

How so?

So if it doesn't come from nature, and it does not come from ourselves, then what else is left to be the origin of the good?

God is part of nature. Everything is part of nature, by definition.

It would have to be something that does not change, since morality would not change,

Why not?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by loinburger
Then we would be supposing that God is not omnipotent,

Actually no - he is omnipotent, capable of doing evil, but his mind is such that he always chooses not to do so. (Obviously this is hypothetical )

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
I think the problem in establishing a morality without a religion is how do you absolutely establish a human person as something worthy of being treated well. From a physical standpoint, we are all a combination of chemicals. A very sophisticated one, yes, but chemicals none the less. What is so fundamentally wrong in causing the chemical reaction that sends through the nerves the singal of "pain" then, say, doing an experiment with a completely different chemical reaction?

Sentience, obviously.

Through theism, we can say that humans fundamentally have value because it is imbued in them by God. Establishing human value without God is a bit harder.

How does God imbue "value"? WTF?

[Elok]

Sorry, Loin, but I have to answer the UR backlog first...

Free will and omniscience are NOT mutually exclusive. That's based on a bizarre limitation of thought imposed by a determinist philosophy. Maybe people aren't machines, and our idea of cause and effect cannot be applied to ourselves. Are you familiar with the old saying about how you can't design a computer that comprehends its own workings?

Maybe it's not the laws of physics being violated...the idea is that reality itself flows from God. If he really wanted, he could presumptively alter the nature of reality so that two plus two is three and a rock can be lifted and stay on the ground simultaneously, or in some weird way match whatever hoop you hold up for him to jump through. But our universe is based around certain truths, such as the idea that "can" and "can't" are mutually exclusive concepts. And there's no point in redefining a system just to prove you control it, especially when the proof won't be accepted. The asker will just turn around and challenge god to make an object that is simultaneously a star, a plant, the city of San Francisco and its entire population, and a guy named Fred, or some such babble. Or a man who is his own grandfather. Anyway, the mistake is in thinking that the extremity of nonsense we can think up makes God somehow impotent.

As for "democracy and communism," there needs to be a limitation on the word "creation" here. God created the particles of carbon, hydrogen, etc. that became the bread I ate today. That doesn't mean God is directly responsible for the existence of that bread. Nor, to sort of use your analogy, is the inventor of currency to blame for communism, though the beginnings of a market economy did lead to the reaction of a Socialist Paradise. When the ingredients stir themselves, as is the case with our universe, you can't blame the guy who just made them, even if he knew what would happen.

"But why couldn't God just make the world differently so people wouldn't choose evil?" Because evil is, like I said, the essence of contrariness. It's the impulse for things to be not as they are for no good reason other than sheer willfullness. It makes no sense that such an impulse would arise on its own, but neither does the impulse itself. My understanding of evil is as a force of nothingness, and asking who made nothing is like asking the chemical composition of a vacuum.

For evil-as-contrariness, take rape as an example. Traditionally, rape has been regarded as about power. Men prove their dominion over women with forced sexual congress and in some way this makes them feel better about themselves. There's no logic in that idea. The actual pleasure of the act would probably be exceeded by just jerking off or something. The unique factor in rape is that it imposes one will forcibly on another. And, for some perverse reason, making others unhappy somehow makes some people happy. This is an extreme example, but see also my recent thread about voyeurism for a more moderate form.

Or Road Rage. No, you don't get there any faster by cutting the guy off in revenge, but it's important to score points off people you've never met, because of course tons of people are making a record of your humiliation and deciding to destroy your career for being so weak. Or cigarette smoking, or dreaming about acquiring more money than you can actually spend (will your average CEO ever want for anything if he stops screwing people over today?), or gossip (your neighbor dyes her hair? Wow, what useful information!). Everybody's got his or her own dysfunction, and my observation of myself and others is that the only common link is that none of it makes any sense in the long run. It's just random perversity. Which of course is what Christianity says, which is why I'm inclined to follow it. Cold rationality can lead to immense scientific progress, but people will continue to use those breakthroughs for more and more efficient ways of hurting each other, sans spiritual contemplation to find the problem within. Which rationality can't do on its own, because nothing can understand its own workings.

Oy. I'll get back on the subject later. My eyes are starting to go funny from staring at this same text box for so long...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
If God is controlling the volcanoes, then that defeats your point of calling it a "Natural Evil." If you presuppose God, then it ceases to be natural and becomes just "evil."

"Natural" denotes the source of said event.

[Al B. Sure!]

fine, yall could use the term evil but, at least to me, it denotes a far greater absolute than fast... it's more like fastest, actually than fast...

but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective.

If my concepts of the terms "good" and "evil" are subjective, then so too are my (and everybody else's) concepts of "fast," "long," "tall," "fat," "smart," "rich," "old," etc. What's the problem? Nobody in their right mind argues that we ought to have an absolute concept of "fat" or "rich" or whatever, so why should "good" and "evil" be treated any differently?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
fine, yall could use the term evil but, at least to me, it denotes a far greater absolute than fast... it's more like fastest, actually than fast...

That's retarded. Why can't we denote something as being evil, even if it is subjective? Unless you're going to assert there's not varying degrees of evil. Evil isn't absolute, and nothing about its definition connotes it has to be so.

but in any event, if you choose to use evil, it should be made with the full understanding that your concept (as well as the Christian concept) of evil is subjective.

And this is even more retarded. Should we go around saying, "That guy is evil (subjectively speaking)."? And what point would that serve? Do you seriously think someone would misunderstand my meaning were I to say that? We live in a society with norms of morality wherein it's pretty darn easy to know what someone else means when they say, "that's evil." Further qualifications are unneccessary.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Elok

Maybe it's not the laws of physics being violated...the idea is that reality itself flows from God.

And who said neoplatonism was dead?

[Agathon]

The misuse of terms like "subjective" in this thread is grotesque.

Pain is subjective, but it's the same for everyone. Mathematical truths do not refer to anything in the world (unless you're a Platonist), but they aren't arbitrary.

[GePap]

I think the Chinese are a great example vs. Deism. A society that existed as was stable for thousands of years without a religion that believes in one creator beingwho is omnipotent or omnicient. They do have dualistic system, but if I understand it correctly, neither side is "good" or "evil"- you need both.

I always fnd these religion debates lobsided because no one argues from a Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Shintoist or other non-monotheistic view.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by GePap
I always fnd these religion debates lobsided because no one argues from a Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Shintoist or other non-monotheistic view.

AFAIK, monotheists are the only ones who argue that morality has divine origins. F'rinstance, I'm not very familiar with the Hindus and Taoists, but IIRC the Buddhists don't believe in a divine origin for anything, since their gods are really just powerful long-lived mortals who are less prone to douchebaggery than humans are. This roughly puts them in the same boat as the atheists/agnostics when it comes to questions of good and evil.

[GePap]

Well, the Hindus are sort of Polytheists-thought like the Egyptians and other before there is a hierarchy of Gods.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by GePap
I think the Chinese are a great example vs. Deism. A society that existed as was stable for thousands of years without a religion that believes in one creator beingwho is omnipotent or omnicient. They do have dualistic system, but if I understand it correctly, neither side is "good" or "evil"- you need both.

The Chinese had (has?) a crazy mythology with huge numbers of deities, demigods, heroes, monsters, etc. We have the Celestial Emperor, who's supposedly the head, but he's far from either omniscient or omnipotent. In fact, he's sorta mediocre. In fact, heaven is just a big fat burreaucracy with all kinds of rules.

Then over the ages Buddhist deities (I think they are called Bodhisattvas), Daoist deities, and even Christianity were added. Quite an interesting mix.

On one hand, we have lots of temples and people worshipping their gods. OTOH, even they don't really believe.

One word about Daosim. It started out as a philosophy, which was later bastardised to become a "religion."

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by loinburger
F'rinstance, I'm not very familiar with the Hindus and Taoists, but IIRC the Buddhists don't believe in a divine origin for anything, since their gods are really just powerful long-lived mortals who are less prone to douchebaggery than humans are.

There are no gods in Buddhism per se, there are these beings called bodhisattvas, who are basically humans who accumulated sufficient karma and enlightenment to be removed from the wheel of reincarnation.