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Nixon, your argument is fallacious from the outset. This is something that could have been avoided had you been using proper critical thinking skills: that is, starting with the fats and working your way to a conclusion, not starting with your conclusion and finding facts to back it up.


I'll start by addressing the words "good", "bad", and "evil". These words are themselves problematic. According to mathematics, A is the opposite of negative A, and negative A is the opposite of A.

In English, if we ask "what is the opposite of good", one might say "bad", or one might say "evil".

So both evil and bad are the opposites of good? This can work, if both words mean the same thing, but noone will say that they mean the same thing. Evil and bad are, however, NOT the same thing. Evil is an extreme, bad is just light. We can agree that stealing 40 cents is bad but not evil, while describing the action of blowing up an orphanage as "bad" is an understatement.

We have two words at the negative end of the spectrum, but only one at the positive end. This is a problem.




We have an extremely negative word, but not an extremely positive one. We'll condense all negative down into one word for this debate: "evil".


So, we are, for this debate, stripped to nothing but good and evil.


Now we must actually DEFINE these words. The most accessable defininitions for good and evil are also useless: we have "That which is desirable" for "good" and "that which is undesirable" for "evil". This is NOT an objective standard, because the definition doesn't say to whom it is undesirable. If it's "undesirable to any individual", then it's completely relative, and the purpose of these words are to move away from moral relativism. If we say "undesirable to God", then we aren't fixing the problem. THis is still moral relativism, because it's no different from arbitrarily choosing for Joe Pesci's standard to be the objective standard.

Objectivity isn't reached by simply arbitrarily choosing a person whose standard to consider objective, it's by seeking a definition for the word that doesn't rely on the preference of an individual.


Perhaps using the following definitions will help:

Good: That which gives others more control over their lives

Evil: That which strips others of control over their lives or causes harm to others


These definitions work on the surface, but they don't address issues such as intent: what if a peson is trying to do good, but causes someone's death by accident? Are they then considered evil? No, that doesn't work. We can't call someone evil just because they did something on accident.

So we have to alter these definitions some more.

Good: That which gives others more control over their lives

Evil: That which intends to strip others of control over their lives or cause harm to others


But now we have another problem. If a person is driving a car after getting completely drunk off their ass, and they end up killing a family of four, are they performing an act of evil? Again, our definitions must change:


Good: That which gives others more control over their lives

Evil: That which, by intent or purposeful negligence, strips others of control over their lives or causes harm to others


There we go, good and evil, completely objective and without any requirement for a god.

oh shit ash is here

Yeah. Why wouldn't I, it's a religion debate? I'm rarely far off.

I belive that there is A god, but not the god/s from ANY of the worldly religions because they were all preached, written, believed in by humanity, and (sorry to say this, it makes me seem like a pratt) humanity is essentiaally a flawed race. so i do believe there is A god, but not THE god (deist)

arguments for my beliefs:
cosmological argument:
1 everthing finite (with an end, eg my life) has a cause (eg, mum+dad)
2 my cause(mum+dad) mustt have a cause (nana=granda) must... ect.
3 these causes cannot go back infinitley, there must have been a start(you cannot add to infinity and future events would) theerefore there must have been a first cause
4 this first cause must not be finite, so it is infinite.
5this infinite thing is A god

morality:
many people say the existence of evil disproves god. this is not true. for us to accept god, and there to be a point in our existence. hence free will. this evil is a by product of free will. so evil does not disprove god. also, if there is no god, then there is no TRUE good or evil, hence evils existence is not an argument against god.

teleological:
1man walks down street.
2man sees stopwatch, picks it up, says "this is very complicated and very intricate
3because it is so intricate it cannot be a product of random chance,therefore it must have a designer.
4earth is even more intricate. it must have a designer.
5that designer is god.

Quote from walker90234

earth is even more intricate. it must have a designer.

Planets exist because all kinds of molecules cluster together, which come from an exploding star.

Nothing to do with A god.

Humans had to go through a ****load of pain and suffering to develop compassion, morals and whatnot that helped us survive. I mean, I'm pretty much proud of mankind for the sacrifices they've made to get us here; not god, but humans who did all the work. A god that disapproves us as sinners is an insult to the world and would be pretty bad in my books.

Quote from walker90234

arguments for my beliefs:
cosmological argument:
1 everthing finite (with an end, eg my life) has a cause (eg, mum+dad)
2 my cause(mum+dad) mustt have a cause (nana=granda) must... ect.
3 these causes cannot go back infinitley, there must have been a start(you cannot add to infinity and future events would) theerefore there must have been a first cause
4 this first cause must not be finite, so it is infinite.
5this infinite thing is A god

Why not remove a step? Occam's razor says the simplest explanation (here read "one with the least steps") is more likely to be correct. Therefore it is more reasonable to assume that the universe goes backwards indefinitely than it is to assume it was started by a god who went back indefinitely.

A nice easy way to allow for infinite universes is string theory. Essentially this is the idea that there have been an infinite number of universes, one after another, and each time a universe is finished a new one starts. This also gets around any argument you may care to bring in in terms of the universe's vacuum energy, the temperature at which carbon can be formed, etc., by allowing for the fundamental constants within the universe to be set different each time.

Quote from walker90234

morality:
many people say the existence of evil disproves god. this is not true. for us to accept god, and there to be a point in our existence. hence free will. this evil is a by product of free will. so evil does not disprove god. also, if there is no god, then there is no TRUE good or evil, hence evils existence is not an argument against god.

Free will? You said yourself just a second ago that everything has a cause. The same is true of bodily action. Every movement you make and every thought in your head can be traced backwards through a string of chemical reactions in your brain and the interaction of atoms which can themselves be shown to be the result of sensory input from the environment via eyes, ears, nose, etc.

Also, why must true good or evil be inextricably linked to the divine? If there indeed is a true evil (highly doubtful) then it is by definition an inbuilt working of the universe no different to gravity.

Quote from walker90234

teleological:
1man walks down street.
2man sees stopwatch, picks it up, says "this is very complicated and very intricate
3because it is so intricate it cannot be a product of random chance,therefore it must have a designer.
4earth is even more intricate. it must have a designer.
5that designer is god.

If I see you bring Paley's watch out at me again I might just lose my temper. You didn't even put all the necessary steps in.

Do you deny that in the world there are a finite number of resources? No, you don't. You made a "nothing is infinite" claim earlier. Therefore it follows by definition that there will be competition for these limited resources. This is an undeniable fact. Life multiplies until all the resources are used up or being used at maximum capacity. After this it follows logically that the animals which are best at getting the limited resources will be the ones to get them. Therefore, the animals which survive are the ones best suited to this task. This is natural selection.

With natural selection in place, there is no need whatsoever for the world to be designed. Let's apply this to the watch, just for fun. Imagine a workshop. In this workshop there are two men. One is a blind watchmaker. In this analogy he will play the part of random genetic mutations. The other man is a client holding a hammer. He wants a watch which will accurately tell the time. He is playing natural selection. Because he doesn't have an accurate watch to compare with, the only way he can know whether he's getting the best item for the job is by comparing two innacurate watches and deciding which one is closest to what he wants. The watchmaker, being blind, hasn't got a clue how he's going to make the watch that the client wants, so he makes fifty and hopes that he gets close. The client then takes his hammer and smashes up the forty-nine watches which perform worst when he compares all fifty, and hands the remaining one back to the watchmaker saying it's not good enough. At this point, the watchmaker duplicates this watch exactly by touch until he has another fifty watches. Because he is doing this by touch alone, he has made a few little mistakes. The client smashes the forty-nine worst performing watches again, but this time the watch he hands back is not the same one that he handed back last time. By chance, a couple of the mistakes were actually improvements. This process is repeated for six billion years and now the watch that's handed back each time is a very good watch indeed. You could use it to tell the time very accurately and it has a couple of other features added on too. It is important to note, though, that it is still not perfect, and this process will continue until the end of time.

Did you like that story? I hope you get the picture.

Quote from walker90234

I belive that there is A god, but not the god/s from ANY of the worldly religions because they were all preached, written, believed in by humanity, and (sorry to say this, it makes me seem like a pratt) humanity is essentiaally a flawed race. so i do believe there is A god, but not THE god (deist)

As scientific advancement continues, the job that any "god" fulfills is getting smaller. In many ways this can be likened to a form of calculus, where the answer cannot be worked out exactly, but is gotten approximately the first time and then done more accurately the second time untill it becomes obvious that the answer is tending towards something. You might get the answers, 3.8, 4.1, 4.02, 3.999994, 4.0000000000157, for example, and say that the answer is tending towards 4. Do you see where this is going? As we measure god more and more accurately it becomes clear that he is tending towards 0.

A deist point of view is that there is something out there but it is undefined. As we learn more about the universe, the possible roles for this "god" become less and less. It must surely by now be clear that even if there is a god out there, he has no power, no benevelance, no presence, and no mind, and as such is it really that much of a leap to simply say that he doesn't exist?

Quote from walker90234

I belive that there is A god, but not the god/s from ANY of the worldly religions because they were all preached, written, believed in by humanity, and (sorry to say this, it makes me seem like a pratt) humanity is essentiaally a flawed race. so i do believe there is A god, but not THE god (deist)

arguments for my beliefs:
cosmological argument:
1 everthing finite (with an end, eg my life) has a cause (eg, mum+dad)


2 my cause(mum+dad) mustt have a cause (nana=granda) must... ect.
3 these causes cannot go back infinitley, there must have been a start(you cannot add to infinity and future events would) theerefore there must have been a first cause
4 this first cause must not be finite, so it is infinite.
5this infinite thing is A god

If there isn't a god, that doesn't automatically mean that the universe has no cause. There's also the option that things DO go back infinitely, where our own universe is the result of a singularity from another universe parallel to our own.

And you are also making a special case: if EVERYTHING must have a cause, then why is God different? Who made god, then? You say the universe can't go back infinitely, but God can? Why not skip a step and put the infinite regress on the universe instead of an omnipotent being?

morality:
many people say the existence of evil disproves god. this is not true. for us to accept god, and there to be a point in our existence. hence free will. this evil is a by product of free will. so evil does not disprove god.

Firstly, free will on the part of humans does not reach past cause and effect: although our brains are free to operate and apply will where they see fit, the places where they apply will are not determined at random. Every decision you make is a result of the programming of your mind, which in turn has been determined by your genetics and by your environment. If we were to restart the universe in exactly the same way with ever atom in the same place and every joule of energy in the same place, then every person would make the same exact decisions as they did the first time the universe was "run". We don't make decisions at random, and its a good thing that is the case, because having decisions determined by dice is not free will at all. In short, we only have free will on an individual level, not on a global level.

The creator of the universe, being omnipotent and omniscient, created the universe knowing exactly what would come to pass at every moment of its existence. He also knew how to alter things in the environment to prevent any given event from occurring. However, he created the universe knowing that evil things would occur, that people would make the decisions they would make as a direct result of everything that happened before they made the decisions. This means that everything that occurs is HIS responsibility, because he set up the universe knowing that it would lead to these things happening.

And second, while I agree that the presence of evil does not disprove ANY sort of god, it does disprove the existence of a LOVING god. It can remain that god exists, but is jsut a huge goddammed prick.

also, if there is no god, then there is no TRUE good or evil, hence evils existence is not an argument against god.

This is one of the most pitiful arguments I hear repeated over and over again.

"If god doesn't exist, then there's no objective right or wrong, people can just fly by the seat of their pants and say that stealing is fine and murder is okay and helping each other is wrong!"

In case you aren't already aware, "objective" means "divorced from the individual mind". Objective morality means morality determined by something other than an individual. The opposite of objective morality is "subjective" morality, or morality determined by the individual.

What you are saying is that OUR morality isn't objective, and that we have to get it from a higher power.

But here's the problem, man. Choosing an individual's moral standard as being "the objective moral standard" does NOT make it an objective moral standard. It's still subjective morality! In this case the individual is God. I could just as well say "The moral standard of Stephen Hawking is the objective moral standard".

True objective morality is one determined by a standard that does not rely on individual opinion, but rather objective fact. It is objective fact that a society can not function when things like murder, rape, and stealing are permissible. We learned this the hard way over thousands of years of civilization. Whether these actions should be permissible is not based on a single person's opinion, but on necessity. THAT is objective morality.

teleological:
1man walks down street.
2man sees stopwatch, picks it up, says "this is very complicated and very intricate
3because it is so intricate it cannot be a product of random chance,therefore it must have a designer.
4earth is even more intricate. it must have a designer.
5that designer is god.

This analogy fails on so many levels it's not even funny.

First of all, we know that a watch is designed because WATCHES DON'T REPRODUCE.

Second, we know that the hallmark of design is not COMPLEXITY, but SIMPLICITY. WE don't see a roman arch and know it was designed because it is complex, but because it is very simple and accomplishes its goal neatly with little baggage. Likewise, compare a building made of bricks to a cave. Caves can collapse by simply damaging a small part, because the stresses are placed ad-hoc, not by intelligence, but by cause-and-effect. A brick building, on the other hand, uses extremely simple stress-relief methods.

And finally, no one suggests that life came about by a modern cell randomly arranging itself. This version of abiogenises is a myth perpetuated by morons like the people at answersingenesis, or whatever the source for your oft-repeated, oft-defeated arguments might have been.

good arguments.
as i have said b4 i don't beleive in any of humanities gods because of what zed said, or something simillar (the0.000ect thing) it is more likley that the christian god doesn't exist.
my main point which i haven't stated is that I would rather believe that there is something unkown and unreachable out there, instead of it all being pointless.
it doesn't have to be an all loving eternal being, or even a concous thing, but there should be something that gives meaning to creation.


on a side note, i find i like the idead of a female (i know gods can't have genders i am talking about a state of mind) god, much more satisfying and believable than a male on. who agrees?

another side note (its a joke, slightly funny)
do you find the idea of heaven and hell kind of like the idea of a house party on a rainy night.
christisna belief states that god hates sin and he doesnt let ppl who have sinned into heaven and not being in heaven is much like burning for all eternity. however, if you believe in and accept jesus he will take your sin for you, and you can go to god and he will let you ino heaven because you have no sin.

this can be much described as god being like a mom who hates yobs, and jesus being a son who loves everyone. it is pouring ouside and he is having a mega wicked house party inside. his mom wont let yobs in. he goes outside and says "if you believein me and loveme i will let you into the house out of the rain and tell my mom you are a "polite young man"
if you do this he takes your hoodies and gives you shirts and you can go inside to the house.
(i wasn't trying to be offensive but its a strange similarity)

i also find it really annoying how christian religion says "no matter how good a life you lead you are damned to eternal suffering unless you believe in jesus" how crappy is that?

Quote from walker90234

I would rather believe that there is something unkown and unreachable out there, instead of it all being pointless.

I believe there is a planet made entirely out of chocolate and populated by two billion incredibly hot, nymphomanical girls which I can reach by getting to 10,000 posts here, masterbating solidly for 24 hours before a solar eclipse, and then putting on a pair of hiking boots and clicking my heels three times saying "There is a place like Zed's fantasy land and this is how to reach it,".


Bearing in mind the other thread, I should draw your attention to the sarcasm. My point here is that just because you like the idea of something doesn't mean it is true and doesn't provide a rational basis for belief. I hold the above statement to be equally as plausible as belief in any god, so long as I can add the qualifier that it only works if you believe it strongly enough.

Walker, instead of thinking of a universe without a god as being pointless, consider this: where does meaning come from? US. Me. You. Nothing has a point unless WE give it meaning. An acorn doesn't have a meaning without a squirrel there to consume it.


Life has a meaning for me, but I give it that meaning. I live to seek happiness for myself and my loved ones, and perhaps to make the world better for my progeny. Instead of wasting time throwing an existential fit because "life and the universe are meaningless", APPLY meaning to them.

Quote from walker90234

I belive that there is A god, but not the god/s from ANY of the worldly religions because they were all preached, written, believed in by humanity, and (sorry to say this, it makes me seem like a pratt) humanity is essentiaally a flawed race. so i do believe there is A god, but not THE god (deist)

arguments for my beliefs:
cosmological argument:
1 everthing finite (with an end, eg my life) has a cause (eg, mum+dad)
2 my cause(mum+dad) mustt have a cause (nana=granda) must... ect.
3 these causes cannot go back infinitley, there must have been a start(you cannot add to infinity and future events would) theerefore there must have been a first cause
4 this first cause must not be finite, so it is infinite.
5this infinite thing is A god

Can't be bothered to type. Here's a video. I have no idea whether it will answer to all your points because I didn't read them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHtxnIkzros

[edit]
In short, 1 sentence why those 5 points prove nothing: If you say that God is infinite to avoid infinite regression, why not just say that the universe is infinite?

Saying it's a God at the beginning just leaves more questions (going back to Ockasm's Razor - simplest option wins).

*sigh*


Is is argument entirely necessary? This thread is about good and evil and why they may or may not imply or not imply the existence or lack of existence of a deity of some kind.

Since we're sharing views, though, I'll pipe up.

I've always had a certain respect for some atheists. It takes a big person to choose to live a good and just life when the only thing in their was is mortal justice. Atheists avoid things out of common sense that religious people avoid out of fear of some faceless vengeance from beyond the mortal scope. It's admirable.

But I myself could never subscribe to atheism. Why? The answer is painfully simple; I choose to believe in something more. No amount of heartless logic and soulless facts can shake that belief. There is, quite simply, too much going on, mostly inside ourselves, for me to think otherwise without feeling... hollow.

In the end, facts cannot determine a human's choice as to what they believe unless they let them. It's a miracle of the human mind, really, the inability to allow facts and arguments that make perfect sense to penetrate their beliefs. And yes, a good number of these cases of mental imperviousness can be attributed to simple ignorance, but not all. There are many perfectly intelligent and learned religious people in the world who don't subscribe to ridiculous beliefs like the world is less than 5000 years old and God created everything in seven days.

I personally subscribe to the idea that mankind created our own deities. That we have a kind of collective consciousness, so far below a detectable level that no one now can analyze it, yet so deep-rooted and omnipresent that no one can escape it (while anywhere near Earth or other people, at least). Miracles, spirits, the mysterious forces all around us that your mere facts have yet to dispell despite your flawless logic, are all connected to this network. This network is also the source of "magic", for lack of a better term, in that it can be drawn upon to perform these acts. Some are born sensitive to this web (those exceedingly rare few who legitimately see and "speak" to spirits).

This world is made up of numbers, facts, laws, all of which we as humans are blessed (if you'll allow the term) with the ability to comprehend, something no other species on this planet has ever done. We just don't have the math yet to figure out these things, to test, to detect. One day we will. It's inevitable. We're advancing at an exponential rate, and the truth of the universe will one day be ours to grasp, assuming the odds see fit to allow us as a species to survive that long.

Quote from Jexsam

*sigh*


Is is argument entirely necessary? This thread is about good and evil and why they may or may not imply or not imply the existence or lack of existence of a deity of some kind.

Since we're sharing views, though, I'll pipe up.

I've always had a certain respect for some atheists. It takes a big person to choose to live a good and just life when the only thing in their was is mortal justice. Atheists avoid things out of common sense that religious people avoid out of fear of some faceless vengeance from beyond the mortal scope. It's admirable.

But I myself could never subscribe to atheism. Why? The answer is painfully simple; I choose to believe in something more. No amount of heartless logic and soulless facts can shake that belief. There is, quite simply, too much going on, mostly inside ourselves, for me to think otherwise without feeling... hollow.

In the end, facts cannot determine a human's choice as to what they believe unless they let them. It's a miracle of the human mind, really, the inability to allow facts and arguments that make perfect sense to penetrate their beliefs. And yes, a good number of these cases of mental imperviousness can be attributed to simple ignorance, but not all. There are many perfectly intelligent and learned religious people in the world who don't subscribe to ridiculous beliefs like the world is less than 5000 years old and God created everything in seven days.

I personally subscribe to the idea that mankind created our own deities. That we have a kind of collective consciousness, so far below a detectable level that no one now can analyze it, yet so deep-rooted and omnipresent that no one can escape it (while anywhere near Earth or other people, at least). Miracles, spirits, the mysterious forces all around us that your mere facts have yet to dispell despite your flawless logic, are all connected to this network. This network is also the source of "magic", for lack of a better term, in that it can be drawn upon to perform these acts. Some are born sensitive to this web (those exceedingly rare few who legitimately see and "speak" to spirits).

This world is made up of numbers, facts, laws, all of which we as humans are blessed (if you'll allow the term) with the ability to comprehend, something no other species on this planet has ever done. We just don't have the math yet to figure out these things, to test, to detect. One day we will. It's inevitable. We're advancing at an exponential rate, and the truth of the universe will one day be ours to grasp, assuming the odds see fit to allow us as a species to survive that long.

So you'd rather continue to believe something because it makes you feel good? THAT is hollow and shallow. When I was still a Christian I thought that atheists must feel sad and lonely, but when I made the commitment to follow facts wherever they seemed to lead I became an atheist, and soon realized that all that "loneliness" was just an invention of people who were desperate fro some reason to believe what their parents told them was true.

You'd be amazed how much more beautiful the world became whenever I stopped thinking of it as a miracle in the traditional "God Dun It" sense of the word and instead as a triumph of culminating subtly. As Einstein said, the real miracle is there are no miracles. I didn't get that thinking of things as common as childbirth as being matters of divine intervention was actually robbing them of the human factor.

The biggest solidifier of my atheism was when I realized that rather than being plopped onto the earth. We were actually MORE special than that. Think about it:every single one of your ancestors had what it took to survive. Not a single one of your ancestors died young, they all fought for survival and came out on top. This isn't a mere 3,000 generations, but MILLIONS and MILLIONS of generations of the absolute best, fighting against the most adverse conditions imaginable.

We aren't special because we're "God's chosen people", or the "soldiers of Allah" or even the reincarnated souls of kings: we're special because we are the result of insurmountable will. The best of the best.

The universe wasn't just POOFED into existence, it slowly coalesced over billions of years, with trillions of wonders more beautiful than could ever be described in some bronze-age desert scribblings culminating in an unlikely but by sheer numbers inevitable, but still rare, event: the coming-into-existence of life. While I'm standing in awe at the unimaginable scale of the Hubble Deep Field picture or the eagle nebula someone else is still entranced by tales of the burning bush.


The difference between you and me it seems (Judging by that post, at least, though it's possible I'm missing something), Jexam, is that I am more committed to the pursuit of truth than what I think will make me feel like I'm not so small.

Indeed, atheism can be bittersweet, and I'll be the first to admit it. For example, I'd love for there to be a way for me to continue thinking, learning, and discovering after I'm dead, but just because I WANT this, doesn't make me justified in thinking it is true. It is also the case that if life is everlasting, then the time we spend on Earth is no longer special. What makes life so special is that this is our only chance at it. It really makes life a lot more important when you realize that it really does end.

And, as I love to, I'll close with a Carl Sagan quote, in this case my favorite and most often-posted one, the quote about the pale blue dot image:

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe:, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. "