# What essentially is Good and Evil?



## Justme

It seems to me that the term Good and Evil are largely overused and carry such backward connotations that they really reduce the power of the story behind them. I have always looked at the two forces in the context of what they've brought about on the real world and think they should be titled according to what effects the two bring to bear on the natural world. I really don't have the time to work this out, but wanted to share my thoughts with you guys and see what you think of the concept.

My mine observation is that evil is concentrated so as to bring anything gained by it to a single source. That the main thing that occurs is the disruption of the norm in a way that reduces the freedoms of those targeted. I first thought to rename Evil as Chaos, but  Chaos has a way of granting more freedoms than it takes. 

Good is basically concerned with orderly nurturing those it effects in a way that appeals to the greatest ammount of people. Something that Democracy was supposed to do, before the advent of the two party system.


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## Hans

In many stories it just seems to be a case of "Winner writes history".
The good guy wins in the end and thus has the opportunity to write down his story, present himself in a very good and his opponent in a very bad light.


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## Steerpike

I don't think "Good" is always a utilitarian concept, wherein the benefit to the greatest number of people carries the day. I think that something that falls within that definition can also be Evil under some circumstances. Many evils can be perpetrated by subjugating the autonomy and value of the individual out of concern for the greater whole,


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## Aidan of the tavern

Hmm, I think it refers to what we (arrogant humans) judge in our opinion to be right and wrong,  selfless acts and selfish acts, actions that are admirable and actions that are shocking, what our moral compass tells us is ok or not, acts for the benefit of others and acts for the disregard of others.  Or something like that.  And I think it sometimes makes us as writers lazy.  We can apply the good/evil theory to our work and save ourselves a whole lot of effort and time, use it justify and give reason to the way things are in the story and why they happen.  Well, that doesn't mean it doesn't work, thats just my humble opinion.


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## Queshire

ugh.... I hate stories that consider good and evil as quantifiable things. >< You can only rely on your own morality. Nobody thinks themselves to be truly evil, they view their actions as justified or neccesary. The macro concept of good and evil is a result of a large mass of individual's concepts of good and evil happening to be similiar. This leads to a loop as each individual's sense of good and evil is reinforced by the mass of humanity sharing their belief as well as increasing the size of the mass by the weight of their beliefs shapping those of the humans around them.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> ugh.... I hate stories that consider good and evil as quantifiable things. >< You can only rely on your own morality. .



This is nonsense, particularly in the realm of fantasy, where you certainly can have absolutes of good and evil if you want them.


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## Queshire

just because you can have something doesn't mean you should.


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## Justme

What I was trying to get at is that these two polar opposites are far too ancient and far too polarizing to really add depth to any story.  You say one or the other and it would seem to me that the reader would just insert their own world views of what these represent to them, instead of being engrossed in the plot of the story. It is our world that we are describing and we should be able to characterize these two concepts in a manner that will leave us as the tour guide and they the tourist, within our universe.  I, personally have some Atheist friends that the very words, Good or Evil turn them cold. Then there are those that believe that Good and Evil don't really exist and can literally take their minds completely off the story, which might be the end of their attention span. 

I want to create a whole new concept that can produce the sense of universal negativity that Evil should  bring to the reader and the virtue of rightness that the word Good should bring, without the baggage those two labels carry. I want something fresh, but gives little doubt what the character pertains to. There's got to be something out there that can be simply used, but profound.


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## Queshire

So you want to call a rabbit a smeerp? Sorry, but no matter what you call it, if you treat it as a black and white morality split that's what reader's are going to see it as.

You can get away with a black and white world. That still falls under your average reader's willing suspension of disbelief, but it seems to me that lately it's been taking more and more suspension of disbelief to fit that. It is entirely possible that having good and evil as actual things is the one thing that pushes your reader's disbelief too far, and when that happens you've lost that reader.

Having good and evil be actual things prevents any form of empathy for those considered evil.

I think it should go without saying that I am NOT a fan of D&D's Good/Evil, Law/Chaos alignment system >: /


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## Penpilot

Justme said:


> I want to create a whole new concept that can produce the sense of universal negativity that Evil should  bring to the reader and the virtue of rightness that the word Good should bring, without the baggage those two labels carry. I want something fresh, but gives little doubt what the character pertains to. There's got to be something out there that can be simply used, but profound.



Sorry, I'm trying to figure out what you're saying. So correct me if I'm wrong. Are you saying you want to redefine or rather find a new definition of  what good and evil are without calling them good and evil?



Justme said:


> My mine observation is that evil is concentrated so as to bring anything gained by it to a single source. That the main thing that occurs is the disruption of the norm in a way that reduces the freedoms of those targeted. I first thought to rename Evil as Chaos, but Chaos has a way of granting more freedoms than it takes.



Define norm. What is normal? Also are laws taking away one's freedom to commit crimes like murder, theft, etc. considered evil? Sadly, things like murder are are every day norms in some places. 



Justme said:


> Good is basically concerned with orderly nurturing those it effects in a way that appeals to the greatest ammount of people. Something that Democracy was supposed to do, before the advent of the two party system.



So good is what ever is the most appealing to the most people? So if 51% of a population agree murdering the other 49% is appealing for what ever reason then it's considered good?

Am I interpreting what you said right?


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## Queshire

ha~~~ It just struck me how wonderful being a writer is ^^ one moment you could be trying to figure out the proper arch of an arrow, the next you could be debating the very nature of good versus evil.


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## Steerpike

Justme said:


> I, personally have some Atheist friends that the very words, Good or Evil turn them cold. Then there are those that believe that Good and Evil don't really exist and can literally take their minds completely off the story, which might be the end of their attention span.



If this is the yardstick for determining what you write, you'll never write anything. No matter what kind of story you come up with, you'll be able to identify a group of people who won't like what you've done. I know people who read only crime stories, and other who read almost exclusively the type of fantasy that has well-defined good versus evil. I know other people who hate that and like the stories where everything is relative and all shades of grey. I am in a Fantasy group on Goodreads, and there are people there who bemoan works where morality is relative and grey, however. They want to stories where good and evil are absolutes (and those types of stories sell very well; if you go through your bookstore you'll see a lot of them on the shelf).

To me, you should decide what you want to write based on what interests you and what speaks to you. For every person who is left cold by one direction you choose, there will be another left cold by the other direction.

Also, if you're writing with fantasy you are dealing with all sorts of things that don't exist in the real world. An absolute good/evil morality is just another of those things (at least from the point of view of some people; I know plenty of people who believe in moral absolutes of this sort in real life). My advice is to write the story in a manner that is true to your own vision. Don't worry about alienating niche groups of readers on one way or another. That's unavoidable.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> just because you can have something doesn't mean you should.



Nor does your point of view mean one should not. There's no good reason, outside of subjective preference, to go in either direction.


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## Steerpike

Penpilot said:


> So good is what ever is the most appealing to the most people?



I agree that this isn't a good measure. Great "evils" can await you down that road. In the political sense, that's why countries have Constitutions defining certain rights that can't be eliminated by the mob mentality of a majority.


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## Justme

Steerpike said:


> If this is the yardstick for determining what you write, you'll never write anything. No matter what kind of story you come up with, you'll be able to identify a group of people who won't like what you've done. I know people who read only crime stories, and other who read almost exclusively the type of fantasy that has well-defined good versus evil. I know other people who hate that and like the stories where everything is relative and all shades of grey. I am in a Fantasy group on Goodreads, and there are people there who bemoan works where morality is relative and grey, however. They want to stories where good and evil are absolutes (and those types of stories sell very well; if you go through your bookstore you'll see a lot of them on the shelf).
> 
> To me, you should decide what you want to write based on what interests you and what speaks to you. For every person who is left cold by one direction you choose, there will be another left cold by the other direction.
> 
> Also, if you're writing with fantasy you are dealing with all sorts of things that don't exist in the real world. An absolute good/evil morality is just another of those things (at least from the point of view of some people; I know plenty of people who believe in moral absolutes of this sort in real life). My advice is to write the story in a manner that is true to your own vision. Don't worry about alienating niche groups of readers on one way or another. That's unavoidable.




What I am looking for is something new and innovative, not something that everyone can agree on. I'm trying to sidestep the stereotypes that people have constructed around certain terms. What I gave were just examples of some who would read more into the story than was actually there, because of the baggage they carry. I know that almost everybody carry's some sort of ideal, which is why I'm looking for something that would diffuse many of these as possible.


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## Queshire

So you're looking for a blue and orange morality? Blue and Orange Morality - Television Tropes & Idioms In that case I suggest taking a look at how real life non-ape animals live and try to imagine the morality of a society based off evolved forms of those animals. For instance, in a society based off praying mantis' killing your husband after mating wouldn't be considered evil.


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## Steerpike

Justme said:


> What I am looking for is something new and innovative, not something that everyone can agree on. I'm trying to sidestep the stereotypes that people have constructed around certain terms. What I gave were just examples of some who would read more into the story than was actually there, because of the baggage they carry. I know that almost everybody carry's some sort of ideal, which is why I'm looking for something that would diffuse many of these as possible.



I hear what you're saying, and I don't think the approach is a bad one if done well. I'm not sure how you quantify how many of these viewpoints you can diffuse, though. Looking at the books on the Fantasy shelves, for all we know you'll attract the most interest with a more black and white approach. There has been interesting articles examining how so many of the bona fide cultural phenomena are black/white and good/evil stories.

Whichever approach you take, if you just put together the best story you can I think you'll be fine.


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## Saigonnus

I think the concept of good and evil are subjective and should only be taken into context of the norms of the society/culture it comes from. Anything at all can be considered good or evil under the right circumstances. Many would consider honor killings (like some middle eastern cultures do) evil because is it basically murder for some percieved slight, but how is it that many cultures embraced similar practices? The samurai for example would behead their most honored adversaries or someone who caused dishonor on their house and yet in movies they make it seem a glorious thing when; according to our western ideals, it is murder. If brought to modern times, and a person was to just behead someone, they'd go to prison for life. 

I think in a general sense; Good refers to anything beneficial to the majority of the population within the culture or provides them something positive in their life. 

Evil is something that takes something away (unless it's replaced by something better) from the culture or creates an environment of hostility or negativity within the population. Also things that cause unwarranted harm to a person or persons can be construed as evil, but only because it is generally opposite of the "normal" range of behavior within a culture. 

For the drows; murder, violence and chaos would be "Good" and the "normal human/elf behavior" would be evil because it opposes them. In anything there are two sides (and ofter shades of gray in the middle) and normally neither side believes they are truly evil, even someone as "GOOD" as Alexander the great was considered by some to be "evil"; those he conquered and oppressed still hate him, but he was doing god's work... so it really depends on the context.


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## ascanius

Justme said:


> My mine observation is that evil is concentrated so as to bring anything gained by it to a single source. That the main thing that occurs is the disruption of the norm in a way that reduces the freedoms of those targeted. I first thought to rename Evil as Chaos, but  Chaos has a way of granting more freedoms than it takes.



Why does a single source matter?  reference to the devil?  Or do you mean that evil is when someone/something takes from another such as theft?  Then by that definition infants/children are inherently evil.  Also if it is about reducing freedom then any and all government is evil along with any and all society.  The restriction of freedom cannot be used as a measure of evil because then it would mean that if there is no restriction of freedom, anarchy, there is no evil even when someone does terrible things because they can.  Utilitarianism is popular simply because it is expedient, well at least how I see it.



Justme said:


> Good is basically concerned with orderly nurturing those it effects in a way that appeals to the greatest amount of people.



As others have pointed out careful, this definition is very dangerous, Hitler, ring a bell.  Utilitarianism and John Stewart Mill, essentially what you are saying, is spurious.  The "aught clause," he asserted that People act this way instead of aught to act that way.  semantics, maybe, but terrible acts have been done by those averring they are doing it for the greater good.  NO ONE does anything to benefit the greater good, they look out after themselves.  Altruism doesn't exist, except for a possible few cases.



Justme said:


> Something that Democracy was supposed to do, before the advent of the two party system.



Sorry but this statement really, *really* bugs me, pet peeve.  First America is NOT, nor ever was a democracy.  Democracy was a failure, the only time it ever worked was when Athens was under iminent threat from a foreign power and Athens was a true democracy.  Polybius gives a very nice description of democracy likening it to a ship where all the sailors are the captain.  The USA is a constitutional republic which is entirely different.



Justme said:


> It seems to me that the term Good and Evil are largely overused and carry such backward connotations that they really reduce the power of the story behind them.



First what do you mean by backwards?  there needs to be a forward, which is?, for there to be a backward.  Second it sounds like you have a problem with connotation that you do not want to include in the story.  I've had that problem but my question is are you looking to redefine good and evil in your story?  If that is the case then your best bet would be to do it through the cultures in your story, how people view things about themselves and the world.

You might want to read some philosophy such as Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and countless others.  They'll give good information on morals and various arguments for and against them.  Kant is particularly interesting with his assertion that Duty is the defining moral value of right and wrong.  Nietzsche, cannot remember which of his writings, gives a very nice history of moral values.



Queshire said:


> Nobody thinks themselves to be truly evil, they view their actions as justified or neccesary.



So if someone can justify their acts does that make the act not evil?  If the act is not evil....well then things get interesting.  Or does it just make it acceptable.  If it makes it acceptable then how that act is viewed does not matter the act would still be evil.  Having to justify an act confers an intrinsic evil, if it was not so then no justification is necessary.  You don't justify a just/good act. 



Queshire said:


> The macro concept of good and evil is a result of a large mass of individual's concepts of good and evil happening to be similiar. This leads to a loop as each individual's sense of good and evil is reinforced by the mass of humanity sharing their belief as well as increasing the size of the mass by the weight of their beliefs shapping those of the humans around them.



You can say the same for the idea that morality is personal and subject only to the individual.  I think a more precise explanation is simply people are stupid.


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## Kelise

ascanius said:
			
		

> Queshire said:
> 
> 
> 
> Nobody thinks themselves to be truly evil, they view their actions as justified or neccesary.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So if someone can justify their acts does that make the act not evil?  If the act is not evil....well then things get interesting.  Or does it just make it acceptable.  If it makes it acceptable then how that act is viewed does not matter the act would still be evil.  Having to justify an act confers an intrinsic evil, if it was not so then no justification is necessary.  You don't justify a just/good act.
Click to expand...


It doesn't make the act not evil - it's simply saying that people act because they deem it necessary to act that way - they feel reason or have been driven to react/act. It doesn't excuse them.

Not many people wake up one morning wondering how they can be evil in general. They need motive and a goal to begin with.


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## ascanius

@ starconstant.  You got the wrong quotes there.  FYI.  But it still begs the question of the need to justify the act.  You don't justify a good act, no one does.  We justify something when we think it is wrong.  They can think it necessary or feel they have a reason but if they feel the need to justify it they feel guilt towards it, thus making the action wrong/evil whatever.  to justify something is to prove that they should be excused for that action, absolved.  I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope.  If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just.  the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.


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## Kelise

Ahh, fixed, thanks for that 

I agree with most of what you say, but would add that we need to justify any great act, whether it be good or evil. To kill is a great act of evil, but justified as you say, as self protection or that of your family.

You would also need to justify why you, say, give $100,000 to someone. Is it because that figure is nothing to you because you're a millionaire? Because they did the same for you when you were poor and now in turn, you're repaying or saving them when they've fallen on hard times? 

So I would say that yes, you do need to justify good acts once they're to the same level as the bad act of killing someone, otherwise everyone wants to know why you've done that and think you're up to something, or think you're being suspicious.


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## Queshire

yes, you do justify good acts. You have to justify to some point any act you do. Otherwise you wouldn't do the act! The question becomes then, what it takes to justify any act and how much time it takes to justify an act. A good act tends to be easy to justify to the point that it can be done subconciously, but it still has to be justified.


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## Caliburn

Our modern distinction of good and evil is rooted in the history of civilisations, which were founded in conditions of scarcity. 
Early "civilised" humans saw themselves as struggling to compete against the forces of nature, which were both aiding and impeding their ability to survive. Environmental conditions meant that people needed to organise themselves efficiently, requiring simple and clear distinctions between what to do and what not to do that could not be easily confused.

Tribes living in situations of abundance, however, had a very different outlook on life. They did not necessarily see themselves as having to conquer or overcome the limitations of the natural world, because it provided them with everything they needed. 
Their perception of good and evil might have been less stringent and more egalitarian? I'm not sure.

Thing is though, if environmental conditions were to suddenly change--as they have done so frequently throughout Earth's history--tribes living in idle abundance would have been much worse off than the people who had already formed civilisations and the tools necessary to adapt to changing environments. Earth's history is littered with examples of animal species that have lived abundantly in a small period of time--being perfectly suited to their current situation--only to be wiped out entirely after failing to adapt when environmental conditions eventually changed.

So perhaps civilisation has that going for it? Or perhaps it is just as liable to become extinct as anything else.

Might seem strange that I am talking about civilisation here, but I think its important as I think our notion of good and evil is fundamentally linked to the concept of civilisation, hence understanding why civilisations came about is the key to understanding why we have _our_ specific notion of good and evil in the first place.

All groups tend to have rules though--even among non-human animals. To me, rules simply distinguish those things which are allowed by the group ("pro-social") from those things that are disallowed ("anti-social"). In this sense, good vs evil is _relative to the group in which its meaning is constructed._ Things that are allowed and encouraged by the group are things that seem to benefit the group's survival, prosperity and/or _group cohesion and trust_, while the greatest scorn is often reserved for those things which damage the group's sense of kinship--things like betrayal.


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## Hans

ascanius said:


> I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope.  If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just.  the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.


And even so in a lot of human history and even in modern fiction killing your enemy or someone deemed as "evil" is regarded a "good" thing and needs no further justification.
Killing someone for the sole reason that he is on the wrong side of a battlefield never matters at all.


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## Anders Ã„mting

I generally don't use good and evil as literal concepts within the story - my villains tend to be powerful people with little or no empathy, who simply want something specific very badly and do not care about people who get in the way. 

That said, I like to keep my heroes recognizably benevolent and my villains recognizably malevolent


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## gavintonks

good question 
good is creation - a living body
bad is the unbinding of creation - the putrefaction to reduce a dead body back to its elements
Most good and bad emanate from the zorastam religion where concepts are personified
so by experience emotion like greed, hate etc you create a negative bad entity
by thinking good thoughts you do the same
the basic principles exist as storm entities bad / destructive and destroying - good - gentle rain makes stuff grow


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## Mindfire

When it comes to this, I tend to appeal to the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, even in my writing. That paradigm makes the most objective sense to me. There's an interesting article about that online here. I find the writer's argument to be interesting and I agree with him somewhat, but I also find the argument to be flawed. 

I think of good and evil as moral absolutes that do exist. Relativism can be self-defeating if allowed to go too far. In my opinion there need to be unchanging, absolute, and objective standards of right and wrong. The trouble is that because of our human narrow-mindedness, our perception of those absolutes is colored by our personal and cultural biases. It's like light seen through a filter. You see blue light, I see red light, but in reality the source is giving off white light. There is an absolute white light out there, but our personal biases are getting in the way of us seeing it.

In general, good tends to promote harmony and evil tends to be disruptive, but that's not a hard-and-fast definition AT ALL. We small minded humans tend to get "the greater good" confused with "my greater good" quite a bit.


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## Anders Ã„mting

ascanius said:


> I'm sure all of would agree that killing is wrong, I hope.  If I kill someone it is wrong, if I justify it by saying that I did it because he was breaking in my house to kill my family then it is excused as being just.  the act is still wrong but deemed necessary.



I would say that killing is always _regretable_ -something any sensible person will want to avoid if at all possible- but not necessarily wrong, as in "the wrong thing to do." It ultimately comes down to intent.

For example, killing an innocent man because you want his shoes is obviously an evil act, whereas killing a clearly genocidal man to stop him from committing mass murder is a righteous act.

The ideal is of course that nobody has to die at all, but the world is not always ideal. Obviously we can't weigh one human life against another - we can't say that one man deserves to live while another man deserves to die, because life is a right rather than a privelige. But we can evaluate the intent and outcome of a person's actions and then determine if they are blameworthy.



Hans said:


> And even so in a lot of human history and even in modern fiction killing your enemy or someone deemed as "evil" is regarded a "good" thing and needs no further justification.
> Killing someone for the sole reason that he is on the wrong side of a battlefield never matters at all.



That is because a soldier must believe that he fights for a just cause and accept that he will be required to kill and possibly be killed in return for the sake of that cause.

CS Lewis fought in the trenches of World War I, one of the most horrible conflicts in human history, and he later wrote: "I have often thought to myself how it would have been if, when I served in the First World War, I and some young German had killed each other simultaneously and found ourselves together a moment after death. I cannot imagine that either of us would have felt any resentment or even any embarrassment. I think we might have laughed over it."


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## Justme

ascanius said:


> Why does a single source matter?  reference to the devil?  Or do you mean that evil is when someone/something takes from another such as theft?  Then by that definition infants/children are inherently evil.  Also if it is about reducing freedom then any and all government is evil along with any and all society.  The restriction of freedom cannot be used as a measure of evil because then it would mean that if there is no restriction of freedom, anarchy, there is no evil even when someone does terrible things because they can.  Utilitarianism is popular simply because it is expedient, well at least how I see it.




I believe evil is the *intentional* disregard for human life, dignity and property they possess. As we look back in history, how many examples are there of power hungry individuals or institutions that have forced their will on others for the ultimate goal of controlling them. What religion, what state has not at one time or the other done this for the express purpose of acquiring more power? This is what I mean by a single source, since ultimately a single entity acquires total sovereignty over those they concur. Your statement about children is off base, sense they aren't fully aware of what such actions mean. 

As far as anarchy goes, wouldn't total loss of order restrict the weak and frail in our society to places which they deem safe. What is Anarchy anyway. Is it that total lack of laws or the lack of accountability of those who are sworn to uphold those laws. Example: If a policeman steals, is he a policeman or a thug with a badge? 



> As others have pointed out careful, this definition is very dangerous, Hitler, ring a bell.  Utilitarianism and John Stewart Mill, essentially what you are saying, is spurious.  The "aught clause," he asserted that People act this way instead of aught to act that way.  semantics, maybe, but terrible acts have been done by those averring they are doing it for the greater good.  NO ONE does anything to benefit the greater good, they look out after themselves.  Altruism doesn't exist, except for a possible few cases.



read my statement above.



> Sorry but this statement really, *really* bugs me, pet peeve.  First America is NOT, nor ever was a democracy.  Democracy was a failure, the only time it ever worked was when Athens was under iminent threat from a foreign power and Athens was a true democracy.  Polybius gives a very nice description of democracy likening it to a ship where all the sailors are the captain.  The USA is a constitutional republic which is entirely different.



I don't care about politics. If you disagree with me on this, then I'm happy for you. My statement was a side thought in the first place. Sorry to have upset you!



> First what do you mean by backwards?  there needs to be a forward, which is?, for there to be a backward.  Second it sounds like you have a problem with connotation that you do not want to include in the story.  I've had that problem but my question is are you looking to redefine good and evil in your story?  If that is the case then your best bet would be to do it through the cultures in your story, how people view things about themselves and the world.



Backwards, meaning the Biblical ideal and ideals about Good and Evil. They have been run into the ground at nearly evey discussion and debate site I've ever belonged to. The attitudes that one finds in religious texts are too cut and dry and have been the references for a good portion of the ridicule and suppression of far too many other peoples rights. 



> You might want to read some philosophy such as Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Nietzsche and countless others.  They'll give good information on morals and various arguments for and against them.  Kant is particularly interesting with his assertion that Duty is the defining moral value of right and wrong.  Nietzsche, cannot remember which of his writings, gives a very nice history of moral values.



I will read what you suggest. I never bypass something that might give me a better understanding of humanity.



> So if someone can justify their acts does that make the act not evil?  If the act is not evil....well then things get interesting.  Or does it just make it acceptable.  If it makes it acceptable then how that act is viewed does not matter the act would still be evil.  Having to justify an act confers an intrinsic evil, if it was not so then no justification is necessary.  You don't justify a just/good act.


Do you mean justify or do you mean rationalize what they have done to place their act in a better light. People justify everything they do. It is part and parcel of the thought process. You buy a present that you really can't afford for the wife you married, when your anniversary comes around. Is it not the event that justifies the expenditure? Is that good or evil?


> You can say the same for the idea that morality is personal and subject only to the individual.  I think a more precise explanation is simply people are stupid.



Define stupid. Is it a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding how to use that knowledge. I've found that there are very few really stupid people on the world. I've witnessed stunningly insightful statements by those that are considered slow by others around me and I've seen the smartest people I know turn into blithering idiots when ideology is introduced in the mix. 

Example: I had a conservative friend, who was a Mensa member die from Cancer, because he refused to use Medicare when he had been ill for a very long time. One day I received a call from his room mate that they found out too late he had Cancer and he died, before they could do anything. I miss my friend. He taught me a lot about things and is responsible for my admiration for intellectuals. The one thing that I can not abide are those that use their intellect to degrade, without reason those they feel less astute as they. 

I despise arrogance, but those who are attacked because of their intellect and smartly dispatch some snotty remark without resorting to nastiness is justified and quite humorous, to boot.


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## Steerpike

Justme said:


> Backwards, meaning the Biblical ideal and ideals about Good and Evil. They have been run into the ground at nearly evey discussion and debate site I've ever belonged to.



This is purely subjective and probably puts you in the minority in terms of viewpoints worldwide. I mention this only because you said you want to diffuse the better part of the objection to your approach, but the approach you want to take doesn't seem to be consistent with that.

Also, I should add that philosophical debate and discussion often comes down to a group of like-minded individuals reinforcing each other's beliefs (at least, that has been my experience, where like minds gravitate toward one another to discuss such issues). The fact that these debates have driven a viewpoint into the ground is really meaningless on a topic like this, where ultimately there is no more hard evidence to support one side or another.


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## Aidan of the tavern

I think that the root of good and bad is founded mostly on our personal values, and what we place to be more important.  If the majority of people agree that something is done for the sake of something more important then it would seem that it would be either justified or at least spared the label of "evil".  

For instance, a guy goes into a old man's house and kills him, I think we would all agree that it would be a pretty evil act.  But a guy goes into the old man's house and kill's him to prevent him detonating a bomb (with no time to call the police or anything), we still think its a grisly thing, but it saves people.  The old man has a mental condition and as far as he's aware is doing something justifiable.  The intruder isn't doing anything differently, but it comes down to what we deem to be more important, killing a man, or letting many people die.

As you can tell I'm crap at examples, but I think you get the idea.


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## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> The intruder isn't doing anything differently, but it comes down to what we deem to be more important, killing a man, or letting many people die.



Yeah, but you can't always do that kind of pure numbers analysis. Take this hypothetical:

Guy has bomb in unknown location. Detonating it will kill thousands of people. Guy won't detonate bomb if you take the gun you've just been handed and shoot the three year old little girl in front of you. For purposes of the hypothetical, assume there is no way to get to the bomb before it goes off, and also that if the little girl dies it will NOT go off.

I say if you shoot the girl, that's evil.

If you run the numbers only, it tells you to shoot her.


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## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> Yeah, but you can't always do that kind of pure numbers analysis. Take this hypothetical:
> 
> Guy has bomb in unknown location. Detonating it will kill thousands of people. Guy won't detonate bomb if you take the gun you've just been handed and shoot the three year old little girl in front of you. For purposes of the hypothetical, assume there is no way to get to the bomb before it goes off, and also that if the little girl dies it will NOT go off.
> 
> I say if you shoot the girl, that's evil.
> 
> If you run the numbers only, it tells you to shoot her.



I agree, but It's how society views the incident that would probably bring the lasting verdict for good/evil.  No doubt the opinions of society would be hugely polarized, so in the end it would come down to which society (which naturally consists of the majority, not everyone) would place to be more important, 1000+ lives or the girl.


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## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> I agree, but It's how society views the incident that would probably bring the lasting verdict for good/evil.  No doubt the opinions of society would be hugely polarized, so in the end it would come down to which society (which naturally consists of the majority, not everyone) would place to be more important, 1000+ lives or the girl.



But in my view, it is evil whether or not any single person in society agrees that it is


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## Justme

The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.


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## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> But in my view, it is evil whether or not any single person in society agrees that it is



Exactly!  I think we all understand that the majority doesn't make something right to us, because of course right and wrong is not something someone else can ever decide for us.  It is about what you deem to be right, not me, not the world, it is for you to decide.  Or at least thats what I think.


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## Steerpike

Justme said:


> The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.



You're not confusing me, I think you've expressed yourself just fine  In fact, my own viewpoint is probably closer to yours. I'm not a religious person. But I do think that the viewpoint religious people hold is just as valid. As you argue the case back on either side you end up at the same point, with neither side able to offer more in terms of a proof. The religious viewpoint may seem antiquated because it is been around so long, but that doesn't make it any less valid, and as I said above it is the viewpoint that seems to be held by the majority of people on the planet. I think it is important for people with varying perspectives on this to all realize that those who differ have valid viewpoints.


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## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> Exactly!  I think we all understand that the majority doesn't make something right to us, because of course right and wrong is not something someone else can ever decide for us.  It is about what you deem to be right, not me, not the world, it is for you to decide.  Or at least thats what I think.



Yeah, I think this is true for the most part, if I'm following you correctly. But I tend to pull back from the idea that this is purely subjective. My viewpoint on the hypothetical above is that it is inherently evil to shoot the little girl; if another person feels that for them it is not evil to do so, then my view is that this person is wrong


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## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> Yeah, I think this is true for the most part, if I'm following you correctly. But I tend to pull back from the idea that this is purely subjective. My viewpoint on the hypothetical above is that it is inherently evil to shoot the little girl; if another person feels that for them it is not evil to do so, then my view is that this person is wrong



I don't know if I followed myself correctly, but I think what I meant was that like many things it is personal opinion, something we all have the right to.  Wow, I've learnt a lot today.



Justme said:


> The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.



Please don't apologize, you certainly haven't given me a headache, you've made me think, question what I've taken for granted, that can never be a bad thing.  This is what always happens when you get a bunch of writers together and ask questions like this, its just a friendly debate.


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## Ankari

I would use the _Golden Rule_ as a foundation for defining *Good.*  Which is ironic as it's really a selfish rule as you expect like treatment for your actions.  

By extension you would have the _Iron Rule_ "Those who would deny you your rights must be resisted."  

As someone previously stated, preservation is a key to defining *Good*, but it's the preservation of _self_ and by extension the preservation of the group that you identify yourself with.  Anything that seeks to destroy you or your identified group would be considered *Evil*.

Most, I think, share common definitions of *Good* and *Evil*.  It would be hard to truly make a groundbreaking moral code as your audience would use their own commonly shared definition of *Good* as a reference and find anything significantly different as outlandish at best.


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## Mindfire

Justme said:


> The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying. I guess I'm confusing people and that isn't what I wanted and frankly you guess don't deserve the headaches. Believe me, this is not the first time I did this to a forum and it, unfortunately won't be the last. I hate this, and I kick myself in the head, every time I do. Sorry man! I will continue the debate though because I think it's going well. I'm just going to figure out my own issues and leave you folks be. Thank you for your help, though. I appropriate it. thank you.



I don't think the Biblical view is stereotypical or antiquated. I think our interpretation of the Biblical view is antiquated. Many people work under the assumption that what's been said historically about the Bible = what the Bible actually says, which isn't quite true.


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## Steerpike

Mindfire said:


> I don't think the Biblical view is stereotypical or antiquated. I think our interpretation of the Biblical view is antiquated. Many people work under the assumption that what's been said historically about the Bible = what the Bible actually says, which isn't quite true.



That's true. And further, its age has no real bearing on its validity.


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## ascanius

Rather than risk my arguments become tautological I will simply do this.
The whole point with my argument is to demonstrate that there are in fact universal truths of evil/wrong, I haven't figured out good quite yet but I assume it to be the opposite of evil/wrong.

Rationalize:  to ascribe (one's acts, opinions, etc.) to causes that superficially seem reasonable and valid but that actually are unrelated to the true, possibly unconscious and often less creditable or agreeable causes.  2.
to remove unreasonable elements from.
Justify:  to show (an act, claim, statement, etc.) to be just or right.  2. to defend or uphold as warranted or well-grounded.

I used killing as an example.  If one looks at the act of killing alone it is wrong no matter what.  However if someone kills another person to defend their loved ones then it is justified, made to be just.  The justification relies solely on the situation or circumstances revolving around the act.  The act alone is evil/wrong but under specific circumstances is made to be just.  On the other hand in the wrong circumstances, like revenge or anger, it is still wrong.  So this tells us that the act alone is evil/wrong but can be justified by the circumstances around it if they are valid, thus excusing blame and guilt.  What we see is the presence of a modifier, the situation, that determines if an evil/wrong act can or cannot be justified or excused as being just.  Killing is not the only example, others such as rape, theft, lying which could also be seen as the theft of truth, excess in drink, food, and pleasure (hedonism) all exist.

If however one tries to argue that the situation that makes a evil/wrong act just makes the act itself right/good then why does it need to be justified?  People do not justify everything they do, they may rationalize but they do not justify, or attempt to absolve themselves of self guilt or that of their peers.  If someone jumps into a lake to save someone from drowning do they justify it?  No they don't, they are not thinking "i was filled with extreme empathy towards the person is such a dire situation that I felt compelled to rescue him."  For one, no one sees the need to have such action justified to them because it is a right/good act.  However if a person stands by and watches said drowning victim drown and does nothing to help then he ends up in a situation of having to justify their actions.  If the person is a poor swimmer and was afraid that he too would drown then it is justified that he did not attempt to help, but why didn't he call for help?  If the persons justification was they did not feel like it then that person did not act justly.  Anyone who has children has probably noticed how their guilt can come forward when they have done something wrong that the parent is not aware of in an attempt to justify it.  And example would be an instance where the caregiver confronts a child about something such as stealing and the child replies that he was hungry, or that it was hers, that so and so never plays with it etc.

I know that the majority of people in our modern culture view right/worn or morality to be personal, that each individual determines what is right or wrong.  I view this as inherently flawed because it means that there is no right and wrong.  If personal morality is correct then how can anyone be seen as doing anything wrong?  What right do we have to say what they did is wrong?  This excludes any idea of wrong, much less grey area, and only leaves right.  Can you honestly tell me that if personal morality is the way right and wrong works you can say a sadistic child raping murderer is right in what he did.  To say that he was wrong would mean that personal morality is wrong because it would mean that there is an underlying definition of right and wrong.  

Now if you say that morality is based on the survival of a group and group unity you also come into problems.  Many of the things we find as evil/wrong would in fact ensure the survival of a group and it's unity.  If group survival and unity is the point then Hitler was right, you cannot tell me that the German people would not have been very well of by getting rid of all those who didn't contribute, the sick, disabled.  No there would have been less strain on their system with out them, yet what he did was wrong?  Think about it if people did what was best for the group, killing, rape, lying and many other despicable things would actually improve group survival and unity much better that what we currently have.  Hitler is one example, but eugenics, Genetic modification, Dictatorships and many others are out there.  Now if one argues that it is determined by the human group as a whole the same arguments against it would still apply.  Anyone remember "The Giver"?  The fact that we don't view this as correct means that right and wrong lay somewhere else in our view of morality.


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## ascanius

Justme said:


> I believe evil is the *intentional* disregard for human life, dignity and property they possess. Your statement about children is off base, sense they aren't fully aware of what such actions mean.



First I think you'll like Nietzsche.  Second my argument about children is still valid, all you did was justify their actions as being just because they do not understand the difference.  It does not reduce the validity of my argument because they are children, most likely I appealed to your aversion to the idea that a child is evil.  But by what you said it was a logical conclusion based on my understanding of your idea of right and wrong.



Justme said:


> As far as anarchy goes, wouldn't total loss of order restrict the weak and frail in our society to places which they deem safe. What is Anarchy anyway. Is it that total lack of laws or the lack of accountability of those who are sworn to uphold those laws. Example: If a policeman steals, is he a policeman or a thug with a badge?



I don't understand what you mean by your first sentence.  Anarchy is defined as a state or society without government or law, or lack of obedience to authority, insubordination.  By definition anarchy is an anything goes social state, or for lack of better words true freedom, the freedom to do whatever whenever one wishes without any moral or civil accountability what so ever.  It's actually kinda scary because in all likely hood it would mean something similar to what happened in Darfur, Somalia, the Congo, basically individuals doing whatever they can to achieve their own goals and being perfectly acceptable, in the context of law and oder



Justme said:


> I don't care about politics. If you disagree with me on this, then I'm happy for you. My statement was a side thought in the first place. Sorry to have upset you!



What I said about the US being a constitutional republic is not something that can be disagreed about, it is fact.  I know it was a side thought, still like I said pet peeve, one that makes my skin crawl.




Justme said:


> Define stupid. Is it a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding how to use that knowledge. I've found that there are very few really stupid people on the world. I've witnessed stunningly insightful statements by those that are considered slow by others around me and I've seen the smartest people I know turn into blithering idiots when ideology is introduced in the mix.



I'm honestly surprised that you were the only one to jump at that statement, most often it is jumped upon like savage dogs.  First people is plural for person thus many people.  Based on the setting and connotation of our modern day time and place I think it is agreed that people means those who compose our society, aka the masses.  In the case I mean as the Romans did, the mob rules there is nothing intelligent about it whatsoever.  As pointed out the individual can be intelligent to an extent but I wasn't talking about the individual.  Lack of knowledge is ignorance not stupidity but simply put I mean stupid.




Justme said:


> The one thing that I can not abide are those that use their intellect to degrade, without reason those they feel less astute as they.  I despise arrogance, but those who are attacked because of their intellect and smartly dispatch some snotty remark without resorting to nastiness is justified and quite humorous, to boot.



Sorry to hear about your friend, it's always bad to loos someone you love.
The fool:  "The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen."  The fool is clearly not a fool in Twelfth Night.  Appearances can be deceiving.  Don't confuse knowledge with intelligence.  A doctor can appear intelligent yet still remain only knowledgeable.  A tittle does not confer intelligence no matter how difficult to gain.  Nor does it mean there is no power or value in knowledge.  Knowledge is power and some sadly abuse that power, yet it also shows their weakness and own stupidity, that they lack of intelligence.  Yet is the fool a fool when "madonna" is unaware that he makes a jest at her expense?  No, she is the fool because she cannot see her own stupidity.  The intelligent person insults and degrades without the other ever being aware because they understand stupidity and that of others, thus know how to play the game.




Justme said:


> The Biblical understanding is still stereotypical and as such is antiquated i guess I lack the words to explain fully my reasoning on what I'm trying, so I will cease trying.



I really don't understand what you are getting at.  The biblical understanding?  what is the biblical understanding?  What is your alternative?  From my understanding your view of evil lies in the indifference to what it means to be human.  Or to put it simply to harm another person, in any way that causes them distress or physical, emotional, or mental harm.  I agree this is evil but differently than they way I think you mean.  For instance what about killing someone to save yourself or your family?  You end up back to the use of justifications to excuse the act from blame or guilt.  I kinda get the impression that you believe in a definite evil yet don't want to say so because of the religious connotations that it has.  

@justme.  Don't stop trying to get others to understand you point of view, it leaves you the true fool.  You'll never learn the faults and weaknesses of your arguments, nor their strengths.  It took me almost five years to come up with my argument, probably could have shortened it if I read more.  So far I haven't had anyone manage to give a good argument contrary to it, yet.  It's like a game of chess each loss teaches you something about your weaknesses while each win will teach you your strengths.  Every statement you use to support your argument is a chess piece, used wrong and you loos, used right and you win.


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## Fnord

We're trying to tackle a subject here on our forum that philosophers have tried to tackle since we could think about something other than finding food.  

I don't think there is a "universal" concept of good and evil; for it to exist you have to believe in some supernatural force that creates and enforces it (which I don't).  The "universe" doesn't care if you kill others or not, it doesn't cry when a child dies; we're just a speck in a immense place with really no bearing on the greater whole.  Our morals are completely our own constructs.  And even within those constructs they can vary wildly.  Collectivist philosophies, for example, feel the greater society takes precedence over the preferences of the individual; Objectivists would argue the exact opposite: initiating force on the individual through a collective is the ultimate evil.  People have engaged in genocide feeling they were well within their rights to "do the right thing" and rid the world of something _they_ considered evil.  There are people who think torturing other people for the possibility of saving the lives of their countrymen is good and right.  

There most certainly is no "objective" standard of "good" and "evil" unless there is a singular, objective force that defines it (and even then, you can spin down a rabbit hole because what gives _that_ entity the authority, etc, etc).  But given sufficient scale, good and evil don't "exist" except within the confines of our societies, and are defined differently therein.


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## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> We're trying to tackle a subject here on our forum that philosophers have tried to tackle since we could think about something other than finding food.
> 
> I don't think there is a "universal" concept of good and evil; for it to exist you have to believe in some supernatural force that creates and enforces it (which I don't).  The "universe" doesn't care if you kill others or not, it doesn't cry when a child dies; we're just a speck in a immense place with really no bearing on the greater whole.  Our morals are completely our own constructs.  And even within those constructs they can vary wildly.  Collectivist philosophies, for example, feel the greater society takes precedence over the preferences of the individual; Objectivists would argue the exact opposite: initiating force on the individual through a collective is the ultimate evil.  People have engaged in genocide feeling they were well within their rights to "do the right thing" and rid the world of something _they_ considered evil.  There are people who think torturing other people for the possibility of saving the lives of their countrymen is good and right.
> 
> There most certainly is no "objective" standard of "good" and "evil" unless there is a singular, objective force that defines it (and even then, you can spin down a rabbit hole because what gives _that_ entity the authority, etc, etc).  But given sufficient scale, good and evil don't "exist" except within the confines of our societies, and are defined differently therein.



Which is why I do believe in a higher power. Otherwise everything descends into a quagmire of relativism and chaos. And I hate chaos.


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## Fnord

But then you get into the quagmire of relativism that is "whose higher power is right?"  Since no such being has made themselves explicitly apparent we instead have the morality/immorality of warfare over_ that_ question.  But we're still a universe of "laws", so I wouldn't exactly call it chaos.  But society and morality is "sloppy" just the same, higher power or no higher power.


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## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> But then you get into the quagmire of relativism that is "whose higher power is right?"  Since no such being has made themselves explicitly apparent we instead have the morality/immorality of warfare over_ that_ question.  But we're still a universe of "laws", so I wouldn't exactly call it chaos.  But society and morality is "sloppy" just the same, higher power or no higher power.



I wouldn't call that a quagmire. I think it's possible to sort out which religions are more reasonable and likely to be true and which ones are more likely to be false. It'll take work and hard thought, but it's doable. And you might not call it chaos, but I would. Existence is an insignificant speck wandering through an endless void subject to the whim of chance and probability? That's pretty much chaotic by definition. I also find it altogether impossible to believe that evolution is the origin of life. It just seems far too improbable- or rather impossible. And if evolution is an adaptational tool and nothing more, then life must have some other source. Ergo my belief in a structured universe under the auspices of a higher power.


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## Fnord

Mindfire said:


> I wouldn't call that a quagmire. I think it's possible to sort out which religions are more reasonable and likely to be true and which ones are more likely to be false. It'll take work and hard thought, but it's doable.



But then we're relying on reason to tease out what is "more reasonable".  Every religious person feels they've done that (and for all the religions of the past several thousand years), but yet the conclusions are all very different.  Then what we actually have is a combination of environmental factors that influence this behavior ("I grew up in an Arab country, and Islam is our identity, therefore I also believe in Islam") and confirmation bias ("This is how I feel about this behavior and this is how this particular deity also feels about this behavior, therefore this deity must be the correct one").  In neither instance are we any closer to solidly defining good and evil, instead we are letting "someone else" make the decision for us.  But even then, if you go up that chain it's still a _subjective_ judgment--subject to the whim of the deity in question.  We've merely moved the decision up the chain of command.  




> And you might not call it chaos, but I would. Existence is an insignificant speck wandering through an endless void subject to the whim of chance and probability? That's pretty much chaotic by definition. I also find it altogether impossible to believe that evolution is the origin of life. It just seems far too improbable- or rather impossible. And if evolution is an adaptational tool and nothing more, then life must have some other source. Ergo my belief in a structured universe under the auspices of a higher power.



Well it's a bit more complicated than an "insignificant speck wandering through an endless void subject to the whim of chance and probability".  Then we're just leaning on the fallacy of the argument from personal incredulity: "I don't understand how this works, therefore it must not be true."  From the outside (or I suppose for us, from the inside) it might look like chaos but there are very much causal chains both in the creation of the universe and in the concept of evolution itself.  Chaos would state that everything is truly random and we know that is not true.  Physical laws work in predictable and measurable ways.  Evolution does as well, but it requires the accounting for a larger bank of influencing variables to make meaningful conclusions, and so on down to climatology and market economies.  Just because accounting for these variables is very difficult to do (as we say in my field, the "economic calculation problem") doesn't mean there aren't causal chains involved, just that they're beyond the scope of our current limitations.  But it's certainly not just "pure randomness".  

And that swings us back to the original topic: human behavior is subject to incentives and evolutionary bias.  We find certain activities "good" because we're evolutionary adapted to engage in cooperative and pro-social behavior. Humans don't have much for natural defenses or particularly well-developed natural hunting skills, therefore true "loners" wouldn't have much survivability.  That doesn't mean we're completely integrated socially, however, and I think we're still evolving socially to changes in how humans behave and interact.  Enslaving other humans we felt were somehow inferior (often due to religious differences) was considered good and proper up until just a hundred years ago (and some would argue in some parts of the world even today).   Now most of us find such a behavior abhorrent.  If there is some all-knowing force that decided what is good or evil, then certainly we shouldn't expect such an entity to change its mind.  And so the argument goes that perhaps us humans, fallible beings that we are, simply misinterpreted that entity in the past.  But then that becomes a new logical rabbit hole regarding morality that we have to delve into ("what makes us more right now than in the past?").  

We should realize that human behaviors, like morality, evolve over time and are influenced by social pressures, incentives, and other environmental factors.  It's really hard to make the case that they exist objectively.


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## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> It's really hard to make the case that they exist objectively.



The problem is, the very nature of the subject makes it impossible for each side (those advocating a purely subjective morality and those advocating an objective one) to provide a proof of their viewpoint. Even if the idea of an objective good and evil is true, how would you set out proving it?


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## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> But then we're relying on reason to tease out what is "more reasonable".  Every religious person feels they've done that (and for all the religions of the past several thousand years), but yet the conclusions are all very different.  Then what we actually have is a combination of environmental factors that influence this behavior ("I grew up in an Arab country, and Islam is our identity, therefore I also believe in Islam") and confirmation bias ("This is how I feel about this behavior and this is how this particular deity also feels about this behavior, therefore this deity must be the correct one").  In neither instance are we any closer to solidly defining good and evil, instead we are letting "someone else" make the decision for us.  But even then, if you go up that chain it's still a _subjective_ judgment--subject to the whim of the deity in question.  We've merely moved the decision up the chain of command.


So you're saying that my Christianity is untenable because I come from a Christian background? That conclusion is both absurd and unfair. If you had been born an Arab in an Islamic country, you'd likely be a Muslim. Does that make your atheism untenable? The fact that people's beliefs are influenced by their background has no bearing on whether those beliefs are right or wrong, or whether a person can compare one belief system with another and come to their own conclusions. My decision to be be a Christian is not invalidated by my upbringing. And if right and wrong is based on the opinion of a higher power, that is not exactly subjective. To consider the opinion of a deity subjective is to place that deity on our level, to count him as "one of us" whose opinion can be weighed against our own. But the very definition of deity refutes that idea. If a being can and has created the universe out of nothing and it can literally will things into existence, then by it's very nature, a deity's "opinion" BECOMES _fact_, i.e. objective, because that being literally has the prerogative to define reality.


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## Fnord

Mindfire said:


> So you're saying that my Christianity is untenable because I come from a Christian background? That conclusion is both absurd and unfair. If you had been born an Arab in an Islamic country, you'd likely be a Muslim. Does that make your atheism untenable? The fact that people's beliefs are influenced by their background has no bearing on whether those beliefs are right or wrong, or whether a person can compare one belief system with another and come to their own conclusions. My decision to be be a Christian is not invalidated by my upbringing. And if right and wrong is based on the opinion of a higher power, that is not exactly subjective. To consider the opinion of a deity subjective is to place that deity on our level, to count him as "one of us" whose opinion can be weighed against our own. But the very definition of deity refutes that idea. If a being can and has created the universe out of nothing and it can literally will things into existence, then by it's very nature, a deity's "opinion" BECOMES _fact_, i.e. objective, because that being literally has the prerogative to define reality.



My point was that no one comes out of the womb a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Hindu or what-have-you.  _Someone_ has to teach that to you.  So certainly your environment (where you were born, who your parents are, etc) influences your religious background--they don't really occur spontaneously.  

If you could run a controlled experiment where someone was born without any outside influence of the sort, it doesn't seem at all likely that someone would spontaneously adopt "Muslim values" or "Christian values" pertaining to "good" and "evil".  Though they would certainly find out quickly the rewards of social behavior (as well as the consequences of anti-social behavior) without those specific religious factors.  That's why the "Golden Rule" is pretty universal across all societies even though their religions (or lack thereof) are very different--a society that doesn't value those sorts of things wouldn't last long, nor would the individuals in such a society likely survive to procreate over several generations.  We see forms of cooperation (and I dare say, morals) in lower primates as well, independent of a religious belief.


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## gavintonks

an interesting concept of religion is to reignite the son/sun. The sun heats the earth [not really] but you are in the middle of winter and you have lost all hope of being warm again so on the 26th December you chop down a tree and burn it, this unbinds the trapped energy and sends it back to the sun so it will be strong enough for spring. 
This used to be done with people, then the king as a yearly human sacrifice, criminals tied into a bower as the green man who is an incarnation of Apollo, but all to ensure the sun/ son [Apollo] gets enough energy to shine and make things grow [this was part of the sacred rite of Dionysian] but was later changed to a sacrificial lamb[sagitarius], ox[taurus]. symbolizing the ages at the time


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## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> My point was that no one comes out of the womb a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Hindu or what-have-you.  _Someone_ has to teach that to you.  So certainly your environment (where you were born, who your parents are, etc) influences your religious background--they don't really occur spontaneously.
> 
> If you could run a controlled experiment where someone was born without any outside influence of the sort, it doesn't seem at all likely that someone would spontaneously adopt "Muslim values" or "Christian values" pertaining to "good" and "evil".  Though they would certainly find out quickly the rewards of social behavior (as well as the consequences of anti-social behavior) without those specific religious factors.  That's why the "Golden Rule" is pretty universal across all societies even though their religions (or lack thereof) are very different--a society that doesn't value those sorts of things wouldn't last long, nor would the individuals in such a society likely survive to procreate over several generations.  We see forms of cooperation (and I dare say, morals) in lower primates as well, independent of a religious belief.



Whether someone will spontaneously adopt beliefs in a controlled environment has no bearing on their truth or falsity. A child raised in a "controlled environment" is not likely to come up with heliocentrism or the laws of motion either. In fact, I'd say a child raised in isolation is more likely to adopt Christianity than invent the laws of motion. For the former there is at least the hope of divine revelation. For the latter there is no such recourse. Also, we can't prove whether animals have religious opinions or not, so bringing them into this discussion can do little to provide clarity.


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## cliche

To me the good and evil are just terms that we use so that we can categorize society. This allows us to feel safe and have a good grip on society. No one genuinely believe that they are pure evil; Hitler did not believe that he was evil.You may say that the people who won the second world war were the good guys... but when you look at what caused this war to happen and why a person like Hitler came into power then you would understand. After world war 1 Germany was forced to accept war guilt meaning that they had to pay a vast sum of money. This led to Germany's economy going down the drain where you needed a barrel full of money just to buy a single loaf of bread (I think there's a picture of some kids making a tower out of money because what they were using was worth so little). People were becoming desperate and when Hitler came along promise that he would help Germany get into better times they were given hope. Now I'm not saying that Hitler was a good person, I think he was complete and utterly insane, but it goes to show that good and evil are all about perspective. 
We hire a group of people in a court to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty, but are those few people enough to decide whether his actions are right or wrong? If every person apart from himself consider him a person who has committed an unforgivable crime then surely that must be what it is... but what about from his point of view?
What I believe is that the terms good and evil are impossible to distinguish from one another except through generic terms and applied only to a fantasy character not someone in real life. Yes person A helps an old lady across the street and therefore is considered someone who is good but what do you consider person B who goes up and steals that old lady's money? What if you were to know that person B was stealing money in order to feed his family since he had just been made redundant from his job? That is when we rely on a figurative head to make those decisions for us.
This is why in my stories I try and blur the lines as much as possible when it comes to protagonists and antagonists since (to me anyway) it helps to me make them more three dimensional.
If any of this has previously been mentioned I am sorry, its late and this is one of my favorite subjects to discuss.


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## Steerpike

cliche said:


> No one genuinely believe that they are pure evil; Hitler did not believe that he was evil.



If objective good and evil exist, then any individual person's belief that they are good or evil is irrelevant. In other words, if there is an objective evil, and if Hitler fell within that definition, then it would remain so whether he believed it or not. Personal belief wouldn't enter into it.


cliche said:


> We hire a group of people in a court to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty, but are those few people enough to decide whether his actions are right or wrong?



Those people aren't deciding guilt or innocence in a vacuum. They are deciding within the context of laws passed by representatives of the society at large (though in the U.S. they are free to disregard them when finding someone innocent, but not when finding them guilty).


cliche said:


> What I believe is that the terms good and evil are impossible to distinguish from one another except through generic terms and applied only to a fantasy character not someone in real life.



I don't agree with this. I think it is easy for most people to envision good and evil as applied to real life situations and to distinguish between the two. A complete lack of ability to do this would be sociopathic, wouldn't it? At the very least, we consider the inability to make the distinction to be insanity under the law.


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## Queshire

gluh... so much to through.....

@ Steerpike: Your example of the bomb versus girl risks being a false dichotomy. There are plenty of third choices to take from shooting the guy with the bomb, stalling for time until the bomb was found, shooting the girl non-lethally, or offering yourself in exchange. Further, your view that shooting the girl would be evil is merely your view, I personally disagree. You invoke "A million is a statistic," implying that the one life before you is worth more then the thousands of lives you don't know. I do not agree with that. I veiw that each of those thousands of lives is equivilant of the girl's. Yes, death is sad, any death is sad, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. In that case, lacking any other option, I would kill the girl as it would be neccesary.

Actually, I think it'd be pretty easy to disprove and objective good or evil. If good was objective, then it would be a law of the universe. Just like gravity pulls everybody to the ground, if good was objective then everybody's idea of good would be the same. This discussion alone has disproved that. Further, extending the thought experiment to real life, if good and evil was objective then each culture would have the same idea of what is good and evil. In fuedal japan, ritual suicide was used to maintian honor and would be considered a good thing, in modern day America, while not evil, I doubt it would be considered good. To disprove subjective morality, 

@Justme: I think the view of the bible as stereotypical comes from the fact that just about all english speaking contries being descended from heavily christan cultures. It has prevaded our cultural identity and regardless of religous views, a person's moral stance is inevetiably influenced by it. I'd suggest looking at cultures descended from other religions like india, china, or japan or historical cultures descended from other religions such as the vikings or the aztecs. They have good and evil, but it is a different good and evil then ours. Other then that, I'd suggest actually reading the bible, mind you, I haven't done that myself, but from what I hear, the popular image of it is very different from what it actually says, it advocates things that we would consider horrendous at times.

@Ankari: I would say that both the golden rule and the iron rule are a good basis for modern morality, but they are just the start and should not be absolutes if, for nothing else, their paradoxical nature. The golden rule would restrict rights while the iron one would expand it.

@Mindfire: I agree that much of the Bible is still applicable, but the world has changed so much since its creation that much isn't applicable. I view that it should be used as a guidline to help inform the individual's opinion and not strict laws.

Individual reason and choice certianly is a big part of religious choice, but you can not discount the effect your environment has on you.

Also, I disagree about being more likely to come up with christianity then the laws of motion. While unlikely to come up with the formal laws, I think it's a lot more likely that somebody would discover "If I do this, then this happens" then spontanously recreating the teachings of the church.

@Ascanius: If we view killing as evil without consideration to who / what, then every human would be a sinner from their first bite of solid food as, even if you did not do the killing yourself, you are directly responsible for the plants and animals that die to provide your food.

People do justify all of their actions, nobody does anything without some reason, how long that takes or what it takes to reach that level varies greatly. Comparing Justification and Rationalization is simply a matter of semantics.

You did cause me to amend my view though. I still don't believe there's an objective good or evil, but I veiw that it is a macro concept decided by society and culture. On an individual level, there's only what society veiws as good or evil and what is justified. For your murderer, yes in the eyes of society, at least American society, he would be viewed as evil, but for himself he would view his actions justified.

I agree that morality isn't based off just survival of the group, that is only one part of the equation, the other is survival of the indivdual. Balancing those and what is considered to acheive that is what makes up all the various moralities of modern day.

@All: Since we've gotten to talking about religion, I guess I'll say what I believe in. Though this is more my philsophy then anything. 

First off, I would not be surprised if there were beings so far beyond humanity that they could be called gods, but I think that the proof of their existence would be reason to not worship them. If such a being exists, then they would simply be a highly advanced beings. A guy with a gun can kill me with a twitch of the finger, he has a lot more power then me, but that's no reason to worship them.

Secondly, I don't believe we have any signifance in the grand scheme of things. It would take so little to make humanity as a whole go extinct, and in 200 every single human alive now will be dead. We live in a cold, uncaring universe. Some will disagree with this, that's fine, I respect their opinion so long as they respect mine.

Thirdly, I have hope. Hope in humanity. Look at what humanity has acheived in these last few centuries. We make light dance. We fly through the sky on wings of metal. We have discovered the building blocks of all of existence! We may not have been given a purpose in this universe, but we will make a purpose! We will carve our name on the face of reality itself or die trying. I believe in a day where death is a distant, sad memory, a day where we fly among the stars, a day when reality itself is our bitch to do with as we want. If god exists, I believe that humanity will kill him just because he's there.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> @ Steerpike: Your example of the bomb versus girl risks being a false dichotomy. There are plenty of third choices to take from shooting the guy with the bomb, stalling for time until the bomb was found, shooting the girl non-lethally, or offering yourself in exchange.



You don't understand the purpose of a hypothetical. It is to create an artificial situation to crystallize a particular point of discussion. You can always change the facts of a hypothetical; that accomplishes nothing. As presented in the hypothetical itself, those are the two options. It illustrates the fact that a pure utilitarian analysis is not always the correct one. 

Moving forward to your response to the hypothetical - I must admit I don't entirely believe that most people would kill the girl if that actually happened to them, even if they say they would under the hypothetical. You would have to be a low-quality individual, if not also to some extent evil, to do it. It is easy to be cavalier about it in a discussion forum, of course.

Your attempt to disprove objective good and evil is not convincing. Unlike a law of gravity, whether good or evil is objective or subjective is not testable. Even testable scientific theories and hypotheses are not universally accepted. The idea that an untestable hypothesis would have to be universally-accepted to be deemed true doesn't make sense.

Those are my thoughts on it.


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## cliche

> I don't agree with this. I think it is easy for most people to envision good and evil as applied to real life situations and to distinguish between the two. A complete lack of ability to do this would be sociopathic, wouldn't it? At the very least, we consider the inability to make the distinction to be insanity under the law.


What is your definition of good and evil? If someone has a motive to commit an act that is evil then that person himself does not consider himself to be evil. It's all about which point of view you look at.


> Those people aren't deciding guilt or innocence in a vacuum. They are deciding within the context of laws passed by representatives of the society at large (though in the U.S. they are free to disregard them when finding someone innocent, but not when finding them guilty).


Laws are made by people who believe that they know what is purely right and purely wrong (despite trying at times to take a neutral approach).


> If objective good and evil exist, then any individual person's belief that they are good or evil is irrelevant. In other words, if there is an objective evil, and if Hitler fell within that definition, then it would remain so whether he believed it or not. Personal belief wouldn't enter into it.


Then you would need to set certain criteria for what makes someone fit into one of these objectives... which would get very complicated (though I admit that to an extent it could would work). You would need to look into things like background, medical records as well as what type of person he is and what drove him to an act of let say crime. But then you would need to be able to define what makes someone good as well. Let say killing was completely out of the question and anyone that killed someone else for any reason what-so-ever that would leave the entire country defenseless against other nations not willing to follow this law. Then lets make this more neutral, killing is only acceptable under certain circumstances. Yes you said that a point of view would not come into this but then how will they be judged? If not judged then the character (or person) will have to either be referred to as unknown or neutral.


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## Queshire

Have you ever taken a logic class? A False Dichotomy is a logical fallacy implying that there's only two options when that is not the case. I did not change the hypothetical in any way, I took the information you presented and showed that those are by far not the only two options.

Further your hypothetical situation in no way crystalizes the point you were trying to make, it was a weak argument at best.

True, the answer to a hypothetical situation doesn't reflect what would happen in a similar real life situation, there are simply too many variables to take into account, but if there's no point in the hypothetical, then why'd you bring it up in the first place?

It is testable, I tested it in my last post 

Look, I'll do it again;

If good is objective, then everybody's concept of good would be the same. Are they the same? No, no they are not. True, they are similar, not same, but similar, but that is explained as a result of evolution, instinct, and culture. Therefore good is not objective.


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## Steerpike

cliche said:


> Then you would need to set certain criteria for what makes someone fit into one of these objectives... which would get very complicated (though I admit that to an extent it could would work).



This leads down another path, I think. I'm just pointing out that if good and evil are objective, than your argument than a given person doesn't consider himself evil wouldn't matter. If it is objective, he's evil whether he thinks he is or not.

What the ramifications of that are, and how someone would be judged, is another matter. In the judicial system, of course, most of the factors you are talking about do come into play. Motive, extenuating circumstances, and so on. But, wrapping this back into the point I was going for, there is no way to demonstrate whether good and evil is subjective or objective. Anyone who says they can do so is trying to fool you (or is at least fooling themselves). It may be that it is subjective, but it may also be that it is objective, and the arguments about a person's own view of themselves, or about circumstances surrounding their act, wouldn't change the reality of whether it is objective or subjective.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> Have you ever taken a logic class? A False Dichotomy is a logical fallacy implying that there's only two options when that is not the case. I did not change the hypothetical in any way, I took the information you presented and showed that those are by far not the only two options.



Again, you do not understand the purpose of a hypothetical. Because it has already been explained to you once, I don't see much profit in doing so again. You either don't get it or don't wish to.

Your supposed "test" of objective good and evil is laughable, Queshire. I don't know what could have led you to believe that the objective existence of something, where the objective nature is untestable, would lead everyone to agree on the subject. You're either joking or you've failed to apply a minimum degree of intellect to the problem.


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## Queshire

The purpose of a hypothetical situation is to think through some situation and try to imagine the outcome without having to have the situation actually happen. Thinking through your hypothetical situation, I have imagined a number of solutions that are possible from the information given and result in nobody dying. Even limiting myself to the two options presented I disagree that killing the girl would be more evil, in fact the utilitarian approach strikes me as the lesser of two evils in that case. Thus it is a weak argument and a logical fallacy.

Well...... considering everybody agrees on other objective things, water is wet, the sun rises in the east, etc, then if good and evil was objective as well, wouldn't everybody agree on it as well?

I find no fault in my thought experiment, maybe there's something I'm missing, and if there is, I'll accept that, but if the only thing you have to offer is insults, then I will not accept that.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> Well...... considering everybody agrees on other objective things, water is wet, the sun rises in the east, etc, then if good and evil was objective as well, wouldn't everybody agree on it as well?



All of that is testable. Again, the other is not testable. There is no reason to expect that people will agree on something that is objectively true if there is no way to test it. For example, at one point in the history of humanity, not everyone agreed that the earth revolves around the sun. The fact that it does so is objectively true. By your argument everyone should have agreed upon it. Of course, they didn't, because there was no proof of it at the time (e.g. a test that established it). Human history is rife with people believing things that are objectively false. I have a hard time believing you are presenting this as a serious argument.

A hypothetical creates an artificial situation. In the one I created, there were two options. That was part of the hypothetical. You can create a hypothetical with more options if you like, but it isn't the same one I employed. People tend to change the hypothetical when they're reluctant to give the answer that the hypothetical as-stated would elicit.

The fact that you would answer a hypothetical one way versus another does not create a "logical fallacy." You like to use that phrase. I do not think you understand it.  

Killing the girl is the much more evil option of the two presented. Your disagreement with that conclusion has no bearing on that fact. It merely demonstrates that you haven't considered the hypothetical closely enough.


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## Queshire

How is it not testable?

The logical fallacy was refering to the false dichotomy.

How is it more evil? One life cut short, one person that will never more know joy, hope, or sorrow, one grieving family, versus a thousand lives cut short, a thousand people that will never more know joy, hope, or sorrow, a thousand grieving families?

It is a common trope that A million is a statistic A Million is a Statistic - Television Tropes & Idioms but that is simply horrible, that's not just a thousand people, that's a thousand individuals. If anything, YOU haven't considered the hypothetical closely enough.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> How is it not testable?



How, exactly, would you propose to test it? It's about as testable as the existence of god, which is to say 'not very.' If you can formulate a test for it, you could sure solve a philosophical point that has been at issue for some time. 

It is more evil because in the instance where you do not shoot the girl you bear no moral responsibility. You did not place her in that predicament. You did not place the other innocent people in their predicament. The moral culpability for everything that has happened rests solely with the bomber. In the event that you shoot her, the moral culpability for her death now rests with you.

Your link has not relevance to the discussion, so I'm not sure what your purpose is in providing it.


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## Queshire

Well, besides the test I ALREADY DID, I'd propose gathering a large amount of people and providing them with a hypothetical situation, ironically, your false dichotomy would be a good one. If the answers given don't show a clear prefrence for one or another, then Morality could not be objective. If it was truly an universal, objective force, then the prefrence would be clear if the people polled where from all cultures, all species, or even from different worlds.

Yes, the bomber is the ultimate villian, but the choice, and the consequences, are still yours to bear. It doesn't matter whether or not you were the one that actually pulled the trigger, it was your choice that sent them to their death. HELL! By your logic Hitler's bloody innocent because he didn't kill the jews himself, just ordered it.

I posted that link because I thought you were arguing that killing the girl was worse because you would see her, probably know her as well, while because the thousands are just faceless masses it'd be better to let them die. It does loose revelance since that wasn't your arguement.


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## Steerpike

Inigo Montoya (speaking off camera to Queshire: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. 

You're going in circles, Queshire. And your arguments are getting more and more ludicrous by the minute. Of course, there is an old adage in debate that you can tell when someone has lost the argument because they drag out Hitler. And your Hitler example is worse than most because it doesn't even make sense. Of course someone who orders killing by others is culpable. You need to stop and think a minute instead of just posting the first thing that comes to mind. You're starting to flail a bit, and I'm beginning to feel embarrassed for you.

Do you actually believe that the moral culpability is the same between Hitler and someone who "refuses" to kill an innocent person? You can retract that silly analogy if you like, I'll pretend I didn't see it. I'll even edit this post to remove all traces of it, just to show what a nice guy I am.

Sheesh.

Next.


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## Queshire

Attacking me does not disprove my claims. That too is a logical fallacy, in particular Ad Hominem. And yes, having taken and got a very good grade in a college logic class, plus just recently refreshing my memory for my argument and exposistion class, I know what Logical Fallacy means, do you?

Just what part of my reasoning is circular? Repeating my previous test? Using the idea that an objective morality would mean that everybody would agree on what is good and what is evil? You have never refuted that. You just claimed that it was untestable. Having come up with two potential tests myself, without going into the potentially thousands of tests that people specifically studying just this issue have most likely come up with, it should be clear that it is quite testable.

I agree that both Hitler and the Nazis as a negative are overused in most arguments, but that does not invalidate my point. You are responsible for your choices whether or not you actually pull the trigger. You might consider it to be refusing to kill an innocent person, I see it as letting thousands of innocent people die.

I suggest instead of putting all that effort into insulting me and fake chivalry you work on strengthing your arguments.


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## Steerpike

Queshire, you haven't made a good counter argument yet. You seem to think that repeating the same poor arguments adds weight to them. It does not. I've already given examples of objective truths that not everyone has agreed on at any given time. One single example would disprove your proposition that if something is objectively true everyone would agree on it.

Why don't you get back on the bench, and we'll call you in when we need you.


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## Queshire

Oh? So you've provided examples of objective truths that not everybody agrees on have you? ^^ Care to point those out for me again?


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## Steerpike

Ah...so you're not reading, you're just trying to move on to your next post. Just go back a few messages. Human history is rife with examples of truths that were not universally accepted at any given time. 

Looking right now at two issues in the news, we can take evolution and anthropogenic global warming. Both of these are either objectively true or false. Either humans evolved or they didn't; either humanity is causing the climate to warm or it is not. But while the truth of the matter is objective in both cases, in neither case is either side of these arguments universally accepted.


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## Queshire

Ah, I see where the misunderstanding was. No, no, no. I never meant to imply that everybody would agree that good and evil are objective if they were objective forces. Simply I meant that if they were objective forces then, whether or not everybody agreed they were objective, people would be influenced by those objective forces in a similar way. This influence would be reflected by a prefrence for one course of action over another in a hypothetical situation, which is what my tests are designed to look for.


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## ascanius

Queshire said:


> Actually, I think it'd be pretty easy to disprove and objective good or evil. If good was objective, then it would be a law of the universe.



LOL. Did you read what I posted.  There are universal laws, killing, rape, lying, betrayal to name a few.  There is no culture where this are considered good.  And to top it off I can Promise you ANY EXAMPLE YOU COME UP WITH I can refute with the ideas I have posted.  Everyone's view of evil/wrong are the same where people disagree are the justifications used.



Queshire said:


> Also, I disagree about being more likely to come up with christianity then the laws of motion. While unlikely to come up with the formal laws, I think it's a lot more likely that somebody would discover "If I do this, then this happens" then spontanously recreating the teachings of the church.



LOL  "While unlikely to come up with formal laws..........Then spontaneously recreating the teaching of the church"  Am I the only one who sees the problem?  It has to work both ways not loaded to support you.  Also in this case how can morality be examined if never allowed to be discovered through interaction.  Would "if I do this, then this happens" be possible if the person was deprived of witnessing the interactions that would lead to an understanding of motion?  No, they wouldn't, the same way morality wouldn't be known if someone was never allowed to experience situations where morality is applicable.



Queshire said:


> @Ascanius: If we view killing as evil without consideration to who / what, then every human would be a sinner from their first bite of solid food as, even if you did not do the killing yourself, you are directly responsible for the plants and animals that die to provide your food.



Hehe.  I find it interesting that you say sinner, I am not concerned with any religious aspect of the argument only the argument itself.  But yes your right, and can you tell me that wasteful killing is favored?  Nope you cannot.  This is a case where the killing is justified, you need to eat. 



Queshire said:


> People do justify all of their actions, nobody does anything without some reason, how long that takes or what it takes to reach that level varies greatly. Comparing Justification and Rationalization is simply a matter of semantics.



NO they DON'T.  Do people justify getting up in the morning, no they just get up.  Do they justify taking out the trash? no it needs to be done they do it.  Do they justify helping an old lady cross the street? nope they don't.  Nor do they justify, eating, sleeping, going to work, paying the bills, walking the dog, saving someone, telling the truth, reading a book, bettering themselves, working out, walking to school, walking, hanging out with friends in their spare time, studying, playing an instrument.  Do you want more?

Semantics: Linguistics. a.the study of meaning.  b.  the study of linguistic development by classifying and examining changes in meaning and form.  3.  the meaning, or an interpretation of the meaning, of a word, sign, sentence, etc.  While I see how you can think it is semantics there is a difference, just look in any dictionary.
I don't respect your argument that it is semantics, it's absurd.  Words have a definite meaning and societies ignorance to those meanings are irrelevant especially when used to further a goal.  For instance the term gender prior to the 70's (I think it was the seventies) was a grammatical term used to distinguish the "gender" or sex denotation of a word, particularly for languages that are gender specific.  Now it is used interchangeably with sex, though it incorrect.  This was purposefully done and could be considered semantics because gender and sex are essentially the same thing even when used correctly.  But changing the meaning of a word to further a goal is wrong.  Seeing that you need a simpler definition of Rationalize how about this.  Rationalize is an attempt to find reason in something, to make comfortable to reason, to make something fit within a specific world view, to invent plausible explanations for acts, opinions, etc., that are actually based on other causes.  Such as the way you rationalize (or make comfortable to your reason) my arguments to be incorrect because you do not like the implications.  Or one might rationalize (find a reason to) going to the store.  Or one might rationalize (find a reason, or make comfortable to reason/thought/world view find an explanation for) what they did .  Or one might rationalize winning the lottery to always picking their children's birthdays.  To justify something is an attempt to make it right or just, to excuse from blame, shame, guilt.  

An attempt to refute an argument through use of semantics is nothing but a childish attempt of attacking the layout of the argument.  It has no purpose save to obscure the actual argument and it leaves you nothing but a dilettante.  Something you have been doing, that whole dichotomy thing, please.  If you are going to argue attack the logic, the argument itself, not words that you are unsure of the meaning, or setup of the argument because you do not like how it is worded or structured.  You bring up a logic class fine, in philosophy the difference between rationalization and justification were brought up and examined.  Surely you are not callow enough to miss the meaning of the argument, I don't think you are.



Queshire said:


> You did cause me to amend my view though. I still don't believe there's an objective good or evil, but I veiw that it is a macro concept decided by society and culture. On an individual level, there's only what society veiws as good or evil and what is justified. For your murderer, yes in the eyes of society, at least American society, he would be viewed as evil, but for himself he would view his actions justified.



If he views it as justified then he knows it is wrong but able to be excused from blame.  how is this different from what I said?  If your going to say that each society determines right and wrong then explain why there are universal truths that cross all societies?  Rape for one is wrong in ANY society/culture, so is betrayal.



Queshire said:


> @All: Since we've gotten to talking about religion, I guess I'll say what I believe in. Though this is more my philsophy then anything.



I'm not talking about religion.  
@JUSTME  I now understand what your whole problem is with the Idea of good and evil and it's connotations.  Let me know if I'm wrong but it is the EMMEDATE association to religion that you have a problem with.



Queshire said:


> Well, besides the test I ALREADY DID, I'd propose gathering a large amount of people and providing them with a hypothetical situation, ironically, your false dichotomy would be a good one. If the answers given don't show a clear prefrence for one or another, then Morality could not be objective. If it was truly an universal, objective force, then the prefrence would be clear if the people polled where from all cultures, all species, or even from different worlds.



LOL.  Of the answeres others give, I think before anyone entrusts anything of importance that those being asked questions should have the ability to comprehend the arguments being presented.  "If the answers given don't show a clear preference for one or another, then Morality could not be objective."  with PREFERENCE,  being the key word, what they feel, or prefer, yes very well thought out plan.  Such as do you have a preference for coke or diet coke, a red shirt or blue.  It's like asking do they like Newtons laws or Relativity, is your preference a flat earth or sphere?  See how easy it is to attack a word in an attempt to refute an argument?  Though in this case it does have a logical point to refute what you said so doesn't quite fit.  There is a reason why the exact meanings of the words have to be considered in an argument and not connotations or social standards of words, it's needed to be precise about what is meant in regards to the argument.  



Queshire said:


> Yes, the bomber is the ultimate villian, but the choice, and the consequences, are still yours to bear. It doesn't matter whether or not you were the one that actually pulled the trigger, it was your choice that sent them to their death. HELL! By your logic Hitler's bloody innocent because he didn't kill the jews himself, just ordered it.



No he did kill them himself because he ORDERED it, he is just as guilty because he used his power in that way.
Steerpike is right in this one.  As Steerpike said "The moral culpability for everything that has happened rests solely with the bomber. In the event that you shoot her, the moral culpability for her death now rests with you."
What makes one life less valuable than a thousand, that life has just as much meaning to her as those thousands of others.  Not to mention it is really easy to say something when not in the situation, much harder when faced with that decision.  I think for the person faced with this dilemma no matter what they choose they are justified or blameless.  Sure the family/s of those involved would be furious but they are influenced by having lost those they love.  This is a situation where all options are evil/wrong and there is no right answer.

I'm surprised only one person had anything to say about what I posted?  I was hoping more would respond and poke holes in my argument that I hadn't seen.


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## Queshire

I think it would be good to take a break for a moment, and rexamine the base arguments.

I am arguing that it is possible to test the objectivity or subjectivity of good and evil. If objective a poll of people from various cultures around the world will show a clear prefrence for one course of action over another.

Thinking further on the subject, I have come to believe that there is an objective element to morality, however that objectivity is not a result of some universal cosmic force of goodness. It results from the animal instincts left over from evolution, and as such beings evolved from other species would have a different set of objective beliefs. As a result of instincts, this objective part of morality can not be considered good or evil. I still maintain that good or evil is decided by a society's cultural conciouss, and doesn't apply to one's own actions. One's own actions are goverened by what is justified, however what it takes to justify something and how long it takes depends on numerous factors, from empathy, the view of good and evil in the society you live in, your objective instincts, hell, even how much sleep you get.

I am also arguing that it can not be said that not shooting an innocent girl but in the process dooming thousands is inheirantly less evil then shooting the girl to save those thousands. In either case, your choice determines who lives and who dies, regardless of who pulls the trigger, and you must take responsiblity for that choice. I still think that in most stories the hero would go with a third option though, there's no reason those should be the only two choices.


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## Queshire

ugh.... why'd you have to post that long thing while I was typing -_-...

Firstly, Those are human laws, not universal ones. Frankly the universe doesn't care whether you kill, lie, rape, or betray.

As for good examples of each, well for killing there's killing for food, you admitted that as well, lying there's lies like Santa Clause is real or lying to spare someone's feelings, betrayal there could be betraying your country to end a century long war that was causing the death of millions, not an example from real life, but hey, this is a writing forum. Rape is a harder one, while never considered good, it was considered acceptable to rape the women of countries you were at war with, or some situation where it would be neccesary to save a life. Yes, you can argue that only justifies it, but that just goes along with my argument that on a personal level actions are guided by justifications, which in turn are shaped by a number of factors.

Secondly... yeah, ok, not my best work there. Still, I find it more likely to come up with a set of rules based off observable, repeating events without influence then it is to independently develop a certain religion. That particular part isn't about whether morality would be developed or not, but whether a specific type of morality, or more specifcally religion would be developed.

Well..................... For wasteful killing being favored.... Well, there's any form of hunting for sport. Big game hunters killing lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!) and stuffing them. While lessened now days, that is still acceptable. Further there's the pioneers killing large number of buffalo on their way west, and even modern day Japanese fishers catching sharks, slicing off their fins for shark fin soup then tossing the finless shark back in the water, causing it to drown as it can't move to filter water over its gills. Oh, and gladiators, can't foget about them.

Justifications:
Waking up: Needing to get something acomplished, hungry, needing to pee.
Taking out the trash: Looks ugly, stinks, need more room for more trash
Old Lady crossing the street: Improving their reputation, empathy, a bid to increase good karma, desire for a merit badge.
Eating: Hungry, don't want to die.
Sleeping: Tired, don't want to die.
Going to work: Need money to not die
Paying Bills: Need service bills pay for to not die.
Walking the dog: Relaxation, dog will get fat if not done.

And so on, people justify every act they do, they may put little thought into it to the point that it's subconcious, but they still justify it.

The only meaning words have is what we humans give them. Language is a human invention. If you replace every time I used Justification with Rationalization my arguments will be exactly the same.

From wikipedia; "A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black-and-white thinking, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there is at least one additional option."

He presented an argument that was either you shoot the girl and she dies, or the bomb explodes and thousands die, when there were numerous possible third options. It is a textbook example of a false dichotomy, which is the particular term I learned for that fallacy, and I'm not afraid to point that out.

HE doesn't veiw himself as wrong, he views himself as justified, it is others that veiw him as evil.

Fine, fine, another instance of semantics, replace that word with trend and the argument is still exactly the same.

What makes a thousand lives less valuable then one life? Take that girl's one life. Now add another life just like it. Do this again, and again, and again, until you get to a thousand. Those aren't just a thousand people they are a thousand individuals, each equal to the girl. Steerpike claimed that killing the girl is worse as you would be pulling the trigger, while it wouldn't be your fault if the bomb exploded killing thousands. My personal choice would be to save as many people as possible, but I would acknowledge that I would be as responsible for that girl's death as I would be for the thousands of deaths resulting from the bomb going off.


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## Caged Maiden

I dunno.  I really don't want to enter this, but I just want to add that people do all sorts of things without thinking AT ALL.  Some of them will try to backpedal once they've caused offense to another, but most will not be able to justify WHY they've acted how they have.

An example?  No thanks, because they're not going over so well in this thread.  But suffice to say that I do not believe people justify their actions as a rule, and can cite MANY examples from my life where I acted on compulsion, indifference, or apathy, sometimes to the detriment of other people.  I don't think I am necessarily evil (read disclaimer below) but then, there are people who would consider some of my decisions more than simply immoral.

Disclaimer:  I probably suffer from some sort of personality disorder and have been known to display antisocial behavior.


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## Queshire

you know what, screw this, I know what I believe and that's enough I see no more point arguing with you guys =_=


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## gavintonks

Kronos or time was meant to be the creator of the universe, and was chaos personified. He had 2 twins born of the mother creation fed by the milk of the cosmos through the milky was as any children would be. The twins each took a role the first one born have first choice, he epitomized his father as chaos and destruction and his brother became creation and birth. One is creative destruction and created all the evils and the other was creative constructions and creates all that is good.
Destruction sees creation as an abomination of the natural order of things and seeks to unbind it all the time creating energy and chaos.There fore the creation and destructive forces create motion and release energy which keeps things ongoing, however the thought of creation was made and implemented, therefore we are in atrophy being unbound from our existence, there fore we can tell the future because it is our past. We are loosing energy until our creation is unbound


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## Fnord

It would be a false dichotomy if the situation actually existed (because in the real world there _are_ more than two options for such a scenario).  A hypothetical situation is supposed to be set up with limitations so that _only_ a given number of choices can be made in order to get at the crux of an idea or argument. Saying "Well, we could do this and this and this instead" defeats the entire purpose of the exercise.  

It would be like using the Prisoner's Dilemma to illustrate the possible outcomes of two people's choices in isolation and saying "well that's a false dichotomy because I'd try to tap a morse code message to the other prisoner through the wall in order to collude."  That's not how it works.  

Sorry, that was bothering me.


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## Aidan of the tavern

As an irrelevent anecdote I was at an Open University tutorial last night and we were looking at the works of Plato, and the conversations he wrote down between Socrates and random people.  Thousands of years ago Socrates made people descend into confusion and frustration by trying to get them to define things like courage and virtue, and we were none the wiser last night.

I'm just making random comments now, but I believe that these perceptions of good/evil etc, are about how we as individuals view the world, so it is up to us to find an answer that satisfies us personally.  A friendly debate with Steerpike helped me to work things out in a way that was good enough for me, at least for the time being, but while it is a personal thing I doubt if there is a universal answer.  Opinions will vary somewhat on any subject, morality included, so it seems to me that the best we can do is to live life by our creed of what is good.  I suddenly feel the need to quote a remarkable person:

_"you must be the change you wish to see in the world."_


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## Devor

In the Catholic Church, there's a framework for discussion morality issues which most people, even most Catholics, aren't aware of.  But it's similar framework used by the legal system in establishing precedent and common law.

I don't mention it because I want this to be about religion or anything else.  But I think the discussion is lacking a good framework for understanding the question.

But to take a piece of it, let's define "murder."

_The willful killing of an innocent human life._

According to the Church and its framework, any action which matches the definition of the above statement is _always_ wrong.  But you can pick at the definition to create situations which _might or might not be wrong_, for which the arguments exist and must be weighed to make a judgement.  Let's take a look.

1)  _Willful_.  If I am being coerced by the threat of a thousand people dying, then killing the innocent girl is not _willful_.  I don't want to do it.  I'm being coerced.  Consequently, the morality of the action is an open question.

2)  _Innocent_.  The person was convicted in a court of law, is a warrior on the battlefield, or has otherwise done horrible things to deserve the punishment.  Maybe there's a better way to deal with this person, and maybe I don't have the authority to declare his guilt.  But if the person somehow deserves it, the morality of the action becomes an open question which must be weighed and judged and debated to find a clear result.  It's no longer on the same scale.

3)  _Human_.  The person for whatever reason can't be seen as a person.  Well, that's bull, but you can try and see it that way.

Lastly, sometimes there are people who do something even though they know it's wrong.  If they know killing is evil, they aren't trying to justify it.

So, here's the assumption, and the question.  _Murder_ is _evil_, but only if it matches the above definition.  First) Can anyone find a case where a large group of society saw "Murder" as acceptable without trying to undermine one of the three elements of its definition?  Second)  Does your example mean the definition needs to be refined (for instance, the assumptions and definition can be tweaked easily to account for euphenasia, and the definition of "innocent" can be expanded to mean "non-threatening"), or does it actually prove that no evil act can be universally defined?

I want to make clear, though, I'm not trying to prove anything in particular, although I'm sure it's obvious what I believe.  I just thought posting a possible framework would help the discussion.


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## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> It would be a false dichotomy if the situation actually existed (because in the real world there _are_ more than two options for such a scenario).  A hypothetical situation is supposed to be set up with limitations so that _only_ a given number of choices can be made in order to get at the crux of an idea or argument. Saying "Well, we could do this and this and this instead" defeats the entire purpose of the exercise.
> 
> It would be like using the Prisoner's Dilemma to illustrate the possible outcomes of two people's choices in isolation and saying "well that's a false dichotomy because I'd try to tap a morse code message to the other prisoner through the wall in order to collude."  That's not how it works.
> 
> Sorry, that was bothering me.



Thank you.


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## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> Opinions will vary somewhat on any subject, morality included, so it seems to me that the best we can do is to live life by our creed of what is good.  I suddenly feel the need to quote a remarkable person:



Yes, I think ultimately when it comes down to determining our own actions, this is all we can really do. Our various conceptions of what is right and good may come from different sources, but I find that in many aspects they are similar across peoples and cultures, and if everyone tried to follow this advice we would be better off.


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## Steerpike

Devor said:


> 1)  _Willful_.  If I am being coerced by the threat of a thousand people dying, then killing the innocent girl is not _willful_.  I don't want to do it.  I'm being coerced.  Consequently, the morality of the action is an open question.



I like what you've said in this post, Devor, and I also like your definition and framework. I disagree with this interpretation with respect to my hypothetical, though. I would still characterize shooting the girl as willful. Some definitions of murder use the word "deliberate" instead, and I think you'd probably agree that if that word is applied it would qualify. I do not think there is a moral justification for taking the girl's life, personally, and if that very unlikely hypothetical were ever to arise, I question how many people could actually do it. Not many, I suspect. I think most would feel the innate wrongness of it.

I suppose one situation that arguably fits your definition of murder, but is not generally considered to be murder by societies, is during warfare. Think of the bombing of Dresden, for example. Or Hiroshima. The bombings were willful, undoubtedly some innocents were killed, and the dead were human.


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## Devor

I've seen deliberate used as well, Steerpike.  "Willful" has additional connotations inside Church's theology, however, which "deliberate" tends to lack.  It essentially means _this is what I want_, rather than _this is what I choose_.  It would include collateral damage, for instance, because even though you _choose_ to act in a way that results in their deaths, those deaths weren't what you wanted.  Your actual target was something else.

In the case of the little girl, even though you might choose to kill her, what you actually want is to prevent the extreme number of deaths.  Thus it isn't "willful," even if it is "deliberate," and becomes, by this standard anyways, a moral question because it no longer matches the defined evil action.

I happen to agree that killing the little girl would usually be wrong, but I don't rule out the possibility that some specific scenario might exist which would somehow change that (What if she were asking you to?).  Regardless, I would not place killing the girl on par with murder if there was an overwhelming element of coercion.

Enemy combatants are usually considered to not be "innocent" when the definition is elaborated on.  Still, even accounting for enemy combatants and collateral damage, I think your point about warfare is still largely valid.  I am certain that people on a large scale sometimes accept evil actions such as murder as a "necessity" of warfare.


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## Queshire

It doesn't matter if it's a hypothetical situation or not, most problems dealth with using logic are hypothetical to begin with, that doesn't stop it from being a logical fallacy. I stayed within the scenario described, I did not change anything, and I still imagined third choices that were not mentioned.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> It doesn't matter if it's a hypothetical situation or not, most problems dealth with using logic are hypothetical to begin with, that doesn't stop it from being a logical fallacy. I stayed within the scenario described, I did not change anything, and I still imagined third choices that were not mentioned.



*shakes head*

You really don't understand the difference do you? I don't know what to tell you, other than you simply do not understand the logical fallacy or how a hypothetical works. There's no way around that. You can continue to make the same points repeatedly, but you are simply wrong. Sorry.

Moving on to people who actually think about what others are saying...


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## Steerpike

Devor said:


> It would include collateral damage, for instance, because even though you _choose_ to act in a way that results in their deaths, those deaths weren't what you wanted.  Your actual target was something else.



Yes, I think that is true in most cases regarding collateral damage. The intention is to bomb a military target, but it is done with knowledge of civilian deaths (or a substantial likelihood of such deaths). I don't know about Dresden, but I know that with Hiroshima, although there were military targets there it was also considered that a big blow to the civilian population might weaken the will of the Japanese. So it seems there was at least some intent to kill civilians. At least, among some people.



Devor said:


> I happen to agree that killing the little girl would usually be wrong, but I don't rule out the possibility that some specific scenario might exist which would somehow change that (What if she were asking you to?).  Regardless, I would not place killing the girl on par with murder if there was an overwhelming element of coercion.



Yes, I think you can add elements to the hypothetical, tweak it, so that it comes out differently, or at least heads in that direction. I left it in pretty stark terms to present that particular case. If the girl is asking you to, now you've got a very interesting situation. What about if someone is asking you to when there are now other lives at stake?

Enemy combatants are usually considered to not be "innocent" when the definition is elaborated on.  Still, even accounting for enemy combatants and collateral damage, I think your point about warfare is still largely valid.  I am certain that people on a large scale sometimes accept evil actions such as murder as a "necessity" of warfare.[/QUOTE]


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## Queshire

How am I misunderstanding it? You give a hypothetical situation, you offer two choices and act like those are the only two choices when in reality there's plenty of third choices. That is the text book example of a false dichotomy. Further, the purpose of a hypothetical situation is to imagine a possible situation and think through the results of that hypothetical. Your purpose in using that hypothetical is to prove a certain point, but as far as I can see, it utterly fails to prove that point.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> How am I misunderstanding it? You give a hypothetical situation, you offer two choices and act like those are the only two choices when in reality there's plenty of third choices. That is the text book example of a false dichotomy. Further, the purpose of a hypothetical situation is to imagine a possible situation and think through the results of that hypothetical. Your purpose in using that hypothetical is to prove a certain point, but as far as I can see, it utterly fails to prove that point.



See Fnord's post, above. He stated the reasons why perfectly. They've been presented to you numerous times, in fact. You're wrong. I have no faith at this point that you're honest enough to admit it, so I'll leave off here. Feel free to have the last word.


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## Queshire

-Your situation is a text book example of a false dichotomy.

-It doesn't matter whether it's hypothetical or not. Logical fallacies often apply to hypothetical situations. 

-Considering you're more likely to think logically in regards to a hypothetical situation then a real life one, logical fallacies become more important. 

-Pointing out a logical fallacy does not defeat the point of a hypothetical situation, the point is to imagine the results of a certain situation. 

-It does defeat your point in using that hypothetical situation, namely that shooting the girl is more evil, but not the hypothetical situation by itself. 

-Further, since it's easily debatable that shooting the girl would be less evil then letting all those people die, your hypothetical situation defeats itself.

Unless you can refute these points, then you're the one wrong.


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## cliche

Looking back at what I have said I have to admit that the last part 'good and evil impossible to distinguish between' is completely wrong and I apologize. I do still believe that in certain circumstances an act can be argued being both good and evil but I do agree that at times there are things that do point out to a genuinely evil action.


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## Steerpike

cliche said:


> Looking back at what I have said I have to admit that the last part 'good and evil impossible to distinguish between' is completely wrong and I apologize. I do still believe that in certain circumstances an act can be argued being both good and evil but I do agree that at times there are things that do point out to a genuinely evil action.



The concepts are interesting to play with in writing. Or to turn on their heads.

Have you ever read _Villains by Necessity_, by Eve Forward? She does some playing around with ideas of good and evil in society in that book: Amazon.com: Villains by Necessity (9780812522280): Eve Forward: Books


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> -Your situation is a text book example of a false dichotomy.



A false dichotomy is when an argument is presented as being between two positions, when a third position exists.

Steerpike's hypothetical is a question of two possible actions, not of two possible positions.  If there is a false dichotomy, it would not be that there's only two outcomes, but that there's only two ways to view the outcomes - good or evil.  A third possible position might be that neither are "good," but that one is necessary.  However, the limits of a hypothetical situation do not themselves represent a false dichotomy.  Rather, the point of the hypothetical is to evaluate a given position against extreme situations to determine the validity of a position.

Admittedly, you're right, hypotheticals present extreme and absolute situations which are not usually relevant, unless you were to discuss extreme and absolute topics like the reality of "good" and "evil."  Oh wait.




> -Further, since it's easily debatable that shooting the girl would be less evil then letting all those people die, your hypothetical situation defeats itself.



It is an easy position to take, and many people take it when presented with such hypotheticals.  A similar example discussed in my ethics class in college was the prospect of going back in time to kill Hitler, as a baby. 

The thing is, what's being presented is in many ways a choice between the "rational" position, utilitarian survival of the most people, and an "emotional" one, the gut says it's wrong.  In college, I said "Kill Hitler, no doubt."  Today I have two children, and I can't bring myself to say it.  Please don't be offended, but you may have a greater appreciation of the ethical dilemmas of the question when you're similarly older.


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## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> I suppose one situation that arguably fits your definition of murder, but is not generally considered to be murder by societies, is during warfare. Think of the bombing of Dresden, for example. Or Hiroshima. The bombings were willful, undoubtedly some innocents were killed, and the dead were human.



I'm a bit late in response in terms of how quick this debate is going, but you raise an interesting point on warfare Steerpike.  At the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales last year I was lucky to be at an interview with Victor Greg, who is 90+ and had been in Dresden when the bombs fell, as a prisoner.  His description of the incendiary fires sucking up civilians really showed me why innocents should never be brought into the warfare.  I do not believe in the right to kill as such, but I do think that if you go into a battlefield with the intention of killing people there's no reason why you shouldn't be killed in the process.  I'm not saying that people who take to the battlefield should all be killed, but it seems to me that if they head out with the intention of killing then it figuritively represents them signing a piece of paper saying "I aknowledge that in attempting to kill these people I'm giving them the right to kill me"


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## Queshire

Now you're just arguing the definition of false dichotomy.

The fact remains that with in the hypothetical situation as described, without changing anything, there are numerous third options that somebody could take besides the two presented, and in a majority of stories where such an event would take place, the hero would most likely CHOOSE one of those third options. I hope with all of us being writers we can agree on that, yes?

If you don't want to call it a false dichotomy due to a technicality that's fine, but I think it's clear that, as the hypothetical situation is specifically outlined, it's not neccesary to choose one over the other.

I agree that neither choice is ideal, a third option would, again, be best. What I'm trying to get across is that you can't say that not shooting the girl and letting those thousands of people die is automatically the best option like steerpike suggests. There is as much value acting rationally as there is acting emotionally. I personally side with rationally, that is my opinion, I am a very logically minded person, but I maintain that neither side is automatically better then the other.


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## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> I'm a bit late in response in terms of how quick this debate is going, but you raise an interesting point on warfare Steerpike.  At the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales last year I was lucky to be at an interview with Victor Greg, who is 90+ and had been in Dresden when the bombs fell, as a prisoner.  His description of the incendiary fires sucking up civilians really showed me why innocents should never be brought into the warfare.  I do not believe in the right to kill as such, but I do think that if you go into a battlefield with the intention of killing people there's no reason why you shouldn't be killed in the process.  I'm not saying that people who take to the battlefield should all be killed, but it seems to me that if they head out with the intention of killing then it figuritively represents them signing a piece of paper saying "I aknowledge that in attempting to kill these people I'm giving them the right to kill me"



Yes, I think that is true. It at least puts the soldiers are a certain moral footing with respect to one another. Unfortunately, it seems that war is often won by beating the will from the civilian population. Trained soldiers, mercenaries, and the like may continue to fight for some time, but if the population of a country loses any desire to support the a war, it is harder to proceed for long.

I'm sure Dresden must have been horrific. How many people were killed? Thirty thousand? The majority must have been innocent civilians.


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## Devor

Steerpike said:


> Yes, I think you can add elements to the hypothetical, tweak it, so that it comes out differently, or at least heads in that direction. I left it in pretty stark terms to present that particular case. If the girl is asking you to, now you've got a very interesting situation. What about if someone is asking you to when there are now other lives at stake?



I think there are people with a certain level of responsibility and authority - if the girl is asking you to, or if the President was on the phone giving you orders, or if you were a soldier or a police officer specifically responsible for protecting these people - or all three - I think the balance of right and wrong starts to even out.

I cannot, however, envision a situation wherein shooting an innocent girl becomes the required moral choice, primarily because you are responsible for your own actions, and not for the actions of the mad bomber's.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> What I'm trying to get across is that you can't say that not shooting the girl and letting those thousands of people die is automatically the best option like steerpike suggests.



I didn't say it was the "best" option. There is no good option in the hypothetical. But not shooting the little girl is the least evil option (in fact, it is not evil, whereas shooting her is an evil act (and people could argue, I suppose, how evil on the scale of evilness). People may differ on whether they consider that "best" or not.


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## Queshire

Before you are responsible for your own actions, you are responsible for your own choices, as action follows choice.

EDIT: If I amend my previous post to read less evil instead of best, my argument would remain the same.


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## Steerpike

Devor said:


> I cannot, however, envision a situation wherein shooting an innocent girl becomes the required moral choice, primarily because you are responsible for your own actions, and not for the actions of the mad bomber's.



Yes. This is it exactly. At the end of the day, if you do not shoot, you leave all of the blood on the hands of the bomber. You are not responsible for what he does, or for the situation he has put all of the innocents into. If you do shoot, you've now inserted yourself deliberately into the situation and made the choice to be responsible for the death of that child.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> EDIT: If I amend my previous post to read less evil instead of best, my argument would remain the same.



It might stay the same, but it still isn't persuasive because you are choosing an evil act over a non-evil act.


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## Queshire

Oh, and I'd like to point out that what you're doing right there is clearly justifying/rationalizing/whatevering the deaths of those thousands. It is your choice that resulted in those thousands of people dying, whether or not you actually built the bomb.

EDIT: As the saying goes; All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> It is your choice that resulted in those thousands of people dying, whether or not you actually built the bomb.



No.

/10char


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## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> Yes, I think that is true. It at least puts the soldiers are a certain moral footing with respect to one another. Unfortunately, it seems that war is often won by beating the will from the civilian population. Trained soldiers, mercenaries, and the like may continue to fight for some time, but if the population of a country loses any desire to support the a war, it is harder to proceed for long.
> 
> I'm sure Dresden must have been horrific. How many people were killed? Thirty thousand? The majority must have been innocent civilians.



I'm not sure of the numbers but it was horrific certainly.  I can't find the interview which is a big shame, but in this one he talks about Dresden briefly at the start.  Really interesting while we are on the subject of warfare.


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## Queshire

I don't get the /10char thing, but yes, you are responsible for your choices. It's simple, you choose to shoot the girl the girl dies, those people live, you choose to not shoot the girl, she lives and those people die. That there's a mad bomber resonsible for the whole mess in the first place is circumstance that justify whichever choice you choose.


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## Ireth

@Queshire: The forum forbids people to post anything that's under ten characters long; the /10char upped Steerpike's character count from three to ten so he could post properly.


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## Queshire

ah, gotcha. Anyways, the existence of the mad bomber either doesn't matter in which case both are evil, or it justifies either case in which case they're both non-evil. As has been argued against me earlier, you can't have it affect only one side or another for your benefit.


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> If you don't want to call it a false dichotomy due to a technicality that's fine, but I think it's clear that, as the hypothetical situation is specifically outlined, it's not neccesary to choose one over the other.



Queshire, what I think we're trying to get at, is that you should make a good-faith effort to respond to someone else's points, rather than dismiss them as fallacious simply because you disagree with Steerpike's conclusions.  Disagree with his conclusions, discount the hypothetical as unrepresentative of the real-world situation, but at least acknowledge that his points are fairly rational, and that the hypothetical is a fairly common and perfectly sound logical tool in these discussions.  You're talking about _absolute concepts_, and thus they should remain valid in _extreme scenarios_ such as the one Steerpike offered.




> What I'm trying to get across is that you can't say that not shooting the girl and letting those thousands of people die is automatically the best option like steerpike suggests. There is as much value acting rationally as there is acting emotionally. I personally side with rationally, that is my opinion, I am a very logically minded person, but I maintain that neither side is automatically better then the other.



As a Catholic, one of the things which I believe as a tenet of faith is that the intellect is only one of the human faculties which we have to judge and accept the truth of a situation.  We also have what for right now I'll refer to as the "gut."  As there is only one truth, the two should always line up for every given situation, or one of them isn't working right.  They break down all the time.

I'm not going to try and prove that to you.  I only want you to understand where I'm coming from.  Because my gut tells me very loudly and very clearly that killing the girl is wrong in the scenario Steerpike presented, I accept it above the shallow intellectual statement of "save the most lives."  Consequently, I should reconsider the validity of the statement and come to a new conclusion.

I am responsible for my own actions ahead of the "fate of mankind," something over which I have no further control.  A Joker with a bomb and a threat is not my concern.  My concern is my own two hands and what they do, the words I use and the thoughts I think.  I haven't accepted any greater responsibility.  Nobody has entrusted me with power over life and death.  I don't claim the moral superiority or the political authority to make such a choice as to kill an innocent little girl.  How could I take away her life?  Because a madman made me?  Nobody makes me do anything, there is always a choice, and I choose not to claim any right to abuse another human person, who doesn't deserve it, who wouldn't understand it.  Maybe it would be different if I was a soldier, if all of society signed a contract giving me that responsibility and that power, but they haven't.  The wall between me and her still stands, and I have no right to violate it.

Here's the real kicker.  It wouldn't even matter if the girl was in the blast zone.  I would be wrong to hurt her.


----------



## Steerpike

Devor said:


> Here's the real kicker.  It wouldn't even matter if the girl was in the blast zone.  I would be wrong to hurt her.



That is quite a kicker, Devor. And I agree with you.


----------



## Queshire

I have been making a good faith effort to respond to the point he makes, namely that I disagree with it and I don't think shooting the girl is automatically worse then letting thousands of people die. After intially point out that it was a false dichotomy, I have only been defending my stance that it is a false dichotomy which you all have been attacking.

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on the rest. I view that all things in this world are interconnected. Our actions can cause effects long after we aren't personally involved. Surely you know those what if stories where one little choice going differently causes a huge domino effect resulting in all sorts of things changing? You can say say what you want about responsiblity, but it remains that if that one choice had gone differently trememdous things would change in the world.

EDIT: You say that as if letting those thousands of people die so she could live wouldn't hurt her. Do you have any idea of what kind of survivor's guilt that would leave on a poor little girl? To know that because you are alive all those people are dead?


----------



## Caged Maiden

I watched a documentary about Amish people recently, and I think it was a stand-out example of goodness for me.  A crazy guy went to an Amish schoolhouse and separated the boys from the girls at gunpoint.  Then once the boys were gone, he started shooting the girls.  I don't remember how many he killed, I think it was about a dozen, then he killed himself.  It was obviously an evil act, one that made no sense.  So the Amish people mourned for their daughters, but then went to the shooter's family who were appalled by what their 30 year old son had done, and they brought cakes and told the shooter's family that they mourned his death as well.  

It's an easy thing to determine evil when it's killing people, but wrath and malice and hatred breed evil as well, and people are not so quick to curb these things.  I look to that example and marvel at the goodness and quality of such morals when you can bridge the gap between like that and forgive the killer of your child enough to mourn his sad death as well.

Evil acts are as natural as good acts to humans, and most people can easily declare themselves "good" because they haven't killed or maimed or raped someone, but how about the hatreds we harbor or the hurtful things we speak, or the selfishness we display daily?  Are those things not evil merely because life hasn't been lost?

I think a large percentage of people consider themselves good, but in truth, the evilness is merely waiting, biding it's time deep within until it is unleashed, and it is a rare person whose soul is truly pure.  We've just never had to prove our goodness nor had a proper catalyst to show our evilness.


----------



## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> You say that as if letting those  thousands of people die so she could live wouldn't hurt her. Do you have any idea of what kind of survivor's guilt that would leave on a poor little girl? To know that because you are alive all those people are dead?



Again, the responsibility for all of that rests with the bomber, who is the one who has brought the whole situation about. You're not the one doing that to the girl, simply by not killing her. You seem to be forgetting the conscious acts of the bomber in the whole hypothetical.

And I suggest we just drop the 'false dichotomy' issue and proceed on the general subject without it. If you can't see the distinction we're making by now, it is not likely you are going to.


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## Queshire

you guys are the ones that keep bringing it up, I have only been defending my position.

And really, try telling yourself you're not responsible when you see the destruction caused by the bomb, the news coverage of the funerals, the names and faces of the deceased, the flat out accusastions of the grieving family members, then imagine all of that happening to a little girl.

You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.

Were's supposed to be writers here people try imagining this in the context of a story!


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.



If I didn't have my "gut," I would be using my logic to justify being the bomber.  I'm not kidding.


----------



## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> You use emotion to vouch for letting those people die, then claim logic to excuse your responsibility for those deaths.



If you think anyone other than the bomber is responsible for those deaths, then you are so far removed from the reality of the situation that there's not much point in debating the matter further. The fundamental starting positions seem to be irreconcilable. Hopefully you'll never be in a position where you can exercise authority or power over other individuals, because I think you'd do so without conscience, clinging to any rationalization to justify whatever you feel like.

There are situations under which you would be the bomber. The same doesn't hold true for me.


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## Queshire

Right back at you. I would rather support a leader that would sacrifice the few for the many then one that would let thousands of innocents die and try to rationalize it due to not being the one pulling the actual trigger.

EDIT: Ugh... look, can you at least admit that both options are horrible and that there's no one right answer, it comes down to personal prefrence? That's all I ask. If you can't do that, well...


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> EDIT: Ugh... look, can you at least admit that both options are horrible and that there's no one right answer, it comes down to personal prefrence? That's all I ask. If you can't do that, well...



I can agree that both options are clearly horrible, and that a reasonable, rational person can make either choice without deserving to be called a horrible human being.  But I can't agree that it's a matter of "personal preference."  Whenever you're restrained to two wildly different choices, one must almost certainly be the better choice by any given standard.

Let's try this.  You agree that in most ordinary circumstances, I would have no right to harm her?  Can you specify at what point, under what circumstances, in your opinion, that right is acquired?


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## Caged Maiden

Queshire said:


> I view that all things in this world are interconnected. Our actions can cause effects long after we aren't personally involved. Surely you know those what if stories where one little choice going differently causes a huge domino effect resulting in all sorts of things changing? You can say say what you want about responsibility, but it remains that if that one choice had gone differently tremendous things would change in the world.



I can imagine in the above scenario that the families of the masses killed would not agree if the little girl was saved rather than their loved ones, but then, they didn't have to choose to kill her.  Sometimes it's hard to make a choice when there is no good choice to be made.  Guilt is a powerful thing. 

Think of all the charities that use it.  When you see the abused animals on Saturday mornings or the starving children of Africa.  Am I to believe that NOT donating my money to their foundation is like neglecting my pet or snatching food out of those kids' hands?  They sure try to make me feel like it is.  And what if I DO give them money?  Is my donation going to stop a single animal from being tossed out on the street or feed a child whose family is so poor they can't even feed themselves?

Guilt and conscience... everyone's is different, and I think the overriding factor governing to what depths we can morally sink.  Some people would feel more guilty killing a little girl.  They might see the face of their own daughter as they stood there, wanting to pull the trigger to save thousands of people.  Other people might easily pull the trigger in hope that they were ultimately doing the right thing in saving many people.  But, who's to say the madman doesn't blow up the people, himself and you after she's dead.  If you believe in the Christian God will he forgive you of murder?  Even those without faith in a god might still worry for the sake of their soul if they willingly pull the trigger on an innocent child.  

While it's rational to want to save more lives over one in this case, how about a multitude of other decisions people make every day that are selfish and put innocents in danger?  People choose not to vaccinate their children against serious diseases which kill children.  Our herd immunity is failing and diseases are coming back that haven't killed in large numbers in a century.  Can I blame those people if my baby gets measles and dies?  They chose something for themselves but endangered many others with their choice.  

My point is that the hypothetical situation is an extreme situation, but people choose every day to ignore the welfare of hundreds or thousands of people, yet we do not call them evil for making their choice (even if it means their own unvaccinated child pays the ultimate price, or my baby who's too young to receive his vaccination).


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## Queshire

Ok, maybe using the word prefrence wasn't good, a matter of personal belief then?

I agree that one certainly seems better then the other, but that is a matter of personal belief. It is my personal belief that killing one to save thousands is the better option.

As for at what point you gain the right to harm another.... Well, all else being equal? When the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.


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## Steerpike

Devor said:


> Let's try this.  You agree that in most ordinary circumstances, I would have no right to harm her?  Can you specify at what point, under what circumstances, in your opinion, that right is acquired?



Yes. I agree with you again. You have no right to harm her; to do so is moral. You have no right to by force deprive the girl of her life as a means to some end. No right whatsoever, and the act is in and of itself an evil act. You can't control what the bomber is doing, but you can control what you do. That's where your own moral determination comes in. If you open up the hypothetical to other actions, then you try anything and everything you can do to stop the bombing, but under no circumstances do you kill the girl to achieve it.


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## Devor

So if two people could be saved,  I could kill her?


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## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> When the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.



That probably opens the door up to as much abuse and human suffering as any stance in human history. It is easily used to excuse the torture of prisoners to extract information from them, to set aside due process and human rights to go after a perceived threat. All you have to do is tell yourself that there is a greater good and anything is excusable.


----------



## Steerpike

Devor said:


> So if two people could be saved,  I could kill her?



Or, if you could save one 'more valuable' person according to a greater good justification, you'd be OK under Queshire's reasoning.


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## Steerpike

anihow said:


> My point is that the hypothetical situation is an extreme situation, but people choose every day to ignore the welfare of hundreds or thousands of people, yet we do not call them evil for making their choice (even if it means their own unvaccinated child pays the ultimate price, or my baby who's too young to receive his vaccination).



Yeah...I think the human race is largely selfish and individuals exhibit a callous disregard for the health and well-being of one another. Where that crosses a line into "evil" is hard to pinpoint. The extremes, like in my hypothetical, are easy. You shoot an innocent little girl, you're an evil person. The close cases are always the tough ones.


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## Queshire

*shrug* it's not perfect, nothing in this world is, but yes, everything else being equal, no idenity, no other options, no extenuating circumstances, if the choice was simply kill one person to save two or don't kill one person and let two die, then yes, I would kill the one person to save the two.

EDIT: If, because of your choice, you let thousands die, you are evil as well.


----------



## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> *shrug* it's not perfect, nothing in this world is, but yes, everything else being equal, no idenity, no other options, no extenuating circumstances, if the choice was simply kill one person to save two or don't kill one person and let two die, then yes, I would kill the one person to save the two.



I don't think you would, because when actually confronted with it I doubt most people, including you, could actually take that action. But the fact that you'd want to do it makes you a sick individual. You should probably look into therapy and stay clear of small, defenseless animals.


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## Caged Maiden

maybe if it weren't shooting this would be an easier question.  How about this.  The madman wanted you to rape the little girl...  Anyone can easily say they will pull a trigger and impersonally kill someone.  How about we make it more personal.  You rape the little girl, she lives, and all those other people live... Do you do it?


----------



## Queshire

The point of a hypothetical situation, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread, is to examine a certian situation in a controlled environment. What would happen in an equivilant real life situation doesn't matter. Yes, I agree, in a real life situation I would be paralyzed by fear and inaction and would likely not be able to go through with the act. But if I was forced to choose between one person dying and a thousand people dying, and I couldn't not answer, then I would choose to save the most lives every time.

Once more, attacking me does not invalidate my arguments.

EDIT: I disagree, that is harder choice.... It strikes me as weird how something that somebody lives through is considered worse then flat out killing them, but there you have it. That is a much harder question. I would have to say that I would try to find a third option, but if that's not possible.... I simply don't know......


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## Steerpike

I don't think most people could follow through on Anihow's hypothetical even if they thought it was the best option. Even if you somehow reasoned that it was OK to rape the girl under that situation, could any person here actually physically perform the act (I'm tying not to get too crude, but you see what I'm getting at)? I don't think so. You'd have to on some level be aroused, or at least be able to arouse yourself to rape the child. I can't imagine how that is possible.

If another person was in the room with a gun and saw that the second person was going to rape the child (or shoot her) I think the additional person there would be justified in shooting the second person to protect the child. How's that for a twist


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## Devor

Here's a hypothetical for you.

I'm a market research consultant (I'm not) looking at sales data for two companies, one is Target and one is Duane Reade, a pharmacy store which in many locations sells alcohol.  I find that by cross-referencing the market data, I can pinpoint with 95% accuracy whether someone is a drunk driver and generate a list of addresses and telephone numbers where these people live.

This is not a remotely unlikely scenario.  In fact, the 5% discrepancy would overwhelmingly be people who shop for someone else, and the other person is the drunk driver.  I could make observations to weed those people out and identify the correct target.

Would I be justified in visiting these people and severing the muscles in their ankle to prevent them from driving, knowing that it would save lives?  Why or why not?


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## Steerpike

Devor:

No you would not be. Until the person has committed the act, you are dealing with an innocent person. You do not have the right to pre-emptively mete out justice for something they might do.


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## Caged Maiden

that was sort of my point with my scenario.  That it's easy to say you would pull a trigger.  It's impersonal and easy.  it'd be much harder to violate someone sexually or even poke her eyes out or break her arms and legs even if it meant everyone would live.


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## Steerpike

anihow said:


> that was sort of my point with my scenario.  That it's easy to say you would pull a trigger.  It's impersonal and easy.  it'd be much harder to violate someone sexually or even poke her eyes out or break her arms and legs even if it meant everyone would live.



I'm sure there are people who would do those things, but there are a lot of disturbed people on the planet.


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## Caged Maiden

I think in the context, shooting someone in the head might be considered merciful.  What does a normal person do if they must maim someone?  That's not an easy thing to do.  I'm pretty callous and enjoy blood, but it takes a special person to enjoy watching suffering and torture.


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## Caged Maiden

<- has decided to become a vigilante.  "Watch out world, my moral compass is out of whack, but it is now the barometer against which you will all be judged!"

Oh, and I'm not attacking anyone for the record.  That would be evil...


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## Steerpike

anihow said:


> <- has decided to become a vigilante.  "Watch out world, my moral compass is out of whack, but it is now the barometer against which you will all be judged!"
> 
> Oh, and I'm not attacking anyone for the record.  That would be evil...



It is rather a convenient outlook. I decide what is in the greater good, and then I'm free to do anything that comports with my decision on that question! >


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## Queshire

Again, a hypothetical is merely a hypothetical, what you would do in real life doesn't matter because in real life there are too many uncontrolled variables.

I agree that you would be justified in stopping a rape, but I'm not sure if killing them to stop a rape would be justified, you should try to stop them non-lethally first.

Now if you knew that thousands would die if that person doesn't rape that other person..... Well, again that's a hard choice. You can only do what your own moral compass tells you to do based off the information you have.

@Devour: No you would not. First, I doubt you would be able to reach anywhere near those percentages. Second, a 95% accuracy in determining whether or not someone is a drunk driver mean would mean that of every 20 people you label as a drunk driver, one isn't, and of every 20 people you label as not a drunk driver 1 is. It seems to me that you're copying this oddly specific scenario from somewhere without fully understanding it. Thirdly not every drunk driver kills somebody, while more likely then driving while not drunk, it's still not assured. Fourthly, slicing someone's tendons does not stop them from driving, while expensive, I'm pretty sure it's possible to modify a car to be controlled solely by hand, and Fifthly, if you do cut someone's tendons, I have to think that they'd get depressed and start drinking more, combined with my fourth point that could very well worsen the problem.


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> @Devour: No you would not. First, I doubt you would be able to reach anywhere near those percentages. Second, a 95% accuracy in determining whether or not someone is a drunk driver mean would mean that of every 20 people you label as a drunk driver, one isn't, and of every 20 people you label as not a drunk driver 1 is. It seems to me that you're copying this oddly specific scenario from somewhere without fully understanding it.



95% likelihood is not at all unreasonable given the science behind it.  You should do some reading on what can be done with modern data mining techniques.  And I don't know what you think I don't understand about what those numbers mean - I've taken more than enough statistics and market research and data mining courses to understand 95%.  Can we talk SQL, K-means clustering, neural networks and genetic algorithms?  Or just stick to the basic linear regression and normalization formulas?




> Thirdly not every drunk driver kills somebody, while more likely then driving while not drunk, it's still not assured. Fourthly, slicing someone's tendons does not stop them from driving, while expensive, I'm pretty sure it's possible to modify a car to be controlled solely by hand, and Fifthly, if you do cut someone's tendons, I have to think that they'd get depressed and start drinking more, combined with my fourth point that could very well worsen the problem.



Two things.

1)  A drunk driver in one sense is no more culpable after an accident then before, the _act_ is the same, which is to take a needless risk on killing someone by driving drunk.
2)  Remember what I said before about making a good faith effort?  None of what you've said addresses the obvious moral question.  If it saves lives, and kills nobody, why can't I do it?

I don't understand why you need to avoid the obvious question behind the hypothetical, so maybe I should just keep it simple:  Can you articulate a moral position that would justify a utilitarian approach to morality without being used to justify vigilantism and other clearly undesirable consequences?


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## Queshire

I will be the first to admit that I do not know very much about statisitcs, but I remain doubtful that you could achieve the accuracy you claim due to the fact that if such accuracy was possible then the use of it would be a lot more prominent. Explain to me how that accuracy is possible in a way I can understand and I will accept it. Otherwise no.

I'm not talking about blame, I'm talking about the fact that simply just because you drive drunk doesn't mean you'll get into an accident. Sure, it's more likely then driving not drunk, but it's not a sure thing.

I HAVE BEEN adressing the point of the hypothetical! You shouldn't do it because of the reasons I described! Your assessment isn't accurate enough to justify it, just because they drive drunk doesn't mean they'll get into an accident, and finally cutting their tendons does not mean they won't drive again and might drive them to drink more! So basically you're causing undue suffering without insurance that you're reducing suffering more then you're causing it.

As for the last word, I have one word for you; Quarantine.


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> I will be the first to admit that I do not know very much about statisitcs, but I remain doubtful that you could achieve the accuracy you claim due to the fact that if such accuracy was possible then the use of it would be a lot more prominent. Explain to me how that accuracy is possible in a way I can understand and I will accept it. Otherwise no.



A lot more prominent than . . . what?  Something that's used all the time?  Those rewards cards in your wallet weren't given to you for your loyalty.  They want to track your purchases, what you've bought and when, and how those purchases have changed over time.  They then run that information through a data-mining process called K-Means Clustering, which arranges the data into groups of purchases which appear over and over again.  Sometimes it reflects items which are purchased all at once - ketchup, hotdogs, hamburgers, they like to barbeque so let's send them coupons for a new grill.  But those patterns also develop over time, and that's where things get interesting.  Target is known, for instance, to predict with pinpoint accuracy when a woman is pregnant - and her expected birth month - based solely on the purchase of saltine crackers and coconut oil lotion three months apart.  The determination comes with a percentage which reaches 90 percentiles by the time there's 3-4 items from the group, and the margin of error was only people who shop for others.  They were sending out "Congratulations" cards until they realized it creeped people out.  Now they send a coupon packet with lawnmowers and diapers side by side to hide how much they know.

With the right data, the same process can be used to identify drunk drivers.  A sociodemographic profile of the typical drunk driver will tell you what to look for - and can distinguish them from typical drivers who drink - based, for instance, on the time of night that a person typically buys alcohol, whether they buy it at a store far from home, or if they buy quantities large enough to suggest a party.  Cross reference that information with car-related purchases to show they own a car, plus something like sunglasses and leather jackets which people buy to show off.  Add to it the purchase of stimulants like Red Bull.  95%?  Yes, you can get that high for a subset of the data, easily.

Why do I go through this?  It came up in a thread elsewhere, and if it comes up again now some people might know what I'm talking about.




> I HAVE BEEN adressing the point of the hypothetical! You shouldn't do it because of the reasons I described! Your assessment isn't accurate enough to justify it, just because they drive drunk doesn't mean they'll get into an accident, and finally cutting their tendons does not mean they won't drive again and might drive them to drink more! So basically you're causing undue suffering without insurance that you're reducing suffering more then you're causing it.



Y'know, when I typed it, I was going to say "cut off their foot," but I thought that sounded too barbaric.  Regardless, I've asked the question several times outside of the hypothetical, so if you're going to refuse to answer it, well.... okay.  I'll take you up on that last word thing.

Quarantine.  Whatever that means.


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## Queshire

you... don't know what being in Quarantine means? Wo~~~~w.

I still doubt all the information you'd gathered would be that useful to track potential drunk drivers though!

Also, what have I refused to answer? I've answered everything I've been asked and given reason for that information!


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## Ankari

I....must......look.....away.....


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## Devor

Queshire said:


> I still doubt all the information you'd gathered would be that useful to track potential drunk drivers though!
> 
> Also, what have I refused to answer? I've answered everything I've been asked and given reason for that information!



I just gave you a clear layman's articulation of a scientific process you know nothing about, and all you can say is you have "doubts"?  Come on.  You just don't want to admit you got lawyered.

Also I asked:




Devor said:


> If it saves lives, and kills nobody, why can't I do it?
> 
> . . .
> 
> Can you articulate a moral position that would justify a utilitarian approach to morality without being used to justify vigilantism and other clearly undesirable consequences?


----------



## Queshire

and I answered both of those.

EDIT: It simply seems to me that the things you mentioned wouldn't neccesarily conclusively point to a drunk driver with the accuracy you claim. There's a large number of things you can buy all that for without being a drunk driver.


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## Caged Maiden

Did anyone ever answer the original question?


----------



## ascanius

What timezone are you guys on?  I'm not going to write another maxed out page trying to explain things again, I cannot keep up with this, Seven pages in one day?


Queshire said:


> ah, gotcha. Anyways, the existence of the mad bomber either doesn't matter in which case both are evil, or it justifies either case in which case they're both non-evil. As has been argued against me earlier, you can't have it affect only one side or another for your benefit.



?  I don't get what you mean by this. Don't answer if you don't want to back track, I understand.



Queshire said:


> EDIT: It simply seems to me that the things you mentioned wouldn't neccesarily conclusively point to a drunk driver with the accuracy you claim. There's a large number of things you can buy all that for without being a drunk driver.



Don't you see that your doing the same thing as the whole false dichotomy thing again.  Your arguing the validity of the evidence and not the logic, like you argued the validity of the definition of words.  FYI, words are meaningless if people decide they mean whatever they want them to.  Language works because of a standard definition of a word.  So rationalize and Justify, mean exactly what they mean, and are not semantics.  Stick to the argument.  Dude you need to step back and calm down a bit, I know what it's like being on the defensive, it's a witch hunt and your the target.  Don't take it personal, and sorry if I helped give you that feeling.

edit:  Not to disrupt the train of thought here but Queshire could you explain what exactly you think regarding this topic and why?  I don't think you gave your opinions on the topic?


----------



## Fnord

This has become heavy.  In the interest of levity, and because this thread continues to remind me of this, I'm just going to post it:









We should consider that a lot of public policy revolves around variations of this argument, so I think it's useful.  Separating the logical from the emotional is what we all want to do when looking at the bigger picture, but when you're the one pulling the trigger on the little girl's head, it suddenly becomes a lot more complicated.

Let's move it from the realm of a hypothetical to something that's actually a moral dilemma:  If terrorists have hijacked an airplane, and it is known they will fly it into a large building full of people, are we morally obligated to shoot the plane down?  There's been some "tinfoil hat" speculation that such a thing is what happened to Flight 93 that crashed in rural PA on 9/11 (and maybe because it was practically in my backyard at the time, perhaps I heard way more about these theories than most). Either way, it brings up a variation on this sort of situation and there aren't a lot of "third options" in this instance either.

While I don't think that's actually what happened, if it did were they justified in doing it?  Lots of people seemed genuinely upset at the thought that we'd shoot down a plane of our own people in order to prevent it from killing other people.  And this wasn't even an either/or scenario: in both instances the people on the plane die.  If we shoot it down, only the people on the plane die; if we let it go the people on the plane die AND the people in the building die.  And yet, even with _this_ choice, it makes people uncomfortable even though the math clearly states the better option.  So the choice is less about the mathematics (many people dying vs. many MORE people dying); the choice is really between passive action and willful action.  

And the fact that it's NOT easy really muddies the black/white, good/evil argument.  Clearly this is a subjective judgment, and a very uncomfortable one.


----------



## Caliburn

"What essentially is Good and Evil?"

As far as fantasy fiction is concerned, they are _whatever you want them to be._


----------



## shangrila

According to bad writers (Goodkind and Paolini), _good_ is your main character and _bad_ is anyone who opposes them, no matter how logical they might be or how morally bad the main character's actions are. The world is what you're told it is, not how it's shown to be.


----------



## Steerpike

Ankari said:


> I....must......look.....away.....



LOL. No kidding 

Devor, Ascanius...I think you guys are wasting your breath at this point. I initially thought Queshire was just being obtuse for the sake of doing so...you know, internet forums and all. Now, I think he really doesn't grasp what any other than himself are saying, or where he's going wrong in his thought process. Maybe try him again in a few years. We can shift this thread in a number of directions.


----------



## Devor

Oh I've given up. No mistake about that.


----------



## Steerpike

anihow said:


> Did anyone ever answer the original question?



I think so, at least with respect to the second part of it (i.e. that "good" is essentially the utilitarian approach in any situation; which I don't agree with). As to the OP's definition of evil...I don't know...I agree that things that fit into the definition given tend to be bad, but I don't know if I'd go with it as a definition of evil.


----------



## Aidan of the tavern

*sigh* It seems to me this argument is going in circles and gradually getting more personal.  Isn't the disagreement itself evidence enough that people have varying personal opinions of what constitutes good and evil to gauge and base their own actions on?  Because at the base of nature we command only ourselves.

Now, who would like some of these homemade cakes I've made:smile:?

:grouphug:


----------



## Steerpike

Aidan:

Yes, I think it is clear people have differing views. But people also have differing views on things that are objectively true or false. I'm not saying good and evil fall into that category, I'm just saying there is no real way to tell whether they do or not. People who view it in more absolute terms may be correct, or not. I don't think we can know that.

What kind of cakes are they?


----------



## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> While I don't think that's actually what happened, if it did were they justified in doing it?  Lots of people seemed genuinely upset at the thought that we'd shoot down a plane of our own people in order to prevent it from killing other people.  And this wasn't even an either/or scenario: in both instances the people on the plane die.  If we shoot it down, only the people on the plane die; if we let it go the people on the plane die AND the people in the building die.  And yet, even with _this_ choice, it makes people uncomfortable even though the math clearly states the better option.  So the choice is less about the mathematics (many people dying vs. many MORE people dying); the choice is really between passive action and willful action.
> 
> And the fact that it's NOT easy really muddies the black/white, good/evil argument.  Clearly this is a subjective judgment, and a very uncomfortable one.



This is a much more difficult scenario, of course, and probably bears a lot more thinking about. On the one hand, you could cast it as more of a wartime collateral damage scenario, because the immediate object and target of your attach is arguably the terrorist wielding the plane as a weapon. On the other hand, the "collateral damage" is clear, quantifiable, and unavoidable, whereas when bombing a terrorist target on the ground in some distant area I suppose you could frame the collateral damage as  unintentional (though that becomes specious on some level).

I think, from a practical standpoint, we are all left with subjective judgments as to how to comport ourselves. It remains an interesting question, though, whether some people may be objectively "right" in their view point. I don't think we can get to that answer.


----------



## Aidan of the tavern

Steerpike said:


> Aidan:
> 
> Yes, I think it is clear people have differing views. But people also have differing views on things that are objectively true or false. I'm not saying good and evil fall into that category, I'm just saying there is no real way to tell whether they do or not. People who view it in more absolute terms may be correct, or not. I don't think we can know that.
> 
> What kind of cakes are they?



*I withdraw from the argument*

These are chocolate, these are coconut.


----------



## Steerpike

Aidan of the tavern said:


> These are chocolate, these are coconut.



Any chance of combining those? If you can, I'll have two!


----------



## Queshire

@Ascanuis: What I meant by that is that they claim that letting those thousands of people die is not evil because of the mad bomber created that situation, yet they ignore the mad bomber when it comes to shooting the girl. The mad bomber should excuse both options as justified or excuse neither option meaning both are evil. It should not matter for only one or another.

After originally pointing out the flaws in your guys arguments, I have only been defending my position on those flaws. I'd be happy to move on if you guys were willing to move on, but since that doesn't seem the case....

Words have what meaning we assign them and that is the only meaning. Just look at how words have evolved over the years to change their meaning. If words only meant exactly what they meant and nothing else, then we'd still be typing in ye olde english.

I gave my view of the original topic back on the first page =_=

@Fnord: One story I read claimed that you can usually tell the right thing because it's harder, while not perfect, I think that applies more often then not.

@Steerpike: I get what you guys are saying, you just haven't convinced me in any way. Also, that people have differing views on it in the first place still strikes me as making it subjective and not objective.

Anyways, since this thread seems to be winding down.

I would first like to appologize to the original poster for hijacking this thread, despite the unpleasent argument it has helped me refine my views of good and evil tremendously which is good as I wanted to do a plot point of how squicky good and evil is.

Secondly, I hold no ill will against those that disagree with me. You have not managed to convince me, and I maintain my orignal position, but I respect your right to your own view on the matter.

Thirdly, I have what is called Aspergers, it is a type of high functioning autism. Essentially, I think differently then most people. I don't use this as an excuse, and I embrace my way of thinking, but it does mean that I can be a bit.... different at times.


----------



## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> Secondly, I hold no ill will against those that disagree with me. You have not managed to convince me, and I maintain my orignal position, but I respect your right to your own view on the matter.



No worries, Queshire. I don't think anyone holds any ill will. Most of us here don't know one another outside of this forum, and it wouldn't make much sense to me to form real judgments about an individual based on posts online. I find the exchange to be entertaining, whether it takes on a certain degree of sarcasm and sniping or not (actually, I'm most used to online "debates" with close friends of mine, via an email list, and because of our familiarity with one another the discussions can denigrate to a contest of humorous jabs one another. Some of it goes way over the top, but we're all friends and no one takes it personally because we're all in on the 'game.'). 

In any event, no apologies needed, in my view. I appreciate the banter and hope you enjoy the rest of your morning/afternoon as the case may be.


----------



## ascanius

It was fun, though I will say that It became impossible for me to keep up with.  It's kinda funny because I actually agree with you Queshire about the bomber but like you still maintain my arguments.  I think everyone had good points.  Like Steerpike said no need to apologize.


----------



## Fnord

In case anyone else needs more humor on this topic, someone sent me this today (timely!):

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

(why are they always busting on economists? )


----------



## Steerpike

ascanius said:


> It was fun, though I will say that It became impossible for me to keep up with.  It's kinda funny because I actually agree with you Queshire about the bomber but like you still maintain my arguments.  I think everyone had good points.  Like Steerpike said no need to apologize.



I should add that I invariably find myself more humorous than anyone else does. I don't know if that's a problem or not


----------



## Penpilot

Aidan of the tavern said:


> Now, who would like some of these homemade cakes I've made:smile:?
> 
> :grouphug:



Late to party... any cake left and can I eat it too?


----------



## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> In case anyone else needs more humor on this topic, someone sent me this today (timely!):
> 
> Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
> 
> (why are they always busting on economists? )



LOL. Nice one!


----------



## Caliburn

Queshire said:


> despite the unpleasent argument it has helped me refine my views of good and evil tremendously which is good as I wanted to do a plot point of how squicky good and evil is.



See this is why I think the discussion was worthwhile even though opinions were conflicted. 
I came away with a sense that there is still plenty of room for good and evil in my project, but I get to put my own spin on the concepts regardless of how they apply to the real world. After all, what good is fantasy if not to entertain the impossible, the unbelievable, the impractical and the downright _unthinkable_?


----------



## Steerpike

Caliburn said:


> See this is why I think the discussion was worthwhile even though opinions were conflicted.
> I came away with a sense that there is still plenty of room for good and evil in my project, but I get to put my own spin on the concepts regardless of how they apply to the real world. After all, what good is fantasy if not to entertain the impossible, the unbelievable, the impractical and the downright _unthinkable_?



Yes, I think this is the important point in the context of fantasy writing. You can set up a fantasy world where good and evil are absolutes. You can set one up in which they are entirely subjective and everything is cast in shades of gray. You have the flexibility.


----------



## SeverinR

Before reading anyone elses posts I will write my answer.

Good/evil is relative to the perspective. There is extremes to both sides that are obvious to the great majority of people.
But in the middle, the angles change and good vs evil are different from various positions.

Killing someone is considered evil, but if the person being killed is trying to harm/kill a child it is at least a lesser evil, if not good.
thousands of people died in war is evil, but fighting the war to end mass killings of innocent people is considered good, or at least the lesser evil.

No matter what ultimate evil a person can come up with, someone in the world can say there is a reason for it, or that there is a greater evil in not doing the "ultimate evil".
Even the worst of Genecidal leaders, believes they did the "right" thing, or that their evil was the lesser evil. Even if only a madman could understand it.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

All good and evil are relative to a set of moral principles. You can choose any set of moral principles you want; the laws of physics will not stop you. They're only concerned with the motion of waves, energy, and particles, which are on a much smaller scale than notions of right or wrong.

In practice, all existing societies have common moral principles that prohibit murder, rape, theft, etc., for one simple reason: *the societies that didn't have those principles all got out-competed by the ones that did, and went extinct.* It's evolution on the scale of civilizations.

We might all agree that _we_ think it's good not to murder/rape/steal, but again, there is nothing in the nature of the universe that prevents these things from happening. People are murdered, raped, and robbed all the time. Societies work hard to prevent these things, but they can never be wholly successful.

Some people claim that the universe _does_ have built-in moral principles of right and wrong, usually in the form of some deity or other. Of course, supporting this claim with evidence has proved somewhat problematic.


----------



## Mindfire

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> All good and evil are relative to a set of moral principles. You can choose any set of moral principles you want; the laws of physics will not stop you. They're only concerned with the motion of waves, energy, and particles, which are on a much smaller scale than notions of right or wrong.
> 
> In practice, all existing societies have common moral principles that prohibit murder, rape, theft, etc., for one simple reason: *the societies that didn't have those principles all got out-competed by the ones that did, and went extinct.* It's evolution on the scale of civilizations.
> 
> We might all agree that _we_ think it's good not to murder/rape/steal, but again, there is nothing in the nature of the universe that prevents these things from happening. People are murdered, raped, and robbed all the time. Societies work hard to prevent these things, but they can never be wholly successful.
> 
> Some people claim that the universe _does_ have built-in moral principles of right and wrong, usually in the form of some deity or other. Of course, supporting this claim with evidence has proved somewhat problematic.



Only problematic if you believe in scientific reductionism.


----------



## Devor

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> In practice, all existing societies have common moral principles that prohibit murder, rape, theft, etc., for one simple reason: *the societies that didn't have those principles all got out-competed by the ones that did, and went extinct.* It's evolution on the scale of civilizations.



Can I ask, what if I'm willing to kill _and then accept_ the consequences which society imposes on me?  What's to prevent me from saying, "Society says that if I kill and rape and murder, they're going to execute me.  Well, then I agree to those terms."  Is there any logical argument which can be made to explain why I should _not_ do such a thing?


----------



## Fnord

Mindfire said:


> Only problematic if you believe in scientific reductionism.



Or just science in general.  Just because something can't be explained perfectly through science now, doesn't mean a scientific explanation doesn't exist for it (and thus the automatic explanation for what can't be explained residing in the supernatural).  After all, incredulity was the defense against heliocentrism, understanding diseases and plagues, and various other things.  We certainly know better now.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Thread hop, because I can't handle eighteen pages of this: I really like the idea of a setting in which the laws of the universe enforce one moral code, but the protagonist lives by a completely different moral code. Moral relativism FTW! (I've already written one story in which an adulteress who goes to Hell is portrayed as a heroic figure. I've also considered a story in which any direct harm to another person negatively impacts one's luck, and the protagonist is a sadomasochist.)

Might as well answer Devor as well: That's how big corporations often see it, paying fines for breaking the law when those fines are smaller than the profit they'll make.


----------



## Devor

Feo Takahari said:


> Might as well answer Devor as well: That's how big corporations often see it, paying fines for breaking the law when those fines are smaller than the profit they'll make.



That's a little different - there's some degree of understanding that some regulations will be broken, in part because of how numerous they are, and how big organizations are.  That's why, for instance, regulations come with a rating.  That's also why it's not considered criminal.

Didn't actually answer the question, though.  There's plenty of people who think this way about personal morality.  Is it in any way irrational within the perspective that morality is a social construct?


----------



## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> Or just science in general.  Just because something can't be explained perfectly through science now, doesn't mean a scientific explanation doesn't exist for it (and thus the automatic explanation for what can't be explained residing in the supernatural).  After all, incredulity was the defense against heliocentrism, understanding diseases and plagues, and various other things.  We certainly know better now.



I would consider myself a scientifically minded person. But science cannot explain EVERYTHING, no matter how much time you give it. To say otherwise is hubris. Science has to assume a natural cause for an event because those are the only things its methodology can address. But it does not logically follow from that that supernatural causation does not or cannot exist. That would be circular logic. Saying that something cannot exist because you inquired about it using a methodology that excludes it as possibility to begin with.


----------



## Mindfire

Devor said:


> Can I ask, what if I'm willing to kill _and then accept_ the consequences which society imposes on me?  What's to prevent me from saying, "Society says that if I kill and rape and murder, they're going to execute me.  Well, then I agree to those terms."  Is there any logical argument which can be made to explain why I should _not_ do such a thing?



No, there is not. That's the problem with the idea of morality as a social construct. If morality is a social construct, there really is no force behind it unless I actually care what society thinks/does. If for some reason I don't care, then all bets are off. It's an imperfect system. Any system of morality that rises above this issue has to be one that does not have a human origin.


----------



## Queshire

The problem with science isn't science itself, but the human mind. There are just some things that the human mind simply can not grasp. Temporal paradoxes (Paradoxi?) being one of them. Just because we can't comprehend the explanation doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation.


----------



## Queshire

Mindfire said:


> No, there is not. That's the problem with the idea of morality as a social construct. If morality is a social construct, there really is no force behind it unless I actually care what society thinks/does. If for some reason I don't care, then all bets are off. It's an imperfect system. Any system of morality that rises above this issue has to be one that does not have a human origin.



I fail to see the problem with the only force morality having being what we give it, it's the same thing with money afterall...


----------



## Mindfire

Queshire said:


> I fail to see the problem with the only force morality having being what we give it, it's the same thing with money afterall...



Economics is imperfect too. Thus the existence of poor people.


----------



## Devor

Queshire said:


> The problem with science isn't science itself, but the human mind. There are just some things that the human mind simply can not grasp. Temporal paradoxes (Paradoxi?) being one of them. Just because we can't comprehend the explanation doesn't mean that there isn't an explanation.



Arguing that the explanation cannot be grasped in no way implies that the explanation is not God.


----------



## Queshire

*shrug* and?


----------



## Ankari

Alright, I want to jump in on this.  Before we continue down this endless wormhole I would like to see what parameters we all agree on.  Allow me to list some observations about the nature of man and his condition.  This is to applied to mankind in general:


Man possess a conscience.
There was A begining
There will be AN end.
Man is aware, and thus responsible for his actions.
Man seeks justice when wrong has been done to him/her.
There is a purpose to life.
Mankind is rational (or strives to be rational).


Can we agree to these parameters before we continue on this topic?  I would like to join in, but the way its been done is chaotic.


----------



## Steerpike

Ankari said:


> Man possess a conscience.
> There was A begining
> There will be AN end.
> Man is aware, and thus responsible for his actions.
> Man seeks justice when wrong has been done to him/her.
> There is a purpose to life.
> Mankind is rational (or strives to be rational).



I'm not at all convinced of #6. From our frame of reference I think numbers 2 and 3 are good enough to be assumed for sake of argument. I'll go along with 6 for purposes of discussion, with the caveat that I don't necessarily think it is true


----------



## Devor

Ankari said:


> Man possess a conscience.
> There was A begining
> There will be AN end.
> Man is aware, and thus responsible for his actions.
> Man seeks justice when wrong has been done to him/her.
> There is a purpose to life.
> Mankind is rational (or strives to be rational).



While I accept all of those, I'm not actually sure an atheist would accept any of them.  For instance, our sense of awareness and responsibility may be a product of genetics and upbringing, and not something that would make us responsible for something which conflicted with those two sources.  And a conscience could be an internalization of the social construct, an evolutional whatever.  And while even cosmologists now hypothesize that time had a starting point, and may have an ending point, that doesn't actually preclude a time-before-time.

So . . . . I agree with your assumptions, but they're not difficult to question at all.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Mindfire said:


> Only problematic if you believe in scientific reductionism.



I'm not sure what "scientific reductionism" is.

I believe that claims should be supported by evidence. If there is insufficient evidence for me to provisionally accept a claim, then I (provisionally) reject that claim.

I'm not aware of any other approach to the world that makes any sense.


----------



## Steerpike

Devor said:


> And while even cosmologists now hypothesize that time had a starting point, and may have an ending point, that doesn't actually preclude a time-before-time.



Yes. I was thinking of an oscillating universe scenario. But I think we can still say that for use, time will have a beginning and an end (in other words, the current embodiment of space-time). Although if you believe the universe ends in a cold death instead of oscillating, does time continue beyond that cold death? Seems like it would in some way.


----------



## Steerpike

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> I'm not sure what "scientific reductionism" is.
> 
> I believe that claims should be supported by evidence. If there is insufficient evidence for me to provisionally accept a claim, then I (provisionally) reject that claim.
> 
> I'm not aware of any other approach to the world that makes any sense.



I generally follow the same approach. Where it becomes interesting with religion is that people feel there are personal ways of "knowing" that can't be communicated to others. So even though someone may not be able to offer you evidence, they view their own experience and ways of knowing as evidence sufficient unto them. So it's an impasse.


----------



## Queshire

1) If by conscience you mean feelings of guilt and empathy then yes, barring certain mental conditions
2) Hm... if you count the big bang then yes, though I kinda think that there was something before it.
3) Agreed
4) Agreed
5) Agreed
6) If you count life being it's own purpose then agreed
7) I wouldn't say this is universal, but in all modern day cultures then yes.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Devor said:


> Can I ask, what if I'm willing to kill _and then accept_ the consequences which society imposes on me?  What's to prevent me from saying, "Society says that if I kill and rape and murder, they're going to execute me.  Well, then I agree to those terms."  Is there any logical argument which can be made to explain why I should _not_ do such a thing?



Presumably if you've decided that you're okay with the consequences, there probably aren't any arguments that will change your mind. I mean, I could go over all the plausible arguments you might make to someone to convince them that they shouldn't rape and murder, and a person could (theoretically) validly disagree with all of them.


----------



## Steerpike

Queshire said:


> 2) Hm... if you count the big bang then yes, though I kinda think that there was something before it.



There are theories that there might have been something "before" (though in this context the word "before" is strange), but there is no way to test it so it remains speculation (e.g. oscillating universe).


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Ankari said:


> Alright, I want to jump in on this.  Before we continue down this endless wormhole I would like to see what parameters we all agree on.  Allow me to list some observations about the nature of man and his condition.  This is to applied to mankind in general:
> 
> 
> Man possess a conscience.
> There was A begining
> There will be AN end.
> Man is aware, and thus responsible for his actions.
> Man seeks justice when wrong has been done to him/her.
> There is a purpose to life.
> Mankind is rational (or strives to be rational).
> 
> 
> Can we agree to these parameters before we continue on this topic?  I would like to join in, but the way its been done is chaotic.



I can't generally agree with these because--and I mean no disrespect--many of them are poorly phrased or are simply not supported by evidence.

I don't know of any evidence that supports 3, and I don't consider it reasonable to accept it axiomatically. For all we know, the universe will continue indefinitely, eventually grinding down to maximal entropy, and it will stay that way for eternity.

5 would be more accurately phrased "Sapients typically seek what they consider justice when they perceive that wrong has been done to them."

I don't agree with 6 at all. Purpose is imbued by sapients. Many people's lives served no apparent purpose at all. (This doesn't mean they don't have a purpose, but if there is no way to conceivably determine that purpose, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist.)

7 would be more accurately phrased "Sapients typically act in a rational fashion."

1, 4, 5, and 7 are all really aspects of the same thing: the emergent behavior of sapient brains.


----------



## Steerpike

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> I don't know of any evidence that supports 3, and I don't consider it reasonable to accept it axiomatically.



There is "evidence" for it. Any of the various oscillating universe models support this. But it isn't proven, of course.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Steerpike said:


> I generally follow the same approach. Where it becomes interesting with religion is that people feel there are personal ways of "knowing" that can't be communicated to others. So even though someone may not be able to offer you evidence, they view their own experience and ways of knowing as evidence sufficient unto them. So it's an impasse.



It actually doesn't have to be an impasse, if the person with the non-communicable "knowing" accepts the premise that non-communicable knowing is useless for purposes of convincing anyone else.

For example, Bob has a "religious experience" where he perceives a deity talking to him. But he knows that nobody else perceived it, and that claiming it happened will not convince anyone (let's assume Bob and all his friends are strictly rational). Bob _had_ the experience; he knows it's possible it was a neurological hallucination, but it felt so real that he simply cannot accept it was anything other than actual divine contact.

But Bob can still choose to ignore that experience when debating with others; his claim that he had this experience is not evidence of anything, and Bob knows that.

Unfortunately, most people who have such experiences don't really understand that a non-repeatable, non-measurable experience is not evidence of anything, and will say things like "I know God exists because I had a vision!" which is of no use to anyone.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Steerpike said:


> There is "evidence" for it. Any of the various oscillating universe models support this. But it isn't proven, of course.



Sorry, you're right; I was mis-thinking. As I recall, the current reigning model is of the open-ended universe declining to maximum entropy. Could be wrong.

Even if we _do_ accept 3, I'm not sure how it affects morality, though (in other words, I'm not sure why Ankari thinks it needs to be accepted in order for us to have a discussion).


----------



## Steerpike

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> It actually doesn't have to be an impasse, if the person with the non-communicable "knowing" accepts the premise that non-communicable knowing is useless for purposes of convincing anyone else.



It is an impasse for purposes of getting at the truth. It may be that Bob is right, whether he can convince anyone of it or not. He isn't going to be persuaded otherwise, and the person Bob is trying to convince isn't going to be persuaded by him, but there's no way to ultimately know who is correct.


----------



## Steerpike

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Sorry, you're right; I was mis-thinking. As I recall, the current reigning model is of the open-ended universe declining to maximum entropy. Could be wrong.
> 
> Even if we _do_ accept 3, I'm not sure how it affects morality, though (in other words, I'm not sure why Ankari thinks it needs to be accepted in order for us to have a discussion).



I think you're right in that the open-ended model has more support. There have been a few new models of the oscillating universe proposed in the last decade or so, but I don't know that they've made much headway, and I'm not knowledgeable on the subject to know what the assumptions are that have to go into the model to make it work


----------



## Fnord

Mindfire said:


> Economics is imperfect too. Thus the existence of poor people.



That's not exactly right either.  Benjamin addressed the other points in the same way I would have (and I'd say better than I would have).  Economics is the study and the acknowledgement of choices in a world of scarce resources.  People are poor for a multitude of reasons, but people are a lot less poor in absolute terms today than they were for the majority of human history.  What Queshire seemed to be pointing out that money itself has value only insofar as humans give it value.  This is true as well, though on a macro scale value comes from usefulness/desirability of the currency against the ease with which the currency can be acquired.  Either way, money doesn't have an objective value and, I'd argue, neither does morality.  Steerpike is right in saying that it's hard to prove either way, but reasoning points us toward relativism (societal construct) rather than divine mandate since the latter is a positive claim and that claim has not (and likely cannot) be proven.


----------



## Devor

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Presumably if you've decided that you're okay with the consequences, there probably aren't any arguments that will change your mind. I mean, I could go over all the plausible arguments you might make to someone to convince them that they shouldn't rape and murder, and a person could (theoretically) validly disagree with all of them.



Splitting hairs, but I'm not asking if such an argument would be _persuasive_, I'm asking if there is such an argument that would be logically sound.  If morality is a social construct, as I accept the consequences society provides, is there a logical reason not to kill?  Or maybe I should ask, if you somehow decided that you wanted to kill someone more than you cared about society's consequences, is there a logically sound reason for you not to?

Note:  I'm not saying you would ever reach that point, or implying anything but that I want to see a logically sound reason for restraining yourself.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Devor said:


> Splitting hairs, but I'm not asking if such an argument would be _persuasive_, I'm asking if there is such an argument that would be logically sound.  If morality is a social construct, as I accept the consequences society provides, is there a logical reason not to kill?  Or maybe I should ask, if you somehow decided that you wanted to kill someone more than you cared about society's consequences, is there a logically sound reason for you not to?
> 
> Note:  I'm not saying you would ever reach that point, or implying anything but that I want to see a logically sound reason for restraining yourself.



To go into formal logic for a moment: If you accept the axiom that committing a murder is acceptable, then there cannot be any way to logically argue that the axiom is wrong--_it's an axiom_. There are no propositions you can make, or conclusions you can reach, that can flip that axiom, because you can't do that to axioms.

So basically, the answer you're looking for is "no." If you accept that murder is okay, then there is no way to convince you that it's not.


----------



## Queshire

I'm reminded of the stories of family feuds in a certain european country I saw on TV, because of one murder, two families get caught up in a cycle of revenge that ends up with both families stuck inside their homes, really closer to fortresses at that time, for years. They can't step outside for fear of the other family killing them. Logically, if you disregard societies' consequences, then others would likewise be forced to disregard societies' consequences in a desire for revenge.


----------



## Devor

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> I'm not sure what "scientific reductionism" is.
> 
> I believe that claims should be supported by evidence. If there is insufficient evidence for me to provisionally accept a claim, then I (provisionally) reject that claim.
> 
> I'm not aware of any other approach to the world that makes any sense.



I can't speak for exactly what Mindfire means by the term, but it's fairly easy to logically reduce any statement to the point where it has no meaning whatsoever, such that there's almost nothing which can be thoroughly and reasonably believed.  Unless somewhere you accept some assumption about something, there's no logical basis for anything, even science.

The question is, where should you get your "assumptions"?  Which leads me to:



			
				Steerpike said:
			
		

> I generally follow the same approach. Where it becomes interesting with religion is that people feel there are personal ways of "knowing" that can't be communicated to others. So even though someone may not be able to offer you evidence, they view their own experience and ways of knowing as evidence sufficient unto them. So it's an impasse.



The thing is, when all is ultimately reduced, there _is only one piece of truly observable evidence:_ *Yourself.*

Everything you experience - what you read, what you see, what you're told, taste or touch - all of it comes through that filter of you.  When I talk about experiences that make me believe the things I do, I don't think I'm talking about miracles.  I think I'm just talking about life, about the study and reflection of myself and what I conclude from that.

And I conclude, almost right away:  I make choices which have nothing to do with what my body or with what society is telling me.  And an easy meta-analysis of myself, and the people I observe, convinces me that the same is true for others.

Consequently, if I think that I deserve any respect, I think that they do, too.

Wait, what's that thing in me telling me I deserve respect?  Why should I trust it?  Well, answering that would keep me here all night, and probably be pointless for the moment.


----------



## Fnord

Queshire said:


> I'm reminded of the stories of family feuds in a certain european country I saw on TV, because of one murder, two families get caught up in a cycle of revenge that ends up with both families stuck inside their homes, really closer to fortresses at that time, for years. They can't step outside for fear of the other family killing them. Logically, if you disregard societies' consequences, then others would likewise be forced to disregard societies' consequences in a desire for revenge.



Which is why anarchy as a form of society cannot persist.  As Benjamin pointed out a couple pages back, societies that embraced this would go extinct and thus the ones that survived had to have some system of cooperation in order to persist.


----------



## Devor

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> To go into formal logic for a moment: If you accept the axiom that committing a murder is acceptable, then there cannot be any way to logically argue that the axiom is wrong--_it's an axiom_. There are no propositions you can make, or conclusions you can reach, that can flip that axiom, because you can't do that to axioms.
> 
> So basically, the answer you're looking for is "no." If you accept that murder is okay, then there is no way to convince you that it's not.



I'm sorry, the second part of that question might have looked like a general "you," but I meant to direct it at you personally.  Do you personally accept any axioms which would logically explain why murder is unacceptable?  And what's your reasoning for that axiom?


----------



## Steerpike

Devor said:


> And I conclude, almost right away:  I make choices which have nothing to do with what my body or with what society is telling me.  And an easy meta-analysis of myself, and the people I observe, convinces me that the same is true for others.
> 
> Consequently, if I think that I deserve any respect, I think that they do, too.
> 
> Wait, what's that thing in me telling me I deserve respect?  Why should I trust it?  Well, answering that would keep me here all night, and probably be pointless for the moment.



Doesn't this get close to Kant's categorical imperative? I'm not a philosopher, so hopefully I haven't bungled it, but Kant laid out an argument for absolutes in moral behavior, that argued that immorality was irrational (and thus the product of some force acting against the reason of the individual).


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## Queshire

Ah, I'm reminded about Renee Descartes' and his famous saying; "I think, therefore I am," Basically, he was doing a thought experiment to find something that couldn't be disproven in any way what-so-ever. Sight, sound, taste, etc, all of these can be fooled, all that can't be disproven in any way is that there is -something- asking those questions. I'm not sure if that philosophy is still applicable or if it was disproven since, but it's still a lovely concept and forms the base of most of my magical / time travelling systems, everything else can be disproven, the self can't.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

Devor said:


> I can't speak for exactly what Mindfire means by the term, but it's fairly easy to logically reduce any statement to the point where it has no meaning whatsoever, such that there's almost nothing which can be thoroughly and reasonably believed.  Unless somewhere you accept some assumption about something, there's no logical basis for anything, even science.



This is true, but I'm not sure how this contradicts anything I said. In general, any claim can be broken down into simpler, more basic claims; eventually you get to the point where a claim can't be broken down or supported by evidence, and now you've got your core axiom. This is how it works; there is no other choice. Where we all differ is in our choice of axiom. Because axioms cannot be proven (they are assumed to be true without evidence), they are all equally _valid_, although they are not all equally _useful._



> The thing is, when all is ultimately reduced, there _is only one piece of truly observable evidence:_ *Yourself.*
> 
> Wait, what's that thing in me telling me I deserve respect?  Why should I trust it?  Well, answering that would keep me here all night, and probably be pointless for the moment.



Yeah, that's solipsism. It's a perfectly valid core axiom, although not very useful. Let me put it this way:

Imagine that Bob accepts solipsism ("My mind is the only thing that I know exists; nothing else I perceive can be treated as reliably existing") as his core axiom. This means that nothing he does makes any difference to anything, or has any point to it.

However, one of Bob's goals is to lead a fulfilling, entertaining life. The solipsism axiom is incompatible with that goal. So he chooses a different axiom:

"My mind is not the only thing that exists; other things exist, too, and I can perceive them (imperfectly) through the mechanisms of my senses."

That axiom is compatible with Bob's goal. He goes on to live a fulfilling life as a tax accountant.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

Devor said:


> I'm sorry, the second part of that question might have looked like a general "you," but I meant to direct it at you personally.  Do you personally accept any axioms which would logically explain why murder is unacceptable?  And what's your reasoning for that axiom?



Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.

So the answer there is yes. I do personally accept axioms which lead to murder being unacceptable, mostly because one of my (derived) goals is to not be murdered. My reasoning goes like this:

Everything starts with your goal. My goal is to live a life as long, happy, healthy, fulfilled, and free of undue injury as possible, given my circumstances. My core axiom must be compatible with that goal, and must not logically lead to any conclusions that conflict with that goal.

My core axiom is that there exists a universe that I am inside, and I can perceive things (with varying degrees of reliability) within that universe.

One of the things I observe in this universe is that human societies that allow random murder do not survive as well as societies that don't. Such murderous societies also drastically increase the chance of members of those societies being murdered. Being murdered is incompatible with my goal.

To minimize the chance of being murdered, I want my society to promulgate the idea that murder is unacceptable, and to segregate from the rest of the population those who have shown a willingness or inclination to commit murder, as doing so will reduce my chance of being murdered. (insert thousands of scientific studies about sociology and criminology here, conveniently undertaken by other people so that I don't have to do all the research myself)

"Murder is unacceptable" (or "murder is wrong/evil/immoral") is shorthand for all of the above.


----------



## Devor

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> To minimize the chance of being murdered, I want my society to promulgate the idea that murder is unacceptable, and to segregate from the rest of the population those who have shown a willingness or inclination to commit murder, as doing so will reduce my chance of being murdered.



But is there anything which would make it logically unacceptable for _you_ to ever want to commit murder if that murder, and the consequences of that murder, were not incompatible with your goals?  That's what I'm asking.  I understand why society would want to limit murders, and why you would support that as a member of society.  But is there a logical reason, based on any axioms which you accept, which would prevent you from doing exactly what you would ask society to discourage?


----------



## Mindfire

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> I'm not sure what "scientific reductionism" is.
> 
> I believe that claims should be supported by evidence. If there is insufficient evidence for me to provisionally accept a claim, then I (provisionally) reject that claim.
> 
> I'm not aware of any other approach to the world that makes any sense.



Scientific reductionism, also known as strong naturalism, is the philosophical stance that absolutely everything, no exceptions, can be explained mechanically through *the power of SCIENCE!*


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Mindfire said:


> Scientific reductionism, also known as strong naturalism, is the philosophical stance that absolutely everything, no exceptions, can be explained mechanically through *the power of SCIENCE!*



Ah, okay.

In that case, I have to disagree that what I said is equivalent to scientific reductionism.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Devor said:


> But is there anything which would make it logically unacceptable for _you_ to ever want to commit murder if that murder, and the consequences of that murder, were not incompatible with your goals?  That's what I'm asking. But is there a logical reason, based on any axioms which you accept, which would prevent you from doing exactly what you would ask society to discourage?



I'm confused. Are you asking that, _if I had a different set of axioms,_ I might come to a different conclusion than I have now? The answer to that is self-evidently yes, so I'm not sure why you even need to ask. If you want, I can come up with a goal which is compatible with the conclusion that murder is a-ok, and work through the logic of it.

Or maybe you're asking whether or not any of the axioms that _I currently do accept_ prevent me from committing murder. In that case, the answer is also yes. For one thing, me committing murder helps contribute toward the murder-acceptance situation that I want to avoid; second, I would most likely get caught and punished, which would be incompatible with my stated goal; third, I would most likely feel really awful and guilty if I murdered someone, which would be incompatible with my stated goal; fourth, my family would suffer if I were imprisoned for murder, which would be incompatible with my stated goal.


----------



## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> That's not exactly right either.  Benjamin addressed the other points in the same way I would have (and I'd say better than I would have).  Economics is the study and the acknowledgement of choices in a world of scarce resources.  People are poor for a multitude of reasons, but people are a lot less poor in absolute terms today than they were for the majority of human history.  What Queshire seemed to be pointing out that money itself has value only insofar as humans give it value.  This is true as well, though on a macro scale value comes from usefulness/desirability of the currency against the ease with which the currency can be acquired.  Either way, money doesn't have an objective value and, I'd argue, neither does morality.  Steerpike is right in saying that it's hard to prove either way, but reasoning points us toward relativism (societal construct) rather than divine mandate since the latter is a positive claim and that claim has not (and likely cannot) be proven.



First, you entirely missed my point. You're being too literal. I meant "economics" in a broad sense. In a "perfect economic system" poverty would not exist because producers and consumers would all happily coexist and get whatever they needed. This is obviously not reality, and something that is not perfect is, by definition, imperfect.

And I don't think that reasoning necessarily points us toward relativism, because to say that is to imply that anyone who believes rather in moral absolutes is necessarily unreasonable. And that implication devolves to insult fairly quickly.


----------



## Steerpike

Mindfire said:


> And I don't think that reasoning necessarily points us toward relativism, because to say that is to imply that anyone who believes rather in moral absolutes is necessarily unreasonable. And that implication devolves to insult fairly quickly.



And again, this gets back to Kant, who said (if I'm understanding it correctly) that an absolute form of morality is reasonable, and immorality (which certain aspects of a relativistic approach would fall into) is irrational.


----------



## Queshire

this is rather confusing.... I imagine this is what those reading my arguments felt like....

I'll just say that I think you're wrong, but I respect your right to your opinion even if I disagree with it, as that is part of MY moral belief.


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## Penpilot

I've been following along, or at least trying.  And I've been thinking, not always a good thing. But here's what's been running around my head. Wondering if I've missed anything.

If there's objective morality then where did it come from?

If it came from a deity, who is all powerful and all knowing that created the universe, which means the deity knows all that has happened and all that will happen and created the universe in accordance with that knowledge.

If that's the case, we are all predestined to do act as the deity has planned, which means we have no free will.

Without free will, how can there be morality? How can we be judged guilty of anything we have no control over?

Now if there is no deity, who is the determiner of objective morality?


----------



## Steerpike

You can have a deity who doesn't know everything that will happen


----------



## Devor

Penpilot said:


> If it came from a deity, who is all powerful and all knowing that created the universe, which means the deity knows all that has happened and all that will happen and created the universe in accordance with that knowledge.
> 
> If that's the case, we are all predestined to do act as the deity has planned, which means we have no free will.



The second is not the logical outreach of the first.  An omnipotent deity can, by definition, choose to create people who have free will, but would of course know the outcome of their choices.  But foreknowledge does not necessitate predetermination.  ((If you happen to be a Calvinist, you can send me a PM about it.))


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## Queshire

Heh, there's always my favorite explanation ^^ God's a jerk.


----------



## Penpilot

Steerpike said:


> You can have a deity who doesn't know everything that will happen



If the deity doesn't know everything then he is not all knowing and all powerful. Which means the deity is not perfect and has limits to their knowledge. 

If the deity is not perfect and has limits to their knowledge then any morality they dictate could be flawed and the deity would not know it, so wouldn't that mean that any morality dictated by said deity would be subjective to them?



Devor said:


> The second is not the logical outreach of the first.  An omnipotent deity can, by definition, choose to create people who have free will, but would of course know the outcome of their choices.  But foreknowledge does not necessitate predetermination.  ((If you happen to be a Calvinist, you can send me a PM about it.))



I'm not a Calvinist. I actually don't even know what that means. I'm just someone who's recalling various things from philosophy courses taken many years ago through an imperfect memory and understanding.

Foreknowledge does not necessitate predetermination... After googling up a little about Calvanism, isn't this statement dependent on which definition of free will is being used?




Queshire said:


> Heh, there's always my favorite explanation ^^ God's a jerk.



Well then, he isn't all good then either.


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## Fnord

Free will AND omnipotence can't exist side by side.  If you know what's going to happen before it does, then that's deterministic.  For humans to have free will then future events cannot be known.  

I think everything can be broken down and explained scientifically (eventually).  Again, this goes back to my point that just because we _can't_ explain it yet, doesn't mean it can never be explained scientifically.  For us to embrace metaphysical forces means that all science is inherently wrong because it can simply be "broken" by supernatural forces.  If we as a species simply settled for the metaphysical explanation of things, we would have made very little advance in the areas of physics, medicine, and even mathematics.  So the supernatural isn't something we witness empirically but rather is something people fall back to describe that which has _not_ witnessed empirically.  

This is why religion is not studied as a science--we really can't experiment with it (and those things that have been tried, such as analyzing the effects of prayer, for example, turn out to be statistically insignificant) and we therefore cannot use it to produce evidence.  After all, if there _was_ evidence then there wouldn't be so many religions today (and sects within those religions) nor the thousands of religions that existed before.  Philosophy wouldn't even be a field of study (for the objective basis for morality and human purpose would be explicitly known) and there wouldn't be any wars over whose religion (or version of it) is correct. 

But we have none of those things.  And even with the pervasiveness of religion in our everyday lives, anyone who comes out and says "a god has spoken to me" is immediately dismissed as delusional or even insane--yet many religions are based on just those very claims (they just happened in the past when these deities apparently were arbitrarily more engaged in the lives of everyday people).  

Without a deity as an objective force for morality, where else would we get it from other than spontaneous emergence through the actions of millions of individuals acting in concert over a period of time?  As Steerpike has pointed out, we can't empirically prove that this objectivity does or does not exist (and Ayn Rand types would say it does, even without religion), but we can certainly _reason_ that it likely doesn't.


----------



## Catherine

I was going to suggest the pendulum swinging between good and evil is _intent_, but then I thought more about this and I realised that the old addages of "even the best intentions..." and "...paved with good intentions" may have their points.

So my second suggestion is _consideration _IE the consideration of the other person and the effects your actions will have on that person. Caring whether one is hurt, angry, or experiencing any other negative emotion, versus not caring at all how your actions will make them feel. This will also cover people who are perceived to be considerate of others, but in their very core, don't really give a flying hoot. The other side of that coin of course includes those that are perceived to be evil, but in their very core _do _actually care. It is about what is in a person's core - their heart, their soul, their essence, their being - whatever you wish to call it.

*PLEASE NOTE: *_This is just my opinion and in no way should be taken by others in a negative light. My opinions are not meant to cause harm or offence to any person or persons in any way and you have my sincerest apologies if my words have been taken in any negative light._


----------



## Fnord

Catherine said:


> I was going to suggest the pendulum swinging between good and evil is _intent_, but then I thought more about this and I realised that the old addages of "even the best intentions..." and "...paved with good intentions" may have their points.



Well, that's a fine point to bring up.  Intent *is* pretty important but, as Adam Smith wrote in the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, we have to take into account all parties--not only the benefactor or the beneficiary, but also other parties who bear witness to the act or are otherwise affected by it.  These issues certainly come up again and again when discussing public policy in economic and social issues; many people might have the best intentions but look at the end goal in a very myopic way.  If, for example, you feel people should be paid a much higher wage than they are and thus advocate raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour because you feel that is a wage that most people can live on, your heart might be in the right place but you have to account for the effects on the intended beneficiary (likely the poor and unskilled who will suddenly find themselves priced out of the labor market) and third-party effects (a slowdown of productivity, an sharp increase in the general price level, etc).  

Does the benefactor's desire then become less moral?  The intention was there (doing good) but the outcome made everyone involved worse off (doing "evil").  Lots of gray area there.


----------



## Mindfire

Fnord said:


> Free will AND omnipotence can't exist side by side.  If you know what's going to happen before it does, then that's deterministic.  For humans to have free will then future events cannot be known.


That's not quite correct. Foreknowledge does not necessitate determinism, if for no other reason than the cause/effect chains our choices create are unknown to _us_, which some would argue is what really matters. In order for predestination to be in effect here, God would have to be actively constraining human choice. He doesn't do that, and there is no cause/effect relationship between knowing an event will take place and the event actually happening. One must also take into account that the reason the outcomes of our choices is unknown to us is because we have limited perspective. God has infinite perspective, so he can see and think "farther down the road" than we can. Also, your scientific reductionist way of viewing things actually WILL produce determinism if you carry it to its ultimate conclusion according to your own logic. If science evolves to the place where every outcome of every event can be calculated with perfect accuracy given the proper number of variables, does that also disprove human free will?



> I think everything can be broken down and explained scientifically (eventually).  Again, this goes back to my point that just because we _can't_ explain it yet, doesn't mean it can never be explained scientifically.  For us to embrace metaphysical forces means that all science is inherently wrong because it can simply be "broken" by supernatural forces.  If we as a species simply settled for the metaphysical explanation of things, we would have made very little advance in the areas of physics, medicine, and even mathematics.  So the supernatural isn't something we witness empirically but rather is something people fall back to describe that which has _not_ witnessed empirically.


This is strong naturalism in its rawest form. And it's somewhat self defeating. The very statement that everything can be explained scientifically is an assumption that cannot be empirically proven. So would that not be invalidated on its own terms? And if such assumptions, which form the bedrock of all human thought, are not invalidated, then that means we have identified at least one thing that cannot be empirically determined, which means we must accept the possibility that there might be others. To deny the probability of the supernatural existing is reasonable. To deny the possibility is overreaching the bounds of science. As I stated earlier, science can only examine natural phenomena anyway. To deduce from that that the supernatural cannot exist is a logical leap. And furthermore, you seem to be using a different definition of "supernatural", or else not to understand its nature. The supernatural is by definition "beyond" us. Think of the universe as a Venn diagram with only one circle. That which is within the circle is natural perception, that which is without is the supernatural. The physical laws inside the circle do not necessarily apply outside of it. But that does not make them "wrong", it only means they have limitations, in the same way that American laws not applying in Norway does not invalidate the American laws in America. And anyway, if a being has the power to create reality, surely it takes somewhat less power to fiddle with it for a few moments.


----------



## Steerpike

Penpilot said:


> If the deity doesn't know everything then he is not all knowing and all powerful. Which means the deity is not perfect and has limits to their knowledge.
> 
> If the deity is not perfect and has limits to their knowledge then any morality they dictate could be flawed and the deity would not know it, so wouldn't that mean that any morality dictated by said deity would be subjective to them?



You're making a leap here and not connecting the dots. We're talking about a lack of knowledge of every future event that will occur. I don't believe you've shown that a lack of knowledge of every future event will occur precludes an absolute morality.


----------



## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> Free will AND omnipotence can't exist side by side.  If you know what's going to happen before it does, then that's deterministic.  For humans to have free will then future events cannot be known.



I'm going to agree with Mindfire on this. I don't think omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive when you are talking about a deity. One thing we believe about time is that it is intertwined with space. It is a 'thing' that was formed along with the creation of the universe. If you believe a deity created the universe, then that deity is necessarily outside of time (i.e. must have existed before it). If you put the deity in a frame of reference outside of time, you could have a situation where the deity is simply able to perceive all points in time simultaneously. Treating the deity as though he is necessarily part of the stream of time and bound by a human frame of reference is a mistake. As humans, we can know what someone did in 1960. It is the past to us, and our knowing what they did doesn't preclude their freewill. For the deity, it is essentially all the past, though the deity is different in that he can presumably interfere at points in the timeline if he so desires.


----------



## Queshire

Science has already arrived at determinism in the idea of Laplace's demon. Basically it suggests that if there was a being that could track the position and speed of every atom in the world it could predict everything that would happen with perfect accuracy just like how in billards you can predict how if you hit one ball it'll bounce into another ball, causes it to go and hit another ball, which goes and hits another ball, etc and so on. Of course, this would require an atomic system to the universe, I'm not sure if it's still valid in the latest quantum waveform whatsits model of the universe.

Well........................ If everything does get proven empirically, wouldn't that empirically prove that statement? It'd be the last thing in the universe to be proven, but it's still possible. ^^

I do agree that there are things that human minds simply can't comprehend.... Time paradoxes (paradoxi?) immediately come to mind. Just because we can't comprehend them though doesn't necccesarily mean that they can't be explained with science, just that we can't grasp the answer.

I don't neccesarily agree that it'd take less power to mess with something that's already started. Imagine you have a stone wheel at the top of a hill. It might take a good amount of force to get the wheel rolling, but it'll take a lot more to stop it. Modifying the course might take less power, but it risks the whole thing going out of control.

I agree though that having knowledge of the future doesn't affect free will, just so long as you have reasons for your choice besides simply knowning you'll make that choice due to predicting the future then it's still free will. I'm reminded about Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen, he described seeing time as a gem, where most people just look at one facet of the gem at a time, he sees it as a whole, but just because he knows he'll feel shocked when he finds out his girlfriend has been cheating on him in advanced doesn't stop him from feeling shocked when he finds out his girlfriend has been cheating on him.


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## Black Dragon

Hey guys,

As this thread is touching upon big theological and philosophical questions, please keep in mind our special guidelines for discussing religion:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/news-announcements/2101-guidelines-discussing-religion.html

In particular, pay attention to points E and F in those guidelines.

Thanks.


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## Fnord

Queshire said:


> Science has already arrived at determinism in the idea of Laplace's demon. Basically it suggests that if there was a being that could track the position and speed of every atom in the world it could predict everything that would happen with perfect accuracy just like how in billards you can predict how if you hit one ball it'll bounce into another ball, causes it to go and hit another ball, which goes and hits another ball, etc and so on. Of course, this would require an atomic system to the universe, I'm not sure if it's still valid in the latest quantum waveform whatsits model of the universe.



Right, this was sort of what I was getting at.  Given certain conditions (and an unfathomable amount of social engineering and computation) we can theoretically predict the outcome of a situation.  Probability and game theory are attempts to make very broad predictions about this sort of thing in regards to human behavior and choice-making.  If we believe in a pure form of free will (which we obviously cannot prove one way or the other at this point), then we assume that there is a great deal chaos in the human psyche.  I'm not convinced of that though.  Theoretically, if you ran experiments where you had perfect genetic human clones with perfectly identical environmental experiences and placed them in separate but identical rooms and ran a decision experiment, you would produce identical results (twin studies have attempted this, which is as close to these conditions as we can get and they've had illuminating results.  Being that I have identical twin girls on the way myself, and given my particular field and accompanying interest in game theory, I have all kinds of curiosities I want to look into).

But I still can't see where one can reconcile free will with knowledge of future events.  For example, if a person is given a battery of decisions to make:








And I, as an omniscient entity, know already that CDDC will be the choices this person makes with absolute certainty, then how have I bestowed free will on this person?  If we look at it from the "past" standpoint (as in the entity in question exists ahead of the event and is looking back on it), we still can't reconcile actual free will in the decision-maker. I, the omniscient entity, already exist in a deterministic universe.  If people have free will, I cannot know their decisions with 100% certainty ahead of time; if I'm omniscient then people cannot exercise free will.  So either I'm not perfectly omniscient or people are not perfectly free-willed.  If we acknowledge some sort of middle ground between the two, then something between those two possibilities is imperfect.  That, in itself, is interesting to think about but that means our concepts of deities and the religion that surrounds them is deeply flawed.  

When talking about an entity that exists outside of space-time, it certainly gets messy.  A Venn diagram of an "inner core" that operates within certain physical laws and an "outer boundary" that exists outside of these laws is certainly an interesting philosophical position.  And being we're all here united under the common banner of fantasy fiction, I'm sure we can all agree that it's fun to think about these sorts of things in a creative sense.  But I run into inconsistencies when attempting to reason out such an environment.  There is certainly the possibility (for thinking purposes at least) of physical laws being different someplace else but it gets messy when these two places, or entities from these two places, interact.  If the godly entity from the "outer world" exerts force on the inner world in such a way that it violates the physical laws of that inner world, then that inner world wasn't operating under those laws to begin with and we're back to where we started.

As an aside to this discussion, this is a little article/blog/journal entry I always found interesting in stretching the imagination of how we think about these sorts of things:  

Ragged Trousered Philosopher


----------



## Ravana

Steerpike said:


> I don't think omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive when you are talking about a deity.



I'm afraid they are–whether talking about a deity or not–if omniscience includes the certain knowledge of all future events. 

There is one fairly simple, and a second more complicated, way out of this. (1) The future simply cannot be "known," period: the omniscient being can only know everything that has already taken place or is taking place concurrently. (2) The omniscient being can know all _possible_ futures arising from all possible choices made by freely acting beings–making each possible future its own deterministic line–but cannot know with absolute certainty which specific choice a freely acting being will make prior to it actually making the choice. 

In either case, especially in the second, the omniscient being may be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy what choices will be made along any given trajectory, since the overwhelming majority of such choices will be curtailed by circumstance, and will follow from some form of rational assessment of those circumstances… but this is not the same as "knowing," and surprises are still possible. In neither case does the future actually exist: the limit is not on the omniscient being's ability to know anything that can be known–that ability remains unlimited; rather it is a limit on _what can be known_. 

Which, unfortunately, generally runs up against simultaneous claims that the being also be omnipotent, the argument being that if the deity can't know the future, there is a power it does not possess, and therefore the being is not omnipotent. In other words, omnipotent beings must be capable of doing the impossible as well as the possible, according to such proponents.

(A third option, less appealing to most who like to speak of such topics, is that omniscience only includes the ability to know _any_thing, not to automatically know _every_thing: the being must still direct its attention to events in order to actually know them. Even here, however, if the being directs its attention toward the future, then the future must become determined at that point in order for the being to actually "know" it, so this doesn't help much in the present case.)

Apart from those, you need to change what is meant by "know" to rescue the universe from the determinism of omniscience. Of course, it becomes pretty easy to win any argument once you start changing the meaning of your terms. 

Nor does the (apparent) uncertainty of quantum events salvage the situation: it still falls apart on the definition of "know." No matter how much uncertainty there is in the system, the omniscient being can only be said to "know" the future if it knows what the actual outcome of these events _will_ be _once they do take place_. If not, the being does not "know" the future. Note too that once more omnipotence creates additional problems: an omnipotent being must be able to know the outcome of theoretically indeterminate to be "omni"potent… i.e. it must be able to do the impossible.

Of course, it has to be able to do this anyway, since omnipotence is inherently and irremediably paradoxical. Which is why most religious scholars opt for a more limited form of "omnipotence" that allows such beings only to do the possible… as Aquinas put it: "Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God"; or, more recently, C. S. Lewis: "Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible." (In other words, they changed the meaning of their terms.  Though I suppose one could also say they defined them more clearly.) If the future, therefore, is inherently unknowable, then omniscient beings do not know it… and, almost as a side-effect, free will is rescued.


----------



## Mindfire

But, if a being is omnipotent, doesn't that also give it the ability to structure reality in a way such that omniscience and free-will CAN coexist? And is it not also likely that we cannot fully comprehend the seemingly paradoxical nature of omnipotence because of our limited human understanding?


----------



## Ravana

Ankari said:


> Man possess a conscience.
> There was A begining
> There will be AN end.
> Man is aware, and thus responsible for his actions.
> Man seeks justice when wrong has been done to him/her.
> There is a purpose to life.
> Mankind is rational (or strives to be rational).



I would actually not readily allow most of these. 2 and 3 are unproven, and may well turn out to be incorrect… assuming they are subject to proof at all. I could see 1 being an outgrowth of 4–depending on what is meant by "conscience"–but otherwise I would question it… would, in fact, consider it highly problematic, as it complicates any explanation of "aberrant" behavior. In my experience, 5 is inaccurate more often than it is accurate: most people don't seek justice so much as revenge. I have neither evidence nor reason to accept 6. 

That leaves 4 and 7… both of which I agree with on a personal basis, though I can see where they could be problematic, depending on how terms such as "responsible," "rational" and (especially) "aware" are defined. (I'm happier with "is rational" than "strives to be rational," by the by. Doesn't leave an escape hatch for anyone who wants to claim "I don't strive to be rational!" Perhaps "is capable of reason" would be a better way to put it.) "Self-aware" may be better than "aware."


----------



## Ravana

Devor said:


> But is there anything which would make it logically unacceptable for _you_ to ever want to commit murder if that murder, and the consequences of that murder, were not incompatible with your goals?  That's what I'm asking.  I understand why society would want to limit murders, and why you would support that as a member of society.  But is there a logical reason, based on any axioms which you accept, which would prevent you from doing exactly what you would ask society to discourage?



Logically, perhaps not—if what you're after is in terms of murder being an _inherently_ illogical act, independent of any other factor. Rationally, yes: it would be irrational for me to believe that the consequences of murder would never include things incompatible with my goals. Such as getting caught eventually, no matter how "perfect" I believe the act to be at the time. I further have internal reasons to believe that committing murder would create consequences incompatible with my goals, insofar as my experience has demonstrated that I am discomforted even by injuring others; therefore, I should wish to avoid incurring such consequences; logic suggests the most reliable way to do this is to avoid murdering people. I also find hypocrisy to be irrational and illogical, in addition to finding it personally repugnant; if I wish to live in a society that does not permit murder, it would be hypocritical of me (and thus irrational and illogical of me) to commit it. (Psychological consequences are nonetheless consequences.) Further, if I discover a way in which I could commit murder with absolutely zero chance of detection, I would fear that someone else might discover it as well, so for my own continued protection I should find a way to close off the possibility rather than risk my own person, or the dissolution of my society—which increases risk to my own person, thereby effectively becoming the same thing. Even if I have good reason to believe my method cannot be replicated, I would still be concerned that the existence of an unsolvable murder of any sort would encourage others to believe they could likewise act with impunity, whether they are correct in this belief or not; again, this increases risk to my own person—whether or not there is even any evidence a murder has been committed in the first place: the assumption, even speculation, that one has taken place is all that need be present to potentially increase that risk.

Most of these considerations apply to _any_ form of killing I might perform, not just murder, unless the consequences of not killing are more incompatible with my goals than those of killing… as, for instance, in self-defense. Similar considerations can be applied to nearly any other act we normally criminalize; thus, I avoid doing unto others that which I would not have done unto me.

Which, I think, arrives at something resembling an axiom. If I accept it as one, then it follows logically that I should not commit murder. 

(I am, of course, ignoring your use of the word "want" in this discussion: there have been plenty of times I've _wanted_ to kill someone. I got over it.  )


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## Ravana

Mindfire said:


> But, if a being is omnipotent, doesn't that also give it the ability to structure reality in a way such that omniscience and free-will CAN coexist? And is it not also likely that we cannot fully comprehend the seemingly paradoxical nature of omnipotence because of our limited human understanding?



If a being is omnipotent, can it create another omnipotent being? Either the answer is no, in which case it is not omnipotent—there is something it cannot do; or the answer is yes, in which case neither being is omnipotent, because each is capable of imposing a limit on the omnipotence of the other… or if they cannot, there is a power that each of them lacks, and they're still not omnipotent. Sorry, but it isn't _seemingly_ paradoxical; it is, as I said, _inherently_ paradoxical.

I have also pointed out, the last time this question arose, that this _doesn't_ mean omnipotence cannot exist. Deities might simply be immune to paradox. That would, in fact, have to be one of the powers of an omnipotent being, after all: immunity to paradox. If it is not so immune, it isn't omnipotent… not on that reading of the term. Right?

Which still leaves you with two options: either you can surrender a bit on the omnipotent part, as many theologians have done… or you can not get worked up about paradoxes. Nothing says the rules of logic have to constrain deities—indeed, they cannot constrain an omnipotent being, or else, once again, the being is not omnipotent. The rules of logic do, however, have to apply to logic. I think far too many people get upset over the notion that "illogical" somehow equates to "wrong." It does not. Just ask a logician. (Well, another one, that is.  )

It may be appealing to think that omniscience doesn't preclude free will—in one way of looking at it, it may appear that the two are completely unrelated. Freely acting beings still make their own choices; omniscience merely reveals what that choice will be in advance. But think about that: if the choice which will be made is known—_is_ known, not _can be_ known—then the "choice" has already been determined, _prior to it ever being made_. A being capable of knowing the future is comparable to (I'm tempted to say indistinguishable from) a being standing at the end of time and looking backward: all choices have already been made, all events have already taken place, all the quantum indeterminacies have already been resolved. Everything already happened that one way, and no other: it's the past, it's history. _It is not free to occur any other way_ at that point. Take all that knowledge of what has happened, move it into some earlier point in time, and give it to some being looking forward into the future: _it must still remain immutable_, if it is to remain accurate. Where does the "freedom" enter in, if there is only one possible outcome to any given "choice"? I'm only "free" to make the choices that, from the point of view of the omniscient being, _I have already made_. That's where the problem lies.

I doubt I can offer a rigorous _proof_ that future-looking omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive… but I can't see how they could be compatible, either.


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## Queshire

You know, I reeeeeeeeeeeeeally hate terms like infinity, eternity, and yes, omnipotent. By defining these things we're... well, we're defining things that are undefinable. Even if we're not doing it conciously, we're putting a limit on these things that are inheirantly unlimitable. When you hear those words what do you think of? THAT is only the smallest of small specks in the face of how stupidly big those things are. They are so big we litterally can not comprehend them.

I also don't see a problem with Paradoxes (Paradoxi?) Those are simply things that our feeble human minds can't comprehend. Our brains are physically unable to understand them. That doesn't mean that there isn't a way to resolve paradox, simply that we can't comprehend them. At the level of a being considered omnipotent, he simply might not care about paradoxi.

I still don't see the problem with knowing everything and free will. It doesn't matter if you know what you're going to choose beforehand if, when the time comes, that choice is still the one that makes the most sense to you. Since my Dr. Manhattan example was ignored, then what about Odin? Thanks to drinking from Ymir's Well (I think that's what it was) He gained knowledge of everything that was going to happen. He knew that all his efforts to stop Ragnarok were going to fail, but He tries it anyways because that's what makes sense to him.

Finally, there's the fact that only the god knows everything that's going to happen, even if you know what somebody else is going to do, if they come to that choice on their own due to their own reasons, that's free will.


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## Fnord

Queshire said:


> You know, I reeeeeeeeeeeeeally hate terms like infinity, eternity, and yes, omnipotent. By defining these things we're... well, we're defining things that are undefinable.



You just need to work with mathematics more.  




> I also don't see a problem with Paradoxes (Paradoxi?) Those are simply things that our feeble human minds can't comprehend. Our brains are physically unable to understand them. That doesn't mean that there isn't a way to resolve paradox, simply that we can't comprehend them. At the level of a being considered omnipotent, he simply might not care about paradoxi.



I think is kind of a lazy way to think about it.  When we start saying things like "our feeble minds can't comprehend X" we put self-created barriers to our thought processes and then dismiss the subjects out-of-hand.  Again, if we had always settled for this explanation, we would have never had the advances in physics, medicine, mathematics, and other fields that have made our lives incredibly better, especially in the last 300 years or so.  Every time we've made great strides in humanity it is because someone said "We _can_ comprehend this. . . ."




> I still don't see the problem with knowing everything and free will. It doesn't matter if you know what you're going to choose beforehand if, when the time comes, that choice is still the one that makes the most sense to you. Since my Dr. Manhattan example was ignored, then what about Odin? Thanks to drinking from Ymir's Well (I think that's what it was) He gained knowledge of everything that was going to happen. He knew that all his efforts to stop Ragnarok were going to fail, but He tries it anyways because that's what makes sense to him.
> 
> 
> Finally, there's the fact that only the god knows everything that's going to happen, even if you know what somebody else is going to do, if they come to that choice on their own due to their own reasons, that's free will.



Because, as Ravana pointed out so eloquently, free will and absolute foreknowledge are inherently paradoxical.  Then only way you can argue against that is simply to throw up your hands and say "Well, we just can't comprehend otherwise" which is just an easy and intellectually lazy way to settle the subject.  If that's simply a person's answer for everything when they hit a barrier, then there isn't really any point to that person continuing the dialogue.  

The Odin example is more an example of early humans trying to reconcile strange beliefs (if we're operating under the assumption that Odin does not exist).  It's not very useful because most people (rightfully) don't believe those events actually happened.  

A better (or at least more modern) example is the eschatological beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses. According to their beliefs, only 144,000 people will ascend to heaven and rule alongside God and yet JWs number in the millions and are aggressively evangelistic.  I once posed this question to a couple who came to my door once "If the number of people who will rule in heaven is so few, wouldn't witnessing to others just be decreasing the probability of you being among that number?"  The answer I received was that in order to be among those chosen, one has to lead others into the faith.  I pointed out that this sounded suspiciously like a pyramid scheme and was met with an awkward farewell.  

And yet the JWs also believe ardently the concept of free will while also not seeming to question that God knows in advance that only 144,000 of their number will ascend to Heaven.  To me it just seems that they haven't thought it all through very well or, at best, also subscribe to the "if I can't comprehend it then it must not be comprehendible" fallacy.


----------



## Devor

Ravana said:


> Of course, it has to be able to do this anyway, since omnipotence is inherently and irremediably paradoxical. Which is why most religious scholars opt for a more limited form of "omnipotence" that allows such beings only to do the possible… as Aquinas put it: "Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God"; or, more recently, C. S. Lewis: "Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible." (In other words, they changed the meaning of their terms.  Though I suppose one could also say they defined them more clearly.) If the future, therefore, is inherently unknowable, then omniscient beings do not know it… and, almost as a side-effect, free will is rescued.



I was hoping to avoid this, but . . . 

Both Aquinas, and Lewis, speak without any force of authority behind their statements, and although they're very well-written and insightful, their works are inherently littered with errors.  Omnipotence means exactly what it's supposed to mean, but there are two elaborations which could be added:  Omnipotence includes the power to create a self-imposed restraint, and the truth which is inherent in creation has been built around those restraints.

This is true because Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnibenevolence are properties of God, but even taken together, they are only a simplification commonly used for debating purposes.  God possesses other defined qualities, such as being _Unchanging_, which justifies God's ability to commit Himself to an Oath: He would never, in the absolute sense, change His mind (although He may at times appear to when considered inside the context of time, however God exists now as He will at the end).

Considering the matter of Omniscience and Omnipotence implying Predestination, I do not agree, but on a more practical matter, there isn't even a point to the debate.  The Christian God possesses a further distinct trait which renders the conversation irrelevant:

He is _Triune_ - that is, He possesses three distinct and divine Wills, acting in perfect harmony, but each of which possesses somewhat separate and distinct properties.

This is relevant because of two things:

 - All things were created through the Word of God.
 - Omniscience does not extend to the Word of God, but only to God the Father.

Consequently, Omniscience is not a feature of the Will which created humanity, and the entire debate is moot, a straw man, and argument from ignorance.


----------



## Steerpike

Ravana said:


> I'm afraid they are—whether talking about a deity or not—if omniscience includes the certain knowledge of all future events.



I don't agree this is necessarily true, for the reasons I stated above. Fnord address those reasons to a degree, but essentially you guys have just waved away the argument without saying much 

From what I understand of physics, time and space in our universe are inextricably linked. Before the creation of the latter, it is in a sense meaningless to talk about the former. There simply was no time as we know it. If a deity existed in whatever came before, and created the universe (and therefore also time), then this deity must necessarily exist outside of time (or at least our conception of it). Einstein demonstrated how important frame of reference is. From the deity's frame of reference "has happened" and "will happen" are meaningless, because the deity simply is not constrained by our conception of time.

I'm not proposing that this is the true state of affairs, merely that it is a logical possibility whereby knowledge of events in our future, by a deity, do not preclude our free will and more than our knowledge of past events precludes the free will of those who came before.


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## Steerpike

Since we're talking about evil, how about the Problem of Evil:

1. God is all good
2. Good is all powerful
3. God is all knowing
4. Evil exists.

Seems to be a paradox in there.


----------



## Fnord

Steerpike said:


> Since we're talking about evil, how about the Problem of Evil:
> 
> 1. God is all good
> 2. Good is all powerful
> 3. God is all knowing
> 4. Evil exists.
> 
> Seems to be a paradox in there.



Indeed, and this seems to be where the concept of free will had to be introduced in order to make all four "consistent".


----------



## Steerpike

Fnord said:


> Indeed, and this seems to be where the concept of free will had to be introduced in order to make all four "consistent".



And even then one might wonder why god didn't create beings with free will who at least choose to do less evil, on the whole, than we humans do. 

And "freewill" as an argument doesn't address so-called physical evils.


----------



## Devor

Fnord said:


> Indeed, and this seems to be where the concept of free will had to be introduced in order to make all four "consistent".



No, that's not why free will exists at all.  Free will exists because God is Omnibenevolent, which by definition means that He needs something distinct from Himself to be the recipient of that love.  Evil is not a paradox because "evil" is undone at the end of time.  In fact, the weight of evil will be used to enhance the good.  It is just a tool employed for a time to help us understand how much we want the good.

But I'll point out, you are starting to break the rules and attempting to prove other beliefs wrong.


----------



## Steerpike

Devor said:


> It is just a tool employed for a time to help us understand how much we want the good.



The interesting question is, why that tool? If you are dealing with an omnipotent being, presumably the same end could be accomplished without all the human suffering in the interim.


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## Devor

Steerpike said:


> The interesting question is, why that tool? If you are dealing with an omnipotent being, presumably the same end could be accomplished without all the human suffering in the interim.



That's an interesting enough question.  The thing is, at root, because God loves you, you're given a choice:  Love Him in return, or don't.  That's your free will.  Our perceptions of good and evil are that choice being reduced to micro-elements and playing out over a lifetime.

Because nothing in this world is absolute, it means something a little weird:  In this world, you cannot fully say yes, and you cannot fully say no.  Even the most arduent of atheists cannot reject God with every aspect of his being; even the most devout Christian cannot - this may be slightly simplified for illustration - accept Him fully with every aspect of his being.

Rather, by giving you complete immersion in both good and evil, without really even explaining what the difference is ("Knowledge of Good and Evil" refers to _Practice_ with them, not a proper education), you're given a greater opportunity to choose the right path with some piece of who you are, before being forced to make an absolute decision.

Basically, to play off the concept of love for a moment, you're given a little bit of space in your life without God (i.e., evil) as a process of seduction.

((edit))

I have to go, I've now promised my wife to leave this thread alone until after Mother's Day.


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## Fnord

> But I'll point out, you are starting to break the rules and attempting to prove other beliefs wrong.



I suppose when we're debating such a broad topic (especially concerning good, evil, and morality in general) that's kind of an inevitability.  




Devor said:


> Basically, to play off the concept of love for a moment, you're given a little bit of space in your life without God (i.e., evil) as a process of seduction.



That seems, in itself, as something that is not very benevolent.  And while it's certainly not unique to Christianity (or Abrahamic religions in general), it seems akin to someone leaving a bunch of loaded handguns on a school playground and then stepping away and taking no responsibility for the actions that ensue because the consequences are just acts of free will outside of the person who left all those guns there.  We certainly don't allow such activity to go unpunished in our society and we _definitely_ don't consider the person who commits such an act as a benevolent or well-meaning individual.


----------



## Ravana

Steerpike said:


> Since we're talking about evil, how about the Problem of Evil:
> 
> 1. God is all good
> 2. Good is all powerful
> 3. God is all knowing
> 4. Evil exists.
> 
> Seems to be a paradox in there.



It's one of the more popular ones to bring up, yes. Even more broadly, the same argument is used to apply to the existence of "natural evils" (disasters, "acts of god" [sic]), and, more broadly still, of pain in any form.

The usual response is along the lines Devor mentions: evil is an unavoidable component of any system involving free will. To which I would agree wholeheartedly. 

The response doesn't work as well if extended to natural evils or pain. Those putting these forward as problems (usually in addition to the evils committed by freely acting agents) primarily employ slippery slope arguments: if our omnipotent, omnibenevolet being is truly as represented, then the system ought to include the absolute minimum of these collective "evils"; anything in excess of that is gratuitous, and ought not to be allowed by an omnibenevolent being. Yet it seems that there are any number of places where an "evil" could have been less than it actually is, and still produce the desired results, whatever those might be. 

Which is usually followed up by the statement: therefore, god doesn't exist. QED. 

Which is bull. 

In the first place, even if this were accepted as a "proof," it would not prove anything about the _existence_ of a deity; at best, it would demonstrate that one or more of the _attributes_ assigned to said deity is incorrectly stated. 

It's actually worse than that, however–because slippery slopes slide both ways. (That, by the way, is a phrase of my own creation: I'm quite proud of it. I'm sure it's been stated in other forms throughout history; I just like the way mine rings.  ) The proponents of the argument from evil/pain can _claim_ that it seems there could be less evil/pain in the system, but they cannot _demonstrate_ that the system, in fact, does not include the absolute minimum necessary for it to function. In other words, while it seems possible that the system ought to work with fewer evils than exist, it seems equally possible that there could easily be _more_ evils in the system than actually exist. So why aren't there? Because of divine benevolence, perhaps?

The lack of a good argument on one side does not prove the other, of course. But in my experience, those who argue for the _non_-existence of a deity can, _at best_, do no better than those arguing in favor of the existence of said deity, and in general their arguments suffer from the same flaws as the ones they purport demonstrate their own positions. 

Note finally that _all_ the arguments against deities go out the window if one is simply willing to drop the "omni"- from in front of the deity's attributes. I honestly fail to see what is lost by changing "all" X to "most" (that is, "unsurpassed by any other") X: "most powerful," etc. Does a deity _really_ need to be able to do the impossible, so long as it can do anything and everything that _is_ possible, and to a greater extent than any other being is capable of doing? I'd still be sufficiently impressed by such a being, I can assure you.…

-

Here are some links, for anyone wishing to pursue the issue, to one of the more recent and better-known discussions of the problem of evil–which popped up in my Philosophy of Religion class (my term paper for which was a refutation of the arguments of the critics). The first is a (poorly-scanned) paper by John Hick, addressing the problem; the other two are portions of a paper attempting to refute Hick, and a bullet-point summary of the complete paper (I couldn't readily turn up the entire paper: it might be out there somewhere). My refutation of Madden and Hare was along the lines indicated above: that all the objections they bring against Hick apply in reverse, and with equal strength, to their own contentions. 

http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/Introduction_to_Philosophy_Fall_09/Hick_Problem_of_Evil.pdf

Madden and Hare: Critique of Hick

http://hettingern.people.cofc.edu/P...adden_and Hare_Critique_of Hicks_Theodicy.htm

(I would point out, in passing, and for whatever it's worth, that the Lewis quote I gave earlier is from his own work on the same topic, _The Problem of Pain_.)


----------



## Ravana

Devor said:


> Both Aquinas, and Lewis, speak without any force of authority behind their statements



I could argue that they are, in fact, "authorities" in the sense of "sources commonly appealed to for support"–but I won't, because I happen to agree with you, and because arguments from authority are at best weakly inductive, and are most often fallacious. I would only add that the same is true of any human writer–that is to say, of any source of anything any of us have ever read. 



> and although they're very well-written and insightful, their works are inherently littered with errors.



Again, no argument. I've ripped Aquinas up before myself, albeit not on this particular contention. I was merely citing them to demonstrate that even among theologians the notion of omni-whatever is often viewed as limited by the possible.

-

(By the by, you might want to check Aquinas' views on triune nature before you go blanket-rubbishing him. Not that being wrong about some things makes him wrong about everything, of course… nor the reverse. Just mentioning it.)


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## Queshire

I think it's important to point out how christian-centric this conversastion has become. I imagine a large part of this is that most english speaking people are most familiar with the christian religions even if they don't practice them. At this time, I don't have much to say about the other religions in the world, but I still think it's important to mention that Christianity isn't the only religion in the world.


----------



## Ravana

Queshire said:


> then what about Odin? Thanks to drinking from Ymir's Well (I think that's what it was) He gained knowledge of everything that was going to happen. He knew that all his efforts to stop Ragnarok were going to fail, but He tries it anyways because that's what makes sense to him.



Did he? Or did he do what he did because he already knew, courtesy of his vision, that was what he was _going_ to do? If his vision of the future was accurate, he couldn't _not_ do those things–regardless of whether or not they made sense to him. 

Indeed, what would have "made sense" would have been trying something _different_… since he already knew that following the path he foresaw led to doom. The only rational reason to remain on that path is if he knew it produced the best possible outcome of _all_ the various choices he might make. And if that was what he saw, then all those future "choices" _were made at that instant_–_not_ later on, as they appeared to come up as "choices"–and his life, and all history, became predestined from that point forward.

And if he did not see all possible futures, but only a single future, he is guilty of surrendering to a belief that the future he foresaw was immutable… in other words, he came to believe at that point (if he did not already) that the future he saw was destiny, fate, what have you, and there was nothing he could do about it. 

Nor does it really help to say that he made the choices that "made sense to him." All this does is suggest that those choices were predetermined even _without_ foreknowledge: he makes the choices he does because those are the choices he would make _anyway_–inevitably. 

Prescience is a trap. The last real choice Odin ever made was to drink from the well. In doing so, he surrendered his "free" will to the perceived inevitability of the future he foresaw.

(P.S. Mimir's well, not Ymir's. You were close.  )


----------



## Queshire

Ultimately that only limits his freewill, not anybody else's. And it wouldn't matter if he knows the outcome if it still seems like the best option regardless of everything else.

The worse thing is to do something just because of forknowledge, that only leads to self fullfilling prophecies.


----------



## Devor

Ravana said:


> I could argue that they are, in fact, "authorities" in the sense of "sources commonly appealed to for support"—but I won't, because I happen to agree with you, and because arguments from authority are at best weakly inductive, and are most often fallacious. I would only add that the same is true of any human writer—that is to say, of any source of anything any of us have ever read.



Actually, I was referring to their authority as representatives of the Christian faith.  I'm Catholic, but Aquinas, in particular, is a pet peeve of mine - he was a Catholic, and a Saint, and a Doctor of the Church, but every time I look to him on a subject, he happens to be somewhat wrong.  There are authoritative statements of the Catholic faith, but for some reason people prefer to quote weaker authorities.

I'll read the footnotes in an Encyclical - not that I read very many of them - and that's enough of Aquinas's quotes for me.

Protestants don't often have as many clear authoritative statements, and even fewer which cross denominations, so quoting Lewis is probably as fair and as close to an authority as you can get - if, y'know, I were still Protestant.


----------



## James Chandler

Justme said:


> Backwards, meaning the Biblical ideal and ideals about Good and Evil. They have been run into the ground at nearly evey discussion and debate site I've ever belonged to. The attitudes that one finds in religious texts are too cut and dry and have been the references for a good portion of the ridicule and suppression of far too many other peoples rights.



Do not be too quick to dismiss "Biblical ideals" or ideas about Good and Evil as a source of morality for your writing. If nothing else, they give the reader something familiar to hold to. More importantly, don't confuse the use of religion and religious teaching for the repression of others with the actual ideals themselves, regardless of the source of those teachings.  Hypocrisy and failure to follow teachings of good and evil are a rich source of dramatic tension. 

Are Good and evil absolutes? Irrelevant. So, be careful of sliding into mental masturbation about the issue. Good and Evil cannot exist without context, they can only really exist within the CHOICES we make.  The choices we make are going to be based on any number of things which inform our perspective.  A volcano destroying a village is not evil, but a warlord destroying the same village probably is. Does it matter to the villagers? What if the volcano was triggered by an "evil" wizard? What about a "good" wizard who triggered the wrong volcano?  What if the "warlord" was really engaging in a mercy massacre days before the volcano blows in order to prevent a more painful death? Be careful of sliding into mental masturbation about the issue, at least in your writing. If you want something "new," you're really talking about a new set of cultural definitions of what constitutes evil choices vs. good choices.

Good Luck


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## James Chandler

Maybe absolute good is avoiding what would qualify as Evil or Bad...


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## James Chandler

> And if evolution is an adaptational tool and nothing more, then life must have some other source.



...In which case there is no true good or true evil. There is only survive or not survive. If there is no afterlife, it does not matter how you live your life or what suffering you cause for others. We're all just philosophizing meatbags.


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## James Chandler

Fnord said:


> My point was that no one comes out of the womb a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Hindu or what-have-you.  _Someone_ has to teach that to you.  So certainly your environment (where you were born, who your parents are, etc) influences your religious background--they don't really occur spontaneously.
> 
> If you could run a controlled experiment where someone was born without any outside influence of the sort, it doesn't seem at all likely that someone would spontaneously adopt "Muslim values" or "Christian values" pertaining to "good" and "evil".  Though they would certainly find out quickly the rewards of social behavior (as well as the consequences of anti-social behavior) without those specific religious factors.  That's why the "Golden Rule" is pretty universal across all societies even though their religions (or lack thereof) are very different--a society that doesn't value those sorts of things wouldn't last long, nor would the individuals in such a society likely survive to procreate over several generations.  We see forms of cooperation (and I dare say, morals) in lower primates as well, independent of a religious belief.



At the risk of starting a debate, this is simply not supported historically. There are many societies today who engage in practices we consider barbaric which have been around for thousands of years.


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## Phietadix

Fnord said:


> I think is kind of a lazy way to think about it.  When we start saying things like "our feeble minds can't comprehend X" we put self-created barriers to our thought processes and then dismiss the subjects out-of-hand.  Again, if we had always settled for this explanation, we would have never had the advances in physics, medicine, mathematics, and other fields that have made our lives incredibly better, especially in the last 300 years or so.  Every time we've made great strides in humanity it is because someone said "We _can_ comprehend this. . . ."



I disagree. All great strides in humanity is admitting we don't know something and trying to find out why.


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## mbartelsm

I believe it boils down to balance, you could say order and chaos, but complete order is not that nice, you could say freedom and oppression, but then again, complete freedom is anarchy, and that's not that good either.


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## shangrila

What is Good and Evil? A line in the sand that can be changed whenever one feels like, and ultimately gets washed away by the tide anyway.


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## psychotick

Hi,

What are good and evil? Well technically good simply means 'of God', so good is essentially doing his will. This ofcourse assumes the God exists. For those who doubt then yes, good and evil are relative. There is no moral authority to decide what is goos and what's evil, there's only the collective judgement of people. And unfortunately people, even millions of people can be wrong. Consider slavery. At one stage it was actually considered a 'good' thing, since it brought civilization to the 'benighted savages'.

In terms of writing a story therefore, how you define good and evil will depend on the society that you create, and whether they are religious, and what the tenats of their faith are. If their faith says throwing children to the wolves is what their lord demands, then that is good. To oppose this, to go against it would be evil.

Cheers, Greg.


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