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The Nature of Evil

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Taylor

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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Interbane
I disagree that naturalists should scratch the term from their vocabulary.
johnson1010
I don't use the word evil, but i'm not agin it.
I do not use the word my self, there again though, I have little call to. It does seem a bit archaic, an anachronism.
Ant
Just like atheists don't own Reason.
Reason is not a border, it is all encompassed, theist and atheist both have reason, question is what that reason is applied to.
Ant
It's not the size that matters
From another thread we also learned that there's an esthetic as well.

Flann5
Naturalist explanations tend to be based on the bigger brains hypothesis. When it gets big enough consciousness emerges,along with a moral sense, language,abstract thought,artistic ability,creativity and imagination.
Interbane
Of course. Are you saying these things existed before humanity arrived? How would that even be possible?
What more can be said? Thanks Interbane, Thanks Flann.
Ant
I suspect a Naturalist believes (without evidence, of course) that prior to the rise of homo sapien intelligence, no intelligence existed.


Do naturalist ignore Neanderthal, Erectus, Habilis, and Australopithecus? all having proved them selves intelligent, fossil records verify as much.
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Flann 5
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
They existed in the mind of God, which explains why we have a universe at all and a moral sense.




They existed in the mind of god? How can that be, if these things are naturalistic? Isn't a god supposed to be supernatural?
Well, God created the natural world and made humans in his image. You believe we are entirely material beings but that's not the Christian view of man.
Interbane wrote:Flann wrote:
Language is innate to humans and not something that could have evolved. It's complex but it's a complete package.




Of course language evolved. What makes you think it didn't?
That's an assumption. Evidence please?

It's complex and I'll study it more before giving my reasons for why I think this human faculty could not have evolved gradually.
Interbane wrote:The largest limit to variation is the environment. If you push a bacteria to mutate a gagillion times, but don't change the environment, you'll get what you started with. Any limits you think are shown in experimentation are due to the limits of the experiment, not to the limits of life's ability to evolve.
Like I said before,the stasis found in the fossil record shows organisms unchanged for myriads of time under vastly changing climactic conditions. Ask Donald Prothero about it. Then new organisms pop up unheralded.
What you are suggesting sounds like Lamarckism. The environment causes genetic changes. It selects from what exists but doesn't create new genetic information. Mutations can change codes but their limits are clear from experiments.
Interbane wrote:That we evolved is a fact. This is where all the evidence leads, if you'd just look at it instead of googling creationist or ID soundbites.

Shed your bias, and let process guide you.
So it's not a theory now it's a fact? A lot of I.D.scientists are highly qualified and it's smacks of bias on your part to dismiss their scientifically based objections as soundbites.
Interbane wrote:
Unless you manage to believe two contradictory things at once, of course you don't find it convincing. Your mind resists understanding because the spot in your brain that would be convinced is already occupied by another belief. The issue isn't with the mechanisms of evolution, the problem is that you refuse understanding(whether you realize it or not). There will be no convincing you if you already have a different conclusion.
Thanks for explaining my bias but you follow proper method of course.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Wed Jul 29, 2015 9:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Flann wrote:That's an assumption. Evidence please?
There is more literature on the topic than you can read, including a tremendous amount of evidence. Both both types of evolution, depending on what you're referring to. Biological evolution, that gave us the capacity, planted the seed. The seed, the ability to think linguistically, evolved culturally after it sprouted. As it sprouted, the benefit it gave selected for men who could think more abstractly, use language to pass along basic behaviors such as tool making and food gathering. It's all there for the taking if you search for the right thing, rather than one man's reasons for not believing.
Flann wrote:The environment causes genetic changes. It selects from what exists but doesn't create new genetic information. Mutations can change codes but their limits are clear from experiments.
This indicates you don't actually understand the driving mechanism of evolution. The environment selects from what exists in the gene pool of the moment, it exerts the selection pressure. What exists constantly changes, from generation to generation. Not only because of the environment, as you claim, but for many other reasons. Radiation causes them, as part of the environment. But transcription errors do as well, which are internal.

Endless small mutations, some large mutations, and almost none of them are beneficial, because any change from the optimum is by definition a detriment. But this basic formula changes the instant the environment changes. An offspring with a previously detrimental trait may suddenly find itself with a greater benefit than its brethren. It will flourish, as will its children who inherit the mutation, until that mutation becomes the norm and a vast swath of the new population is once again optimized to the environment.

What you see in experiments is that when we change the environment, the organism changes, and no limit to this change is observed. But if you go for nothing but mutations, and don't change the environment, you'll get what you started with.
So it's not a theory now it's a fact? A lot of I.D.scientists are highly qualified and it's smacks of bias on your part to dismiss their scientifically based objections as soundbites.
It's been a fact for a while now. That we evolved is a fact. The description of this process is a theory.
Thanks for explaining my bias but you follow proper method of course.
Don't be so dismissive. This is perhaps the largest difference between us.

I do follow proper method as best I can. I've failed many times and corrected myself many times and I still make mistakes, but all my eggs are in the same basket. Not that of a worldview, but that of a set of methods. Methods that most reliably lead to truthful conclusions, developed and refined over the last two thousand years. I don't care whether or not evolution is true. I only care about following proper method. When you follow proper method, without playing favorites with any single worldview, you're more likely to land on the truth. It's not certain, because our minds aren't optimized for figuring out which worldview is the most truthful. We have to fight our biases, recognize which heuristics in our endless array are fallacious, and suppress our convictions. Unless you commit your entire will to that end, you will almost certainly end up with a false worldview. Your entire focus should be adherence to those methods which most reliably lead to truthful conclusions. Dismiss this if you want, but you'll never find another way to equal it, if the truth is your goal.


Getting back to the nature of evil. How do you justify the idea that there is something about people's behavior that is supernatural?
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Interbane wrote: I'm not sure the nature of evil can be justified from a religious perspective. Dig deeply enough, and you're forced to identify the seed of evil; what the first evil or origin of evil was. With that in place, you're forced to identify what planted the seed, or caused it to exist. The concept of evil is easily explained in a naturalistic worldview, even if it is unpalatable to theists. I disagree that naturalists should scratch the term from their vocabulary. We use the term to refer to acts committed by people.
Hello Interbane, here are my views on your comments.

Good and evil can only be defined as absolute objective realities if we agree on some foundational value statements. For example, if we assume that sustained human flourishing is good, and suffering evil, we have a framework to measure whether actions that cause flourishing or suffering are good or evil. This framework relates to other dualities, such as the contrast between order and disorder, although that is not so clear since disorder can be dynamic, for example in the capitalist idea of creative destruction. We also encounter the means-ends dilemma, since an action that produces net good, such as saving money, can produce interim evil, such as forgoing pleasure. The theme of flourishing relates to another natural theme, complexity, with the idea that greater ecological complexity is good while simplicity, if not evil, is less good, and destruction of complexity is evil.

In Christianity, this schema has traditionally be imagined in the categories of grace and corruption. Actions that lead in the direction of a sense of unity with the cosmos produce a state of grace, and are therefore good, while actions that lead in the direction of a sense of disunity with the cosmos produce a state of corruption, and are therefore evil. Seeing grace as a foundational concept for ethics helps to examine key ideas such as what is good, true, just, loving and beautiful.

My view is that these broad concepts have a universal quality. It is of course extremely difficult with disputed ethical topics to say whether one course of action produces net grace or corruption, especially where we must weigh short and long term impacts in the balance. However, I think that is the metric we should aim for in assessing the possibility of absolute values.
Interbane wrote: The disagreement is over the motive for those acts, and if that motive is in any way supernatural.
Moral disagreement tends more to be about the impact of acts, and the balance between consequences and principles. It does not make sense to say a natural entity has a supernatural motive. If we are talking about striking out words, we should strike out supernatural, because it is an obsolete and unscientific idea which is nothing but a source of vanity and error. Ethical assessment should aim to be quantifiable, while recognising that such an ultimate goal is in practice unattainable.

While it is generally agreed that an act can only be evil if it is deliberate, I really am not so sure about that. If a person does not know that they are committing an evil act, such as destruction of a sacred place or inflicting needless trauma, their ignorance may excuse them in terms of personal moral guilt, but it does not make the act itself any less evil.
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Flann wrote:How does evolution explain evil acts done with intent?
I thieved this from another thread.

Evolutionary biology might weigh in on this, but it really is a topic for psychology or perhaps even philosophy. In evolution, there isn't any judgement of action from a moral perspective. Not that it isn't admitted to be necessary, but that it isn't the scope of evolution. Evolution also doesn't calculate the perigee of the Moon, that's a different field of science. Perhaps evolutionary psychology, but I consider that different from the generic "evolution". Being specific might help I guess. A better question to start with might be "what field related to evolution explains evil acts done with intent?"

There are many different philosophies that explain it, and many fields of science that weigh in on it. The thing to remember is that you can't see evolution as a parallel to your own worldview, which is comprehensive top to bottom. Evolution has limited scope. Most difficult questions will fall outside that scope, and you'll have to turn to other fields of science or fields of philosophy.

With all the necessary explanation done, I'd say evolution doesn't explain evil acts. There are no such things as evil acts. Not to say they aren't real or don't exist, but that this judgement is left to be explained by other domains. Behaviors in evolution are viewed through the lens of survival and adaptation, and with only limited utility in human affairs. You could probably come up with some scientific sounding reason why one man kills another, but we're all subjects to our infosphere now, the insanely complex evolution of culture.

One man might have killed another because he breached an online contract by altering his server's code. The primitive emotion is there, but it's all convoluted by layers of education and a complex cultural environment. The motive is no longer about sex or food, and punishment is often done through arbitrary numbers - fines. You can tie these two domains together easily enough, but you need to have a solid foundation first, knowing the boundaries of each.
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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To mirror the original question, how can theists believe in evil? Take the God of Abraham as one of many examples. As is well documented in the Bible and perhaps to a lesser extent the Quran, that Deity ordered numerous genocides. What can be considered evil once one accepts the Divine sanctioned mass slaughter of men, women, babies, animals, and indeed anything that breathes?
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When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.
Isaiah 1:15

But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Exodus 21: 23 - 25
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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if i kill someone it's evil because i am a sinner :-D

when God does it it's fine because God is holy :lol:

like when you murder while in the army it's ok cause you are state sanctioned, then you come back from the war and it turns out your conscience doesn't care if the state sanctioned it or not, you been played.

so once again

when you do it it's evil because you are evil, when god does it it's fine because god is holy.

makes perfect sense to an apologist :wink:

if i kill someone it's wicked because man is made in God's image and i am destroying the image of God

when God does it it's somehow now holy.

Theology, it's able to get you to justify evil, including the evil of your (concept of) God. :-D

let us turn to word of God for comfort
I will dash them against each other, both the fathers and the sons together," declares the LORD. "I will not show pity nor be sorry nor have compassion so as not to destroy them.
everybody BOUNCE!!!
Last edited by youkrst on Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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LanDroid wrote:To mirror the original question, how can theists believe in evil? Take the God of Abraham as one of many examples. As is well documented in the Bible and perhaps to a lesser extent the Quran, that Deity ordered numerous genocides. What can be considered evil once one accepts the Divine sanctioned mass slaughter of men, women, babies, animals, and indeed anything that breathes?
Well Landroid,that's your view of the bible as it is Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins among others.
I provided a response which you don't find convincing but others do at least see it differently from you.
It's very simple isn't it? The destruction of many though not all of the Canaanites is genocide just like Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds.

You seem to consider genocide evil or is it? from your worldview. I'll provide my response again which you won't accept but others will.
Do you believe genocide is evil and if so how do you explain such evil based on your worldview?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7B5jokJsqk Moral objections to the Old Testament. Peter J Williams
Last edited by Flann 5 on Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Flann wrote:Do you believe genocide is evil and if so how do you explain such evil based on your worldview?
well, where do i begin, to tell the story of how great a love has been...
Perils of the Self

Von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the victim "thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. [18]

In everyday life, the Self may be projected onto such powerful figures as the state, God, the universe or fate.[19] When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality - one potential counterbalance to this being however the social or collective aspects of the Self.[20]
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Re: The Nature of Evil

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Interesting that this thread started out with a question on how atheists believe in evil. I asked how theists believe in evil given "the Divine sanctioned mass slaughter of men, women, babies, animals, and indeed anything that breathes." The response is to say you won't like my answer (probably true) and by the way, why do you believe genocide is evil? Weird!
The destruction of many though not all of the Canaanites is genocide just like Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds.
Not sure I understand that except you understand the concept of genocide although I'm quite sure Saddam Hussein is not the God of Abraham.

I watched 10 minutes of the video Flann5 provided, Moral Objections to the Old Testament - Peter J. Williams, PhD. Finally after about 5 minutes of frittering about technology and setting up his speech, he quotes the excellent description of the God of Abraham by Dawkins. Williams instantly references "different cultures" and "different times" as if that could in any way justify the outrageous slaughter commanded by that Diety. Obviously those two concepts are irrelevant to the Eternal Wisdom of a benevolent Diety. Williams then moves on to several cartoons such as Tom & Jerry, I have no idea why and that's where I lost interest in the 67 minute video. I'm becoming more sympathetic to starhwe's objections to videos w/o transcripts. :P
_______________________________________________________
When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you multiply your prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.
Isaiah 1:15

But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Exodus 21: 23 - 25
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