MrIndigio, the reason why it can't be proven that God doesn't exist is that it's impossible to prove or disprove a negative. You're 100% right, but I really do hope you don't expect something of reason from those that are faithful. You cannot pander to them expecting much of anything productive- they will move the goal posts until they hit a wall, then neutralize debate with a very standoffish viewpoint that you cannot disprove them. Just look at this thread: a very specific question that seems to regress to whether or not their god exists, which as a negative is undemonstratable regardless of siding in the debate. Do not play their game- they can either provide the evidence that they have burdened themselves with needing or they can be viewed as incorrect and therefore not worth more debate. It's a pretty simple equation, really.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Evil means a Christian God cannot exist?
- Thread starter jc104
- Start date
Bolded part is not true. A negative statement has an equivalent positive statement and vice-versa, ergo the provability of the statement is not based on the positiveness or negativeness of the statement.
What you're referring to is a unfalsifiable statement. However, no statement is nonfalsifiable perse, it's only unfalsifiable because those who make them (in this case, Christians stating the existence of God) keep changing them every time the statement is falsified.
e.g.
"God created all the animals at the beginning of time."
"But we have fossil records that show different animals existing at different periods of time."
"That's because God did that on purpose to make it look that way."
Disclaimer: I'm not trying to assert that all Christians believe these particular statements, I'm just using this as an example to demonstrate the idea of unfalsifiability.
In the scientific community, falsifiability of claims is paramount if you want anyone to establish any worth to your statements.
What a fantastic post.
To add: some statements or claims are fundamentally unfalsifiable given the circumstances under which they are presented. For example, we may lack the evidence to give weight to either argument or we simply don't have the ability yo collect said evidence. It's this ambiguity in evidence that gives the Christian their common "god of the gaps" mentality; you can't say I'm wrong so I must be right, but they can't show us why they are right so they must be wrong. It's an intellectual standoff brought on by scientifically illiterate people trying to horn in on something they really don't understand.
To add: some statements or claims are fundamentally unfalsifiable given the circumstances under which they are presented. For example, we may lack the evidence to give weight to either argument or we simply don't have the ability yo collect said evidence. It's this ambiguity in evidence that gives the Christian their common "god of the gaps" mentality; you can't say I'm wrong so I must be right, but they can't show us why they are right so they must be wrong. It's an intellectual standoff brought on by scientifically illiterate people trying to horn in on something they really don't understand.
A person is defined by the cumulation of his or her experiences and memories. I don't see how a person "reincarnated" into another could possibly be construed as being the same person as the original. Even under reincarnation (however that would work), men can't experience what it's like to be women - because once they reincarnate, they forget they even were men - so what's to say "they" were, rather than someone else? (Reincarnation is rubbish anyway - wishful thinking, at best).
First, it is good form to use words in a conventional way. Second, I thought I had made it clear, in the original argument, that whatever we think is perfect is irrelevant. If the world was different, our thoughts would be different. Thus what matters is not what we think now, but indeed what our counterparts would think, should the world be different. That is, the world should arguably constructed in such a way that the opinion that the world is perfect would not be restricted to fringe elements, but would be nearly universal.
You can't stay in a virtual world forever? That's news to me. If we can sustain patients in a coma we sure can stick people in a matrix-like virtual world forever.
... What? It's not evil you're depriving the child of - he's a victim of an evil act, for christ's sake, of course he's experiencing it. It's everything else you're depriving him of - physical activity, friendship, strolling through nature, and all these things we are biologically wired to enjoy.
Let's see you witness a man stabbing another man to death. If these two men are like you, presumably, one of them suffers and dies. That's actual evil. If these two men are puppets, robots controlled by God or some sort of collective, then it is appearance of evil - just an act, though you don't necessarily know it's an act. Both events look the exact same, so they convey the same emotions and the same formation to you, the observer. Do you really need help figuring out the difference and which one is preferable?
Your point isn't subtle - it's rather obvious - but it's irrelevant. Yes, every human has their own conception of good and evil. But these conceptions largely overlap, which means that outside moral grey areas and cultural idiosyncrasies, good and evil are reasonably well defined. No point in being overly pedantic, when we say there's evil in this world, we know what that means, and nothing else matters. Language is meant to convey concepts from a person to another - that some people assign different meanings to the same words is an impediment to communication, but only if you argue with them. The problem of evil is fair game as an argument to whoever understands evil in a certain way - which I believe is most people.
Yes, but when arguing one only needs to be concerned with current definitions. If I think good is X, and you also think good is X, I'm not going to quibble about what good meant a hundred years ago. Who cares? All that matters is that I'm reaching you: when I say "good", you know what I mean. If I was talking to witch burners from centuries ago, I'd have more work to do - namely, I'd have to convince them that the modern morality that I hold is better than theirs - and by that I mean I'd convince them that they prefer my morality (maybe I would fail).
Morality is one of these concepts where everybody but you is wrong. If somebody's morality is different from yours, you don't have to respect it and neither does he have to respect yours. You both have to argue and argue until one of you realizes he prefers the other's morality, you both reach a compromise, or you both agree to disagree and part ways. Morality is a war of wits - everybody wants everybody else to agree with them.
Curbing evil might simply involve making it a fixed point of the system, and making sure that the referent of that fixed point never obtains. All you're doing here is describing how human society works. Presumably, human society as we know it is inherently flawed - its nature might simply not be compatible with a lack of evil. But then one has to wonder why a human society was put here in the first place. It is certainly possible to conceive of a social creature whose nature is compatible with a lack of evil - think of what you personally think is moral, then make creatures who all agree, will never change their minds and will scrupulously abide by it. Sounds good to me.
Why would you assume that our history textbooks will always exist, and why would you think that reading about evil is itself evil?
Well, duh. A God who is indifferent to the world is perfectly compatible with the existence of evil.
That knowledge is only useful in so far that there is suffering. I mean, your argument is circular. I could make up a feeling called bingading, I don't know what it would be, only that nobody ever feels like that. Yet I don't miss that knowledge.
Trivially. If I smile to someone, it's good. If I don't, it's not evil, it's just neutral. If I help my sister do her homework, it's good, if I don't, it's neutral. And so on. I mean, wake up, evil isn't omnipresent in this world, there are plenty of examples of good existing without evil (probably more than the converse, in fact). I mean, if you want to be pedantic, I guess that there are small evils here and there all the time, brothers and sisters fighting, some inconsequent lies and whatnot. But take any family with loving parents who have decent paying jobs that they enjoy, where the children are smart, balanced and well integrated, and who never watch the news. Well, there's a lot of good there and so little evil it might as well not exist. I'm not going to split hairs - just make the whole world like that and we're set.
Certainly, in history, at least one tribe existed somewhere on the Earth which was perfectly peaceful and lived in an area rich in natural resources for many years. Certainly, at least one tribe, village or isolated group existed who never really knew evil. You know, just happy folks who got along and never encountered warriors or droughts or plagues or any other unpleasant things. Yet they knew good, simply thanks to the obvious contrast it makes with moral neutrality.
And that's notwithstanding the near infinity of possible living beings whose natures would significantly differ from ours and might make for completely harmonious societies.
I just got off another quote war (I hope, anyway) and now this. zzz.
@Electrode - in a universe with no good there'd be no rape in the first place. In this worldview God doesn't threaten us with eternal damnation if we use "evil". What happens is that we use "evil", nothing more. And finally I don't think you can conceive of an all-good universe with no evil. You would for example have to conceive of causing another person suffering because we cause each other suffering all the time, accidentally, without intending evil (e.g. you slap someone on the back and accidentally hit an ulcer).
No. With no actual evidence for a God, it's self-evident that we can't say anything about whether or not God exists. Lack of evidence does not equal a proof that something doesn't exist, e.g. there's no counterexample so far to Goldbach's conjecture, but it doesn't prove that there will never be a counterexample (i.e. it doesn't exist). Of course, the lack of a counterexample to Goldbach's conjecture doesn't prove that the conjecture holds either. It means we can't make any conclusions about whether or not the conjecture holds.
Actually you might try asking a few physicists if they believe magnetic monopoles exist. There's no evidence that they exist and they've never been observed, but quite a few physicists believe they will eventually be found.
@Brain - you might want to dispense with the multiple quote tags.
Why can't a man who's reborn as a woman rememeber his experience as a man ... after he dies? Why can't he remember all the past lives he's had?
No you can't stay in a virtual world forever. A person in coma isn't in a virtual world, he's simply unconscious. I don't know of any evidence that he is, anyway.
Perhaps, but he isn't aware that he's the victim of an evil act. For all intents and purposes he's believes himself a person in a world without evil. He cannot conceive of physical activity, friendship and strolling through nature because he's unaware they exist. By the way I don't see why you can so easily come up with "physical activity, friendship, strolling through nature" as examples of things that would be deprived of the child, yet didn't come up with things like "showing compassion" or "donating to charity" in worlds where evil didn't exist.
The scenario with the two people who're stabbed - I don't see how this is relevant. At all. So it's preferable (to me anyway) that two puppets suffer and die as opposed to two humans. So what? How is this relevant?
On the contrary, I'm going to carry this extension out to the absolute limit here. I'll stick my head out and declare now that there is no such thing as good and evil, and that things are only good or evil when we decide that they are. It doesn't matter if everyone in the world agrees that something is evil / not preferable - in the absolute sense it still isn't evil, because nothing is evil. THAT is the subtle point.
If you find this an unpalatable view, so be it. I'm not trying to convince you to accept it. I'm showing you that there exist consistent world views that include God and evil both, and so the existence of evil doesn't disprove the existence of God.
If you call smiling at someone good, then not smiling at someone is certainly not good (= bad). Same with helping your sister do her homework. The family with loving parents etc ... neglecting the parents, the children can still certainly conceive of evil, because if they look up the dictionary for example they will know the meaning of "rob" or "rape" or whatever.
By the way I thought you agreed that if you locked your son to a bed and never let him out, it's evil, but here you just said making the whole world into families which is so isolated that it never watches the news is good ... ?
No I do not believe that any society in which there is no evil existed. I cannot conceive of one, and I think it is logically impossible. Think of a different duality - instead of good / evil, try hot / cold. Suppose there's a world somewhere with a constant temperature of 50 degrees celsius. Bring someone from our world to theirs and he'll say it's hot. But for the inhabitants of that world, they would not - cannot - know either hot or cold; they know only 50 degrees celsius.
@Electrode - in a universe with no good there'd be no rape in the first place. In this worldview God doesn't threaten us with eternal damnation if we use "evil". What happens is that we use "evil", nothing more. And finally I don't think you can conceive of an all-good universe with no evil. You would for example have to conceive of causing another person suffering because we cause each other suffering all the time, accidentally, without intending evil (e.g. you slap someone on the back and accidentally hit an ulcer).
MrIndigo said:
No. With no actual evidence for a God, it's self-evident that we can't say anything about whether or not God exists. Lack of evidence does not equal a proof that something doesn't exist, e.g. there's no counterexample so far to Goldbach's conjecture, but it doesn't prove that there will never be a counterexample (i.e. it doesn't exist). Of course, the lack of a counterexample to Goldbach's conjecture doesn't prove that the conjecture holds either. It means we can't make any conclusions about whether or not the conjecture holds.
Actually you might try asking a few physicists if they believe magnetic monopoles exist. There's no evidence that they exist and they've never been observed, but quite a few physicists believe they will eventually be found.
@Brain - you might want to dispense with the multiple quote tags.
Why can't a man who's reborn as a woman rememeber his experience as a man ... after he dies? Why can't he remember all the past lives he's had?
No you can't stay in a virtual world forever. A person in coma isn't in a virtual world, he's simply unconscious. I don't know of any evidence that he is, anyway.
Brain said:
Perhaps, but he isn't aware that he's the victim of an evil act. For all intents and purposes he's believes himself a person in a world without evil. He cannot conceive of physical activity, friendship and strolling through nature because he's unaware they exist. By the way I don't see why you can so easily come up with "physical activity, friendship, strolling through nature" as examples of things that would be deprived of the child, yet didn't come up with things like "showing compassion" or "donating to charity" in worlds where evil didn't exist.
The scenario with the two people who're stabbed - I don't see how this is relevant. At all. So it's preferable (to me anyway) that two puppets suffer and die as opposed to two humans. So what? How is this relevant?
Brain said:
On the contrary, I'm going to carry this extension out to the absolute limit here. I'll stick my head out and declare now that there is no such thing as good and evil, and that things are only good or evil when we decide that they are. It doesn't matter if everyone in the world agrees that something is evil / not preferable - in the absolute sense it still isn't evil, because nothing is evil. THAT is the subtle point.
If you find this an unpalatable view, so be it. I'm not trying to convince you to accept it. I'm showing you that there exist consistent world views that include God and evil both, and so the existence of evil doesn't disprove the existence of God.
Brain said:
If you call smiling at someone good, then not smiling at someone is certainly not good (= bad). Same with helping your sister do her homework. The family with loving parents etc ... neglecting the parents, the children can still certainly conceive of evil, because if they look up the dictionary for example they will know the meaning of "rob" or "rape" or whatever.
By the way I thought you agreed that if you locked your son to a bed and never let him out, it's evil, but here you just said making the whole world into families which is so isolated that it never watches the news is good ... ?
No I do not believe that any society in which there is no evil existed. I cannot conceive of one, and I think it is logically impossible. Think of a different duality - instead of good / evil, try hot / cold. Suppose there's a world somewhere with a constant temperature of 50 degrees celsius. Bring someone from our world to theirs and he'll say it's hot. But for the inhabitants of that world, they would not - cannot - know either hot or cold; they know only 50 degrees celsius.
ok im sure the rest of your post will be addressed by brain but this was just too ridiculous to let slide. in fact im not going to explain why because honestly if you dont know already then there is no hope of changing your mind, and if you do already know then you are trolling.
This is going to go a bit off topic but,
Going to butt in and say that Natural resources and hazards do not determine wealth under most circumstances. In fact, if you look through research regarding countries with large natural resources, often these are the countries living under poor conditions. Think of Thailand, Brazil, any number of countries that have rich forestry, metal, material reserves and other natural resources, compared to a country like the UK. If anything, the existence of high natural resources goes hand in hand with greed and corruption (external or internal) to control those resources that leads to poverty.
Rather there is a tendency for countries who lack natural resources to industrialize and raise themselves out of poverty because they have no other choice.
Let's look at Japan. A good way to describe Japan is "Half of America's population living in 1/4th of California." Not only do you have high crowding, but you have relatively severe lacking of natural resources. Furthermore, if you want to talk about natural disasters, Japan's history is shaped by catastrophic earthquakes and typhoons. The words "typhoon" (In Japanese 台風, pronounced "Tai-foo") and "tsunami" are even Japanese in origin. This combined with regular flash fires that would often burn through half a village. When you visit Japan and see the ancient sites and temples, most are a 3rd, 4th, etc. remake of the original. Not only because of the bombing during the war, but simply destruction through natural disasters.
Despite this, Japan is undeniably a powerful industrialized first-world country. This is, ironically, due to a lot of points laid out by Anachronism.
The Japanese did things that brought them a long way towards industrialization even going into WWII, but their real economic development followed the war (you can see the stats, economic growth after the war was exponentially greater), and this was accomplished in large part by:
1. Getting rid of war (they disarmed, at least initially-- we can argue about Japanese "defense forces" entering the Middle East another time)
2. Are(were?) a society where everyone value(d) moderation, and have a communal mind set. (when you live in a country where 1/2 of America is living in 1/4th of California, and everyone is cramped for space, you have to think of the needs of others or you'll piss everyone else off-- the "excellent manners" of Japanese culture are born from necessity)
3. No laziness (hah hah hah . . . I don't think I have to explain this one)
Ultimately, they strived to build a healthy and educated work force. Though they lacked anything in terms of natural resources, as long as you can build a healthy and educated work force with a bit of motivation, you can build to a certain level of wealth through industrialization.
Similar things can be said about Korea, because whether it be the exposure to natural disasters, lack of natural resources and a dedication to developing human resources, a lot of it applies. To lesser degrees, you could say similar things about countries like the UK or Taiwan.
Obviously the Japanese are struggling with the fact that it takes more than that to succeed beyond, and that even giants like America fall on their faces.
The point is that while it's definitely hard to pull yourself out of war, famine, disease etc., many of those situations (and the reasons behind the continuation of those situations), are human in origin, not being born from simply being in that area.
Natural Resources (or lack of) does not determine a country's potential for wealth, as many of the richest countries were far from Natural Resource rich.
Natural disasters are certainly disruptive, but countries that can build strong infrastructure against Natural Disasters can deal with being in an area heavy with them. Or if you are the US, you can always dump lots of money into fixing it after you chose not to do regular maintenance on your dams. I doubt there was a lot of cry for foreign aid following Katrina.
@Electrode - in a universe with no evil there'd be no rape in the first place.
EDIT: Thanks for clearing up that typo!
My definition of evil was unecessesary suffering; that doesn't remove suffering alltogether. So if 100% of individuals that were raped were improved because of this, then was it unecessary? If every evil event you experienced resulted in a better you, then the evil would be justified.
In this worldview God doesn't threaten us with eternal damnation if we use "evil". What happens is that we use "evil", nothing more.
Hm...I should have been more specific. Some acts we generally deem as evil are a sin, while others or not. So some sins are evil and will get one sent to hell.
And finally I don't think you can conceive of an all-good universe with no evil. You would for example have to conceive of causing another person suffering because we cause each other suffering all the time, accidentally, without intending evil (e.g. you slap someone on the back and accidentally hit an ulcer).
If the ulcer even existed in the first place, then it would cause the inflicted individual to improve their life or go do something good. Me giving them a pat on the back would also have to have a result that ended well.
In an all good world, there would either have to be no evil, or all evil would have to result in a greater good.
EDIT: Thanks for clearing up that typo!
My definition of evil was unecessesary suffering; that doesn't remove suffering alltogether. So if 100% of individuals that were raped were improved because of this, then was it unecessary? If every evil event you experienced resulted in a better you, then the evil would be justified.
In this worldview God doesn't threaten us with eternal damnation if we use "evil". What happens is that we use "evil", nothing more.
Hm...I should have been more specific. Some acts we generally deem as evil are a sin, while others or not. So some sins are evil and will get one sent to hell.
And finally I don't think you can conceive of an all-good universe with no evil. You would for example have to conceive of causing another person suffering because we cause each other suffering all the time, accidentally, without intending evil (e.g. you slap someone on the back and accidentally hit an ulcer).
If the ulcer even existed in the first place, then it would cause the inflicted individual to improve their life or go do something good. Me giving them a pat on the back would also have to have a result that ended well.
In an all good world, there would either have to be no evil, or all evil would have to result in a greater good.
If God decided that rape was inherently good, as he called the shots according to Christian doctrine, then there would indeed be no bad. A good act is not measured against bad acts and vice versa to determine worth of the act. An act is either good, bad or neither. So to say that there cannot be good without evil is entirely a cop out, because both exist separate of one another: the actions of a serial pedophile rapist murderer typically don't go hand in hand with giving oodles of money to orphans with diseases. Even if they did, they would be two discrete events or actions, not dependent on the other for 'goodness' classification.
So you're looking at two things here: What if god made all evil acts good, thereby removing sin in its entirety? Alternatively, why not just make the evil acts impossible to do? Free will blah blah yeah, I know, but you can't just sit there and tell me that god doesn't know the choices you are inherently capable of making. Just remove murder from human nature and you will not have murders; people can only commit acts that are within our abilities and nature. So to put malicious acts within our nature is a complete baiting to remove our eternal souls from being next to god, thusly sending us to hell indefinitely. An all loving God would prevent this capacity; instead, He opts for the childish and ultimately quite pathetic stance of baiting us to commit sin and remove ourselves from his bosom making it all the more impossible to love him. Funny thing is, I've heard countless times he wants us to love him for our sakes, cause sin is so very terrible. Your god is pathetic.
Still, I wonder how it would fall under the spectrum when a schizophrenic murders his whole family. It's not his fault, it's still an evil act, but God created him knowing he had that capacity and was vulnerable to it or infact helpless/inevitable to commit the act.
So you're looking at two things here: What if god made all evil acts good, thereby removing sin in its entirety? Alternatively, why not just make the evil acts impossible to do? Free will blah blah yeah, I know, but you can't just sit there and tell me that god doesn't know the choices you are inherently capable of making. Just remove murder from human nature and you will not have murders; people can only commit acts that are within our abilities and nature. So to put malicious acts within our nature is a complete baiting to remove our eternal souls from being next to god, thusly sending us to hell indefinitely. An all loving God would prevent this capacity; instead, He opts for the childish and ultimately quite pathetic stance of baiting us to commit sin and remove ourselves from his bosom making it all the more impossible to love him. Funny thing is, I've heard countless times he wants us to love him for our sakes, cause sin is so very terrible. Your god is pathetic.
Still, I wonder how it would fall under the spectrum when a schizophrenic murders his whole family. It's not his fault, it's still an evil act, but God created him knowing he had that capacity and was vulnerable to it or infact helpless/inevitable to commit the act.
You're mistaking self-evident with "true". With no evidence of an object's existence, it is self-evident that it is not existing. That does not necessarily mean it doesn't exist. In the 1200s, there was no observed evidence of electrons. But as we now know, electrons do exist, or at least we have a great deal of evidence of that now.
Similarly, we have no evidence of the existence of God. That does not prove he doesn't exist, nor does it mean there is never going to be evidence of him. It simply means it hasn't been found or adduced yet.
To extend this to a more obvious example, we have no evidence that the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn exist. Indeed, we have no evidence that any not-yet-named gods exist. That does not immediately mean that we need to produce evidence of nonexistence. It is already evident that they don't exist. The contrary position requires evidence to their favour before they can be accepted as equally valid.
They're a minority, I think (mostly String Theorists, for instance), but it's the same principle as above. Noone claims that the magnetic monopoles exist as a principle of science, nor claim that they exist on the basis of evidence. Those who claim it (and I have read Edge Question responses about it by some of them) do so on the basis of a faith in universal aesthetics. It's acknowledged to be an unfounded belief.
I agree with your point of view, but the confusion is one of semantics. "Good" and "Evil" are words to describe abstract concepts that are socially and culturally subjective.
But the exact definition of evil is not what's relevant here. You could alternately use the words suffering or tragedy. The point is that the Christian definition of God gives him the power to prevent the disasters of Haiti and the like, but he clearly chooses not to, which contradicts the idea that he cares equally for everyone.
If you call smiling at someone good, then not smiling at someone is certainly not good (= bad). Same with helping your sister do her homework. The family with loving parents etc ... neglecting the parents, the children can still certainly conceive of evil, because if they look up the dictionary for example they will know the meaning of "rob" or "rape" or whatever.
By the way I thought you agreed that if you locked your son to a bed and never let him out, it's evil, but here you just said making the whole world into families which is so isolated that it never watches the news is good ... ?
No I do not believe that any society in which there is no evil existed. I cannot conceive of one, and I think it is logically impossible. Think of a different duality - instead of good / evil, try hot / cold. Suppose there's a world somewhere with a constant temperature of 50 degrees celsius. Bring someone from our world to theirs and he'll say it's hot. But for the inhabitants of that world, they would not - cannot - know either hot or cold; they know only 50 degrees celsius.[/QUOTE]
In view of this post, I'll make this one my last post in this thread. For now anyway.
@Electrode - yes there's a typo.
@MrIndigo - According to the dictionary self-evident means "evident in itself without proof or demonstration; axiomatic". If you agree that a lack of proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists doesn't prove that the Flying Spaghetti monster doesn't exist, or proves that it exists, then we're done.