RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 6:48 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:28 pm
It makes of, "justice," some kind of transaction, as though wrong choices and actions could be paid for, thus balancing some kind of account.
Then you leave human beings with only two options: be perfect, or be forever guilty ...
Guilty of what?
Take your pick: guilty of failure. Guilty of violence. Guilty of theft, of selfishness, of slander, of folly...Guilty of anything that is unworthy of respect and emulation -- anyone else's and your own.
Unless a person is perfect himself, and lives in a perfect world, and never makes any mistakes or does anything he wishes he hadn't, guilt is going to be a reality. And people who lack any sense of it is pretty much limited to narcissists, psychopaths or sociopaths.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
No wonder Christians relish the idea of suffering
We don't, of course. We don't for even a second imagine that suffering balances some imaginary scale.
Then what is the point of suffering? The Bible calls it, "punishment," as though it were some kind of just desert or payment. You don't agree with that?
Not at all, of course. One only has to read the oldest book in the Bible, the Book of Job, to know that such simplistic accounts of suffering are anything but Biblical. There is no tidy link between being good and getting good things, or between doing evil and being punished...at least, not on this Earth.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
Rather, we know that sin damages beyond all human repair. And justice, when it comes, will require an absolute answer: this, too, we know. "For the wages of sin is death," says the Bible. But then it finishes, "but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
It's the gift or the grave, to put it neatly. But no, we can do nothing to "cancel out" evil ourselves.
I didn't say you did it. You believe your God does it.
Actually, I never said that. And neither will you find that the Bible does.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
No amount of suffering by Hitler will make anything suffered by others not have happened.
This is true, but also begs the whole question. The point is that you say justice happens automatically, as a result of reality; but can you explain to the satisfaction of the sufferers in the Holocaust, how Hitler was properly paid by reality itself, so justice was arrived at?
Of course not in terms of your preconceived meaning of justice.
No, I mean in yours; that is, in any sort of account that you think a Holocaust survivor should believe.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
...all that suffering is the consequence of individual's own choices, their ignorant and superstitious beliefs and chosen governments. As I said:
You'll have to forgive me...do you mean to say that the Jews who suffered did so for "picking" Hitler? Or was it because of their "supersititious beliefs"? What, in your view, precipitated them into the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz?
You tell me.
Well, I'm afraid I just can't justify your view for you. You're going to have to manage that yourself. To me, your view seems (if you'll forgive me for saying so, and please read this as descriptive not insulting) rather simplistic (a predictable consequence for every action), unsophisticated (it takes for granted the existence of values your worldview renders impossible) and self-satisfied (it seems you feel you've managed very well yourself).
So let me put the question again: how can you explain the Holocaust in terms of your system: how did they "deserve" what they got?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
But what then is this concept "justice"? What does such a universe owe us to deliver?
Nobody is born owing anything or owed anything.
I recognize that that is what your belief system requires. But then, I'm puzzled by your sense of self-congratulation over achievement...since that system also renders anything like "right" and "wrong" choices illusory.
The universe is the infinite resource...
Apparently, not.
...available to every individual human being...
Manifestly not.
... to achievel...
What does it mean to "achieve" in your kind of world? If it's just an internal feeling, then even a criminal, a narcissist or a psychopath meets that bar.
...and have all he can achieve and produce in this world, (and nothing more)
Wow, that's vague stuff.
...but every individual must achieve their own life and success...
Well, nobody "achieves" life...they are either brought into it by others or, as "thrown into" it. And as for "success," unless you mean that term to collapse into nothing more than an unanchored inner feeling of smugness, you are going to have to say what "success" for a human being actuall looks like in concrete terms. Or you're saying nothing at all there.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 4:23 pm
What does "fair" even mean, ...?
Outside of man-made games it means nothing at all.[/quote]
It would be like "success" then? Just something one feels or does not, but has no criteria beyond emotional self-satisfaction?
Then "justice" wouldn't be merely a problem. It would be just an illusion.
Most people hate reality...
Well, they hate some things about it, sure. But I don't think that's really true. What they want is for reality to yield to them the goods they feel they "deserve," and they are upset when it doesn't; especially when they've tried hard and failed.
But justice is a different issue. You say that reality is "demanding," "not nice," "dangrous," "full of risk," "ruthless" and "pitiless." You say it has consequences people don't like. You use the value judgment "bad," and speak of "suffering." But this is the same as to say that reality is "unjust," since otherwise you would not use those pejoratives to describe it. You'd just say, "Reality is whatever."
But this sense we all have that things ought to be better...what does it mean? How should the indifferent universe have infused us somehow with a longing for a thing called "justice," since you must say it's a totally delusory idea? Does it not seem an odd thing for "survival of the fittest" or some other such indifferent agency to have forced into human beings, instead of, say, a stoical indifference to everything that is not real?