EVIL!!!!!!!!

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:52 am Of the 7+ billion on earth, how many do you think are likely to agree to be a victim of the atrocities below?
Wait a minute.

"Agree"? If Atheism is true, then nobody needs to "agree" to be abused. It can be done whether they like it or not.

If "survival of the fittest" got us here, why would we abandon that? Those that have power can freely tyrannize those who do not have it. They will never be called to account for their exploitation of others. So long as they can get away with it, why shouldn't they abuse other human beings? You're surely not introducing the idea of karmic cycles or some idea of ultimate justice into one without God...

In a world devoid of God, one fact is very obvious: might makes "right." Or rather, nothing makes "right" or "wrong." Those values don't exist! And "agreement"? Who is there to say that even counts?
  • various atrocities and horrors, such as genocides, terrorist attacks, mass murders, and tortures and killing sprees by psychopathic serial killers.
Some extreme perverts may agree to be victims but I believe 99.9% will not agree to be victims of the above atrocities.
Thus it is not difficult to get a consensus from the 99.9% to agree to these evil acts as absolutely 'No' 'Noes' in the secular sense. Therefore we can ground this as a secular absolute and to avoid moving goalposts. Such atrocities are obviously of high net-negativity to humanity.
Actually, this "grounds" nothing.

Who says we owe "humanity" anything? Who says "consensus" matters? We have the power...that is all we need. And in fact, if Nietzsche or Darwin is right, we do a great service to the overall condition of humanity when we let the weak die at the back of the herd, and we, the strong, survive, dominate and procreate.

"Will to power" is what matters, said Nietzsche. Let's get rid of this nonsense, and get "beyond good and evil." That's the real "transvaluation of values" (all Nietzsche's terms, not mine).

Or take Rand. According to her, it is the great men who advance society. The sheep get us nowhere. The great men, the heroes, must practice "the virtue of selfishness," and use their own inner compasses to set their course. "Agreement"? That would just hold them back, and society as a whole would suffer because of it.

"Agreement" indeed! "Consensus"? Phht. "Humanity"? They don't know what's good for them, and don't have the courage to be "bad." Let the sheep "baa": the wolves have the advantage of them. Let the wolves thrive!
As for low to medium evil acts, there are possible trade offs for the individual and humanity if say the 'evil' acts are committed for the greater good, self-defense and the likes. In this case, these acts themselves are evil in general as defined but the overall consequence is net-positive, thus not a resultant evil act for the individual.
Rand and Nietzsche would agree to this part. They would say, though, that these "net-positive" acts aren't "trade-offs" at all. The survival and dominance of the übermensch (Nietzsche) or the John Galts (Rand) of the world, or of "the fittest" (Darwin) would be a positive for the race, so there's no reason to say any bit of it is "negative." Who cares if the weak suffer? They're the weak. If they deserve to live, they will; if they don't, it just proves they didn't deserve to live. Pity is a vice, not a virtue.

What I'm saying is this: there are powerful ways of telling the story that deny the very fundamentals you are trying to use in order to affirm a secular ethic. So your project is troubled -- but not by religionists. It's troubled by the avowed Atheists (meaning Nietzsche, Rand, Darwin, et al), who will accuse you, under Atheist assumptions, of a lack of nerve, and of a less-than-moral squeamishness about doing what needs to be done in order for the human race to "go forward."

What will you say to them?
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Greatest I am
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Greatest I am »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:52 am
Humanity should not be waiting for the perfect model of morality to be delivered from a God [an impossibility] but rather to initiate something feasible as a starting point and make the effort to continuously improve on it by tweaking all the relevant variables involved.
I think secular law has already done that and that is why they are slowly shedding all the outdated barbaric laws that religions teach.

No religion other than Islam are backwards enough to try to have their laws as the law of the land.

Regards
DL
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Greatest I am wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:05 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:52 am
Humanity should not be waiting for the perfect model of morality to be delivered from a God [an impossibility] but rather to initiate something feasible as a starting point and make the effort to continuously improve on it by tweaking all the relevant variables involved.
I think secular law has already done that and that is why they are slowly shedding all the outdated barbaric laws that religions teach.

No religion other than Islam are backwards enough to try to have their laws as the law of the land.

Regards
DL
Noted.
Yes, secular laws are doing that but there is still a long way for humanity to progress to a reasonable state of peace.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:23 pm ...
What I'm saying is this: there are powerful ways of telling the story that deny the very fundamentals you are trying to use in order to affirm a secular ethic. So your project is troubled -- but not by religionists. It's troubled by the avowed Atheists (meaning Nietzsche, Rand, Darwin, et al), who will accuse you, under Atheist assumptions, of a lack of nerve, and of a less-than-moral squeamishness about doing what needs to be done in order for the human race to "go forward."

What will you say to them?
You are too hasty on the above.

Of all humans on earth we have the following;
  • 1. Good - 1/100 to 99.9/100 of Goodness/ rightness
    2. Evil - 1/100 to 99.9/100 of Evilness.
Both variables are likely to be distributed in accordance to the Bell Curve or Normal Distribution.

Both distributions will also apply to the theists and the non-theists.

You have merely focused on the non-theists who are;
2. Evil - 1/100 to 99.9/100 of Evilness.
but you have ignored non-theists who are on the
1. Good - 1/100 to 99.9/100 of Goodness

I am sure there are very good human beings within the non-theists ranging from
1. Good - 1/100 to 99.9/100 of Goodness / rightness.

For example, Buddhists and Jainists are non-theists and adopt their religion's pacifist and progressive maxims. There are many non-theists who are peak performers.

As such it is possible for the non-theists within the 20% percentile within 80/100 to 99.99/100 have good attributes to contribute to the progress of humanity together with similar people from the theist community.

I wrote earlier;
  • Humanity should not be waiting for the perfect model of morality to be delivered from a God [an impossibility] but rather to initiate something feasible as a starting point and make the effort to continuously improve on it by tweaking [& improving] all the relevant variables involved.
For the above to become a reality, humanity must strive to improve the mental capabilities of the average human, e.g. the average IQ, EQ, Wisdom Quotient, Philosophy Quotient, Spiritual Quotient, and other relevant quotients must increase by significant % and many folds.
For example the average person capability for empathy, compassion impulse control [on lust, greed, drugs, etc] must be increased. At present we are moving towards that and there are already potentiality for the individuals to improve on it.

On the other hand, there is not much room for improvement from the theists since 2000 years ago and it is getting worst with Islam and Muslims who are stuck with immutable theistic doctrines that cannot change and adapt with changing times and conditions.

When the average IQ, EQ, Wisdom Quotient, Philosophy Quotient, Spiritual Quotient, of both theists and non-theists has increased by significant % and many folds in the future [say 50-100 years] you still argued the average person will still be evil?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 10:40 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 2:23 pm ...
What I'm saying is this: there are powerful ways of telling the story that deny the very fundamentals you are trying to use in order to affirm a secular ethic. So your project is troubled -- but not by religionists. It's troubled by the avowed Atheists (meaning Nietzsche, Rand, Darwin, et al), who will accuse you, under Atheist assumptions, of a lack of nerve, and of a less-than-moral squeamishness about doing what needs to be done in order for the human race to "go forward."

What will you say to them?
You are too hasty on the above.
You've misunderstood, VA. There was nothing hasty in my reply.

I asked about Atheism as an ideology: you responded about Atheists, and how they may behave. The former is an ideological position; the latter is a description of how (often confused and inconsistent) people happen to behave. They're not the same thing at all. If all Atheists practiced the implications of their Atheism with perfect rational consistency, they might be; but as you note, they're clearly not. People do all kinds of stuff. The question is, what does the ideology rationalize them doing?

I did not question whether Theists or Non-Theists were more or less likely to be good people. What I was pointing to was that whether they turn out to be (conventionally, or by any metric) "good" in their behaviour or not, Atheism (the belief system, not just the people) has no ability to ground an account of evil or good.

In other words, if someone really believes and acts consistently with an Atheistic set of presuppositions, then such a person would have to admit he had no basis on which to even know what good or evil might be. The concepts would have no place at all in his/her worldview.

But in the real world, Atheists behave in different ways. Some are conventionally moral, though they have no grounds for saying they have to be that. Some are wicked, and there is no grounds in their Atheism for complaining that they are, no matter how conventionally "bad" they may get.

Atheism is the problem. That Atheists often do not, and cannot follow through on the worldview they claim is a stroke against, not for, that worldview.

Meanwhile, eloquent Atheists like Nietzsche, Rand and Darwin have made powerful cases that Atheists do not need to, and ought not to have to be, moral in any "consensus" or "agreeable" way. What is you answer to them, is what I would like to know.
For example the average person capability for empathy, compassion impulse control [on lust, greed, drugs, etc] must be increased. At present we are moving towards that and there are already potentiality for the individuals to improve on it.
Here's an example of this misunderstanding. You speak as if it is just a given that "empathy, compassion, impulse control on lust, greed and drugs are "good" things. You take that completely for granted. But Atheism does not give us any reason to prefer empathy to cruelty, compassion to violence, or to put artificial constraints on the dictates of our desires, be they conventionally good or bad, so long as we feel we can benefit, in any way, by them.

How can you call compassion "good," when Atheists like Nietzsche and Rand have shown why it's bad, weak, foolish and even "a transvaluation of [real] values"? You have not answered their challenge at all, therefore: you've actually just missed it completely.

However, it's a common mistake to do that. I've found many Atheists do, in fact, retreat from the implications of Atheism by claiming, "Well, the Atheists I know don't act badly," or "There's no reason an Atheist can't be good." True enough: but nothing in their Atheism gives them any warrant for thinking it matters whether or not an Atheist "acts badly," and nothing in it even remotely suggests it's necessary for any Atheist to want to "be good," ever.
you still argued the average person will still be evil?
I'm glad you ended that with a question mark, because it's clearly nothing like what I said. I hope the above clarifies this well.

I'd still be interested in your response to Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin, Hume...et al, on this question. Can Atheism be a basis for deducing any values: and in particular, can Atheism leave us with any reason to think empathy, mercy and equality are good and necessary, and that viciousness, violence and injustice are options we must not take?
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Lacewing
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 2:35 pm The question is, what does the ideology rationalize them doing?
I.C., this weighing of theists and atheists is clearly a dance you love to do, but it falsely presumes that superficial ideologies are more significant and powerful than basic human nature. You go even further by defining supposed ideologies that rule over and govern people (like gods), and you then pit the "theist governing god" against the "atheist governing god". It’s fantasy.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 4:14 pm I.C., this weighing of theists and atheists...
Nope. I don't do that.

I say again: I am NOT talking about what Atheists and Theists happen to do, here. I am talking only about what Atheism will rationalize, and what the "great Atheists," like Nietzsche, Hume, Darwin or Rand, say about what Atheism can or cannot rationalize.

Period.
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:08 pm I am talking only about what Atheism will rationalize
So that you can weigh theists and atheists. Why else would you be doing it?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:13 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 5:08 pm I am talking only about what Atheism will rationalize
So that you can weigh theists and atheists. Why else would you be doing it?
No.

So that we can all see what Atheism does or does not rationalize. That's all.
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Lacewing
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:23 pm So that we can all see what Atheism does or does not rationalize. That's all.
According to who?

Do you really think there is some SINGLE definitive definition that is not a contrived fabrication?
Dubious
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Dubious »

Atheism rationalizes that there is no god or none that would concern us. Theism rationalizes that there is one based solely on scripture and articles of faith composed by humans...the longest novel ever written accepted as fact. Judging by the ability to rationalize, the former would seem to precede the latter where god is simply a book entity rationalized into Being based on psychological needs which has always incorporated its own extensive Will to Power.

God is ONLY useful to humans as a power play and the psychological expression of consolation, not as something abstract with zero concern for humans. That kind of god would be useless to us and thoroughly dispensable...in which case, god's unconcern for our existence resembles our unconcern for its existence as if it never existed to begin with...the atheist position with or without god.
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Greatest I am
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Greatest I am »

Veritas Aequitas wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 10:14 am
Greatest I am wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 8:05 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:52 am
Humanity should not be waiting for the perfect model of morality to be delivered from a God [an impossibility] but rather to initiate something feasible as a starting point and make the effort to continuously improve on it by tweaking all the relevant variables involved.
I think secular law has already done that and that is why they are slowly shedding all the outdated barbaric laws that religions teach.

No religion other than Islam are backwards enough to try to have their laws as the law of the land.

Regards
DL
Noted.
Yes, secular laws are doing that but there is still a long way for humanity to progress to a reasonable state of peace.
It is too late if we do not act now. Demographers cannot ie enough to cover to cover up that fact. Our grand children are doomed and we don't care. Shame on us all.

Regards
DL
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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:52 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:23 pm So that we can all see what Atheism does or does not rationalize. That's all.
According to who?
According not to a "who," but to a "what": Atheism.
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Lacewing
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Lacewing »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:01 am
Lacewing wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:52 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:23 pm So that we can all see what Atheism does or does not rationalize. That's all.
According to who?
According not to a "who," but to a "what": Atheism.
Ah... so you're side-stepping responsibility by pretending that you have nothing to do with the definitions you create and believe.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: EVIL!!!!!!!!

Post by Immanuel Can »

Lacewing wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:09 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2019 2:01 am
Lacewing wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:52 pm
According to who?
According not to a "who," but to a "what": Atheism.
Ah... so you're side-stepping responsibility by pretending that you have nothing to do with the definitions you create and believe.
I'm bored with these efforts at misunderstanding, Lace. You're working WAY too hard at that. And I'm bored with ad hominems. They do not get a reaction from me.

Consequently, I'm content to let my previous explanation stand. Make of them whatever you can.
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