If you’re in some roundabout fashion talking about the God of the Old Testament, the problem isn’t that he leaves things up to people; he ‘intervenes to some extent’ by exhorting his followers to kill homosexuals and blasphemers and folks who curse their parents and family members who suggest you should follow other gods. Also, he repeatedly wipes out whole cities full of people just, y’know, because.
A god who agrees with my morals is superfluous and unnecessary. A god who falls short of my morals? Well, he’s no different than anyone else who advocates killing people who don’t deserve it; “superfluous and unnecessary” would be a step up.
I know that’s tongue-in-cheek, but really now. What else can good be, in the ethical sense? When we remember some of the great men in history, we remember them for their selfless acts and their work for the greater good. When we remember some of the worst men in history, we remember them for their gargantuan selfishness and in some cases their monumental failures.
Example: When I donate money for non-ironic reasons, I am doing good by sacrificing myself for others. When I steal money, I am doing wrong by sacrificing others for my own sake.
Unless you can find a decent counterexample, good is defined by our intent.
Well, your initial statement struck me as being a little unclear, is all. What do you make of a guy who donates some of his money but keeps much of it for himself? Can good exist in that situation? You wrote that ‘the only way for good to exist is for a man to sacrifice himself for the sake of others’ – were you just envisioning a man who sacrifices himself for a weekend here and there, maybe once every couple of months? How about a guy who goes 50/50? Just what level of sacrifice did you have in mind?
I’m just not sure the intent needs to be 100% self-sacrifice. What about a guy who works tirelessly to cure some disease or patent some useful breakthrough in part because he genuinely wants to help his fellow man and in part because he genuinely wants a lot of money and fame?
I think that good is not black and white. There are always ulterior motives, but whether or not the selfish motives dominate the action is the key. I don’t think a 50/50 situation is even possible.
Human beings are animals, instinctively selfish. We want what’s best for ourselves, and we want to preserve ourselves and cultivate our own growth. Does that mean we’re incapable of good? There’s no such thing as 100% self-sacrifice, so good would have to be determined, if at all, by the driving force behind the action, not the ones crowding the passenger seats. Ethics is a pain.
Look, imagine someone out there cures a disease, like I was just saying. And imagine I have that disease. Do I care whether he did it because he was in it for the money, or because he’s just a darned nice guy? Not really, no; in fact, I’m in favor of setting up financial rewards for that sort of thing just to increase the odds: nice guys will shoot for it regardless, but, hey, let’s get selfish folks on it too – and if some folks are partly selfish and partly altruistic, well, heck, we’ll rope them in along the way.
Imagine some people refrain from murder because they’re kind-hearted. Imagine others refrain because they’re afraid we’ll kill them back. Let’s put laws in place that harness any selfishness for the beneficial results; the point is to get a society where people aren’t murdering each other, after all.
Let’s not view ethics as a pain; let’s make it a workable modus vivendi, arranging incentives so enlightened self-interest will lead to the results we want. Some folks among us will do right anyway; others can be helped into it. We’ll put your picture in the paper if you make a big donation to charity. We’ll threaten you with jail time if you contemplate raping someone. We’ll give you a medal and throw you a parade for outstanding military service, which we’ll also pay you for. A selfless person doesn’t much care, but so what?
Just build us a car that runs on seawater and society will thank you in half a hundred ways.
I only meant it to sum up what I’d been saying before and kept saying after; if the examples made sense, just stick with them. Make it so folks stand to make a lot of money if they develop useful breakthroughs, set up punishments to deter would-be criminals, shower praise and fame on people who dedicate themselves to worthy causes or make big charitable donations – and otherwise arrange things so selfish men will act the way decent ones do anyway.
Why did no one kill you and take your wallet today? Well, some of 'em refrained because they’re nice. And some of 'em refrained because they realized society would punish them for it. But it comes to the same thing: all the purely selfish bastards kept their distance just like the angelic saints. That’s why you agree to live in a society where you’d get busted for committing a crime: the rest of us agree to do likewise in exchange, setting up that institutionalized incentive for everyone. That’s why we all agree that it’s useful to have cops around – and just why did those two cops risk their lives to bust that crook this afternoon? Well, maybe one of 'em was a pure-hearted civil servant thinking only of his community, and maybe the other one was gunning for glory and a promotion; it shakes out the same.
Just make it so a dick pursuing his own self-interest will act just like a friendly altruist would anyway. Make it so a man looking to get rich and famous will decide to work hard and play by the rules; a nice guy would do that regardless, but let’s get the same result from guys who only care about rewards and punishments. (And if most people fall somewhere in the middle, so what? To the extent that incentives are irrelevant, they’re irrelevant; to the extent that they’re useful, they’re useful.)
I understand. Now define goodness. You don’t have to go in depth, just simplified. Is it just what’s on the surface then? Does giving with an open hand amount to the same goodness as giving inconspicuously?
In other words, can a man who does good just for the sake of recognition have the same merit as one who does good just for the sake of good?
It’s hard having these discussions with theists because you all believe different, contradictory things. I’ve heard many times that God exists outside of time and is not constrained to live moment-to-moment like we are (I usually hear it in the context of the cosmological argument for God). Now you come along and say that God is following along in time just like we are. If God is like that, then when did he begin to exist? Who/what created him? If he created himself, could I have done the same if I had beaten him to the punch?
But then what is time? It is a measurement used to quantify a rate of change from point A to point B, basically. The universe may be infinite along with God, or at least the physical world as a vacuum, before the big bang. Even without God, the universe may be infinite. Not everything requires a cause, not everything requires a beginning. It makes the “who created God” argument kind of dumb, I think.
Oh, we could go on and on about how comparatively noble some folks are in doing good for the sake of others – but I still don’t mind the guys who do good out of enlightened self-interest; the results are what’s paramount, even if the rest counts for something. Maybe someone who’s looking for a little recognition while motivated primarily by genuine fellow-feeling deserves a little less merit than someone “who does good just for the sake of good,” but I can’t really work myself into much of a lather over it.
Maybe not. Maybe the guy who volunteers at the soup kitchen deserves a little more praise than the hardworking paramedic or the crusading attorney, because he’s a little more selfless than they are – or maybe it’s the other way around, if they happen to be a little more selfless than he is. In any event, the only reason we praise what’s beneath the surface is because it ultimately aims at making a difference in the real world; the goodness that’s “on the surface” would matter to a truly selfless person because it’s what he can do for us, and it would matter to us because it’s what he can do for us.
(Besides which, there’s the whole question of how to count stuff like sympathy and friendship: what if I’m helping you because I’m sad when you’re upset, or if I genuinely like you and want you to be happy? It sort of makes sense to say I’m being selfish, because “I want you to be happy” – but it also sort of makes sense to say the opposite is true; of course people do what they feel like doing, the point is to look at what their “selfishness” consists of. It’s all a rich tapestry, one part psychology and two parts semantics.)
You bloody idiot, your very premise is wrong! A spoon exists for a purpose, that is true. However, a tree exists not to fill a role, but because prior circumstances led to that tree existing. You are ascribing purpose to a purposeless thing only by hindsight. Your follow up question is even more nonsensical: a spoon cannot fulfill its purpose without some entity to conceive, create, and utilize it. As noted before, a tree has no ‘purpose’, it is only lazy thinking on your part in ascribing ‘intention’ to evolution.
Kind of like the “who created the universe” question, eh? The universe requires no creator, so it’s silly to ask about or posit one.
“Goodness” and “merit” are entirely in the eye of the beholder, so that’s your decision to make. If you wish, you can choose to think that giving out of pure generosity is better than giving for kudos. Personally, I think it’s usually the case that people who are “doing good” do it for a complex range of reasons, all of which involve at some point the judgment “it will make me feel better to do this good thing.” So at some level, you can always consider their motives in terms of self-interest. Which levels of value you apply to the different types of motive is a question of personal morals.
I think a tree exists for a purpose involving its place in the ecosystem, in much the same way my eye exists for a purpose involving its function in my physiological system.
But that’s beside the point–it’s a mistake to think that purpose implies a designing mentality.
One thing people confuse about evolution is thinking that every change must have a “purpose”.
Completely ignoring the premise that differences arrive by chance combinations and mutation, and will remain unless fatal or interfering with procreation. They come up with a purpose for eyebrows specific for people that ignores that most mammals have them. Or tears or whatever. When you jumble your shoes together in the closet, one will be topmost, but that doesn’t mean there’s a purpose there.