Of course, DS, but what I was suggesting was an example of oversimplification was placing specific acts in an evolutionary context, such as setting forth in a court of law that the reason you killed your boss was because of an evolutionary drive to take his place as dominant male. Perhaps oversimplification was the wrong word: non sequitur might be more accurate.
Got it. Agreed.
Along those lines, if free will is an illusion it is a necessary illusion.
Or, indeed, the ‘flow’ of time itself. Yes, I’d go along with that, just as Santa Claus is a useful fiction in getting children to behave. 
Whadda ya mean, Santa Clause a fiction?
Prove it!
And if you can’t, then teach about Santa in Bio class!
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. I’m not trying to explain emotions based on reasoning.
I’m trying to see what reasons besides emotion, would convince someone to not kill another human (if the former person does not believe in a soul).
Look, we have a society in a nice equilibrium right now.
- Due to millions of years of evolution we have something called “empathy” built into us.
- In addition to that, our social upbringing re-enforces the empathy response by teaching us that all human life is valuable, that we should follow the Golden Rule, etc.
- In addition to that, we have laws that punish people who kill other people
- In addition, to that, we have religions that tell people that even if they escape human law, they will pay later.
As a result of the above, the murder rate is quite low at the moment.
But, how much can we rely on the empathy response? How strong is it?
Milgram’s experiment showed how easily* ordinary people* inflicted pain on others, given the right situation. (Not to mention the many ordinary Germans who were accomplices to the Holocaust. Or the fact that Romans used to watch people die for entertainment. Were all these people sociopaths, since you claim that only sociopaths lack empathy? Maybe society teaches us whom to have empathy for)
Also, how can we guarantee that social upbringing will keep reinforcing our built-in empathy? It seems that with so many kids raised in bad neighborhoods with practically no parents around, and with the media so flooded with violence and death, I don’t think society is doing too good a job telling people to value life and follow the Golden Rule. (Well, maybe they are learning the “real” Golden Rule: “Whoever has the gold makes the rules”)
It seems to me that, if a person is raised to disregard the value of human life, not much can be done to convince him to not kill people when it is beneficial to him and when he can escape being caught.
Is it easier to be raised to discount human life if you believe the other person has an immortal soul and that there is an afterlife, or if you believe that the other person is a very complex machine who will simply stop working and decompose when they die?
Many people on this board will think that it doesn’t make a difference, or even that it is easier to discount human life when you believe in a soul and an afterlife. I don’t think so, because, without the social upbringing that reinforces our built-in empathy (see Romans and the Coliseum), and without the possibly-menacing afterlife, the only argument when trying to convince such people to not kill other humans seems to be “because I say so”.
We cannot rely on the empathy response at all.
That why we have societies and laws. If the mores of society are such that conforming to them discourages murder, then murder will be failrly low. But put people in an enviroment in which killing or torturing others is what you do in order to conform, then that is what most people will do. Nay, even put people in an environment in which they feel the law does not apply to them, and in contact with people clearly identified as “other” and watch the fun begin. Abu Grave anyone? On a grander scale it must always be remembered that the people who committted HaShoah, were people, not monsters. People who loved their kids, went to church, believed in souls, maybe even got up for old ladies on the bus. Exterminating other humans by the millions was just what you did for work in that military division at that time. The Inquisition and its great evils was done by people who believed in souls … because they believed in souls.
We all have a capacity for great evil. Forget that fact at your peril.
But you value reason. And value is an emotion.
And why should they find it convincing, if an emotion is required to prioritise an answer based on reasoning over another one?
Of course. Any machine can be broken.
Marginally the former, I’d suggest, since you’re arguably doing them a favour by sending them to the afterlife (or, conversely, yourself a favour by doing God’s work).
Then we must all work to make that social upbringing as effective as possible, regrettably including enforcing simple “I say so” consequences on those whose empathy is sadly absent. The menacing afterlife is, even more regrettably, a double-edged sword which can promise a paradise of houris for killing yourself and thousands of others.
(Emphasis added by me.)
I have problems reconciling the bolded part with the direction of your arguments and questions in the rest of this thread. Social upbringing and “because I say so” can be equally strong (or weak) regardless of belief in souls. So what you’re left with is that if people believe in an afterlife with punishment for some kinds of murder, that belief will help prevent those kinds of murder. But if that’s what you are saying, this thread would have been better titled: "For people who don’t believe in punishment in an afterlife: why is killing bad?
I can accept that, at least in theory, the threat of punishment after death might to some extent help prevent murder. (Admittedly, the history of mankind doesn’t give a very strong support to this hypothesis, but I guess it’s possible, even likely, that some murders have been prevented because of such beliefs.) But: You still haven’t explained why a belief in souls adds any arguments to the “murder is bad” stance. If I believe in souls but not punishment, I’m just as (un)likely to murder someone as if I believe in no souls and no punishment. I still can’t see that you’ve given a good answer to a question which have been asked by several posters: Which arguments for not killing do you get from the existence of souls?
And this being GD some evidence to back up the contention that having a soul belief protects one from becoming murderous would be nice. Again, lots of evidence exists for the contrapositive. Islamist terrorists, Spanish Inquisitors, etc. While some that may not have a belief in an afterlife, say like Stalin, were murderous bastards as well, it seems that many horrific crimes against humanity were committed by those who believed in souls. And often specifically justified by that belief. Based on the evidence there is no protective effect.
Also, to re-emphasize SM’s take. Neither emotions nor reason function in isolation in a human brain or in society. It is an integrated package. We balance different drives and delay satisfaction of others using reason. No drives, no values, nothing for reason to balance.
And to briefly return to a point I made earlier - if empathy (or whatever putative positive force might predispose us not to kill or harm others) is supernaturally imposed upon our meat machines, why is it so shaky, fragile and inconsistent? If this is one of those “God (or Our souls) show us the path, but we can choose to follow it or not” kind of things, why bother? Did some great power get a Supernatural Institute of Mental Health award to study how meat machines react to an imperfect soul? Again, if the introduction of a new construct really doesn’t get us to a better explanation than one that relies on solely the meat we can (by and large) measure, it really isn’t all that helpful.
OK, good point, let’s see how belief in a soul, in and of itself, can change peoples’ attitudes towards killing other humans.
Well, the only way I can think of trying to understand this is, is if I assume that I was on another planet and came across some alien “being” about which I had no idea whether it was “self-contained”, i.e. it was an automaton, or whether it was a receiver, i.e. a remote-controlled device that sends back its perceptions to its “base”.
Assume also that I started feeling that this alien being might start to inconvenience me while on this new planet.
Then, if I thought it was a self-contained machine, I might knock it out, destroy it. I might care a little that it was a very complex and probably sentient machine, but my interests would trump that.
On the other hand, if I thought that it was just a remote-controlled device that sends its “perceptions” back to some base, then I might choose to lay low and avoid destroying it, as that might be worse for me in the long run.
So, take the above simple example, and if you add the element of the “supernatural” (which for some reason, possibly evolution, is awe-inspiring to many people) and you would have people who should be even less willing to mess with this being.
I have no cites for this, of course. This is just my opinion.
And Humble Opinions are all well and good. So are things mindless and pointless that you must share. And discussion about the arts. They don’t fit especially well to GD, but all well and good. Meanwhile the evidence is solidly against that contention.
And one more thing.
If you accept that there is such a thing as an eternal soul, it is like automatically accepting that the world is MUCH more complex than you think from everyday experience, and this complex world must have some rules which you know nothing about. So, it is not easy making decisions about “should I do this, or should I do that”, since you don’t know what the rules of this “bigger” world are.
If, one the other hand, you take a mechanistic view of the world and are convinced that this is all there is, and these are the rules by which everything works, then it is much easier to decide whether you should do something or not. This is because you know the rules of this world, and that is sufficient, because you don’t belong to some higher meta-world, whose rules are a mystery to you.
So, insofar as accepting the existence of an eternal soul means you have to accept the existence of a meta-world (the “supernatural”), belief in a soul changes how you behave in this world, including how you behave towards other humans.
So there are no opinions expressed in GD? :rolleyes:
And where is this overwhelming evidence? Care to provide a cite?
But responding to the logic of your post … that actually argues that a soul belief predisposes to murder. If I have no soul belief then individuals have no seperate place to go after they destroyed. The whole of their sentient existences is tied up in that vessel, is emergent of the machine. If I kill them then I kill all they got and ever will have. If you believe in a soul then you can justify that killing as not so bad, because it is just the vessel, just the avatar, “I’m not desroying the entity’s essence, that will continue. I may even be doing it a favor by sending it to a better place, or saving it from eternal damnation.”
No, you argue not for soul belief but for the possible benefit of a concept of fire and brimstone, of the God who judges and will mete out punishment to you forever and ever unless you behave now.
Please read the posts.
Where is the evidence that having a soul belief is protective?
Logical arguments belong here. Evidence belongs here. Within the context of presenting both opinions do. I’m no mod, Jr or otherwise, but you want to debate, you need more than HO’s to convince people.
But you can’t say that for sure. If we exclude existing religious teachings from consideration, and we just accept the statement “there is an immortal soul”, you have no idea whether killing a person is good, or if you are doing them a “favor”.
The statement “there is an immortal soul” simply tells you that there is another world out there and we don’t know the rules of that world, or how our actions in this world affect existence in the other world.
So inferring from this statement the idea that you are doing someone a favor by killing them is wrong. It does not follow logically.
Let’s not confuse the issue by adding Christian ideas about the afterlife into this discussion. This is not about Christianity or any other world religion.
Where did I claim that believing in a soul stops all murders?
I just said that believing in a soul may reduce the likelihood of someone killing a fellow human.
Your quote simply says that some people who believe in a soul committed murder.
You do understand that this does not contradict the statement I made, right?
If you like logical arguments, stop building strawmen then by claiming that I stated that all murder stops when people believe in a soul.
Where did I say “all”? Your position would predict that fewer atrocities are committed by those with soul beliefs than those without. Yet most of the world’s atrocities have been justified by soul beliefs, or by people with soul beliefs. Are most on death row, or in jail for murder anyway, atheist or without belief in souls? More than the general population? Or less?
Punishment in an afterlife is not restricted to Christian thought, btw. Your argument is merely that if we feel there can be no consequence, then we may commit offenses. No argument there. You see a soul concept as key to adequate consequences. There we disagree. The key in your alien bit was not being an avatar, but the lack of possible consequence. I see societal constraints and the desire to conform to them as protective, whatever the axiomatic basis.
But if most of the people in the world believe in a soul, then it makes sense that most murders are committed by people who believe in souls.
It’s like some statistic that came out several years ago “The majority of airplane crashes are Boeing aircraft”. However, if the majority of aircract flying at the moment are Boeing, that makes sense.
You would have to get the exact percentages to determine if Boeings are better or worse aircraft than the others.
I don’t know. Do you?
In any case, whichever way it turns out, it would seem like a biased sample because, I assume most atheists are more educated and richer than the average American, and I assume most people on death row are less educated and poorer than the average American, so it makes sense that people on death row are less likely to be atheists.
In order to determine in a quantitative fashion the “protective factor” of soul-belief we would need a controlled experiment that controls for factors such as education and wealth. I’m not aware if any such experiment has been done.