Zenster, what’s wrong with Stalin and Hitler? They did lots of good things, right? Whose to say that mass murder doesn’t serve a useful purpose, and accomplish many good things in a society? It actually does free up food for much of the population (The part that you want to live).
Great, I have to go to work now, and probably won’t be able to respond for a few hours.
At any rate it’s a standard argument, basically, how do you, Zenster determine the limits of right action, or right standing?
If it is to be based on your own suppositions and observations of life, then you really have no moral authority, or at least no more than Stalin or Hitler, you simply state that their ‘good’ is not really ‘good’ based on your own ethic. Which is of course as fallible as anyone’s.
So, someone else getting credit for your ‘good’ works really assumes that they are good. What makes you think someone might want to take credit for your work? If they did, would it change the nature of the work itself?
In other words, if you knew that you would not get credit, would you still do something that you had thought might be good based on your understanding of the word?
Do you only feed the hungry when there are witnesses? Make a starving man sign an affidavit assigning the right of goodness to your work to validate your own existence?
Doesn’t the OP assume that humanity has some value, and if so, what do you believe that value to be? We’re just animals on a rock in space, man. . . what would make you assume that you, one of several billion might have some intrinsic value, or that any and all of us might?
Ok, this is asinine, but I don’t buy original sin. So, if Zenster is willing to withdraw his attempt to paint Christianity with the broad brush of idiocy, I will withdraw my argument. I don’t even want to argue about original sin, but, like the evolution threads that tend to pop up I felt a need to defend my religion, which this thread obviously has nothing to do with.
So, if we can deal out the sweeping generalities, I’ll move on with my life. However, if this thread is actually intended to be an attack on Christianity in general through the medium of original sin, I’ll stick around.
Whaddaya say, Zenster?
Then you leave yourself without footing in this argument. You desire to sit on both sides of the fence. This is not possible in rational decision making. Is mankind evil or good? You attempt to escape such a question by merely saying mankind is mankind, that is ipso facto. I have opened this debate to consider the validity of automatically condemning mankind and you have made no contribution to it with this observation. Unless you are willing to adopt one side or the other of this legitimate question the rest of your contributions are negated. You have demonstrated this in another place by your continued attempts at consigning good deeds to Stalin and Hitler, which I shall address later.
Defensive? No. Wondering why you put your question in small case font, yes. Your off-topic inquiry was easily interpreted as snide or condescending in the way you couched it and has nothing to do with the validity or substance of this debate. If you want to know where I am coming from, read my words.
But the fact that Stalin fed his nation with the blood and bone meal of other people does (not “kinda”) absolutely negate any goodness found in his acts. Turning a nation into cannibals does not constitute “feeding” them and never will.
The only thing that Hitler accomplished was the near-complete annihilation of Germany and the creation of a lasting stain and stigma upon their national conscience which remains in place over half a century later. Had Germany been an island nation like Great Britain, it may well have gotten attacked with atomics too. Once more, the term “revitalization” is utterly inappropriate. You do not revitalize a country by feeding it upon the flesh of others. Any attempt to confuse this concept with semantics about ends and means is supercilious.
This debate deals with rational people. Some people act with irrational motivations for their deeds, that is not what is being discussed here. Try not to take someone else’s personal stand and fog it with theoretical notions.
Yes. Good is and will always be the central focus of my life. Anyone attempting to tell me that I was born bad will be held suspect to their very core.
I still maintain that the quote is a manifestation of that diseased notion, altruism. It attempts to deny enlightened self-interest and I find that exceptionally repugnant.
I take any attempt to blather about altruism as a danger to society. See above reply.
To continue:
There is something known as “The Golden Rule.” It requires you to treat others as you would yourself. Two simple questions. Do you desire to have others prejudge you to be base and corrupt? Is it fair to regard others with that same basic prejudice? Unless you find it acceptable to be deemed in advance as basically flawed, Original Sin violates one of the most fundamental Biblical precepts by its very nature. Any notions about some sort of “heritable defect” are equally odious. The Christian church disavows any possibility of reincarnation by claiming that each soul is born anew. Then it simultaneously attempts to deny such self-proclaimed novelty of birth by insisting that we are all born tainted by Original Sin. This is hypocrisy at its most evil.
By what provable yardstick has mankind been shown to be intrinsically sinful? The tenets of the Bible largely demand to be taken on faith. Faith is a form of emotion and has nothing to do with reason. Attempting to use faith as a tool of judgment is morally corrupt. It provides no common objective measure by which to refer. An absence of absolute reality in moral determination voids any validity to such decision making.
In his book “Otherness,” David Brin makes a superb observation. He notes how most major religions seek to reverse history and return to some long-past ideal and primal state of existence. Christians seek the Garden of Eden, Muslims their Caliphate, ancient Greeks their Atlantis. The wish for regression is not only impossible, it defies causality and the direction of time’s arrow. Science is one of the only rational forms of thought that anticipates a utopia. It is one of the only forms of thought that actively strives for further clarification and dismissal of any faulty tenets it might hold. This cannot be said for Christianity so long as it maintains the existence of Original Sin.
Let us examine the structure of Original Sin’s context. It is important to mention that much of the Bible is allegorical. To adopt every single statement of the Bible as incontrovertible fact requires the assimilation of so much contradictory input as to be completely impossible for a rational person. The myth of Original Sin deals with the assumption of volition and free will in man. It mentions a loss of direct contact with God and details expulsion from an idyllic environment.
All of this is well documented in many respects, just not in the Biblical context. There was a time in recorded history when people routinely heard the voice(s) of God(s). I refer you to the Oracle at Delphi and hundreds of other similar well documented sites. It is well know that during a certain period in history, many people wrote lengthy lamentations about no longer hearing the voice(s) of God(s). What is not so well known is that this precise period in history seems to correspond quite neatly with one of the most profound paradigm shifts in the history of human civilization.
We are talking about the advent of human consciousness. One need only to read the Code of Hammurabi to see rudimentary attempts at syllogistic thought. Ancient Greek writings routinely show a lack of the internal analogue “I.” The Old Testament’s annals stand in stark opposition to the New Testament’s narrative qualities.
Man did not simply fall out of a tree on some long-past African Savannah, strike his head on a rock and awaken fully conscious. However difficult it may be to divine the origins of consciousness, there was most definitely a sustained period of time when homo-sapiens was not conscious. There was most definitely a prolonged period when preconscious man experienced auditory hallucinations interpreted to be the voice(s) of God(s). Modern day analysis of those experiencing auditory hallucinations (i.e., schizophrenics) find such dialog consists almost entirely of admonitory or condemning content. There are few recorded cases of such voices being laudatory or encouraging. (You rarely hear of a psychotic mentioning how the voices in his head told him to jump into a river and save someone.) This makes a substantial argument for the possibility that preconscious man perceived his God(s) in a similarly foreboding cast.
Imagine the impact of losing such an intimate connection with your God(s). There would be plaintive (and well documented) wailing about the now-muted Voice(s). The loss of such a cherished connection would render suspect any newly emerging consciousness. The transition from what was perceived to be an entirely predetermined and predestined existence into one of self-motivated volition would be regarded as perilous. There easily could form an inextricable link between the emergence of consciousness or free will and a loss of idyllic “innocence” (from having to make up your mind about every singe issue you are confronted with).
This entire scenario is played out rather exactingly in the Edenic Biblical allegory. The advent of free will is directly equated to loss of contact with God. Volition now allows man to consciously commit wrong (as opposed to doing so through unthinking anti-socialism). We are now segregated from the realm of the animals by this newfound intellect. All is no longer inexplicably provided by some supreme being and intentional foraging must begin. So many of these elements correspond with such profound congruity that I find it difficult to disregard.
Once viewed in this fashion, the myth of Original Sin begins to appear as a condemnation of free will. So it is that one of the highest manifestations of free will is routinely excoriated by Christianity. This is ego and nothing short of its destruction is the direct intention of Original Sin. Time and again it is said that any supposed rebirth in Christ first and foremost demands the abandonment of ego. Free will, ego and reason all rally directly against the positing of reality upon faith. This opposition is regarded as a dire threat by the church and always has been seen in such a light. Attempts to suppress free thought, to constrain and confine human belief or action within a narrowly delimited scope are a direct throwback to preconscious mentality.
I cannot and will not countenance such a reversal of fortune for mankind. The poison of Original Sin, oozing from the sores of diseased minds, has seeped into the very warp and weft of society’s fabric. This toxic mentality seeks to degrade man’s highest achievements and bring down all opposition with arguments that have no basis in reality. It must not be permitted and should be fought every inch of the way. It is not enough to dismiss Original Sin as a tainted component of an otherwise seemingly acceptable religion. It is only through the rejection of this wholly evil mindset that Christianity has any hope of redeeming itself. Until such a time, Christianity and its long outdated notions will continue to marginalize itself in the minds of rational men.
Is there any particular reason that you are not permitting that answer to your question to be an acceptable response in this discussion? What reason do you have for attempting to disregard a legitimate position about morality in a discussion of morality?
Mankind is neither good nor evil. This is sufficient to satisfy your objection to ‘Original Sin’ as painting a particular innacurate and dangerous portrait of humanity. Why are you insisting on a black or white spin on a universe that is neither?
Indifference to reality or man’s rationality is an extremely unhealthy and logically impermissible mindset. There is no middle ground to morality. Man is free, or he is not free. Any impingement upon freedom renders him not-free. Man is rational or irrational, again there is no middle ground. To merely claim that “man is neither good nor evil” in no way provides adequate refutation of Original Sin. If man were born indifferent to life and continuing existence, would that be acceptable? Such indifference is merely a type of suicide and in such a pointless form, entirely invalid.
One is not permitted to be indifferent about life or its innate goodness. To do so often results in intellectual, if not corporeal death, be it swift or slow. Life demands aggressive advocacy. Anything less permits irrationality to gain a toehold. Wherever irrationality is given the least whit of credence, sooner or later, death follows.
The universe is life oriented. This is a known fact and our mere existence is irrefutable proof of same. The Anthropic Principle makes a solid case that the universe is life-giving. Attempts at using the Anthropic Principle to prove “intentional design” is just Creationism dressed in a shabby tuxedo. What the Anthropic Principal shows is that the universe is not malevolent. Neither is the universe indifferent. Its permission of life can only be construed as good. Denial of this constitutes a rejection of humanity’s worth. Rejecting humanity’s intrinsic worthiness is completely irrational yet represents a basic premise of Original Sin.
People are good. It is the innate goodness of mankind that has kept the human race alive for these millions of years. Suddenly (in historical perspective, even two thousand years ago is suddenly) deciding, without reasonable proof, that man is intrinsically evil or corrupt flies in the face of all evidence and logic. Life is good, rational man is good, reason is good. Maintaining or even feigning indifference to this fact is immoral and promotes death.
I remember that when I first started to seriously question Christianity, one of my first realizations was, “Hey. I have a set of moral principles. Perhaps they are changing with time as I grow and learn, but at any given time why can’t I simply live according to my principles?” After that I was determined to do what seemed like a very simple thing - be good.
Of course, I could not do it.
The simple fact that people do not – and apparently can not – live up to their own principles is the basis of the doctrine of Original Sin. Writers have observed this throughout history.
But it is by no means obvious that such a situation is necessary. We can conceive of a race whose members do indeed live according to their principles, whatever those principles may be. The elves of Tokien are one example.
It is not a question of our moral systems being inherently contradictory or incomplete. I’m not talking about the gray areas. Yes we sometimes find ourselves in situations in which we are uncertain as to what it is right. But it is also a common fact of human life that we occasionally - sometimes frequently - do things which we certainly know and feel to be wrong.
Original Sin is just the attempt to fit this fact about the human experience into Christian theology.
Zenster Am I seeing a very strong objectivist argument here? I must re-read this thread when I get home. 
I say that however many reasonable utterances Jesus Christ (whose existence I do not argue, but whose descent from any putative God, I do doubt) may have made, a majority of them have been twisted out of all recognition by the Christian church. Twisted to such a point that I am confident that Christ Himself would be utterly disgusted at the slaughter and deceit carried on in His name by both church and individuals alike.
I don’t see how original Sin forces me to choose between Good or Evil. (Although, maybe I’m just confused as to what is being argued here) In fact, I understand it as the maker that says we are between the two. Built by God and stained by our own failings.
So you’re in deep with the almighty? He tells you His plans? In fact, I’ve never been sure He didn’t intend for Adam and Eve to be immortal.
They didn’t have any children until after they left the garden. Aside from which, you think God couldnt deal with a simple Malthusian math problem?
The serpent may have told them the truth in detail - sure it wasn’t going to kill them now - but his words implicitly ignore the larger context of what was going on, and encouraged A&E to do the same. Yes, it was a lie, if a very smart one.
Though I understand that the terminology is not exactly accurate, as it wasn not realy the physical body he was talking about, but man’s “fleshy” or “earthly” nature.
I don’t see how original Sin forces me to choose between Good or Evil. (Although, maybe I’m just confused as to what is being argued here) In fact, I understand it as the maker that says we are between the two. Built by God and stained by our own failings.
So you’re in deep with the almighty? He tells you His plans? In fact, I’ve never been sure He didn’t intend for Adam and Eve to be immortal.
They didn’t have any children until after they left the garden. Aside from which, you think God couldnt deal with a simple Malthusian math problem?
The serpent may have told them the truth in detail - sure it wasn’t going to kill them now - but his words implicitly ignore the larger context of what was going on, and encouraged A&E to do the same. Yes, it was a lie, if a very smart one.
Though I understand that the terminology is not exactly accurate, as it wasn not realy the physical body he was talking about, but man’s “fleshy” or “earthly” nature.
I posit that a claim that man is either inherently good or inherently evil is a claim that man is not free to make moral choices.
It claims that to do either good or evil (depending on which is claimed) is an inherent bias, and such cannot be shown to be the case based on an observation of reality: people do good, and people also do evil.
It also claims that to do either good or evil (depending on which is claimed to not be intrinsic) is a violation of a human being’s basic nature, and this is often explained by an appeal to supernatural sources, whether “original sin” or “the Devil made me do it”.
A person biased towards evil deeds by nature, by the way he is made, can blame his evil actions on his creator; had the creator not botched up the job he would not be so biased. A person biased towards good deeds by nature, by the way he is made, cannot claim credit for them any more than water can claim credit for them by flowing downhill.
A person created evil who does good deeds is placed in an inherent conflict of nature, and the question of whether those good deeds overcome the intrinsic vileness of nature is one of much wasted debate. A person created good who does evil deeds is a pervert, a throwback, defective, faulty, else why would such things happen?
A person created human, with the option to choose good or choose evil bears responsibility for that choice. And a single success or a single failure does not reflect the reality of that person – either may potentially be balanced by future action, future success or failure, future choice.
This was a most encouraging statement upon your own part. I could not agree with you more.
A person, be they intrinsically good or evil may always elect to do good. Free will is a superb motivational structure that does not prohibit movement in either good or bad directions. However, only progress towards a worthy goal contains life sustaining rewards. Morality does prohibit any migration towards evil, which is one of its primary functions. While immorality does not exclude the possibility of doing good, it neither propagates nor husbands such conduct. One of the most conspicuous hallmarks of evil is its unproductive nature. This is one of the principal distinctions between right and wrong.
**Taken to its logical extension, your statement infers that only a bad person who does some sort of good deed is allowed to take any credit for it and that a good-natured person may not.
Do you fully comprehend the twisted nature of your statement? Just like the Philippine quotation, you are stating that virtue in a good person should go unnoticed and only a sinner committing a good deed is worthy of credit. Whatever happened to the age old adage, “Credit given where credit is due?”
There are so many things wrong with your last statement that I do not know where to begin.
If one rejects the concept of moral essentialism as dangerous, flawed, and generally stupid, as I do, the belief that moral essentialism of whatever sort leads to twisted and defective results is entirely rational.
I do not and will not agree with you on the validity of notions that human beings are anything other than essentially human. I think essentialism of whatever sort is unsupportable by observations of the world, and further that it promotes wooly thinking by inserting a filter on actions and behaviours that may not in actuality exist.
Good and evil remain human constructions, and individual humans are exactly as free to choose one as they are free to choose the other, unconstrained by the defects of essentialism.
Zenster, on the possibility that you are enough of a Biblical scholar to determine whether the words of Christ have been ‘so twisted’ by the passage of time and whatever, I will not comment, and instead assume this is an assumption, unless state otherwise.
Secondly, the idea that original sin has so infiltrated the core of our society as to provide a taint on the whole religion of Christianity is ridiculous. You’re assuming again the original sin is a Christian concept, when it’s dogma, primarily a tradition of the Catholic church, and has been argued against for hundreds of years.
Each Christian church has it’s own views on the idea, and I would say that each individual Christian takes the concept a different way.
I think the Garden is a metaphor for the ancient man, who didn’t have to think about Good and Evil as concepts, and the forbidden fruit is the dawn of conciousness. Before conciousness dawned on us, everything was Good. We were just animals with no sense of moral being, once that sense developed, Evil was born as a concept. This is how I take original sin. Many Christians agree with me.
It’s not like we all woke up one day and said, “Hey, there’s an idea. . .” and decided to screw everybody over.
If you actually consider yourself to be a rational man, stop swinging your paintbrush so widely that it encompasses all of us as if this was some form of damnation on the souls of Christians everywhere.
I for one have never considered the argument of original sin to hold merit, you are therefore wrong about all of Christianity. You are wrong about most of Christianity. You might be right about some of Christianity. Please make an attept to apply your absolute righteousness to a group of the appropriate size.
Zenster>
I have to adopt one side or the other? Either mankind is inherently good or inherently evil? What if I don’t believe either of those arguments? Mankind is mankind. Each individual has the potential to do acts which are good or bad, but no individual has an inherent quality of good or bad locked inside them. Mankind is just mankind. It does both good and bad, it is neither.
Why not just ask that to begin with? Generally, I interpret small fonts as being tangents or asides, things which have no direct relevance to the topic, and I don’t especially see much leeway in that interpretation.
Well, I apologise that you saw it that way, but it wasn’t meant that way. To be honest, it seemed as if you flew off the handle because you expected me to be insulting and were presupposed to assume that people mentioning Rand’s work were automatically out to beat you with it. You’ve definitely got objectivist leanings. No other group of people rails against “that diseased notion, altruism.” Why you couldn’t just come out and say this I don’t know. You’re an objectivist, I’m a Pragmatist, big flaming whoopee.
Listen to what I’m saying here. I am not apologising for the actions of Stalin or Hitler. I am merely pointing out that it is possible to see every action from more than one point of view.
This, actually, ties in quite well with the topic of original sin, at least as far as any inherent goodness and badness goes. Let us not, for example, believe that Hitler was the only person to know about the Final Solution in Germany. Even if the German people did not know what was going on in detail, for the most part they knew of it. They went along with it, they did not oppose it, and in many cases they justified it to themselves, or supported it. Now, the question you have to ask is, why? Did they do it because they were inherently bad people, because they all hated the Jews enough to want them dead? Perhaps. But its a very rare person that is so consumed by hate that they will seek to exterminate the object of their hate even if they do not gain from it. The people of Germany believed that the Jews were taking away their prosperity; incorrectly, but so what? They believed it, it was their justification. They were willing to go along with the Reich’s Final Solution because they believed that they could gain from it, to right the wrongs that they perceived were done to them. They believed that there was a positive effect to them from the Final Solution, and there was, for a time. Many people around the world, during the 30s, looked to Hitler as a social visionary. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can truly see how twisted the man was, and how evil his actions.
Rational and irrational are axes on a graph, they aren’t discrete groups. Things can be rational from one point of view and irrational from another. And there is no such thing as a person who never makes an irrational decision.
For a start, making rational decisions implies having all the information available to you, or not making the decision until you are satisfied that all the information is available,and this situation never occurs. Life dictates that we make irrational decisions every day, and we often do. People on diets who fully appreciate that having a cheeseburger is bad for their coronary arteries and could cause premature death still eat cheeseburgers, because they taste nice. They are making irrational decisions, yet many of them are perfectly capable of holding down a job, operating a motor vehicle, or getting a PhD in latin.
Again, people aren’t rational or irrational, they make decisions, which can be rational or irrational decisions, but that’s not implying anything about the person themselves.
Well, I disagree. See above. “Man” is neither. Nor, to be honest, is it particularly helpful to think about “people” in terms of a broad, overarching “Man.” People are people. Some of them do more good things than bad, some of them make more rational decisions than irrational ones. If you believe in freedom and self-determination so strongly (and obviously you would be self-determinst, as determinists claim that people are not free to make their own decisions, that they are influenced by events and causality), then surely it makes sense to say that if individual men are free, then they are free to make bad, stupid decisions. The term “Man” is meaningless when talking about What People Do, because everyone is different.
I would dispute the “known fact” part here. The anthropic principle site makes a number of asumptions straight off the bat because they support his point. Working backwards through the philosophy, I see no reason to believe that these assumptions are true over the alternatives. I would be careful about using terms such as “known fact” or “common knowledge,” because often these terms indicate that they are not known facts or common knowledge, and the phrase is being inserted in order to handwave away objections.
Sorry, wrong.
Taking as my initial assumption the universe’s indifference (not malevolence):
Given this, any developments of life occur according to merely natural processes. There is no “good” or “bad”, inasmuch as there is nothing occurring which would be considered, from the point of view of the universe, to be better had it not occurred. Things merely happen.
When we, as humans, develop out of this, we develop ways of imposing values of good and bad on the indifferent universe. We, as human beings, rise above the merely natural and create morality. This is a humanistic aproach, and it requires no assumption of a good, life-giving universe, yet still acknowledge’s humanity’s “worth”.
Disproof by counterexample, a marvellous thing
This is a wonderfully poetic polemic, but doesn’t actually prove your point. In fact, looking at all the evidence in front of me, i.e. the fact that no human being on the planet has ever made 100% “good” or “moral” decisions, this seems to, in fact, PROVE that people are inherently evil. If an evil person can do good things, yet good people cannot do bad things, then if everybody does, at some point, bad things, then everybody is evil. It’s simple logic, and, while I’m not suggesting that everyone is evil, I would suggest that you re-evaluate either your stance quoted above or your stance on man’s inherent goodness, because they logically contradict each other.
The story in Genesis does not say that the serpent was Satan. The author of revelation may have been trying to draw that inference on his own (although he does not explicitly say so), but it really doesn’t matter. Genesis doesn’t say that the serpent was Satan. The fact that another author came along a thousand years later and called Satan a “serpent” (in a highly allegorical apocryphal text) is pretty much irrelevant. Nothing in the NT can fairly be used to inform any part of the OT anyway. The NT was written at a different time with a different theological agenda. Any attempt to retroject a Christian interpretation into the OT is erroneous and false. The Hebrew Bible was written with no knowledge or reference at all to Christianity. The OT is a Jewish text, not a Christian one.
If he didn’t know right from wrong, he couldn’t sin. If he didn’t know right from wrong, he couldn’t know it was wrong to disobey God. If he didn’t have free will yet, he couldn’t make a moral “choice.”
Even if Adam had been capable of “sin” at the time, how the hell is that my fault?
Welcome to the free world, McDuff. You are not compelled (save by your own conscience and rational capacity) to do anything. However, I will refer you to a well worn adage:
“All that is necessary for evil to succeed, is for good men to do nothing.”
To countenance such evil as Original Sin and arrive at the finding that “mankind is mankind” strikes me as pretty lame. You seem to seek neutrality concerning the issue. While that is your privilege, it is also mine to direct your attention to another saying. This one was coined by a woman involved in the Spanish civil war. She said:
“To live is to take sides.”
As you rise each day, you (typically) make the decision to live. The value of your life rotates around that commitment. The selection of life implies continuation of both body and mind. One without the other is not of much use. To have a bland dedication to such a crucial issue yields a similar effect on your ability to impact it. If you elect to do so little when confronted with a long standing poison to the mind, so be it. I’ll hope you do not come whinging about it when you are finally faced with the ultimate byproduct of your own inertia.
An outright question is usually asked directly and without dressing it up. Small case font commonly implies sotto voce. Your reference to Ayn Rand as “that lovely lady” added overtones and personalities that can easily be interpreted as inappropriate to debate. Deny it if you wish. It was rather transparent to me.
Apology accepted. I most certainly do not expect you to be insulting or I would never have welcomed you to this thread. Do not claim that I am an objectivist until you see me doing so. You seem to have a capable mind, regardless of to which end it is employed, I shall always welcome that in debate. Your presuppositions are less welcome in that they do not maintain acceptable focus on the issue at hand. Since you attempt to identify my mindset by singling out my stand on altruism, please give us the benefit of your own views concerning it in this thread. Long before I made the least mention of altruism, I brought up the warped concept of duty to other men. Our sole duty is to ourselves, that same duty (in a mass setting) implies compliance with the social contract. Do you defend the nature of altruism and its implications? Do you advocate a mandatory sense of duty to others?
Here is where we must agree to disagree. There are some issues where one cannot be open minded. Mass murder is one of them. Both of these monsters engaged in the unbridled and wanton slaughter of innocent human beings. This forever taints their acts and disallows viewing them in any type of decent cast. Would you have it that history regards these two super-thugs in any sort of benevolent light? By construing even the slightest redeeming value to such evildoers you do apologize for them, even if that is not your intention.
Again, I must take issue with how you attempt to permit even remote justification of Germany’s wholesale slaughter of the Jews. You say, “The people of Germany believed that the Jews were taking away their prosperity; incorrectly, but so what?” But so what? Have you ever heard of a concept called “the shadow of a doubt?” It has served our American courtrooms quite well in the absence of magistrates. Before anyone advocates consigning someone else to death, they are obliged to investigate each and every avenue of evidence. The bigoted hate by the people in nazi Germany granted no such chance to hapless millions. Most German people stood idly by, if not actively participated in the looting and murder of their fellow countrymen. Again, I remind you, all that is necessary for evil to succeed, is for good men to do nothing. Nazi Germany is a sterling example. I cannot adequately express my revulsion at the slow reaction time the remaining world (including the USA) exhibited in their response to the Holocaust, save to say that anti-Semitism was rampant then and remains far too prevalent now.
But there is such a thing as people who willingly dedicate themselves to eliminating irrationality from their life. There is such a thing as people who refuse to countenance blatantly irrational acts and thus deny them any shelter of neutrality.
“Life dictates that we make irrational decisions every day, and we often do.” Wittingly or not, you have just sided with the malevolent universe by stating this. Life forces us to be rational and nothing else. You have also made a completely insupportable and sweeping generalization. Making rational decisions does not demand “having all the information available to you.” This is an utterly fallacious notion. While rationality and scientific investigation have much in common, it is science that makes its best attempt to gather all data before proceeding. This is not the case for rational thought. Rational thought demands that you make a best effort (by the standards of personal excellence) to base your decisions on sufficient verified input such that you have a good chance of reaching a valid conclusion. I believe that this is what you might have meant by, “… or not making the decision until you are satisfied that all the information is available …” If you mean “until you are satisfied that all of the [pertinent] information is available,” to the trained mind, this situation occurs quite frequently. “All” the information is never available. It is irrational to require all information before making a routine decision.
If you awaited all information before deciding, you would not even leave your door in the morning for fear it is the next car that might careen into you. You might not even get out of bed for fear the floorboards will give way. This is balderdash. Recent programs dedicated to training scientists for business management address this exact problem. Business (read, “life”) decisions must always be based on incomplete data. If you wait to gather all of the existing data, a competitor who has been able to accumulate sufficient valid information will make a similar decision sooner and precede you to market. So it is with rational decision making. You diligently gather enough information to confidently decide in any given situation. Any person on a weight-losing diet (diet refers to one’s daily intake of food, not weight management) who is well informed about arteriosclerosis and persists in regularly eating cheeseburgers solely because they taste good has elevated transitory sensory pleasure over the value of their health. This goes beyond irrational and into the realm of intentional stupidity. A person who holds a Ph.D. position that they drive to each day is not automatically deemed rational. You confuse functioning with method. One is an artifact of the other, they are not interchangable.
And this is where your argument falls to the ground. A person who regularly persists in making irrational decisions says quite a lot about themselves. Let’s examine a common irrational decision, driving while intoxicated. People who insist on repeatedly driving under the influence are criminals who endanger society as a whole. What does this say about them? It says that they bloody well need to be incarcerated so their irrationality does not become a detriment to society. That you maintain such actions have no reflection upon either their own character or rationality is pure unadulterated tommyrot, completely and utterly uncontaminated by logical thought.
Yes, our free will gives us the opportunity “to make bad, stupid decisions.” We are not entirely free to do so. “Bad, stupid decisions” are not made entirely without consequences. There are costs associated with being stupid or irrational. The obese person eating cheeseburgers at each lunch finds that out when their heart stops. The drunk driver finds that out once they are remanded to substandard government housing with substandard government supplied neighbors. Rationality’s virtue is that it permits a cohesive and coherent mindset. Rationality is neither at conflict with one’s own goals nor those of society, irrationality is.
The central issue of the Anthropic Principal is that any correct model of the universe must be one that permits the existence and manifestation of life. This is what I am referring to by its mention. It is also why I forewarned of Creationist attempts to justify “intentional design.” It is a “known fact” that life exists. I you assume to argue that then all bets are off. I find that life is a good thing. Again, if you are to argue that, then this debate may be moot. By dint of syllogistic thought; If the universe holds life and life is good, then the universe is good. I accept this as a fundamental tenet of rationality.
Permit me to say the same thing in return. You have previously stated that life forces us to make irrational statements. This is wrong in so many ways it is laughable.
You cannot have it both ways and wishing will not make it so. You state that life (the universe) forces us to make irrational decisions, then you state that the universe is indifferent. Which is it? A universe that enforces irrationality is not indifferent. I observe that such a coercive universe would be quite malevolent.
I find this statement to be both noxious and nihilistic. You seem to be utterly indifferent to life. Wait until you encounter someone who is indifferent to your continued living and watch what happens. You may not be too happy with the results, even if they are. I remain concerned about life because I find its continuation to produce the most profound joy and exhilaration imaginable. We do not live according to the viewpoint of the universe. We live according to the viewpoint of being human, at least rational people do. For you to assume a universal point of view when attempting to argue about the human condition is specious. I will say once more, YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.
How does one ‘impose’ value upon anything? I would be inclined to say that values are derived from existing reality. Imposition or assignation of value does occur but it is often not logical or rational. Derivation of value from extant objects requires comprehension of their function and utility. If you permit yourself to be indifferent to life, then you may well permit yourself to be indifferent about the universe. I am not indifferent to life and shall not permit myself to maintain an indifferent attitude towards the intrinsic goodness of either the universe, life or mankind. If your approach reflects that of secular humanism, the I can only be glad to have never claimed alliance with such a thing. You claim to be pragmatic but I cannot see any practicality in your indifference to life. When pronounced by a living being, I find such disregard for life’s primacy as hypocritical.
You have disproved nothing as of yet. The contradictions in your own answers are proof of that.
Your statement that, “… the fact that no human being on the planet has ever made 100% “good” or “moral” decisions, this seems to, in fact, PROVE that people are inherently evil.” is utterly fallacious. It is identical to the concept of Original Sin which you claim to dispute. Man’s fallibility does not automatically condemn him, only a willingness to be so does. Man is not born with a willingness to be fallible. It is taught to him and represents one of the most monstrous poisonings of the mind imaginable. Original Sin teaches not just a willingness to accept fallibility as inherent but attempts to posit it as a definite inclination and thereby voids any validity it might have.
TASTY!
I’m not saying that Original Sin forces man to choose between good and evil (in that precise sense). What I am attempting to prove is how Original Sin is a poisonous concept, in that it presupposes man to be inherently flawed or evil. However much we might be “stained by our own failings,” we are not stained at birth. This is one of the fundamental tenets of Original Sin and I find it to be monstrous.
I believe your other questions were directed at another poster.