I think Paul was the first to tie the crucifixion to an atonement for the fall in the Garden, but, as you said, that was just a springboard for a lot of subsequent debate about the nature of sin.
I agree with you that the immaculate conception seems like a silly extropolation.
So you did. It was a while back, I sort of forgot about it. I guess I should have just said I agree with you then. 
actually, looking back on it, had we not been discussing this this, the thread would have died two days ago.
My determinations are made using empirical observation. Scientific method has a lot to offer life. Through routine experience I have found that there is a fairly strong logic to morality. Murder, rape and unmerited aggression are wrong acts. It is fairly simple to see why and just as simple to avoid doing such things. The logically inconsistent nature of Hitler’s and Stalin’s acts voided any possible attribution of good to their conduct. A functional philosophy cannot be based upon the wholesale slaughter of innocent people. It matters not how well oiled of a propaganda machine paints them as your enemies. Mass abrogation of human rights is contrary to every rational person’s code of ethics. You speak of ethics as though they are something each person is allowed to make up for themselves. Such is not the case. Ethics derive from and are a direct manifestation of the social contract. They are not something to pick and choose from selectively (no matter how common such behavior is today). While I may be as fallible as anyone else, I was neither born that way nor do I willingly permit myself to be so.
I have seen far too many people who are content with taking credit for the work of others. I’m quite positive you have as well. Rational people never desire credit for someone else’s work. Just as they do not want credit for their work to be ignored or misplaced. Just because someone manages to wrongly appropriate credit for my own work does not make them a good person. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
Cheating another of proper credit for their work can most definitely alter the worth of that work. Someone who has unjustly benefited from such appropriation may then go on to falsely win admiration from unsuspecting people and thereby assume a role of leadership which might utterly pervert the original intentions of the person who actually did the work. I would liken this to Hitler. By expropriating the substantial wealth of murdered Jewish people, he was able to project himself as saving his country’s economy. This corrupt notion has already been paid lip service in this very thread. Hitler’s theft of what was not rightfully his was critical to his success. Had people of conscience vocally opposed it and publicly exposed him from the very beginning, Hitler may not have gotten far. The willingness of German people to irrationally harbor their bigoted anti-Semitism was a linchpin for Hitler’s success. Hitler merely climbed upon the willingly offered shoulders of fellow irrationals and proceeded to wage his campaign of slaughter with their full complicity.
Your questions are couched in extremely insulting and offensive terms. Suggesting that any rational person would behave in such a manner is both degrading and without any sense of class.
I try hard to do the right thing for one reason alone. Because it is the right thing to do and by doing right I strengthen my ability, will and resolve to continue doing so. Credit for good deeds provides crucial positive reinforcement of such behavior. It is why I stress the importance of giving credit where credit is due. While disguised as common courtesy or politeness, it serves a vital (life-giving) role in personal advancement and that of the entire world. If a person is so sloppy whereby they willingly do not recognize good works by another they not only cheat the person who has helped them but, more importantly, cheat themselves out of doing the right thing. It is this sort of moral flaccidity that I protest. The Philippine newspaper quote promotes that sort of flaccid mentality and it is offensive.
Your belittlement of mankind’s potentialities is both abhorrent and blatantly indicates a distinct lack of personal self esteem. The value of humanity is tremendous. We hold within our grasp the ability to become a civilization that could colonize vast parsecs of space. With such ability we could bring life to barren planets. We could use the same technology to rescue other civilizations unable to escape their own solar system’s collapse. There is a near-infinite potential for our race to do good. By dint of our consciousness and rational mind we are far more than “just animals on a rock in space.” To even suggest such a repellent notion indicates that you have not risen very far above animal life here on earth.
I believe that any one of us human beings might hold the key to advancing our planet past its currently benighted state. A single new invention or discovery might possibly propel this world well beyond anything imaginable. You obviously fail to grasp such a fundamental concept and are the poorer for it. Your niggardly estimation of man’s worth is an insult to thinking people and represents nothing less than self-proclaimed incompetence.
I’m interested in what you think of the allegorical analysis I provided in my earlier post about the Eden mythos representing the advent of consciousness.
So, a person who engages in such actions as rape, murder, and unmerited aggression is an illogical person? If someone has better, or perhaps different data from your own, would these actions then become right if they could be shown to be logical? Hitler and Stalin probably didn’t consider themselves illogical. Their followers in the modern day see much of their actions as supremely logical.
Right, once again I’d have to see how it’s irrational. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t pick and choose my code of ethics either, but I’m not arguing that mine in the right code of ethics, or that any personal laws I might lay down based on my own logic should naturally apply to a society. That was Hitler and Stalin’s mistake.
You were born perfect? I have seen lots of babies, and known lots of children, and they are wonderful. By far the most wonderful people in society. They still make mistakes though. I don’t think they’re trained to screw up, it’s just a mistake. People make mistakes Zenster. I don’t think that it’s necessarily evil to believe that these mistakes are a result of our very existance, but that they are largely unimportant. When I make mistakes, I try to fix them, and apologize.
Actually, Hitler’s patriotism was essential to his success. He was a national figure long before he began to steal the wealth of the Jewish citizenry. He made his platform on the rights of the common man and promised to revitalize Germany. He was anti-semetic the whole time. But then so were a lot of people. Rationality probably would’ve averted disaster, had there been an initiative to forward it. I’m not saying that Hitler was rational, in my opinion, but that he probably thought he was.
Credit for good deeds is fine Zenster. It does provide positive reinforcement. But you’re not a ten year old, so the next time you do a good deed go buy a fucking candy bar for yourself and feel good about it. My point was that credit is not the reason to do a good deed, the reason is the deed itself. It can suck when someone else takes credit, but it doesn’t stop me from doing the right thing in the future, and it doesn’t really bother me that much. If it bothers you that it doesn’t bother me, tough shit. I’m me, and I have a right to my opinions, and I have a right to do the right thing and never once ask or expect any credit to be given.
And then there’s this:
First of all, I don’t care what you might have read between the lines in my post, but this is more like writing in the lines and interpreting them yourself. Personally, I think asking questions of someone in a debate is the hallmark of a rational person. You may disagree with that, and you may even read quite a bit more into it than that. Your responses above are niether rational, nor correctly assumed.
What this indicates to me(A phrase you may wish to remember in the future, for your replies to others to appear reasonably pleasant) is that your rationality is questionable.
I’ll ask another question(This is an honest question, which I note here in doubtfulness of your interpretive ability.), does my irrationality extend to the point where I might be killed for the benefit of society? It certainly seems from your reply as if I am a wart on the face of all that is good in this world.
Ah, emphasis is quote was mostly mine.
Feeling a little defensive are we?
Please limit your foul language to the Pit. It is most unwelcome in this thread and has been reported to the moderators. It also bespeaks of truly poor debating skills.
I am not attempting to make you feel worthless. How in Hades you were able to extrapolate that you should be “killed” from what I’ve posted is beyond me.
You seem to have an extremely low esteem for your fellow man. I do not feel that way and find it offensive when people do. Regarding humanity as “mere animals” is the root of some of the most incredible evils this world has ever seen. This includes some of the events being discussed here in this thread.
I will take the time to rebut your other statements later. I am due at a friend’s house for dinner.
Actually Zenster, I was responding to several assumptions that you had made about me as a person, and I apologize if you felt my language was foul. I felt that it best appropriated my opinion. I use language as a tool, not as a weapon.
I extend man from the animal kingdom, but ‘mere animals’ is not a quote of mine. Man is technically an animal. You may extend conciousness past other animals, and I could have said ‘people’ instead if it makes you feel better.
My question was not an intimation that I personally believe I should be killed, or that you might think that, but a question of moral boundaries for the good of society. I find it interesting that you have such trouble with the concept of moral questions that do not necessarily reflect the morality of the party asking them. This is the third time you’ve called me on it as if I was advocating Naziism by asking about Nazis, or undermining the value of human life by asking you about it, or undermining my own personal morals by questioning the derivation of yours.
I’m not sure exactly which post you’re referring to, but I’ve re-read the entire thread a couple of times and I think I have a sense of your overall thesis. I don’t think that the fall symbolizes the biological advent of sentience so much as a social and anthropological change. The human brain was not significantly different one hundered thousand years ago than it was ten thousand years ago.
Two major events in human history occurred about 10 or 11 thousand years ago. The last ice age ended and the agricultural revolution began. With agriculture came civilization. With civilization came major changes in social structures, language, religion and pretty much all other aspects of life. Like cain, we came out of the “garden” that was an idealized memory of our hunter-gatherer days, and into the land of Nod that was the city.
Like you said before, there was a mythologized longing for the innocence of an earlier paradise. On the other hand, the loss of human innocence had also given them an unprecedented control over their lives. Their newfound power came with new responsibility.
The story is that people used to be innocent, and lived in a garden where God provided everything. Then something happened and now they knew all kinds of things they hadn’t known before, but things were no longer simple and innocent.
I’ve read that some anthropologists think that the agricultural evolution was inspired by the invention of beer. Maybe the forbidden fruit was malt liquor.
I should have said like Adam we came out of the Garden. Doh!
You’re my wife now Dave!
Firstly, Zenster.
Humour an old man’s interest. I like to know a bit about the people I talk to. Are you an objectivist?
This is why I ask. It is my experience that people who rail against “altrusim” use a definition of the word that no other people use. I was once very confused about the apparent contradiction between a belief that altruism was evil, and a belief that firefighters rushing into the World Trade Centre to try and save people’s lives weren’t either evil or hopelessly misguided. However, it was explained to me that the firefighters weren’t acting because of altruism, but because of something else (I forget exactly what).
You rage against a “mandatory” sense of “duty” towards others, yet are intensely proud of your own desires do “do good”, and highly critical of others apparent lack of desire to do likewise. I would suggest that our views on the actions and attitudes we would like people to exhibit are very close to each other, in this regard, but I call it “altruism” and you call it something else.
Yes. Yes I absolutely would advocate showing what the perceived benefits of Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes were. Yes, I would advocate showing that the issue was not one sided. Yes, I would advocate displaying the complexities, the biases, the willful blindness, the effects of fragile hopes on a desperate people. To say that there were no redeeming qualities to Hitler is to paint a one dimensional picture of pure evil, and that leads to a great danger that we look for evil to rail against, when we should instead be looking out for persuasive speakers emotionally appealing to fears and ignorance, who by this method will cause evil deeds to insinuate themselves into society without us even being vastly aware of it.
The first lesson we should take from Hitler and Stalin is not that we should always fight against evil men, but that we should not do evil things and become evil ourselves. If we do this, the second lesson, that of opposing evil men, ceases to be relevant.
I agree with you. It was shameful, and the German people today still bear, I would say unnecessarily, part of that national shame. What I would have you realise is that there is rarely a situation where all things are equal and all decisions are as cut and dried as they appear with 20:20 hindsight. The status quo is a powerful force. “Everyone else is doing it” is a very persuasive argument. After all, twenty-million Americans can’t all be wrong about cheeseburgers.
There are? Please, tell me where to find such bastions of enlightenment, for I have yet to come across a single one of these precious, diamond-like beings.
Yes, I apologise, I was rather broad in my definitions of “rationality.” I still, however, defend the inevitable nature of irrationality as part of human nature. People who go out to a partys knowing that the inevitable hang-over will occur the next morning are acting “irrationally”, as are those people, such as myself, who sit in a chair and allow another human being to permanently mark their skin with ink-filled needles. There is no rational justification for my going into work tonight with a hand that has been sliced open following a recent accident with a broken mirror. As a freelancer in a physical job, I could quite easily phone in and say that my injury prevents me from working - rationally, given the nature of my work, it would. But I have a strange kind of pride which makes me prove that the normal rules that apply to sensible people don’t apply to me. This is why I do what I do in the first place (and some people would say that anyone choosing to work as I do is making an irrational decision in the first place. On the other hand, it’s the best job in the world, so what do they know, eh? 
)
There is irrationality in carpe diem. There is irrationality in taking the long shot, the big risk, the million to one chance. There is irrationality in heroism. Yet, of such things is humanity made.
I don’t buy attempts to conflate business with life. Life is not a science, an art, or a business. These things emerge from the act of living, they are not guides for it.
Yet, maybe they feel that the benefits outweigh the risks? Maybe they have made a value judgement and feel that it is worth running the risk of premature death because cheeseburgers are just so damned tasty. Maybe they think that life without cheeseburgers isn’t worth living?
It’s “irrational”, yet it has all the hallmarks of rationality. That’s what makes human beings humans, rather than automatons.
Oh, come now Tarquin! I must call shenanigans on such insults! To state that I said actions have no reflection on character is to misread what I said. If a “rational” person can make irrational decisions, even occasionally, or an “irrational” person can make rational decisions, even occasionally, then that indicates that there is no such thing as an irrational or rational person, merely people who do rational or irrational things. If a person makes decisions which are 50% rational and 50% irrational, then what are they? Surely you are not claiming that nobody ever makes irrational decisions? Again, if you know of such glass vulcans, I would love to meet them, or possibly observe them for a sociology PhD.
Also, to characterise my statements as “uncontaminated by logical thought” is pretentious bobbins, and flies in the face of your “welcoming” me into this thread.
I am afraid I must be misreading this. You seem to be saying that the goals and aims of “society” are always in tack with the goals and aims of a rational individual. Given the number of “rational” men (or men who I would hope you view as rational, or else all appears to be lost) who oppose vociferously the society in which they live, surely such a belief is entirely inconsistent with reality?
You’re shifting around like quicksand here, Zenster, and I’m finding it very hard to avoid being bogged down in your arguments.
On the one hand, you argue that since the universe holds life, and life is good, then the existence of the universe is a good thing. This I cannot really argue with, as it is the equivalent of saying that since bottles hold wine, and wine is good, that the existence of bottles, or other containers for liquid, is a good thing.
On the other hand, you use the word “permits”, which I feel simply must be the wrong word, as it implies a conscious decision on the part of the universe. The universe no more “permits” life than the ground “permits” me to walk upon it. More to the point, the ground does not care one jot whether I walk upon it or not. It will exist there quite unaware of me and my grand or not-so-grand designs on life, be I walking upon it or flying to the moon in a rocket.
To argue that the universe “permits” life, rather than life just being something that happens in a universe blindly following the rules of its physical laws, seems to argue for an overarching intelligence making decisions on the universe’s behalf; a kind of pantheistic curtain-twitching. I have no problem with this kind of theology, but your objections to ID leave me thoroughly confused, although this may be because of my ignorance rather than your argument.
Here I see I have left you by the wayside. I am not attempting to have anything both ways. The universe is indifferent. It cares not one jot for us. We are something that happens within the universe.
But we humans, as you so rightly point out, live according to our own viewpoint, which finds us to be, if not the best thing since sliced bread in all cases, at least more desirable a state of affairs to continue than not. Our desire to stay alive, to create fair societies, to write and read fine works of literature, is one giant “fuck you” to an indifferent universe. We don’t care that the universe doesn’t care about us, because WE care about us, and that’s all that matters to us.
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How does one ‘impose’ value upon anything?
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Easy. You say “that is worth this to me.” How else do we define what thngs are worth? Things are “worth” only what someone is willing to “pay” for them. A diamond is just a rock, yet it is “worth” thousands of dollars to someone if it sparkles prettily enough. And worth is not constant across the entire breadth of humanity. A glass of water is worthless to a drowning man, yet worth much hardship to a man in the desert. A tarnished silver necklace may be worth a few dollars in metal, yet priceless for the old lady for whom it acts as a reminder of her dead husband. A piece of paper will set you back mere fractions of a cent, but if said piece of paper was stained by ink by Hemingway or Shakespeare, as part of a manuscript of some famous work, it may become worth some hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Without the human element, all talk of “worth” is meaningless, at least to me. Something has worth to someone, or it has no worth at all. Diamonds are merely rocks unless someone makes them into jewels. Steak will merely rot unless someone eats it. The very planet we live on, and the universe in which it is placed, would be worthless unless we were here to value them. Value is always assigned, never intrinsic.
I have no real knowledge of the specifics of Secular Humanism, per se. Humanism, the knowledge and acceptance that we can only view things from our own perspective and that we must learn to live and cope with it, is a philosophical stance which I believe is different to the social stance of Secular Humanism.
Am I indifferent to life? That I believe the universe is places no onus on myself to be likewise. If I am free, I am free to disagree with the universe, am I not?
I know. This makes it all the more odd that you, who are much more vehemently opposed to it than I (because I am content to merely ignore Original Sin as it does not apply to my life, yet you have started a thread with the apparent intention of convincing others that it should not apply to theirs), should hold such an unusual viewpoint as you do.
You claimed:
Which rendered, in my mind, as “good people cannot do bad things, wheras bad people can do either good or bad things.” Given this, only people who never do “bad” things fall into the extremely narrow category of “good” people, and everyone else appears to be lumped in with the bad. I previously thought that 100% of the human race did bad things at some point in their lives, but if you know, as you obviously do, of people who have never committed a sin or moral failing, evidently I am wrong, and my pessimism only applies to a statistically significant majority.
The flowery language is confusing my poor old addled brain here, Zenster, but this seems to be rather at odds with what you have said before. If it is not the fallibility itself, but the “willingness to be fallible”, or, as I render that, the act of making mistakes vs the intention to act in a mistake-free way, then “morality,” the “intent” part of the equation, cannot be taken to “prohibit any migration towards evil.” Nobody intends to be evil, and nobody intends to fail. If it is merely the “willingness to be fallible” that condemns a man, then nobody can be evil, by logical extension, unless they go out of their way to be so. This is entirely at odds with what you have previously said.
Of course, you may be using a different definition of the word “fallible” than I am used to.
I agree with you here, although not as strongly. I do not believe, however, that a belief in any inherent goodness in humanity or individuals is any less “poisonous”. That mankind has a noticable bias towards being shitty to each other is noted. To claim that mankind is inherently good, and that it is only social conditioning that forces us to be this way, is to subjugate the intellect of the individual to society far more than I am willing to. Rather, I do not assign any tendency or inherent morality in a human being to begin with, and place the onus firmly on the individual himself to make the decision to be good or bad. Anything other places one foot on a slippery slope towards denying accountability for your own decisions.
Although not wishing to put words in Lilarien’s mouth, I find your tone towards her to be arrogant to a quite unnecessary degree. Perhaps, if you are able, you can imagine that to be “essentially human” is to describe what happens beyond merely having a “capacity for mentative process” or being a “passageway for food.” Perhaps you can imagine a world in which people live a life of balance between their biological needs and the influence of their glands, their social needs and the influence of those around them, and their intellectual needs and the influence of their own brains, with their capacity for logic but also for sensible illogic and flights of fancy. Perhaps you can perceive that mere rationality does not dictate human behaviour, and that if it did, we would be all the worse off for it. Humans are caught halfway between heaven and hell, between animals and angels, where we can go either way and our choices are ours to make, where the influences that play upon us are balanced one against the other, leaving us no natural inclination to be like satyrs or cherubs. It is this place of balance and choice, with the capacity for immense failure as well as immense success, that makes being a human being such a vital and exciting thing to be, far better than being an angel or an animal.
Rather than that, might I spend my life without wars or McDonalds cheeseburgers? I understand that these are all things made by rational human beings as well, yet I would far rather do without them. I pick and choose my “ethics” as I see fit, and do things which only I see as good. This does not mean that I see other people’s ethics as being the result of “mental flaccidity,” but as the result of our shared “essential” (that’s essential as in inherent, not as in necessary - I feel you might have confused the two earlier) humanity.
Yes, people who exhibit unwarranted violent and aggressive behavior are illogical. They are typically expending far more energy and resources than what would be required to arrive at a peaceful solution. If another rational person is capable of demonstrating through emperical analysis and experimental proof that certain of their own methodologies are superior to yours, it is in your best interest to carefully examine them. It matters not in the least whether Hitler or Stalin considered themselves sane, rational or logical. Both have pretty well conclusively been proven to be nearly psychotic, paranoid, asocial or all of the preceding. Introducing their self-assessment in no way supports a claim of them being rational in any sense of the word. Those who would be of such dubious competence to declare themselves followers of either Hitler or Stalin have already shown themselves to be suspect. How that can possibly lend the least iota of credibility to the acts of these murders is beyond logical explanation. You continue to use subjective methods (i.e., the opinions of unqualified admirers) to counter the observations of hundreds of qualified analysts. Calling or even referring to the acts of Hitler and Stalin as supremely logical is repugnant. Is this how you feel about these two men? Please make your position on this abundantly clear. If you do not, yet persist in maintaining a contrived argument in their favor then you are do no one any favors, including yourself
Good, now we are making some progress. Neither am I saying that my own personally selected code of ethics are the correct law for society. Do you recall my constant mention of “The Social Contract?” That is the guidepost I am using for a standard set of acceptable ethics to regulate behavior and conduct.
I have never said such a thing. I have only said that I do not believe that I was born with a willingness to do evil or any innate tendency to intentionally do so.
I wish you might consider apologizing for wasting so much of our time trying to defend the acts of Hitler and Stalin as being rational or logical.
For what seems the entire duration of Hitler’s life, his entire mindset and thought processes were tainted and malformed by his anti-Semitic bigotry. Anyone who is willing to countenance such a flawed component residing within their frame of reference is not entitled to the label “rational.” Rational thought demands discarding such unproductive and fundamentally antisocial thought patterns. It matters not whether Hitler had yet to obtain the additional looted wealth that fueled his mass murder. The seeds of it were planted by his permitting himself to maintain an utterly flawed philosophy whilst building all of his other plans. This made any of his other efforts, “fruit of the poisoned tree.” For you to declare that Hitler “made his platform on the rights of the common man” without instantly admitting that so long as that “platform” excluded the Jewish segment of Germany’s population, then your statements do not hold water and you have once again ignored the rotten underpinnings of his twisted “platform.”
You are once again attempting to ignore (just as Hitler did) the unalienable rights of a huge segment of the German people. Such mistaken reasoning (unintentionally or not) gives false credibility to his acts. To go on and dismiss the crucial way in which anti-Semitic bigotry tainted the reasoning of an entire nation by saying, “But then so were a lot of people.” is equally reprehensible. This boils down to the old saw of; “If everyone else is jumping off of a cliff for no good reason, should you do so too?” The actions of many do not define the values held in the social contract. Only the actions of countless succeeding generations of peacefully coexisting people can possibly begin to outline such a vital set of axioms. How can you say that “rationality probably would’ve averted disaster,” yet continue to argue against Hitler or Stalin’s blatant irrationality?
Your crude response to my claim that I do good “because I can” is unworthy and flat out mannerless. What do you deem so offensive about my motivational structure? I do good because I can. I do it because it reinforces that which I consider best within myself. For you to take such offense seems more like a ten year old mentality. Please explain yourself more clearly.
Again, I shall repeat how establishing credit that is yet to be received as the supreme motivation or foundation for the performance of good works is in defiance of causality. How many times do I need to repeat this? It is also incorrect to state that, “the reason is the deed itself.” The proper reason is for the effect of the deed and the results which shall manifest in this world because of that deed. This is why correct attribution is so important. Our good deeds make changes to this world and it is vital that those changes not be usurped by those who are unworthy of praise. I do my best not to let the evil acts of others deter me from pursuing the course of good. But neither do I merely shrug off those evil deeds and go on my merry way. I do my best to expose such frauds. Whether they are attempting to garner undeserved praise or posit false hypotheses. You have every right to your opinions and I would fight to the death in order to defend your right to have them. At the same time, do not expect me to countenance your markedly false assumptions about the putative rationality of mass murderers. You may certainly feel free to commit good deeds without the least credit. I would not forcibly attempt to halt you in any fashion. If we are engaged in a debate over the issue, I am compelled to point out the fallacious nature of such an unconcerned attitude.
I do not think that I am taking your own words out of context in the least. While you may not have said “mere animals,” you stated that, “We’re just animals on a rock in space, man. . .” While the preceding emphasis was mine, the connotations in both phrases are pretty much identical. You have attempted to state that mankind consists of “just animals.” This is a niggardly assessment of man. You have disregarded millennia of conscious evolution and lumped us back in with beasts that roam the earth. There is absolutely no other way to interpret your statement. I utterly agree with you that exchanging questions in civil debate is a hallmark of rationality. Yet, suddenly, you who have been striving to cast Hitler and Stalin in some sort of rational or decent light, now accuse me of being irrational. I find that entirely laughable. Again, you seem to want things both ways.
The rather large holes in your argumentative structure leads me to believe the opposite is true. Your opinion is yours, mine is mine on that matter. I have yet to see where you’ve successfully defended the dogma of Original Sin, as it stands.
For some incredibly obscure reason, you now deem my ability to be dubious and seek to paint me with the autocratic condemnation of those you have previously attempted to defend. Please read above, where I state that I will defend to the death your right to freedom of thought and speech. Your low esteem for man and his achievements revolts me, but represent little threat save in spreading the ignorance that so many of us here are trying to fight. I should hope that no one has ever been executed for ignorance nor shall I even begin to advocate such totalitarianism, despite your implications to the contrary.
Very well, Zenster, I don’t think Hitler or Stalin were rational people, I merely stated that they thought they were. You’re right though, they certainly have not been seen as such, and I don’t expect they will. I was questioning your rationality in relation to theirs, many of their critics are not necessarily rational either. I think you are.
Since you’ve clarified your fallibility, I think we’ll let that stand. I obviously misread your meaning.
On the subject of doing good, I’ll agree that credit is a good thing, but I myself can do without it and prefer to leave it. I’ll leave out the crude response to what you may think of this philosophy, but it is an honest response.
I like that you’re not totalitarian. I’m not either, glad we could clarify.
I actually have a pretty high opinion of man so far, and hope we improve in the future. However, this will not make us great in the cold hard eye of the universe. We may be hyper intelligent near God like beings on a rock in space who are potentially capable of colonizing other such rocks, but I’d settle for being decent to one another which we may still never achieve regardless of the success of the space program.
I think we have a case of individual ethics clashing with the Social Contract. I think we’d probably line item most moral issues together. I just come to mine differently.
For what it’s worth, I think you’re a pretty cool guy, Zenster. Even if you find me revolting, I still love you.
Copaesthetic, glad to see some sorta meeting of the minds here. It was difficult to believe that you weren’t arguing about Adolph and Unca Joe just for argument’s sake. Please, let’s not and say we did … Oh! Too late.
Anyhoo, I’d like to think that we have more in common than not. Please indicate any response of mine that you felt was crude. I try to avoid that like the plague in this forum. I’ll be happy to clarify if I can.
McDuff, I’ll be back tomorrow to work on a reply to your posting. Two of these in one night really cuts into my drinking schedule. Regardless, I do appreciate having people actively engage in sorting this kind of stuff out. It helps to straighten out thought patterns and resolve internal philosophic contradictions.
It’s possible to empirically prove that tribal sins cause droughts, kings cause suns to rise, and sacrificing animals causes the rain to fall. Given the level of evidence available to your average prehistoric tribesman, it is, in fact, entirely reasonable to assume that such circumstances are true.
Scientific method is lovely, but it should not be given more credit than it is due. It is a tool, not a philosophy, and much is not covered by its banner.
To achieve what? Methodologies for what? If I wanted to achieve world domination, or at least something resembling it, I would certainly go about it the way Stalin did. Maybe not Hitler, I think he overreached himself. But Stalin, man, the dude died in his bed. He was a sick, selfish bastard, but his methodology worked for him. I think, as an empirical study, Stalin’s life is a perfect example of what you can do if you want to maintain control over a population.
It’s all about what you want to do, isn’t it? Can you give me, really truly, a rational reason why I shouldn’t take over the world and make you all my slaves if I could? Other than “well, it’s not very nice”?
Are you serious? Spurious associations and post hoc ergo propter hoc assumptions by tribal cultures are not empirical methods, and they have nothing to do with science. Maybe I’m misunderstanding you. Could you clarify that paragraph?
Stalin’s “success” at dominating the Soviet Empire did not bring him any happiness or peace of mind. Stalin died paranoid, alone and unloved, even by his own children. He was not rational during his reign. He lived in constant fear of coups and conspiracies. He had no friends. His own wife and children were terrified of him and hated him. He was a monumentally unhappy person.
I would say that his methodology failed him. His own power put him in a personal hell. To answer your last question, you should not “take over the world and make every body your slaves” becuause it will make you extremely miserable. That’s not the only reason, obviously, but I’m just pointing out that, even from the perspective of a sociopath, there is a logical reason not to do it.
The point I was making, although obviously rather too abstractly for my own good, was that you cannot judge people’s actions in the past as if they were as well informed about the world as we are. You can learn from the mistakes that they made, but you cannot claim that they should have acted differently unless you consider what was known at the time.
It was perfectly reasonable for people to assume that sacrifices made the rain fall. Sacrifices were made: the rain fell. When sacrifices were made and the rain didn’t fall, the theory was modified to fit the observed facts, just like everywhere else. True, the measuring equipment was crude and unsophisticated, but you’d have trouble explaining to people why the sacrifice doesn’t cause the rain to fall and the crops to grow.
Scientific Method is great, but only up to a point. When General Relativity failed the falsification test, and the observed facts disagreed with the theoretical numbers, physicists made up Dark Matter because the theory worked so well everywhere else that they were loathe to modify it, even though the strictest application of the Scientific Method would have tut-tutted at such sleight of hand. But it worked, because Science is built on the same spirit of inquiry and rational deduction that human beings have used since they first found out that sacrificing chickens made grass grow - make up some bullshit until it gets proved wrong.
All anyone has is the observations and evidence that are available to them right then, at that time. And, as abhorrent as it may seem to us now, if the leading scientists of the time are pushing this new science called “eugenics” which “proves” that some races are naturally inferior to others, who is Joe Sidewalk to disagree with them? They’re scientists. They must be right, after all, science gave us everything good.
The average person on the street is not educated or interested enough to be able to hunt through scientific journals and philosophy textbooks and test every case as it comes up. There is a lot that you and I take on trust - even those in the sciences. Biologists take Physicists on trust to a certain extent, and vice versa, because they don’t have time to do five or six PhDs simultaneously. If the prevailing wisdom of the age and all the great minds are leaning a certain way, most people will lean that way because it seems right, and while they might have the mental capacity to disprove it, they don’t have the training or time or inclination.
Does that make them “irrational”? We take “experts” for what they are, we assume that they know more than us, thus the “expert” label. If they are proved to be wrong by other experts, are we irrational fools for believing the first lot, because we laypeople should have known what it took the experts twenty years to figure out, before they actually worked it out?
That’s fair enough. I wasn’t planning on it anyway, you’ll be pleased to know. But again, my point stands that you cannot say that X is a bad method until you know what X is supposed to achieve. If my goal was just power, not happiness, Stalin achieved and kept it. If my goal was happiness, I’d go for Thoreau :).
This is predominantly a Protestant view of original sin, and one which I (a Catholic) was not even aware of before reading the Methodist Articles of Religion some time ago.
The Catholic Encylopedia says it better than I can:
“It is unjust, says another objection, that from the sin of one man should result the decadence of the whole human race. This would have weight if we took this decadence in the same sense that Luther took it, i.e. human reason incapable of understanding even moral truths, free will destroyed, the very substance of man changed into evil. But according to Catholic theology man has not lost his natural faculties: by the sin of Adam he has been deprived only of the Divine gifts to which his nature had no strict right, the complete mastery of his passions, exemption from death, sanctifying grace, the vision of God in the next life. The Creator, whose gifts were not due to the human race, had the right to bestow them on such conditions as He wished and to make their conservation depend on the fidelity of the head of the family. A prince can confer a hereditary dignity on condition that the recipient remains loyal, and that, in case of his rebelling, this dignity shall be taken from him and, in consequence, from his descendants. It is not, however, intelligible that the prince, on account of a fault committed by a father, should order the hands and feet of all the descendants of the guilty man to be cut off immediately after their birth. This comparison represents the doctrine of Luther which we in no way defend. The doctrine of the Church supposes no sensible or afflictive punishment in the next world for children who die with nothing but original sin on their souls, but only the privation of the sight of God [Denz., n. 1526 (1389)].”
What would have happened if Eve plucked the fruit of the tree of life instead?
It was not explicitly forbidden, only eating from the tree of knowledge was (see Gen. 2.16 and 17); and yet, the fear that the naughty pair would chomp down on this fruit next was why God turfed them from Eden (Gen. 3.22 and 23) …
Speaking as an Orthodox Christian, inasmuch as I may understand my Church’s teaching on the matter, the whole western “Original Sin” thing is a bit of a head-scratcher.
We do have “the Original Sin”, which was simple disobedience of eating from the one tree whose fruit was forbidden. Why was it forbidden? Orthodox speculation is that it was not necessarily forbidden forever, merely for a time. The Orthodox understanding of the “Image of God” is that this “image” is a potential. Adam and Eve had not sufficiently developed their potential to safely eat the fruit. Thus, their eating it before its time was disobedience, the first sin, hence the “original sin”.
However, this original sin had repurcussions. The major repurcussion is death. The other repurcussions are the Passions (gluttony, sloth, etc.) These are not viewed as punishments inflicted upon humanity but as lamentable results of this original mistake. Why didn’t God just make everything all better all at once? Again, it has to do with Orthodoxy’s concept of matters having to progress in due time and according to due course. The magnitude of the repurcussions are such that it takes a good deal of time to set things aright.
If humanity were just another type of beast, then God would have just patched things over on the spot, but our special status means that the slow and tricky way will end up with better results.
Ok, now I’m curious, who actually thought this up? I’m an evangelical protestant and I thought it was the Catholics. Did the Methodists expand it out to where it currently is debated, or was this a cross denominational evolution?
BTW, I apologize to Catholics for thinking it was you guys. I apparently have uninformed Catholic friends and family members.
This is kind of like a game of Christian tag. (Methodists, you’re it!)