This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Classic Theme
Thottbot Theme
If There is No God... (debate)
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
182246
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Erlinn
This is an interesting question and it's definitely not something to be taken lightly when answering. It really looks back at the old question of whether humans are innately good or innately evil, but even that itself leads to the question about what constitutes "good" and what constitutes "evil".
Ultimately, the matter is completely objective. There are some things in this world that are, without much question, "good", like say, one person helping another with no thought on receiving a reward. There are also some things that are unquestionably evil, such as the killing of the innocent and so on. But even THESE bring up issues all their own over the specific examples.
Really, it goes back to what Blademeld said not to long ago, that morally good and just "good" are two different things. If we don't set a line between what we ourselves find good and evil, then this debate is completely irrelevant because it's just going to keep looping back around on itself with the same questions.
Post by
182246
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Erlinn
Moral absolutism is just silly.
You're telling me that if I donated 5 million dollars right now to Hammas, no questions asked and anonymously, I would be doing something which is inherently good?
If you thought it was the best thing to do, then yes, it would be inherently good.
We can't just sit here and go "Is good? How is it good? What about if I do to get ?" because we'd just be saying the same darn things over and over again, much like I'm doing just now.
Two men charge at each other on a battlefield, with the intent on killing the other. One is doing it to protect his country, which he believes he must do, and the other is doing it to reclaim is lost homelands, where his ancestors lived, which he believes he must do. Which one would be doing the "right" thing by killing the other? No one could say because everyone perceives goodness and evilness in different ways. What may be good to you could be considered evil by another person.
Post by
182246
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Malgayne
Two men charge at each other on a battlefield, with the intent on killing the other. One is doing it to protect his country, which he believes he must do, and the other is doing it to reclaim is lost homelands, where his ancestors lived, which he believes he must do. Which one would be doing the "right" thing by killing the other? No one could say because everyone perceives goodness and evilness in different ways. What may be good to you could be considered evil by another person.
Is there any reason why you couldn't say BOTH of them could be doing something inherently good?
This is a slightly different disagreement than we've been having up until now, and it comes merely from a confusion in terms. By moral absolutism I don't mean that there are some actions which are ALWAYS good and some which are ALWAYS bad. I don't believe that to be true. I don't think killing people is always bad. I think killing with a certain INTENT is always bad—that's why the fifth commandment is usually translated not as "Thou shalt not kill" but as "Thou shalt not murder."
The point though, is that we're not arguing that an action can be considered "good" or "bad" without considering it in its context. What we're arguing is that whether or not people
think
an action is "good" or "bad" has no effect on whether it actually
is
so—and an action remains good or bad (or some mixture of the two, as nearly all actions must be) regardless of what people may think of it. "Good" and "bad" are descriptive adjectives in the same way that "red" or "blue" are.
Even if no one
recognizes
a good deed for what it is, it remains nonetheless a good deed. I suppose what I'm saying is that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it still makes a sound.
Post by
260787
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Erlinn
If you thought it was the best thing to do, then yes, it would be inherently good.
The people who's family died from my donations would agree that what I did was good though, correct? I mean, it's
inherently
good.
I'm not going to respond to this, beyond what I'm saying just now, because you don't seem to be reading my posts at all. You're doing exactly what I said we shouldn't do.
Is there any reason why you couldn't say BOTH of them could be doing something inherently good?
That's exactly my point! Who are we to say what is good and what is evil? What gives us the power to say that one man dieing is alright but another man dieing isn't?
Post by
Malgayne
Who are we to say what is good and what is evil? What gives us the power to say that one man dieing is alright but another man dieing isn't?
What I'm arguing is that while human beings sometimes have to decide who lives and who dies, it is not for humans to decide which is the
right
choice.
Post by
TheMediator
I think killing with a certain INTENT is always bad—that's why the fifth commandment is usually translated not as "Thou shalt not kill" but as "Thou shalt not murder."
That seems like a HUGE oversight to print it as "Thou shalt not kill" then. "Thou shalt not murder" seems to be pretty applicable to most situations, whereas "Thou shalt not kill" is not feasible in the slightest.
What I'm arguing is that while human beings sometimes have to decide who lives and who dies, it is not for humans to decide which is the right choice.
I think what you said there sort of confirms what most people have been saying. No one can say whether something is right or wrong, because their values may be different from others.
Post by
Malgayne
I think what you said there sort of confirms what most people have been saying. No one can say whether something is right or wrong, because their values may be different from others.
I agree that it is not for humans to say whether or not something is right or wrong. The disagreement is: Some seem to feel that this is evidence that the terms "right" and "wrong" are meaningless concepts with no intrinsic value, and that they can be different for every person. What I am proposing is that there
is
an absolute (though tremendously complex) scale, and every action rightfully belongs in a certain point on that scale—no matter how
people
may feel about it.
The fact that everyone's values and moral codes are different means that each of us aims our moral code as closely as we can get to this absolute moral code. Some of us (Mother Teresa, Gandhi) are fairly close to it, while others are much further (Hitler), but the "ideal" moral code
does exist
, independent of all moral conflicts between human beings.
I don't believe anyone knows exactly what it is. I certainly don't. But to claim that it doesn't exist—that all morals are relative—and then to live your life according to a moral code of any kind, seems self-defeating to me.
Post by
MyTie
Malgayne - What defines this scale? Where did it come from? What authority?
Post by
Laihendi
Malgayne, people like Gandhi may seem to be close to the ideal moral code, but thinking that is more of a reflection of your moral values, and does not take into account those that disagree with you. Not everyone agrees with Gandhi, wasn't he assassinated? And many people agreed with Hitler, whether you find what he did to be appalling or not.
Laihendi agrees that Gandhi was a much better person than Hitler... by an extraordinarily large margin... but once again, that is a reflection of his beliefs. It doesn't make Laihendi's beliefs universally right, because to some racists (and other types of people of that sort), what Hitler did was morally right.
Post by
TheMediator
There's isn't an absolute right, I'm sorry but we've been reasoning it out for centuries and there's no way you can be absolutely fair and say "X right has Y units of utility attached to it, and infringing upon that right removes that number of units". If you could force everything to confine to one scale, then yes, you could measure a value and say how good something was for the overall group of people, and say whether or was good or bad, but you can't.
By the way, I'm sure most on these forums would believe that a eugenics movement to eliminate almost every single inferior human would be "wrong", even if it did improve the species and ultimately increase the utility of the species in the millennia to come.
Post by
Malgayne
That seems like a HUGE oversight to print it as "Thou shalt not kill" then. "Thou shalt not murder" seems to be pretty applicable to most situations, whereas "Thou shalt not kill" is not feasible in the slightest.
Don't blame me for copying errors made by kings in the Middle Ages. :)
Malgayne - What defines this scale? Where did it come from? What authority?
How far do you want to get into this debate?
I believe there is a God, and that he (or she) defines right and wrong. I believe he tries to show us what right and wrong are, and that he gives us enough evidence to make our own decisions without forcing us. I believe he knows what's in our hearts, and that what is right and what is wrong has more to do with why we do something than what we do—that's why I think both of the soldiers, each one fighting for a cause they believe is righteous, can kill each other and still both be right.
Is that what you were looking for?
Post by
Malgayne
There's isn't an absolute right, I'm sorry but we've been reasoning it out for centuries and there's no way you can be absolutely fair and say "X right has Y units of utility attached to it, and infringing upon that right removes that number of units". If you could force everything to confine to one scale, then yes, you could measure a value and say how good something was for the overall group of people, and say whether or was good or bad, but you can't.
This reply is designed to make it sound as though there is a single scientific authority on Earth which has discovered the answer to this question, which simply isn't true. There are a large number of people who disagree with me. There are also a large number of people who agree with me.
(There is an even larger number of people who just don't think about it, and THAT scares me.)
Post by
Malgayne
Malgayne, people like Gandhi may seem to be close to the ideal moral code, but thinking that is more of a reflection of your moral values, and does not take into account those that disagree with you. Not everyone agrees with Gandhi, wasn't he assassinated? And many people agreed with Hitler, whether you find what he did to be appalling or not.
Laihendi agrees that Gandhi was a much better person than Hitler... by an extraordinarily large margin... but once again, that is a reflection of his beliefs. It doesn't make Laihendi's beliefs universally right, because to some racists (and other types of people of that sort), what Hitler did was morally right.
The reply doesn't change anything. That's like if I told you what my opinion was, and you retaliated by saying "Well, that's just your opinion." Yes, it is. It's my opinion, and it is informed by my life experience and my cultural background. Does that make it false? I don't think there's any reason to believe it does.
The ultimate question for you, I think, is this: Do you believe in absolute truth? Or is all truth relative?
Post by
Laihendi
All truth is relative.
Including the above statement.
Post by
TheMediator
All truth is relative.
Including the above statement.
So you don't think that you exist?
Post by
Laihendi
Exists as what?
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.