Why does God hate babies who have not sinned?

So now the general consensus is "not true" because I have shown evidence that refutes your earlier claim? Quit arguing yourself over this straw man you created about "every action doing harm". I said that, in a causative world where perfect prediction does not exist, any action has some, even if minute, possibility to cause harm.

No, you have no way to predict whether any action will potentially cause harm, so you simply do not have the option to make perfectly harmless choices. An innocuous dog treat could, one day, set off a food allergy, become a choking hazard, cause an intestinal blockage, etc.. Thinking about flowers, while not an action, could potentially distract from an action necessary to prevent harm. And these are just the most immediate examples.

I have already explained this, but it must have been in a post you completely ignored so you could hypocritically accuse me of not answering you.

Here, I will simplify my argument for you. It would necessarily take perfect prediction to anticipate which actions, whether good or not, could potentially cause harm and need to be negated. Perfect prediction does not allow for the ability to do otherwise. How do you reconcile the necessary prediction with free will?

I have not even agreed not to call a scraped knee evil. You can only call it a "minor inconvenience" because you have worse to compare it to, but you assert the people in your world would not. You are trying to apply the same standard to two very disparate worlds. People in our world have attributed evil intent to the weather, illness, and almost every other misfortune, so it is no stretch to assume that people in yours could consider the worst they experience as evil. How do you explain that away?

Is "selling chocolate ice cream" the absolute worst thing that can happen in this world? You have indicated that it is not. That example was introduced only if it were an example of the absolute worst. If you say it is not then it no longer applies to the conditions you have since changed. Agreed? If you continue this it can only be a fallacious appeal to ridicule, which you now know you are applying to conditions it was never meant to address.

I am more than happy to provide you with a syllogism, if you can answer these questions, either yes or no:
Is free will essentially the ability to do otherwise than a single thing in any given situation?
Can people, in general, attribute evil intent to the accidental and incidental, especially when cause is unknown?
Is perfect prediction necessary to ensuring that no harmful (evil) action can occur?

If the answer to any of these is no, explain exactly why.

Again, that ice cream example was never intended to address the general case, which is why I asked in general terms: "What if one person intentionally withholds a better thing for themselves by only allowing the worst for another?" Unless you are once again claiming chocolate ice cream to be the worst thing in this world, it is inconsequential.

You also neglect to account for the fact that humans are not psychic and cannot know whether an action that causes them grief is intended or not. It is this lack of psychic ability that contributed to people thinking the weather was evil. Are you trying to introduce psychic ability into Safeworld?

Oddly, your longest reply is for the off-topic waste of time, by your own estimation. "I am not" is no defense, just another unsupported assertion. You have also yet to provide any evidence that people generally agree with you, while I have provided a very well-known saying. And it is yet another in an ever lengthening list of straw man arguments to try to claim that I ever made any statement about a consensus being a proof. I said it "refuted your claim", nothing more. A refute is not a proof, and you have yet to provide any support for your claim. Just your say-so. I do not have to acknowledge anything there is no evidence for. So put up or shut up already.

Really? So nothing is deemed worthy of addressing unless it is pointedly asked as a question? Since when are discussions subject to such stringent constraints? Seems to be only a justification for not addressing an argument. Why would you refrain from addressing an argument if you are perfectly capable of providing a refute? Do you realize that every point you neglect can only be assumed to be one you agree with, and will lead to huge misunderstandings if you do not? How can you justify that? Again, if you do not bother to explain yourself then you cannot complain about any supposed misrepresentation.

Here are some questions you have failed to answer, including ones from my post you pretended did not answer yours:

Can you even just say whether or not you agree with the definition for free will I have given here?

So now I must ask, why would they be worried about efficiency or being highly mobile?​

This second one being the latest in a string of questions you did not answer but instead made up new conditions to avoid:

Or do you just think such people would form committees and go about filling holes for absolutely no discernible reason?

Again, how do you suppose any "safeguards" would come to exist in your hypothetical world?

AGAIN (since you have yet to answer), why would they build "super safe tornado proof homes"?

So now I must ask, why would they be worried about efficiency or being highly mobile?​

Do I need to go on proving your lies?


Now, I expect answers to each and every question in this post, otherwise you demonstrate yourself insincere in your artificial and arbitrary discussion constraints.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

you cannot show that your idea is true about perfect prediction being necessary for all events. I don't need to predict whether the dog treat will cause an intestinal blockage if, in order to achieve optimum veterinary health, the dog would be scanned weekly, or even daily, or even hourly, or even every three seconds. There is no logical reason why perfect prediction of every event is necessitated, as long as dangerous situations could be controlled, even inadvertently, by the denizens of safe world's pursuit of optimal pleasures and general awesomeness.

well if we can't agree on what we are going to use as a definition for "evil" i can assuredly say that you haven't even addressed my idea. You asked me for a definition, i gave one, you don't accept it, so why don't you give the definition? And it most certainly isn't the lesser good of two good things. We might as well call orange, 'yellow' and blue "purple" while we are at it, if you are going to insist on that definition.

if you are saying that there must be a choice between at least two actions or two thoughts, i.e. you are not forced into one single thought or action, then yes i think that is a perfectly acceptable idea. As Sartre has discussed, the ability to say "no" is the one thing in man's power that can not be taken away. Even the chained prisoner can think otherwise than the jailer insists.

people can attribute sunshine to a giant lightning bug in the sky but that doesn't make the bug in the sky exist, so your point that people, CAN incorrectly use the word "evil" in an inappropriate way at the wrong time, doesn't mean anything.

no, as explained earlier.

done and done

the idea that people in a society where evil is prevented would assume evil is not exactly convincing, and if it were, as i've said, the lightning bug in the sky doesn't exist just because somebody thinks the sun is a giant lightning bug in the sky. Perhaps these people would have to read each other's minds for perfect trust to exist, i don't really care, but i do know that their lack of understanding or knowledge of every possible thing can't be considered a problem. If you can prove that these people would think evil existed but were incorrect, that would be fun, but it doesn't address the question as far as i can tell.


#4

basically, in your case, i seem to have needed to apply selectivity to avoid pages and pages of back and forth about nothing.

intelligent people usually put such constraints whenever they are going to seriously discuss something, because definitions and rules create an arena where arguing can be avoided somewhat.

you assume a lot anyway, so if you wish to pretend your assuming a lot is justified rather than realizing the limitations of patience, then please continue misunderstanding.

your ad homs were getting in the way

i haven't complained about misrepresentation, because i don't cry like a baby every time somebody misunderstands me or i misunderstand them. I have calmly pointed out the things you said i said that i didn't say, like the safety seeking tornado idea you made up and then misattributed to me.

I made it clear that i did not agree with your ideas on freewill, once i understood your unfounded claims. Please forgive me if i didn't understand entirely your, to me, illogical definition that includes the need for perfect prediction being necessitated in a safeworld, and gave the discussion a moment to settle in to a definition we could possibly agree upon instead of just assuming your idea was unfounded.

see my answer below

i gave you a clear response about filling up holes being something that could have been instituted in a time when evil had not been removed from the situation.

... toy cars, etc etc

i answered that, with one possible reason, efficiency

this was in your post which showed me that your constant attacks were getting nowhere, and i was forced to try to reframe the discussion rather than go through your conjectures one by one. At least NOW they are confined to one area so the actual discussion can be done.

proving that they are not lies, as shown by my prior direct responses to all but two of your questions, yes please go ahead wasting time on that.

good. Please leave out the question marks from section 4, in order to prevent it from taking up too much of our time in the future. I am bored with that section already and we have barely started.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

In a theistic sense, the solution is fairly simple: In a world where everyone is functioning as a servant of God, there is no evil. Because they all try to please God, and they know this about themselves and eachother, and they all believe God is the Summum Bonum, the actual recipient of all sacrifices etc.

Real problems of evil come up if God is left out of the picture, or if God is defined in a way characteristic for demigods.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Point of interest: People do not choose a real or true God (Considering there is no evidence of one)- rather, they follow what they want out of life and attribute the good things to "God," the bad things to eachother and the "Devil" and all instructions on how to behave are up for interpretation based on how you wish to justify either your desires, violence, good will or what have you.

The only way any of what you just said could make any sense is if there actually was a God dominating us.

 

How do you know? Can you read minds? Or are just projecting onto/into others based on your own experience?

What I stated is a truism, a logical conjecture. So, of course it makes sense.

 

Yeah, ok. Whatever you just said.



Yes, Wynn. I can read minds. Including yours. I know what you're thinking about right now... But don't worry. I won't tell anyone.

 

So are you saying that nature organised, and structural-ised (oh shut up Balerion!

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

) itself, or, was God
instrumental in this process?

jan.

 

Again you dodge the issue without any reasoning to justify the actions you assert. Why on earth would these people have their dogs "scanned weekly, or even daily, or even hourly, or even every three seconds"? That is preposterous, even for our world, where we are quite aware of such risks. "Inadvertently controlled" is an oxymoron. Remember this:

It is your thought experiment, so you have the responsibility to give answers AND reasons for any question put to this test. If at any point you cannot then your test has failed, as you have run into a situation in which your hypothesis cannot be maintained. ​

You even replied: "We don't have to include such absurdities as..."

So you need to provide some solid reasoning for why these people would do such ridiculous things, or you have failed to maintain your hypothesis. Hell, even just explain how having your dog scanned "every three seconds" would not consume their lives, much less interfere with seeking any pleasure. Actually, seeing as this is just a continuation of your earlier pattern of vicious regress, your hypothesis has already failed. You were warned and wasted your chance to demonstrate some intellectual honesty. You have only tried to refute my assertion with random, ad hoc, and unexplained additions to your scenario.

I have already done so:

"People in our world have attributed evil intent to the weather, illness, and almost every other misfortune, so it is no stretch to assume that people in yours could consider the worst they experience as evil."​

If people are not psychic, they are just as likely to attribute evil, even assuming intent, where there is no real intent. This satisfies your definition of evil including intent, even if the people only think there is intent behind the misfortune. The only way around this is for people to be psychic, which once again implies prediction.

As you can clearly see, I have fully addressed your idea, regardless of your ineffectual bellyaching.

Correct.

Whether an evil is somehow objectively real (which is highly debatable) or not has no bearing on what people perceive. You can only call such use of the word evil incorrect because you are still applying the knowledge of our world. You were the one who hypocritically insisted that our world cannot be used to argue in this scenario. Apparently that double standard only applies to people you disagree with. Just more intellectual dishonesty.

They would call such things evil nonetheless. Whether incorrect or not, you have tacitly conceded that such a concept could exist in such a world.


So you agree with the definition given of free will, you agree that intended evil can indeed be perceived, and you have no intelligible refute to prediction being necessary to negate all evil.

Listen to yourself. "A society where evil is prevented" could only exist if evil is known. You cannot very well "prevent" something you know nothing about. Even in every example you have made, it is the people of this world who do the preventing. No wonder you cannot come up with ANY rational explanation for their bizarre behavior. You are asserting two mutually exclusive assumptions. You have to know evil in order to prevent it, but if it is always prevented you claim you would never know it. How do you justify asserting these two mutually exclusive assumptions?

You are also asserting some sort of objective evil. You should know that our entire history of philosophical thought has not led to a convincing resolution as to whether morality is absolute, relative, or universal. Evil, like any other value judgment, is in the eye of the beholder. We have only to assume it intended to meet your criteria, but of course, as soon as your argument starts to fail you, you change it.

Since YOU have proven that these people would necessarily think evil existed, in order to prevent it, you have refuted your own earlier assertion that the concept would not even exist. Like I predicted much earlier, this world gets ever closer to our own, just by the application of logic.

No, intellectually honest people make such artificial constrictions known in advance, like in a formal debate (which this forum does accommodate).

No justification for failing to explain yourself.

Only because you insisted that they do, as this whole "#4" illustrates, you are the one seeking to make this a major part of the discussion.

You just keep on lying:

There is no difference between "misrepresentation" and "incorrect interpretation" other than assumed intent. Quit equivocating to cover your lies. I did not "misattribute" anything. I asked you a question: "So now this world is magical, with tornadoes knowing to avoid inhabited homes?" You are just digging a hole for any credibility you may think you have left.

Hence admitting evil did exist and that at least a memory of it existed whereby these people could have a basis for the concept of evil.

Which you never gave ANY evidence for people extrapolating such disparate things.

Yet you STILL manage to avoid answering this one with your little aside about "attacks". So you still have not truly answered this line of questioning other than with a vicious regress and moving the goalposts (both intellectually dishonest).

Au contraire, you have only affirmed your lie by yet again failing to answer a direct question in this last post of mine, quite aside from those regresses being no answer at all.

 

So the entire history of philosophical thought has taken a giant step today as, although all the philosopher's of the earth have not made a "convincing resolution as to whether morality is absolute, relative, or universal", in the sentence DIRECTLY FOLLOWING that, you say "evil" is relative. So you have effectively answered the question for all time. That is actually pretty funny. thanks for that one.

Hahaha anyway...

first off, the absurdities i mentioned we should disallow are impossibilities, such as a "fire" that emits cold, not agreeing that imaginative ideas are absurdities. Secondly, the dog could have a chip that tests it's vitals every tenth of a second for all i care. It is perfectly reasonable that the technology does this to ensure the highest quality of life for the dog and its owners. A dog that doesn't have this chip may suffer a limp or have bad gas which the denizens of safeworld will have to smell while sitting on their safe couches or whatever. It is not pertinent why you think these things are IMPROBABLE, as that was never the argument. If you want to MOVE the goal posts, and say the safe world is merely IMPROBABLE, that has nothing to do with my idea. And FIRST you actually have to prove it is improbable for the dog to be scanned to prevent the "worst" from happening, i.e. stomach aches and flatulence, in this case.

it is called "technology", and it can act without constant work. Also, who are you to say that a safeworlder who likes to check his dog's vitals on his iphone every day cannot? This does not follow.

i can keep adding only because you are posting protests of sensible ideas. There are literally millions of sensible ways extreme negatives could be avoided in this world by the pursuit of happiness, by an external agency, by an internal agency informed by previous administrations on what to avoid long after they don't remember what they are avoiding, but have some sort of shintoist respect for their ancestors that inspires them to comply with the old precautions, etc etc.

you haven't. I don't accept the false idea you propose these people would, in opposition to their experiences (unless we are going to agree on a purely relativist idea of "evil" which I will not), assert that their neighbors had evil intent, and that some person's misuse of a word they don't have in their vocabulary (???) is somehow to be construed as the existence of evil. I would say it is much more likely that a safeworlder would insist on his neighbor's harmlessness if the neighbor was somehow able to accomplish something "evil" (not that they can actually accomplish these things in safeworld anyway).

so one of the key issues avoiding us coming to an agreement on definitions is "highly debatable", but i am a dodger and a bellyacher and bad guy, for debating it???? Here you are AGAIN, pointing out that it is reasonable to debate what "evil" is, while you ad hom all over the place, because I am debating it. please take your own advice from this sentence and back off the attacks.

so now we are just talking about concepts again. Look, i don't care whether you want to talk about concepts or objective realities, my position is the same either way. Neither the concept, or the objective reality of, evil is shown as necessary yet. We are still not having a discussion of "evil" as i see it, nor as many others see it, so don't pretend you have solved anything. Until we can agree on a definition you are simply proving your own ideas in your own mind, not disproving mine.

i don't agree with you. By arguing against your point in the past post, i don't tacitly concede. I am not conceding that these people would have a concept of "evil". You yourself were arguing against that idea throughout these pages.
you said

So in your previous post you are saying safeworlders cannot imagine evil without evil existing, but yet here you are saying they CAN incorrectly imagine evil although evil doesn't exist????????????????????? please explain

dog health, home efficiency, love of variety in ice cream, all of which demonstrate a few of the billions of choices safeworlders can make each day. And no, i don't agree that intended evil is perceived in safeworld, you failed to show that necessity. I am saying that this conceptualizing of something that doesn't exist is illogical by your own arguments , and ADDITIONALLY, I do not agree that false perceptions are more than minor inconveniences, and ALSO still believe that the concept of evil is also unnecessary for optimal behavior in the scenarios listed in addition to scenarios implied by my mention of external agency.

how many examples do i have to give that COULD exist in a world where optimal pleasure or "good" is pursued, if only to avoid their "worst" possible experiences?

as i said before, until we can agree on anything, you seem to be working with different premises, about a different idea than i am. YOU say these people would think evil existed, I did not. I merely said your unlikely idea that safe people would think evil existed is incorrect and even if agreed to it (which i didn't), impertinent to the discussion. I guess we can go back to the idea that these people do not conceive of atrocities and terrible things, although even the memory of a time when evil had existed could possibly be seen as a pleasure in a safe world and that is not necessary for my original premise to be true. You were the one who brought the concept of evil in to safeworld with your idea of people falsely attributing evil intent.

let's try to make this more formal and less antagonistic. First we can drop all the ad homs and suppositions about why the other person is saying what they are saying, and work out these, in your words "highly debatable" definitions. We got one for "freewill", that is a start.


SECTION #4
you should realize that calling me a liar and then not being able to prove it is not helping your argument (not that all of this ad hom has anything to do with the actual argument. You can't even keep the ad homs out of the other sections. Do you UNDERSTAND, that prefacing your arguments with any comment about me or my intent doesn't accomplish ANYTHING? I know it makes you feel like you are "winning" your argument, which is not true, and i certainly can't use the word debate if you can't keep the ad homs from peppering everything. Does the ad hom just come out and you have no control? You just admitted that i did respond to your questions, except for ONE. Are you really going to claim that I didn't respond, because you didn't agree with the answers or like the way the answers were made? That is just weird. And yeah, in this mess of questions i missed another apparently. Maybe if you didn't surround the questions with masses of ad hom i could keep track of what you are saying. I am getting bored with your personal attacks, and am moving toward ignoring them and focusing on the matter at hand.
here is the answer to that one

NO. The general consensus is NOT true period. It is merely something we all have to take into consideration. So when i say, "the consensus is x," I, unlike you, KNOW that that is not a proof of x, but rather only points out that it requires some attention and can't be dismissed by a simple protest from the obstinate mind.

 

You have naively conflated evil with morality, which I have warned against doing before. Morality is the differentiation of right from wrong. The whole reason that we have not come to a convincing resolution to morality is because our perception (eye of the beholder) of evil is relative. Me saying that the perception of evil is relative has no bearing on whether or not morality may be relative. So it is your comprehension which is laughable here, and your ridicule which proves you a fool. Evil pertains to morality, but they are not synonymous.

You seem to be quickly approaching a "science of the gaps" apologetic, where you imagine some technology will solve any situation. But I will let that go, as it does not impact my argument. You are only arguing specific cases because of your straw man about "every action causing harm". I have already addressed that.

Yep, science of the gaps, even though that has as little explanatory power as god of the gaps. Basically amounts to "it just does".

How are these to be enforced? Even religious prohibitions and ancestor worship fade with time. How are any internal or external agencies suppose to know of these negatives in sufficient advance to stop them?

Where have I criticized you for debating? I have criticized your tactics, but nowhere have I criticized you for simply debating. This is just another ad hominem straw man, which you use with such hypocritical abandon considering you rankle so to have any applied to you. Here is a hint, you cannot be self-righteous about something you do as well, no matter how well you think you obfuscate it.

See, you have once again failed to give any reasonable explanation for how ALL evil could be negated. Who or what does the negating, and how does it know what needs negating? Where my argument does not rely on "ALL ACTIONS causing harm" (contrary to your straw man), yours does rely on absolutely negating ALL evil. Now you can continue to argue any of a million special cases, but until you have an answer that generally satisfies for all cases, you have not succeeded. The onus is yours, as it is your claim and it is the more extreme claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

And I have not claimed that ALL choices will necessarily cause harm. Your point? At best, you are using these specific cases to make hasty generalizations, which is fallacious.

No, the onus is yours to show that ALL evil can be negated, so until you do, I am free to assume that there is some conception of evil. Your bare assertion evinces nothing. I have tried, many times, to get you to answer a single scenario that illustrates exactly how you justify this assertion, but each has led to you spewing excuses and further bare assertions ad nauseam. So how EXACTLY is evil negated in ALL cases in general? If you cannot answer that with sufficient preciseness then your hypothesis has failed. Simple as that.

Again, you cannot test the hypothesis of whether evil must exist by assuming, a priori, that it does not. That is not a valid test, and especially so considering you have provided no mechanism whereby it could be negated. The fact that it must be negated, itself, implies its necessity.

You must provide a general means of negating evil (worst) in ALL possible situations, as that is exactly what you are claiming. Do not bellyache about this burden you have placed on yourself.

Danger is not synonymous with evil, unless you are trying to say that a pedophile that never touches a child is "good" just because it is "safe". Seems I have let this red herring about safety go on too long. "Lack of danger" is not equivalent to "lack of evil", so your assumption of safety in insufficient to make your case.

No, you do not get to dictate the terms of the discussion. If you honestly want a formal debate then propose one in the debate forum, where a third party can strenuously moderate both sides of the exchange.

Yes, it is always convenient to avoid quoting anything that may be incriminating. I guess I could start pointing out all of your obfuscated ad homs, and then we could really get nowhere. This whole "SECTION" seems to be your excuse to justify your own ad hominems. You do know that implying a lack of self-control is an ad hom, right? And again you are equivocating, "respond" and "answer". An answer addresses the specific question, where a response may not. And here is a hint, responses that only introduce new scenarios do not answer the original questions.

So no good action can possibly cause harm?! That is the consensus that you are claiming is "NOT true". And again with your straw man that I have ever claimed any consensus as proof of anything. Enough already.

 

no. I have been careful to distinguish here in my posts that we can talk about "evil" a number of different ways. So far it seems we are including a tornado killing people as "evil" which is IMPOSSIBLE for me to do if i conflate evil with morality. So i cannot possibly be doing that. Anyway, the reason for my putting that quote out of order at the top of my response is that it is clear that philosophers debate this stuff for good reason. Again, this was placed here to remind you that you yourself MUST agree that i have every right to question your ideas and disagree with them without being called a troll, or acting as though i am flaming you and being malicious. It is possible, perhaps, that i do not understand your position. You seem to be using pure relativism as a proof that safeworlders have "evil". The idea that there is some objective "evil" is accepted by society, although many philosopher's would disagree, and many would disagree with that disagreement only in order to have something more to discuss than how many people should be included in the camp that should receive good things. We have yet to come to an agreement on our definition of "evil", so...

my idea was always, from the beginning, the idea that a world without "evil" could exist, so ANY POSSIBLE WORLD that can exist satisfies my premise. My premise is a direct response to the ideas i see floating around that evil MUST exist in a system. The premise says that it is not logically provable that evil must exist in a system. Don't talk about what i may be approaching, just try to focus on the actual argument and try not to argue against the version of me that only exists in your imagination.

when you can point at an actual statement that i can provide no reasoning to support you are free to come back to what you imagine i am thinking.

Ancestor worship increases with positive results, which inevitably will follow in a world where nothing evil happens. NOt that following the wise rules left by ancestors couldn't be enough, because it COULD. Not that the pure pursuit of optimal happiness wouldn't be enough because it COULD. Even if it weren't, an external agency of protective force could be watching and reacting to situations it knows are dangerous. REMEMBER, we here now do not have complete free will, so freewill CANNOT be called negated just because there are limitations against taking evil or dangerous actions, especially if other choices are added. ALSO, you have shown no reason why the denizens of safeworld would even WANT to do things we consider evil, just because people brought up in a f*d up world want to. What logic demands the safeworlders even want the freedom to kill for example or have the desire to do so????

let's just drop all the useless parts of the discussion then, I hereby agree to do so. You can assume that if i misrepresent a point of yours it is by accident. I promise to approach the rest of the discussion with utmost civility.

from ...
this...
point...
on.

I feel that we will have to make it clearer where the burden of proof lies. As i've noted, my premise is that evil is not logically necessary to systems. So in my opinion, i merely have to show that there is no logical proof that evil is necessary. The safeworld i am picturing is only one of many systems which COULD exist. If i can show one system where "evil" must not exist, the conclusion that evil MUST exist is incorrect.

these ad hoc generalizations (yes i did just make them up as i went along, i am just that good *wink*) must be knocked down for a logical proof that evil must exist to exist, or some encompassing idea, such as the initial supposition that freewill wouldn't exist would have to be shown.

here are various questions regarding my previously stated reasons why evil can be negated -
1 - can you show that the pursuit of optimal happiness cannot result in the negation of evil? If it could, there is no logical way of saying evil must exist.
2 - can you show that an external agency acting upon various causes and effects destroys ALL cause and effect? If not there is no logical way of saying that the evil that exists is a lack of freewill.
3 - can you show that there cannot be a system wherein things we consider bad simply were not there? If not there is no logical way of asserting that evil must exist.

i have provided two and i disagree that we cannot work from the idea that there is a system that doesn't exist, putting the onus on those who claim logic INSISTS that evil MUST exist. Remember, I am not the person who brought this question up or made a statement about evil needing to exist or not needing to exist. My premise is that the idea that it must exist is incorrect. If you want to agree with that premise, we are done arguing and perhaps can investigate further how to actually provide a satisfactory proof of WHY evil is not necessary. If you want to continue disagreeing with my ideas, then we can continue in this other mode. Either is good to me.

it seems impossible to me to make all options equally desirable. Are you insisting that we have to call the lesser of two good options, "evil"? If so maybe we need to just focus on the claim that "evil" must be perceived by these beings even if it is just chocolate ice cream or bad smells, which i (obviously) disagree with - but i can't just insist on my definition and then argue with you over two different ideas, that isn't very productive right?

I have never said that pedophilia is something these people would necessarily ever desire. i think people that were dedicated to optimal happiness for all would desire children to live a happy stress free life. If you are saying there must be a pedophile among them, i am not sure why. I am assuming genetic mental illness is not a factor on safeworld (i could make a joke here, but the subject is too distasteful and i did promise to be cordial) please infer the joke and have a laugh, knowing that i would not imply anything about your sexual preferences or your mental fitness, as that would clearly be inappropriate and far below our level.

please forgive any personal attacks and time-wasting i have added to the discussion, I truly should have shown more restraint.

No that is not what i was saying. I am saying that we cannot assume any consensus is true just because it has a bunch of people saying it is true.

 

Balerion,

The TGOA, are listed in genesis 5 which starts with ''This is the book of the generations of Adam.''. Not the ''TGOA, from Seth to Noah, Abraham, Moses, et-al. Read it for yourself if you don't believe me.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

They are ALL mentioned (whether by name or not, it doesn't matter).
Cain is not mentioned in ANY capacity, nor are his generations. That tells me he is not part of TGOA, and it tells you that as well, so stop being stubborn.

The only people mentioned by name are the firstborns. Seth is a replacement for Adam's firstborn who was slayed by Cain, who incidently is not mentioned in any way throughout the entire Bible as being Adams firstborn.

You've shown nothing, you just keep banging on about it, as though it is so because you say it is.
Show me in the Bible where the the purpose of TGOA is to draw a line from Adam to Noah.
The really stupid thing about your claim is that, TGOA, naturally draws a line, simply because Noah is naturally part of TGOA, and from the begining of the Bible to the end of
genesis ch5, no special mention is given to anyone apart of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and the serpent. The only reference to the forthcoming generations is;


And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

So what? At the time of TGOA, in genesis ch 5, they are of no consequence other than being TGOA. Because you have some idea of their signigicance due to reading further on in the book, doesn't change that the chapter in question only highlights the TGOA, just like it say's.

As things had changed drastically by Jesus' time, it's silly to compare the OT and the NT.
Regarding Reuben, it's clearly a mamoth task to strip the firstborn of his status, yet we don't see Adam interacting with Cain upon stripping him of his status. That job is left to God (chastising him, not stripping him, as he is not Adams firstborn). If Cain is Adam's son, and from what we understand biblically, the life is in the blood(line), then Adam would have had to do the job of sending him away.,

It's clear who his father is.

Just telling me what you personally think is not a debunk. In fact you cannot debunk me on this, because there is nothing that ties Cain to Adam. but there is ample reason to conclude that Cain is not Adam's biological offspring.


jan.

 

We're just repeating ourselves now, so I'm done with this crap. But I'll address this, because you're clearly being obtuse intentionally. It says "This is the generations of Adam" because that's precisely what it is; it's a list of a particular group of descendents of Adam. The object of this genealogy is to tie Adam to Noah, who is another hugely important figure in Genesis. You seem to think that it saying "This is the generations of Adam" has no meaning, but that's obviously false. Why does it stop with Noah, if there's no purpose to it? Why does it list Noah's sons by name, if it's only supposed to mention firstborns? Ah, see, this is where your faulty logic fails you.

Enjoy your ridiculous misinterpretation of the text.

 

Nice justification, but trying to ridicule me because you thought "...has not led to a convincing resolution as to whether morality is absolute, relative, or universal" and "Evil, like any other value judgment, is in the eye of the beholder" were contradictory says otherwise. You simply assumed your preferred definition for evil, i.e. morally reprehensible. But all of this is just a distraction from the point I was making. You failed to support your assertion for an objective evil.

No one, in an informal discussion, ever has the right to dictate the kinds of responses they will get. So since I have never claimed you had no right to question and you have employed ad homs yourself, you have no grounds to complain.

Trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, I cannot decide if you are intentionally equivocating by saying "there is some objective "evil"". Of course there is some, but that does not mean that all evil is objective. Even assuming a moral absolutism, there is nothing about morals being dictated by a deity that makes them all inherently objective, otherwise we would not have any such debate. Now if you are not just equivocating then you need to provide some evidence that "objective "evil" is accepted by society". You know, as the primary definition and other than just on your bare assertion (which is a fallacy).

Without such evidence, you cannot assert that our definition should be so artificially limited. You said you preferred the definition of "morally reprehensible" and that is fine, but what is reprehensible is not an objective criteria.

Okay, explain these contradictory statements:

You have repeatedly allowed for inconvenience and have asserted that the concept of evil can thus be extrapolated. I have asked you to give a comparable extrapolation, but every example you give is firmly rooted in experience and built on the previously known. It seems you are the one assuming your conclusion, which is the fallacy of begging the question. I, on the other hand, am basing my conclusion on observable facts. Since evil definitely does exist, you must show that it may not. You have yet to do so. So far, you have only provided a string of "maybes" and bare assertions that these explain anything at all. These methods are not intellectually honest, whether you have the self-awareness to realize it or not.

If you are going to claim that "ancestor worship increases with positive results" then you need to support that statement. You also seem to be saying that death does exist in this world, otherwise these ancestors who know evil and proscribe such precautions would still exist. "COULD" does nothing to support "WOULD". Man could invent time traveling, but that says nothing about whether they ever would. Seems to be another equivocation, where you use the sense of "maybe" for "could" rather than "is capable of". If you do mean "is capable of" then this is yet another assertion you need to support.

So any intervening agency would be limited to "situations it knows are dangerous"? So barring perfect prediction, there may be unanticipated situations which end up being dangerous. As far as "desire to do evil", you must assert very inhuman people to do away with self-interest (the whole motivation for pleasure), as that is all that is required for one human to value his own pleasure over the well-being of another. Without any example of evil, as you claim, self-interest would have no natural inhibitions.

Yes, I am sure you would like to shift the burden, but it is you who has made the claim contrary to observed evidence, so the onus is yours alone. And no, imagination cannot refute actual, observed evidence, and I have already pointed out the many ways in which your logic is fallacious. Quite aside from you having yet to show a single, self-consistent world where evil does not exist.

No, as you could (and have so far) continue to introduce ad hoc solutions ad infinitum. That is the inherent weaken of ad hoc solutions and the reason why they will not suffice.

1. Personal self-interest, self-preferential optimal happiness.
2. In order to negate all evil any agency would require perfect prediction, which is contrary to free will.
3. The concept of good does not exist without a comparable concept, so no recognition of one precludes the recognition of the other, regardless of if they exist or not.

QED, your hypothesis fails.

Your personal disagreement does not change the requirements of a thought experiment, hypothesis, or logic. You have proposed nothing but bare assertions to counter what is readily evident. No one needs to make any argument at all to support the readily evident.

Really? Then what is this:

That sounds like a statement to me.

Again, you are only equivocating in an attempt to allay burden.

Without a comparable concept, all such options are necessarily equal. You cannot have an assignment of value without both positive and negative values. And if "bad" necessarily exists then so does "worst" (the most serious or unpleasant thing that could happen). You do not seem to realize that it only takes self-interest to escalate the worst. If any two people are faced with a necessary choice of the worst between them, one must escalate the worst, by enforcement, to avoid it. We are talking the makings of force versus force.

You then must explain how basic human self-interest does not exist. Otherwise, what would prompt humans to be self-sacrificing?

I never said you did, and I also said that the pedophile would never touch a child (hence cannot interfere with the "optimal happiness" of any child). So you have, yet again, dodged what I actually said. Is a pedophile who never touches a child NOT evil? Now they may be seen as good, for exercising the will to deny their desire, but your world does not give them that option, so they cannot be otherwise than evil.

Humans have widely varying preferences for various reasons. You can make all the unsupported assumption you may wish, but if these are actual humans then they will inevitably develop desires which conflict with that of those around them. Even just self-preferential desires.

You are arguing your own straw man here and only repeating what I said the first time you made an appeal to consensus.

 

Balerion,

You're quite right. You're going to continue refusing what's written in front of your face, for the sake of
pride. So I'm also done with this crap.

The firstborns, quite right.

There is no need to tie Adam to Noah, as he (Noah) is a natural part of his genealogy. The next big event in the Bible, is the flood, where we learn of Noah's part, and as the story unfolds, other characters of Adam's generation, come to the fore, all of which are part of TGOA.

That's just it, I'm not interpreting, but you are.

Anyway, I know there's a storm brewing in your neck of the woods, and this discussion is the furthes thing from your mind right now. Needless to say, I hope the storm doesn't take any casualities. Stay safe.

jan.

 

I understand you and i disagree on who is or was using inappropriate and unproductive attacks, so please consider the fact that I have limited time to spend here and would prefer to discuss ideas rather than personalities in this particular thread. Don't assume that any ad homs are accepted, tacitly or otherwise, because i just don't see the value in discussing them.

If we were to use the definition of "evil" as the least good thing, then there is no meaning to the word that corresponds with our common usage. How can we, without artificial limitation, say that the highest and utmost imaginable being or society doesn't consist almost entirely of "evil" if we use this definition? or conversely, how can we say shooting your dog for no reason is "evil" if you didn't torture them first? So, in this relatively described world, chocolate is worse than vanilla, is worse than soda, is worse than a new car, is worse than God, within which God's particular bent towards justice is worse than God's love. (i am not using these terms about God for any religious purpose, and am not implying her anything about a reality or existence of a God or Gods in this world, and this particular line of reasoning we are talking about in this thread isn't anywhere near to an actual discussion of God, christian or otherwise, so let's leave all the religiousness out of this and assume, i am using this talk of God as placeholder for, "the highest good", because it is convenient.)
Also, if we use a purely relativistic definition, torture is worse than murder, so murder is then not "evil". You cannot have a definition based on the "worst" without excluding a lot of stuff, so your definition must also be artificially limited to remain sensible. So let's decide what the limits will be in safeworld, as to what we will call "evil", for the sake of our discussion. Would we call inequality such that women or others cannot vote or own property an "evil", for example. Being a modern person from america, I would artificially limit the definition in that way.

hence my intention to create a definition we could use for "evil". We know our perceptions of "evil" are different around the world, for example. What does not follow from this is that a culture would call chocolate ice cream, "evil". In order to be discussing the same question, we have to have a definition of "evil". The definition must be artificially limited, because we as limited beings in discussion must place limits on our speech. We are limited to having this discussion in english. We SHOULD be limiting ourselves to using the english in a way that we can both agree on, or as i keep saying, we can't have a discussion about the same question.

trying to accommodate another person's reality tunnel and definition of "evil" in order to have a mutual discussion is not always simple. If we were using my definition of "evil" both statements are perfectly reconcilable. A world with no concept of evil, and where there is no evil, could exist. Within this world, certain things we call evil could be conceived to happen, but these people, not knowing what would happen in somebody were to be attacked for example, would proceed along unscathed by the thought nor by any experience, since the pursuit of optimal happiness for everyone has eradicated the ability for physical assault to be completed. I am also not saying this is the only way safeworld can be imagined, but it is one way in which the need for evil can be argued against.

i have provided many examples of how evil could be dealt with or not emerge. As i explain thoroughly above, a definition of "evil" as the "worst" is not allowable.

i should have said, "could", but my point is the same, that ancestor worship need not fade with time as you proposed.

again you say, "may". Let's keep in mind that we haven't settled on who must exhibit MUST, because i say it is the person who says, "evil must exist." We can go back and forth all day with "may" until we settle that. As far as the agency goes, you cannot possibly say that this agency is removing the freewill of the people involved just by assessing results from factors known to be dangerous, such as predicting excessive dog feeding as possibly leading to intestinal emergencies. If you are saying that we would have to limit many possible "good" things to achieve great things, I have a feeling you are probably right, although i haven't thought that idea through, and it is not a problem to me. Until we agree on what to call "evil" there is no point discussing whether overfeeding the dog with no negative consequence would be"good" or "evil".

self-interest need not ever be imagined to be more important than the community interest, so unless you can show that self-interest is MORE likely to exist than communal interest, and then go further to show community interest won't exist, I am not sure how this is pertinent.

actually, I have begun to show a self-consistent world where evil does not exist. You have yet to show a logical proof to the contrary. Once we get the definitions out of the way, perhaps you will be able to, but I feel that my view will prevail.

an imaginable situation where evil does not exist inherently refutes the statement that evil must exist LOGICALLY. Now if we are talking about the need for evil to exist due to our current physiology or previous social upbringing, that is another discussion for another time as far as i am concerned, as i am not willing to go there until this current idea is thought through.

1 -not shown - see above
2 - not shown - not so, it would simply require a much better way of doing things than we are capable of now. You still haven't made it clear why i should accept your idea of limited freewill as opposed to mine. We probably need to have a more ordered discussion to avoid us circling back over the same ground.
3 - i do not require that the people of the good safeworld know that they are that much safer than we are here in general. That objection is not pertinent as you phrase it in 3.

anybody who says, "evil" must exist, must be able to show that it cannot logically be otherwise. It is not enough to say, "it isn't that way now."

the statement is a response to the idea that evil must exist from another poster. It was initially a response that starts us towards a more logical definition of evil than that employed by some philosophers, and others.

see above regarding the impossibility of a purely relativist definition of evil and my objection to your use of the "worst" which i fell is impossible for you to support without making "artificial" limitations. We need to decide on our accepted artificially limited definition of "evil".

see above my request for you to show why it MUST exist out of proportion to communal interest.

no i would say that someone who imagines evil actions but doesn't take them is experiencing negatives, but if they are taking good actions, it is hard to see this as more than inconvenient. We have to figure out whether we are allowing for evil thoughts at all in this world, and why they would exist in people trained from birth to desire the good for all mankind. You also propose here the unsupported idea that a person who isn't trying to do something can be stopped from doing it. If it is guaranteed that nobody else is affected, I find it hard to use the word "evil". You would have to say that video games where people are violent are "evil" as well following this path. We have to decide whether

i never said they were humans, and i certainly don't suppose they are just the humanity that we know now, transported to another safer place while retaining all their conditioning from our world. I also don't see why these humans should not be conditioned to go for the good, and this aberrant behavior you imply might not just be expressed by cutting ahead in the ice cream line, or whatever. The safeworlders can't be anything that COULD imaginably exist, or the idea that evil MUST exist (the logical idea, not the practical idea that was only lightly touched upon in this thread) is disproved.

 

That assumes that humans start out as blank slates which are nevertheless able to experience things, and then, reflecting on their originally amorphous, unnamed experiences and a number of them, they, in a somewhat scientific-like approach of comparing the experiences, assign value to them "this is good; that is bad".


It seems values are more like tastes: we recognize a taste, we don't assign value to it in the sense of doing it from scratch. For example, when one eats sugar, one automatically knows "this is sweet" or "this is sugary" or "this is that particular taste that is different from others in such and such a way." The sense of the sweet is independent of the sense of salty, bitter, sour (or umami, pungent, metallic).

In a similar manner, we recognize something as good, or bad, as a kind of given, without previous analysis. Value judgments, like tastes, seem to come naturally, automatically, non-analytically.

Altruism is sometimes listed as an advanced ego defense mechanism.

 

If that were the case, then how would you explain varying values from culture to culture? If the values of "good" and "bad" are innate rather than learned, then are you suggesting that people are simply born Christians, for example?

Even tastes are acquired. Just because you don't always rationally make a decision regarding value judgments doesn't mean there isn't something going on upstairs that fits the bill.

 

I certainly think that people are not born equal, are not born with the same predisposition.

I don't think a person can be born a Christian, but with a predisposition that, say, makes it more likely for them to become a fundamentalist Christian than a traditionalist Buddhist, for example.

Sugar is sweet; to a Chinese, an Eskimo, an American; to a Christian, a Hindu, a pagan. etc.

There is a difference between making a value judgment, and explaining one's justification for said value judgment to a particular person, in a particular context.

The first seems to be a given; the latter involves much latitude.

 

Our common usage very much does cover "the least good thing", as you have pointed out yourself, we even call the least good smells evil. So how are you possibly be getting this nonsense about "society consisting almost entirely of evil" from our common usage of "least good" smells? You seem to have failed to make the very important distinction between what may be considered "least good" of one class of things NOT being an absolute relative to a completely different class of things. The subdivision of "smells" is an arbitrary one, useful when discussing that particular class of thing. Torture is the worst of pain, and death the worst to life. It is foolish and illogical to attempt to conflate the two.

Our world is "relatively described". So you cannot distinguish between these classes of things? Only if the choices are artificially enforced to be between these things would they be related so. Any sane person would choose a new car over soda, so this arbitrary comparison is trivial, at best.

I have already explained how evil is only relative either in a particular class of thing or due to an enforced choice. A quick death is only better than torture when those are enforced as the only two alternatives. One class of evil does not mediate another, as compounded evils are just that. An "evil smell" while being tortured does not make either any better, but only compounds the horrid experience.

The only limit necessary is the common and sensible class of things. Evil, as the worst of a particular class of thing, or choices between classes, is the only high generalized definition. If you insist upon intent being accounted for then you must accept that intent is a matter of perception, where one person may see the self-interest of another as intentionally antipathetic to themselves.

Now if you really what to go so far from reality as to say these people read minds (comparably impossible to traveling at light speed, mind you), your definition of "reprehensible" does not require intent.

You are seeming to be intentionally obtuse or dishonest by insisting on using this ice cream example that I have, many times now, told you that your changed conditions are far beyond where it applied. If you do not desist then I will once again assume you are intentionally being dishonestly provocative and respond accordingly. Fair warning.

"it is quite easy to extrapolate an evil experience from a mere inconvenience.

i think you are arriving at this goig from the end to get to the start. The CONCEPT of evil necessitates at least the possibility of evil. A world without the concept of evil has no necessity for the possibility of evil." -CG​

You have again failed to explain how the concept of evil cannot exist. You keep "imagining" ways you think evil cannot exist, but each is mutually exclusive from the next you have to "imagine" to address my criticisms of the first. This is called moving the goalposts, and is generally considered to be highly intellectually dishonest. You need to settle on ONE scenario that you think answers ALL objections, otherwise I cannot give you the benefit of the doubt. Now you are saying that any evil that may happen in the world of yours could not be recognized by its inhabitants. Can you provide an example to support this assertion? Is that not just how animals perceive our world? Do you consider animals to have comparable free will to our own, or just at the mercy of instinct?

Yes, I think we all understand your penchant for bare assertion. Where is the logic? Just because you have naively conflated what is called evil between unrelated classes of things, as I explained above, does not mean you have any logical argument for dismissing the definition of "worst".

Uh, you did say "could", and still failed to clarify whether you meant "may" or "is capable of". And you still failed to support your assert, so I will phrase it in a question for you this time. What support do you have for your assertion that "ancestor worship increases with positive results"? If you cannot support this assertion then it is meaningless.

The burden always falls to the person making claims that are not in evidence. In this case, that person is clearly you. Deal with it, as there is no avoiding the logic, other than by self-delusion, intellectual dishonesty, etc..

Holder of the burden
When debating any issue, there is an implicit burden of proof on the person asserting a positive claim. "If this responsibility or burden of proof is shifted to a critic, the fallacy of appealing to ignorance is committed". -wiki​

An appeal to ignorance is asserting something is true simply because it has not been proven false, which is exactly what you are doing. You are trying to require me to prove your assertion false rather than proving it true yourself. And no, me saying that evil clearly does exist in our world is not the positive claim here.

A positive claim is any claim about reality. It may in fact be a "negative claim," that is to say a claim that something is "not real" or "not true." Positive claims should be supported with evidence...​

Me saying that evil must exist in our world is supported by the evidence that it clearly does. If our world developed to include evil, it is reasonable to assume that its inclusion was at least partially necessitated by the causality fundamental to our world. You have yet to provide any comparable evidence.

Again, you have made the claim that ALL EVIL need not exist. If you are changing that assertion then you need to specify what evils are allowed, and by doing so refute your own argument.

You really do not know the first thing about human behavior and development, do you? Self-interest is merely a matter of proximity. That which is most prominent, i.e. your own personal sensations and experience, draw the lion's share of your attention. Look up psychological egoism.

You seem to be the only one here having trouble defining (conflating) evil, and no, you have yet to settle on a single, self-consistent world, as you continuously "reimagine" it with every criticism I raise.

It is only your bare assertion that your imaginings are logical. As you have pointed out, Einstein being able to imagine traveling at light speed does not make it logically so. Evidence trumps imagination, so if this is all the argument you have then this whole conversation has been a colossal waste, which I have suspected for quite some time.

1. That is an appeal to ignorance.
2. Appeal to ignorance. What "much better way of doing things"?
3. If people do not recognize good, then no value judgments exist and you can rightly claim that on one recognizes evil. None of this has any bearing on whether a necessary but unrecognized evil may exist. So this is a red herring (distracting from the actual issue). Also, if there are no value judgments then people have absolutely no basis for making free will choices, other than perhaps animal instinct. Again, do you consider instinct an expression of free will?

The evidence is more than any imaginings you have provided. If a world could exist without evil, why not this one? Are you assuming something intended our world to include evil?

See my above response to your naive conflation.

Appeal to ignorance, and also a straw man, as I never said anything about it being "out of proportion". Altruism has always been the exemplary, not the norm.

So now you are introducing brainwashing? I did not say the pedophile was not being actively stopped, since you asserted that all evil actions would be actively stopped. So make up your mind and stop equivocating. So if they cannot affect anyone else, pedophilia is only relatively evil? Remind me, who was bellyaching about relative evil? Video games? Where actions you would not take, even unhindered, are virtually taken? You have some serious issues if you can conflate pedophilia and video games, by any stretch of the imagination.

WHAT?! Not human?! Talk about heaving the goalposts. Your intellectual dishonesty is completely without bounds. Good thing you saved that for the very end of your post, or I would not have been anywhere near as cordial, if I responded to much of this post at all.

We are done here, and I am reporting your post for gross and flagrant intellectual dishonesty.