Do you believe in God ?

[Jacquemar]

It is a generally accepted principle in physics that there is no such thing as cold – it is simply an absence of heat. Similarly, darkness is understood to be an absence of light. Can evil be explained without comparing it to something else?

What do you think??

 

[Kyanimal]

Can evil be explained without comparing it to something else?

^ I'll take a stab at that ...

As with everything, Evil has many forms, and can be evident to various degrees. One of those forms is the derivation of pleasure through deliberately inflicting harm to others, and/or the willful destruction of things and/or property. Some examples:

> Sanctioning kidnapping children, and keeping them in cages, neglecting their welfare, while purposefully not keeping track of who/where their parents are, in order to frighten other families.
> Justifying the denigration of those who are not like you.
> Promoting the spreading of a possibly fatal virus, with total disregard for general public health and safety.
> Preparing, collecting, and inciting a mob to violent insurrection solely for the purpose of your own personal aggrandizement.
> Demanding fealty, then blatantly betraying your ardent supporters.

With comparisons: Evil is not merely the absence of Good, but rather the encouragement of Bad.

 

[opinterph]

What do you think??

I think the statements about heat, light are correct. Not sure about the other one.

 

[opinterph]

With comparisons: Evil is not merely the absence of Good, but rather the encouragement of Bad.

How is bad different from evil?

 

[Kyanimal]

How is bad different from evil?

Evil entails viscous intent.

 

[Kulindahr]

Can either of those things exist without the other?

Good can exist on its own; evil cannot as it is just flawed good.

Though without evil we may never really appreciate the good -- one of those twists of human nature.

 

[magikarping]

Good can exist on its own; evil cannot as it is just flawed good.

You're gonna have to explicate further on that.

Also, selfish altruism argues that good does not, in fact, exist on its own.

 

[Kulindahr]

Do I believe in God?

I believe that there is a problem with the word "believe". If you are asking if I am intellectually convinced that God exists, my answer is - I am not certain. I do not think that anyone can "prove" God's existence through the scientific method or through pure logical reasoning.

Nonetheless, I choose to trust in the idea that God exists. I choose to think and act as if there is a benevolent creator. I choose to think and act that the universe is filled with his spirit, including us. I also choose to believe that we human beings are creatures imbued with free-will, and can choose to align with good or evil.

Well said. "Believe" in the New Testament, for example, means "trust" the great majority of the time, often indicated by the wording "believe into". When it's used as mere intellectual assent it tends to be (I think it's always but not sure) regarded derogatorily.

It was a distinction clear to those of us in our informal "intelligent design" club in university (back before the young-earth horde hijacked the term): we were all students who due to studying science had come to conclude that there was a Designer/Creator behind it all. We'd get challenged by young-earthers with the question, "Do you believe in evolution?" as though "belief in" evolution was in anyway equivalent to "belief in" God: God as a person is someone in whom one can put trust, but how does one put trust into a process with a large element of randomness?

(We also baffled atheist sorts who insisted that "faith" means "believe without evidence", because we weren't interested in anything that lacked evidence.)

 

[Kulindahr]

This is how I read your statement: "The classic problem of religion is that humans only define it to suit themselves -- and then want to use force to coerce others into following their standards, not realizing that what they are proposing is itself evil."

Probably not what you intended, but it works just as well lol.

Except your version doesn't work -- most of the Christians I've known well most certainly refused to define Christianity to suit themselves; they were quite aware that while Christianity may serve to comfort the afflicted, it is quite potent at afflicting the comfortable. The same was true for a couple of Muslims in our informal "intelligent design" club: they'd become convinced that Islam was true, yet were not happy with that conclusion.

 

[Jacquemar]

I think the statements about heat, light are correct. Not sure about the other one.

As a said, many believed there was only a deficiency of Good. God, who was the ultimate good though, had no intelligible properties to speak of. There is nothing to compare evil to. Plotinus becomes dualistic though, claiming that matter is evil and spirit is good.

 

[Kulindahr]

That does not follow. Just because you intervene in some situations doesn't mean you have to intervene in all of them. And even the god of the bible demonstrates this because it has instances of intervention and it's not constantly intervening.

[Text: Removed] when you do total inspection, you intervene to fix all flaws, not just a select few.

The problem is that you are drawing a subjective line between things you consider evil enough that you expect God to intervene and those you don't really care about, and that doesn't work: God is like a quality control engineer who, if asked to intervene to correct defects in units produced on a line will reject all defective units because the goal is to guarantee the excellence of every piece. Another way to illustrate is that God's standard is pass/fail, and pass means 100% correct. By saying you want Him to intervene when someone's score is an 80% or less you're asking what is impossible because there are no 80% scores -- there's only 100% and fail.

Also I need to address the bold. You're downplaying rape, murder, and slavery as being simple dislikes, again, and that's abhorrent.

I'm treating them as "simple dislikes" because that's how you're treating them: they're things you find abhorrent, and that's nothing but subjective.

You appear to be critquing my standard for not being perfect and therefore worthless but that's a meaningless critique because your use of the word 'perfection' is implicitly subjective, but it sounds like you're treating it as objective. If gods standard is objectively perfect, I shouldn't be able to see it as flawed because it is perfect. But I don't. You've given me no way to improve my standard. You need to demonstrate it's perfection because I'm not about to give that serious consideration just because you claim that you understand god.

Your definition of evil is subjective. The issue is that God's isn't: He doesn't differentiate between one kind of evil and another; His standard is that of the engineer who has promised a flawless product. In comparison, God's standard is objective because it refuses to subdivide the category of evil.

As for your being able to see that something is perfect, that's contradicted by real life: for example, an equation that perfectly describes the behavior of charged particles orbiting a spinning black hole can be considered "perfect", but that doesn't make it plain to everyone that it is -- most of us wouldn't know where to begin to try to understand such an equation.

But the perfection of God's standard is simply demonstrated: no flaws allowed. No arson, no vandalism, no drunk driving, no speeding, no littering, no selfishness whatsoever, no "good enough", no shortcuts, no laziness, no failure to help the needy, no envy, no impatience, no cruelty, no deception, no part-truths, no coercion, no preferring one over another, no impoliteness, no unkindness, no undependability, no harshness, no cheating, no weakness, no procrastination, no disharmony, no favoritism, no lateness.... none of anything that people recognize as flaws or failure, and none of a lot of things humans don't even see.

 

[Kulindahr]

One [Wiki]​

Plotinus was both fun and tortuous to read in the original.

 

[Kulindahr]

It is a generally accepted principle in physics that there is no such thing as cold – it is simply an absence of heat. Similarly, darkness is understood to be an absence of light. Can evil be explained without comparing it to something else?

Taking that further, all evil is just twisting something that's good.

A common illustration is the Adam and Eve story: desiring the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden was good -- but taking it rather than waiting for it to be given was not.

 

[Kulindahr]

^ I'll take a stab at that ...

As with everything, Evil has many forms, and can be evident to various degrees. One of those forms is the derivation of pleasure through deliberately inflicting harm to others, and/or the willful destruction of things and/or property. Some examples:

> Sanctioning kidnapping children, and keeping them in cages, neglecting their welfare, while purposefully not keeping track of who/where their parents are, in order to frighten other families.
> Justifying the denigration of those who are not like you.
> Promoting the spreading of a possibly fatal virus, with total disregard for general public health and safety.
> Preparing, collecting, and inciting a mob to violent insurrection solely for the purpose of your own personal aggrandizement.
> Demanding fealty, then blatantly betraying your ardent supporters.

With comparisons: Evil is not merely the absence of Good, but rather the encouragement of Bad.

Evil is often the presence of something good -- but at the wrong time or in the wrong place or in the wrong proportions. Classical examples include alcohol, salt, and fire.

 

[Kulindahr]

Evil entails viscous intent.

I think you meant "vicious".

So "bad" is falling short, but evil is intentionally stopping short?

 

[magikarping]

Except your version doesn't work -- most of the Christians I've known well most certainly refused to define Christianity to suit themselves; they were quite aware that while Christianity may serve to comfort the afflicted, it is quite potent at afflicting the comfortable. The same was true for a couple of Muslims in our informal "intelligent design" club: they'd become convinced that Islam was true, yet were not happy with that conclusion.

Your personal anecdote doesn't match the violence that religions have enacted throughout history/in present day. You've just reminded me of Steven Weinberg's quote: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

It's not clear who these "comfortable" people are, or what unhappy Muslims have to do with this.

 

[Jacquemar]

Well the fun has been sucked out of this thread.

 

[Kyanimal]

I think you meant "vicious".

So "bad" is falling short, but evil is intentionally stopping short?

Yep! I did mean "vicious". (@me )

However, "viscous" could also work when the evil continues to stick around, especially when continuing to be enabled by sycophants of the evil doer.

I'm not sure I agree with your "falling short" concept in regard to bad and evil. Something can fall short of expectations, yet not be bad nor evil, in spite of being disappointing. But, yes, evil stems from intent.

 

[Rickrock]

There have been some well thought out ideas expressed in this thread and I appreciate this discussion.

I believe that there is life after death, so it is probable that I would believe in God. I stated in this forum a couple of years ago that a relative occasionally saw people who could walk through closed doors and then found out that person had died at about that time of the day. Another relative felt the presence of someone or otherwise realized that a dead person was present. In addition there are thousands of stories of ghosts and of people who had out of body experiences, perhaps during an operation. Even if some of the stories aren't true, that still leaves thousands which are true. With thousands of witnesses over thousands of years I believe that is sufficient proof of life after death. If I believe in life after death, it is likely that I would believe in some sort of God. That still leaves room for a wide range of ideas of what God is and what life after death is. Since I was raised as a Catholic Christian, my idea of God is related to what Christianity teaches about God.

 

[Kulindahr]

Your personal anecdote doesn't match the violence that religions have enacted throughout history/in present day. You've just reminded me of Steven Weinberg's quote: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

It's not clear who these "comfortable" people are, or what unhappy Muslims have to do with this.

Weinberg's assertion is so plainly false it's not worth refuting.

You made a flat assertion about religion. Even one case contrary is enough to falsify such an assertion.