posted
Twinky, I was specifically referring to 'Even a cursory glance at our world shows that there is far more "evil" than "good."' I should have cropped out the Newton stuff.
I believe there's far more good than evil. Maybe I'll make a thread about it - it sounds like an interesting discussion, but probably takes this far off track.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, some of us believe that "evil" is largely a myth.
Perhaps for those of us who believe this way, we could say that "more unfortunate things happen in the universe than fortunate things". But that would be an impossible statement to prove without getting into degrees.
For example, how long does a person have to be alive before their birth was more fortunate than their death? Does it happen instantly?
How about when one animal eats another one? Does the unfortunate amount of suffering and eventual death get countered by the amount of fortunate eating that the animal does? The eventual birth of the new predator? Do the death's of dozens of prey get canceled out by one predator's survival?
I couldn't begin to even form an opinion.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: For example, how long does a person have to be alive before their birth was more fortunate than their death? Does it happen instantly?
Talk about starting a whole new thread!
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
This is why I put "good" and "evil" in quotes. I don't have clear personal definitions of either term. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
derail Tom - have you read Passions Within Reason by Robert Frank? It's a very interesting book looking into the same problem that you see in the Rationalist POV- selfish interests vs. seemingly altrustic behavior. It's on my booklist for my Ethics class, and I couldn't help reading it early. It's that good.
My own spin on the problem: people want to be happy - that's their main goal in life. Through either social conditioning or biological programming, most people display a preference for altrustic behavior - they become happier when engaging in acts they consider good and altrustic (saving the random person from drowning in the river, tipping a waiter they'll never see again). Just like some people display a preference for (and become happier when) watching TV over playing video games. Why this preference has evolved or been conditioned in is what Frank discusses in his book.
/derail
To add my bit to the main conversation: the first time I really started disliking the Christian God was after reading an excerpt from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. While the book in the end triumphs God's design, this section, in which Ivan argues with Alyosha over God and evil, has always stood out in my mind. An innocent child suffering unspeakable cruelties is not worth anything good that might come out of the world. It's basically an argument against the "end harmony" and "God works in mysterious ways" arguments. As Ivan says
quote:Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace andrest at last, but it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature - that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance - and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?
Like Ivan, I would respectfully return my entrance ticket to Heaven than enter on those terms.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: The caterpillar was writhing around, clearly in pain. It was covered with ants that were biting, pinching, and chewing all over it. The video segment of this lasted for several seconds. To the caterpillar it must have seemed like eternity in hell.
I don't want to puncture your newfound faith I would just like to point out that insects probably don't have pain receptors. As creatures with exoskeletons it simply doesn't make much sense for them. Also, even when insects experience stimulation of the receptors they do have (mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors) it is very unlikely that they experience the sensation in the same way we do. Insects have a very distributed nervous system, so stimulation of receptors functions as a simple feedback loop- just like when the doctor knocks the nerve bundle just below your knee capwith a hammer. Likely the caterpillar was writhing because all of those ants were stimulating mechanoreceptorsat different points along the caterpillar's body and thus setting off a muscle contracting feedback at numerous different points.
From a purely practical standpoint, animals which do experience pain do so because it is a survival mechanism- it not only prevents the animal from continuing to expose itself to harmful conditions (imagine how damaging burns would be if we didn't feel the pain and so continued to roast the flesh indefinitely) it also functions as a powerful incentive to learn which actions to avoid. For example, birds which eat monarch butterflies quickly learn to avoid them in the future after the bad experience.
And so we have solved the problem of pain with a simple observation- pain exists because God is a good engineer.
quote: I think you may need to expand your viewpoint beyond Karl's specified example, JS.
I did already. I explained why creatures which experience pain do so. Good design is good design, whether in humans or sparrows.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
The problem isn't so much the perception of pain, Jacare, but the reason for the suffering itself.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Jacare Sorridente: And so we have solved the problem of pain with a simple observation- pain exists because God is a good engineer.
Or "nature" is a good engineer, and God doesn't exist. And I'm not worshiping an engineer, no matter how much of a "good engineer" he is.
Edit: Or what Tom said. Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: The problem isn't so much the perception of pain, Jacare, but the reason for the suffering itself.
But I already explained that- pain is unpleasant so the creature can learn not to repeat whatever action caused the pain.
quote: Or "nature" is a good engineer, and God doesn't exist. And I'm not worshiping an engineer, no matter how much of a "good engineer" he is.
The question (at least the one I am addressing) is how God can allow pain and suffering to exist and still be benevolent. Well, designing his creations well with a mechanism which allows them to minimize damage and to avoid it in the future sounds like a fair motive to me.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Man I can never get very far in any religion thread with out this thought wandering through my mind:
"Jeeze we humans are stuck up, arrogant, self centered, self absorbed pricks."
I mean, we have so much evidense piling up that we are nowhere near the center of the universe (in any aspect of it) and yet we are still completely convinced, for the most part, that we must be the center of the universe.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Tom-- In Omelas, the decision to preserve their happiness by subjecting one being to misery is society-wide and conscious. It is a voluntary, social act.
I would walk away from Omelas, too. But I don't accept Omelas as a good analogy for an existence propagated by God.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jacare, I'll give you an example: Bad things happen to a baby. He's in pain, he's suffering. How is this allowing him to minimize damage afterward?! And is there no better way to go about it? It might be necessary to have pain receptors, but is *pain* itself necessary? Especially when it could be easily avoided by a well timed divine intervention, that is.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jacare, pain makes perfect sense as a naturally evolved mechanism for what you explained. But when we're talking about an all powerful benevolent creator, why in the hell would he design it like that when there are far far less... well painful ways to acheive the same thing. Such as having us born with all the knowledge we need of what is damaging and what is not. It makes zero sense.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Now THIS is funny: my winamp decided that I should listen to Muse - Thoughts of a Dying Atheist right now! Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: Bad things happen to a baby. He's in pain, he's suffering. How is this allowing him to minimize damage afterward?! And is there no better way to go about it? It might be necessary to have pain receptors, but is *pain* itself necessary? Especially when it could be easily avoided by a well timed divine intervention, that is.
First, what difference does it make if the subject is a baby?
Second, If the baby is in pain it does whatever is in its power to stop the pain. In a human baby this would generally entail crying so the mother can take action.
Third- pain is the system which is in place. If you think it unnecessary, what would you replace it with?
Finally- whether or not there is any divine intervention speaks much more to the purpose of life than the reason pain exists.
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:I don't know, Karl--the example you give doesn't strike me as evidence for the nonesistance of god so much as it does evidence that god, if it exists, doesn't have the same perspective on suffering as humans do.
Bingo! Give that man a cookie.
As KarlEd stated, the Bible tells us that God notes the fall of the sparrow. But does it tell us He stops it? I mean, obviously there are plenty of sparrows that fall.
God isn't about stopping pain, but He is aware of it, and exists to balance things out *eventually* rather than right now on our time schedule.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote: But when we're talking about an all powerful benevolent creator, why in the hell would he design it like that when there are far far less... well painful ways to acheive the same thing. Such as having us born with all the knowledge we need of what is damaging and what is not. It makes zero sense.
Again, propose a different mechanism. We don't like pain because in order for it to be effective we mustn't like it. Likely if there were no pain we would discuss something like why a benevolent God could allow his creatures to destroy themselves so easily. Or maybe how a divine being could possibly design his creatures so that reproductive and waste elimination features are combined.
Your idea about being born with necessary knowledge speaks to the purpose of life. So tell me, why do you think God would create anything at all?
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: Jacare, pain makes perfect sense as a naturally evolved mechanism for what you explained.
I don't understand why you think this is the case. Once again, good design is good design. If it makes sense for evolution to come up with this mechanism then why doesn't it make sense for God to design us that way?
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Alcon: Maybe that approach would do more harm than good.
Perhaps, but that's just one example.
Don't get me wrong, from an evolutionary sense, pain is an ingenius mechanism for doing the job it does. However, if we're talking benevolent, all powerful creator who cares about his subjects, then screw him. If that's the best he could come up with clearly he's not all he claims to be.
But this is just one problem I personally have with the concept of a being as the creator. There are many more, the reason perhaps I am a fairly solid atheist.
For example: Who created him? How'd he come to be? How'd he end up all powerful? What was before him? And if we come up with something that created him, who created his creator?
Or if your answer is, he just kinda was, he came first. Well what's to say that we, live, molecules come together at random, didn't come first?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:The fact that pain is caused -- in other words, the fact that actions are bad -- is something also determined by God.
If pain is merely a signal for a bad event, why make bad events in the first place?
I think you are confusing bad and harmful. But again, this speaks to the purpose of existence. Why make anything at all?
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:quote: Jacare, pain makes perfect sense as a naturally evolved mechanism for what you explained. I don't understand why you think this is the case. Once again, good design is good design. If it makes sense for evolution to come up with this mechanism then why doesn't it make sense for God to design us that way?
Precicely becuase it causes pain and suffering. If he's truely omnipotent and all powerful then he could most certainly come up with a better mechanism for the same job. That is if he's truely that benevolent and loving of his subjects.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Jacare - I picked a baby so he would have "no sins" attached to him. Nothing to be punished for with that pain. If he does whatever he can to stop it, and people try to help him but can't, why does God still allow the pain to go on? I keep asking why is that pain necessary and you keep telling me that we try to avoid it. Somehow we're not talking about the same thing here.
beverly - That "eventually" is what bothers me. I don't understand how am I suppose to believe that "eventually" things even out when I see that "now" - as Murphy put it - if a thing can go bad, it will. Especially when I'm being told this by people who read it in books written by other people who - perhaps - have received that information from God without any (relevant to me) proof.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
If nothing but God existed in the first place, there would be no reason for God to create anything. However, if some things pre-exist (that is, existed independently of God), then God's creation of things can be explained in terms of his interactions with those pre-existing things.
Posts: 1652 | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: It also helps (with the not being depressed) that the universe doesn't care about me, or about "order" or "good," but that I pursue these things for my own personal satisfaction.
So for you "Good" is defined by what is personally satisfying? Or is there a desire in your brain that organizes what is good or bad, through responses like guilt or pain?
I know this is one of those long argued statements, but I still feel there is a universal sense of good or evil. Like Tom said, there is a system of morality that everyone throughout time seems to adapt even when those morals go against personal satisfaction
But this is another topic that could take up an entire thread of its own.
Posts: 232 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet, if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear, If we were things born Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.
quote: Jacare, pain makes perfect sense as a naturally evolved mechanism for what you explained.
I don't understand why you think this is the case. Once again, good design is good design. If it makes sense for evolution to come up with this mechanism then why doesn't it make sense for God to design us that way?
If it makes sense for evolution to come up with this mechanism then why do we need God at all to explain it?
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:If nothing but God existed in the first place, there would be no reason for God to create anything. However, if some things pre-exist (that is, existed independently of God), then God's creation of things can be explained in terms of his interactions with those pre-existing things
Yeah, then you run into the problem of who created God and those preexisting things? Now it sounds like God is just some other alien race who just happens to be naturally more powerful than us.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
I realize this is a side note, but other people are saying what I would just fine.
I was thinking about why I do many of the things I do, when I could be watching movies and eating brownies all the time. The answer is that when I don't, I'm not happy. If I'm not making/creating something (painting/writing/movie-making/designing), I'm unhappy. If I don't exercise, I'm unhappy. If I don't make a new friend every other week or so, I get restless. If I don't go to school, I'm unhappy.
All those things are hard and usually painful, but the alternative is to not be happy. A series of passingly-painful activities allows me to live my life on a considerably-happier level than I would otherwise.
I don't know that I would design the world/me this way if I had the choice, but I do know it works this way. I can rail, drop out, and be unhappy, or I can join in the game and wake up in the morning without dread. Go figure.
Fear is a fabulous motivator. I don't mean fear of God, but fear of...I don't know. Desert places?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
That quote is what keeps me going through life. It helps me understand that all the crap I go through in life sets me up for greater joy later and that there will always be light at the end of the tunnel.
Posts: 1660 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote: I can rail, drop out, and be unhappy, or I can join in the game and be considerably happier.
I think you're attempting to justify the stick with the carrot.
quote: That quote is what keeps me going through life. It helps me understand that all the crap I go through in life sets me up for greater joy later....
You can have light without darkness. You can have joy without sorrow. You can have wisdom without stupidity. That we have come to define these things largely by the absence of negative emotion does not in fact mean that they are dependent upon negative emotion to exist.
All the crap you go through in life is crap you go through. If you have greater joy, great. And perhaps you were able to achieve that greater joy by applying some of the crap you went through -- and perhaps you achieved that greater joy for some other reason. But your greater joy is in no way dependent upon the crap, unless the joy is in fact so inadequate that it only resembles joy in comparison to crap.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote: beverly - That "eventually" is what bothers me. I don't understand how am I suppose to believe that "eventually" things even out when I see that "now" - as Murphy put it - if a thing can go bad, it will. Especially when I'm being told this by people who read it in books written by other people who - perhaps - have received that information from God without any (relevant to me) proof.
It's called faith. And I totally understand someone *not* having it. Having it does give someone hope, though hopefully it does not lead to apathy because "God will take care of it". While I do think that "God will take care of it", I also believe that He holds us responsible when we don't do all we can to make the world around us a better place. Part of "God taking care of it" is that holding us accountable.
I don't think he holds the ants accountable for causing pain to the caterpillar. They don't have free will--not nearly the same way we do, anyway. I'm not sure if I really believe this or not, but it may be that Christ's atonement happened to help balance even the pain of that caterpillar. But that opens a whole 'nother can of worms.
But the scripture that I do have and believe says that Christ's atonement covers the misdeeds of those who do not understand what they are doing. It mentions that children are without sin and are covered automatically by the atonement for any negative effects they bring to the world around them. So I don't find it all that strange to extrapolate that to animals that do not "understand" the effects of their actions.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:So for you "Good" is defined by what is personally satisfying? Or is there a desire in your brain that organizes what is good or bad, through responses like guilt or pain?
posted
Probably. However, I don't think God created either the stick or the carrot in that particular scenario.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Hail]](graemlins/hail.gif)
![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
