quote:Billions of people use the concepts of "right" and "wrong" - you are suggesting that all of those people are speaking gibberish
Billions of people say "this shirt is red." Does the color red look the same to all people?
'Red' is not subjective. Red refers to a specific wavelength of light. Now, there are shades of red. But there was a study (which I can't seem to find online) done years back where a culture that had words for no colors beyond black and white could still identify red objects as red.
[ October 10, 2008, 03:35 PM: Message edited by: El JT de Spang ]
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Ah. Saying "'red' is this specific wavelength of light" is like saying "'evil' is hurting someone else." It's a definition that, once agreed-upon, can be used to reach other objective conclusions. But that doesn't mean that everyone using the word "evil" is using it in this same way.
I believe that most people casually use the words "right" and "wrong" in a very broad way that covers a wide swath of subjective uses.
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quote:I think you're misrepresenting Hume's sensible knave in this characterization.
Oh, I know I am. Or, at least, I know I'm not treating him the same way Hume did.
quote:it washes away the value of the term "self-interested"
Not necessarily. I think in situations like this one -- where someone is forced to determine whether a given action is to their rational benefit -- the value of their self-respect to themselves must be considered as a valid factor in that decision. It is rational to be a "good" person, even if you can steal from someone without getting caught, because you place a value on "goodness" that exceeds your profit from the theft.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I believe that most people casually use the words "right" and "wrong" in a very broad way that covers a wide swath of subjective uses.
I agree. I just don't think it's a strong analogy.
Better, I think, to say that people all over the world say things like, "It sure is bright today".
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But we could just as easily define the word "bright" in terms of candlepower as we could "red" in terms of frequency. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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We could, but we haven't. Which is why 'bright' is subjective while 'red' is not. Or at least why 'red' is less so.
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The question is, "given goal X, is action Y rational?" Arguing about the rationality of X is missing the point.
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Chapter 7: I'm not sure where you got the impression that Jesus lied in saying he would not go up to the feast of the tabernacles. I'm looking at the verse right now and Jesus says in verse eight, "Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come. (emphasis mine)
As for the matter of the officers being somehow unable to lay hands on Jesus though they sought to, you stated that this violates freewill. I'm not sure where you came to this conclusion either. Rain, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, sunshine, moon phases all happen without man having the slightest control over them, and yet they all effect men in very real ways. If a person is murdered in their sleep, how can we say they had free will? The free will of another human seems to have overrode the free will of the slumberer.
Men cannot summon or dismiss God, so why should they be able to man handle his emissary if God does not will it? If a man got it into his mind to slay the entire human race and then commit suicide, and somehow accomplished it, I think that would prove that free will is absolute as it's doubtful anyone could argue that God would allow that to happen. But God preventing His children from committing certain acts does not immediately throw us into Calvinist predestination territory. God for the most part does not interfere with actions we decide to take, but it is just as correct for Him to accelerate or prevent what we are doing as it was for Him to do nothing.
There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon, (Sorry to force your eyes upon another book of scripture) that I think outlines the matter quite effectively. It was stated by a prophet discussing the nature of choice concerning good and evil. "Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience.
Taken one way this could mean that God allows us to do anything, and in a way he does for the most part. I see it more as an ultimate result rather than an immediate one. If we desire evil, for a time we will be permitted to indulge in that desire and then we will be given the reward that awaits all those who truly desire evil.
In any-case the officers attempting to lay hands on Him explain for themselves why they could not take hold of him. It's in verses 45-47, where the officers say that Jesus words were so effecting that they could not summon the will to lay hands on him. This is hardly any different than when a person is commanded to do something they considers very wrong, and cannot bring themselves to do it. But there are indeed several examples of this phenomena where men seek to lay hold of Jesus and find themselves unable to carry out their purpose.
quote:The phrase was 'given X'. Would you please take it as given?
We get it. X is given. Let's write it out as you presented it:
X: I dislike people of type A. <some other premises which have not been identified as given> Y: Therefore, it is rational for me to kill people of type A.
If one of my premises is "It is irrational to kill people I dislike unless my dislike of them is rational," then even if I accept X as given, Y is not true.
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Yes, yes. If you want to add terms to the utility function, you can come up with whatever outcome you like. The point is that there exists some utility function to make any given action rational.
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quote:As for the matter of the officers being somehow unable to lay hands on Jesus though they sought to, you stated that this violates freewill.
Because it does. God stepped in to prevent them from executing their will, which they could have executed normally had He not intervened. Using the same approach to intervention -- physically preventing soldiers from doing what they want -- He could have prevented the Rwandan genocide.
Your real assertion is this: God denies people Free Will when they attempt to interfere with His plans for His emissary.
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: This is even more counterintuitive than simply saying "genocide is not wrong" though. Billions of people use the concepts of "right" and "wrong" - you are suggesting that all of those people are speaking gibberish, yet don't realize it, even while they appear to understand one another.
I understand what people are talking about when they use the concepts of "right" and "wrong". I just reject the premises that are implied in their usage.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Because it does. God stepped in to prevent them from executing their will, which they could have executed normally had He not intervened.
Not necessarily. Maybe Jesus was just too fast for them. The text does not specify.
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I suppose that's true. I'd argue that this isn't what's implied, but "Jesus hightailed it after juking left" would certainly preserve the sanctity of Free Will.
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I generally agree with Tom's statement that good and evil aren't useful words to define morality with, because you can't prove anything about them - you can only hope that everyone in your community shares the same basic gut feelings about stuff.
I'd like to think that setting aside those gut feelings and figuring ethics out logically would be the best thing for humanity, because many people with different gut feelings can still learn the rules of logic and use it find something satisfying for both of them.
Unfortunately, oftentimes, it just doesn't work that way. Lots of people just don't give a damn about rationality and working through an ethics system step by step from the ground up. They feel things in their heart so strongly that no amount of logic matters one way or the other. Sometimes this comes in the form of "God said so, it must be true," but it doesn't have to be that way at all.
I have a friend who is essentially an atheist. She is, in many ways, one of the "best" people I know by my own definition of goodness. The problems of the world weigh heavily upon her and she does whatever she can to help them, to the extent that she's probably going to die young from the stress.
For the most part, it happens that we agree upon what is right. But she has absolutely no interest in ethics "theory." There are certain things she "knows" are wrong and if I try to talk about WHY it's wrong (or, in fact, right), she gets annoyed at me for pointless arguing.
In her case, I don't press the issue because she does far more good for the world than I do.
I have another friend who's a fundamentalist Christian. We disagree on an awful lot. He's also a very logical person and the two of us can easily set aside our beliefs and have a purely hypothetical discussion about ethics, and admit that each other have good points. But when all is said and done, he still believes what he believes and I usually still believe what I do.
I remember hearing in psych class that something like 2-5% of the world falls in the "rationalist" demographic (I may be conflating and/or misinterpreting information here). Sad as it makes me, I have to wonder how "rational" it is to try and use rationality to discuss morality with most people.
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quote:As for the matter of the officers being somehow unable to lay hands on Jesus though they sought to, you stated that this violates freewill.
Because it does. God stepped in to prevent them from executing their will, which they could have executed normally had He not intervened. Using the same approach to intervention -- physically preventing soldiers from doing what they want -- He could have prevented the Rwandan genocide.
Your real assertion is this: God denies people Free Will when they attempt to interfere with His plans for His emissary.
No it isn't. Did you miss my last paragraph where the officers actually explain the dynamic that was going on here?
There were several instances where this sort of thing happen, and perhaps different mechanics were taking place some or all of those times. God forcing people to do things is not the necessary explanation.
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I did indeed miss your last paragraph. And I agree that "God talked me out of it" violates no Free Will. It's a good thing we aren't discussing the "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" verse(s), though. *grin*
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I did indeed miss your last paragraph. And I agree that "God talked me out of it" violates no Free Will. It's a good thing we aren't discussing the "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" verse(s), though. *grin*
Indeed! Especially since Joseph Smith's supposed corrections on that verse are not assumptions you and I can begin with.
Also your statement, "Jesus hightailed it after juking left" made me laugh out loud. Clearly my stoicism needs some work.
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I have serious question for those of you who think limb regeneration would be proof of God's power.
If there were a well documented case of a person regenerating an amputated limb which do you think would be your most likely response.
1) You become a firm devout believer in God.
2) You'd want to see detailed scientific study of the person to figure out how the limb regenerated.
I recognize that is a false dichotomy because one could do both but I'd still like some serious consideration. You see even though I am already a devout believer in God, I am also a scientist. And if there was evidence that someone had spontaneous regenerated an amputated limb, I'd want to study the heck out of it to find out what biochemical and cellular processes were involved with the hopes that we might be able to use the findings to help other amputees. If nothing obvious showed up in the initial tests, I'd keep pushing for a scientific explanation not because I doubted the miraculous nature of the event but because I believe that God operates by manipulating natural process not magic and that if we can understand those natural process we will be better able to love and serve each other.
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A friend's dad used to make the old joke "Whenever I have a headache, I pray and take an aspirin. God clears it up every time."
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The only reason number #1 would be an option at all was if A) it was well documented that the person in question had specifically prayed to have their arm come back and B) there was some set of circumstances that could possibly explain why God had chosen to heal this one particular person's arm as opposed to all the thousands of other people of every religion who lose their arms and pray for it back to no avail.
Even then, it would awaken a curiosity, not make me a firm believer, and I'd still be heavily into option B until more information suggesting a particular God (as oppose to magic, psychic powers, aliens, etc) was responsible.
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I know Rabbit didn't actually say this*, but I'll say it because it's true. It's highly unlikely that an intellectually honest atheist whose atheism has anything to do with the verifiability of God's existence would ever believe that a miracle is legit, regardless of the evidence.
*I realize the question isn't even exclusive to atheists.
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quote:It's highly unlikely that an intellectually honest atheist whose atheism has anything to do with the verifiability of God's existence would ever believe that a miracle is legit, regardless of the evidence.
I've previously described a miracle I'd accept as legitimate. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I can search for it in a bit, but I can't justifiy wasting that much time right now when I'm supposed to be working.
If you're talking about the limb regeneration, though, can you honestly say you wouldn't still be skeptical even if you witnessed the regeneration yourself?
quote:It's highly unlikely that an intellectually honest atheist whose atheism has anything to do with the verifiability of God's existence would ever believe that a miracle is legit, regardless of the evidence.
I've previously described a miracle I'd accept as legitimate.
Was it you who suggested you would accept a controlled experiment where someone was praying for a coin to come up heads and others were flipping the coin or was that KoM?
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Not in this thread. For many, many years, I kept a sealed envelope in my closet that contained a piece of colored construction paper. Every now and then, I'd open it and transfer it to a new envelope. I figured that if God wanted to send me a message, He could write it on the construction paper by simply removing the color where appropriate, and ideally preface the first part of the message with a simple prediction of some kind.
That wouldn't prove that a God worth worshiping existed, of course, but I would accept that result as proof that someone was capable of exerting quasi-divine power.
quote:can you honestly say you wouldn't still be skeptical even if you witnessed the regeneration yourself?
You mean if I saw it grow back? *blink* Well, I'd obviously look for a scientific explanation first. And barring any other information, Occam's Razor would suggest aliens or some other form of extremely advanced technology before it'd suggest an omnipotent God. But it'd go a long way.
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Okay. I was talking about conviction, but I can agree that such experiments would "go a long way."
Though I must say witnessing limb regeneration would be a tad more convincing for me than your test as you've described it.
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Chapter 8: I agree with you that Jesus does not seem to be saying that stoning adulterers was wrong. But I think Jesus was trying to promote a passage that is also in the Old Testament.
God is more interested in repairing a soul diseased with sin, rather than simply ending their mortal sojourn. More importantly these Pharisees who sought Jesus' council in the matter of the woman's adultery had done so purely out of desire to harm. The woman's life was of no concern to them, they merely wanted to use her as a tool to get Jesus cast into prison or likely worse. At best some of the crowd accusing her cared little about the question of Jesus' stance on the Law of Moses and simply wanted to administer capital punishment. When Jesus looks up and gazes into them and says, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," this was not some statement that only the perfect can administer justice. This was an accusation towards all in the room that inside lay great sins of similar weight to the woman. As an aside some have speculated that Jesus' statement, "Let He who is without sin..." is meant to mean, "Let He who is without sin, (meaning Jesus) cast the first stone." Since Jesus declined to do so, nobody else could, being convicted by their own consciences.
As for Jesus' long discussion about how He is subject to the father and yet is the father we might be returning to old territory. Jesus doesn't delight in making things difficult to comprehend, in fact from the start of his ministry from John's account we seem him being extremely open in his declarations about who He is. It is after His initial ministerial forays that he begins to couch his language in mystery. His audience is extremely important when deciphering Christ's meaning. The disciples themselves ask Him why He suddenly begins speaking in parables. I think we should take Jesus at His word in this explanation. The Pharisees, with whom he argues with numerous times are only listening to His words so that they can cherry pick something that sounds wrong. They have no interest in being converted when faced with Jesus' miracles. Because they are corrupt in their hearts they will not believe. If you look at Jesus' arguments with the Pharisees the Pharisees almost always comment on the very last thing He says, and extrapolate it into meaning something contrary to Christ's meaning when his comments are taken as a whole concept.
We eventually find that Jesus when preaching, because there are those who want to believe and those who want to catch Him in a mistake, speaks less directly. When speaking to His disciples however, we find Jesus is often quite obvious in what he is saying. Interestingly enough the disciples often have trouble understanding Jesus because they don't want to believe the truth, for it is an awful realization. It is after the fact that we see the Apostles saying in essence, "It all makes sense now, he said that so many times and I didn't want to believe it because it was painful to think about." Matthew seems to say this the most.
Obscuring the statements in a certain way keeps the hard at heart from understanding, thus keeping them ignorant, but still permits the faithful to figure out what is being said.
The faithful folks that heard these words would have wanted to hear those statements again and tease out the meanings, while the doubters would simply go their way and not think too hard about them.
edit: By the way, the duality of Jesus' role as both the son of God and the Father is something I struggled with when I was younger, if you'd like to understand it I can certainly try to lay it out using the scriptures, (Including the Mormon canon) and my own commentary. I believe that if somebody really wants to understand this concept, and it is an essential one, the scriptures explaining the whole thing are there.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Was it you who suggested you would accept a controlled experiment where someone was praying for a coin to come up heads and others were flipping the coin or was that KoM?
Technically, this might rather prove that the people doing the praying have psychic powers, rather than that they have a god doing their bidding. But it would certainly be an extremely interesting experiment.
By the way, saying that a god 'healed' condition X by causing human doctors to work on it is just silly. Then you would also have to accept that the god 'caused' the limb loss by, say, getting human soldiers to place a land mine, or whatever the original problem was. This is just a cop-out. It also doesn't explain what was so unworthy about all those people who lost their limbs before science advanced to this stage.
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quote:By the way, saying that a god 'healed' condition X by causing human doctors to work on it is just silly. Then you would also have to accept that the god 'caused' the limb loss by, say, getting human soldiers to place a land mine, or whatever the original problem was.
This is a logical non-sequitur. The thesis that "God can cause people to perform certain acts" does not necessarily imply that God causes all human actions.
quote: It also doesn't explain what was so unworthy about all those people who lost their limbs before science advanced to this stage.
I don't know of any serious theologians who claim that God heals all those who are worthy. In all the theologies with which I am familiar, miracles are rare events which occur to serve God's purposes which we rarely fully understand.
The fact that you (or I) can't come up with a logical explanation for why God does or doesn't do something is not evidence that God didn't do it or evidence that God doesn't exist. Its a cop out.
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quote: rare events which occur to serve God's purposes
Right. So prior to, say, roughly 2008, there was no possible godly purpose to be served by healing amputees. And now there is. Curiously inconsistent for a being outside of time.
quote:This is a logical non-sequitur. The thesis that "God can cause people to perform certain acts" does not necessarily imply that God causes all human actions.
Sorry, skipped a step. To assign credit to God only for the human actions we like is clearly special pleading. I'm sure you wouldn't want to be pleading specially.
quote:The fact that you (or I) can't come up with a logical explanation for why God does or doesn't do something is not evidence that God didn't do it or evidence that God doesn't exist.
It is, actually, replacing your 'that' with 'for'. That is, the absence of such a reason makes the existence less likely, although by itself does not push the probability to zero. Just Bayes' theorem: Given the existence of a rational god, there exists some probability that a rational human would be able to understand its reasons for a given action. Given its nonexistence, the probability of being able to find a rational reason is clearly much smaller - not zero, because humans are quite good at rationalising, but smaller than the chance of finding something which really exists.
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quote:It is, actually, replacing your 'that' with 'for'. That is, the absence of such a reason makes the existence less likely, although by itself does not push the probability to zero. Just Bayes' theorem: Given the existence of a rational god, there exists some probability that a rational human would be able to understand its reasons for a given action. Given its nonexistence, the probability of being able to find a rational reason is clearly much smaller - not zero, because humans are quite good at rationalising, but smaller than the chance of finding something which really exists.
This might be a reasonable argument if we were talking about a God who wasn't infinitely smarter and more knowledgeable than all humans.
Consider for a moment the computer program you have been working with. When I've worked with codes written by someone else I frequently find myself scratching my head trying to figure out a logical reason why they did what they did. If I'm very familiar with the purpose of the code and the language and I can't find a rational explanation, its pretty likely that its not a very good piece of code. But those first two assumptions are very important.
If I were to give the code to someone who didn't know the language and didn't know the purpose of the code, the chances that they would be able to come up with a rational explanation for why a particular part of code is written a particular way become completely uncorrelated with whether or not the code was well written in the first place. The chances that they will rationalize a bad piece of coding actually become much greater than the chances that they will correctly identify the true reasoning behind a good piece of code.
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quote:This might be a reasonable argument if we were talking about a God who wasn't infinitely smarter and more knowledgeable than all humans.
Which rather assumes your conclusion! But even if that were true, the probabilities are going to be shifted by some amount, because the probability that your god has a rational reason accessible to humans is nonzero.
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quote: quote:It's highly unlikely that an intellectually honest atheist whose atheism has anything to do with the verifiability of God's existence would ever believe that a miracle is legit, regardless of the evidence.
I've previously described a miracle I'd accept as legitimate. [Smile]
I have also. But first a question: If I give God permission to change my mind, and he does so, is that a violation of free will?
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And what, out of curiosity, would be an acceptable miracle for you?
To clarify, when I say 'believe" I mean believe with conviction, as in comparable to your confidence in gravity, your senses, your own ability to reason, etc. And by "legit" I mean that the miracle in question was accomplished entirely or in part through means that defy and cannot be explained by verifiable natural laws*.
As for your question, I'm a bit confused by its relevancy, but I'd say it depends on what you mean by "free will." Either way, though, I think it's a useless concept in such a scenario.
*which may or may not be presently known to us. A little wordy, perhaps, but I wanted to close any loopholes in my proposition.
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I would have said yes. Assuming by "change your mind" you mean by rearranging your neurons or something, not by persuasion.
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If I give him permission to change my state of belief, and he did so, then I would believe in God. I have given him permission to do so. It will not offend me if I suddenly believe.
I regard that as an acceptable miracle. But he hasn't taken me up on it.
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You know, I almost would. I was put on steroids once and it altered my personality. I could tell it was happening but I couldn't seem to care at the time.
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Here's the thing: a definition of free will that suggests that Prozac (and, by extension, chocolate, sex, and coffee, which work much the same way) violates it is not a definition of free will which permits free will to exist.
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