Good and Evil

[Wayfarer]

Is there such a thing as "justifiable evil" Can you commit evil intentionally to further a cause for a greater good?

Ethics, like software, abhors recursion. ]: )
http://www.ubersoft.net/d/20030324.html

Besides, it's impossible anyway.
http://www.ubersoft.net/d/20030328.html

[Lizra]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
BTW, IR and others who favor the 'preservation of species'-type explanation for things, what do you think of the following scenario?


I quite like to target shoot, but paper targets get boring. Hmm, let me think of a place where there's lots of people - say, India. I get on a plane with my husband's .22 rifle (the one immortalized in the Entmooter picture links photo) and my lovely 23-pound recurve bow and some arrows and head to India. I go over to some place where there's lots of little babies and consider - let's see, I think if I pick off 100, that certainly wouldn't cause the human species to die out. So I kill 100 babies - or better yet, maybe toddlers - hey, babies are too easy of a target - let me now go and pick off 100 toddlers for a bit more of a challenge. Hey, what a nice day - I had some target practice, had fun, and our species is still going to survive - hey, I probably even improved the quality of life for the locals because there will be less demand for the already scanty resources!

Now, regardless of whether or not I get caught - was what I did ok with you guys? Was it right or wrong, or does right/wrong not apply?

It was wrong. But a "moral code" instilled by a divine being didn't tell me this.(IMO) My intelligence did. Human intelligence has taken countless millions of years to develop, and is far too complicated to explain in a nutshell. (even if we did understand it all! ) As tempting as it is to say we behave a certain way because a "moral code" was planted in our brain (or wherever!) by an all knowing creator, I don't buy it. I believe saying an "all knowing God" gave us a moral code is an easier way to explain and come to grips with something that is almost beyond comprehension. (The human animal and the evolving of species over eons of time ). We are not comfortable with not understanding everything, (hence all the many religions of the world today and in times past.) but that doesn't change the way things are. I guess I was really impressed by my science classes!

[Cirdan]

Evil is the natural state of existence. Good is an attempt to ameliorate this state. We can feed the hungry but there will always be hunger. We can punish the killers but there will always be murder. Violence is the way problems are negotiated when there is no use or faith in morality.

[Wayfarer]

How does your intellegience tell you when something is wrong?

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by Wayfarer
How does your intellegience tell you when something is wrong?

My intelligence has been conditioned by my environment to make a subjective value judgement. It cannot know enough to "tell" me the absolute truth. Some judgements are just more correlated by concensus than others.

[Wayfarer]

Evil is the natural state of existence. Good is an attempt to ameliorate this state. We can feed the hungry but there will always be hunger. We can punish the killers but there will always be murder. Violence is the way problems are negotiated when there is no use or faith in morality.

But as lewis asks- if evil is the natural state of existance, how do we feel it's bad?

In a universe with no light, we wouldn not know that there was know light, because we would not know what light was. If there was no sound, we would know realize it because we would not be able to hear. If humanity had /never/ been hungry, then we would have no comprehension of what it was to hunger.
It's impossible to visualize a universe with anything other than the three visible dimensions we see around us, although we theoretically admit that such a universe could exist.

Why then, if humans are naturally in an evil state, to we try to ameliorate it? How do we even know that anything else is possible?

Perhaps because we weren't made for this kind of life after all?

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I'm not quite clear, Wayfarer: are you saying that mankind is not naturally evil, or "fallen"?

[Cirdan]

Natural does not equate to desirable. The common desire to be safe from murder drives humans to rationalize a potential state of cooperation that discourages murder. Evil is undesirable in pain, discomfort, fear, sadness, etc.; all the natural responses that would define an event as evil that would provide a commonality upon which to build a concensus. Evil events certainly occur among organisms incapable of establishing a concensus (lacking communication) of what is evil.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Of course not. I wasn't saying THAT.

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by Gwaimir Windgem
Of course not. I wasn't saying THAT.

I was responding to Wayfarer's post. Yours seemed directed to him specifically as well.

But on your point, from a theological point, I guess fallen w9ould apply to Adam and Eve, but unless sinfulness and evil do not correlate, then man is evil from birn, without guidance.

Outside the theological perspective the "fallen" aspect has no meaning, except that at some point humans discovered/developed the capacity for consciously "evil" behavior. From that time they could be said to be "fallen" from innocence.

That leaves the question, however, as to whether it was a fully human being that made this discovery.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
That sounds rather like Deism, which was disproved by Quantum Mechanics. We now know that at the smallest level, everything is chance. Like Deism, you're saying that if you know where everything is at a specific point in time, you can predict everything else because of mathematics or other things.

uh well what little I know about deism is that its basically the idea that god may have started things but thats about it and theres no point in religion at all. Quantum mechanics disproved that? But I had no idea there was a mathematical portion to deism nor do i follow it at all. I was just speaking from scientific theory and evidence only.

If I believed in that theory, then I could go and rape someone and say that I was forced to do it. I had no choice; it was bound to be.

Then you would either be killed by an angry father/husband/significant other or you would be caught and jailed for doing something that goes against our instinct driven moral code. Either way it would be a lot less likely that you would pass on your genes and new humans wouldnt be born with the genetic trait you had of being able to rape without guilt or fear or compulsion. So it would work perfectly with my theory.

I really am convinced that I have a choice in whether or not I am going to do what is broadly considered to be an evil deed.

The complexity of the hardwiring here makes it hard to see that. What you need to do is look at this from the point of view of your genes (your selfish genes) not you as an individual. The question is always what benefits your genes in the long run. You have been hardwired with the compulsion to avoid what we are calling "acts of evil" because it benefits your genes on average in the long run and it benefits the population as well. You DO however have the ABILITY to kill or rape when its necessary (necessary on a biological level). If you didnt then when it was really necesary to your survival you would not survive. So the ability is there. But the INSTINCTUAL compulsion against is very strong.

I agree that an individual's background, and what led up to the point he's at when confronted by a decision of whether to do evil or not, is influential in his choice. I don't agree that those things are all there is to it, that it's all worked out and that you have no choice in the matter. On the contrary, what your background does is it biases you one way or another. It makes it so that you already have a predisposition to go for one course of action, but it doesn't have anything to do with making the decision for you.

the logic is complex to be sure. but your background (or cultural experience which is another word for population specific learned behavior) is a reinforcement of your innate hardwiring.

Unfortunately though, here we get off of common ground, for that's where the soul comes in.

yes I definitely diverge there. i get on a different bus at that point called Science.

However, that doesn't really answer the question C.S. Lewis brought up.

Ill have to have a look at that again. I cant really remember it now. Which one of those big posts had the actual question in it?

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
(IOW, no offense, but I think what YOU wrote is very "contrived"). Do you really think that is typically what goes thru people's heads every time they consider whether or not to go thru with an action?

no not at all. thats the point. its NOT concious. its hard wired. its instinct at its very base. its just smothered and hidden by overtly cognitive self awareness so we see it as always OUR choice. And we never stop to trace the steps back. You are right. If we had to sit and think over evey choice (even if it meant checking on some moral law dictated by an outside source) then we would be long dead by now because some big animal would have eaten us all. But if we have a nearly automatic system based on the light speed firing of neurons from and to our brain well we have a better chance of survival. Time is everything in nature!

If a moral law guided our every choice in life then why is it we are only talking about killing and raping? there are so many things in the bible described as "moral" many of which are completely ignored. Just look at the 10 commandments. Most people are ok with one or two or three but the rest are considered intrusive at best and antiquated and rediculous at worse. So if god has simply given us moral laws somewhere in our head to control our actions why hasnt he uploaded all of the ones in the bible?

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
BTW, IR and others who favor the 'preservation of species'-type explanation for things, what do you think of the following scenario?


I quite like to target shoot, but paper targets get boring. Hmm, let me think of a place where there's lots of people - say, India. I get on a plane with my husband's .22 rifle (the one immortalized in the Entmooter picture links photo) and my lovely 23-pound recurve bow and some arrows and head to India. I go over to some place where there's lots of little babies and consider - let's see, I think if I pick off 100, that certainly wouldn't cause the human species to die out. So I kill 100 babies - or better yet, maybe toddlers - hey, babies are too easy of a target - let me now go and pick off 100 toddlers for a bit more of a challenge. Hey, what a nice day - I had some target practice, had fun, and our species is still going to survive - hey, I probably even improved the quality of life for the locals because there will be less demand for the already scanty resources!

Now, regardless of whether or not I get caught - was what I did ok with you guys? Was it right or wrong, or does right/wrong not apply?

This is an easy one. See my example above to lief about raping people. killing children is an especially big taboo in our species because our INSTINCT to protect our helpless children is very strong. Why? because they carry our genes!! And our genes rule our world. So the instinct to protect them is paramount. Killing babies like that would result in a mob of people tearing you to shreads no doubt causing two things: you dont pass on your baby killing genes anymore and people are shown by example that this kind of action is extremely dangerous to do. So those who might consider it dont do it. you didnt improve the life for the people whos children you killed because you threw away all the investment and energy that put into bonding with a mate and producing and reering their child (their little gene carrier). In nature its very difficult to recover from something like that. Too much energy must be expended . so the logical thing is to kill the being who does such a thing thus extinguising their genes from the population. and in this way you are selected against. and less baby killers are born.

[Elvellyn]

But if you kill all the babies before they have a chance to be born then you are also a baby killer.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Elvellyn
But if you kill all the babies before they have a chance to be born then you are also a baby killer.

Was that a comment about abortion or what?

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I'm pretty sure it was.

[Cirdan]

What if you kill hundreds of innocent women and children while liberating millions of others? Are those immoral acts ameliorated by the greater good? The bible says not to kill in the ten commandments, but then it approves of killing in many other circumstances. Why then is the the statement "thou shalt not kill" so unambiguously clear? Simple ideas have a more universal appeal as a basic truth, yet the reality is much more complicated.

[Elvellyn]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
Was that a comment about abortion or what?

Well I didn't mean it to sound like that. I was just commenting on your interesting logic that as a solution to killing babies you...kill babies.

Back to the original topic: If there was no evil then good would have no opposite paralell and wouldn't really be good it would just...be.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Elvellyn
Well I didn't mean it to sound like that. I was just commenting on your interesting logic that as a solution to killing babies you...kill babies.

Back to the original topic.....

wait wait come back here you. I didnt suggest killing babies. I said thats a major taboo. Rian is the one who wants to kill babies.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally posted by Cirdan
What if you kill hundreds of innocent women and children while liberating millions of others? Are those immoral acts ameliorated by the greater good? The bible says not to kill in the ten commandments, but then it approves of killing in many other circumstances. Why then is the the statement "thou shalt not kill" so unambiguously clear? Simple ideas have a more universal appeal as a basic truth, yet the reality is much more complicated.

Actually, I'm almost certain that the word translated "kill" there means "murder" or something equivalent. I just installed QuickVerse a couple of days ago, lemme see if I can find out.

A primitive root; properly to dash in pieces, that is, kill (a human being), especially to murder