Elevating the Concept Above the Physical:The Mechanics of True Evil
Offline One of the reasons why I stopped debating with Christians, or any other theist from the Abrahamic camp, is that once you establish the belief system and worldview, the impasse pops up immediately and the theist's true reason for debating in the first place, which is proselyltizing, becomes transparent and the debate goes nowhere and degenerates into ad hominem attacks and name calling. I've learned what I came to learn on these forums in debate and thus any further banter will become repetitious and boring.
That said, I believe I have isolated the faulty logic that is present in both theistic and some atheistic worldviews, which have led not only to historical atrocities such as genocide, but also to a mistaken viewpoint of who and what is really to blame in these psycho/socio mechanics.
Let's look at the extremes of both atheist and theist camps which have come under the most criticism as well as the claims and blames. Christians have made the erroneous claim that atheism,materialism,scientism and the like are amoral and thus lead to a social breakdown of morality. They cite the atrocities of communist regimes as well as what they perceive as a breakdown in western society's morality since around WW2, with their chief complaints being the changes seen in human sexuality, the acceptance of homosexuality and abortion being their most forefront complaints.
I've debated these issues with some of the most educated theologians and they all, without exception cite the study of meta ethics and are quick to assert that morality is not biological as scientific evidence shows, but something "non material". They assert that morals are objective concepts and any other worldview that doesn't share this is simply looking for an excuse to escape accountability.
Well once that is said, the best thing to do here is agree to differ and move on. Jean Chauvin once posted that the Christian starts with the ideas and concepts and moves from there with his reasoning and interpretation of evidence, yet the atheist starts with "rocks" and continues his bumbling quest and erroneous conclusions. Apparently as I will show, some atheists also start with concepts and ideas and act on them accordingly.
Let's compare two worldviews which everyone will agree were responsible for many of history's atrocities: The Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and The Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Both of these worldviews elevated their non material concept above the physical thing or action it represented. The Communist Manifesto states that "everything is right (moral) if it promotes the cause of communism." This was what made the Cold War so difficult, for how can any agreement be struck with a regime that believes this? In the theistic mind, this was proof that an atheistic/materialist worldview was morally dangerous. Now look at the Inquisition. People were tortured in some of the most creative and henious ways for a non material cause (The Gospel of Christ) and so torture,murder,rape and the like were "justified" because, it was believed that physical torture was unimportant, if it brought about confession and conversion. Ironically, we see this same tactic used in Communist China.
So in conclusion, it wasn't atheism that led to the atrocities of Bolshevism, but the elevation of the cause, the non material concept above the human being or the action, and it wasn't necessarily Christianity that led to the atrocities of the Inquisition, but the elevation of the cause, the non material concepts of conversion to the Gospel that led to the misplaced priorities that resulted in atrocities.
In one of my last debates, one apologist admitted to me that, "biological morality based on evolution and natural selection (BTW, this apologist wasn't a creationist) might make sense from a scientific point of view, but its a train wreck philosophically." Since when does reality depend on philosophy?
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
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Best analogy I ever read was from "Mistakes were made but not by me", a fantastic book on self-justification.
You are on the top of a pyramid and choosing which way to descend is not a big deal. If you change your mind, it it only a few steps to select a different path down. But once you are at the base, it is a long, long way around to the other side.
Same here, one little step, then another, and so on until you are so far down the path that admitting you made a wrong turn would be catastrophic - if for nothing else, for your self-image.
Yeah, I have no patience with philosophy, either, though I did take a couple of classes in part to help me with some of the debates on this forum.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Similarly, evolutionists and supporters of Intelligent Design Creationism have highlighted the principle of methodological naturalism in debates as being the ‘focal point’ of their arguments. Creationists have accused scientists of being ‘prejudiced and dogmatic’ and most of their intense criticism has been towards the ‘self-imposed limitations’ of scientific methodology.
Responding to creationist arguments, scientists and philosophers have pointed out that science is neutral with respect to the supernatural but creationists have exploited the ‘philosophical flaws’ stated above, accusing the scientists of escaping accountability.
To counter this, provisory methodological naturalism meets the problem head on. By insisting that supernatural/metaphysical claims don’t fall beneath the reach of science, it argues they’ve failed simply because natural explanations have a good track record and supernatural/metaphysical explanations don’t. The success of naturalism shows it’s not just a leap of faith but the underlying reality of the universe?
Oh, but Peggotty, you haven't given Mr. Barkis his proper answer, you know.
Charles Dickens
One thing that has always reached impasse with me is that people who insist on elevating the non material AND have a background in philosophy believe that philosophies such as those expounded by Kant and the like can be presented as "proof" or "evidence" as if they're quoting a mathematical theorem. They insist that rational thought and the five senses only takes one so far and when asked what else is there, they tend to go all ethereal and lapse into a diatribe on their subjective experiences as "proof", while at the same time justifying this with Kantian philosophy. Its like an educated drug addict justifying his addiction with his knowledge of chemistry.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
I think the root cause of atrocities and 'evil' is just plain old greed. Unfortunately, obtaining power and wealth has been a successful reproduction strategy for millions of years, especially for men. So we're kind of stuck with it, with men commiting most all the 'evil'.
Conflict is an inevitable outcome of population pressures and competition for resources. Animal predators will commit 'atrocities' against competitors without any religion or politics. Why should we expect humans to behave differently if we have the same pressures and competition?
If you look at the leaders of the former USSR, they really were not so much committed to any ideology, they just used Communism to increase their own power and wealth. The average citizen just went along with what they were told to believe.
If you talk to most religious people, they can't even really explain what exactly they believe or why they believe it. They will twist their religion to suite whatever they desire. So I don't think religion is a motivator. It is an effect not a cause. The real cause of 'evil' is greed and narcissism
The Taliban put on the face of being committed religious zealots. But now we learn their real motivation is to get wealthy from the Opium trade and to enslave women to make it easy to 'spread their seed'. All societies including the USA seem to be inevitable organized as small group of wealthy and powerful that use irrational religious and political ideologies to keep the unwashed masses in check.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
To: Marty Hamrick - If there is no objective morality and I assume as atheists we all agree on that, then it's inappropriate to apply our own moral values to those of history. You are diagnosing where the Inquisition and Soviet Union went wrong – they didn’t go wrong they went right, in their own terms. Who are you to now pronounce on the error of their ways?
To a medieval Christian who believed in heaven and hell, what you call the elevation of the cause was a matter of the utmost personal urgency, determining whether he forever burned in the fires of hell or sat for eternity on a cloud at God’s shoulder.
How mistaken then to apply the moral standards of our godless, individualistic, materialistic society to the values of a different age.
I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.
speaking as a humanist, we today have our own moral axioms. it's true, they have no more "eternal" or "universal" basis than any other, but we believe history shows that they are more conducive to quality of life and the happiness of the individual (and to the humanist, the individual is of fundamental importance) than those you mentioned above. that is why we do make judgments on history and why, for example, i support wholeheartedly the principle of the nuremberg trials that a human being has a duty to say no to an immoral command, even if it carries the force of law.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
Good points and much I agree on. I wouldn't call what I'm espousing to be objective morality, but perhaps a responsibility to fellow sentient beings. Sam Harris has written and spoken about this in great detail and it comes under much criticism from the religious who hold that its the moral "principal", not sentience and suffering that gives humans moral responsibility.The basic "skeleton" of moral values lie in every human being and are a product of natural selection "fine tuned" by individual cultures. If you look at what religious people most vocally object to, so called "loose sexual morals",abortion,homosexuality, i.e. actions that can be virtually inconsequential in today's world, these are the things that they use as examples of error in natural biological morality, accusing non believers of just abandoning responsibility. These memes are probably rooted in cultures where at one time the values made sense. Memes against abortion were probably born at times and places where infant mortality was very high.
So while there may be no objective moral principal, there are genetically based evolutionary imperatives programmed in every social and political animal. What I was trying to point out, and perhaps I'm not doing such a good job of making myself clear, is that elevating a principal above the physical thing it represents is as meaningless as believing that thought could produce matter.This is probably the root principal where the theist and atheist mainly disagree on.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
Then perhaps we need to look at the justifications that these greedy and "evil" men used for their acts, which is more of what I was aiming at.The common theme seems to be the end justifies the means because the principal supercedes the physical thing or person that it represents.
Right,however other animals don't need justification to their fellow animals for what they do. A colony of chimps doesn't need a propaganda campaign to sell the rest of the colony to convince them that its OK to tear the faces off of the members of the competing colony.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
I don’t think atheists are sufficiently comfortable with their own moral relativity. They’re constantly looking for some guiding moral principle, some fundamental value at the root of all ethics to provide them with a security blanket to hide the absence of God. Hence, ideas like ‘well-being’, as though that isn’t the most subjective, relativistic judgment imaginable. Atheists’ problem with moral relativism is that it puts the much lauded rights and freedoms of Western society on a par with the savage diktats of the Taliban or the Inquisition.
Thus the impetus among atheists for this type of philosophical enquiry, desperately seeking to find some rational or empirical essence for their ethics. It has its parallel in law in the concept of ‘inalienable rights’ that seek to place our moral values outside the ebb and flow of history and the wildly varying judgments of any given culture.
Instead of concentrating their efforts on justifying our ethics through rational argument, atheists should be shoring up the society that produces and protects them. Without this they will disappear like a puff of wind and we will return to the darkness of an objective theistic morality that has held sway over the world for almost all our history and in all likelihood will do so again.
I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.
well, you definitely think wrong in my case. i think moral relativity starts with reality, not with abstract principles--in fact, moral relativity is the reality, like it or not. as i've said elsewhere on this site, a good global ethic will have to be descriptive, not prescriptive. human beings do not need imaginary absolutes to govern themselves in a way that will bring the least amount of distress to their fellow humans as possible.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson
I agree. everything is relative.
I do have one qualm with the OP. The USSR was not the only one to have such a position, they were simply more honest about it. The US was just as bad, and still is. It just isn't mentioned in the constitution, presumably because the founding fathers were smart enough to let people outside the US find their own path.
The whole Cuban missile crises, for example, was provoked by the US putting missiles in Europe.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
Quite true.
I never meant to impy that the USSR was the only bad ass among us. Its just that Christians and other theists often use them as an example of the "dangers of relativistic, atheistic" morality. I got very bored with Christian/atheist debates that would try to play one upmanship on who was responsible for the most atrocities and whether or not Hitler was a Christian or an atheist. Either way it didn't matter. His religion was Nutbar.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
Logically speaking, if you start from rocks and move upward on a very tall tall ladder via the empiricial means of epistemology, several philosohical problems must be answered
1) How can you tie universals in with ROCK connotatively? Since connotative definition is not empirical but rather a-prior, you must escape the jumping ape that points his finger approach (Ostensive definition)
2) You cannot have one foot in empiricism and the other foot in Rationalism. One starts with rocks, the other starts with a-prior first principles. One starts with principles, one starts with universals. One uses experience via the senses, the other uses abstract mathematical means.
3) How can you empirically justify a rock as a universal? For this to happen, you would have to physically via experience look and observe every single rock in the entire world via empiricism. This includes the ones underground. After you observe every single rock, you can then conclude. But rocks fall from space. This would be a couple life times for rock being an empirical universal.
Thus being said, if you have trouble finding the universal for 1 thing, what about 5000 things. Like potato.
Since you start with the particlars, empiricists option time switch back and fourth from particular empiricism to universal rationalism since they keep getting stuck. mathetmatics is rational, not empirical.
Thus please reconcile this problem. Also, please explain the answer to me EMPIRICALLY. Thus you cannot write sentences in any language since the syntax, grammar, and structure of the sentence is outside of empiricism. Doing this refutes you immediately. Please justify this empirically.
4) Via a-posterior, the presuppotion is made that your senses are infalliable. Do you wear glasses or contacts? Has it not been demonstrated via magick tricks that your eyes can play tricks on you? You thus beg the question Marty. Justify the ratio level of your senses accuracy as a whole of all empiricists. My apology, you can't do ratios, you're an empiricist.
5) Thus as can be seen soon enough, your reply will be a Hegelian answer to try to reconcile Rationalism and Empiricism as synthetic approach towards argument. You will use Rationalism to justify your answer of particular empiricism.
Marty, if you write one, and only 1 sentence rationally, you're entire thread is refuted. You must justify via empiriciam. Particulars such as rocks and toads. I await for your fingers to demosntrate your foolishness by simply conveying a subject verb construct lol.
Good Luck!
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.
Respectfully,
Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).
ha-bla-bluh-bluh-bluh-blah-blah-bluh-blah-i'm a fuckin' tard=blah-blah-bluh-blah...
lol
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Typical theistic argument, avoids the question of evidence by clouding the issue with arguments on how to argue, the apologist's not so artful dodge. Defending the vapor of bogus concepts that have no grounding in physical evidence so revert back to psych/theo/philosophical gobbledegook. No wonder a lot of theists are lawyers. They make up the majority of the membership roster of Westboro Baptist Church, whom Jean probably admires.
I think I'll save this post for some of my friends who have degrees in philosophy who will get a good laugh out of it. My psychologist relative will enjoy it even more.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
( No Subject )
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// Typical theistic argument, avoids the question of evidence by clouding the issue with arguments on how to argue, the apologist's not so artful dodge. Defending the vapor of bogus concepts that have no grounding in physical evidence so revert back to psych/theo/philosophical gobbledegook. No wonder a lot of theists are lawyers. They make up the majority of the membership roster of Westboro Baptist Church, whom Jean probably admires.//
It is not a matter of debating evidence. Two opposing worldviews (Athiest v Thiest) will both interpret the same evidence differently in such a manner that supports their worldview. The athiest will say " look around the world, see there is no evidence of God". The theist will say" look around the world, there is nothing but evidence of God" They both see the same things but interpret it differently according to their world view. And so the argument is never resolved using evidence. Each worldview will always have an escape mechanism. The only way to resolution is to challenge the presupositions that create said world view. In such a debate the athiest loses because he has no solid ground or certain path to knowledge because he cannot account for immaterial absolutes like the laws of logic or the uniformity of nature which are the preconditions to intelligibility.
Actually the theist never learned how to critically analyse evidence, while the atheist did (usually).
The theist always loses on evidence because all evidence points away from them.
They lose everywhere else because they think the term immaterial has meaning (it doesn't, because they can't show anything that is immaterial. Worse, they point at the material and claim it is immaterial, just like wakawaka demonstrated), and they think things are absolute or uniform but can't prove it (because they aren't, which has been proven).
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.