by cofty 210 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The secular definition you're using.
Explain to me in a scientific way why humans are the only specie to perceive evil.
Tell me about the evolutionary mechanisms involved in this unique feature in humans.
What exactly is the evolutionary advantage of perceiving evil?
If possible show me "fossils" or traces in the minds of other species of animals that evolved to our consciousness.
LoveUniHateExams3 minutes agoBTW no other species have consciousness at all - are you sure?
Please explain how you know this.
Are you saying to me that you lunch every day a conscious being just like you?
I think humans in your menu is just fine.
John Mann
Evil is a human construct. We invented the term and have provided various definitions time and time again. As I said before, these concepts and definitions are created to try to improve the collaboration efforts of humans, which ultimately advance our survival rate. Bad "morality" is that which reduces our survival, and good "morality" is that which improves our survival. Staying alive is the purpose.
Consciousness? we will get there, if we live long enough. The "help" from the Bible turned so useless in many simple cases that it would be pointless to try to use it in this complex quest.
The problem - sometimes referred to as the Euthyphro dilemma - was identified by Plato when he posed the question of "whether the gods love the pious because it is the pious, or whether the pious is pious only because it is loved by the gods". If god commands good things because they are intrinsically good then goodness exists independent of god and we can discover moral truth without him. If on the other hand things are good because god commands them then morality is not based on anything other than god's unpredictable whims.
I'm glad to see you've been reading Plato, Cofty. I've been banging on about his excellent philosophy for years on this forum. Euthyphro is one of his best dialogues about the ethical dilemma of a man taking his father to court for letting his slave die tied up in a ditch. There is so much discussion in that dialogue on what it means to be a good person. This from a man, Socrates, who is famously executed because he doesn't believe in the gods.
What we actually see is theists sanctifying ethical positions they arrived at by other means, claiming that their opinions reflect the goodness of god.
Yes exactly, five hundred years before Jesus the Greek philosophers were discussing what it means to be a moral person. Confucius and others introduced the Golden Rule (treat others as you would be treated) at around the same time. Theists have hijacked their ideas and ascribed them to a deity
Are you saying to me that you lunch every day a conscious being just like you? - no, I was simply asking how you know that other species besides Homo sapiens don't have 'consciousness' (I think you may mean 'higher consciousness' or sentience).
Some anthropologists either believe or have reached the tentative conclusion that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) used fire, cooked food, buried their dead ritualistically, etc.
“whether the gods love the pious because it is the pious, or whether the pious is pious only because it is loved by the gods”
Actually, there is no dilemma:
God cannot love the pious because they are pious because this would mean He loves only those of His sort which in itself is evil.
The pious and the impious attract appropriate rewards in such a way that the pious would feel inspired to continue his pious acts and the impious would feel pressurized to discontinue his impious acts.
Thus both the pious and the impious are loved by God.
Evil is a human construct.
Evil is subjective? A social construct?
Why we build prisons then? Or why we have judges?
How is possible to create a civilization with this idea of "evil is just an opinion"?
Do you accept you and your family being killed just because some random guy thinks is OK in his mind to do some killing?
Welcome to Islam !
In the past I would look at suffering in the world and pray for others. Now I just send a donation to Mercy Corps.
Welcome to Islam!
The concepts of God introduced by Islam and the Protestants (and their Sola Scriptura) are so awful that atheism is the only logical conclusion to them.
Catholicism is the only system that have logical internal consistency.
Interesting almost every (neo) atheist arguments always deals with the Sola Scriptura approach. Atheists quote Bible just like the Protestants.
