| > Equally, if there is no Good or Evil, just physical/chemical/quantum reactions in a purely mechanical universe, then equally, screw everything. Do whatever makes the happy-chemicals in your brain do their thing. This strikes me as extremely flawed reasoning, creating a false dichotomy between ${religion} and nihilism. You don't need absolutes to exist in order for a concept to be meaningful. "Absolute Good" may be a contradiction in terms but that doesn't mean you can't judge whether something is good or bad (or make a more nuanced argument for why some aspects are good or bad in some ways). The same way as you don't need "absolute wet" to exist in order to judge whether something is wet or dry. It's also a common parlor trick to talk about "evil" instead of "bad" as the antithesis of "good". Evil implies intent. But very few people would think of themselves as intentionally evil and take joy in that. Practically speaking "evil" is another way to say "sinful" and "sin" is a concept that only exists in religion because in most cases it describes genuinely "victimless crimes" as "crimes against God", specific religious codes of conduct that are imposed without a logical underpinning (e.g. "don't wear mixed fabrics" but also "don't kill people"). Religious morals generally don't care about good and bad, they care about adherence to a set of strict but arbitrary rules. Moderates in most religions pick and chose which rules are the "important" ones but they tend to base those decisions on social norms that have formed in the broader context their religion exists in, not some "inner truth" or unbiased intuition. So in other words: "evil" is a distraction. It's how you perceive something but it says nothing about intent or cause. You can call someone an evil person, sure, but they don't get out of bed thinking "I'm so evil, I'm going to do a lot of evil things today", they just act in ways that actively harm people either out of disregard for other people's well-being or far more often out of a conflicting idea of what is or isn't harmful (or only empathising with a very narrow subset of the people they affect). |
Possibly, sorry about that. I guess I've expressed it a bit extreme there - but even toned down, I still feel (yeah, feel. goodbye reason...) that there's some truth to the concept...
Defining "goodness" is difficult. There's a whole bunch of different attempts - logical positivism, utilitarianism, etc, but to me all of them eventually boiled down to some kind of "do whatever makes the happy-chemicals in your brain do their thing...". At some point you have to decide which other non-you-beings you want to compromise with, and which physical/chemical urges you want to cultivate, and which balance between longer-term-goals and instant gratification you want to achieve. Keeping humanity alive, wiping ourselves out to allow other species to survive better for a few more thousand years until something cosmic wipes us all out... It doesn't really make any difference in the end.
> You don't need absolutes to exist in order for a concept to be meaningful. <snip> The same way as you don't need "absolute wet" to exist in order to judge whether something is wet or dry.
Absolutely.
But some kind of definition of wetness, or dryness is probably helpful. :-)
>It's also a common parlor trick to talk about "evil" instead of "bad" as the antithesis of "good". Evil implies intent.
Ah, yes. I guess I'm not really using the right terminology at the moment. Terminology is complicated.
I guess so there should be a scale of "good occurances" and "bad occurances", with evil being intention of bad occurances? But to whom? Is a prison guard commanded to hurt his prisoners intending bad occurances to his prisoners, but intending good for his family being provided for? Is there any way to define whether hurting someone is good or bad? You could argue surgery or chemotherapy is very specifically hurting people with the intention of good for them later... But genocide has been justified under the same argument - but on a societal level. Is there any way to define which things are good, or bad?
I believe there is Good, and anti-good. And I believe that there is a being beyond of our limited perspective, God, who cares about that, and wants us to aim for Good, and if we're willing, will help us in that direction.
> Religious morals generally don't care about good and bad, they care about adherence to a set of strict but arbitrary rules.
Sad, but true.
However, from how I've read the bible, I don't think that's how God (if there is a God) really wants it to be. And if there is a God, and if that's all they care about, they're really not worth caring about.