Religion vs Atheism Book 2

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

Acutually, reading asuages boredom as does your gameplay.  Boredom is "bad" and as such shouldn't exist in your ideal universe thus you'd never feel an impetus to read or play.  Your game would be awefully boring if you couldn't lose, a "bad" outcome, wouldn't it.  To go back to your last example of enjoying a meal, to eat you need to feel "hunger" a "bad" sensation.  Wouldn't hunger need to cease to exist in your ideal universe where nothing "bad" can happen?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

OAR,

 

But... what I think most faiths are attempting to do is give all of us their best guess as to God's purpose which we all fail to grasp more than a smidgen of.  As such, being human and fallable we screw it up.  What I hear you saying is that if we can't further that purpose in perfect lockstep with God's plan we should abandon any attempts to try as the efforts are pointless whether God exists or not?

Is that correct?

This is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that when faiths give their "best guesses" (very often they are not posed as guesses, but as Truth) about God, commonly he is held to be omnipotent and benevolent. Certainly this is the case with Christianity. Many object that this idea of God poses a contradiction, expressed as the problem of evil. It's an ancient objection, but there is still no satisfying answer to it.

I believe conceptions of God as omnipotent and benevolent can be logically ruled out as impossibilities, contradictions in their own terms. There are other ideas about God(s) that are not contradictory in their own terms, and so are still possibilities, though I still see no reason to believe in them- when you say you believe in God but you don't think we know anything about his aims, that falls under this.

[TrueMetis]

TM,

Acutually, reading asuages boredom as does your gameplay.  Boredom is "bad" and as such shouldn't exist in your ideal universe thus you'd never feel an impetus to read or play.  Your game would be awefully boring if you couldn't lose, a "bad" outcome, wouldn't it.  To go back to your last example of enjoying a meal, to eat you need to feel "hunger" a "bad" sensation.  Wouldn't hunger need to cease to exist in your ideal universe where nothing "bad" can happen?

Your definition of bad is far broader than mine. Neither boredom nor the ability to lose are things I consider bad at least no enough to apply here. They're annoyances at worst, and sometimes "losing" a game or sitting around bored can be quite enjoyable. And I disagree that you need to feel hunger to enjoy a meal. The contrast may add to the feeling however. My ideal universe is one without poverty, starvation, disease, murder, rape, etc. Boredom isn't on the list neither is a state where I always win games.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

Annoyances are "bad" things.  You are now niggling over matters of degree.  Are you saying that you wouldn't consider God cruel or capricious if "annoyances" existed but what you define as "bad" did not?  Consider that in world where the worst "bad" things are "annoyances" I suspect you would define God as cruel or capricious for allowing those things to exist because in that world those would be the worst things you could experience in comparison to your moments of joy and delight. 

[TrueMetis]

TM,

Annoyances are "bad" things.  You are now niggling over matters of degree.  Are you saying that you wouldn't consider God cruel or capricious if "annoyances" existed but what you define as "bad" did not?

Of course I'm niggling over matters of degree, cause I didn't think for one second we we're doing something as pointless as talking about a world were all subjectively bad things were gone. Something that is impossible if we want to live in a world with other people. Which itself would make in not an ideal world for many people. I probably should have suspected however when you and Ritso started saying ideal world though. Either way we've expanded far beyond the scope of the original question.

 Consider that in world where the worst "bad" things are "annoyances" I suspect you would define God as cruel or capricious for allowing those things to exist because in that world those would be the worst things you could experience in comparison to your moments of joy and delight. 

Suspect all you want, you still haven't proven your premise.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

Suspect all you want, you still haven't proven your premise.

 

Okay, why wouldn't that be true?

[TrueMetis]

Scot, do you not understand burden of proof?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

You're avoiding a difficult point by claiming I haven't "proven" my premise.  You are claiming "good" has a value unto itself indepenent of a compairsion with "bad".  I've pointed out for each of your examples how your "good" feeling is complemented and compaired to a matching "bad" feeling at which point you claimed those feelings weren't "bad".  

As such let me address your claims thia way, If you are bored or hungery would you like to stay that way?  If you have the ability to asuage boredom or hunger will you take it?

[TrueMetis]

TM,

You're avoiding a difficult point by claiming I haven't "proven" my premise.  You are claiming "good" has a value unto itself indepenent of a compairsion with "bad".  I've pointed out for each of your examples how your "good" feeling is complemented and compaired to a matching "bad" feeling at which point you claimed those feelings weren't "bad".  

And you've claimed that good requires bad, fucking prove it.

ETA: and none of your points actual disprove my claim. Blue and orange contrast, and together they make each other seem more distinct. Blue would still however exist without orange.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

Good exists as a positive point on a spectrum.  If the spectrum doesn't exist then "good" doesn't exist because every point is like every other point emotionally.  The opposite point on that spectrum whether it stops at annoyance is "bad" compaired to "good" as such if annoyance is the worst point on the spectrum from "good" it is still bad as it exists on that spectrum.

[TrueMetis]

TM,

Good exists as a positive point on a spectrum.  If the spectrum doesn't exist then "good" doesn't exist because every point is like every other point emotionally.  The opposite point on that spectrum whether it stops at annoyance is "bad" compaired to "good" as such if annoyance is the worst point on the spectrum from "good" it is still bad as it exists on that spectrum.

I don't think so, anymore than if you cut blue, indigo, and violet off the colour spectrum we'd start calling the end of green violet and shift everything over.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

TM,

I fundamentally disagree.  Without something unpleasant to compair to the "good" all experiences are emotionally identical.

[Altherion]

Again so? Why is this a problem? The world would be different, so fucking what?

Well, I point out the Leprocy example because he had no qualms about curing that disease.  He just refused to use a method that would scale effectively.  So, why would he chose to do that: out and out cure a disease for a handful of sufferers, but not tell people about the steps needed to effectively control the disease?  Hell, why would he cure the disease and allow the person he cured to walk back into the same conditions where he got the disease in the first place.

You can ask "Where do you stop?" if you want, but clearly that was not a stopping point for Jesus.  Where he did stop on curing Lepers seems to have been right where human knowledge stopped (at the time the books were written, decades after the time Jesus was purported to be around.)  

The reason to perform miracles, but not reveal the knowledge that would allow them to scale is obvious: it demonstrates his nature without rocking the boat. A few lepers cured or some water turned to wine or even a few people raised from the dead (which, incidentally, is still far beyond human knowledge today -- at least when the individual in question has been dead for four days at room temperature) is not going to make any difference in the grand scheme of things.

On the other hand, the other question as well as the comment from TrueMetis above are equivalent to what, in my opinion, is the most interesting single question in existence: why is the universe as it is? It's not a matter of free will -- human beings behaving badly certainly make things worse, but most of the problems would remain even without that. Our universe allows consciousness... but just barely and not for long. It's not at all obvious why it had to be this way; to paraphrase the poem, why fasten a soul to a dying animal? Death is an intrinsic part of the universe; even if we were able to rewrite DNA to the point of eliminating aging and disease, we would merely have delayed the inevitable (albeit by a few orders of magnitude longer than what we currently get). There are many possible answers to this questions, but I don't think there is one on which people agree.

[Kindly Old Man]

TM,

I fundamentally disagree.  Without something unpleasant to compair to the "good" all experiences are emotionally identical.

No. Without unpleasantness you can still distinguish between degrees of goodness and different types of good things. Say we have two scenarios. In Scenario A, on some days I can afford a burger and on some days I starve. In Scenario B, on some days I can afford a burger and on some days I can afford steak. Scenario B is absolutely better than Scenario A, with no bad option whatsoever. People in Scenario B may come to consider burger days "bad" days, but that doesn't make it so.

[DireWolfSpirit]

OAR,

 

 

OAR,

I don't think we have any real idea what God is or what God's purposes are and that all we have, at the end of the day, are our best guesses.  I don't believe we are capable of understanding God's purposes.  I'll go further and say that if we could, we would be God.  As for why a diety chose not to heal all illnesses and allow us to exist in a perfect idil we cannot understand the full purposes of a being that far beyond us but I do think their is value in attempting to try to understand.  

Wherein do you get faith in such an entities existence though? Because the only difference in this and agnosticism is your faith in that existence.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

No. Without unpleasantness you can still distinguish between degrees of goodness and different types of good things. Say we have two scenarios. In Scenario A, on some days I can afford a burger and on some days I starve. In Scenario B, on some days I can afford a burger and on some days I can afford steak. Scenario B is absolutely better than Scenario A, with no bad option whatsoever. People in Scenario B may come to consider burger days "bad" days, but that doesn't make it so.

KOM,

Again, as it is on a spectrum and we are postulating a Universe were nothing "bad" can happen and as such there is nothing "terrible" to compare your "only able to afford a burger" scenario the fact that it is "less pleasant" makes it "bad" in comparison to "can afford a steak" as that is the only "less pleasant" experience that can take place.  It's "less pleasant" aspect is amplified by its position on the negative end of the spectrum and as such would be "bad" in such a scenario.  

Finally, "good" and "bad" emotional experiences always contain a degree of subjectivity, a vegan would likely find only top grade steak being offered for dinner a "bad" experience, for example.  

Your entire hypothetical necessarily retains memories of a world where real hunger exists for you to say "a burger isn't as bad as going hungry so while less pleasant than a steak it is more pleasant than being hungry."  That comparison can't be made in a world where nothing "bad" can happen.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Wherein do you get faith in such an entities existence though? Because the only difference in this and agnosticism is your faith in that existence.

 

DWS,

Are you asking where my faith comes from, empirically?  That's rather a contradiction in terms.  

If you are asking more specfically what my faith is beyond the existence of God suffice to say it is more elaborate and personal than I represent here... but I'm not trying to convert you or anyone else to my faith.

[The guy from the Vale]

Scott,

but can't we try to draw a line between objective (or at least intersubjectively agreed on) badness compared to subjective? I.e., can't we discern ethics from aesthetics? Whether you get a burger or a steak is a question of your own subjective experience, but it is more aesthetic than ethical a question. On the other hand, going hungry is ultimately an ethical issue, because it will do you measurable harm and can in the long term kill you, which doesn't just affect you and your subjective experience, but also all those around you, in ways the question between burger and steak simply can't (unless one of the two is poisoned, anyway).

I think most people who argue that a good god should eradicate badness don't advocate for an erasure of aesthetical badness, but ethical badness. And unnecessary pain, suffering and disease should be ethical issues for an almighty being, particularly one also claiming to be the ultimately good being.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Scott,

but can't we try to draw a line between objective (or at least intersubjectively agreed on) badness compared to subjective? I.e., can't we discern ethics from aesthetics? Whether you get a burger or a steak is a question of your own subjective experience, but it is more aesthetic than ethical a question. On the other hand, going hungry is ultimately an ethical issue, because it will do you measurable harm and can in the long term kill you, which doesn't just affect you and your subjective experience, but also all those around you, in ways the question between burger and steak simply can't (unless one of the two is poisoned, anyway).

I think most people who argue that a good god should eradicate badness don't advocate for an erasure of aesthetical badness, but ethical badness. And unnecessary pain, suffering and disease should be ethical issues for an almighty being, particularly one also claiming to be the ultimately good being.

tgftv,

Ethical v. Aesthetic "badness".  Interesting.  

To a Vegan is eating a steak or burger ethically or aesthetically "bad"?  To a Fruitarian is eating a picked fruit or grain ethically or aesthetically "bad"? To someone in an assetic order or lifestyle is hunger ethically or asthetically "bad"?  To a person from a warrior culture is killing someone in combat ethically or aesthetically "bad"?  What is "nessecary" v. "unnessecary" pain?  Isn't that question inherently subjective?

You are positing an objective standard of "bad" when I don't see such.  "Bad" is largely dependent upon context and culture as far as I can tell.

[Kindly Old Man]

KOM,

Again, as it is on a spectrum and we are postulating a Universe were nothing "bad" can happen and as such there is nothing "terrible" to compare your "only able to afford a burger" scenario the fact that it is "less pleasant" makes it "bad" in comparison to "can afford a steak" as that is the only "less pleasant" experience that can take place.  It's "less pleasant" aspect is amplified by its position on the negative end of the spectrum and as such would be "bad" in such a scenario.  

Finally, "good" and "bad" emotional experiences always contain a degree of subjectivity, a vegan would likely find only top grade steak being offered for dinner a "bad" experience, for example.  

Your entire hypothetical necessarily retains memories of a world where real hunger exists for you to say "a burger isn't as bad as going hungry so while less pleasant than a steak it is more pleasant than being hungry."  That comparison can't be made in a world where nothing "bad" can happen.

 

Again, no.  Just because you decide to redefine what "bad" means doesn't mean something is actually bad.  Say we rate all experiences on a scale , where 0 is totally neutral, -100 is extremely painful, and 100 is extremely pleasant.  You're acting as if we need the existence of negative numbers to be able to distinguish between the positive numbers, when that plainly isn't the case. If I need people to be starving to be able to appreciate my burger (or veggie burger), that just makes me a dick.  It doesn't make the burger bad.