Karlen and invizzy: are you one and the same person, with two identitties on this site?

It does not matter to me if you are, but to the organizars and the owner of this site it does.

Since I also have to say something about the topic: causation is inseparable by logical means from coincidental repetitions. Your choice to believe either. Nobody will ever prove it one way or another.

The best we can do is assume (not know!) that all repetitives are caused, until one or more exceptions occur. This is Topper's (?) test of scientific fallibility.

If you can't accept my proposition, so be it; I can't prove it.

Thanks to Campbell, here's one of the many versions of the North American Native deluge story:

The Earth has seen an endless rainfall. The water level rose above the land surface. Manido was hanging on to a tree branch, when he saw a beaver swimming in the water. Several days later the rain stopped, and Manido asked the beaver to go the bottom of the waters and bring him some sand. The beaver ducked, and was gone for an hour, and came up out of breath, saying he could not reach the bottom. Manido asked him to duck again. This time the beaver ducked for three hours and came up really near death by drowning, saying he saw no bottom. Manido asked him to go down once again, this time even deeper. The beaver went down, and was gone for one hour, three hours, ten hours, and never came back.

Next day the carcass of the beaver floated up. Manido paddled with his hands as he was haning on to the tree branch, over to the floating, bloated beaver. He pried the beaver's mouth open, and found three grains of sand. He threw the three grains in three directions, and they formed a smallish mound of land on the sea. He took a handful of sand, off this island, and cast it far. The island gained in size, and hew Manido walked around it. He took four handfuls of sand, and he threw it in four different directions. He started to walk around it, but nightfall came. Next morning he asked an elk, or reindeer, to run around the edge of the water, until the elk came back to him from the other direction on the shore.

The Manido waited a month, a year, a hundred years, but the elk still hadn't returned; the land the Manido made in the water was so big.

That's the worst part! She's married to my best friend, not to me. And she's better in bed than my thesaurus or my Oxford Dictionary.

"God" credible only to him/her. — 180 Proof

Reminds me of an oft-used signage in corner-shops:
"IN GOD WE TRUST. EVERYONE ELSE PAYS CASH."

I keep asking her, and she reads, beautiful, interesting, insightful, complex stories, with wonderfully loveable characters, but she reads silently, just to herself. No fun.

Yes, it's the playfulness, irreverence, and malleability, so aptly put by you, that is so endearing about Indian culture.

The tale I desribed in brief I read in one of Joseph Campbell's collections.

I would love to read Thomas King, but unfortunately I've learned to abhor reading. It irritates me. I'd rather write, which I do, but reading is really an effort, a strenuous, horrid, awful effort for me.

I guess we're all different.

The problem with native cultures is that their history has been bastardized. Now it's common knowledge and practice, that men (chiefs) are the leaders of tribes. Whereas historically North of Guatemala all tribes were patriarchal. Females decided on issues, and chiefs were only spokespersons of tribes. Men warred, but females decided when to go to war and against which other tribes.

It's just the tip of the iceberg, as, like I said, I know very, very, little about native culture.

I am actually lying. Because I know even less than that.

I found out that the creator of the world in native cultures was not the forbidding giant of a monstrous knower, judge and goodness. Tales about him abound as he was given a laxative of a kind, and he was letting it out, until it came to his chin, and he had to climb the tallest tree, while it was still coming out, and he was on the top of the tree and it finally levelled out at his chin.

A god and creator like that is absolutely more to my taste, too. And I ain't jokin'. I don't know much about native cultures, but I listened to a chief about seven years ago and it was impressive. He did take you on a wonderous journey.

I am usually very critical of responses to my post, but you hit the nail on the head on all accounts, resounding with my opinion.

Because, in a way, lions, tigers, tapeworms, and leechens together with firns and ameaobas, are all related to me by dna. The closer thread to my own dna, the more protection and help I am willing to give even by sacrifice. But the distance does not diminish my help to nothing... it's a function that gets closer to the x axis, but never touches it, as the x increases.

It depends on the moral code you follow, which rests on some founding principle.
If it's one of those whose founding principle is: "Pain bad; pleasure good", then its first moral tenet would logically be "Avoid causing pain." — Vera Mont

Yes, you are right. Each to his own ethics, that's perfectly true.

In my value system this topic you discuss belongs under the heading "empathy" and "pity", not under ethics. Ethics in my book, interestingly, is "sacrifice given by the self to promote others who will propagate the dna derivatives of the sacrifice giver."

I think you are stuck on "free will is better than no free will". That is 1. not true and 2. I don't understand why you don't consider the arguments against it, which are so very reasonable.

Maybe in your traditional upbringing it was imperative to think that, but when logic and everyone you ask says no, becasue a world with people who have no free will is the better one, then you incredulously reject all arguments, since your upbringing indeluably imprinted this free-will love for your.

Believe me, there is nothing good in free will, when in a world in which free will is the only source of evil.

perfectly benevolent god and evil world is better than less perfect or evil god and good world. — SpaceDweller

A.. maybe. B. try "benevolent god and benevolent world." You left out this permutation, for no reason at all, but maybe? in order to be able to maintain a modicum of reasonable argument.

god which gives free will is more benevolent than god which doesn't give free will. — SpaceDweller

you must substantiate this. You haven't convinced me yet that a world full of evil is better than a world with no evil.

Please substantiate the above claim.

Conclusion: pretty, shiny, benevolent sky-daddy god did not create "this place".
Therefore, Christians must have been misled.
But were they misled about the nature of the creation or the nature of the creator? — Vera Mont

Reminds me of an old joke. The teacher asks the students: "Who was the most intelligent man in history? The pupil with the right answer gets five bucks from me." Bobby says: "Donald trump." NO, Bobby, it wasn't him." Michael says, "Galileo." "No, son," says the teacher, "It wasn't Galileo." Little Moritz says, "Teach, the smartest man ever alive was Edison." "Very good, Moritz, here's the five dollar for you. Now tell us, why he was the smartest." Moritz looks at the teacher, and says, "Teach, both of us know the most intelligent guy ever was Moses; but business is business."

Similarly, the squeeky clean, shiny god is known by everyone as a mean, vicious bastard; but we also know that we have no chance left with a mean vicious bastard unless we call him the best of adjectives we can ever muster.

just go out ask 10 random people "would you like your free will to be taken away from you?" — SpaceDweller

They would say "no, I don't want it taken away from me", but if I explain to them that a world of love, harmony, pleasure, abundance of good things and happiness is possible and everlasting in that world, then I'm sure they will say "sure, take that thing away from me."

you would be a slave of god. — SpaceDweller

And the god that is claimed to be all benevolent, good and graceful... why would being a slave to him be bad? You've never had it so good as being a slave to god.

But if it's bad, then it's god that is evil.

No? You said that in the previous post. How can you say that this is so and in the next post deny the very same thing?

I am now totally confused by you. Now you say that truth and existence are assumptions?

isn't slavery evil? But no free will, no evil.
— god must be atheist
slavery is evil and god would be an evil god if it gave us no free will. — SpaceDweller

I think you are losing it. God is evil BECAUSE it gave us free will. He is the alpha and the omega; his creation of free will results directly in evil.


Because slavery is evil, and all evil things are the result of free will.

would you like to sing songs to god all day, wash feet of poor people, give your wealth to the poor, go to church and all this stuff without the right to complain and so all day and every day until your death?

I think this sucks so bad, I prefer free will and I'm sure a lot of other people do as well. — SpaceDweller

You have no concept of evil. Suffering. If it's suffering, it's evil. So stop complaining about the lack of free will. There are no negatives in a world that lacks free will. You can't deny that. Because all suffering is the consequence of free will.

without free will we would be 100% slaves, — SpaceDweller

isn't slavery evil? But no free will, no evil. You were adamant about that.

And there is no free will in that hypothetical world. That's one of your claims. How can evil exist without evil existing?

Now you have to decide whether life without free will is evil, or evil only exists in a world where there is free will.

because otherwise it would violate our free will. — SpaceDweller

Maybe. But that still does not negate the obvious, that god allows evil to happen, something you claimed falsely.

how is lack of free will desireable?
without free will we would be 100% slaves, no freedom no nothing. — SpaceDweller

We would still have thoughts, and pleasure; we'd all live in harmony; no evil. Isn't that what the Christian ideal of Heaven is? Free will is responsible for Evil. Isn't your idea of a good world to live without evil?

I agree with the first two sets of claims/assumptions. In that sense, like I said, God is the only one responsible (but not the committer) of evil.

In law, sometimes the responsible person is just as guilty as the committer. For instance, a woman may hire a hired gun to kill her husband. She is not guilty of murder, but she is just as responsible for his death as the assassin.

Your third set is false in the A part. "Free will is good, taking away free will is bad." Without free will there is no evil; therefore the lack of free will is desireable.

There is no good use of free will.

Therefore I don't agree with the A part of the third set.

The B part is even more false.God allows evil in the world. That is blindingly obvious. And he tolerates it, too. This B part is not good. God PUNISHES (according to the scriptures) evil, but he does not stand in the way of evil deeds. Where did you get that?

C is questionable. In the thrid section. For a creation, evil is a noun. But humans, the ones with free will, do not create an object of evility. Thay act in evil ways. Evil is not a physical entity. Creating it is not a creation of something physical.

Keeping true to this thread, you may say that evil is a concept, an abstraction, that humans create. True. But not by being evil, not by their free will. Evil as a concept is created to describe evil deeds. The very essence of evil is not an entity, but its descriptor is an entity.

Now I am even more confused in trying to understand what you say.

I'm still stuck at "Existence and something being true is synonymous". Wouldn't it be the "something being" synonymous with existence? And "true" is interchangeable with any other adjective.

In a way, the problem is that existence and something being true is synonymous. From that we get confused. — ssu

I agree with you, but I lost you at this part.

I went to the movies last night. True.

What exists here that "true" refers to? It's an assertion that "true" validates. The assertion exists? in a way yes, but if I say "i went to the beach yesterday" then it would be false and yet "false" also validates that the assertion happened, except it disagrees with it.

Right. According to the bible, Satan has free will.)

This, however, opens up another can of worms. I claim that the ultimate responsibility for sin and evil lies with god. Not that he had created it; but he created a venue in which it was possible to create evil.

God gave (and therefore first created) free will to man and to angels; and god knew it will lead to evil doings, but he still created it. He pre-knew about evil, and that it's inevitably going to happen. He created the thing that made it possible for it to happen, nevertheless.

Thanks for the referenes on the free will of angels, I'll check it out, gimme some time, please.

With that said, is it ethical for technological automation top be stunted, in order to preserve jobs (or a healthy job marketplace)?

This is, in my humble opinion, one of the more important dialogues that our modern society needs to be having. In some ways, we already are having this dialogue; not just here, but throughout our cultures. Technology is advancing, and people are beginning to push back. This is a tough one. — Bret Bernhoft

This is a goof question but why do you call it ethical? it has to do what with ethics? It has to do with practicality, with usefulness, with power, with economic reality, but what does it have to do with ethics?

It''s the second thread I see you've started with "is it ethical" and neither one has to do anything with ethics.

Why the obsession with ethics?

I wonder if maths, time and space and all those tricky matters are just part of a generalized neurocognitive system that allows us to understand the world and they have no reality outside of experience. — Tom Storm

This is what I am driving at, too, except I recognize their existence as such. You talk of them as functions of a system; I agree that they depend on their existence on the system, but once created, they are body-less existencies.

This is only a viewpoint difference; an interpretation, between "existence without body" and "function of system". I am beginning to think that it does not really matter what you call it, but I still believe that they do exist; not as part of the system, but as function of the system, therefore they are SEPARATE from the system. Much like travelling speed of a car is dependent on the car's system, but the speed itself is separate from the system, and is in effect a measurable non-physically existent quality.

Thanks for asking those questions.

I copied the list from the post of a fellow user. I shan't name the user, in order to avoid a making a mistake for which I'm accountable.

I QUESTIONED the list. I said there are thing outside the assertions of those items. I left the list as is, assuming that that is the proposition that only material things exist. The last point says that. Somehow you cut off the last two or three points, which is unfortunate, as they were essential elements of the weltanschauung of the poster whose post-list i questioned.

I wonder if the OP was titled properly. It started with the ethics of eating animals. I think it is more like (on one hand) about the pity we feel for animals. Pity and ethics are not equivalent. The other angle is practicality: healthier, cheaper, more abundant.

I have yet to see one ethical problem raised (other than what's mistaken for pity and empathy) about eating animals.

but we know that not all good deeds or things are not equally good and same is true for evil things. — SpaceDweller

If you accept this, then you accept that evility is MORE than just a lack of goodness. Your definition was:

You need to define evil first,
"Evil is lack of good"

If you agree with this definition, then evil isn't creatable. — SpaceDweller

You have to choose between the two. Either you accept your own definition, or you reject your own opinion on evility.

Of course you don't have to do this for yourself, but you have to do this for the sake of your OWN argument. You can't say that something is all red and the next minute say that that thing is all green. You can't say that evility is the lack of goodness, and you can't say that there are degrees of lacking. It lacks only if it isn't there.

I showed this to you right away, and you kept insisting that your definition was okay. Now that you got caught on the horn of your own dilemma, now we are at the same spot as eons ago. How long will this go on? Quo usque tandem abutere Cataline, pacientia nostra?

I don't have a definition but I would certainly not limit good to morally right since the bible ie. mentions good things which don't necessarily deal with morality. — SpaceDweller

I think genesis 1:3-4 is one good example:
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good

So using your logic one could say "light" is neutral, but it's not, at least not in this context. — SpaceDweller

these two clearly show that you haven't noticed the Aristotle-defined fallacy in argument you have in your own mind, the fallacy of equivocation. Two things, two different condepts have the same word, and the speaker treats the two concepts as one.

problem with your reasoning I think is that you compare good and evil with 0 and 1, but 0 and 1 don't have shades. — SpaceDweller

The problem is differnt. You can't see that if one has 3 goodnesses, or 6 or 93848 goodnesses, those are different. But their lack, can only be 0 or zero goodness. This is not negotiable; if something is missing, then it does not matter how much of it is missing, it is not there, period.

Therefore I may accept that goodness can be great or little, but evility can only be on value, ACCORDING TO YOUR DEFINITION. Keep in mind that I use YOUR defintion to disprove your argument, not any other definition, since you are compelled to accept your own -- otherwise you would not make it if you did not believe it, would you.

we all know satan was created by god with free will. and it choose to defy god.
but you're trying to prove that god created evil being which is not true. — SpaceDweller

Is it in the scriptures that Satan had free will, or you made that up along with the people whose values you still embrace? Please tell me the book and line number where it is explicitly stated that Satan had free will.

In my readings I encountered that the christian god gave man (humans, men and women), and man only, free will. No other creature has free will. Now all of a sudden Satan has it-- this is suspect that you only say that to prove your point, without any substantiation but hearsay which serves the skewed version of the true logic that your argument so stubbornly (but unsuccessfully) keeps on trying to defy.

You need to define evil first,
"Evil is lack of good"

If you agree with this definition, then evil isn't creatable. — SpaceDweller

You're right, if you accept that definition. And you obviously do.

You must have a neat explanation how Satan had come into existence without being created. If you like, please write it down here. If you don't, then obviously your definition is false (since evility exists, in the created form of Satan.)

How do you define good, or goodness, in religious terms, SpaceDweller? This would be helpful in knowing how evil is created. If you accept my definition, then not following god's will is NOT always evil. Sinning is; but there are myriads of ways of not following god's will without committing a sin at the same time.

That's A. B. is that lack of goodness is evil as you say; but evil does encompass a quality of causing harm. Harm to the self, to another self, or to god. Why do we call non-harmful behaviour evil? It is your categorical claim, that no other human wants to accept. However, it follows from your definition. Would your definition be incorrect?

C is this dilemma: how do you take goodness out of an act, which has had it? If it never has, if no ill will or harmful things have ever been done, then goodness was taken out. Humans took goodness out? Humans only do what they do. They don't go to an act and take out goodness out of it. How does an act become void of goodness?

I know I answered this based on my own beliefs,, but I don't know what your beliefs are, SpaceDweller. You must have the clear idea how goodness gets taken away from an otherwise good deed for it to become an evil deed.

There is a third problem. If evility is a lack of goodness, then there is no gradation of goodness. Everything that has no goodness is evil. You can't say "this nothing has more something missing than that nothing." If goodness is missing, then how much of it is missing? That is a silly question. Therefore all evil deeds are equal in magnitude of evility. yet you insist that they are graded for magnitude.

Tell that to Heidegger... — Tom Storm

if you guys are too chicken to tell him, I'll do it.

What's his phone number?

in religious sense "neutral" doesn't really exist. — SpaceDweller

What do you call it when you buy a loaf of bread or you look out the window in religious terms?

I always thought, because I have been told, that an act is good in Christianity when it pleases god; our act pleases god when we act according to his will, expressed in the scriptures as required behaviour. On the contrary, an acti is evil, when it goes against god's will, which is a plan for us which we ought to follow.

Did god plan for us to idly look out the window, or to buy a loaf of bread?

If god planned for us to look out the window, and we don't, are we evil? Or are we evil when we can bind up a broken man and yet we don't?

I don't think anyone has confessed at the confession box that they looked out the window. They confess sins, which are well defined in the ten commandments.

Is it evil, and therefore a sin, that you buy a loaf of bread at three o'clock when god had planned for you to purchase it at seven o'clock?

no such thing as complete absence of both good and evil. — SpaceDweller

I accept of course that that is your view, but you have to prove it in case you want me to accept it, and therefore to accept your definition of evil, which you said is a lack of good.

What you wrote about substances and physics and definable elements are not definitions; they are separate descriptors of what we consider reality. We can't verify reality; we can verify differentness of instances of what we consider reality.

That's why I wanted to avoid the whole issue. Reality can be decided over (i.e. what we consider reality) but it can't be verified.

For instance, scientists can't prove there is matter; they deal with it, they find its properties, but they can't verify matter.

Some users stopped talking to me, because I said matter is a matter of belief. (Or at least this is my recollection why they categorically said they won't talk to me.) I won't quote names, because my rote memory is shot; I don't know how to quote who said what. |(I know the mechanism, but it's too much work for too little return in this instance.) This is completely a side issue, but when it comes to reality, I adamantly support the view that reality is not proven, it is a matter of belief. I admit it COULD be the real thing, but there is no way we, humans, can prove it and/or verify its existence.

This all goes back to Hume, of course, the Humest Human.

Can you give a real world example of neutral which would imply something that excludes both good and evil? — SpaceDweller

Examples:
I bought a quart / a litre of milk today.

You must always check the blind spot before changing lanes.

Don't worry; be happy.

When we talked about good and evil here, we use the terms in religious senses.

Meaning something like we will consider something real if we can verify it's existence. — Bylaw

Good point. Well put. The only weaknesses of this definition are its use of undefinable elements, and its obvious subjectivity.

I think we can agree that we are humans and real to us is what is real to us. Yes, it's not only circular, but more so: it's a point-definition, and if we include the need for verification, then we really throw ourselves into the outer space of philosophical loo-loo land.

We are scraping the outer boundary of philosophy, the frontier where no man has gone before.

Any way you define reality, there are physical existances, I am sure, and things that are born of physical existencies. Some people deny the existence, not only the realness, of non-physical existencies. That is where my battle lies, not in defintions... defining life, god, love, reality and meaning I leave to the philosopers.

[1] We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.
[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy.
[3] These substances behave in accordance with scientific principles, laws.
[4] Scientific laws are mathematical in nature.
[5] The same scientific laws apply throughout the universe and at all times.
[6] The behaviors of substances are caused.
[7] Substances are indestructible, although they can change to something else.
[8] The universe is continuous. Between any two points there is at least one other point.
— T Clark
[9] Space and time are separate and absolute.
[10] Something can not be created from nothing. — god must be atheist

[/quote]

what is the definition of physical/material and should we assume that this definition will remain? — Bylaw

I think the best answer I can provide to your quiestion, Bylaw, is point [2] in the above credo.

But it's not a perfect answer. Because the universa also contains empty space. And it contains functionalities that are not matter, yet they exist.

How would you define physical/material?