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@SkepticalOne
It gets really tricky when it's two 'sorts of evil', such as 'emotional pain' v. 'physical pain' - how on earth do you compare those!
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@SkepticalOne
Is it wrong to cause suffering in order to save a life or prevent greater suffering?
Most moral problems are not choices between good and evil but choosing the lesser evil.
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@Swagnarok
@ludofl3x
More simply, God could use Nebuchanezzar to punish Israel by not preventing Nebuchadnezzar invading Israel.
Had Nebuchnezar not desired invading Israel, God would doubtless have found an alternative punishment!
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@janesix
Look at Richard Dawkins... He is a household name.
Yeah, well, Dawkins might be rich and famous, but does he have any DArt medals, or is he on top of the leaderboard? I don't think so!
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@SkepticalOne
The human sacrifices by the Aztecs was snuffing out a healthy, fully autonomous, volitional individual for no good reason at all.Quite a big difference I'd say.
Isn't it a case of 'bentham's principle applies'? The aztec's sacrifices suffered; an early-stage foetus (we suppose) does not. As soon as a foetus will suffer I think abortion becomes wrong - very wrong.
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@Stephen
I'd say that from context 'hate' doesn't mean 'actively wish harm towards' but is closer to notions 'be indiferent to', 'renounce', 'leave behind/aside'.
In the chapter Jesus tells wrould-be followers to be sure they are prepared to put their faith ahead of the people and things that matter to them now. There is an element in jesus' teaching that one should withdraw from the world as much as possible for the short time before the new world order arrives,
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@Stephen
@disgusted
@Dr.Franklin
The word we should be analysing is 'μισεῖ', particularly its idiomatic use in 1st century koine greek.
Not really my area!
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@Swagnarok
Carelessness can cause as just much harm as evil, but sometimes acts turn out better than expected! Perhaps we should all start thinking in terms of more moral classes than 'good' and 'evil'...!
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@RoderickSpode
Jacob didn't exactly suffer as a consequence of his dishonesty, did he?
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@RoderickSpode
There are actually a few succesful deceptions in the bible! Jacob tricks brother Esau out of his fathers blessing by disguising himself as Esau, and later cons his employer Laban out livestock. On three (I think 3) occasions Abraham passes his wife off as his sister. I could probaly dig out some more examples in time!In Hitler's world, deception was a virtue
The point is that the OT writers saw nothing wrong with a bit of deception.
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@RoderickSpode
God never required human sacrifice. Including Abraham/Isaac, and Jeptha/his daughter.
I didn't suggest he did! I'm saying the witchburners were just like the aztecs - they believed what they were doing was good because they believed it was divinely mandated.
In any case, witchburning was not human sacrifice. It was done to accord with the divine command 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' - it was execution, not sacrifice.
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@RoderickSpode
A male police officer gets acquainted with a female festival coordinator. They end up getting married. Their son (or daughter) grows up to be the most successful president of the U.S., ending the immigration proplem. No wall, no deportations.Did the mass shooter do a good thing?
Yes - but the shooter gets no credit for it.
While his act had a positive outcome, moral judgements are properly based on the intended outcome of an act rather than its actual outcome. A common example is a doctor making an incorrect diagnosis and the patient dies. That is morally different from a doctor deliberately killing a patient, although the actual outcome is the same.
If you bravely tackle a fire with the wrong extinguisher you can make things worse, but you are not evil for trying - the arsonist who deliberately started the blaze is evil, even if 'some good comes out of it'.
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@RoderickSpode
For instance, did the Aztecs ever say in recorded history "We are evil because we practice human sacrifice rituals"?
That just goes to show how dumb it is to equate what your god supposedly requires with what is moral. The priests and witchfinders who burned
little old ladies as witches thought they were being very moral, doing 'God's work'.
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@3RU7AL
Are you suggesting that the "creator" mentioned by the American founding fathers was in-fact a Celtic deity?
Almost certainly it refers to 'Nature's God', mentiomed in the first paragraph.
...the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,...
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@Castin
No rocket science...What reasons do you have to think they were probably real?
I think Jesus was a real person (or based on a real person), so he must have had parents! Their names are just about the only thing Mathew's and Luke's nativity stories agree on.
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@SkepticalOne
It's only a forum post - only you and the nsa will ever read it.although I think this may be too much simplification.
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@janesix
@disgusted
@ludofl3x
@RoderickSpode
A point to remember is that one bad person can have a big impact on one's perception. If you go to a new town and get mugged on the first day you won't think of the million residents who didn't mug you!
If you think about your friends, classmates or workmates, how many of them are total bastards and how many of them are 'nice people'? I certainly don't claim that people are saints, but if you faint in the street people are more likely to assist you than empty your pockets - at least that is my experience!
Generally we have evolved to be good neighbours. We aren't immune to a bit of opportunism, but most of us can resist temptation, or at least feel guilty if we don't.
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@SkepticalOne
My guess is that most American Christians are not theologians and have a pretty shakey grasp of the details of Christianity. Basicaly, there is a vague feeling that if it's good it's Christian. They have a very 'sunday school' attitude towards it all.
I suspect the CN movement is primarily about conservatism and an idealised vision of the past. They use the language of religion and terms like JCP to gain support from the huge number of American Christians. It's a dangerous game because while politically conservative and biblical values overlap I don't think mostconseratives want to burn witches or stone adulterers, but if they use biblical values to gain power they may have to continue doing so to retain it.
I think something like that happened in the Muslim world when Islam transformed from being a tool of the political powers to being the political power when the political mohammedan empire began to disintegrate in the 11C.
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@3RU7AL
Apparently it was about a 50/50 mix.
It was a long time ago! I think their lack of overt religiosity is remarkable for the time.
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@SkepticalOne
Would you agree that 'Judeo-Christian values' of the CN are mis-named and are actually conservative or reactionary values?
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@SkepticalOne
@RoderickSpode
My theory is that most (as in 'nearly all') Christians are nice people - in fact most people are nice! However Christians are taught that they are naturally sinful and evil and it is only their faith in God that prevents them from being murderous thieving rapists.
Of course that's nonsense. People are not naturally evil and only held back their faith - people are naturally nice (not totally so, but we're not actually evil by default). But it doesnt suit a church's interest to say that! Churches want people to believe they need religion and that civilsation will collapse without it.
I see this thread has moved on since I started this post!
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@disgusted
I'd guess that without the invention of montheism the commonest system would be henotheism, ie singling out one god from many for special worship while fully acknowledging the existence of other people's gods.
In the modern world it would be like everyone accepting there are (at least) three gods, yhwh, god and allah, all of whom are venerated but (depenun on your tradition) one is especially so. With montheism comes the idea that only one god is valid and it is wrong to worship anything else. A polytheistic put look makes it much easier to accomdate the gods of anybody else.
So the old, pagan religions would have carried on. Being of north european heritage, I'd probably worship the norse gods mainly, but the mythology and doctrine could well hae got mixed with up the gods of the celts and the greeks by now and I'd believe in all of them!
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@SkepticalOne
Mais oui! That is why religion had to hijack them!
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@ludofl3x
@RoderickSpode
An atheist once told me he thought that when he dies he will evolve into a higher life form. Does such a notion qualify as a magical realm?
A very untypical atheist I would say!
it's impossible to rule out accidentally creating sentience, depending on definition, which seems slippery.
The only way we could create sentience is accidentally because we don't know how to do it on purpose!
Most effort these days is focussed on producing marketable products so AIs are collections of tricks that give the impression of understanding. Less effort is going into learning how the human brain does what it does. As I said before, I think the way current AIs work is not how brains work, and the way AIs work (currently) is not going to produce sentience - not even by accident.
I'm not saying it's impossible that a battle-field robot to turn on its human masters, but if that happens it will be a glitch, not because it's become aself-aware megalomaniac.
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I think they were strongly influenced by deism. Deism was probably as close to atheism as was possible in the 18th century because science still offered no reasonable alternaties to a divine origin of the cosmos and life. I feel confident that the founders would been atheists had they been able to read Darwin, but that science came more than a century later.The founders were all Christian men
It would not have affected the substance of the founding documents because their laudable principles are universal and humanist, hijacked by religion.
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@3RU7AL
I think that free will has 'shades of gray' and isn't 'all or nothing'.
My guess would be dogs have more free will than dead leaves but not as much as people! I'm fairly sure mental phenomena such as subjectivity, consciousness and free will are inimately bound together and are aspects of the same philosophical problem, a problem that has bothered philosophers since Plato - that's about 2,500 years!
I don't know what free will is, but there is a difference between things we intuit to have and don't have it. Turning that intuition into something more solid and useful is a battle!
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@Castin
@3RU7AL
I think the term 'free will' refers to something that isn't actually 'free' or 'will'.
Free will is what a leaf blowing in the wind doesn't have that I, walking into that wind to get to the shops, do have.
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@RoderickSpode
I put it to you that what has happened is that religion has claimed ownership of niceness. There is a superficial rationale behind that notion: if there is no god, what reason do people have not to be selfish hedonists? Especially in America the idea that an atheist can't be a good person is widespread - millions of Americans would not vote an atheist for president. (In the UK being religious is more of a handicap to polical ambition!)Reason is why people choose to align with various religions. Thinking that reason would only lead to atheism isn't any better than any religion or philosophy that might claim authority like in a European theocracy. Leads to the same result if not worse.
Christian Nationalism is based on the idea that niceness comes from religion and nastiness from irreligion. It trades on the notion that the past was better because it was more religious, ignoring the reality that the past was not better than the present and progress was achived through secularisation.
Christian Nationalism harks back to a mythical golden age (ie the 1950's of 'Happy Days',not the reality)and is opposed to change of any sort. Abortion is opposed because in those mythical days nice girls didn't get pregnant, gays hadn't been invented and women were content to be 'home-makers'.
Thus CN appeals to those who favour stability over progress. But its stability to the point of stasis and intellectual stagnation.
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@Castin
@zedvictor4
I think Mary and Joseph were (probably) real people.
I'd say the most likely scenario is that Mary and Joseph were an ordinary married couple and Jesus was conceived and born in the usual, unremarkable way.of such things. That is why Mark and John say nothing about it - there is nothing to say. Paul seems unaware of anything unusual about the circumstances of Jesus' birth.
Matthew and Luke made up the 'virgin birth' nonsense out of thin air for 'theological' reasons.
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@Castin
Now find me a religion that worships platypuses.
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@3RU7AL
How would I do that, exactly? And are you sure it would work?If you want a computer to have emotions, then give it a (virtual) limbic system.
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@Stronn
@SkepticalOne
So what went wrong?
Our new PM recently said he was not a serious practising Christian
I think it will be a while before a US president says that! More to the point, in the UK its no big deal, despite our retaining of a queen who reigns by divine right!
In simple terms, the majority of rank-and-file Christians equate 'being Christian' with 'being nice'. The flip side of that is the bizarre notion that if you aren't Christian you can't be nice! I've noticed many Christians have real problems getting their head around humanism. They are so convinced that being nice and kind are 'Judeao-Christian' values that they truly think anyone who is not a believer must be a egotistical hedonist.
IMO, "judeao-christian principles" have nothing to with doctrine or dogma; it relates to the way that religion has claimed ownership of niceness.
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@3RU7AL
Yes, but a chess progran is functionally identical to a human grandmaster, but it doesn't achieve its wins in the same way (I don't believe chess GMs choose their moves by explicitly constructing a vast decision tree).It would probably be functionally identical to a sociopath.
An AI can that gives all the outward signs of having subjective experences and having emotions and so can be done - I don't dispute that. But my guess is that you - 3rutal - do not merely give the appearance of having emotions - you do occasionally feel happy, or sad.
If you can feel sad, why can't a robot? Of course I can't prove you feel emotions, but if you do then I hope you're interested in there being something
your brain can do that a computer can't do -or hasn't done yet!
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@disgusted
I don't think the lack of contemporary documents referencing Jesus is conclusive. At the time he died, Christianity wasn't 'huge' so not much would get wriiten about it or Jesus. Josephus, writing shortly, afterwards either ignores it or gives Jesus a passing remark. Later, once Christianity had grown, plenty of stuff was wriiten and some has survived, but its not surprising that nothing very early has come down to us - I don't think anybody at the time would have predicted Jesus' small obscure sect would become a globally dominant religion.
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@Stephen
@disgusted
According to google, the gnostic gospels were associated with the seperate 'naghamadi library'. The dead sea scrolls are all OT and naghamdi is in egypt, 200 miles from the dead sea.
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@Stephen
@disgusted
When people ask 'Did Jesus exist?' do they mean 'Did God become flesh, perform miracles and rise from the dead 2000 years ago?' or do they mean 'Is the character of Jesus in the Gospels loosely based on a real human being?
I think the majority of atheists would guess 'yes' for the latter.
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@TheRealNihilist
How is it not?
I don't hold either view, but if i did I would say 'I am proinnocent life but against guilty life'.
I also think it's possible to confuse being hypocritial with being inconsistent.
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@n8nrgmi
It's impossible to answer those questions unless someone can work out how to nearly kill people in lab conditions!why isn't there random hallucinations at death? why isn't t here imagery of getting abducted by aliens? or something like an acid trip? why is it that there's a coherent and very vivid death story, in some version or another?
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@Castin
but sometimes the sheer coldheartedness of these experiments just really gets to me.
It's clearly impossible to study the effects of oxytocin on behaviour other than by using live animals.
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@Castin
Not dinosaurs? I thought you'd be for dinosaurs...
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@3RU7AL
@ludofl3x
@RoderickSpode
There's not much danger of an AI being sentient in the forseeable future because AIs (such as alpha-go) work by evaluating a 'decision tree'. Essentially they use brute force and rely on raw speed. Current AIs don't know what they are doing nor why they are doing it. Current AI is a great way to make a task-focused robot, but not to make a sentient one.
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@Mopac
I don't doubt that prayer brings peace and solace - the question is whether there is anyone listening.
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@Mopac
I answered your question quite thoroughly, and in such a way as to address your superstition. Now if you are going to cling to your superstition, it will appear you have no answer.
It's not my superstition, tho, is it? Just because I know many people think breaking a mirror is bad luck doesn't mean I belive it or that it is 'my superstition'. I know a lot of people believe 'Jeremy' exists, but I don't.
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@Mopac
So it is no strange thing to say that prayers are answered, because they are.
Some prayers are 'answered' - many are not. Also the issue is not whether sometimes something prayed for happens - that willl occur by random chance. The issue is whether there is a Jeremy that answers payers, which you sidestepped in you post.
It is no strange thing to say that the fate of dead people or anything really is decided by reality.
It is strange to say anything about the fate of dead people when it appears they don't have one.
But we Orthodox have been kissing members of the same sex for centuries. No, not in a perverse way, but because this is a cultural way of greeting someone!
Perhaps Merriem-Webster has an entry for 'euphemism' you can look up!
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@Mopac
At that point we are moving in to "my reality" or "what is real to me" territory.
It's rare I can agree with you! There is,.indeed, only one reality.
As people do not agree what the word 'god' refers to, I will avoid it by saying that it is my position that reality does not contain a 'Jeremy',which I have defined to be "a cosmic entity that answers prayers, decides of the fate of dead people and gets upset if you kiss some one of the same sex."
My position on the 'existence of god' for any other definition of 'god' depends on how the word 'god' is defined. I am not totally opposed to the existence of an underlying 'ultimate reality' - i am opposed to equating the 'ultimate reality' with Jeremy - that seems to me to be based on dogmatics, not on logic; it's an article of religious faith rather than a fact.
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@Mopac
@TheRealNihilist
Just for Mopac's benefit, perhaps instead of discussing the existence of God we could discuss the existence of a cosmic entity that answers prayers, decides of the fate of dead people and gets upset if you kiss some one of the same sex. For convenience we can refer to that entity as Jeremy.
I am not sure about my position on any 'ultimate reality' because I'm not sure what those words mean, but I am sure Jeremy doesn't exist.
I am no longer an atheist - I am an ajeremyist.
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@3RU7AL
You are in the lead for the 1/300000000000000 of a dollar.
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@Mopac
@3RU7AL
@TheRealNihilist
If it doesn't exist, it isn't God. It must exist in order to be God. That is why it isn't just wrong to say God doesn't exist, it is stupid and indefensible.
I'll give the equivalent of an 2009 zimbabwean dollar to who spots the law in that logic...
(ie a 300 trillionth of a US$)
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