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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by Calhoun:
I prefer to accept theories or information in general based on scientific evidence or factual data.

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And therein lies your own set of unprovable beliefs.

Who says scientific data is the only kind of data that has evidentiary quality? Surely this is nothing more than epistemological imperialism. Much stock is given to the idea that only things that are empirically verifiable count as knowledge. But curiously, there's no way to empirically verify that idea!

Furthermore, the idea that only material things exist is also an unprovable hypothesis. Universal statements like that reduce to the form, "Given any X, X is physical." But that sort of universal is impossible to prove because to prove it, you'd have to have access to every X that currently exists, and ever did exist and ever will exist, and then you'd have to have a way to test all those Xs to see if they really were purely physical. And of course, it's ludicrous to think that we could ever gather all Xs for examination, and it's doubtful whether we're equipped to examine them all.

I guess the main point is that a purely scientific worldview rests on unprovable hypothesis, just like religion does. Its foundations rest on certain metaphysical and epistemological commitments which, though they be so widely repeated and so widely accepted as to appear to be beyond doubt, are really nothing more than the fruits of philosophical inquiry. To quote John Stuart Mill, "The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science are really the last results of a metaphysical analysis."

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- Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
- Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:

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I know you know what I'm saying.... being that in actuality you wouldn't even classify yourself as an Athiest

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Actually I think that the Strong Agnostic subgroup fits better under the Atheist group then the Agnostic group, perhaps renamed as "Weak Atheist"? So by my own (obviously superior ) classification system I would fall under Atheism.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I don't think I'm grasping this Atheism concept then. I'm confused. Please define Atheism to me because I was under the impression that they flat out didn't believe in God, and I just don't know why you would be willing to go as far as to come right out and say "THERE IS NO GOD" without being absolutly sure that there wasn't a God.

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Originally posted by fredgiblet:
With the other option being Agnosticism? I really don't think that god would be much happier with "I don't there is a god but I'm not sure" then "There is no god, but I could be wrong". Personally I think Pascal's Wager is shit, if god is so vain that lip service to belief will do or so blind that he-she-it can be fooled by false belief then I think I'd rather kick it with Satan for eternity myself.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
If you live a life without regret, and somehow it's in conflict with God's law, you go to hell. Without the factor of hell, you have just lived a life without regret. Seems freerer to me.

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This is assuming that you are incapable of guilt and conscience free. Hannibal Lechter lived a life without regret.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

EDIT: I re-read your posts and it seems that you think that everyone has their regrets and makes mistakes (that's what you said last post). The reason I said anything in the first place was because of a line in your previous post:

"If you live a life without regret, and somehow it's in conflict with God's law, you go to hell. Without the factor of hell, you have just lived a life without regret. Seems freerer to me."

This is impossible for any sane individual, with or without God. Although because of your most recent post, I think you were speaking more ideologically here rather than literally.

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I think it's possible to live a life that one doesn't have to feel sorry for at its end (and I include arrangements made with human society and its rules in there) that might stand in conflict with God's laws, and I dislike the notion of having to pay for that in hell fires, simply because my idea of good and God's idea of good aren't the same. If that's his idea of free will, he can bite me. That's not loving, that's controlling.

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Originally posted by Malachite:
Hey Citizen,
You quoted me as saying we should weigh "only" the good in considering this. I haven't said that and apologize if I said anything like that. I am trying to point out that if we are going to discuss whether something is "The Root of All Evil", one aspect to consider is whether it has any good aspects or has done anything good for humanity.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
I knew how to build a nuclear bomb by the end of High School.

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And you don’t need to be taught “how” to build one, any student with a basic knowledge of first year college Physics, Chemistry and Calculus can figure it out.

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By teaching our children we allow evil to flourish. So we should stop teaching our children?

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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by Khyron:
Basically, since he has the power to have initially prevented humanity's capacity for evil by limiting free will from the get-go, or limiting free will after seeing all the carnage that results from unlimited free will (which he already would have known about in the beginning due to omniscience), it follows that since humanity still has the capacity for evil, and exercises it freely, that this must be part of God's plan, and since God's plan goes against the well-being of humanity, why should humanity worship him? People can believe in him if they wish, but why the worship?

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Whoa, and we've just moved from philosophical to theological (which is an area where, like LeadB, I'm hesitant to go).

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I can say at least this: if God is perfect (and I think most religions take him to be) then above anything else, he is worthy of adulation.

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Malachite wrote:
Sunday, May 27, 2007 02:01
Calhoun: Perhaps it is a bit late in the discussion for this, but if we are going to discuss whether the "God Delusion" is the root of all evil, we may need to define what evil is and whether there is such a thing as absolute evil. After we've done that, we may be able to assess whether an atheist like Dawkins really has the philosophical underpinings to claim that something is evil. What I mean is, how does an atheist claim something is evil and therefore wrong? Can an atheist deduce that there are certain absolute evils? How? I thought the morals an atheist could produce was a moral relativism like, "You can have your beliefs and do what you think is good and I'll believe what I want and do what I think is good". If that is the case, how can Dawkins say something is the root of evil when it might actually be defined by someone else as good. So, from his point of view, religion is the root of evil, but from a religious person's point of view, religion is the source of good. How can Dawkins determine who is really right? I think that in order to claim something is truly evil, you have to have some absolutes on what evil is. How does an atheist do this? (I hope I don't sound antagonistic here -- this is something I've really started getting curious about lately).

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Originally posted by ethan:
The above statement manages to illustrate a very flawed equivication at the heart of most arguements between believers and their detractors.

It's true science can probably never claim to prove anything absolutely. True science should never and would never claim to anything resembling epistemological imperialism. Rather science is valid in a range which varies in it's ability to predict. The greatest scientific theories are are the ones which manage to predict the most fantastic occurences sight unseen which sometimes don't become validated for decades at a time, as in the case of many of Einstein's prediction. Newton is the best example of science's measured worth through predictive range. The X's fundamentally ingrained in his equations fail on the quantum level, but these failings are immaterial to it's true worth in a range of predictive knowledge regarding gravity.

Theists often get it wrong when they try to equate the validity of scientific knowledge to the purely backward looking philosophies religions use to describe the existence of the natural world. That all crucial moment of creation is their first and final obsession...it's the true face of the 'causality' chain so central to the visions of theistic thinkers like Spinoza and Liebenitz. Science is not dependent on such foundational issues. Luckily(heh ironic)it just so happens to be the case, science's predictive values often work in both directions when it comes to temporal observations.

If I'm not mistaken, theism offers little by way of similar predictave value. It may try, but I don't think anyone's been bowled over by any one result yet. That said, it doesn't really need to. Religion often seems to derive it's greatest value out of foundational theories, whether used for justifying moral behavior or creating a sense of comfort and place in the vast universe. Faith is religion's function, which does not adhere to the logical apprehensions of time and space. Causality is a surprisingly weak principle inside the labratory.

The equivication difficulties for theists and their detractors continue beyond arguements of science. For one, nonbelief driven behavior does not equal atheism. Same can be said for overstated aethistic proclomations that deistic religions are at the root of evil. It would be more usefull for aethists to claim that evil is at the root of what enables religious thinking...and in turn religious thinking is often a mechanism which enables prolific amounts of evil to be perpatrated. Without staking a claim on either side...I do believe this is the articulation most anti-theist want to make. Evil is fundamentally a process of mistaken thinking. And I do personally believe deistic religions often perprate no small amount of evil when it tries to force the world around it to it's own shape...enforcing it's own predictions down upon us...red in the tooth and claw...rather than resigning itself to the rather benign meadows characterizing the eternal "waiting for god-o" that is faith.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
iii) If evil in the world could be eliminated by God limiting free will or by humans abolishing education (a ludicrous thought, education being the source of all evil, but let's go with it), then why is God waiting for humans to abolish education? Unless he wants us to, so that we can spend more time thinking about him and less time thinking about important stuff, and generally significantly decrease our quality of life. Which again contradicts the hypothesis of a benevolent God, one that deserves to be worshipped.

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Originally posted by Malachite:
Calhoun: Perhaps it is a bit late in the discussion for this, but if we are going to discuss whether the "God Delusion" is the root of all evil, we may need to define what evil is and whether there is such a thing as absolute evil. After we've done that, we may be able to assess whether an atheist like Dawkins really has the philosophical underpinings to claim that something is evil. What I mean is, how does an atheist claim something is evil and therefore wrong? Can an atheist deduce that there are certain absolute evils? How? I thought the morals an atheist could produce was a moral relativism like, "You can have your beliefs and do what you think is good and I'll believe what I want and do what I think is good". If that is the case, how can Dawkins say something is the root of evil when it might actually be defined by someone else as good. So, from his point of view, religion is the root of evil, but from a religious person's point of view, religion is the source of good. How can Dawkins determine who is really right? I think that in order to claim something is truly evil, you have to have some absolutes on what evil is. How does an atheist do this? (I hope I don't sound antagonistic here -- this is something I've really started getting curious about lately).

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Originally posted by Malachite:
I think that in order to claim something is truly evil, you have to have some absolutes on what evil is.

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Originally posted by citizen:
I would say 'evil' is: that which stands as a barrier to the continuation of the species; with the directness, and scale of the action determining how 'evil' it is.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
I don't know, in that case rape wouldn't be evil but good (since it's possible that the victim becomes pregnant and therefore aids the propagation of the species).

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Originally posted by Calhoun:

I think its fair to say that someone who straps explosives to their body to blow up civilians in some sort of religious mission or someone who fly jets into buildings to kill as many civilians as possible in the name of allah.. is evil. If you disagree with this opinion then dont bother responding, you'll be dismissed as another religious nutjob..

You dont need any special qualifications to be able to recognise something as evil. To any reasonably intelligent person it should be obvious.

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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by Malachite:
Calhoun: Perhaps it is a bit late in the discussion for this, but if we are going to discuss whether the "God Delusion" is the root of all evil, we may need to define what evil is and whether there is such a thing as absolute evil. After we've done that, we may be able to assess whether an atheist like Dawkins really has the philosophical underpinings to claim that something is evil. What I mean is, how does an atheist claim something is evil and therefore wrong? Can an atheist deduce that there are certain absolute evils? How? I thought the morals an atheist could produce was a moral relativism like, "You can have your beliefs and do what you think is good and I'll believe what I want and do what I think is good". If that is the case, how can Dawkins say something is the root of evil when it might actually be defined by someone else as good. So, from his point of view, religion is the root of evil, but from a religious person's point of view, religion is the source of good. How can Dawkins determine who is really right? I think that in order to claim something is truly evil, you have to have some absolutes on what evil is. How does an atheist do this? (I hope I don't sound antagonistic here -- this is something I've really started getting curious about lately).

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Hear, hear!

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Originally posted by citizen:
I would say 'evil' is: that which stands as a barrier to the continuation of the species; with the directness, and scale of the action determining how 'evil' it is.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
This is going to sound really horrible and I apologise for it, but it actually underlines my point that that definition isn't completely workable a bit more. So let's assume the rape victim isn't a healthy, fertile woman, let's assume instead that it's somebody who's a burden to society, a mentally handicapped person or an old pensioner long past child-bearing age. In a way, these acts would be considered to be even more evil by society than the rape of a healthy young woman, even though these two would be representative of people not actively contributing to the advancement of the society, perhaps even hindering it if it's a society that can't really afford to support them.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
i) I wasn't stretching, it was well in line with my initial rape counterexample.

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See LeadB's post to see that counterexamples are easy to come by.

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ii) I really don't see how, generally, weaker members of a species help to advance it, no matter how social the species. But fine, let's say an old lady living alone in the woods who hasn't had anything to do with society in decades one day gets raped in her log cabin. That's an act that would still be considered evil by society, even though she wasn't part of society and didn't contribute to its advancement.

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iii) I said mentally handicapped, and I'm betting you know that too. I respect you, Citizen, but don't twist my arguments around, I can get very grumpy with people if they do that.

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iv) Bored now, so I'll exit this discussion for a bit.

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Originally posted by leadb:
So which is more evil: using a birth control pill which fairly directly reduces the number of people? Or not using the pill; which while in the short term reduces the number of people, but in the long run may prevent a population spike which will ultimately drive a population crash from which we might not recover?

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Originally posted by citizen:Your choice, I apologise if you thought I was trying to insult you.

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by leadb:
So which is more evil: using a birth control pill which fairly directly reduces the number of people? Or not using the pill; which while in the short term reduces the number of people, but in the long run may prevent a population spike which will ultimately drive a population crash from which we might not recover?

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If neither is producing mental, or physical harm to either individuals, or the cooperative, and neither through incidence or design can lead to over population nor a population crash then by my definition neither are 'evil'.

The criteria are fixed, but the actions aren't, necessarily.

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The problem is you're asking if something is evil, devoid of it's repercussions, intent, and environment.

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Is taking food from someone suffering from an over eating disorder 'evil' in the sense that it will harm them? No, it's actually helping them, and so leads to aiding the overall survival of the species. Conversely, would taking food from a starving person be 'evil'?

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
With your definitions, there really doesn't seem to be any difference between the two anyhow.

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Originally posted by leadb:
I really don't want to go too far down this path, personally, I think it is silly to try and prove the 'title' of this thread as true. It is patently false.

While certainly we can refine what is good and evil, I'm willing to wager you will find that of those posting here, once all the 'fireworks are done', we will agree on 90% what constitutes good Vs. evil.

Since the topic is "going to discuss whether the "God Delusion" is the root of all evil" I can close this topic down immediately. The answer is no. Sad to say, I'm not perfect. I have committed evil, and said evil is not, and was not, religiously inspired, motivated, intitiated, caused, or any other way tied to religion. I will say I regret such occaisions, and do henceforth intend to reduce my evil and increase my good. However, this is sufficient to prove the point, you really don't need anything more.

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Originally posted by Causal:
I think my interest in Malachite's proposal stems less from its utility in the discussion at hand and more from my interest in the topic as such. I think it warrants an entry into our string of Important Conversations.

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Originally posted by Causal:

Well, Ethan, you've missed my basic point. You seem to be taking me to be suggesting that religion can answer the same questions as science tries to answer, and if I were trying to claim such a thing, you'd be right to take me to task. Fortunately for me, that's not at all what I am saying.

My post was in response to the belief that theism is an inherently illogical set of beliefs because its foundation is, ultimately, something that is impossible to prove. This, the thinking goes, is irrational. Often, the folks who make these sorts of arguments use scientific knowledge in contrast to religious knowledge, and claim that as opposed to religion, the data of the sciences can be proven; hence, they are rational, and I am not.

In the first place, this sort of attitude is a result of a philosophical movement known as logical positivism. The basic belief of logical positivism is that nothing counts as knowledge unless it can be empirically verified. The fatal flaw of logical positivism is, of course, that the proposition, "nothing counts as knowledge unless it can be empirically verified" cannot be empirically verified! So for the most part, philosophers have abandoned logical positivism. Unfortunately, the demand for scientific verification remains in popular thought. But that demand suffers the same problem as the foundation of logical positivism.

In the second, my defense against the claim that religion is irrational because unprovable foundations consists in pointing to what I believe to be unprovable foundational beliefs of a purely scientific worldview. The two examples I used were dogmatic naturalism and material reductionism. But a further example might be useful: the Uniformity Principle (UP). According to the UP, natural laws will continue in the future to operate in the same way as they have been observed to operate in the past. Now this seems obvious. Why would anyone need to formalize something everyone already knows? The answer is that the UP is an attempt to overcome the problem of induction. The problem is this: in virtue of what are we justified in making predictions about the future based on our experiences of the past? David Hume first posed the problem in his groundbreaking Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding--he concluded that any attempt to prove the legitimacy of future expectations from past experience would be circular. That is, any argument attempting to justify the inductive method would commit the logical fallacy of begging the question, because it would have to assume the very thing it was trying to prove. For instance, saying something like, "I know induction is reliable because it's always worked in the past" assumes that past experience will continue to be reliable in the future, and the conclusion has been assumed, the question begged, and the argument fails. Now, I don't disagree that the UP is incredibly useful (in fact probably essential to getting along in life). But nevertheless, it cannot be proven. And that, Ethan, is my point.

Your fundamental mistake in responding to my post is that you assumed that I was equating religion and science in terms of their ability to describe the world and make predictions about it. But that's not my project. Religion and science treat on very different issues. To paraphrase Galileo, "The bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes." So you've committed the straw man fallacy: you've erected a false version of my argument, then patted yourself on the back for defeating my "argument." My real assertion is this: any worldview, whether theistic or not, relies on certain foundational beliefs that are beyond proof. That is what I'm arguing. If you'd read my post thoroughly, I suspect you'd have realized that.

By the way, you may want to look up the definition of the fallacy of equivocation: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/equivoqu.html If you're going to accuse someone of equivocating you may as well use the term correctly.

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- Grand High Poobah of the Mythical Land of Iowa, and Keeper of State Secrets
- Captain, FFF.net Grammar Police

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Originally posted by ethan:
The Uniform Priniciple is very like a foundational arguement that has little to no application to science. Scientific predictions, most often in the fields of physics and astronomy...although sometimes in biochemistry...are created without any previous or neccessarily similar-type observations. The very definition of prediction. Rather predicitons extrapolate from current observations. Theories on why something we see is happening, lead to suggestions and implications for new observations never seen or linked before. The Uniform Principle, by your definition, is not useful when formulating heretofore unseen activity.

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Originally posted by Causal:

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Originally posted by ethan:
The Uniform Priniciple is very like a foundational arguement that has little to no application to science. Scientific predictions, most often in the fields of physics and astronomy...although sometimes in biochemistry...are created without any previous or neccessarily similar-type observations. The very definition of prediction. Rather predicitons extrapolate from current observations. Theories on why something we see is happening, lead to suggestions and implications for new observations never seen or linked before. The Uniform Principle, by your definition, is not useful when formulating heretofore unseen activity.

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But isn't it the case that scientists wouldn't be able to make accurate predictions about what will happen unless they assume that in the future (or the far distant past) the laws of nature will remain the same as they are now? I mean, if that's not the case, then we couldn't make predictions about how long it will take a penny to drop from the top of a bridge, or how loud the speaker in a car will be. "Extrapolation" seems to depend exactly on the uniformity of nature. Because if nature were variable, there'd be no way to make such extrapolations. Take astrophysics for instance. If we want to launch a rover to Mars and have it touch down in a particular place, we'll have to make all sorts of calculations about when, where, and how to launch the rover. But if we can't assume that gravititational attraction (for instance) will remain constant, then all bets are off. Of course, there's no way to prove that gravitational attraction will remain constant--we just assume that it will. And although you're right that predictions are qualitatively different than launching a Mars rover, it seems that the predictive activity of the sciences is strictly bounded within certain norms; namely, natural laws.

Interesting coversation, anyway. You could be right, btw--we might have talked straight past each other back there. Wouldn't be the first time I've done that!

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Originally posted by Khyron:
No offence, but I seriously doubt that. I'm sure you knew how they work in principle, but there's no way you could've constructed one yourself given enough material. Nations that have the bomb spent years and millions of dollars until they finally got it right, and nations that don't have it spend years and millions of dollars on trying to develop it. If any kid from high school could build one, every nation and terrorist organisation on the planet would have had a nuclear arsenal ages ago. So that seems like a laughable comment to make.

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Originally posted by Khyron:
But I digress, I realise that that wasn't your point. I have to be honest, I'm not sure anymore if this knowledge/free will thing is supposed to be an analogy or if you're seriously saying that knowledge is the root of all evil. If the former I'll just get to the underlined part of the following:

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Originally posted by Khyron:
i) Evil would flourish because the students would choose to use their education to do evil. It comes back to free will.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
If you live a life without regret, and somehow it's in conflict with God's law, you go to hell. Without the factor of hell, you have just lived a life without regret. Seems freerer to me.

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Originally posted by leadb:

Does this add anything to the discussion?

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
How? They are equally free. In both cases, you live a life without regret.

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It seems to me that your issue with religion is that you don’t want to be reminded that there are consequences to your actions, but there are, and if you ignore those consequences, you may live a much shorter then expected. Religion is simply a metaphor for reality.

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