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> Why? I can write a game where you have choice, but no pain or suffering. Is God worse programmer? If our choices were reduced to those which could not cause

by genegc2 10y ago

> Why? I can write a game where you have choice, but no pain or suffering. Is God worse programmer? If our choices were reduced to those which could not cause pain and suffering, life would resemble a game; our choices would lack any consequence. Thankfully, life is much more than a game. > and don't be a dick This advice is curious to me. How do you derive this from your beliefs? I can understand you saying "don't be a dick just to be a dick", because that would cause pointless suffering. But if I can advance my own wealth or happiness by being a dick in such a way that I can reasonably avoid retribution, why shouldn't I?

ajuc 10y ago
> our choices would lack any consequence consequences doesn't have to cause suffering. You can live in one country or another - meeting different people, eperiencing different thigs, learning different cultures. How is it less of a consequence than developing a cancer? The rest of your argument is taking a mataphor literally, and asserting it's less true thanks to the existence of evil. Why? How would the life be worse if there were no diseases and wars? > How do you derive this from your beliefs? I'm not special. Other people have their lives too, and by being a dick I decrease their enjoyment of their short lives. I don't have any reasons to value my enjoyement over theirs (or vice versa). I have counter-question BTW - would you go around murdering people and stealing from them if there was no hell and no police? That's what your argument boils down to - "without a stick and a carrot why bother with morality"?
- genegc2 10y ago
  There are more consequences than just hell and jail - and a faith or belief system purely motivated on hell and/or jail is an immature one. My argument boils down to Natural Law, and it sounds to me like yours does too. When you say "I don't have any reasons to value my enjoyment over theirs" - I would totally agree, but I still don't understand how you arrive at that without a belief in Natural Law. An argument that doesn't rely on Natural Law goes something like this: We have evolved into highly social beings, so our internal physiology naturally rewards us for socially constructive behavior, so we choose to not be a dick because being a dick feels bad. It's a purely selfish motivation because that is what is purely rational. My limited understanding of Natural Law comes from CS Lewis and Thomas Aquinas, but I did a quick search before writing this reply and I see that it has some backing in atheistic thought. Is that where your coming from?
  - ajuc 10y ago
    > I still don't understand how you arrive at that without a belief in Natural Law I don't believe in things that seem unlikely and have no proofs. The theory that my feelings are more valuable than that of other people seems unlikely (why my out of all people) and I have no evidence supporting it. Therefore I assume it's false and act accordingly. Why would you need some external law for that train of thought? All you need is logic and probability theory.
    - brokenmachine 10y ago
      I get the impression that religious people actually have no internal moral compass of their own so therefore need a set of external rules in order to not be dickish. Because of this necessity, they can't understand how other people can have morals without a set of rules, even self-contradictory, ambiguous rules passed down from a supernatural being via the mysterious hallucinations of desert people thousands of years ago.
      - ajuc 10y ago
        > I get the impression that religious people actually have no internal moral compass I'm quite certain that's not true. At least it wasn't true for me when I was religious, and it's not true for most of the religious people I know (and I live in 95% Catholic country, at least in theory). For one example - I've spoken with many Catolics who thought it's "not fair" that a serial murderer can escape eternal punishment with last minute atonement, but a women that was in a marriage with abusive husband and then met her "other half" - has to sacrifice her love till death because of 1 unintentional mistake in the past. If people actually believed morality comes from God only - they wouldn't think twice about this. God says so and that's it. On the other hand it's hard to distinguish external and internal motivation when you have it constantly mixed by the religion, rituals, etc. And people like to find explanations fo why they (and you) need religion - external morality seems to be a popular excuse.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

by genegc2 10y ago

ajuc 10y ago

> our choices would lack any consequence consequences doesn't have to cause suffering. You can live in one country or another - meeting different people, eperiencing different thigs, learning different cultures. How is it less of a consequence than developing a cancer? The rest of your argument is taking a mataphor literally, and asserting it's less true thanks to the existence of evil. Why? How would the life be worse if there were no diseases and wars? > How do you derive this from your beliefs? I'm not special. Other people have their lives too, and by being a dick I decrease their enjoyment of their short lives. I don't have any reasons to value my enjoyement over theirs (or vice versa). I have counter-question BTW - would you go around murdering people and stealing from them if there was no hell and no police? That's what your argument boils down to - "without a stick and a carrot why bother with morality"?

genegc2 10y ago
There are more consequences than just hell and jail - and a faith or belief system purely motivated on hell and/or jail is an immature one. My argument boils down to Natural Law, and it sounds to me like yours does too. When you say "I don't have any reasons to value my enjoyment over theirs" - I would totally agree, but I still don't understand how you arrive at that without a belief in Natural Law. An argument that doesn't rely on Natural Law goes something like this: We have evolved into highly social beings, so our internal physiology naturally rewards us for socially constructive behavior, so we choose to not be a dick because being a dick feels bad. It's a purely selfish motivation because that is what is purely rational. My limited understanding of Natural Law comes from CS Lewis and Thomas Aquinas, but I did a quick search before writing this reply and I see that it has some backing in atheistic thought. Is that where your coming from?
- ajuc 10y ago
  > I still don't understand how you arrive at that without a belief in Natural Law I don't believe in things that seem unlikely and have no proofs. The theory that my feelings are more valuable than that of other people seems unlikely (why my out of all people) and I have no evidence supporting it. Therefore I assume it's false and act accordingly. Why would you need some external law for that train of thought? All you need is logic and probability theory.
  - brokenmachine 10y ago
    I get the impression that religious people actually have no internal moral compass of their own so therefore need a set of external rules in order to not be dickish. Because of this necessity, they can't understand how other people can have morals without a set of rules, even self-contradictory, ambiguous rules passed down from a supernatural being via the mysterious hallucinations of desert people thousands of years ago.
    - ajuc 10y ago
      > I get the impression that religious people actually have no internal moral compass I'm quite certain that's not true. At least it wasn't true for me when I was religious, and it's not true for most of the religious people I know (and I live in 95% Catholic country, at least in theory). For one example - I've spoken with many Catolics who thought it's "not fair" that a serial murderer can escape eternal punishment with last minute atonement, but a women that was in a marriage with abusive husband and then met her "other half" - has to sacrifice her love till death because of 1 unintentional mistake in the past. If people actually believed morality comes from God only - they wouldn't think twice about this. God says so and that's it. On the other hand it's hard to distinguish external and internal motivation when you have it constantly mixed by the religion, rituals, etc. And people like to find explanations fo why they (and you) need religion - external morality seems to be a popular excuse.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]