3 ms·

> I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have fa

> I don’t think anything is weird anymore. The ultimate reality of free will is that you will always have the option to do right and wrong. If you don’t have faith, this privilege will be difficult. The human left to their own devices will always have a shifting sense of morality (turning a ship by 1 degree at a time). I think this hypothesis is flawed. I think most people in society strive to do right, and therefore most of us are able to live in relative peace and with relative trust in our fellow members of society. There are some people who do wrong, but we’ve set up our society to strive to detect this and punish those (albeit using imperfect systems and knowledge, leading to false positives and negatives). Therefore, I think religions are an encoding of human morality, not the other way around.

somenameforme 1y ago
I'd challenge your position with a simple thought experiment. You're given a device with a button. When you push that button a random person you don't know will be killed. In exchange you'll receive $1 million in completely clean money, and nobody will ever know you pushed the button or how many times you pushed it. So how many times would you push it? Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is far more interesting than asking if you'd push it. And asking how many times you'd push it also gets rid of the marginal utility argument, and just to the dirty self centered core of humanity. People without any static set of values will trend towards doing whatever they want and then justifying it afterwards. There will undoubtedly be a guy who pushes it thousands of times, and then donates a fraction of it to charity, convincing himself that he's actually saved lives on net. That is humanity in a nutshell.
- baobun 1y ago
  > Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is far more interesting than asking if you'd push it. Is that a royal "Our"? I don't think you are speaking for anyone but yourself. People like Trump, MSB and Netanyahu aren't normal. They tend to abuse religion as a justification for their actions rather than spititual inspiration.
- freedomben 1y ago
  What if you were a Christian, and you knew that the random person being killed was a rock solid Christian who would die painlessly and without even knowing it, and would go immediately into the bosom of Christ? In that scenario pushing the button seems like the right thing to do. If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault. What is the worth of a soul? My understanding is it's infinite. If not infinite, certainly it must be worth more than a measly cool million.
  - baobun 1y ago
    > If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault Have you read the Bible? Jesus would disagree with this take very hard. Or do you have any support for this moral argument from any of the apostles?
    - freedomben 1y ago
      Yes I've read the Bible cover to cover multiple times (although admittedly on the second and third time through I did skim a bit of the last 1/3 of the OT rather than reading it for diligent comprehension), and have taken a number of different courses on it. I've read the New Testament at least a dozen times through, plus many years of Sunday School looking at different books/passages. > Jesus would disagree with this take very hard. Citation needed for that. This is something hotly debated among all sorts of Christians so I don't claim to have a solid answer, but perseonally I think the Bible is repeatedly pretty clear that you can lose it[1]. I used to be a strong believer, but no longer am. Out of curiosity, do you think I'm going to Hell or am I still all set for (eternal) life because of my past faith? [1]: https://www.biblestudyguide.org/articles/salvation/salvation-fall-grace.htm https://www.biblestudyguide.org/articles/salvation/salvation...
- Tijdreiziger 1y ago
  Personally, I would take a strictly utilitarian approach. If I thought I could save >1 life for $1 million, I would press the button. The number of presses would depend solely on the number of lives I think I (or a humanitarian organization) could save with the money. I think that most people with a moral compass would either take this approach, or would not press the button at all. I think your second paragraph is misguided and reveals an overly pessimistic view of the nature of humanity. (Such is the nature of cynics: they always think everyone else is just as cynical as they are.) > People without any static set of values will trend towards doing whatever they want and then justifying it afterwards. Religious people aren’t immune from that, and conversely, it’s not necessary to be religious to have moral values. edit: I thought about this some more. I think that the button problem is equivalent to the trolley problem (provided you can save >1 life with $1 million, as above).
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    No, it's the perfect example because we can't help but rationalize a way to justify pushing it. If you now gave every single person that button, humanity would be extinct within minutes - many of them rationalizing that they're saving humanity. This is the heart of where the saying that power corrupts comes from. It's not that power corrupts but that these sort of decisions are ones that will never be available to anybody without power. Yet for those with power it's not that far away from many practical scenarios. In other words, we start corrupt, but our impotence mitigates the relevance of that. Power just reveals our character. And no, religious people are obviously not immune from this, but with a fixed set of values rationalization becomes far more farcical than without. The Bible's position on homicide, let alone for personal gain, is unambiguous. A person without any set of fixed values, by contrast, will have no problem justifying and rationalizing even the most egregious acts, so long as the reward is seen as desirable enough. --- To respond to your edit, consider that you're basically doing a version of the trolley problem where you have the choice to redirect the track from killing one person, to killing two, but you get a million bucks for doing so. And you're now arguing that this is the utilitarian choice. It's plainly a false rationalization, but we can so easily convince ourselves that it's reasonable. Our extreme strength at rationalization is humanity's biggest moral and ethical failing. [1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY

somenameforme 1y ago

I'd challenge your position with a simple thought experiment. You're given a device with a button. When you push that button a random person you don't know will be killed. In exchange you'll receive $1 million in completely clean money, and nobody will ever know you pushed the button or how many times you pushed it. So how many times would you push it? Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is far more interesting than asking if you'd push it. And asking how many times you'd push it also gets rid of the marginal utility argument, and just to the dirty self centered core of humanity. People without any static set of values will trend towards doing whatever they want and then justifying it afterwards. There will undoubtedly be a guy who pushes it thousands of times, and then donates a fraction of it to charity, convincing himself that he's actually saved lives on net. That is humanity in a nutshell.

baobun 1y ago
> Such is our character that asking how many times you'd push it is far more interesting than asking if you'd push it. Is that a royal "Our"? I don't think you are speaking for anyone but yourself. People like Trump, MSB and Netanyahu aren't normal. They tend to abuse religion as a justification for their actions rather than spititual inspiration.
freedomben 1y ago
What if you were a Christian, and you knew that the random person being killed was a rock solid Christian who would die painlessly and without even knowing it, and would go immediately into the bosom of Christ? In that scenario pushing the button seems like the right thing to do. If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault. What is the worth of a soul? My understanding is it's infinite. If not infinite, certainly it must be worth more than a measly cool million.
- baobun 1y ago
  > If you don't, that person might lose their faith later and end up in hell, and it would be your fault Have you read the Bible? Jesus would disagree with this take very hard. Or do you have any support for this moral argument from any of the apostles?
  - freedomben 1y ago
    Yes I've read the Bible cover to cover multiple times (although admittedly on the second and third time through I did skim a bit of the last 1/3 of the OT rather than reading it for diligent comprehension), and have taken a number of different courses on it. I've read the New Testament at least a dozen times through, plus many years of Sunday School looking at different books/passages. > Jesus would disagree with this take very hard. Citation needed for that. This is something hotly debated among all sorts of Christians so I don't claim to have a solid answer, but perseonally I think the Bible is repeatedly pretty clear that you can lose it[1]. I used to be a strong believer, but no longer am. Out of curiosity, do you think I'm going to Hell or am I still all set for (eternal) life because of my past faith? [1]: https://www.biblestudyguide.org/articles/salvation/salvation-fall-grace.htm https://www.biblestudyguide.org/articles/salvation/salvation...
Tijdreiziger 1y ago
Personally, I would take a strictly utilitarian approach. If I thought I could save >1 life for $1 million, I would press the button. The number of presses would depend solely on the number of lives I think I (or a humanitarian organization) could save with the money. I think that most people with a moral compass would either take this approach, or would not press the button at all. I think your second paragraph is misguided and reveals an overly pessimistic view of the nature of humanity. (Such is the nature of cynics: they always think everyone else is just as cynical as they are.) > People without any static set of values will trend towards doing whatever they want and then justifying it afterwards. Religious people aren’t immune from that, and conversely, it’s not necessary to be religious to have moral values. edit: I thought about this some more. I think that the button problem is equivalent to the trolley problem (provided you can save >1 life with $1 million, as above).
- somenameforme 1y ago
  No, it's the perfect example because we can't help but rationalize a way to justify pushing it. If you now gave every single person that button, humanity would be extinct within minutes - many of them rationalizing that they're saving humanity. This is the heart of where the saying that power corrupts comes from. It's not that power corrupts but that these sort of decisions are ones that will never be available to anybody without power. Yet for those with power it's not that far away from many practical scenarios. In other words, we start corrupt, but our impotence mitigates the relevance of that. Power just reveals our character. And no, religious people are obviously not immune from this, but with a fixed set of values rationalization becomes far more farcical than without. The Bible's position on homicide, let alone for personal gain, is unambiguous. A person without any set of fixed values, by contrast, will have no problem justifying and rationalizing even the most egregious acts, so long as the reward is seen as desirable enough. --- To respond to your edit, consider that you're basically doing a version of the trolley problem where you have the choice to redirect the track from killing one person, to killing two, but you get a million bucks for doing so. And you're now arguing that this is the utilitarian choice. It's plainly a false rationalization, but we can so easily convince ourselves that it's reasonable. Our extreme strength at rationalization is humanity's biggest moral and ethical failing. [1] [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY