First off, it arrives at the "no measure of morals without God" argument which raises my hackles on a good day and has me snapping on a bad one (ask Kor... or, on second thought, don't). There's a tiny step from there to "no morality without God" and thus "no ethics without God" all the way to "people have no incentive to behave morally without God", which is just wrong in several ways. The most obvious one is "you must be amoral if you're an atheist."
Second, evil and good both imply activity [1]. You can leave the thermometer in a bedroom and measure a temperature. You can't leave the evil-o-meter (or, I guess, in his argument the good-o-meter) in the same bedroom and get a reading while a person is sleeping. People will be actively evil by behaving evilly: When they are afraid, when they feel threatened, when they feel they have something to gain, or even when they are confused and not willing to think things through. Similarly, people will be actively good by behaving well.
Lastly, not every opposite of an evil action is a good action, or vice versa: For instance, I'd classify xpioti letting me ride Banker on Wednesday as a good act; I had a lot of fun, learned some stuff, and there's some ecstacy in feeling such a powerful animal in some sort of communication with you. But if she hadn't thought I could handle Banker, or if Banker was having a bad day, the impromptu riding lesson wouldn't have come up. Which wouldn't have been evil on her part, and it's absurd even to think of it that way.
(Lastly-lastly, that seems to bring up something else that always rubs me wrong in that sort of discourse. People talk of Evil and Good as always large, all-encompassing, sweeping things. No they aren't. Evil is often petty, good is often simple.)
[1] Yes, in some cases, lack thereof, but it still works both ways: Not raising a hand to help a friend in need is passive evil, but not spreading gossip about a friend passing through a hard time is passive good by the same token.
Not very coherent, but hope it helped. Have to run to lab now.
silmaril, you have a very good point in your first (real) paragraph and that seems to be the way many people think (I hope you don't mind if I quote you elsewhere?) However, no one has said that every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent. But - if xpioti knew her horse was mean-tempered and likely to buck you off, yet still encouraged you to ride knowing it was likely you would get hurt - wouldn't that have been evil?
No, go ahead and quote. I can expand that bit a little, too: There's even a personal component as to why that thought makes me angry. It implies that I wouldn't do good things without hope of eternal reward, or refrain from doing bad things without fear of eternal punishment. They might as well be saying I wouldn't tidy my room without getting a cookie for it, or I would stay out very late without telling my parents where I was if I didn't know I'd be yelled at afterwards. The connection should be obvious: I am NOT a child. Neither, one hopes, are human beings who are old enough to be called upon to make moral decisions.
Nope, no one said every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent, I wasn't trying to disprove that. I trying to refute the "evil is the absence of good" argument in the original quote---because I don't think it is; evil and good are both attributes of certain types of actions in their own right.
" It implies that I wouldn't do good things without hope of eternal reward, or refrain from doing bad things without fear of eternal punishment."
*nod* The teaching of my faith is that once one is Saved, that cannot be undone; so the idea of preachers waving the carrot and the stick to get people to behave always struck me as odd -- I'm already promised I'll get the carrot and avoid the stick, so, duh, that's not the reason for me to do good and shun evil.
The reason I came up with (beyond things like "enlightened self interest" and all the non-God-based reasons, which are also useful) is love and duty; that is, not because I fear punishment or am trying to earn Celestial Green Stamps, but out of a sense of duty to God, or out of love for Him, with reward and punishment having been removed from the equation.
Translating that to the broader issue you raise, I guess that means I expect God to expect me to not be a child.
Obviously I do not speak for all subsets of Christianity in this ...
But - if xpioti knew her horse was mean-tempered and likely to buck you off, yet still encouraged you to ride knowing it was likely you would get hurt - wouldn't that have been evil?
Interestingly enough, that is *exactly* what happened to someone in my family: they took their child visiting a friend who had horses, the child got a ride on one of them, the child got bucked off, and the child's arm was permanently damaged as a result. During the aftermath, the child's parents learned from remarks made by the owner's son that the owner not only had known that the horse was bad-tempered and likely to buck, but that he often had trouble controlling it himself. The parents sued. The court found for the child, and the horse's owner had to pay medical expenses, plus some extra.
Do I think the court made the right decision? You betcha. The owner's actions were at least negligent, at worse malicious. Now, if the horse had been a proper mount for a child the owner knew was a fairly inexperienced rider and it happened to spook with the same results, then I'd say it was just one of those things. What some might call an "act of God". But knowing that the horse was likely to be a problem, and putting the kid on it without even a warning? That's another kettle of fish. That's *wrong*.
This is the case of the ox that gores (in Exodus, shortly after the revelation at Sinai -- Mishpatim, if that helps). If your ox gores someone and it's the first time it has done that, you owe damages. If the ox does it again, you owe damages and a fine, because you should have known better. There's a fair body of Jewish law on damages and negligence, actually; thsi is the proof-text for some of it.
(I know this is a Christian context more than a Jewish one, but since Christians use at least the ethical teachings from the torah, I figured it might be relevant.)
"First off, it arrives at the 'no measure of morals without God' argument"
Well ... I don't think so, quite. The basic model only requires reference to "a higher form of good"; I read the "or ultimately an absolute standard of 'good'" as being a refinement and the "which is God" clause as being nearly parenthetical (basically reminding the reader that the particular discussion from which the quote was snarfed is a Christian context). So I don't read this as a "no morals without God" so much as an "and those of us who believe in Him calibrate the scale using God as a reference".
But a) I have seen the reasoning you complain about, and it's pretty easy to disprove (just look at the existence of Existentialist ethics and morals), and b) that's not the only problem you brought up...
"Second, evil and good both imply activity"
I think that was one of the things that bothered me that I couldn't put my finger on.
"People talk of Evil and Good as always large, all-encompassing, sweeping things. No they aren't. Evil is often petty, good is often simple."
(no subject)
First off, it arrives at the "no measure of morals without God" argument which raises my hackles on a good day and has me snapping on a bad one (ask Kor... or, on second thought, don't). There's a tiny step from there to "no morality without God" and thus "no ethics without God" all the way to "people have no incentive to behave morally without God", which is just wrong in several ways. The most obvious one is "you must be amoral if you're an atheist."
Second, evil and good both imply activity [1]. You can leave the thermometer in a bedroom and measure a temperature. You can't leave the evil-o-meter (or, I guess, in his argument the good-o-meter) in the same bedroom and get a reading while a person is sleeping. People will be actively evil by behaving evilly: When they are afraid, when they feel threatened, when they feel they have something to gain, or even when they are confused and not willing to think things through. Similarly, people will be actively good by behaving well.
Lastly, not every opposite of an evil action is a good action, or vice versa: For instance, I'd classify
(Lastly-lastly, that seems to bring up something else that always rubs me wrong in that sort of discourse. People talk of Evil and Good as always large, all-encompassing, sweeping things. No they aren't. Evil is often petty, good is often simple.)
[1] Yes, in some cases, lack thereof, but it still works both ways: Not raising a hand to help a friend in need is passive evil, but not spreading gossip about a friend passing through a hard time is passive good by the same token.
Not very coherent, but hope it helped. Have to run to lab now.
(no subject)
But - if
(no subject)
Nope, no one said every good action has a corresponding evil equivalent, I wasn't trying to disprove that. I trying to refute the "evil is the absence of good" argument in the original quote---because I don't think it is; evil and good are both attributes of certain types of actions in their own right.
(no subject)
*nod* The teaching of my faith is that once one is Saved, that cannot be undone; so the idea of preachers waving the carrot and the stick to get people to behave always struck me as odd -- I'm already promised I'll get the carrot and avoid the stick, so, duh, that's not the reason for me to do good and shun evil.
The reason I came up with (beyond things like "enlightened self interest" and all the non-God-based reasons, which are also useful) is love and duty; that is, not because I fear punishment or am trying to earn Celestial Green Stamps, but out of a sense of duty to God, or out of love for Him, with reward and punishment having been removed from the equation.
Translating that to the broader issue you raise, I guess that means I expect God to expect me to not be a child.
Obviously I do not speak for all subsets of Christianity in this ...
(no subject)
Interestingly enough, that is *exactly* what happened to someone in my family: they took their child visiting a friend who had horses, the child got a ride on one of them, the child got bucked off, and the child's arm was permanently damaged as a result. During the aftermath, the child's parents learned from remarks made by the owner's son that the owner not only had known that the horse was bad-tempered and likely to buck, but that he often had trouble controlling it himself. The parents sued. The court found for the child, and the horse's owner had to pay medical expenses, plus some extra.
Do I think the court made the right decision? You betcha. The owner's actions were at least negligent, at worse malicious. Now, if the horse had been a proper mount for a child the owner knew was a fairly inexperienced rider and it happened to spook with the same results, then I'd say it was just one of those things. What some might call an "act of God". But knowing that the horse was likely to be a problem, and putting the kid on it without even a warning? That's another kettle of fish. That's *wrong*.
(no subject)
(I know this is a Christian context more than a Jewish one, but since Christians use at least the ethical teachings from the torah, I figured it might be relevant.)
(no subject)
Well ... I don't think so, quite. The basic model only requires reference to "a higher form of good"; I read the "or ultimately an absolute standard of 'good'" as being a refinement and the "which is God" clause as being nearly parenthetical (basically reminding the reader that the particular discussion from which the quote was snarfed is a Christian context). So I don't read this as a "no morals without God" so much as an "and those of us who believe in Him calibrate the scale using God as a reference".
But a) I have seen the reasoning you complain about, and it's pretty easy to disprove (just look at the existence of Existentialist ethics and morals), and b) that's not the only problem you brought up...
"Second, evil and good both imply activity"
I think that was one of the things that bothered me that I couldn't put my finger on.
"People talk of Evil and Good as always large, all-encompassing, sweeping things. No they aren't. Evil is often petty, good is often simple."
A good thing to be reminded of every so often.
"Not very coherent, but hope it helped."
Yes, it did.