The Boulder Church

[dduffy]

THANKS everyone for the lively and thoughtful discussion on Original Sin last night. Another question which I failed to get to and may only apply to those of us who thing the concept of Original Sin is a story, or was a way for the Church so many years ago to introduce us by way of a religious metaphor to this imperfect world. IF Original Sin is but a metaphor, a story, what about Adam and Eve, are they too a metaphor?

[Chris Burkhardt]

Yes.

[Tim]

What is the difference between a metaphor and a lie?

(that is a Colbert quote)
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~ Tim

[Louis.com]

Hi.

I generally like to avoid discussions about weighty abstractions, such as "original sin," that are not carefully defined, because the discussions tend to reiterate known positions without modifying anyone's opinion.

It seems that any rejection of original sin must carefully distinguish between the implied genetic transmission of sin and the trans-historical human condition.

Whether sin is transmitted through bloodlines, as fundamentalists would argue, is not something that I feel a need to comment on.

However, the human condition certainly suggests something insufficient and often degrading has a fundamental role in shaping our thinking and behavior. Something has always been drastically wrong with the human race, and if you do not experience some of that evil in your own life--either as a perpetrator or a victim, or, more commonly, as both--you should count yourself lucky or blessed or luckily blessed.

If you discard all theories of original sinfulness or way-upstream-something-went-wrongness, how do you account for the perpetual wars, cruelty, rivalry, egotism, manipulation, abuse, overindulgence, and pride that happen to comprise the subject matter of most the great novels and movies (as well as the daily interactions of people around the world)?

Thanks for considering -

Louis

[kyle]

cs lewis talks a lot about this. our senses reveal to us immediate often superficial truth. but metaphor, allegory, myth, whatever reveals profound deep truth. we can see and experience things in their true potentcy. if parable is merely nontruth, then Jesus was foolish for speaking in parables

[Chris Burkhardt]

[EvanA]

I should define a myth so that all of what I am about to say makes sense: a myth is a fantastic, improbable, and most likely fictitious story about the past, present, or future, whether or not it refers to something that has actually happened or is actually happening. I say “most likely fictitious” only because nothing is known with absolute certainty, not because I think there is any strong possibility that myths, apart from a de-literalizing interpretation, are true.

My Webster’s dictionary defines a myth as follows:

“A traditional story of unknown authorship, ostensibly with a historical basis, but serving usually to explain some phenomenon of nature, the origin of man, or the customs, institutions, religious rites, etc. of a people: myths usually involve the exploits of gods and heroes.”

I would also regard the Soviet quasi-worship of the proletariat, or “the people”; the Nazi and fascist quasi-worship of the state; the Neo-Liberal, Objectivist, and popular libertarian quasi-worship of free markets; and the popular Western belief that Western culture is more civilized than other cultures (and similar beliefs in other cultures) as mythical in nature, which would expand the dictionary definition to some extent.

That said, I think the best available evidence suggests that humankind has never been "virtuous" by the rigorous standards of the world's major historical religions and philosophies. If we are talking about actual historical facts, there is little evidence that humanity or the world at large was ever in a pristine or sinless condition by those standards. On the contrary, the best available evidence (which is not foolproof, just better than the alternatives) suggests that the universe is over 10 billion years old, the earth is about 4.3 billion years old, life began (nobody knows why) about a billion years ago, complex life developed mainly in the last 250 million years, and that apes emerged one to two million years ago, with modern homo sapiens emerging in the last 100,000 years. Our strong DNA relationship and physical similarities to other modern apes suggest that we have a more recent common ancestor than we do, say, with dogs or snakes or tarantulas.

This does not disprove any account of the origins of the universe and life on earth (although, I must say, mythical accounts never provide any real empirical evidence to justify their fantastic claims), but it provides strong (I would even say overwhelming) evidence that humankind’s origins do not differ significantly from those of other animals. We are almost certainly just like other animals in our origin.

For this reason, humans behave like other animals, particularly like mammals, and particularly like other apes, unless we develop our reason, awareness/concentration, compassion, mutual concern, and self-control: we fight, we want to dominate others, we are greedy (that is only natural where there is any scarcity of resources and there are living things relying on those resources to survive), we are cruel, we create boundaries between some people groups and others (whether we call them tribes, nations, religions, or whatever does not make much difference in this context), and we have strong bodily urges based on our physical sensations.

That is how I account for “the perpetual wars, cruelty, rivalry, egotism, manipulation, abuse, overindulgence, and pride that happen to comprise the subject matter of most the great novels and movies (as well as the daily interactions of people around the world).”

Furthermore, although I do not believe that there was ever a real Garden of Eden; that the first human was created literally from the dust of the ground (or the first woman from the first man’s rib); or that there was a real primordial act of disobedience by the first humans, I interpret the second creation story in Genesis as a metaphor for the fact that humans awoke from their primordial ignorance by eating from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” or in other words by just suddenly “waking up” to their reasoning capacity, thereby gaining the ability to discern and conceptualize distinctions in nature.

In other words, like the Gnostics, the Kabbalists, and the Mormons, I interpret this as symbolizing cognitive evolution, or at least as a necessary development for humans to be capable of entering into eternal life. This is the only interpretation of the story I consider logical or even acceptable. That God becomes angry, jealous, and vindictive in response to Adam and Eve’s act of “disobedience” demonstrates the inadequacy of Genesis’s theology. After all, God in Genesis literally walks through the Garden of Eden, wipes out all living things except Noah’s family and two of every living creature, and physically wrestles with Jacob.

This theology is in utter contrast to traditional Christian theology, which considers God incorporeal (except when God takes on a human body in the figure of Jesus Christ), all-loving, and merciful. Any “God” who lacks these latter two traits is not worthy of worship, and any “God” with the former one by definition does not transcend space and time.

Finally, I view myths not as inherent conduits of truth and morality, but as made-up stories capable of a variety of interpretations, some of which are profound, but some of which are thoroughly irrational. In the majority of societies, myths have been used to justify, and have even given rise to, some of the worst atrocities ever committed by human beings.

A few examples are the caste system in India (and other cultures), justified by certain stories in the Vedas and the Manu Shastra (two of Hinduism’s sacred texts); the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of witches, and the violent “Christian” conquest of Northern Europe, somehow justified by references to the Greek Bible/New Testament; (if they are historically accurate) the genocidal conquests of Palestine by Joshua and the Judges, accounted for in the Hebrew Bible/“Old Testament”; the “Islamic” practices of killing apostates, stoning adulterers (which unfortunately has precedent in the practices of the Prophet, but then again it is also legislated as the penalty for adultery in the Pentateuch), and converting those who are not “People of the Book” to Islam by the sword. Imperial conquests are generally justified by referring to myths of one kind or another, whether the conquests are by the ancient Romans, the medieval Muslims, the Mongols, the Chinese, the British, the French, Americans, the Japanese, the Lakota, the Aztecs, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Israel, or whoever.

Of course, it is possible to use myths to justify ending slavery (as Martin Luther King did), resisting or ending colonialism (as the likes of Mohandas Gandhi and the Mahdi in Sudan did), and promoting gender equality (as Christian feminists and Islamic feminists have both done), but myths have not normally been used this way: reason, compassion, kindness, and mutual concern have been the key in most cases, because myths simply do not unequivocally support any of these lofty modern goals in nearly any case. This supports my belief that myths are not inherent conduits of truth and morality: they have to be interpreted that way, and the overwhelming majority of people in human history have not interpreted them this way, or in other words, have not rationalized and humanized the myths they believe in.

I also believe that it is possible to interpret myths to point to the levels of reality that transcend normal human perception because they transcend space and time, namely the levels of the divine, although I strongly believe that irrational myths do not inherently refer to the real divine any better than rational concepts do. But this is a topic for a later discussion. (And I will post on it.)
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Evan

[EvanA]

I need to make a few corrections regarding the scientific timeline I gave above. Because there is always some uncertainty in science, even if that uncertainty is small, all of these dates are approximate. The best available evidence suggests that:

1. The universe is about 15 billion years old.

2. The earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

3. Life emerged 3.5 to 4 billion years ago.

4. Eukaryotic life (i.e., life with a cell with a membrane-enclosed nucleus and membrane-enclosed organelles) emerged by 2.1 billion years ago, with multicellular eukaryotes emerging by 1.2 billion years ago.

(NOTE: The opposite of eukaryotic cells are prokaryotic cells, which lack a membrane-enclosed nucleus and membrane-enclosed organelles, and were evidently the first life-forms.)

5. Animals emerged about 700 million years ago.

6. Primates emerged about 55 million years ago.

7. Hominids emerged 3 to 5 million years ago.
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Evan

[Louis.com]

[Louis.com]

The following includes Evan's response to how one can account for the dark side of humanity without a concept of original sin:

[EvanA]

Yet again, I have decided to post a long-winded response that tries to cover many topics at once. However, this time I will post four consecutive responses rather than put all of my ideas in the same post.

First, I want to discuss Coleridge's concept of "motiveless malignity." I suggest looking at the following website: http://www.clicknotes.com/othello/motiveless.html. It is the source of my ideas here. In Coleridge's vocabulary, an impulse is what we moderns call a motive, and by motive Coleridge meant a rationalization or justification of some course of action. As such, when Coleridge used the word "motiveless," he meant that Iago's alleged motives (in Shakespeare's play Othello, of course, which I know Louis knows very well) were really just rationalizations, and what really "motivated" him were his impulses: his keen sense of intellectual superiority and his love of asserting power. But from what I can gather, Coleridge was not talking about evil for its own sake, but rather evil motivated by something natural, even bestial, inside of Iago (and everybody).

I think this might have an important point in it: that even if people do not have a good reason for cruelty to others based on scarcity or needs, the will to harm is still deeply ingrained in them, and they have strong impulses in this direction, particularly the love of having and exerting power over others for its own sake. I do think people have this impulse. But of course the question we are debating is not if people are hard-wired for cruelty and violence, but why. So this point would not clarify much.

Anyway . . . I will get on with the meat of the discussion. I will divide my discussion into three sections: one on the significance of reason, analytical thought, animal instincts, and the concepts of morality and justice in relation to the human propensity for cruelty and violence - this section will also include some discussion of whether or not there is a universal moral code; one on the theological reason for cruelty, violence, and the human propensity for both; and one on my current theory of the nature, structure, and progression of the universe, and how my concept of "the good" or morality fits into this. (End First Post)
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Evan

[EvanA]

A. Violence and Cruelty in the animal kingdom, revisited

It is probably not appropriate to say that there is gratuitous violence in the animal kingdom. However, animals are violent and cruel to each other (both inter- and intra-species), and their violence and cruelty is not just over territory or food. I will try to use examples that have been so well-documented that they have become common knowledge. Cats frequently kill birds not because they are hungry, but because they are instinctively driven to do so, maybe even because it excites them. (It could also be to hone their hunting skills, but even then they are being predatory just for the sake of being predatory.) Foxes are infamous for biting off the heads of fowl and leaving the bodies behind. Orcas have been known to tear other whales to pieces without eating them. Chimpanzees, which I believe are genetically most similar to humans of all known species, have been observed fighting wars with each other, including trying to exterminate other groups of chimps, in territorial wars that arguably get genocidal. There are many other examples, but I think these will suffice. The point is that animals kill for reasons other than food or territory. Maybe it is because they are instinctively-driven to do so for some other reason. But is it not possible that humans are instinctively-driven to far-reaching cruelty and violence in much the same way, and just have the better planning abilities and technology to carry out their cruel and violent impulses?


B. Reason/Analytical Thought in relation to Violence and Cruelty

The ability to reason or analyze possible courses of conduct does not reduce cruelty and violence in itself. (By reason I mean the ability to think about the world in a logical or orderly manner, and nothing more abstract or lofty than that.) This is the case because humans can reason regardless of what their moral beliefs are. The Nazis used systematic and logical thinking (or reason) to figure out how to accomplish their goal of triumphing over all other nations of Europe and exterminating Jews and Gypsies. I realize that this is not considered reasonable from a perspective that considers reason synonymous with treating individuals as ends in themselves, and of course I consider it detestable; I just mean something narrower by reason, as I have already discussed - I call the Kantian view that people are ends in themselves Individualistic Humanism.

Put simply, my point is that reason (as I understand it) is neutral, and can be used in support of moral beliefs ranging from the most compassionate and loving to the most cruel and violent. Reason also involves the ability to plan future courses of action, and the human ability to plan makes it possible to carry out cruel and violent goals in a more systematic and comprehensive way than animals are capable of doing.


C. Morality in relation to Violence and Cruelty

Morality is not out of sync with mental development. Humans invent all moral codes, based on their instincts, intuition, and/or notions of natural law. They rationalize the codes they invent and present them systematically, but they never derive such codes from pure reason. Most moral codes do not consider non-violence virtuous in all circumstances. In fact, most people in history have considered many forms of violence not only virtuous, but required by natural law. Theistic believers have mostly been no exception, but nor have they been worse than anybody else, overall.

The concept of justice has historically been one of the principal justifications for ruthless violence and cruelty, and the concept of justice is normally supported by the concepts of guilt and blame or debt to other people or society. As I said before, the reason that morality seems out of sync with mental development in our eyes is that nobody really believes that violence is wrong in all circumstances. Punishment or “criminal justice” is a case in point.

Let me just say right now that I have great reservations about all “justice” systems that have ever existed. I question the legitimacy of the concept of justice in the first place, and I also question the very existence of free will, which means I question the justifiability of guilt and blame as concepts. Justice is, in my opinion, a nice-sounding justification for the most savage human inclinations: sadism (in the general sense of getting pleasure out of the suffering of others, not just sexual pleasure), vengefulness, and hatred, at least in most circumstances. And theists almost always attribute this barbaric concept of justice to their god. Let us not forget that according to Jesus, people who hate or fail to forgive even the nastiest of criminals are just as evil or ungodly as the criminals themselves.

I will put aside the rest of my opinions about justice for now and continue. Most people really believe that, and consistently put into practice the belief that, violence is acceptable in many circumstances. The Nazis really believed that the Holocaust was morally acceptable, at the time, and many never changed their minds. That is an extreme example, but one that illustrates an important point: throughout history, people have believed almost without exception that killing those defined as “outsiders” by social convention is acceptable, and in many circumstances the right thing to do. If one defines one’s Jewish or Tutsi neighbors as outsiders, then killing them becomes much easier, and because of their proximity, genocide can more easily ensue. The killing becomes even easier for those who see others not only as outsiders, but as not even human – the Nazis eventually came to see their Jewish victims that way, and the Hutus their Tutsi victims.

People’s most sacred and cherished beliefs often condone, or even encourage, violence against outsiders. To use a relatively controversial example, the god of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, especially in the books of Joshua and Judges, is portrayed as a tyrannical being ordering Joshua and the judges/chieftains who followed him to sack entire cities and kill all their inhabitants. God does this multiple times in those books.

Violence and cruelty against outsiders is morally acceptable, even virtuous: this is the belief that has made people into monsters. Most people even today, all over the world, believe it is true. And if violence is virtuous, it is no worse to get pleasure out of it than out of a beautiful sunset.

The idea that violence and cruelty against outsiders are not acceptable because all human beings have inherent rights and dignity is a very modern one. And it has typically remained only that: an idea. It is not that much of a stretch to believe that those people one identifies as one’s own people are entitled to basic rights, respect, and dignity, but to believe that outsiders are entitled to the same remains a stretch for many people all over the world, including Westerners, even today. So people continue to believe that at least some violence and cruelty against outsiders is acceptable or inevitable, but morally right either way. And this belief, as it has always been, is normally justified by reference to either some notion of natural law or the will of the power behind the universe. (Even though a few traditions have disagreed with this viewpoint, most have not – even those that have considered all violence to be immoral at one point typically have followers who make many exceptions for situations when violence and cruelty is acceptable: most Buddhists and Christians support at least some violence; only Jains are generally consistent here.)

A final note on this section: outsiders should be read to include outcasts, or those who live in the same society but are not considered equals for one reason or another, such as criminals, members of certain professions (e.g., prostitution), and various minorities. (End Second Post)
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Evan

[EvanA]

E. Why is there so much violence and cruelty? (Or: Evan's Theodicy)

At last we come to the key questions: are humans hard-wired to consider some forms of violence and cruelty, particularly violence and cruelty against outsiders, virtuous? If so, why? From the history of our species, it does appear that people are hard-wired to consider some forms of violence and cruelty, particularly violence and cruelty against outsiders, virtuous.

In part, it is because of our animal origins or instincts. But it is also because of the very structure of our universe. I do believe that there is a negative force in the universe. But it existed long before humans. In fact, it gave rise to all things that currently exist in the universe. Human “sin” did not bring evil into the universe. Rather, the universe we live in is inherently damaged or flawed. Life in nature, for humans and all other organisms, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes). Living organisms must strain and struggle to survive, if they are lucky. Humans are no exception. Humans did not create this situation. Nor are humans responsible for their cruel and violent tendencies: those exist in people through no fault of their own or the fault of any of their ancestors. These tendencies, as well as the tendency not to be concerned with the suffering of perceived outsiders, let alone other organisms, are inherited from the animal kingdom and exacerbated by the human ability to plan using reason. Reason is not inherently incompatible with cruelty and violence.

If a personal, omniscient, omnipotent creator god made the universe, then logically speaking this situation is directly attributable to that being, no matter what kind of fanciful hairsplitting people who believe in such a being try to use to claim it is not attributable to him/her. I have an alternative explanation, which does not do the despicable and blame the victims of the flawed nature of our universe for its flawed nature, as the theory of original or primordial sin does, but nor does it attribute the flaws of our universe to the divine being beyond and within it.

My theory is that the divine being has seven attributes: infinity, eternity, absolute being, pure consciousness, absolute bliss, absolute love (i.e., agape), and light (in the sense of absolute knowledge or truth). But by necessity, there must be something that has the opposite qualities, particularly the quality of delusion/ignorance/darkness, otherwise we could not properly speak of the divine being having the qualities I mentioned. I believe the divine being is known directly, and known to have these qualities by direct (not communicated) experiences or realizations of the divine by human minds in the here and now, not by revelations in books, miracles, faith, speaking to the divine or one of its mediums (like angels), or any other form of communication from the divine: the divine is already there, as our true nature and the true underlying reality of all things.

I believe that the force of delusion or ignorance exists from the very beginning. Its true nature is divine and eternally free, but by definition it is ignorant of this fact, and it perpetuates itself in ignorance always trying to realize itself, but always failing. I believe it is this force that has manifested the universe in which we currently live. This being or force has only relative reality, for it is ignorant of what it really is, which is divine from the very beginning, but in its ignorance it has no idea about what perfection is, so it is continuously trying out new ways of understanding itself, or realizing what it is. And this is what leads to all of the problems in the universe: suffering, the need to struggle for survival, violence and cruelty, the whole nine yards. All of these are imperfect (to put it mildly) attempts to figure out a mode in which it can realize what it is.

Humans have inherited the past residue or results of these attempts: we all have material bodies; we are living organisms; we are animals; and now we have developed increasingly complex cognitive abilities which are unprecedented. I believe this great force of delusion has finally figured out a mode in which it (or components of it) can realize their true nature.

As an aside, in believing this, I do not deny the value of humans as individuals. Remember that the force of delusion in my theory is synonymous with the universe and that which gave rise to it, so humans are individuals from birth, as they are clearly distinguishable from other parts of the universe. Even though their true nature transcends any exclusive sense of identity they have, their provisional nature is what all are aware of from birth, and this nature is the most important one to set straight, for the simple reason that their divine nature cannot be realized until the provisional self is fully developed and in Maslow’s terminology, achieves self-actualization.

Those are the basics of my theory. It is still developing, but I believe at root it is much more plausible than either original sin or the theory that the divine being made the universe flawed intentionally. I only came up with this theory because I believe with full confidence that there is a real divine being with the attributes I described, and I cannot figure out any other satisfying explanation for how this is possible if the universe is so flawed. It is the only theodicy I have yet encountered that is reasonable (in that it blames neither humans nor the divine being for the flawed nature of the universe), deals adequately with the flaws of our universe (some theories brush over them, or say they are all a dream, or that everything will be fine because it is all in God’s hands, or some other feel-good explanation that really does not adequately explain why the universe is so flawed), and is still not negative or hostile to the universe in which we live.

In fact, we have reason to be optimistic: things seem to be getting better and better – humans can realize the divine, and we have figured out ways of vastly improving our quality of life in the universe, despite all the wars, cruelty, violence, etc. I think things are even improving there: even though the concept of human rights is a relatively recent one, and a lot of people still do not respect them, it still represents a vast improvement over everything that has come before. For most of history, including in the nineteenth century, most people would have scoffed at the very notion of universal human rights. Even though a lot still do today, I believe that fewer do than ever have before. That to me does represent at least some measure of progress.
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Evan

[EvanA]

F. On Cross-Cultural Similarities in Morality

Many moral codes have certain features in common, but usually I find these commonalities more worrisome than encouraging. It seems like the general consensus from several thousand years ago until the dawn of the enlightenment was that humans are fundamentally not equal to one another: some are better some are worse; that punishment for transgressing the laws or customs of a people should be brutal and harsh so as to deter perpetrators and exact retribution upon transgressors (in other words, revenge and intimidation are the values people have sought to put into practice through their justice systems); that women are inferior to men (it is in agrarian societies where this belief has been predominant); that one should be loyal to one’s own culture and people, including defending them to the death and killing all who threaten them, and that one should be severely punished for treason, which historically included such offenses as criticizing the government or practicing a religion not sanctioned by the state (this is what patriotism has almost always meant – the idea that dissent is patriotic, which I believe it is if it is rooted in a genuine concern for the well-being of one’s society, is a very recent one). Some aspects of the consensus are easier to accept: not murdering one’s own kind (though of course most moderns would probably extend it, and in my opinion should do so, to everybody); not stealing; that sort of thing. Overall, however, the consensus is not a reliable guide for morality, in my opinion.

G. My Conception of the Good

I define the good as rising above our natural limitations – physical, mental, and spiritual, in a responsible way (e.g., without destroying the natural environment or walking all over other people in the process). Natural limitations are not bad per se, just, well, limiting. To me, our natural limitations include our propensities for cruelty, violence, hatred, and vengefulness. I believe that overcoming these and other limitations constitutes the path of virtue. It is not easy to overcome our limitations. In fact, in some ways we are not free to choose whether we do or not. And other people are not likely to overcome their limitations en masse. There will always (or at least for a much longer time there will) be violence and cruelty unless there is a drastic change from the way our universe currently is. But we can certainly (at least try to) improve ourselves. (This is the end of my entry)
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Evan

[EvanA]

I guest section "E" should be "D," "F" should be "E," and "G" should be "F."
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Evan

[Chris Burkhardt]

Hi Evan. Interesting series. Although I'm not sure if you are responding to something specific in Louis's posts or just speculating on the origins of recreational violence. Either way it's a timely discussion for me because I just watched a documentary on the Weather Underground and their philosophy of violence in response to the violence of the US Government (because, apparently, not reacting violently would have been violence itself -- and who wants to be guilty of violence?).

Your theodicy reminds me of Spinoza -- if he were gnostic. I kind of like it. But I still have two points of contention:

• You say that the existence of the divine being of light necessitates the existence of a being with opposite qualities. You also say that the ignorant divinity can realize its true nature (through humans?). So what happens at this Singularity of Non-Duality when the force of delusion is no longer deluded? And is it a good thing?
  
• You seem concerned with not blaming sin (does this just mean cruelty or violence?) on humans (why not?) or nature (and therefore God). But then you blame it on nature as created by an ignorant god (who is somehow working through humans).
  

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- Chris B

"Ah! This discourse transports me, charms me," etc.

[Louis.com]

Hello. I'm assuming that Evan was replying to my comments. In most of his points the correlations are clear.

So I've gone through his points and written short replies.

A. When I wrote "internecine violence," I was referring to violence, particularly violent killing, among one's own kind. Humans excel in this. I'm not sure if any of Evan's examples of animals fit this category. Not being an ethologist, or even a regular viewer of the Discovery channel, I am drawing on chance observations and readings. It seems animals--such as a group of porpoises I watched one--will drive one of their own out of their group. They did not go on to kill the member. Most of Evan's graphic examples demonstrate violence against different species or, at least, different communities. It's the killings within the community that most interest me as a clue to human evil.

B. Not sure Evan is responding to what I wrote on reason. To me, reason can increase significantly, putting an end to much instinctual behavior because it provides alternate means of survival. What an increase in reason does not provide for is a generally more humane treatment of others. It is, as Evan wrote, neutral. So, again, what interests me, are instances of evil that are not in the interests of physical survival and often endanger physical survival. These are moral issues, and they have much more to do with what CS Lewis called "well trained emotions" than reason -- as he argues at length in The Abolition of Man.

C. I think Evan is arguing that internecine violence--which is what I'm pointing to as an index of something gravely wrong with humans--has been institutionalized and also has been projected onto a divine plane. I agree completely.

E. (i.e. D.) Apparently, Evan believes that a binary dualism is necessary to allow finite beings understand and appreciate the seven attributes of the divinity. While it is hard to imagine appreciating light without knowing darkness (for example), my concerns are not touched by this. Once could certainly know the value of love without perpetrating or experiencing extreme cruelty. After all, most of the human race will not go to the darkest end of the spectrum, but will, presumably, be capable of appreciating love, light, and bliss.

F. (i.e. E.) Evan does not trust (most) moral codes, although at the end of the previous section he wrote, "I think things are even improving there: even though the concept of human rights is a relatively recent one, and a lot of people still do not respect them, it still represents a vast improvement over everything that has come before." Here the discussion touches my concerns. On one hand, humans are capable of incredible refinements to older moral codes. On the other, this refinement does not necessarily affect their behavior, but only their ideals.

It is that disjunction that brings me back to my original point: "My belief is that we are born blind and will imitate the worser elements of our neighbors if not for the grace of God." This is not a philosophical position, but, then, a lot of philosophical positions either minimize the problem of human evil or re-cast it as a non-human problem.

G. (i.e. F.) I this it is in this last point that a real difference between my and Evan's positions becomes clear. According to his post, "To me, our natural limitations include our propensities for cruelty, violence, hatred, and vengefulness." And according to almost everything I've written, there is something uniquely specific about human evil, something that isn't natural, the way the desire to eat is natural and observable across species. One can argue that the greater intelligence causes the greed and pleasure in subjugation, but I would answer that (1) it shouldn't since intelligence is also linked in these discussions to human improvement, and (2) if it does, it demonstrates a difference in quantity that results in a difference of kind.

It's not the starving humans that concern me. They are usually the raped and slaughtered ones. It's the ones who are prospering at the expense of the others. In other words, it's the ones who have a lower instinctive demand breathing down their necks but a higher drive toward injuring others. This is a problem of evil that strongly suggests we are not whole, and that the biological needs do not account for some of the moral needs.

[Chris Burkhardt]

Here's a quote from the book I'm currently reading.

[EvanA]

That's a strange quote. In this quote at least, Chesterton merely states that original sin can be proven to be true without offering evidence of how it is true. Maybe he explains it elsewhere in the book? I know this quote is largely directed against contemporary Christian theologians, but it contains claims about morality that apply far beyond the Christian context if they are true. Therefore, I approach it from a general philosophical perspective rather than a scripturally-committed perspective.

It is not true that great sceptics take positive evil as the starting point of their argument. It is not even true that they always did before the modern era. And even if they did, there is no reason they should have. The existence of evil can only be demonstrated to exist if an absolute moral standard is demonstrated to exist. But in fact no such standard has ever been convincingly demonstrated to exist by any real empirical evidence. Even those who have advanced different standards ostensibly rooted in human experience have failed to show how they went from an "is" (what we experience) to an "ought" (that we ought to take that experience or sort of experience as our standard of values).

I certainly believe Chesterton that the British atheists he knew and knew of disbelieved in God's existence because of all the suffering and sadistic joy they saw all around them, but that is what I would call "knee-jerk" atheism, or atheism that takes one's emotional reactions as tools of cognition, rather than reason based on empirical evidence. (I concede that emotions are empirical phenomena, but they tell us how our brain currently interprets the world, not why it interprets the world that way or whether that interpretation is correct - only direct observation has the power to do that.) Such atheism takes the idea of a universal moral order seriously. Most atheists still do, despite the fact that there is no empirical evidence for an objective, universal moral order.

Now I want to examine the last statement in this quote:

[Chris Burkhardt]

Say, shouldn't you be studying for your final exams?
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- Chris B

"Ah! This discourse transports me, charms me," etc.

[EvanA]

I had a final yesterday, before I wrote this, and felt like focusing on something besides law for a while. Your post gave me a perfect opportunity to focus my mind on something I both care about and enjoy, so I did.
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Evan

[Chris Burkhardt]

[EvanA]

I disagree that absolute morality is not the issue. At the very least, it is an issue, and in my opinion it is at the heart of Chesterton's quotation.

[Chris Burkhardt]

[EvanA]

I guess it is difficult to argue that each organism with neurons has a subjective set of values. I was refuting Chesterton's claim about sin being a fact as plain as potatoes, etc., in my original response to his quotation. He also seems to think that because his favorite philosophers and theologians all believed in positive evil, that proves that positive evil exists. In truth, it is not relevant whether Aristotle, Plato, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kant, and Paul all believed in absolute standards of morality. All that matters is whether their arguments are strong or weak. They are quite weak, yet all of them, and many others, have maintained quite adamantly that absolute moral standards do exist.

The greatest skeptics are those who see through these specious arguments, as Hume, Pyrrho, and Nietzsche all did in the West, the Daoist philosophers Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu did in East Asia (as did many Zen Buddhists later on), and some heterodox philosophers did in India. Hume: he believed, as far as I understand him, that moral beliefs are rooted in subjective emotional reactions that vary from person to person. I think he has a strong argument.

Pyrrho, Chuang Tzu, and Lieh Tzu seem to emphasize transcending all dualistic beliefs, including those based on conventional notions of right and wrong, benefit and harm, pleasure and pain, etc. Then again, they make non-dualistic thinking the standard of morality, though they would almost certainly agree that thinking of non-duality in ethical terms prevents its realization.

Nietzsche generally argued that subtle psychological proclivities based on one's position in society, one's cultural background, and one's level of confidence, among other factors, influence (perhaps even determine) the creation of all ethical and metaphysical systems. His argument for the will to power starts with the belief that there are no absolute standards of morality, but that moralities that glorify strength rather than weakness are more life-affirming, and so better in his subjective estimation.

All of these guys had good arguments against absolute standards of morality, yet all realized the inevitability of having some sort of moral standard based on subjective factors. I cannot argue with you there.

However, I do think that the belief that there are not absolute moral standards goes against the Platonist and Aristotlean strains of Western Philosophy, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Baha'i, Confucianism, all traditional African religions, all traditional religions of Oceania, and all traditional Native American religions. However, these traditions all have what their adherents believe are absolute standards because of the adherents' emotional attachment to certain views, based on subjective factors, not to mention a very ethnocentric worldview.

The "problem" of living once's life in conformity with natural law (which I would say is probably the most common philosophical or ideological dilemma in human history) no longer exists once people admit that any belief in absolute standards of morality is empirically baseless.

(This is an addition to my last posts.) Even life and death and pleasure and pain are not necessary standards, as I discussed previously, and they tell us very little in the way of practical information even if people choose to make them the standard: many value systems are compatible with life, unless people try to define organisms' purposes or natures, of course, but no organism, particularly not the human being, has a particular/unique purpose, function, or nature that can be pinned down with precision. People can survive in many different ways, and people disagree sharply about what truly constitutes pleasure and pain. The Theravada Buddhists think that attachment to people, ideas, and specific courses of action ultimately leads to suffering because none of those things last, and so advocate calming the mind and seeing that things are impermanent, that the human "self" is in a constant state of flux and so lacks any substantial or permanent existence, and that suffering results from clinging to impermanent things (and either preferring to have or avoid those things). In practice, this is, in my opinion, a form of hedonism (making suffering the standard of good and evil cannot be called anything else), yet is a very far cry from all forms of prosperity-based hedonism. (So is Epicureanism, for that matter.)

I guess I'm rambling. Oh well. Chris, I think you probably agree with most of what I have written so far. My point is that if you are right, which I think you are, that subjective moral standards are inevitable, and all we have to go by, that goes against the dominant Western philosophical traditions and the whole Christian religion, not just as traditionally practiced, but as it undeniably exists in the language of the Bible as well. It means people can choose whatever moral standards they want, inasmuch as they have free will. And we all have apparent free will. So we can all appear to change our views by free choice. In practice, this means people can truly have whatever moral beliefs they want. That goes against Chesterton and most philosophies and religions in human history.
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Evan