Good and Evil

[Ahab]

3 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

True.  God really is simply all that we make him to be. 

We make him?  No I think you have that backwards.  He is our Father, if you're referring to the person we most often refer to as God. 

And if by God you mean the kind of being he is then no we still don't make him, but we do choose for ourselves how we will be and what we think we are.

3 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

He's conceived in the consciousness of individual humans.

No, still wrong.  Individuals like us, who are the same kin d of being he is, do conceive of what we think of him but he does not originate in our consciousness.  

3 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

  Sure humans talk about what they perceive him to be and let that dialogue influence how they view him.  If there is a god, he's likely no where near as described by any religion or any religious person. 

Some of us are spot on, even though we may not have learned everything about our kind of being yet, and some of us are way off with only a few fragments of true knowledge about what we are and who we came from.

[Ahab]

7 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

An artist paints a portrait over many days. He finds it to be unsatisfactory and destroys it and starts over. Is that destruction moral or not? Good or Evil ? 

An artist paints a portrait over many days. A vandal breaks in to the art studio after hours and destroys the painting. Is THAT act moral or not ? Good or Evil? 

The bigger point in all of this is that we are the ones who determine whether something is good or evil.  We, our kind of being, does that.  The kind of being we refer to as God.

I haven't looked around recently but I haven't seen any other kind of being who determines whether something is good or evil.  Apes don't do that.  Whales and dolphins don't either.  Not even any owls will do that.

Just us.  Just God.

[Ahab]

32 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

And...the big problem with the experienced directly--well it simply could be nothing but imagination, feelings and not much more.  That is you simply assume God then when you feel inspired and imagine he's working inside you, or whatever, you confirm your assumption--confirmation bias.  

Thus the importance of knowing yourself and the differences between yourself and some other person.  Like when you think of something, was that just from your own mind or did that thought come from some other person?

This is me speaking to you right now.  Just in case you might have thought this idea came from your own mind.

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

And we say we are God and that we do.

Okay then I will leave you to it.  Pointless though because there is a God and we are it.

Gobbeldeguk.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

5 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

For the record, this is not what you just said.

Nothing can preexist an infinite regress. 

Anyways, what is it that makes it impossible to have purpose if God does not exist? What makes it impossible for there to be good or evil to exist if God does not exist? You still haven't answered these questions.

The great chain of being is infinite.  There was no beginning.  There will be no end.  https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-joseph-smith/chapter-17?lang=eng

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

The fact that God must be experienced directly does not rule out logical proof for God. 

Yes. Please read the rest of the post

That's what it says.

But I suppose it was confusing.

What I meant is there's no logical proof in the Paradigm that most people use, Cartesian foundationalism. Then I also said there IS logical proof in a different Paradigm, which is non Cartesian. So I guess overall it was confusing. Sorry

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundationalism

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by mfbukowski

[Ahab]

1 minute ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes. Please read the rest of the post

That's what it says

 

Looked to me like you contradicted yourself and the statement from you that I took issue with was this one:  There can be no logical proof for God

Otherwise I would have agreed with everything you said there.

[mfbukowski]

6 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Looked to me like you contradicted yourself and the statement from you that I took issue with was this one:  There can be no logical proof for God

Otherwise I would have agreed with everything you said there.

Yes you are right.

Read the edited post. You replied too quickly 

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by mfbukowski

[Meadowchik]

29 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The great chain of being is infinite.  There was no beginning.  There will be no end.  https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/teachings-joseph-smith/chapter-17?lang=eng

I'm very familiar with Joseph Smith's teachings on co-eternality, they had a deep impact upon me as a believer.

Yet, that does not address my point or questions. You still haven't explained why purpose requires God or why "good and evil" requires God. I"m sensing an unformed thesis here, on your part. 

Edited September 9, 2020 by Meadowchik

[Ahab]

11 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes you are right.

Read the edited post. You replied too quickly 

 

Now I feel like I just want to use the word Robert used.  Gobbeldeguk... even though I know it is bad spelling and the correct spelling is gobbledygook.

To me and my mind, something is either logical or it isn't, so either it is or is it ain't logical to you?

[Ahab]

9 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

I'm very familiar with Joseph Smith's teachings on co-eternality, they had a deep impact upon me as a believer.

Yet, that does not address my point or questions. You still haven't explained why purpose requires God or why "good and evil" requires God. I"m sensing an unformed thesis here, on your part. 

And no she was not saluting Hitler.

[Meadowchik]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

And no she was not saluting Hitler.

Hermione rocks!

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Ahab said:

Now I feel like I just want to use the word Robert used.  Gobbeldeguk... even though I know it is bad spelling and the correct spelling is gobbledygook.

To me and my mind, something is either logical or it isn't, so either it is or is it ain't logical to you?

Yes I know and that's the problem we have in communication. It's not likely to change. Thanks for the conversation.

I'm sorry I don't have the time to get into it with you at this time. Maybe if you read the Wikipedia like I sent you on foundationalism it would help.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I'm very familiar with Joseph Smith's teachings on co-eternality, they had a deep impact upon me as a believer.

Yet, that does not address my point or questions. You still haven't explained why purpose requires God or why "good and evil" requires God. I"m sensing an unformed thesis here, on your part. 

As I have repeatedly said, purpose does not require a God or god.  Purpose preexists God.  It is a universal law.  And God must obey all universal laws.  Otherwise He could not be God.  In fact, without opposites (which I have covered in detail, with citations), God could not be God.  God did not create the universe or universal law.  It preexists Him, and is eternal.  God is required to obey eternal law.

[mfbukowski]

On 9/8/2020 at 9:52 AM, Islander said:

"It" has to be beyond time and space to create time and space. The only thing in the human record that points to such "thing" that is both,  intelligent and capable of creative power is God. I understand that secularists cringe at the notion, but it is rather more probable than something came from nothing.

What if I said that time and space are human perceptions- ie: that the construction of the human brain does not allow us to think WITHOUT the constructions and constrictions of time and space?

Suppose T&S then could be both, in a sense "human creations" AND "really out there" in another sense?  Just as for example that the sky is "BLUE" because that is the agreed upon linguistic utterance  for what we perceive as the angstrom units of wavelength reaching our eyeballs?

Does one have to be beyond the perception of blue to SEE what is called the color blue?

Of course not.   We cannot even know what being "beyond time and space" MEANS any more than we can know what "being beyond blue" means.

Crucial of course to this point is the postulate which we LDS believers accept that God himself is a glorified HUMAN.  

He has voluntarily accepted (in my story here) to remove himself from being "beyond" time and space - IF he ever WAS "beyond" in the first place- which is unknowable- in order to BE like us in the personage of Jesus of Nazareth

God himself allowed himself to see the world AS a human being and experience all the pain and suffering humans can possibly know just exactly because that is what a HUMAN God would have to do to "qualify" as a HUMAN God.

And now that also applies to the question of did we create God or did God create us!!

WE postulate that he was a human himself-which postulation itself MAKES Him Human- it is postulate number 1 of Christianity since we believe that God became Jesus- or we would not be "Christians"

So by that postulate, WE make HIM God by seeing Him AS God

BUT on the other hand since humans create human reality AS HUMANS SEE REALITY- we can see it no other way- we can say that God's human perception, as a human seeing other humans, CREATES us as humans, just as we create our world by seeing it as humans see it.

We see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.   We do not see him face to face now!

We look in a mirror and see God looking back at us just as when we look out at the world what we see are our peceptions of the world staring back at us.   We create the world and the world creates us.

Maybe an analogy would work

As we evolve, evolution as a concept itself evolves.  So do we create evolution or does evolution create us?

 

[Meadowchik]

5 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

As I have repeatedly said, purpose does not require a God or god.  Purpose preexists God.  It is a universal law.  And God must obey all universal laws.  Otherwise He could not be God.  In fact, without opposites (which I have covered in detail, with citations), God could not be God.  God did not create the universe or universal law.  It preexists Him, and is eternal.  God is required to obey eternal law.

It started here when I remarked to Nehor:

  On 9/7/2020 at 11:58 PM, Meadowchik said:

............... if there is no God, are all those good thoughts and feelings which we call "the Light of Christ" invalid? I don't think so. 

And you replied:

  On 9/8/2020 at 4:30 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

If there is no God and no purpose to the universe, then the thoughts and feelings we have are neither good nor bad.  In fact, all value judgments would then be nonsensical and irrelevant.  Only the laws of the jungle and of entropy would apply.  Bertrand Russell admitted up front that his personal preferences aside, one could not logically say that Stalin's Soviet Union was better or worse than the U.K.  If the so-called "light of Christ" is merely a matter of fairy faith, then it has no more value than the childish hope that the tooth fairy will come and compensate us.

Here, you have pinned all possibility of "good or evil" on the existence of God and a Universal Purpose.

I am of the school of thought that agrees that if God exists, it is because God is good, abiding by principle and therefore being Supreme. Nothing becomes good (or evil) by decree.

I do think I was confused by your combining God and purpose, though, and I beg your pardon.

So it sounds like you are saying that the real dependence is that of good and evil upon Universal Purpose rather than upon God. So in other words you didn't actually disagree with what I said to Nehor. In fact it sounds like you agreed. 

Instead of arguing the existence of something like the Light of Christ depending upon the existence of God, you switched to its existence depending upon the existence of a universal purpose. Is that close to what you're saying?

 

 

 

 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

It started here when I remarked to Nehor:

  On 9/7/2020 at 11:58 PM, Meadowchik said:

............... if there is no God, are all those good thoughts and feelings which we call "the Light of Christ" invalid? I don't think so. 

And you replied:

  On 9/8/2020 at 4:30 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

If there is no God and no purpose to the universe, then the thoughts and feelings we have are neither good nor bad.  In fact, all value judgments would then be nonsensical and irrelevant.  Only the laws of the jungle and of entropy would apply.  Bertrand Russell admitted up front that his personal preferences aside, one could not logically say that Stalin's Soviet Union was better or worse than the U.K.  If the so-called "light of Christ" is merely a matter of fairy faith, then it has no more value than the childish hope that the tooth fairy will come and compensate us.

Here, you have pinned all possibility of "good or evil" on the existence of God and a Universal Purpose.

I am of the school of thought that agrees that if God exists, it is because God is good, abiding by principle and therefore being Supreme. Nothing becomes good (or evil) by decree.

I do think I was confused by your combining God and purpose, though, and I beg your pardon.

So it sounds like you are saying that the real dependence is that of good and evil upon Universal Purpose rather than upon God. So in other words you didn't actually disagree with what I said to Nehor. In fact it sounds like you agreed. 

Instead of arguing the existence of something like the Light of Christ depending upon the existence of God, you switched to its existence depending upon the existence of a universal purpose. Is that close to what you're saying?

More or less.  Good and evil are part of universal law, the Law of Opposites.  One cannot exist without the other across a broad range of opposites.  As in philosophy (logic), one cannot make an assertion without also assuming its opposite.  And no proof of anything is possible without establishing the theoretical falsification of that proposition.  That is the fundamental basis of science.

Of course, everything I am asserting is merely part of a system of belief.  My asserting it doesn't make it so.  And something being logical does not make it real.  Whether God exists, and what sort of God He might be is a matter of faith.  However, Joseph Smith's assertions have the happy circumstance of being internally logical and coherent.  That doesn't mean they are correct.

[The Nehor]

On 9/8/2020 at 7:07 PM, Islander said:

God is a Holy God, a Just and Righteous God and an omniscient God. He does not do random. An inextricable part of His creation is love which can not exist without free will.  The fact that He allows evil does not make Him the author or creator of evil. We would not know what is good if evil did not exist. How can we chose righteousness if unrighteousness is not possible. We are incapable of judging the mind or acts of.the God of the universe with our puny minds. Whatever He does is right because He is ALWAYS just and His justice is always right.  Job attempted to question God for his ill-fortune. The Lord chastised him (for four chapters, mind you) until Job declares:

"Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”  Job 42:3

I think you missed one of the main points of the book of Job. The argument that God is so far beyond man and that what is happening to Job is just and right is put forward by Job's "friends" and in the end they are more condemned then Job. There are two approaches to the unjust nature of the Universe. You can throw up your hands and declare that everything is right because God decreed it as Job's friends did which God does not seem to approve of. The other option is to relentlessly continue wrestling with the problem and applying justice and rationality to the world to figure out how it works. This is what Job did. In the end Job did not get a solid answer for why he endured those tribulations but God approved of Job's search and blessed him for it.

[Islander]

9 hours ago, stemelbow said:

"Without a decidedly Judeo-Christian worldview, the concept of what's good and evil, moral and immoral does not emerge"?  Sounds like the type of dogma that amounts to nonsense.  Good and evil, moral and immoral has emerged outside of this worldview you mention.  More than half the world continues on and has been raised outside of it.  

Morality is not relative in my view.  it's objective.  Proposed slavery, proposed rapes and slaughters by God's commands are not moral.  Everyone agrees with that.  

The fact that the West has decided to jettison its Judeo-Christian  foundation does not negate that fact that the value system, the system of laws and the very rights that we all enjoy are rooted there. Its influence has permeated the world and America, for example, has gone to great lengths to share and spread those values the world over. 

In most of the world, people do not have the rights we ,cherish and enjoy in this country, . Think of the fact that millions live in countries that have no Judeo-Chrisgian roots and those are the most repressive,  most brutal and backwards societies on earth. The West has rejected the Lawgiver but enjoys the benefits of His laws. Regrettable.  

God has defined what is good and what is evil. Besides that there is only human opinion which changes constantly. Thus without an absolute and immutable definition of good and evil we are left with situational, utilitarian and ever shifting opinion, not morality. 

[Islander]

9 hours ago, california boy said:

Interesting.  God can kill every single child on the face of the earth, because some were practicing human sacrifice (children mind you).  So which group is moral and which group is immoral???

How do you decide what's moral? What are the standards that set what is moral or immoral?

[Islander]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

I think you missed one of the main points of the book of Job. The argument that God is so far beyond man and that what is happening to Job is just and right is put forward by Job's "friends" and in the end they are more condemned then Job. There are two approaches to the unjust nature of the Universe. You can throw up your hands and declare that everything is right because God decreed it as Job's friends did which God does not seem to approve of. The other option is to relentlessly continue wrestling with the problem and applying justice and rationality to the world to figure out how it works. This is what Job did. In the end Job did not get a solid answer for why he endured those tribulations but God approved of Job's search and blessed him for it.

God chastised Job! For nearly three chapters God asks question after question to illustrated that we are a grain of sand in a thousand mile coastline. We have no way of possibly understanding the reasons why God does what He does. Suffering has meaning, even if we can't grasp what it is. That is at heart of the story of Job. 

[Glenn101]

21 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Why do we need an authoritarian to identify evil?

Because, without that, all is moral relativism. Without that higher arbiter Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin are just as moral as you or I.

[Islander]

19 minutes ago, Glenn101 said:

Because, without that, all is moral relativism. Without that higher arbiter Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin are just as moral as you or I.

Secularists just refuse to be confused by the facts. Without God, we're just cosmic dust and it would matter not if we live, die, have rights or eat each other for dinner. 

[rodheadlee]

11 hours ago, stemelbow said:

"Without a decidedly Judeo-Christian worldview, the concept of what's good and evil, moral and immoral does not emerge"?  Sounds like the type of dogma that amounts to nonsense.  Good and evil, moral and immoral has emerged outside of this worldview you mention.  More than half the world continues on and has been raised outside of it.  

Morality is not relative in my view.  it's objective.  Proposed slavery, proposed rapes and slaughters by God's commands are not moral.  Everyone agrees with that.  

The president of China said he had a mandate from Heaven to rule the world. Is this immoral or moral? Is it objective or subjective?

[Meadowchik]

5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

More or less.  Good and evil are part of universal law, the Law of Opposites.  One cannot exist without the other across a broad range of opposites.  As in philosophy (logic), one cannot make an assertion without also assuming its opposite.  And no proof of anything is possible without establishing the theoretical falsification of that proposition.  That is the fundamental basis of science.

Of course, everything I am asserting is merely part of a system of belief.  My asserting it doesn't make it so.  And something being logical does not make it real.  Whether God exists, and what sort of God He might be is a matter of faith.  However, Joseph Smith's assertions have the happy circumstance of being internally logical and coherent.  That doesn't mean they are correct.

Thank you.

Yes I get this, it's right in line with where I was for a long time before my belief system exploded. (I say it that way because it's important to recognise the traumatic nature of it. The change was not so characteristic of my personality.)

Anyways, that might be why my experience now feels as joyful as it does, because my new moral code from the ashes (see here)

"My moral code is quite accessible. It starts with acknowledging that I exist and others exist. Then I also acknowledge that I want to be treated like a person by others and that therefore I can help create a world where others treat me like a person by myself treating others like individuals just as real as me. It's not esoteric, but it provides the principle upon which all kinds of humane relationships can form between the individual and society and between respective individuals. 

By the way, it makes room for the freedom to believe, too, so it makes room for theism. It is inclusive and it does not depend on one person's or one group's interpretation of what God/s have said."

does not depend upon the logical premise of opposition or an overarching universal logic. 

If anything, it collectively depends upon the social/communal nature of human beings. But I am not bothered by that dependence. What's important is to have a code that others can agree upon because it is mutually beneficial.

And I feel like I was able to discover more joy despite the absence of a conviction of some overarching cosmic meaning, maybe even because of that absence:

"Just speaking from my experience, it was a weird transition going from the paradigm of "the fiery darts of temptation" of devils to no belief in devils. Throughout my life, I was very careful to avoid the appearance of evil, and try to renew the Spirit so that I could withstand evil. Of course, since "as a (wo)man thinketh," so she is, I would even avoid many types of thoughts. Then, after belief in God and devils was over, I changed something. I allowed myself to think through an entire scenario.

Here's an example: suppose as a married woman I had always felt uncomfortable being alone with a man who was not in my family. If a repairmen was in my house in the past, I would have been afraid of temptations that I had been told could happen, even to the point of blocking any thought of the obvious stereotypical temptations and avoiding any unnecessary contact. But now, I don't block the thought, I think it through. Do I want to fool around with a man who is not my husband if given an easy opportunity and no one would have to know? What if he was real charming or handsome? I found something about myself and my marriage. No, I don't want any of that. I just want to be with my husband. It doesn't matter how "attractive" another man is in theory, the thought is repulsive because of the impersonal nature of such a thing and the betrayal it would represent. It's not tempting at all.

Since my beliefs changed I haven't had any prevailing desire to do wicked things, and this fact is actually very gratifying to me. It's nice to know that belief in God isn't the only thing that holds me back from doing wicked things. I have values that are part of who I am. 

I think that the belief in Satan and his minions and their temptations might rob us a bit of this knowledge of our own goodness, and what we really want. And therefore, that belief can rob us of joy."

Maybe as grown humans we are still like children who benefit from the model toward independence, maybe some growth happens uniquely when we feel most alone or we feel the finity of human life.

I believe I have made meaning for my life, whether I am the first or ten billionth to do so makes no difference.

My little boy is a thoughtful fella, he feels the problems of the world deeply and sometimes it is too much. Besides ensuring he has proper rest and sunshine, I also found myself articulating my belief system inadvertently. All I was attempting was to try to coax him out of that mental/emotional precipice that overwhelmed him.

I used Pixar as a visual aid for him:

https://youtu.be/93JqK32LqW4

The Toys are stuck in an incinerator, and their would-be last choice is to hold hands and comfort each other because there is nothing left that they can do. 

I told my son that while we don't want bad things to happen, it's undeniable that they do. So, I asked if he'd rather be holding his friends' hands or fighting them during a bad thing.

The Toys do get saved, by other toys that Woody had previously helped.

(Pausing here to say that the Toy Story series is a rather brilliant metaphor for secular humanism imo.)

So bad things do happen, but kindness helps us endure them and kindness can also help us overcome them.

I think it helped. So did a better bedtime.

Kindness, to me, is the meaning to be made and it is the greatest weapon for good and against evil.