The Black Hole at the Center of Ethics

[Avatar]

I meant in the over-arching sense, not in the cause and effect sense.

--A

[Linna Heartbooger]

I told myself I'd stay out of conversations like this...

Feel free to duck in and duck out, for reasons of your own, not to be judged by our fool human eyes. I know I do. -sigh-

There is also no existential need for sorrow or pain. Yet they exist, and in many times at much higher quantities than the joy. That, to me, is proof that there is no God.

But isn't that way of thinking just another means to avoid pain and disappointment?

Not that we don't, like, all do that...

[rdhopeca]

I told myself I'd stay out of conversations like this...

Feel free to duck in and duck out, for reasons of your own, not to be judged by our fool human eyes. I know I do. -sigh-

There is also no existential need for sorrow or pain. Yet they exist, and in many times at much higher quantities than the joy. That, to me, is proof that there is no God.

But isn't that way of thinking just another means to avoid pain and disappointment?

Not that we don't, like, all do that...

No, I'm merely refuting the argument that because joy exists, so therefore must God exist. Obviously we all feel joy, sorrow, pain, whatever it is we feel. However it does not logically follow then that there must be some third party reason for them that we would ascribe to a metaphysical all powerful being. Maybe it's because at the end of the day joy is just the same to us as it is a dog with a ball, not because there's some doggy god who allows the ball to exist.

[Avatar]

But isn't that way of thinking just another means to avoid pain and disappointment?

I don't understand? I would think that it is just the opposite. Can't see how thinking there is no god reduces your pain and disappointment.

I could see that believing in one would do so though.

--A

[Linna Heartbooger]

No, I'm merely refuting the argument that because joy exists, so therefore must God exist. Obviously we all feel joy, sorrow, pain, whatever it is we feel. However it does not logically follow then that there must be some third party reason for them that we would ascribe to a metaphysical all powerful being.

Okay, so you don't think that although joy and beauty seem to some to have an utterly lavish needlessness to them...
You don't think that on a purely logical basis that can get all the way to -> God exists.
But then, I don't think it was was being put forward on the grounds of cold, hard, solid logic.

So you countered with a negation that has some teeth to it..
...seeing as there is so much apparently pointless pain and suffering... that "...man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."

I'm not assenting that joy is the same for us as for the animals... but I'm definitely not picking that fight.

But no, wait, I'll pick a debate... near it. And maybe it won't go anywhere, but we'll see.

Maybe it's because at the end of the day joy is just the same to us as it is a dog with a ball, not because there's some doggy god who allows the ball to exist.

But who makes the ball to move? For the doggy? And why?

[Linna Heartbooger]

But isn't that way of thinking just another means to avoid pain and disappointment?

I don't understand? I would think that it is just the opposite. Can't see how thinking there is no god reduces your pain and disappointment.

Well, I don't know how it is for people of other faiths... or even just for someone coming from a different place from me.

But I see faith as full of tension. I am constantly struggling.
I mean, you could see how attempting to hold faith with a God Who is omniscient and omnipotent... would create tensions about, oh... every two minutes.
Even if we could try to rationalize with a simpering smile that, "all things are within His Will" when pain strikes, that doesn't seem to be all that He wants out of us.
God does seem to want us to have a depth of "knowing" that He really is this way.
It doesn't seem that He's content to make us capable of repeating intellectual statements of such things... (liars can get the voice inflections down pat just as much as a faithful believer) but He seems to want us to get a deep down "knowing" that involves time-tested again-and-again experience that He has proven faithful.

And then there's... loving such a God.
In a faith the holds the love of God as supreme there's bound to be tensions...
If any person, even closest family, hurts me, I will be tempted to wall off my heart from them.
How much easier (in some ways) would it be for me to retreat from an invisible God?
And to justify such retreating!
Especially when "his arrows have sunk into me, and his hand has come down on me."
I mean, in a sense, He's responsible for everything that happens, right?
I'd suggest that all of us, believers included, have built up an incredible set of defenses to ward our hearts from God.

A friend's husband once pointed out that pain is a big part of life... and that having high hopes for good things... things in which we can participate... can easily lead to despair... pain when those things fail, or seem to fail, or remain unfulfilled for so long.
So why not just harden ourselves against such fearfully-painful things?

I could see that believing in one would do so [reduce pain and disappointment] though.

Amusingly, it was a South African pastor who was being interviewed on the radio who really got my attention awhile back... when he characterized what people in many Western churches call their 'belief' as not being the Christian faith but actually being "a sort of Theraputic Deism."

Well, aren't you glad you asked now, Av?

[Orlion]

Okay, so you don't think that although joy and beauty seem to some to have an utterly lavish needlessness to them...

In my opining, that is kinda evidence for the randomness of the universe. We will end up with things that are connected (like food produces energy to prolong life), but because things are random and nothing is actually aiming at some goal, we have things that "do not fit". Perhaps there is no actual reason for joy, sorrow, etc. but that does not mean there is a God or Devil that is controlling aspects of reality, it just means those things came into existence by chance and by chance happen to stick around.

Ultimately, I can not see an omnipotent entity being concerned with mere people on a mere rock that must be in size to it like an electron is to us. We don't care what one electron is doing... ever. The only thing we care about is the general behaviour of electrons... and we do not permeate nearly as much of the universe as electrons do. To then turn around and feel 'special' because we attract the attention of this omnipotent entity seems to be arrogance at its height.

And, based on the suffering and evil that abounds unchecked by any supernatural forces, I can only conclude that there is no all-benevolent entity out there with any ability affect reality at all.

[Avatar]

I could see that believing in one would do so [reduce pain and disappointment] though.

Amusingly, it was a South African pastor who was being interviewed on the radio who really got my attention awhile back... when he characterized what people in many Western churches call their 'belief' as not being the Christian faith but actually being "a sort of Theraputic Deism."

Well, aren't you glad you asked now, Av?

So you're saying that believing in god is a stressful and difficult thing, so by being atheists, we're avoiding that?

I can see the therapeutic deism thing though. There's also a lot of habitual deism going on. People believing because that's what they were taught, and that's what their parents believed.

--A

[rdhopeca]

No, I'm merely refuting the argument that because joy exists, so therefore must God exist. Obviously we all feel joy, sorrow, pain, whatever it is we feel. However it does not logically follow then that there must be some third party reason for them that we would ascribe to a metaphysical all powerful being.

Okay, so you don't think that although joy and beauty seem to some to have an utterly lavish needlessness to them...
You don't think that on a purely logical basis that can get all the way to -> God exists.
But then, I don't think it was was being put forward on the grounds of cold, hard, solid logic.

So you countered with a negation that has some teeth to it..
...seeing as there is so much apparently pointless pain and suffering... that "...man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward."

I'm not assenting that joy is the same for us as for the animals... but I'm definitely not picking that fight.

But no, wait, I'll pick a debate... near it. And maybe it won't go anywhere, but we'll see.

Maybe it's because at the end of the day joy is just the same to us as it is a dog with a ball, not because there's some doggy god who allows the ball to exist.

But who makes the ball to move? For the doggy? And why?

No one. The ball exists, and the dog discovers it (or one of us makes the dog aware of it) and the dog derives joy from playing with it. Same could be said for a stick that fell out of a tree, or a bone. Some need of the dog is satisfied by that. There is no "why". Joy is in the teeth that knaw, if you will.

[deer of the dawn]

And to counter, I cannot think of the measurements available to me measuring pain and sorrow and joy in relative quantities. But I suspect you are right. Yet, I don't see why this proves there is no god, unless god is "a being that can alleviate all sorrow and pain."

I think a lot of people (Christ-followers like myself, included) miss the boat by assuming that God's plan is to alleviate their pain; at least in the short term. That He owes us happiness. The thinking is: I suffer, I don't like it, therefore God is either mean or nonexistent. Recently my parrot had an eye infection. He was given to us at the age of about 12 years, never EVER having been handled since he was put into his aviary 12 years before. I had to catch him twice a day so Stag could put medicine in his infected eye. He had no idea that we were doing good to him and his natural reaction was to screech, struggle and bite. People are like that with God.

He IS the happiness. To have fellowship with Him is joy; but people expect a cosmic Santa and don't like it when he doesn't come through with the bicycle, the baby, the healing from cancer, etc., that they thought He owed them.

The hardest thing about faith, the tension Linna alluded to, is accepting that both these statements are true: that God is good/love/light, and that God is omnipotent/sovereign/in control. Reconcile those; that is faith.

[hierachy]

Sorry if this has already been said but I only read the op

I am always wary when I see people talking about 'human nature'. I find it is often used dismissively. Are humans greedy by nature? Personally I think a lot of what is labelled human nature is actually a psychological side effect of prevailing paradigms--a thesis which is hard to test. However, greed seems to lose its relevance when one thinks of oneself as all things rather than to isolate this human holon.

In any case, this article seems somewhat relevant to the discussion of human nature - www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-le ... plementary

I think language plays a huge roll here. Language doesn't just describe reality, it creates it. The voice in our head is limited by the boundaries of language... lego brick concepts, lego brick views of a fractal existence. This is by no means the only method of awareness, but it is the dominating narrative within western culture. The problem arises when we forget that it was us who drew the lines in the sand, and so we ponder such dichotomies as free will vs determinism as if these concepts have some kind of reality separate from the mind that thinks them. A dog chasing its own tail, so to speak.

So to with ethics and morality:

...how do we escape from the conclusion that the best gameplan is one of 'screw your neighbour - look after number one!

It is not sufficient to say 'we all benefit from leading altruistic and benevolent lives'. Human nature is not like that, nor I am afraid ever will be. The immediate advantages to the immoral self-pursuer in such a world would doom it to failure from the very start.

You come to the conclusion that in the absence of an almighty arbiter to enforce the contrary, the optimum course of action is selfishness... but you clearly view this as a negative. From where has this meta-value arisen? It seems you've split yourself in two and they are in conflict.

Personally, I feel that if there has been an increase in selfish behaviour, that it is more likely to do with a breakdown of community than a disbelief in God and the afterlife. We have specialised mirror neurons that are responsible for empathy, so it seems to me that this must be in our nature.