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alitaptap
Guest
Please discuss.
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Trurl
Guest
Incorrect dichotomy. There are other options. For example: “properly limited freedom, so there will be no moral evil”, or “well designed moral agents, who have all the freedom, but who are not inclined to do moral evil”. Or "properly designed sentient beings, who have no pain receptors, and as such cannot experience “pain and suffering”. These possibilites are far superior to the ones you mentioned.
But, if only those two were available, then option #1 is the better one.
But, if only those two were available, then option #1 is the better one.
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kingpomba
Guest
You came up with a false dichotomy and set up a bit of a trap for people answering.
It’s like the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
If you answer Yes, then, it’s obviously bad. “So, you accept you beated your wife”
If you answer No, then, it also comes out bad. “So, you deny that you beat your wife, you beat your wife and lie about it too!”
God can stop evil and still allow free choices. He stopped the Pharaoh from killing the Jewish tribe with his plagues and the miracle of the red sea. God can stop evil and i’m sure you wouldn’t deny that we have free choice, so, stopping the pharaoh didn’t get rid of our freedom.
If God can stop evil once in the case of the Pharaoh without sacrificing free will, surely as an all powerful God, he can do it again.
It’s like the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
If you answer Yes, then, it’s obviously bad. “So, you accept you beated your wife”
If you answer No, then, it also comes out bad. “So, you deny that you beat your wife, you beat your wife and lie about it too!”
God can stop evil and still allow free choices. He stopped the Pharaoh from killing the Jewish tribe with his plagues and the miracle of the red sea. God can stop evil and i’m sure you wouldn’t deny that we have free choice, so, stopping the pharaoh didn’t get rid of our freedom.
If God can stop evil once in the case of the Pharaoh without sacrificing free will, surely as an all powerful God, he can do it again.
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alitaptap
Guest
Like robots? What sense is there to say I love someone if that is precisely what I have been programmed to do and I am unable to do otherwise?
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englishredrose
Guest
being devils advocate here : what sense is there anyway to the destructive world we live in today when all we seem to hear about is death and destruction. That is no sense to me so is it better to be senseless and forced into loving each other by which we wouldn’t know it as force because we be programmed. There is also no sense to me in the world we have today so I haven’t voted because there isn’t really an option
Of course I have learned to value being free to love God because that is how Our God has given it us as thus. Along with freedom comes the freedom to do as we please and we seem pleased to destruct each others lives rather than live in the knowledge that God loves us
Of course I have learned to think that robotic love is pointless and couldn’t see how that would work because it has been taught too long. Robotic love is not free love. But does it make it any lesser? We have been taught to think so but in reality would we know so…
What do I want? Everything that is good and love is good and God is good. I have God and I feel his love whenever… It is harder to share His Love on. I fail there. But I have want I want therefore don’t I because I have God.
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alitaptap
Guest
The only way we can remove all human suffering from the world, or for people to stop doing bad things to each other, is to either give up free will and become robots or stop committing sins.
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Robertanthony
Guest
A world where everybody loved God naturally and to whom it would never occur to not love him would be a terrible world. Who in their right mind would want to live in such a world? Free-will being restricted to only choosing good, evil is not an option, the mere thought makes me shudder. A world where sin and misery abound is superior because, hey, at least we ain’t robots. If I didn’t have the awesome privilege of saying no to God to the bitter end and ending in pure misery for eternity, it wouldn’t feel quite right. (SARCASM)
The best scenario to me is Adam and Eve without the Tree, whatever it was.
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Trurl
Guest
Who cares about “love”? You got this fixation about “love” (and you scrupulously avoid specifying which kind of “love” are you talking about).
Which kind of “love”? Eros and philia are emotionally and chemically driven, they cannot be volitionally invoked and as such they cannot be programmed. Agape - to be kind to others, to be helpful toward others, now that is volitional, and as such it can be pre-programmed - and guess what? I could not care less why that person is kind and helpful to me. If you would be in an accident, and someone stopped to help you, would you “interrogate” first about his motives and if he would say that he is unable NOT to help, due to his unbringing, then would you reject the help, because it is “programmed”? Get real!
In one of Asimov’s wonderful short stories (in the book: “I Robot”) there is an expression: “We simply cannot differentiate between the behavior of a robot and kindest, most loving and wonderful humans”. Robots are the idealized humans, selfless, kind, loving, helpful… and these properties are valuable on their own right, and not because “it could be different”.
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englishredrose
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Robertanthony
Guest
All the people in Heaven must feel like miserable slaves, it could be argued that they have no choice but to love God. We ought to qualify them as poor souls. Or robot souls.
Englisredorose, I think you’re the kind of person I’d like to have tea and scones with while having a pleasant chat. And I’m NOT a tea lover!
Englisredorose, I think you’re the kind of person I’d like to have tea and scones with while having a pleasant chat. And I’m NOT a tea lover!
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Polycarp1
Guest
Wow do you ever have a wrong notion of Heaven! The slavery is here on earth. In heaven we will be free!
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englishredrose
Guest
is that sarcasm…
?
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Robertanthony
Guest
Absolutely not. All the rest pretty much was, though. I like your take on OP’s reflection. Somehow the robot analogy always comes up when there is mention of restricting our free-will or making it impossible for us to choose evil.is that sarcasm…
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Robertanthony
Guest
I was sarcastic, I just don’t see how being like Adam and Eve without the Tree would be so bad. Our freedom would be restricted to choosing among the vast amount of good available, no evil allowed. Which would be awesome. Just like Heaven will. If that makes me a robot, then people in Heaven are robots because it’s technically impossible to experience the Beatific Vision and to turn away from God.
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englishredrose
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catholictiger
Guest
no I don’t not want to be a robot.
101101101000001111100111101101010110101010101010101.
101101101000001111100111101101010110101010101010101.
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davidv
Guest
Re: bolded selection:I believe this is because you haven’t considered the upside of the tree. I believe the tree is a symbol of our freedom to choose good over evil. Take away this freedom and we are no longer human, and no longer the pinacle of God’s creation. Being human means we share in God’s ability to love.
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
This ended up being too long, but I don’t have time to edit it down to reasonable length at the moment unfortunately. Oh well, here goes:
You may not care why it is that I give you a sandwich if you’re starving, but that is not the same as saying it does not matter. No matter why I give it to you, you have been fed and that’s certainly and definitely good. But the motivation can be good or bad completely independently.
But suppose we remove motivation altogether. We make it so that our decision process determines what will minimize suffering and does that automatically.
But then suffering itself become meaningless. I mean, why is it that being slowly tortured to death is bad? Primarily because the person being tortured doesn’t enjoy it? Well, we’re talking about changing reality here: change it so that these actions are now defined as good, that the feelings we experience as pain are now called pleasure and we “enjoy” them.
And so physical evil becomes physical good and yet nothing has changed.
My point is that physical evil, while really bad and actually fixed, need not really be evil. It certainly is a real thing that exists and is a problem, but when we’re talking about how we would wish the world to be, we could reach into the gears, as it were, and change what things are valued as good and what as bad so that the world becomes good with no or nearly no physical change. (And for a moral relativist, the change would only have to occur in our own minds, and so it’d be extremely easy.)
Hence, physical evil without mentioning motivation is essentially meaningless - at least insofar as it relates to persons and suffering and the like. Why call it evil at all? It’s unpleasant, true, but that could just as easily be said to be a problem with our perceptions as with what we perceive.
Choice-less physical good is no more “good” than following physical laws. A human who gives a sandwich to a human who is hungry because he is programed that way has not done any good. Physical good may have occurred, but it has nothing to do with the human involved. It makes no more sense to call such a person good than to praise the moral character of a rock for obeying gravity and falling.
Without choice there is no intrinsic moral character at all. A robot may be indistinguishable from a moral man from the outside, but that does not make it a moral man. Whatever good comes from its actions having nothing to do with it at all.
And again, it’s not that choiceless following laws to bring about the best good, whether that be feeding hungry people or minimizing the area of a soap bubble, is bad. It is in fact good, it’s just that all the goodness is exterior. Inanimate matter exists, following the rules it’s supposed to, and that’s good. But it’s not moral good, and the goodness that occurs is completely independent of the object.
Whereas actual persons are capable making choices, and these choices can be good or bad regardless of whether or not they have any exterior effect at all. And so goodness can be attributed to these persons, even if they require assistance to make it so.
Again, it’s not that a world of automatons serving whatever arbitrary rules of physical good and evil exist would be a bad thing. It’s just that it would be no different from the chaos inside of a star, or the order of a fixed crystal. Such does not solve suffering, it simply defines it not to exist. To call the evil we inflict upon each other evil requires that we freely decide to do it. But so too with good, in any moral sense.
But note that the world of automatons does exist in world of inanimate objects and of animals and plants. Animals may kill each other, but it’s not evil. Whatever such things do to each other is according to the natural laws they follow. If that is what you think would be ideal, it’s there.
So to is there the world of beings that suffered no physical evil at all, but only (at least originally, now they can mess with us) made intellectual choices. The angels did not have physical suffering, only choices to make. The only way a demon could hurt an angel would have been to convince it to become a demon during their war.
And then there’s us funny hybrids. We can choose like the angels to eat each other like the animals. But the more fundamental good and evil is with the choice, the mere physical manifestations are much less important. Remove the choice, and how would we call the eating evil?
Evil is divided into moral evil and physical evil. I suspect the poster was speaking of the moral side - is it worth losing the ability to choose to do bad if we also lose the ability to choose to do good?
You may not care why it is that I give you a sandwich if you’re starving, but that is not the same as saying it does not matter. No matter why I give it to you, you have been fed and that’s certainly and definitely good. But the motivation can be good or bad completely independently.
But suppose we remove motivation altogether. We make it so that our decision process determines what will minimize suffering and does that automatically.
But then suffering itself become meaningless. I mean, why is it that being slowly tortured to death is bad? Primarily because the person being tortured doesn’t enjoy it? Well, we’re talking about changing reality here: change it so that these actions are now defined as good, that the feelings we experience as pain are now called pleasure and we “enjoy” them.
And so physical evil becomes physical good and yet nothing has changed.
My point is that physical evil, while really bad and actually fixed, need not really be evil. It certainly is a real thing that exists and is a problem, but when we’re talking about how we would wish the world to be, we could reach into the gears, as it were, and change what things are valued as good and what as bad so that the world becomes good with no or nearly no physical change. (And for a moral relativist, the change would only have to occur in our own minds, and so it’d be extremely easy.)
Hence, physical evil without mentioning motivation is essentially meaningless - at least insofar as it relates to persons and suffering and the like. Why call it evil at all? It’s unpleasant, true, but that could just as easily be said to be a problem with our perceptions as with what we perceive.
Choice-less physical good is no more “good” than following physical laws. A human who gives a sandwich to a human who is hungry because he is programed that way has not done any good. Physical good may have occurred, but it has nothing to do with the human involved. It makes no more sense to call such a person good than to praise the moral character of a rock for obeying gravity and falling.
Without choice there is no intrinsic moral character at all. A robot may be indistinguishable from a moral man from the outside, but that does not make it a moral man. Whatever good comes from its actions having nothing to do with it at all.
And again, it’s not that choiceless following laws to bring about the best good, whether that be feeding hungry people or minimizing the area of a soap bubble, is bad. It is in fact good, it’s just that all the goodness is exterior. Inanimate matter exists, following the rules it’s supposed to, and that’s good. But it’s not moral good, and the goodness that occurs is completely independent of the object.
Whereas actual persons are capable making choices, and these choices can be good or bad regardless of whether or not they have any exterior effect at all. And so goodness can be attributed to these persons, even if they require assistance to make it so.
Again, it’s not that a world of automatons serving whatever arbitrary rules of physical good and evil exist would be a bad thing. It’s just that it would be no different from the chaos inside of a star, or the order of a fixed crystal. Such does not solve suffering, it simply defines it not to exist. To call the evil we inflict upon each other evil requires that we freely decide to do it. But so too with good, in any moral sense.
But note that the world of automatons does exist in world of inanimate objects and of animals and plants. Animals may kill each other, but it’s not evil. Whatever such things do to each other is according to the natural laws they follow. If that is what you think would be ideal, it’s there.
So to is there the world of beings that suffered no physical evil at all, but only (at least originally, now they can mess with us) made intellectual choices. The angels did not have physical suffering, only choices to make. The only way a demon could hurt an angel would have been to convince it to become a demon during their war.
And then there’s us funny hybrids. We can choose like the angels to eat each other like the animals. But the more fundamental good and evil is with the choice, the mere physical manifestations are much less important. Remove the choice, and how would we call the eating evil?
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
Actually, they had the freedom to sin (noted because they did) just not the built in tendency to do so. They could have simply chosen not to. We are damaged and in worse shape than they were, but this is not because we were preordained to be so, but because they messed stuff up.
But yeah, a garden state would not be bad. That was the original plan, after all.
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MPat
Guest
Why so harshy? Yes, your preferences are almost unique. “Who cares about “love”?”? Well, about everyone, I guess… But couldn’t you consider it a “matter of taste”…? You found a question asking which of two options do you prefer. You gave your answer. Other people gave their answer. Then we can discuss if those answers tell something about our genes, environment, religious or political views… But I don’t see why we should respond so harshly…
Also, “Robots are the idealized humans, selfless, kind, loving, helpful…”… Did you mean “suitably programmed robots”…? For most of the robots I have seen cannot be described by any of those words. If I had to describe them with one word, it would probably be “clumsy”…
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