Top 3 Mass Murderers Were Atheists

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Moonyu wrote:

No.


Arguing even a bad premise can be entertaining. I personally love trying to blow up other people's arguments even when I agree with them.

I don't agree with this one and you are right. It is a bad thread. That's why we should argue it. The original poster will never come around, but at least he is reading our replies.

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barraclaw wrote:

thought Christianity was a religion for slaves.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Pavshaus wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

@Pavhaus:

I essentially agree with Thomas Acquinas regarding human will to evil. He said, "there is no problem from the fact that some men desire evil. For they desire evil only under the aspect of good, that is, insofar as they think it good. Hence their intention primarily aims at the good and only incidentally touches on the evil."

The proof for this: no human acts with volition. For anything more complicated than a knee-jerk when hit by a hammer at the doctor's office, one must will himself to act. In so doing, one justifies ones actions to oneself. Justification is an ethical action involving the assignment of good to an action. Thus without self-justification, no human action occurs.

No matter how depraved, people commit actions according to their own view of ethics. For the person who steals a dollar out of someone's purse, stealing is a good — society might think it's wrong, but I could use this dollar for something, and that something is more important than societal convention, therefore — says the thief to themselves — good. For the mass murderer, murder is a good — it is their personal ethics which are so warped that they convince themselves of this.

Thus it follows that all evil stems from ethical ignorance. In most cases, it's an ignorance of proof, not of conclusion — the perpetrator knows, with absolute clarity, that "society" says a certain action is immoral, but not having worked out the proof of its immorality themselves, they suspend their acquiescence temporarily.

I don't deny that there is some merit to what you are saying but it just cannot be applied across the board. In a very micro and simplistic situation someone who is hungry beyond any hunger you or I may have known might steal a couple dollars from a local church donation box. He may do so fully knowing that the choice he is making is wrong but feels compelled to do so by other influences which are driving him to make a choice he otherwise would not. Clearly this man is not ignorant of the evil he does and in doing so I do not believe he assigned any good to the action. He may have felt it necessary and may very likely feel very guilty about it afterwards. The commission of an evil act does not necessarily require the assignment of good to the act in all cases and I think that is where things fall apart in the proof you have stated. Most social concepts do not lend themselves to universal truisms and good and evil are no exception.

I disagree with this analysis. The way I see it, the thief puts one good — satisfying that hunger — over another good. It might be that he prioritizes the social good over his hunger 99% of the time — but not in that moment when he decides to steal. If he did prioritize the social good higher at all times, there wouldn't be a time where he would will himself to steal. It is his doubt in the social good being the higher good that allows such an action to occur.

We could have a lengthy debate about which is truly the higher good in that situation. You might argue that the starving are justified in such actions, and perhaps you'd be right. But the point is that either they are justified or they're not; there is one absolute answer to which is the higher good in that situation, regardless of whether that answer is known to the thief or not, and regardless of whether anyone knows the answer (it could be that no one does, and all anyone has is conjecture). In any case, it is ignorance of the higher good that leads to improper justification, and thus to evil.

Good and evil are not "social concepts," they are real, because ethics is real and not a "social concept." Hunger and the murder of loved ones are evils to even the most primitive of societies — hell, even to animals. Determination of good and evil is a very difficult problem of ethics, but even a man marooned on an island with no other people must still contend with ethics, and thus good and evil, in much the same way that he must also contend with the laws of physics, even though the determination of those laws is a complex problem. If anything, being in such a desperate situation as being stranded alone to survive by oneself is one of the toughest trials of ethics, as how one justifies ones actions to oneself is key in determining whether one will survive or die.

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Seriously, debating this ridiculous idea is about as useful as a shit enema

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VictorDoom wrote:

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Moonyu wrote:

No.


Arguing even a bad premise can be entertaining. I personally love trying to blow up other people's arguments even when I agree with them.

I don't agree with this one and you are right. It is a bad thread. That's why we should argue it. The original poster will never come around, but at least he is reading our replies.

But moon, there are some things that have no point in arguing about.

Seriously, debating this ridiculous idea is about as useful as a shit enema

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Pavshaus wrote:

What is viewed as good today maybe viewed as evil in 100 years, thus they are indeed governed by a social conscience of what good and evil are.

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Pavshaus wrote:

Additionally a man who acts out of necessity does not have to subscribe good to a necessity in order to want to fulfill it.

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Pavshaus wrote:

the concept of a necessary evil is nothing new.

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Pavshaus wrote:

Even if you believe that the good perceived is sustaining his life you cannot logically conclude that the evil act of stealing was ever perceived as good by him.

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Pavshaus wrote:

Take our hungry man again.. lets say he views sustaining his life as necessary and therefor good, he has reached the conclusion that he must steal to do so.. he may still feel that the stealing is wrong and know that it is but he views it as the only way (necessary) to achieve the good of sustaining his life. Thus in this case the evil of stealing is born of the good or sustaining his own life.

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Pavshaus wrote:

To me there are no absolutes