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Fri 22 Feb, 2008 01:40 pm
I imagine that most atheist's would take the presents of evil in the world as a big chunk of evidence that God (the Christian God), does not exist.
But how would they explain the problem of evil?
Would they have to at all?
Re: How would an atheist explain the probelm of evil?
Gilbey wrote:I imagine that most atheist's would take the presents of evil in the world as a big chunk of evidence that God (the Christian God), does not exist.
But how would they explain the problem of evil?
Would they have to at all?
I think your first premise is inaccurate. We don't believe in god for a variety of reasons including: god doesn't make sense to us, no proff of god, scientific explanations replace faith.....
Evil has roots in environmental dysfuntion.
Put more simply, evil is a subjective judgment. That someone doesn't make something does not make it evil. It may be bad for them, it may by a product of vice, it may be criminal, but it is only evil if you choose to describe it that way. The hunting lion who snatches your child and eats her is not evil, she's just hungry.
Evil is a religious concept. Some confuse it with immorality/ certain antisocial acts. It does not belong to an atheist.
Re: How would an atheist explain the probelm of evil?
Gilbey wrote:I imagine that most atheist's would take the presents of evil in the world as a big chunk of evidence that God (the Christian God), does not exist.
But how would they explain the problem of evil?
Would they have to at all?
There is no "problem" of evil. Evil only becomes a problem when you create a world with a benevolent god.
The discernment of good and bad requires no religious or spiritual concepts. If you are willing to relabel evil as bad then their is no need for God.
Basically, as you will see, most atheists deny that any behavior is evil.
It's all just a matter of opinion.
Therefore, to an atheist, murder and rape and cannibalism are NOT evil. It's just YOUR opinion that they are so.
You see, to the atheist, the problem only exists in your head. It's your wrong ideas, that's all.
If you would just quit using the word 'evil', then we could all practice whatever behavior we wished without someone labeling it 'evil'.
To an atheist, Hitler wasn't evil, nor Mao, nor Stalin, nor Jeffrey Dahmer, nor the child molester who lives in your neighborhood.
They were ( or are ) simply putting their opinions into practice.
Can evil exist without God and the opposite of God??? Don't think so.
Interestingly enough few want to talk about Satan anymore, which throws the whole good/evil dance way the heck out of balance, but I digress
Atheists such as myself deny the utility of some concepts (like God) but this does not mean that the denial of the utility of other concepts should follow. The relationship between the concepts "God" and "Evil" is an ambiguous one.
The concept "evil" implies a sociopathic lack of empathy on the part of a perpetrator. In that sense it is a "problem" for secular humanity who naturally/biologically/humanistically tend towards empathy. There is also an opposing trait of "tribalism" (common in primates) which tends to delimit empathy to "in group" operations. In such a case "religion" can itself function as an organized reinforcer of group boundaries and hence religion can be a de facto agent of evil, despite its nebulous claims to the moral highground captured in phrases like "brotherhood of man".
real life wrote:Basically, as you will see, most atheists deny that any behavior is evil.
It's all just a matter of opinion.
Therefore, to an atheist, murder and rape and cannibalism are NOT evil. It's just YOUR opinion that they are so.
You see, to the atheist, the problem only exists in your head. It's your wrong ideas, that's all.
If you would just quit using the word 'evil', then we could all practice whatever behavior we wished without someone labeling it 'evil'.
To an atheist, Hitler wasn't evil, nor Mao, nor Stalin, nor Jeffrey Dahmer, nor the child molester who lives in your neighborhood.
They were ( or are ) simply putting their opinions into practice.
That's bullshit, and a set of lies, which is not surprisingly from a typically hateful christian such as yourself.
You, "real life," are a slanderous liar.
No surprise there.
This is a strange question to ask. Atheism is just a lack of belief in God. It's not a system of beliefs, or a way of thinking. There's no standard atheist world-view, just as there's no standard world-view for people who aren't doctors, or for people who don't like baked beans.
Not believing in God certainly doesn't make it any harder to explain the presence of evil in the world (if there is a presence of evil in the world*). As Atheist101 said, explaining evil is only a serious problem for people who think that there is a benevolent creator who watches over everything. Since atheists do not believe in any such creator, they don't have this extra difficulty; there's nothing particularly weird about the fact that some people cause great suffering to others. We can ask the psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists etc. to explain, and we don't need to reconcile what they say with any kind of theological world-view.
*The Problem of Evil works better reformulated as the Problem of Suffering, since we all agree that there is suffering in the world, and some of it cannot be explained away with reference to the free will of humans (e.g. natural disasters... why would a good God have allowed the tsunami?).
thoke wrote:This is a strange question to ask. Atheism is just a lack of belief in God. It's not a system of beliefs, or a way of thinking. There's no standard atheist world-view, just as there's no standard world-view for people who aren't doctors, or for people who don't like baked beans.
Right here you get to the crux of the biscuit. For religionists, it is crucial to define atheists as though they were the members of a competing, equivalent but polar opposite religious organization. It is necessary for them to assert that this is a clash of beliefs, so as to then make claims about the moral bankruptcy of atheists. That clown "real life" to whom i responded above makes a specialty of stupid, invidious remarks about atheists.
It seems difficult for religionists to get their heads around the idea that the refusal to believe something is
not the equivalent of having a religious belief set.
If it can't be framed according to the religionists' view, they refuse to understand it at all.
When we say that someone is evil, we just mean that he has certain bad personality characteristics. How could the existence of evil possibly suggest that there's a God???
I tend to agree with Setanta that there can be a large subjective element in defining what is evil. However, certain behaviors (by humans) are so counter-productive, so anti-evolutionary--say, the proliferation of nuclear weaponry--that I can see a possible argument that they are intrinsically evil. Why evil appears is possibly a question of maladaptive evolution (which is a natural phenomenon). Looking from a further perspective, evil may be simply the result of randomness spinning off statistical clumps that happen to have dire consequences for us.
By the way, I don't like the word "evil." It's carries too much distracting baggage.
Miklos7 wrote:I tend to agree with Setanta that there can be a large subjective element in defining what is evil. However, certain behaviors (by humans) are so counter-productive, so anti-evolutionary--say, the proliferation of nuclear weaponry--that I can see a possible argument that they are intrinsically evil. Why evil appears is possibly a question of maladaptive evolution (which is a natural phenomenon). Looking from a further perspective, evil may be simply the result of randomness spinning off statistical clumps that happen to have dire consequences for us.
By the way, I don't like the word "evil." It's carries too much distracting baggage.
1. How about evil being the result of people deciding that their interests are much more important than the interests of others?
2. I shouldn't think that the existence of intrinsic evil would require any argument, since most people accept it already.
3. What baggage makes the use of the word evil undesirable? To refuse to use the word would seem to be equivalent to claming, or at least suggesting, that it doesn't exist.
Brandon9000
Good morning.
1. Yes. A subjective example of evil could well be "people deciding that their interests are much more important than the interests of others." I typically find this particular attitude offensive, but I would not term it automatically "evil."
2. As I am not a god, I would hesitate to term anything "intrinsically evil." Some behaviors seem this way to me, but I am not qualified to make the absolute judgment.
3. Most of the baggage that comes with the word "evil", for me, comes from its frequent use in religious contexts (and in the case of the current U.S. President, a political context). I do not refuse to use the word: witness my post on this thread.
Miklos7 wrote:Brandon9000
Good morning.
......2. As I am not a god, I would hesitate to term anything "intrinsically evil." Some behaviors seem this way to me, but I am not qualified to make the absolute judgment...
Good morning.
I'm not sure why you'd have to be a god to decide that a person or behavior was evil. Being able to make judgements should be enough.
Brandon9000,
The older I get, the less inclined I am to make absolute judgments. Sure, I make the rough judgments that are necessary for navigating my daily life, but I'll leave the absolutes to someone better qualified.
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