Are people good or bad?

[Votto]

So there are no universal heroes or villains?

Sounds about right...

I would say that Jesus is as close to universal good and Hitler is as close to universal evil as it gets.

Even Hitler did not do evil for evil's sake.

But Hitler did some good. He put an economy back in order, built up the infrastructure, and ended a dark economic time. Hitler had the largest welfare state on earth as its citizen enjoyed a higher standard of living than anywhere else on earth.

Men like Al Capone even owned a soup kitchen for the poor.

Once you do "good", it legitimizes you and gives you power that you simply point to when people say you are "bad".

I wasn't arguing that exactly. I was trying to say that when men do what some would perceive as evil, they don't do it for evil's sake. They do it for their own good. If you show me someone who worships evil and does evil for evil's sake, then I might have a different opinion.

Good and evil are not subjective. People are subjective.

Some people are sadistic. They get pleasure from watching others suffer, but you are correct, people turn to evil for a perceived need that supersedes what they know to be good.

 

[ding]

Sounds about right...

I would say that Jesus is as close to universal good and Hitler is as close to universal evil as it gets.

Even Hitler did not do evil for evil's sake.

But Hitler did some good. He put an economy back in order, built up the infrastructure, and ended a dark economic time. Hitler had the largest welfare state on earth as its citizen enjoyed a higher standard of living than anywhere else on earth.

Men like Al Capone even owned a soup kitchen for the poor.

Once you do "good", it legitimizes you and gives you power that you simply point to when people say you are "bad".

I wasn't arguing that exactly. I was trying to say that when men do what some would perceive as evil, they don't do it for evil's sake. They do it for their own good. If you show me someone who worships evil and does evil for evil's sake, then I might have a different opinion.

Good and evil are not subjective. People are subjective.

Some people are sadistic. They get pleasure from watching others suffer, but you are correct, people turn to evil for a perceived need that supersedes what they know to be good.

And yet they still have mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, children, etc that they care for and love.

They don't do those sadistic acts for evil's sake. They do them for their own sake; their own pleasure. If you show me someone whose existence is devoid of good. Then that might be a bad person. But that's not what we see. We see good men who do bad things. That does not make them bad.

 

[Michelle420]

Can an Omniscient God make a Rock that it cannot move...

Can an Omniscient God make a moral that it cannot change.

Also, is a God even proven to exist in the first place.


These would all need to be answered before it can be said that good and evil exist.(outside of the abstract).otherwise you are just nature bloviating.

Also, God is defined in different ways to different people, different cultures, different religions.

 

[ding]

Good and evil are not abstract terms. Evil is the absence of good. Perception of good and evil is subjective which leads some humans to the erroneous conclusion that there is no such thing as good or evil.

If good and evil are abstract terms then hot and cold are abstract terms too. Of course we know that hot and cold are not abstract terms. What we do know is that cold does not exist in and of itself. Cold is the absence of heat just as evil is the absence of good. Nothing abstract about any of that at all.

 

[ding]

Can an Omniscient God make a Rock that it cannot move...

Can an Omniscient God make a moral that it cannot change.

Also, is a God even proven to exist in the first place.


These would all need to be answered before it can be said that good and evil exist.(outside of the abstract).otherwise you are just nature bloviating.

God cannot oppose Himself. He cannot oppose His Nature and make a moral change.

God cannot be proven to exist anymore than He can be proven not to exist.

But evidence of His existence can be examined for clues as to his invisible attributes and the purpose of existence.

 

[ding]

Good and evil or right and wrong are absolutes. Perception of good and evil and right and wrong are relative. All one has to do to know this is to experience both first hand.

 

[ding]

Hot and cold are descriptive terms based on human definitions. Subjective, and abstract.

Humans would describe 120 degrees as a hot day.

The sun would giggle.

Myrtle Beach would call 35 degrees a bitter cold day.

Canadians would giggle.

"There's cold in the same sense that there's dark. You can't open the door to a room and have the dark spill out. Dark is the absence of light," says Dr. David Goldberg, a Drexel University physicist. "If you leave your door open when the air-conditioning is on, you're not letting the cold out. You're letting the heat in."

The idea that there is no cold is a fundamental building block in physics and thermodynamics. Kids study the concept in school, but it often fades into the haze of all the stuff they have to master to move on and up, when they're not praying for snow days so they can ditch class and homework entirely.

Tulasi Nandan Parashar, a post-doctoral researcher in physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, explains the concept of heat by starting at the atomic level.

"Everything is made up of atoms – yourself, your desk, your belt, your cellphone," he says. "And atoms vibrate very fast. If they are free to move, they move around very fast. If they are in a solid state, they shake around in that position. There's random shaking of liquids, gasses and movement. It's a form of energy.

"The more shaking we have, the more energy is emitted and we call it hotter, or it has temperature."

Or heat.

There is a limit to that shaking, though: At absolute zero, at which point scientists believe all the motion of atoms ceases.

There is no cold. Only absence of heat

 

[ding]

Hot and cold are descriptive terms based on human definitions. Subjective, and abstract.

Humans would describe 120 degrees as a hot day.

The sun would giggle.

Myrtle Beach would call 35 degrees a bitter cold day.

Canadians would giggle.

At absolute zero, at which point scientists believe all the motion of atoms ceases.

Nothing abstract about that.

 

[ding]

Good and evil or right and wrong are absolutes. Perception of good and evil and right and wrong are relative. All one has to do to know this is to experience both first hand.

Experience is subjective.

Absolutes are the exact opposite of being "based on experience."

Thats why I asked for the adult table.

You just "declare" things. Thats not how logic works.

"god cannot change his opinion, or else hes not all powerful" is logic.

"good and evil are absolutes...cuz...experience"... is not logic.

Outcomes are not subjective. The greatest organizing principle is virtue.

 

[ding]

Can an Omniscient God make a Rock that it cannot move...

Can an Omniscient God make a moral that it cannot change.

Also, is a God even proven to exist in the first place.


These would all need to be answered before it can be said that good and evil exist.(outside of the abstract).otherwise you are just nature bloviating.

God cannot oppose Himself. He cannot oppose His Nature and make a moral change.

God cannot be proven to exist anymore than He can be proven not to exist.

But evidence of His existence can be examined for clues as to his invisible attributes and the purpose of existence.

If he cannot oppose himself, then the God youre describing is not all powerful.

The part about proving a god to exist....youd fail there so lets just not talk about it. Its not been done in human history, ding on USMB isnt going to do it.

He is so powerful He can't oppose Himself. What's not to understand?