Is free will responsible for the evil that occurs in the world? Most theists would say yes to this question. It can be argued that because God gave humans the ability to make the wrong choice or the right one, it follows that evil can be the direct effect of poor decision making. God could have made a world in which the creatures he created would only do the right thing all the time but most would agree that we would be no better off than robots in this kind of environment and that a world of free agents is better than this kind of scenario. God also could have made a world in which the decisions we made only had a minimal effect on the whole of humanity or what Robert Swinburne refers to as a “toy world”. Free will can be directly traced to evil then but also to the good that can be found in it. Aquinas believed that God is the cause of everything good, bad, or indifferent and that it does not affect his omnipotence in the slightest because God is not good by human standards of morality but good in the sense of all that is good directly flows from him and all that is desirable can be found in him. There is no easy explanation for the evil that exists in the world but even a good parent can be seen as an example of letting their child go through some hardships to learn valuable life lessons. If the child learns from the hardship not to make the same mistake they will be better equipped for adulthood; does it follow then that God allows for us to make wrong choices with the hopes and expectations that we will learn from them but that some never learn from the mistakes and so the problems get compounded? This type of reasoning doesn’t explain away things like hurricanes and volcanos, but to this Aquinas believes that God only works within the boundaries of nature and that this also is not reflective on the goodness of God.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Kony 2012
Thought that after the discussions we've had the past few classes this would be an interesting video for anyone to check out if they were interested. Speaks a great deal about evil and our responsibility for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc
"The Value of Soul Making" from Evil and the Good of Love
Social/Cultural Evolution
Hick makes the argument that the phenomena of evil comes from the process of developing a human soul which is what happens through out our lives in our efforts to become more like God. He states that this is a necessary part of life and that evil is a necessary byproduct of this journey, but that this journey is the result of us as a human population having rational thought and the idea of a God to follow and is not the result of an evolutionary phenomena. Until this point I actually agreed with Hick, but being a biology major I found it difficult to discredit an evolutionary theory without examining it further.
The evolutionary theory I believe applies to this reading the best is that of cultural/social evolution. This theory describes how societies and cultures change over time, our human population has gone through more drastic change over time than I believe can be explained without the help of an evolutionary theory. It is important to note that sociocultural evolution is not the same as cultural development, development involves the integration of differentiations and increases in overall complexity of the society itself. This contrasts with sociocultural evolution because evolution implies this; the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form. This can be easily seen in the contrast of the hunter gatherer lifestyle of the caveman to the relatively easy and carefree life comparatively we live as humans today. All pathways of evolution are based on the presence of variation in a population and the presence of evil is most easily explained as the essential variation that drives the process and makes it work.
It has been argued that the development of God himself is a product of the sociocultural evolution of the human race, and I think this is a good place to start class discussion on this reading itself; it is a fairly widely accepted fact that the structures and the way of life we live today as humans is vastly different from what it was at the beginning of the human race, but is God, the driving life force behind every being also just a product of a similar kind of evolutionary pathway? If yes, then the presence of God is a natural phenomena that has been allowed by nature, from a scientific perspective, how could this have benefited humans enough in order to be selected for?
Hick makes the argument that the phenomena of evil comes from the process of developing a human soul which is what happens through out our lives in our efforts to become more like God. He states that this is a necessary part of life and that evil is a necessary byproduct of this journey, but that this journey is the result of us as a human population having rational thought and the idea of a God to follow and is not the result of an evolutionary phenomena. Until this point I actually agreed with Hick, but being a biology major I found it difficult to discredit an evolutionary theory without examining it further.
The evolutionary theory I believe applies to this reading the best is that of cultural/social evolution. This theory describes how societies and cultures change over time, our human population has gone through more drastic change over time than I believe can be explained without the help of an evolutionary theory. It is important to note that sociocultural evolution is not the same as cultural development, development involves the integration of differentiations and increases in overall complexity of the society itself. This contrasts with sociocultural evolution because evolution implies this; the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form. This can be easily seen in the contrast of the hunter gatherer lifestyle of the caveman to the relatively easy and carefree life comparatively we live as humans today. All pathways of evolution are based on the presence of variation in a population and the presence of evil is most easily explained as the essential variation that drives the process and makes it work.
It has been argued that the development of God himself is a product of the sociocultural evolution of the human race, and I think this is a good place to start class discussion on this reading itself; it is a fairly widely accepted fact that the structures and the way of life we live today as humans is vastly different from what it was at the beginning of the human race, but is God, the driving life force behind every being also just a product of a similar kind of evolutionary pathway? If yes, then the presence of God is a natural phenomena that has been allowed by nature, from a scientific perspective, how could this have benefited humans enough in order to be selected for?
Monday, March 5, 2012
Fallacies
Description of Fallacies
In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) that is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (which is also a sentence that is either true or false).
There are two main types of arguments: deductive and inductive. A deductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) complete support for the conclusion. An inductive argument is an argument such that the premises provide (or appear to provide) some degree of support (but less than complete support) for the conclusion. If the premises actually provide the required degree of support for the conclusion, then the argument is a good one. A good deductive argument is known as a valid argument and is such that if all its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true. If all the argument is valid and actually has all true premises, then it is known as a sound argument. If it is invalid or has one or more false premises, it will be unsound. A good inductive argument is known as a strong (or "cogent") inductive argument. It is such that if the premises are true, the conclusion is likely to be true.
A fallacy is, very generally, an error in reasoning. This differs from a factual error, which is simply being wrong about the facts. To be more specific, a fallacy is an "argument" in which the premises given for the conclusion do not provide the needed degree of support. A deductive fallacy is a deductive argument that is invalid (it is such that it could have all true premises and still have a false conclusion). An inductive fallacy is less formal than a deductive fallacy. They are simply "arguments" which appear to be inductive arguments, but the premises do not provided enough support for the conclusion. In such cases, even if the premises were true, the conclusion would not be more likely to be true.
Evil and Omnipotence
J.L. Mackie states the problem like this "If God is omnipotent (all powerful) and wholly good than why does evil exist? The four arguments he cites are 1) Good cannot exist without evil. 2) Evil is necessary as a means to good. 3) The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil. and finally 4) Evil is due to human freewill. There are several problems to each argument as Mackie sees it. Mainly that each argument somehow either questions God's power or his goodness, ie.., if humans can see that evil is a problem why couldn't God see it? Or if Evil was necessary did there need to be so much of it? Or in the case of human freewill could God have just made us with freewill when we were about to do something bad? Mackie only brings this questions to the readers attention he never asserts a final position on any of them, he leaves that up to the reader. I did find this interesting analogy about a man who creates a robot with the capacity to learn and make decisions. He also makes it with abilities like the ability to kick, with the hopes that the robot would kick balls back to little children in the playground, or maybe kick grenades out of harms way for soldiers. The robot however develops a penchant for kicking puppies, it goes out of its way to hunt down the cutest and fluffiest puppies just to kick them. Maybe God did not design us for doing evil but we just acquired a taste for it.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Rebellion
First off in this piece Dostoyevsky's character, Ivan, gives us an idea of the types of evil that exist in this world through examples of neglected and tortured children, the satisfaction parents get through torturing their children, and the abuse of animals. Through these examples Dostoyevsky brings the question to mind of what justifies this cruelty.
For example, a little boy hurt of the General's hound while the boy was playing. Then the General, in turn, stripped the boy of his clothes, sent him running, and released his hounds to kill him. Is that justified? Perhaps the child would have grown up to be a sinner. (A serial killer) By his death, would the world be saved of future evil? Does that make the General's decision to kill him right?
For something to be justified by the consequences associated with it, the good that comes out of it must justify the bad. Therefore, acts of evil cannot be justified by the positive outcomes at the sake of the negative consequences.
The siginificance of the title, "Rebellion", in this piece comes when Alyosha suggests that Ivan forgot that there is a God and who he was. A God who can forgive those who feel guilt for the killing of a child. Ivan argues with her by suggesting God would not allow a crime such as the torture and suffering of a child. Ivan accepts that God's judgement is good, bet he does not accept the world that God has created. He explains how he feels when talks about how he would rather kill himself than live in this world of evil.
First off in this piece Dostoyevsky's character, Ivan, gives us an idea of the types of evil that exist in this world through examples of neglected and tortured children, the satisfaction parents get through torturing their children, and the abuse of animals. Through these examples Dostoyevsky brings the question to mind of what justifies this cruelty.
For example, a little boy hurt of the General's hound while the boy was playing. Then the General, in turn, stripped the boy of his clothes, sent him running, and released his hounds to kill him. Is that justified? Perhaps the child would have grown up to be a sinner. (A serial killer) By his death, would the world be saved of future evil? Does that make the General's decision to kill him right?
For something to be justified by the consequences associated with it, the good that comes out of it must justify the bad. Therefore, acts of evil cannot be justified by the positive outcomes at the sake of the negative consequences.
The siginificance of the title, "Rebellion", in this piece comes when Alyosha suggests that Ivan forgot that there is a God and who he was. A God who can forgive those who feel guilt for the killing of a child. Ivan argues with her by suggesting God would not allow a crime such as the torture and suffering of a child. Ivan accepts that God's judgement is good, bet he does not accept the world that God has created. He explains how he feels when talks about how he would rather kill himself than live in this world of evil.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sigmund Freud
The Psychological Origins of Religion
It should first be noted that in order to understand the readings from Freud, a basic foundation of his principles should be available.
First, Freudian psychology focuses a great deal on the relationships of individuals between themselves and their mothers, fathers, siblings etc. From these relationships, Freud created what he called the basic foundations of the human person, what eventually became to be known as: id, ego, and superego.
Id: undifferentiated, unsocialized core of personality that contains the basic psychic energy and motivations
Ego: personality aspect that develops to deal with the real world.
Superego: personality structure that develops to internalize societal rules and goal-seeking behavior toward socially acceptable pursuits.
With his theory Freudian psychoanalytical theory then developed into psychosexual development within five stages. 1) oral stage, 2) anal stage, 3) phallic stage, 4) latency period, and 5) genital stage. Each of these stages, if properly navigated according to Freud lead to appropriate development and conduct of an individual; if not, they would find themselves stuck and have manifestations of the stages present in daily life (i.e. chewing pins, gum, anal retentive attitudes)
As it relates to the reading, Freud refers to the laws of the totem and how they pertain to the rules against killing, eating, etc., and then attempts to connect it to the father and what he deemed as the Oedipus complex. Apart of the phallic stage, the Oedipus complex refers to the rivalries young boys have with their fathers for the love and attention of their mothers (established in the oral stage). So how does this apply to religion, faith, God, and everything else we've covered thus far? Though I cannot entirely understand Freud's writings, to me he is trying to establish that religion and more so a relationship with God is an establishment of guilt from feelings against earthly fathers and a representation of trying to balance that guilt with awe and respect. He seems to suggest that we are jealous of our fathers, and even more so jealous of the fatherly God we cannot explain.
The readings go on to further touch upon the stages of development as the correspond to turning away from religion, and the establishment of the ego as it pertains to religion. In terms of the stages of development, it is during the phallic stage that attitudes and motives of jealousy are the most evident; once passed, an individual becomes more attuned with his or her ego which allows them to move past their jealously of fathers and male figures in general. In the case of the readings, the point at which the Oedipus complex ends and the gradual turning from religion occurs is Freud's "neurosis of humanity." The final points of Freud's readings are surrounded by where and when the sense of the ego originates. Freud argues that an individuals sense of ego does not initially come from an external world, that we learn to associate the ego with the outside world. He also comments that the ego-feeling is oceanic and it is comparable to a limitlessness and a bond with the universe. He finalizes his argument that religion is simply a return to infantile helplessness; that we cannot understand and that leaves us looking for the relationship and bond of awe or respect for a caregiver or God; the defense the ego uses as protection from an external threat.
It should first be noted that in order to understand the readings from Freud, a basic foundation of his principles should be available.
First, Freudian psychology focuses a great deal on the relationships of individuals between themselves and their mothers, fathers, siblings etc. From these relationships, Freud created what he called the basic foundations of the human person, what eventually became to be known as: id, ego, and superego.
Id: undifferentiated, unsocialized core of personality that contains the basic psychic energy and motivations
Ego: personality aspect that develops to deal with the real world.
Superego: personality structure that develops to internalize societal rules and goal-seeking behavior toward socially acceptable pursuits.
With his theory Freudian psychoanalytical theory then developed into psychosexual development within five stages. 1) oral stage, 2) anal stage, 3) phallic stage, 4) latency period, and 5) genital stage. Each of these stages, if properly navigated according to Freud lead to appropriate development and conduct of an individual; if not, they would find themselves stuck and have manifestations of the stages present in daily life (i.e. chewing pins, gum, anal retentive attitudes)
As it relates to the reading, Freud refers to the laws of the totem and how they pertain to the rules against killing, eating, etc., and then attempts to connect it to the father and what he deemed as the Oedipus complex. Apart of the phallic stage, the Oedipus complex refers to the rivalries young boys have with their fathers for the love and attention of their mothers (established in the oral stage). So how does this apply to religion, faith, God, and everything else we've covered thus far? Though I cannot entirely understand Freud's writings, to me he is trying to establish that religion and more so a relationship with God is an establishment of guilt from feelings against earthly fathers and a representation of trying to balance that guilt with awe and respect. He seems to suggest that we are jealous of our fathers, and even more so jealous of the fatherly God we cannot explain.
The readings go on to further touch upon the stages of development as the correspond to turning away from religion, and the establishment of the ego as it pertains to religion. In terms of the stages of development, it is during the phallic stage that attitudes and motives of jealousy are the most evident; once passed, an individual becomes more attuned with his or her ego which allows them to move past their jealously of fathers and male figures in general. In the case of the readings, the point at which the Oedipus complex ends and the gradual turning from religion occurs is Freud's "neurosis of humanity." The final points of Freud's readings are surrounded by where and when the sense of the ego originates. Freud argues that an individuals sense of ego does not initially come from an external world, that we learn to associate the ego with the outside world. He also comments that the ego-feeling is oceanic and it is comparable to a limitlessness and a bond with the universe. He finalizes his argument that religion is simply a return to infantile helplessness; that we cannot understand and that leaves us looking for the relationship and bond of awe or respect for a caregiver or God; the defense the ego uses as protection from an external threat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)