Where does evil come from?

[Slimebeast]

highwaystar101 said:

Slimebeast said:

highwaystar101 said:

Slimebeast said:

highwaystar101 said:

My real answer, events happen naturally , we are the ones that label them good and evil.

We also label these events in a spectrum. There is no such thing as good and evil per se, but good on one side of the spectrum and evil on the other, and everything exists as points in between.

The atheist view. Because everything that happens is predetermined (minus some randomness on the quantum level or whatever) there is no free will. And therefore no one is accountable for his actions. Thus there is no such thing as right or wrong, no good or evil.

How exactly did you extract that from my post? I mentioned nothing of the sort. Of course I acknowledge right or wrong and good or evil.

Man kills another man: evil.

Man donates a kidney to another man: good.

It's not hard. By your assertion us atheists are without morals, seeing murder as "just another aspect of nature". We may believe that nature is the be all and end all, but that doesn't mean we can't decide when to recognise something as evil and something as good.

I extracted it from the green sentence.

Atheist morals aren't absolute morals, correct. As in not universal. They are only 'light' morals, morals in a context. As a set of rules that work here right now. Along the lines of "it's not beneficial for the survival of humans as a collective to have too many individuals who kill others randomly, so humans have developed genes that trigger feelings of repulsion towards such acts. And over the years, as the intellectual and cultural beings we are, those feelings have been projected into ethical rules."

But from an aliens' point of view that has no relevance. You couldn't use that as an argument to stop them from destroying all humans. For them our planet could be just like a stack of ants.

 And yes, from an atheists point of view murder is exactly that, "just another aspect of nature".

Was it? Because I said that we recognise what is good and evil, but in your post you said that we don't recognise such things as good ad evil. 

You are correct that atheists don't have a set of absolute Universal morals. But I counter that with why do we need a set of absolute morals? Our morals come from nature as you say (whether it is from adaptation or a changing society), but that's good. Our morals are constantly adapting to the environment. We don't have a fixed set of morals that can become outdated.

A few hundred years ago I would have been able to morally keep slaves, I would find that to be a disgusting act now. As humans we've adapted to the new environment. But a look through Leviticus, an old testament book, and I can justify having slaves.

I'm not saying that Christians haven't adapted, of course they have with the rest of us. But their actual moral code has rarely been updated in the past 2000 years.

(In fact, the notion that Christians have updated their morals ahead of their unified set of morals is kind of re-enforcing my point that we are the ones who ultimately label what is right and wrong.)

Also, is having a divine unified set of absolute morals the only guiding force behind morals? What if your God decided to wipe all knowledge of those morals off the face of the planet right now? Would you suddenly go out and start raping and killing because you have no set of morals any more? I wouldn't think so.

...

And yes murder is "just another aspect of nature", I can go to the woods near my house right now and perhaps observe animals fighting each other. Do I think it's right to kill other people because it is nature? No I find it disgusting. Murder is just a sad fact of nature, I don't like it and I would deem it to be wrong, but it occurs.

Green: If I kidnapped a hermit who had no relatives or friends who would mourn him, there would be no effect to society in any way from what I did to him, and I'd take him into the woods and torture him and then kill him. What would you say, why is it wrong?
Or to the alien who threatens to wipe out everyone from our planet. Why is that wrong? From his point of view we're just vermin. Why would he listen to you?
Absolute morals would dictate that it's always wrong to torture an innocent living being. It was wrong in the stone age, it's wrong today as well as in the future. It's the adaptation that sucks, and is seen as dangerous (by Christians).

Blue: You are wrong. Because I would argue that Christian morals are timeless, it's the interpretation and application of them that has changed over time. Slavery was always wrong, at least for a Christian. It will make the discussion a bit complicated if we put the Bible into this, but okay.

Orange: if the divine spark within all of us was wiped away, and the rule book (the Bible) also was wiped away then I would just have my genes left, so then I'd act based only on them. I wouldn't rape and kill because my genes would still produce a feeling of repulsion. But the three guys with a hammer, their genes maybe don't produce such a feeling. So how could I then condemn them?

White: You say you observe nature. Would you really use the word 'wrong' when witnessing a hawk killing a chicken?