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Ant had asked me recently how a naturalist could believe in evil. Flann asked the same thing to GB. So I thought it needed a new post.

I'm not sure the nature of evil can be justified from a religious perspective. Dig deeply enough, and you're forced to identify the seed of evil; what the first evil or origin of evil was. With that in place, you're forced to identify what planted the seed, or caused it to exist.

The concept of evil is easily explained in a naturalistic worldview, even if it is unpalatable to theists.

I disagree that naturalists should scratch the term from their vocabulary. We use the term to refer to acts committed by people. The disagreement is over the motive for those acts, and if that motive is in any way supernatural.

I don't use the word evil, but i'm not agin it.

Evil doesn't mean on the wrong side of two agendas though, as it seems to mean to religious people. People aren't doing the dark bidding of a grand evil which is trying to change the way the world works. People who do evil things are actually just incredibly selfish, childish and self serving.

They aren't supervillains... they're idiots. And usually there's no master plan, but instead there's hastily assembled acts of "ME FIRST".

But to count as evil i think there would have to be a blatant lack of self analysis or attempts to recognize what was wrong about what they did.

So an evil act in my mind is something that is done intentionally to cause great harm, or a pattern of small harms that amount to great harm. The motivations for these acts are not "to become more evil" but "just because" or "it was fun" or "that's not my problem".

Yes - just like you "naturalists" aren't willing to scratch the word spiritual of your list either.
Having a scientific worldview I'd think you'd rather say something like " I'm feeling very endorphic right now"

But we've been down this road before. It's just all kind of silly to me at this point and that's it.

Please - feel free to borrow any theistic sounding words you see fit to express your self as best you can.
There's nothing wrong with it. Seriously.
Theists don't own supernatural sounding words. Just like atheists don't own Reason.

ant wrote:Yes - just like you "naturalists" aren't willing to scratch the word spiritual of your list either.

If the word fits, use it. It's not the words I disagree with, it's the explanation for the phenomena they represent. A spiritual feeling is a real feeling, but that doesn't mean there are spirits behind it. Evil is a real thing, but that doesn't mean it's supernatural. It's a subjective judgement, much like beauty.

Interbane wrote:The concept of evil is easily explained in a naturalistic worldview, even if it is unpalatable to theists.

Naturalist explanations tend to be based on the bigger brains hypothesis. When it gets big enough consciousness emerges,along with a moral sense, language,abstract thought,artistic ability,creativity and imagination.
All this is done by matter and chemicals (which have no opinion on the subject) but long ago for no reason happened to randomly interact and produce a primitive chemical replicator which gradually acquired a code and snowballed its way to modern man.
Modern man doesn't know where matter came from but is confident science will one day provide a naturalistic explanation.

the bigger brains hypothesis. When it gets big enough consciousness emerges,along with a moral sense, language,abstract thought,artistic ability,creativity and imagination.

This person has an advanced math degree with virtually no brain

http://boingboing.net/2015/07/28/man-bo ... -no-b.html

But as Interbane said before, to a naturalist It's not the size that matters

Flann wrote:When it gets big enough consciousness emerges,along with a moral sense, language,abstract thought,artistic ability,creativity and imagination.

Of course. Are you saying these things existed before humanity arrived? How would that even be possible?

Flann wrote:long ago for no reason happened to randomly interact and produce a primitive chemical replicator which gradually acquired a code and snowballed its way to modern man.

That is correct. And it isn't simply fabricated, as Christianity is. But rather, it's a conclusion born from so much evidence that it is the only reasonable conclusion. Reality may sound strange to you, but it is what it is.

Modern man doesn't know where matter came from but is confident science will one day provide a naturalistic explanation.

Omniscience is a man-made concept that doesn't make any sense. We will never know everything. Which is something of a paradox for us, since we feel the need to close the loops in our worldviews. Thus we create gods and other supernatural constructs.



With all that off your chest, do you have any comment on the nature of evil? Or is it as simple as believing what the romans wrote?

Are you saying these things existed before humanity arrived? How would that even be possible?

[quote="Interbane"]Flann wrote:
When it gets big enough consciousness emerges,along with a moral sense, language,abstract thought,artistic ability,creativity and imagination.




Of course. Are you saying these things existed before humanity arrived? How would that even be possible?
[/quote
They existed in the mind of God, which explains why we have a universe at all and a moral sense.
Language is innate to humans and not something that could have evolved. It's complex but it's a complete package.
The gradualist explanation doesn't work for so many things. I know that's the theory but things like visual systems and audio systems like sonar are complex systems.
I don't find the piecemeal explanation convincing.
O.k that's what most biologists say,but it is actually an extrapolation and not proven.
You know the arguments on the pattern in the fossil record and the law of recurrent variation in the mutations breeding program.
These are strong indicators that the theory doesn't match reality as far as gradualism goes and limits to variation.
And it's not just a scientific question. Everyone knows it has metaphysical and world view implications so while I may be biased I don't think it's in quite the same position as whether the law of gravity is correct or not.

They existed in the mind of God, which explains why we have a universe at all and a moral sense.

I suspect a Naturalist believes (without evidence, of course) that prior to the rise of homo sapien intelligence, no intelligence existed.

That, and if homo sapien intelligence can not identify some thing unambiguously AS intelligent, it is therefore NOT intelligence per se. (non seq)

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