Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?

[I_am_not_mafia]

As distasteful as it may be to a lot of people to try and compare themselves to someone who willingly set themselves to the task of destroying an alarmingly large group of people, and managed to go a good portion of the way in the span of less than 3 1/2 years, to just treat it with a little "there but for the grace of God go I," but I've come to realise that, if you want to try and stop evil, othering it is the worst thing you can possibly do. A film released the same year De-Nur gave his testimony concluded "If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe."

You dismiss that idea, you fail to understand evil. You fail to understand evil, it becomes a Hell of a lot harder to take it on.

I read Rudolf Höss's autobiography. It is very interesting to get inside the mind-set of the person who orchestrated the logistics of it all. It was a nothing more than logistical problem to him, albeit a major logistical challenge. It made me realise more than anything else just how common people like him actually are. There have been several people who I have got to know since reading that book that I think could have done exactly the same thing given a completely different environment. This made me realise how evil doesn't come about because of a few people but because we collectively allow others to be dehumanised.

And dare I say it, I am most certainly reminded of this when speaking to theists who argue that it is only an external objective morality that has is stopping them from doing the same. It can make me glad that they have religion if that's the kind of people they are. But I also know that it would be given a different society, that same religion could be encouraging them to carry out such atrocities. And that worries me.

[robvalue]

War is murder and we're getting ready to murder some North Koreans and Iranians just because our god (Trump) wants to do it.  The guys doing the killing don't have any grudges against the people they are killing but they do it simply because their god (their national leader) tells them to do it.  So when things like that happen aren't we all murderers because we did nothing to prevent it from happening?

To a degree yes but i was talking about something more direct . But i was more talking about the fact that a god could literally have prevented the death of millions but does not .

God invented the fact that death can happen (and rape, torture, violence, illnesses, natural disasters, etc). That makes him responsible, in my opinion, since he didn't need to do that. (Or if he did, due to some incredibly convenient rule binding God to behave like a cock, then that just opens up way more questions than it answers.) Doings things via nature is just a buffer of responsibility, like me blaming the bat I smack you in the balls with.

[Angrboda]

To a degree yes but i was talking about something more direct . But i was more talking about the fact that a god could literally have prevented the death of millions but does not .

God invented the fact that death can happen (and rape, torture, violence, illnesses, natural disasters, etc). That makes him responsible, in my opinion, since he didn't need to do that. (Or if he did, due to some incredibly convenient rule binding God to behave like a cock, then that just opens up way more questions than it answers.) Doings things via nature is just a buffer of responsibility, like me blaming the bat I smack you in the balls with.

Even more than that. First, God condemns people to death as punishment for Adam and Eve misbehaving, carrying the punishment of the sins of the father down into perpetuity. But also, by depriving a person of life, he's depriving them of the opportunity to possibly change one's mind about God, for better or worse, and thus he is essentially deciding their eternal fate for them. How theists see God getting a free pass in this is beyond me.

[robvalue]

God invented the fact that death can happen (and rape, torture, violence, illnesses, natural disasters, etc). That makes him responsible, in my opinion, since he didn't need to do that. (Or if he did, due to some incredibly convenient rule binding God to behave like a cock, then that just opens up way more questions than it answers.) Doings things via nature is just a buffer of responsibility, like me blaming the bat I smack you in the balls with.

Even more than that.  First, God condemns people to death as punishment for Adam and Eve misbehaving, carrying the punishment of the sins of the father down into perpetuity.  But also, by depriving a person of life, he's depriving them of the opportunity to possibly change one's mind about God, for better or worse, and thus he is essentially deciding their eternal fate for them.  How theists see God getting a free pass in this is beyond me.

Exactly, yeah.

Worst case scenario, I’m questioning everything for a long period and I’m on the verge of becoming a Christian. Not yet, but in a few days. I’ve overcome the extreme disadvantage of not being born into a Christian family.

Then someone shoots me. There goes all my precious free will. There goes my chance at redemption. And god knew how it would go down all along.

Fair? I don’t think so. A more monstrous character is hard to construct.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hey now, he tries!  He sends us all of our favorite batshit evangelists.  It's not -his- fault if we don;t believe their inane rambling. 

[Wyrd of Gawd]

To a degree yes but i was talking about something more direct . But i was more talking about the fact that a god could literally have prevented the death of millions but does not .

God invented the fact that death can happen (and rape, torture, violence, illnesses, natural disasters, etc). That makes him responsible, in my opinion, since he didn't need to do that. (Or if he did, due to some incredibly convenient rule binding God to behave like a cock, then that just opens up way more questions than it answers.) Doings things via nature is just a buffer of responsibility, like me blaming the bat I smack you in the balls with.

The thing is that if an all-powerful deity exists there's no reason for all of the victims to be real people.  He could make them imaginary to see how the real people react to the apparent misfortunes of others.  With a real deity you could be in the "Matrix" living an imaginary life because he could do anything.  So if you think that what you are experiencing is actually real then it's best to toss the idea of an all-powerful deity that interacts with you.

[Edwardo Piet]

To me, that answer is incoherent. It dodges the question and confuses the issue and in no way represents moral objectivity.

I think it's funny when theists say that they can't understand the idea of objective morality being possible without God. Because the reality is that whatever objective morality is it doesn't come down to "because I say so", whether it's an omniscient being saying so or not. If goodness is identical to God's nature then that just makes God redundant as the objective goodness is objectively good for the exact same reasons. God's saying so doesn't magically make something not objectively good become objectively good at all. That makes no sense at all. Either an action is moral or not. Either a motive is moral or not. Either something is wrong or right. God saying so is just a red herring.

---

Playing devil's advocate here, why is murder objectively wrong?

May I answer this question as well?

[robvalue]

I'll just throw more of my brainstorm in here. This partly addresses what you said earlier Khem. Our ideas about morality are so different that I feel we're not discussing the same thing. This is not a criticism, just an observation.

My personal method of assessing morality, which I totally own as mine and don't claim is correct or better than anyone else's, is the following:

I rate behaviour I observe on a scale of what I could reasonably expect from whatever thing took an action. This then influences my attitude towards the agent after the event, and maybe any action I take in return. This is why I don't consider a dog attacking a cat a moral matter. I take into account as many factors as possible when making this assessment. It's only useful to me, or perhaps to someone else if they want my opinion. That's as far as it goes. I'm forever evolving my moral judgement systems.

On the flip side, I set my own goals, which I try to achieve pre-emptively and actively. For example, I want my dog to be safe, so I walk her on a lead (she's mental).

If she ran into the road and someone ran her over deliberately, I'd probably consider them to be immoral, pending further information. If they did it by accident, I wouldn't consider it a moral matter. However, if I see a car coming towards my dog, I'll try and get her out of the way whatever the morality may be of something running into her.

So to sum up: don't run my dog over.

[Catholic_Lady]

To me, that answer is incoherent. It dodges the question and confuses the issue and in no way represents moral objectivity.

I think it's funny when theists say that they can't understand the idea of objective morality being possible without God. Because the reality is that whatever objective morality is it doesn't come down to "because I say so", whether it's an omniscient being saying so or not. If goodness is identical to God's nature then that just makes God redundant as the objective goodness is objectively good for the exact same reasons. God's saying so doesn't magically make something not objectively good become objectively good at all. That makes no sense at all. Either an action is moral or not. Either a motive is moral or not. Either something is wrong or right. God saying so is just a red herring.

---

Playing devil's advocate here, why is murder objectively wrong?

May I answer this question as well?

Of course, Ed!

[Edwardo Piet]

But then I don't know how exhausting it is to keep up the facade of being "normal", as most psychopaths do if they want to go unnoticed.

Probably not exhausted at all as they were most likely socially conditioned from childhood and they learned to blend in and mask their abnormality so much that it's like second nature to them.