RE: How to easily defeat any argument for God
August 12, 2019 at 11:33 am
(This post was last modified: August 12, 2019 at 11:48 am by GrandizerII.)
(August 12, 2019 at 10:49 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:Quote:Being helpful is good.
Being harmful or cruel is bad.
Being kind is good.
Being honest is good, being dishonest is bad.
To be loving is good, being hateful is bad.
This comes across as highly problematic.
Stealing a wallet filled with cash is dishonest and is therefore bad. But suppose the original owner of the cash intended to use it to finance a murder or arrange to have sex with a child, or some other despicable act. The theft of the wallet thus prevents crime and is therefore good. How, in this instance, is dishonesty bad?
If being helpful is good, then all German citizens who were accessories to the Holocaust were being good, as they were 'helpful' to the Party in (among other things), rounding up Jews.
And so on.
Boru
I find this position very understandable, and you're spot on with regards to help and harm from a subjective point of view.
That said, putting this another way: from an objective outsider "perspective", rather than from the perspective of the Germans or the Jews, it seems that those who were accessories to the Holocaust were being harmful rather than helpful. Reasoning here is the Germans did not have to harm the Jews, the reasons to do so weren't warranted, the harm was severe and trauma-inducing, and a very large number of people were killed unnecessarily. Nothing about this can lead to a reasonable argument that those who were accessories to the Holocaust were being helpful in the moral sense. Hence, 'helpful' instead of helpful.
The wallet one is a bit tricky, and I'll need to further think this one a bit. Suffice to say, we may have basic subconscious intuitions on what is morally good or bad, but we're not generally well-equipped to intuit the morality of trickier and more complex situations. Not unless we consciously indulge in philosophical thinking and reflection on such matter.
ETA:
If it was known that the guy was going to commit such an immoral act, then stealing his wallet would not be that bad and would probably be a good thing. But even better, report to the cops. If, however, it was not known at all that the guy was going to commit a heinous act, then that's where it's tricky.