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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 22, 2018 at 10:15 pm
(May 22, 2018 at 7:33 pm)Hammy Wrote: (May 22, 2018 at 7:28 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: So, what you're saying is that we don't need God in order to explain morality, right?
She seems, to me, to be saying that morality comes from the natural world, but the natural world comes from God, therefore ultimately morality comes from God
Yes. If the natural world is just an accident without any sort of objective purpose or intention, there isn't much reason to think morality is grounded in anything greater. Which is why atheists typically don't think morality is objective, which makes sense.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 22, 2018 at 11:07 pm
(This post was last modified: May 22, 2018 at 11:07 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
(May 22, 2018 at 10:08 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: (May 22, 2018 at 8:52 pm)robvalue Wrote: Why does his plan involve some people being amoral?
I find the thought processes interesting.
Psychopaths don't have to be immoral. They have free will like everyone else.
Psychopaths have to be immoral. They have no free will like everyone else.
(May 22, 2018 at 10:15 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: (May 22, 2018 at 7:33 pm)Hammy Wrote: She seems, to me, to be saying that morality comes from the natural world, but the natural world comes from God, therefore ultimately morality comes from God
Yes. If the natural world is just an accident without any sort of objective purpose or intention, there isn't much reason to think morality is grounded in anything greater. Which is why atheists typically don't think morality is objective, which makes sense.
I'm not kudosing this because I agree with it. I do not agree with it. I am kudosing it because I appreciate you stating your position clearly to me like this. Good post.
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 22, 2018 at 11:29 pm
Quote:Psychopaths don't have to be immoral. They have free will like everyone else.
Yes they do . No they don't at least not the same kind everyone else does .
Quote:Yes. If the natural world is just an accident without any sort of objective purpose or intention, there isn't much reason to think morality is grounded in anything greater. Which is why atheists typically don't think morality is objective, which makes sense.
Ridiculous. Morality is objective and nature. And there are tons of Atheist moral objectivists .
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 22, 2018 at 11:35 pm
The dominant position of academia is a secular moral realism.
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 22, 2018 at 11:37 pm
(May 22, 2018 at 11:35 pm)Khemikal Wrote: The dominant position of academia is a secular moral realism. Yup overwhelmingly. And it's encouraging to say the least . 
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 23, 2018 at 1:41 am
(May 22, 2018 at 10:08 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: (May 22, 2018 at 8:52 pm)robvalue Wrote: Why does his plan involve some people being amoral?
I find the thought processes interesting.
Psychopaths don't have to be immoral. They have free will like everyone else.
Sure, they have free will, but morality means nothing to them. They haven't been given the equipment to care about it. This is what I find odd from a "design" perspective.
I've read a bit about how it does make some sense from an evolutionary perspective, as sometimes situations call for pure pragmatism.
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 23, 2018 at 1:54 am
(May 23, 2018 at 1:41 am)robvalue Wrote: (May 22, 2018 at 10:08 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Psychopaths don't have to be immoral. They have free will like everyone else.
Sure, they have free will, but morality means nothing to them. They haven't been given the equipment to care about it. This is what I find odd from a "design" perspective.
I've read a bit about how it does make some sense from an evolutionary perspective, as sometimes situations call for pure pragmatism.
They lack empathy, but still have the ability to choose to behave morally. I dont really see a conflict here between the existance of psychopaths and morally coming from God.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 23, 2018 at 2:35 am
Once again you miss the point .
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 23, 2018 at 4:26 am
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2018 at 4:34 am by robvalue.)
The best way I can describe being a psychopath is to imagine you're playing a video game. It's a game highly centered around you and your achievements, and the other characters in the game are just cardboard cutouts with no significance. You don't care about them, because they don't matter.
You might "help" one of them, but you'd only do so because you expect there to be a reward in it for you or because they'll help you later in the game. If you can steal from them and get away with it, or even kill them when it's advantageous to you, you'll do it. You're just playing a game, after all. This is how I play games. Sometimes I'm even extremely cruel to other characters, even though there's no point to doing so, just because I find it amusing. I randomly kill "innocent" people just for kicks, because I can easily get away with it.
This is the way I imagine the life of a psychopath to be. They literally cannot care about other people. If they happen to do something we would consider moral and "helpful", it will be entirely because they expect it will benefit them in the long run. In this way, I consider them unable to be moral. I also consider them unable to be immoral, because they aren't going against any conscience or internal code they have when they do something "bad". They are again just doing it because it benefits them in some way, or because they enjoy doing it. Therefor I class them as amoral: outside the scope of morality.
Expecting them to "choose to care" about people, and to act morally simply because it's the right thing to do is expecting the impossible. You might as well say a computer program could choose to really care about people. At best they can be conditioned to act pseudo-morally, which is (I think) the best approach when it's discovered a child is a psychopath. Our laws achieve this in a very rough way, simply by supplying deterrents to doing "bad things".
PS: The weird thing is that I've often heard religious people describe things so that everyone is a psychopath, and the only reason anyone can do anything "good" is because of the incentive God gives to do so (or his orders). This leads some people to think they'll turn into maniacs if they left their religion, which is very unlikely to be the case.
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RE: Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?
May 23, 2018 at 9:00 am
(This post was last modified: May 23, 2018 at 9:01 am by robvalue.)
I find it strange how I'm so violent and sadistic when playing games. It's not like I'm ever repressing any violent urges in real life. I almost never have any. It does relieve general stress and frustration to beat the shit out of a load of imaginary people though.
In some ways I envy psychopaths. Having an extremely strong conscience and empathy is exhausting at times; mine goes beyond what is of any practical use. 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.
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