After a full day at work, and an evening at the kwoon, it appears another day has got away from me. We will be traveling tomorrow, so it appears that, as they say, “blogging will be light” for a little while. Things might not get back to normal until after the New Year, though there is much I’d like to take up if the opportunity presents itself. (Oh, to be a “man of independent means”, and not have to continue to sell off my dwindling reserve of days! How sweet it would be to keep those that remain for my own ends.)
Meanwhile, have a look at this post over at Bill Vallicella’s place. I’d be curious to know what you think.
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You’re curious as to what I think? I’m flattered!
I will admit that it took a great act of will not to burst into tears at seeing logic again, and an equally great act of will to stop my eyes from glazing over, but once I got past those hurdles I realized something: I still have no idea what he’s talking about. I’m not saying that his argument is logically flawed, just that I apparently don’t possess the mental capacity to grasp it (and seeing logic shorthand makes something inside me die–I was a CS major once, and those were very dark times).
I have a couple stupid questions, but I’m too embarrassed to post them over there (and also I’ve never posted over there before, so it seems a bit awkward):
1) What is “objective evil?” Is this what people mean when they say “absolute evil?” I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea, and it’s not working. Isn’t all evil subjective (for that matter, isn’t everything subjective)? Evil is a value judgment, and value judgments are made by subjects according to value systems, no? Help…
2) This question might stem from the fact that I don’t understand objective evil, but: why does God need to exist for there to be objective evil? If we’re going to have evil that exists objectively without regard to the perception of the subject, what does this have to do with the existence of God?
These are not intended to be refutations of the argument, they are just things I simply do not understand. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go into the corner so no one will hear my brain softly weeping.
Charles, when Malcolm said “you,” he meant me, not you.
Unfortunately, he should have meant you, for I don’t understand logic well enough to follow Bill’s precise argument.
Jeffery Hodges
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Hi Malcolm –
I haven’t commented at Bill’s about the “atheism & evil” discussion, because I don’t know of any atheists who who would buy into the premises needed to construct the argument Bill is critiquing. I’ve encountered a couple atheists who do maintain that objective moral standards imply a diety; but as atheists, they of course accept the nihilistic consequences, denying the reality of objective evil. But most, by far, of the atheists I know are moral objectivists of one stripe or another, who deny any dependency of objective good and evil on a diety. The issues Bill addresses don’t get any traction with either of these sorts of atheists.
Bob beat me to it, but reading the post I was left wondering why any atheist bother with:
“I will grant you that if there is objective good and evil, then God exists” as Bill seems to think he ought.
Thank you all! I have no time today (I am about to spend the rest of the day driving), but want to examine this more closely, as the nihilistic implications of Darwinian nontheism have been on my mind a lot lately.
I’m looking forward to your further treatment. If you would be so kind as to address my questions in the process, I would be very grateful.
Dr. Hodges: Well, phooey. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Those are good questions, Charles — and Bill V., writing for a fairly technical audience when he writes about philosophy, assumes that his readers will require no clarification of them.
I’ll deal with them as well as I can when I get a post put together on this topic. (It may be a few days, or even a week or two; I need to be careful, and I have scant quiet time for writing at the moment.)