Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

As I said I really don't understand the distinction. To use your earlier example, "I have a right to pizza" could be rephrased as "I have the right to not be refused pizza because that causes me harm"

I suggest reading up on the concepts before you continue using them.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/

I think it's pretty interesting stuff!

OwlFancier posted:

What's the point in protecting rights if not to increase welfare?

Is this a question or a claim? Are you telling me you have considered the various reasons people might give for insisting on rights over welfare, and you think they're all bad? Or are you asking me if I had heard of any because you can't think of any sensible ones?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:02

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# ? May 11, 2024 08:12

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

It is interesting to note that trying to exterminate religiosity isn't apparently "hostility".

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:03

MaxxBot: Oct 6, 2003; you could have clapped

you should have clapped!!

Brainiac Five posted:

It is interesting to note that trying to exterminate religiosity isn't apparently "hostility".

It's also "hostile" towards fundies for me to have the gall to exist in society as a gay without being murdered apparently.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:05

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

Is this a question or a claim? Are you telling me you have considered the various reasons people might give for insisting on rights over welfare, and you think they're all bad? Or are you asking me if I had heard of any because you can't think of any sensible ones?

I'm suggesting that rights should be derived from increases in human welfare than that adhering to imagined rights for their own sake is silly because you're following rules without bothering to look at whether they're doing any good.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:06

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

MaxxBot posted:

It's also "hostile" towards fundies for me to have the gall to exist in society as a gay without being murdered.

?

I'm talking about twodot's claim that every religious person is delusional and must be corrected. That's different from hating evangelical Christians for being dogshit bigots.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:07

MaxxBot: Oct 6, 2003; you could have clapped

you should have clapped!!

OwlFancier posted:

As I said I really don't understand the distinction. To use your earlier example, "I have a right to pizza" could be rephrased as "I have the right to not be refused pizza because that causes me harm"
What's the point in protecting rights if not to increase welfare? Rights are pretty useless if they don't make things better for people.

What are you talking about? I just said that positive/negative rights are a loving stupid way to judge things, laws are good because they increase human welfare. Imperfect implementation of UHC is obviously better than just killing everyone, except from a particularly committed nihilist's perspective.

Having the government not actively oppressing groups of people is a huge improvement over having them do so, I don't see how this is hard to understand.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:08

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Cingulate posted:

How about a pope who spends fortunes on the sciences, leading to a lot of important discoveries in maths and chemistry, and promotes the hell out of that stuff, but once in a discussion with an astronomer he didn't really believe every single thing because there's an ambiguous sentence somewhere in 33th Samuel 33:ff? It seems you would have to say this "presents an ongoing conflict between science and religion", but it also seems a much milder conflict than between science and many secular societies (e.g. Lysenkoism, contemporary bioethics, ...).

Such a person sounds like a positive force for humanity's research institutions, but also like a person who doesn't believe in using the scientific method for their own purposes. Secular societies can also be in conflict with science.

Mr. Wiggles posted:

Of course religion CAN BE in conflict with science, but it is not necessarily so. In these specifics about the Bible, while some people have taken parts literally, it does not follow that it is a document meant to be read so (nevermind the fact that the Bible isn't even a single document etc.)

My point here is that essentially all Christians take some portion of the Bible literally. I can't generally predict what parts those are, but when it happens to be the case that the parts they picked out as literal turn out to be right, that's just a coincidence.

quote:

Your claim is essentially saying that because some white people are Trumpists, then all white people are terrible. And while I concede that there are many terrible white people, you would be hard pressed to prove your logic.

No, I think basically all religions make some empirical claims, and that whether those claims turn out to be right is basically chance. When those claims are shown to be wrong, you either say "Whoops we were wrong, we will reason using actual evidence and logic" or you double down on the conflict. To the extent that conflict doesn't exist between science and religion, it's because science always wins.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:08

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

MaxxBot posted:

Not having the government not actively oppressing groups of people is a huge improvement over having them not do so, I don't see how this is hard to understand.

I... agree? I think?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:09

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

twodot posted:

You've completely failed to understand my point, and all of this is totally irrelevant, except here:

If you write this sentence, but you need to write "generally" instead of "literally always every single time, no exceptions whatsoever" then that presents a historic and ongoing conflict between science and religion. So long as the Bible contains any empirical claims, that's an opportunity for conflict between science and religion. It doesn't matter if someone think the whole Bible is literal or 50% literal or 1% literal. Any amount of literal claims are subject to scientific review. The young-earthers are just convenient in that they both exist and are definitely wrong, the fact that they are recent or few is irrelevant to fact that they show that religion and science can be/is in direct conflict. Other believers have wrong beliefs about reality, it's just much more difficult to demonstrate they're wrong, or, often, pin them down on what they actually believe.

It would be utterly foolish for me to say "literally always every single time, no exceptions whatsoever" about any social assertion covering possibly tens of thousands of incidents in hundreds of human societies with dozens of religions over thousands of years. The simple enormity of that sample size makes it silly to categorically rule out any social happening or movement.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:10

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Main Paineframe posted:

It would be utterly foolish for me to say "literally always every single time, no exceptions whatsoever" about any social assertion covering possibly tens of thousands of incidents in hundreds of human societies with dozens of religions over thousands of years. The simple enormity of that sample size makes it silly to categorically rule out any social happening or movement.

I agree it would be very silly for you to do it, which is why I also think it's silly to claim religion and science aren't in conflict, especially when there are active ongoing direct examples of that being the case.
edit:
"Where science and religion are in conflict, religious people are generally comfortable ignoring the conflict" works.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:12

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

twodot posted:

Such a person sounds like a positive force for humanity's research institutions, but also like a person who doesn't believe in using the scientific method for their own purposes. Secular societies can also be in conflict with science.

Do you think they are "engaging in the conflict of science and religion" is a useful description of that pope?
You say secular societies can also be in conflict with science. But still, religion can't (not be)?

OwlFancier posted:

I'm suggesting that rights should be derived from increases in human welfare than that adhering to imagined rights for their own sake is silly because you're following rules without bothering to look at whether they're doing any good.

Okay, but can you imagine that some people have different views, many of them for smart, well-fleshed out reasons? E.g., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
I mean, ~70% of philosophers are consequentialists, but that still leaves us with 30% and a bunch of non-philosophers.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:15

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

Okay, but can you imagine that some people have different views, many of them for smart, well-fleshed out reasons? E.g., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/
I mean, ~70% of philosophers are consequentialists, but that still leaves us with 30% and a bunch of non-philosophers.

I can imagine that people will start from premises that lead them to that conclusion yes but that doesn't mean I agree with them.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:17

RasperFat: Jul 11, 2006; Uncertainty is inherently unsustainable. Eventually, everything either is or isn't.

Brainiac Five posted:

You said that your error was caused by the need to talk down to me, motherfucker. Don't whine and whimper when someone hits back.

My reason for believing positive proof of a state of mind beyond simplistic ones is unlikely to ever be possible is the ability of the brain to function with severe damage and the extent to which thinking appears to occur at a higher level of organization than simple nerve cell activation, which suggests a receding infinity of unfalsifiability more than a successful effort to prove the mind can be manipulated.

The evidence against black swans existing was that none had been observed until they were discovered in Australia. The "proof" was a probabilistic claim, not an absolute statement that black pigmentation was impossible for swans to have. Which is immediately applicable to your confusion between making positive statements and pointing out unlikelihood is not disproof.

For example, it is, to understate things, unlikely that consciousness continues after apparent death by the state of consciousness being replicated on other substrata by chance in such a way as to produce continuity of experience, but there is no strong evidence that this cannot happen either. To say that this is disproven would be a false statement, even though it is an unlikely statement.

I said that because you keep intentionally using bullshit parallels. The claims about probability of alien life are not analogous to claims about consciousness surviving past death. They are not equatable in the way you keep insisting they are.

You then take the idea that we can never be certain in 100% verifying something scientifically and equate that to the idea that you can apply this to spiritual claims. It's misleading at best.

Claims of a potential black swan are based off of other animals that have a mutation that causes black pigmentation, and as such it is likely that a black swan can exist.

This claim is not equal to any magical claims about spirituality or god, and you refuse to acknowledge this.

I don't have to definitively disprove the soul, because the burden is not on me to disprove something that has absolutely zero supporting evidence in the first place. Or do you think we should entertain every idea ever like it could be equally possible?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:20

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Cingulate posted:

Do you think they are "engaging in the conflict of science and religion" is a useful description of that pope?

No, it's not an actual battle that humans can take the field in.

quote:

You say secular societies can also be in conflict with science. But still, religion can't (not be)?

I mean it's certainly possible to have a religion that makes no falsifiable claims, but that seems kind of boring, I'm not sure if any exist in enough numbers to be worth talking about. Any system that generates falsifiable claims is going to eventually generate claims that contradict science, if any of those claims are wrong, we've got a conflict. (When they're right we've got an interesting research opportunity)

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:23

Calibanibal: Aug 25, 2015

religion is poop. its doo doo

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:24

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

I can imagine that people will start from premises that lead them to that conclusion yes but that doesn't mean I agree with them.

No, of course not, but you can't expect to convince everyone by building on a premise many don't accept.

You think the government should be allowed to kill me and freely distribute my heart, liver, both kidneys, and sexual organs to 5 people missing just these organs, about to die. I think the government doesn't. You say it maximizes welfare. I say I have a right not to have my organs harvested for the greater good. I say I have a right to be treated not merely as a means to an end. I say I am a human being, a person even. You don't respond, you just call the death squads. 5 people live happy lives with my organs. Well, 4, one of them is seriously short-changed. But so is life when your welfare is brutally maximized.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:25

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Cingulate posted:

Is that an extensional or an intensional definition? I don't think this means "whenever some individual pursues knowledge to their best ability, they're engaging in science". Without the context, I can only imagine it means something like "looking at the world, we see many attempts to understand it, of which science is by far the best, and religions are rather bad ones".

I personally wouldn't say Sam Harris' work follows the highest standards of logic or evidence. But what pseudoscience that meets this standard are you thinking of ..?
Cause, like, I'm a relativist who likes his Kuhn and Feyerabend, but that sounds really relativistic.

Harris is broadening the term 'science' to include moral reasoning and philosophy so he can demonstrate how science can derive moral facts (instead of merely inform them):

�Some people maintain this view by defining �science� in exceedingly narrow terms, as though it were synonymous with mathematical modeling or immediate access to experimental data. However this is to mistake science for a few of its tools. Science simply represents our best effort to understand what is going on in this universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn." (from the beginning of Moral Landscape)

He supports this by purporting we can use fMRI scans to decide what is a morally superior alternative by finding those that favor pleasure and avoid loss based on straightforward utilitarian ethics.

the trump tutelage posted:

By definition, pseudoscience is not well-known for its high standards of logic and evidence.

Exactly.

Danger fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Mar 8, 2017

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:26

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

RasperFat posted:

I said that because you keep intentionally using bullshit parallels. The claims about probability of alien life are not analogous to claims about consciousness surviving past death. They are not equatable in the way you keep insisting they are.

You then take the idea that we can never be certain in 100% verifying something scientifically and equate that to the idea that you can apply this to spiritual claims. It's misleading at best.

Claims of a potential black swan are based off of other animals that have a mutation that causes black pigmentation, and as such it is likely that a black swan can exist.

This claim is not equal to any magical claims about spirituality or god, and you refuse to acknowledge this.

I don't have to definitively disprove the soul, because the burden is not on me to disprove something that has absolutely zero supporting evidence in the first place. Or do you think we should entertain every idea ever like it could be equally possible?

They are, in fact, equatable as claims about reality and your argument makes it clear that you have taken it as a prior that any claims which you process as spiritual are inherently false no matter what. Which is to say that you have designated the truth-value of certain statements as false regardless of evidence.

This is not a bad thing, but it is not a scientific thing to do, unless you have a grasp of logic that is purely binary, in which case I suggest returning to these questions after you graduate from high school.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:26

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

No, of course not, but you can't expect to convince everyone by building on a premise many don't accept.

You think the government should be allowed to kill me and freely distribute my heart, liver, both kidneys, and sexual organs to 5 people missing just these organs, about to die. I think the government doesn't. You say it maximizes welfare. I say I have a right not to have my organs harvested for the greater good. I say I have a right to be treated not merely as a means to an end. I say I am a human being, a person even. You don't respond, you just call the death squads. 5 people live happy lives with my organs. Well, 4, one of them is seriously short-changed. But so is life when your welfare is brutally maximized.

I mean maybe I might argue that the inability to get people to buy into that society would probably cause more damage than the policy would avert and thus wouldn't actually maximize welfare.

Being a consequentialist, and that.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:27

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

twodot posted:

I agree it would be very silly for you to do it, which is why I also think it's silly to claim religion and science aren't in conflict, especially when there are active ongoing direct examples of that being the case.
edit:
"Where science and religion are in conflict, religious people are generally comfortable ignoring the conflict" works.

So what? Science has conflicted with a lot of things at one time or another. To assert that science has never ever contradicted the theories, beliefs, or thoughts that previously existed would be a silly assertion to make, and to claim that that somehow results in some inherent and irreconcilable conflict between science and everything else is absurd.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:35

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

twodot posted:

Any system that generates falsifiable claims is going to eventually generate claims that contradict science, if any of those claims are wrong, we've got a conflict.

Ok, that seems true by definition. So how are you going to cash this out? What does it mean that religions all conflict with science to the extent that they sometimes imply claims about the world which disagree with science?

OwlFancier posted:

I mean maybe I might argue that the inability to get people to buy into that society would probably cause more damage than the policy would avert and thus wouldn't actually maximize welfare.

Turns out you're wrong. (As this is my thought example, I get to decide.) There's no buy-in. To maximize welfare, there is only one society: we're all ruled by Killary Clinton and her army of Lizard Overlords. Globalism 3.0. And Killary did the math and turns out your welfare is indeed being maximized.

Danger posted:

Harris is broadening the term 'science' to include moral reasoning and philosophy so he can demonstrate how science can derive moral facts (instead of merely inform them):

“Some people maintain this view by defining “science” in exceedingly narrow terms, as though it were synonymous with mathematical modeling or immediate access to experimental data. However this is to mistake science for a few of its tools. Science simply represents our best effort to understand what is going on in this universe, and the boundary between it and the rest of rational thought cannot always be drawn." (from the beginning of Moral Animal)

He supports this by purporting we can use fMRI scans to decide what is a morally superior alternative by finding those that favor pleasure and avoid loss based on straightforward utilitarian ethics.

Sorry, you will have to explain to me how this 'definition of �science� necessarily includes things like astrology, phrenology, and even elements of religion' because I don't see it.

Main Paineframe posted:

So what? Science has conflicted with a lot of things at one time or another. To assert that science has never ever contradicted the theories, beliefs, or thoughts that previously existed would be a silly assertion to make, and to claim that that somehow results in some inherent and irreconcilable conflict between science and everything else is absurd.

I guess many would argue science has at times conflicted with human well-being, dignity, and even continued existence ...
But I would say I don't understand twodot's point still.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:37

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

Turns out you're wrong. (As this is my thought example, I get to decide.) There's no buy-in. To maximize welfare, there is only one society: we're all ruled by Killary Clinton and her army of Lizard Overlords. Globalism 3.0. And Killary did the math and turns out your welfare is indeed being maximized.

Well, I mean, if we're going to play that game then I get a magic spell that creates eternal voluntryist communism forever and I cast it.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:52

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Main Paineframe posted:

So what? Science has conflicted with a lot of things at one time or another. To assert that science has never ever contradicted the theories, beliefs, or thoughts that previously existed would be a silly assertion to make, and to claim that that somehow results in some inherent and irreconcilable conflict between science and everything else is absurd.

Cingulate posted:

Ok, that seems true by definition. So how are you going to cash this out? What does it mean that religions all conflict with science to the extent that they sometimes imply claims about the world which disagree with science?
[...]
I guess many would argue science has at times conflicted with human well-being, dignity, and even continued existence ...
But I would say I don't understand twodot's point still.

People try to claim religion and science don't conflict because it's religion's job to make spiritual claims and science's job to make empirical claims, but that is plainly false. Religions frequently make empirical claims. If this seems trivial, it's because it is, and my whole point is thinking there's no conflict is just dumb.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:52

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

Brainiac Five posted:

I'm talking about twodot's claim that every religious person is delusional and must be corrected.

Not sure how you can argue religion is not a delusion of sorts, belief in something without proof is the whole point of faith, it's the definition of both.

But to be fair delusions like that are not at all limited to the religious, I have known atheists who nevertheless believe in fate, good luck charms, ghosts, or yea, even aliens (as in actual visitors). :downs:

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:52

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

Cingulate posted:

Sorry, you will have to explain to me how this 'definition of �science� necessarily includes things like astrology, phrenology, and even elements of religion' because I don't see it.

Astrology or phrenology is an effort to understand what is going on in this universe; for some it is their best effort. Moral philosophy is as well (which Harris's main contention why it falls to science to answer moral questions). The issue is none of those things are science. The definition is overly broad.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:57

Brainiac Five: Mar 28, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

Avalerion posted:

Not sure how you can argue religion is not a delusion of sorts, belief in something without proof is the whole point of faith, it's the definition of both.

But to be fair delusions like that are not at all limited to the religious, I have known atheists who nevertheless believe in fate, good luck charms, ghosts, or yea, even aliens (as in actual visitors).

If belief in something without proof is insane, then we are all insane. Furthermore, this definition of religion is extremely focused on Protestant Christianity to the exclusion of all other religions, so it's useless.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 21:59

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Avalerion posted:

Not sure how you can argue religion is not a delusion of sorts, belief in something without proof is the whole point of faith, it's the definition of both.

But to be fair delusions like that are not at all limited to the religious, I have known atheists who nevertheless believe in fate, good luck charms, ghosts, or yea, even aliens (as in actual visitors).

To my knowledge I've never described religious people as delusional, nor would I in general (there are of course some number of people who have religious delusions). Religious people can certainly be occasionally wrong about things, but that's not practically any different from people who are wrong about things for a variety of other reasons.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:00

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

Well, I mean, if we're going to play that game then I get a magic spell that creates eternal voluntryist communism forever and I cast it.

Then I'd probably say it was immoral to do that because you're ignoring people's right to self determination.

The game goes like this: you propose a scenario, and contingent on if I accept this scenario as inherently self contradictory or for some other reason impossible, we decide if your or my ethical system considers it just or not, and if that is a good classification. And if your system judges a repugnant scenario good, it won't convince me.

Avalerion posted:

Not sure how you can argue religion is not a delusion of sorts, belief in something without proof is the whole point of faith

I think to a lot of people, one of the more important points of faith is something like community.

twodot posted:

People try to claim religion and science don't conflict because it's religion's job to make spiritual claims and science's job to make empirical claims, but that is plainly false. Religions frequently make empirical claims. If this seems trivial, it's because it is, and my whole point is thinking there's no conflict is just dumb.

This seems very vague to me. Sure, sometimes religion and science stand in conflict. I don't see what important implication follows from this.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:04

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

Then I'd probably say it was immoral to do that because you're ignoring people's right to self determination.

The game goes like this: you propose a scenario, and contingent on if I accept this scenario as inherently self contradictory or for some other reason impossible, we decide if your or my ethical system considers it just or not, and if that is a good classification. And if your system judges a repugnant scenario good, it won't convince me.

That doesn't really work when you're trying to appeal to realism.

Like you can't have a scenario that realistically leads to a reduction in welfare because of the obvious issues with mandatory organ reassignment and then claim that it actually improves welfare. You're being silly.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:08

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Cingulate posted:

This seems very vague to me. Sure, sometimes religion and science stand in conflict. I don't see what important implication follows from this.

I don't know, ask the people who insist on there being no conflict and put in a bunch of effort to discredit religions where it's immediately obvious there is substantial conflict why they are doing that.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:16

unlimited shrimp: Aug 30, 2008

Danger posted:

Astrology or phrenology is an effort to understand what is going on in this universe; for some it is their best effort. Moral philosophy is as well (which Harris's main contention why it falls to science to answer moral questions). The issue is none of those things are science. The definition is overly broad.

Harris would claim that neither astrology nor phrenology have a high standard of logic or evidence and therefore would not fall under the umbrella of "science".

He would not claim that moral philosophy is scientific; rather, that it has the potential to be such given advances in cognitive science.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:19

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Danger posted:

Astrology or phrenology is an effort to understand what is going on in this universe; for some it is their best effort.

Again, I am not so sure what Harris means here is "whenever some individual pursues knowledge to their best ability, they're engaging in science". And even if, I think there might be a lot to be gotten out of "best effort" that excludes pseudosciences.

OwlFancier posted:

That doesn't really work when you're trying to appeal to realism.

Like you can't have a scenario that realistically leads to a reduction in welfare because of the obvious issues with mandatory organ reassignment and then claim that it actually improves welfare. You're being silly.

To be honest, we're one step too far already. I'm appalled the only reason you think the government should not distribute my organs amongst those in need is that you don't actually believe it maximizes the greater good. I think you should, at the very, very least, grant me the right to not be murdered.

twodot posted:

I don't know, ask the people who insist on there being no conflict and put in a bunch of effort to discredit religions where it's immediately obvious there is substantial conflict why they are doing that.

I think you're being imprecise. Surely nobody would argue there is never any tension. Surely nobody would argue there is always an extreme incompatibility. Maybe you're defending one, others are attacking the other.
So - you're saying, sometimes the two conflict. And?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:23

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

To be honest, we're one step too far already. I'm appalled the only reason you think the government should not distribute my organs amongst those in need is that you don't actually believe it maximizes the greater good. I think you should, at the very, very least, grant me the right to not be murdered.

Why? I think the fact that there's very little reason why murdering you would actually achieve a positive outcome in the world is sufficient? In the event that you were such a malign force in the world that it would help things, why should you have that protection?

Essentially why would you extend the right to life to say, hitler, rather than just saying that maybe killing people almost universally makes the world shittier?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:27

A Terrible Person: Jan 8, 2012; The Dance of Friendship; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

Why? I think the fact that there's very little reason why murdering you would actually achieve a positive outcome in the world is sufficient? In the event that you were such a malign force in the world that it would help things, why should you have that protection?

So you think that the right to life/safety from murder is a step too far because you might want to kill someone?

How virtuous.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:34

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Cingulate posted:

I think you're being imprecise. Surely nobody would argue there is never any tension. Surely nobody would argue there is always an extreme incompatibility. Maybe you're defending one, others are attacking the other.
So - you're saying, sometimes the two conflict. And?

And therefore this person is wrong:

Pellisworth posted:

I would invite you and any other thread posters to read and consider the following before continuing (a famous essay by evolutionary biologist S. J. Gould): http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

Science and religion do not necessarily overlap or conflict. Science occupies the domain of empirical observations and testing, religion generally occupies the domain of moral, ethical, and philosophical reasoning.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:34

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Again I have said several times that the concept of virtue is a silly idea.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:35

A Terrible Person: Jan 8, 2012; The Dance of Friendship; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

Again I have said several times that the concept of virtue is a silly idea.

Ah, sorry; you're a hosed-up sociopath.

Better?

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:38

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I don't think it's particularly sociopathic to affirm that killing people near universally is a bad idea but there are situations in which it might be better than not.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:39

Cingulate: Oct 23, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

OwlFancier posted:

Why? I think the fact that there's very little reason why murdering you would actually achieve a positive outcome in the world is sufficient? In the event that you were such a malign force in the world that it would help things, why should you have that protection?

I think you are not standing on firm ground when arguing with anybody that their right to life should stand entirely on them not being a malign force - that if it was found that murdering them had net positive consequences, not only would their right to live have been overruled, but that they never had such a right in the first place.
"Why are you concerned about the NSA when you're not a terrorist?"

I hope I'm not coming across as saying you're wrong. I'm saying, I think you're not objectively, self-evidently right. I'm saying, many people will reasonably disagree with your first premises, and you'll be stuck at a point where neither has an argument that has any force on the other.

E.: I don't see any of this as indicating sociopathy either ...

twodot posted:

And therefore this person is wrong:

Well, not if they meant something like: "It is not true that science and religion are always in an existential conflict, a less-than-zero-sum-game where one has to destroy the other ASAP".

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:46

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OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Cingulate posted:

I think you are not standing on firm ground when arguing with anybody that their right to life should stand entirely on them not being a malign force - that if it was found that murdering them had net positive consequences, not only would their right to live have been overruled, but that they never had such a right in the first place.
"Why are you concerned about the NSA when you're not a terrorist?"

I hope I'm not coming across as saying you're wrong. I'm saying, I think you're not objectively, self-evidently right. I'm saying, many people will reasonably disagree with your first premises, and you'll be stuck at a point where neither has an argument that has any force on the other.

That is the problem with people working from different premises and also with things that are not immediately intuitive, yes.

# ? Mar 8, 2017 22:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Is the Left Hostile to Religion?

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