+Warren+

Fun things like blowing away people you don’t like, or having a harem full of sex partners.

There weren’t a lot of fun things to do back when the Roman Catholic church came around. They didn’t have to restrict people having fun, they were more concerned with survival and continuation of society.

People only see it sin now as a way to restrict people from doing fun things, is because people are more free. Meaning, people can do things that folks 500 years ago could not. Not would not, could not. They were prevented from doing so, they were not free just as we are not free to breathe in water as if it is air. There are physical limitations that are not the same as religious and societal ones.

YHS: No, that’s Nietzsche, although you’re close. I’m talking about your God-given freedom to choose. Or if you prefer a non-religious argument, Sartre’s point about freedom being the defining characteristic of a being-for-itself.

ED: Not following you.

I think you should have just said that free will is what can change a person’s fate.

ED: What about those university students? What freedom did they have?

The freedom to choose to try to run, to try to hide, or try to kill the killer. The freedom to choose to be prepared in reaction to an attacker. The freedom to choose not to be helpless, not to be an easy target. There are no physical limitations, and it is not as if the law can prevent you from doing what you want to do. Since laws are just like sins, they prevent you from doing what you want to do. But if you really want to do it, they cannot stop you from doing it, just as it did not stop Chou.

ED: Yes, yes – I get all that. I just don’t believe that God is up there keeping score, waiting to cast bad people into Hell.

She sounds as if she would be more amenable to the Deism beliefs that some of the Founding Fathers interpreted God as, or specifically that God is a natural god, not a humanocentric one.

ED: Well, yes, I believe in evil, and I’m not forgiving what Hitler did or making any excuse for it. But he didn’t think he was being evil, no one thinks of themselves as being evil.

Our Youngest: Right, it’s all relative to what each person thinks. (Departs for the bathroom.)

I hope your Youngest was being sarcastic. ED is right basically, not a lot of people do things because they think it is evil. Most people think their actions are doing good in this world, or their beliefs at least if not their actions.

In a general sense, entropy is fate, it is what makes fate possible. For entropy is the fate of the universe, the inevitable fate. Sooner or later, that is, without an input from a different system/universe/dimension, the universe will face maximum entropy or heat death. In relation to humanity, this means that if you let Evil do whatever it wants, then that becomes the fate of people. It is destined to happen, which is why free will is important, because only the strength of free will can change destiny and fate.

Everyone will die sooner or later. That is fate. But while it is fate that cannot be denied, it can be changed. The time and manner of your death may be changed, if not the inevitability of the final end.

I hope your ED sees the connection between the laws of society and sins. If she truly believes that sins are a limitation upon one’s freedom to do fun things, then she must also recognize the limitations of society that prevents a person from changing his fate. Society said that you must not do violence, that you must not protect yourself by killing the attacker in a brutal and efficient manner. But society is wrong. Fate, as with evil, can only happen if you let it happen. If you stop resisting, you can die easily. If you stop trying to save your life, your fate will be here very soon.

The same with evil. If you stop trying to resist evil, evil will manipulate things in such a way that the final end will be where everything good is destroyed. Everyone can claim that they are strong, but this does not make them strong. The same with Good and Evil. The same with free will and fate. If you are weak, then your actions are decided by fate more often than not. If you are strong on the average, then your actions and life will be decided by your will.

To return to what you said about free will, there are limitations upon the will, free or otherwise. In fact, there are limitations to everything. And as it relates to fate, fate is the limitation placed upon free will. The co-existence of opposites. Light and Darkness. Good and Evil, also pertains to choice and the absence of choice.

If we start with the premise that all societies share certain moral universals, then why do so many conflicts seem intractable?-Huntress

I think in a sense because not everything can be validated or found out by humans, so all that remains is argument. Humans are not very good at argument as a way to find truth, we are much better at doing, at experimenting, and at finding out truths by ourselves. Rather than talking about them. It is not as if inventors found what they found because they got together in a group and started talking. Sure, partnerships can result, and benefits from the research of others accrued, but these are just foundations. They are not the doing, itself.

I find Situational Ethics interesting — why does a Christian ethical theory based on the principal that love is the ultimate law(which is at the heart of the NT) and therefore in certain situations certain moral principles can be set aside if love is best served –seem to anger/annoy Christians?

If we start with the premise that all societies share certain moral universals, then why do so many conflicts seem intractable? Even in the blogosphere, we have people who talk past each other, convinced that the other person is incredibly dumb or willfully blind to what’s in front of him/her. We don’t just disagree, we have a hard time imagining how anyone could disagree on “this” point that seems “so obvious”. How can someone tolerate abortion? How could someone not? How can some women go out in public covering their faces? How could they not? Is it possible that our brains moral circuitry is affected by our genes, culture and personal experience and therefore wired in different patterns?

If I can co-exist peacefully with a woman who covers her face by choice, does it mean that I have abandoned my core values? Or am I simply a reasonable person? Likewise, if I cannot co-exist peacefully with her, then what kind of person am I? While each of our values are in conflict with each other, are they not equally correct and fundamental? Do they not both reside in concept at the heart of American values: individual choice?

I’m not a moral relativist — mathematics has proven the existence of universal truths, yet I don’t find it a contradiction to accept the premise of value pluralism: the idea that there are several values which may be equally correct and fundamental, and yet in conflict with each other. The laws that govern the physics of the macro-world,(Newtonian physics) do not govern the physics of the micro-world( quantum physics) yet they are equally correct and fundamental, and they co-exist in conflict with each other.

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She hates that.