Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
I don't believe the ultimate goodness resides in God.
God does man a disservice if he dis-empowers him to autonomously recognise evil when he encounters it, using only the mortal tools of reason and empathy.
I don't believe the ultimate goodness resides in God. If it exists at all, it resides in human beings. It is this notion of the divine which clouds the reality in the mind of men.
Okay. That's what you don't believe.
What DO you believe is the reason why Dasa's speech is evil in calling for the things he is calling against all Moslems.
What is your positive explanation as to why it is REALLY evil ?
If it [goodness] exists at all, it resides in human beings. It is this notion of the divine which clouds the reality in the mind of men.
So then Dasa's speech is EVIL only because the opinion of the minds of men deem it so ?
Okay. But that is not too solid.
If Dasa is able to convince a good number of people, it will be in the minds of at least a sizable portion of men, that his policies should be enacted.
Do we have an ad populum situation here ?
God does man a disservice if he dis-empowers him to autonomously recognise evil when he encounters it, using only the mortal tools of reason and empathy.
I am looking for a positive reason given by Atheism as to WHY, in an absolute sense, Dasa's speech should be judged as EVIL.
But since you mentioned (and I did mention) Theism, I would briefly reply this.
God did tell man that he would gain a knowledge of good and evil.
And man did. But the ASSUMPTION was on man's part that JUST having the KNOWLEDGE would mean that he had the life power to resist the evil and perform the good.
He gained a knowledge of good and evil only.
He did not always have the life power to perform the good that he knew, nor resist the evil that he knew.
Yes, the conscience of Adam and Eve did awaken. But death came just the same.
The way I understand this in Genesis is that the awakened conscience of man only acted as a breaking system to prevent man from doing TOO much sin - on his downward road to his inevitable death.
We are glad that the conscience was awakened to be a kind of breaking system restricting the performance of unbridled evil. However, sin and death could not be resisted in the long run.
Man gained a knowledge. Man did not gain the life power to resist that evil fully or perform that good fully.
But tell me - if Dasa's speech is evil in an absolute sense because it somehow thwarts the ultimate purposes of Evolution, how do I harmonize that with what I have been told that Evolution HAS no purpose ?