Posted on 12/08/2016 10:27:07 PM PST by Perseverando
I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the human “soul” (yes, I’m using a spiritual term).
My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the human element. That is to say, while economics is often treated as a mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology. To know the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.
Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss. I have touched on the issue in various articles in the past including Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood, but with extreme tensions taking shape this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community investigation of “Pizzagate,” I am compelled to examine it once again.
I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective. Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of belief. Evil is secular in its influence.
The first and most important thing to understand is this — evil is NOT simply a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical perspective. I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled 'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.
To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Without a religious perspective in the discussion of evil, there can be no argument. Without divine judgment good and evil are relative not absolute.
I don’t believe you can make a very compelling argument of true evil without a religious component.
I suppose you can make an argument from the viewpoint that society determines what is good and evil. But that is still a relative viewpoint as societies change and cultures are wildly different from one another. What is accepted one decade as good is evil the next, etc.
You cannot make an argument for absolute evil without a religious component. Period.
Explain, please, what you mean by ‘religious’ perspective? Globalism in theory is a ‘religion’. Actually, globalism is just another phase of global ‘communism’ where the few control the many. Whatever an individual places their faith in, is their religion. You think for one second the globalist believe they are going to change the belief system of the Muslim world? Christianity in large part has been dissolved into mindless mush...
from a non religious darwinian perspective,
compassion can enhance individual and 1-1 relational survival
narcissism can enhance individual survival
cultism can enhance tribe collective survival
behaviors can either be learned or inherited
Dostoevsky said it most brilliantly: “Without God, everything is permissible”. There is no Good and Evil (no laws without the lawgiver)-—and Pleasure will always trump pain (virtue/perseverance).
Fichte realized that for a collective/socialist “worldview” to exist, you had to destroy Free Will (conscious) of the individual and condition them from young age (brainwash) to “NOT” “think” for themselves. You can program little children and put them in artificial environments (very controlled) so that they have no experiences and practice in thinking for themselves. Their minds will be mapped so that it isn’t integrated the way that Davy Crockett’s mind was integrated, or a Ben Franklin’s.
You have to have unstructured environments and loving role models of loving male/female, so Laws of Nature (Common Sense, Science) is intelligible. You learn what it is to be male and female, and you have a proper role model (children need to have role models—like ALL mammals if they are to mature properly, and not be warped/inable to understand Reality and have the proper emotions/desires. The ability to connect and flourish will depend on the first years of life and the embedding of proper worldview (ability to “love” others).
Most “religions” are “group”/tribal religions, so aren’t equivalent to Christianity which is the only belief system which gave us the Age of Reason and Individualism (Individual Natural Rights from God) and Freud and Jung.
The Ancient Greek Masters were “baptized” by the early Church fathers, the Platonist St. Augustine, and the Aristotelian St. Thomas Aquinas. The combined philosophy created the Age of Reason and Modern Science-—not possible with any other “Ethic” system which created the idea that human beings could NEVER be used as a Means to an End (Marxism/Socialism/Tribalism). Christianity is the only ideology which rid the world of slavery as a “good”-—and pederasty, incest, misogyny and on and on. It is the most rational and just “ethic” system on earth.
There is a reason why Christianity is being erased from the World-—as I type. Because for a NWO, you have to eliminate individualism/identity of the child-—to make them irrational, too dumb to even know if they are male or female-—too dumb to EVER be able to “think” for themselves so they will be willing to be slaves of the elites.
That is why the Marxists took over education in the World and created the indoctrination (operant conditioning like Pavlov’s dog) so that children are incapable of using Reason, over Emotion (tribalism). The Marxists have been very successful because we allowed it and gave up our children to these evil institutions and TV (programming artificial emotions).
Only Classical Christian education truly educates children-—gives then the Wisdom of the Ages and the ability to “think critically” since it teaches the Socratic Methodology and Aristotelian Logic and Rhetoric, etc. Everything else is garbage (feelings). Children should NEVER be removed from their Natural Family until 7 years old or older and even then only for a few hours. They should learn from their parents in real life situations like they did until the 1930s in America when the communist, Humanist destroyed America’s “education” system.
A religious perspective with divine judgment.
There is no absolute good or evil without that.
It isn’t possible to have true good or true evil without divine judgment.
Because true good or true evil would always be relative. Meaning what I think is absolute good and absolute evil could be your absolute evil and absolute good. Good and evil can change. Everything is a grey area, there is no black and white. I say something is good, someone else says it is evil. But without divine judgment and a God, then I am right, and so are they. Because there are no absolutes. So no true evil, no true good.
That’s why you can’t argue good and evil without a God or an ultimate authority to DEFINE GOOD and DEFINE EVIL for us. Everyone would have their own definition of each, and everyone would be right. Right?
So if you’re saying that compassion is good. Without a defining authority of what good and evil are(God), I can simply say that compassion is evil.
C.S Lewis said (paraphrasing)
Evil is always a perversion of the good. It is parasitic on the good. You can have good without evil but evil cannot exist without good.
ping
This confirms what you say:
http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/why-the-problem-of-evil-is-a-problem-3/
the notion that compassion requires a divine third party could however alternatively be simpy a human conceit imposed upon a magnificently working darwinian selection of those who have compassion above those who do not.
observe the nurturing of young animals by their parents in the wild. you do not deny that some nurturing of that type exists, as well as other types of compassion, expressed between animals. This, darwin would probably say, is healthy and beneficial to the organism over organisms that do not have innate compassion, thus the behavior tends to be passed along and amplified through sucessive generations.
if there is a G*d I would feel safer intellectually as modeling the existence of G*d as independent of all things that could conceivably be explained by darwinian selection.
To be forthright i do admit that i am beginning to believe that i can see the hand of darwinian selection in most animal and human behavior. Do we believe that animals have souls? If yes, where is the boundary of animals that have souls from animals that do not? There must be some such boundary. But if not, then to be honest, could there be a scientific darwinian mechanism that explains why animals might exhibit compassion towards other animals? I demand honesty when considering this— fobbing it off to some book, no matter how old or holy, seems to me too much like intellectual laziness.
(Are you familiar with the Russian fox behavior experiment? Russians took wild feral foxes with aggressive behavior, and over several generations instilled domestication into them via selective breeding to the point that they became as friendly to humans as dogs.)
Oh my, you put Pizzagate in your title. Be prepared for all the FR deniers to come out and call you a moron for suggesting evil people like this exist.
Their first line of defense is ‘Where are the victims?’ ‘Why haven’t they come forward?’
Anyone that has been educating themselves on this has seen A LOT of evidence of the use of INFANTS. Not highly likely that an INFANT going to escape the clutches of these evil people and run off to the police station to report their abuse. I won’t name any FR names but who is really the MORON here? I have to wonder at the vehement way the deniers attacked people here that understand how all of this can happen. Perhaps they have some association with it themselves. I have heard the claim that this is going to capture a lot of people that will be a total shock like teachers, police etc.
I hope the ultimate goal of putting all this information out there will be to educate the public so when it all goes down people will be prepared and supportive no matter who is ensnared. I’m sure it’s probably already saving some children’s lives now that these people are having to look over their shoulders. Hopefully forensic evidence has already been collected and everything’s waiting for the right moment.
Mindless mush lol? What? Christianity has been bolstered, confirmed and strengthened by archeology and science. The abundance of evidence makes anything but Christianity, mindless mush.
Compassion does not require nor prove a divine entity. Natural behavior (both subjectively "good" or "evil") is explicable though logic, observation, and (heaven forbid!) social consensus. I know you said not to refer to old holy books, but even Christ said: "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that."
At some point, the question of good and evil must be answered either through consensus or authority.
observe the nurturing of young animals by their parents in the wild. you do not deny that some nurturing of that type exists, as well as other types of compassion, expressed between animals. This, darwin would probably say, is healthy and beneficial to the organism over organisms that do not have innate compassion, thus the behavior tends to be passed along and amplified through sucessive generations.
From a human perspective, the nurturing of young is viewed as compassion. This predilection is readily apparent in popular culture where anthropomorphism runs rampant and extends from Disney movies to people who substitute children with pets. From a scientific perspective, this "compassion" is readily explicable as a physical necessity for all mammals. Nursing requires an extended relationship between mothers and young; however, that is not the case for most species.
if there is a G*d I would feel safer intellectually as modeling the existence of G*d as independent of all things that could conceivably be explained by darwinian selection. To be forthright i do admit that i am beginning to believe that i can see the hand of darwinian selection in most animal and human behavior. Do we believe that animals have souls? If yes, where is the boundary of animals that have souls from animals that do not? There must be some such boundary. But if not, then to be honest, could there be a scientific darwinian mechanism that explains why animals might exhibit compassion towards other animals? I demand honesty when considering this— fobbing it off to some book, no matter how old or holy, seems to me too much like intellectual laziness.
Darwin proposed survival as a determinant factor in speciation, but that is inherently a physical equation. Insects comprise 2/3 of the mass of species on the planet, but compassion is not a trait that is readily apparent in that class. Extrapolating a moral system from physical survival would place the cockroach on the pinnacle of morality.
In my limited understanding, your question places the onus in the wrong domain. From a Darwinian perspective, where do those moral imperatives which are not natural come from? If personal satisfaction and survival of one's species are paramount, what drives our conscience? We construct an entire lexicon to address morality without ever considering its basis. We question the existence of God, and then condemn the existence of "evil," without a hint of irony. Medieval scholars were accused of counting angels dancing on pinheads, but our society is now content to count pinheads as angels.
(Are you familiar with the Russian fox behavior experiment? Russians took wild feral foxes with aggressive behavior, and over several generations instilled domestication into them via selective breeding to the point that they became as friendly to humans as dogs.)
I am not familiar with the particular experiment, but I spent some time in the Aleutians where an abandoned Russian colony left a fox population that became a study in the hazards of isolation. The resultant offspring have "evolved" to survive, but not without consequence. They hunt mice and birds, but subsist primarily from the base's waste. Airmen constantly feed them and some haunt most of the outlying structures. Most people's tours are a year or less, but a few personnel were permanent party by choice. These people generally lacked social skill and performed menial labor in various areas. They often adopted the foxes as pets--naming them and feeding them and even letting them into buildings despite a gross lack of housebreaking. Relegated to the fringes of the world, both found a strange solace in their shared status as outcasts.
What "good" comes of such an experiment? Why would we consider decreasing the survival instinct as a positive outcome? Is the decrease of danger toward man the only impulse, or do we truly long for the biblical heaven where the lamb and lion lie down together without fear? Lewis proposed that good was independent of evil; and that is true to the extent that "evil" is a perversion of some good; however, as humans, we experience good in contrast to evil. The question of heaven itself raises the issue, even on an eternal perspective. Even the conception of such an environment truly escapes our understanding. However, as it is written: "What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived..." When stand in judgment of God’s lack of compassion, we should consider our standing in ignorance.
Mindless mush lol? What? Christianity has been bolstered, confirmed and strengthened by archeology and science. The abundance of evidence makes anything but Christianity, mindless mush.
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I think the “mush” description refers to how Christianity is being widely preached and practiced today, and in that sense I think it’s an accurate descriptor.
Mindless mush lol? What? Christianity has been bolstered, confirmed and strengthened by archeology and science. The abundance of evidence makes anything but Christianity, mindless mush.
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I think the “mush” description refers to how Christianity is being widely preached and practiced today, and in that sense I think it’s an accurate descriptor.
I suppose it would be convenient to observe here that cockroaches while evolution-wise are successful, occupy an ecological niche that does not seem to be in direct conflict with many other species of animals including man that demonstrate compassionate behavior. What influence does a barnacle have on a giraffe, and vice versa?
And please do not mis-construe anything from me as an exhortation not to read the bible, or other great works in other selected religions (though I personally eschew a few). To the contrary, I believe that they can be instructive to anyone interested in morality, as well as a potential source of info on the devine should that be of interest. All I wanted to do was to draw a distinction between that thought which is science based and that which is not so as not to conflate the two unnecessarily at a low level. I have no special knowledge or wisdom in most of this. I would like to have more time to spend on the bible, on canon, and on students of the bible such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas (to name a couple). (Maybe even Martin Luther too?) It might also be interesting to look at the “new atheism” but somehow I already sense their arguments and I worry that it would be depressing, which I personally don’t really feel that I would benefit from studying right now given the current state of the world (ha). My preoccupation with compassion in contrast to Christian love comes from Buddhist teaching which I also struggle to learn.
Compassion is weakness, and it is evil.
How is saying that any less or more valid than saying compassion is good if there isn’t a higher authority that governs what good and evil are?
If there isn’t an absolute authority of what good is and what evil is, then every choice is relative to the person making it, and nothing is good, nor evil. It just “is”.
Well, the why’s here, I hope, not shouting slogans, or indulging in jihads.
if you do want to claim a point of view for real, then claim it and defend it with reason. a head faketype of statement subsequently used as if it were a valid defensible viewpoint as a premise for something else does not sound kosher somehow to me. Much less a convincing argument for a deity or deities (would most of your arguments so far apply equally well to polytheism, btw?).
On an absolute scale, though, I suppose that anyone can say almost anything they want, even if it is nonsense (just not “fire” in a crowded theater).
Most polytheistic religions have gods for different things. Such as Justice, or Law.
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