TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 5: Imperfection
Direct continuation of: TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 4: Skeptical Theism
Follow up to: Cl, Bubonic Plagues, and Bibles, Part I
This series is about looking at a series of YouTube videos by user TheraminTrees called “There are no gods”, that set out to explain what TheraminTrees used to believe about gods, and why he is an atheist now — including which gods he rejects, why, and with how much certainty. I’m still analyzing his second video, which is about the gods he can reject with near absolute certainty, because they involve logically incompatible properties and thus are logically impossible.
So far we’ve ruled out omnipotent gods (for being incompatible with the state of free will, moral perfection, and absolute immortality); knowably omnibenevolent gods (for being incompatible with Hell, suffering, evil); gods you can pray to; and omniscient gods who still get genuinely surprised or upset. That’s a lot of divine real estate, but there’s still more to be said! In this last part of the second video, TheraminTrees takes aim against gods said to be perfect.
From Whence Comes Imperfection?
The idea of perfection is pretty complex, and people have many different views on what perfection would entail God to do. Many people argue that perfection would compel a god to intervene in human events, enforce an omnibenevolent will, and oversee humanity’s ascension to Heaven. Other people argue that perfection would compel a god to be completely hands-off and detached from human affairs.
TheraminTrees moves to discuss the parts of perfection we do agree on firmly — namely, that a perfect being never makes mistakes. Thus, if God is the omnipotent creator of the universe, the universe God makes must be devoid of mistakes, and therefore perfect.
Yet, the world is not perfect. Some kinds of imperfection we might point to are the types of suffering we examined in “TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 3: Evil” — nonhuman animal suffering and birth defects. Yet, these forms of suffering are indeed debatable, so let’s turn to a type of imperfect that isn’t easily debatable: the idea that humans are imperfect. This is a key tenant of Christianity — humans sin — and also generically plausible given that we hurt ourselves and others both intentionally and unintentionally.
We could all be better. But this raises an interesting question: where did this imperfection come from? Are we imperfect beings created by a perfect god? If so, why? How and why could a perfect god create imperfect beings? Let’s consider an argument analyzed by Graham Oppy in his book Arguing about Gods, which I have rephrased as follows:
P1: An omnibenevolent entity would always bring about a world where humans freely preform only morally good acts provided that (1) it is logically possible to bring about such a world and (2) the entity is capable of bringing about that world.
P2: It is logically possible to create a world where humans freely preform only morally good acts.
P3: An omnipotent entity can realize any logically possible world.
C4: Therefore from P6 through P8, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent entity would realize a world in which humans freely preform only morally good acts.
P5: Our world is not a world in which humans freely preform only morally good acts.
C6: Therefore from C9 and P10, no entity can exist that is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
This argument is logically valid and the premises are very plausible: P3 and P5 are utterly uncontroversial, so all the debate must occur within P1 and P2. But P2 seems true because of the nature of compatibilist free will and the untenability of libertarian free will, as well as God himself having free will yet being genuinely incapable of evil, and that Heaven is traditionally conceived as a place where people have free will yet don’t commit evil acts.
P1 seems obvious on first glance, but given everything we’ve talked about skeptical theism, we have to defend that we can actually know this. I think it can be most easily defended by another appeal to the fact that Heaven has people freely preforming only morally good acts, yet is preferable to life on Earth. But more generally, it seems further defensible by taking it to be definitionally true — the morally good acts would be whatever maximizes even the goods unknowable to us, and then this argument shifts to P2 which can be defended by an appeal to the fact that humans are declared to be sinful and imperfect by God himself.
Thus what looks like a characteristic-world incompatibility argument (omnibenevolent, omnipotent gods are incompatible with a world in which humans do not freely preform only morally good acts) is actually better understood as a characteristic-characteristic incompatibility argument (omnibenevolence and omnipotence are incompatible with a god that declares his creation to have become imperfect). Now let’s look at this in a bit more detail…
The Fall
In my debate with Cl about the existence of needless suffering, Cl wrote in his rebuttal that all suffering (birth defects and the suffering of nonhuman animals included!) are a result of The Fall, the theological event in Genesis in which Adam freely chose to reject God and eat the poisoned fruit. Thus the Fall is the origin of all imperfection. God created a perfect world, but we ruined it. And God has to let us endure the ramifications of our own choices…
But there are like a million problems with this. Let’s start with the most obvious: this isn’t a good place to rest a theodicy, nor a tenable origin of imperfection, because given what we know, there is no way that The Fall actually happened, and a metaphorical Fall can be no justification for actual suffering. I don’t think I need to mention how Genesis is historically untenable, genetically untenable, and contradicts a lot of scientific evidence.
Now we could pack up our bags and be done here, theodicy busted. But there’s a greater point to be made, and as far as free will and imperfection are concerned, we should be far more interested in the theological and philosophical concerns — which are also numerous.
The key lemma of the Fall is that it was (1) a free choice made by Adam that (2) God had no choice but to respect and allow to unfold. But both (1) and (2) are false, given the nature of the event that actually took place. First, the choice was entirely uninformed — Adam would not have known the ramifications of his own actions without a greater understanding of how the world worked nor would he have been able to judge his actions as wrong without eating the tree in the first place. Secondly, just as we stop children from walking off cliffs, God could have intervened at any step of the way, but in fact he did the opposite by making it really easy for the Fall to take place. In fact, as mentioned in Part 2, he knew it would take place due to his omniscience and still changed nothing.
In his essay “Sins of the Father”, Adam Lee summarizes all the problems with (1) and (2) as follows:
What we have so far is this: God deliberately created a dangerous, forbidden tree and put it into Eden with no protection, then created an intelligent, evil, talking serpent to tempt Adam and Eve, and gave them an ineffective instruction they could not have known not to disobey along with a threat of punishment they could not have understood. This bizarre behavior can only be explained as the result of malice or extreme stupidity.
But granted for the moment that all this happened as written – that God could have intervened at any step of the way to stop what was about to unfold, and yet he did not. The serpent tempted Eve, and God kept silent and did not intervene. She reached out to eat from the tree, and God didn’t stop her, although he could have. She ate, and gave the fruit to Adam, whom God also did not stop from eating. Only then – once their sin was complete – did God finally show up. And instead of simply forgiving them and undoing what had happened, which he also could have done, he kicked them both out of Paradise and cursed them, condemning them to mortal lives of toil, suffering and death.
The Trouble of the First Sin
But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg, because all we’ve done is look at the action and notice that it was uninformed and unprevented. But where did the action to reject God itself come from? If Adam was created perfect, why would he do such an imperfect thing?
As Adam Lee puts it in his essay “That Fateful Apple”:
In examining this doctrine, the first question that arises is this. What caused the first sin to come into being? In other words, why did Adam and Eve choose to eat the fruit? [...] It is true that, if he gives us the option of doing good, God must logically also give us the option of doing evil. But that does not mean we must choose to do evil. Why couldn’t God have created free-willed beings who would freely choose only the good?
[...T]he fact remains that Adam and Eve did not create their own natures. Any hint of rebellion, any trace of pride, any tinge of defiance that was to be found in their natures was there because it was put there by God. (Saying they were originally created without sinful inclinations but later took them on is absurd: why would a perfectly good person choose to add negative qualities to his character?) [...] Responsibility for any imperfection to be found within any created thing must ultimately lie with the creator. It would hardly be fair for God to blame us for being exactly as he created us to be, even though the Bible tells us he repeatedly does just that.
Conclusion
So clearly it cannot follow that Adam and Eve were perfect yet did something imperfect. Thus God could not have made a perfect creation and we end up with another incompatibility argument: not only is the story of Genesis incompatible with an omnipotent, omniscient god who desires above all else his creation not disobey him, and not only is the story of Genesis incompatible with a perfect god incapable of making mistakes, but the concept of a perfect god is incompatible with the very fact that the current creation contains mistakes, even setting Genesis aside.
So we enter another incompatibility argument: a perfect god cannot exist, given the fact that the world is imperfect. Not only does the Fall fail to ground any explanation for why God is justified for allowing suffering in the world, but the Fall is another example of how God messed up, and another reason to doubt his existence. In the next part of this series, we’ll see just how far these incompatibility arguments can go, and then what to do with the rest of the god concepts that can’t be ruled out by logical contradiction.
Continued in: TheraminTrees’s Atheism, 6: Atheism and What’s Left
Followed up in: Cl, Bubonic Plagues, and Bibles, Part II
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Author’s Note: This essay was revised on June 25, 2012 and split into two different essays to space out the length.
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 4 Apr 2012 in All, Atheism, Problem of Evil, Responses. 14 Comments.
4 Apr 2012, 4:06 pm
Since—as far as I know—you’ve eschewed my offer for subsequent debates, I have to be a little scathing here. It’s in mockery of these “arguments” and in no offense to you, Peter.
Patent nonsense. “We” have ruled out no such thing. Now, maybe in your own mind, you think there’s some sort of problem here, but that’s different. That’s in your mind, and you have more than a few not-responded-to comments from me on this blog. It’s your blog, run it how you want, but you might want to consider finishing our discussions before rushing ahead and declaring victory.
Ah, yes… probably, the all-so-prevalent euphemism for, “my own personal feeling.” Classic. Just, classic! And this passes for rationalism.
Well, you forget to tell your readers that you’ve swallowed Ebonmuse’s strawman argument. Not everybody believes in “eternal torture” of the unrepentant, for example. And of course, never forget the element of subjectivity. Glass half-empty? Glass half-full? You see, I think a God willing to work with sinners—despite the fact a perfect God would be justified in killing us all—is, I don’t know what word to use, but it’s definitely not “unfair” in my opinion. But let’s not found arguments on opinions.
Why should your subjective preferences dictate the “probability” of God’s existence? How is that rational? I’m not the least bit confused about what the Bible requires for salvation, and there are many others like me. Hence, your argument doesn’t get past P1.
This is an empty assertion based on prior commitment to the very “metaphysical naturalism” in question. The truth is, there is no way you can honestly make that claim. It cuts both ways. There’s no way I can “prove” the fall happened, either. I would absolutely *LOVE* to debate this one.
Oh, you do.Wikipedia is for lazy agendists. Wikipedia is essentially biased rubbish on many issues and a simple link to them makes me question your respect for scholarship. Anyone can post there.
LOL! Wikipedia says it, I believe it, that settles it! Talk about depressing.
Wrong on both counts. God clearly told Adam the ramifications of his actions (“you shall die”), and there is no reason to assume a perfect God wouldn’t have given Adam the brainpower to understand that “no” means “don’t do,” or that “die” means “something not good.”
Ah, yes… the Cosmic Coddler who should have intervened to prevent us from maturing into responsible, free, rational beings. God “probably” doesn’t exist because Peter Hurford thinks God should be more like a Cosmic Coddler. There you have it, folks.
Seriously, readers… these “arguments” fail miserably. Please encourage Peter to participate in further debates so we can at least put on a decent show.
14 Apr 2012, 7:56 pm
Of course from my perspective, you err in applying compatibilism; but not just because compatibilism is false. We’ve already agreed (if I correctly understood you) that a God both determined by law and omnipotent is illogical. So, God, in any event, must be pictured as having “libertarian” free will. But if you grant it to God, you grant the concept’s use to the theist, who will most parsimoniously apply it to humans, to posit that we, like God, enjoy “libertarian” free will.
[I'm tempted to read Sam Harris's book "Free Will" for his critique of compatibilism. Is it worth it?]
14 Apr 2012, 8:16 pm
It seems to come down to whether God is or isn’t a Cosmic Coddler. This too can be evaluated for consistency. The question, to rephrase, is benevolence equivalent to Cosmic Coddling. Now, this is a question of consistency within a particular religion, and unlike Theramin, I don’t have the benefit of a Christian education (or much curiosity regarding the details).
That said, certain salient features of Christian teachings suggest God defines benevolence as Cosmic Coddling. If that’s the case, then Christianity can’t argue in a consistent fashion against using the Cosmic Coddler standard to assess God’s benevolence.
1. The strongest reason is that God in the “Garden of Eden” thoroughly and completely coddled Adam and Even, leaving only the trivial obligation not to eat the knowledge. If man had to learn self-reliance, why weren’t there any other *lessons* in man’s primordial near-Paradise.
2. The second reason–weaker only because of my ignorance of the fine points of Biblical narrative–is that heaven seems a complete Coddling situation. If self-reliance is so important, why isn’t it exercised in Paradise?
On its face, it looks like the Judeo-Christian God is a Cosmic Coddler in theory but a miscreant in practice.
14 Apr 2012, 11:22 pm
Diamond,
You have an odd concept of “coddling.” The standard definition goes something like, “treat with extreme or excessive care or kindness.” It is immediately clear from Genesis that God is not a cosmic coddler. Rather, despite wanting us to make the right choices, God lets us suffer the ramifications of our own disobedience, just like a loving parent.
The point as it related to our debate was that Peter defined “omnibenevolent” superficially (in my opinion). Peter’s argument literally required one to doubt God’s existence because they stubbed their toe (which is needless suffering per Peter’s definition), but it is merely asserted that “omnibenevolent” must mean “will not let us stub our toe.”
On my view, God would be cruel if He *DID* coddle us. That is to say, God would be cruel if He prevented us from experiencing any suffering related to our disobedience. For example, a God that tolerated sin without punishment. That would be cruel and unjust, in my opinion.
15 Apr 2012, 1:45 am
Did Adam and Eve stub their toes and feel pain? Isn’t pain part of what the Fall introduced? God almost completely shielded Adam and Eve from the possibility of sin. All he required, it seems, is this one act of obedience. Eternal life, no? This is a very pampered existence by my standards, and I doubt it fare’s too badly from Heaven’s. God was oriented primarily toward making life for Adam and Eve as absolutely pleasant as possible, which is coddling: pampering. Their whole self-reliance boiled down to having sufficient will power to resist one trivial temptation. That leans mighty heavily in favor of God the Coddler than God the builder of initiative and self-reliance. (Initiative being one thing that could turn out ruinous.)
To coddle means to treat indulgently. God gave Adam and Eve whatever they wanted, free of effort, everything but that singe stupid apple.
Will people do wrong and suffer consequences in Heaven? Perhaps that’s debatable, but when has Christianity generally taught self-reliance, anyway. Isn’t one supposed to be his brother’s keeper? Is having a bunch of keepers supposed to encourage self-reliance? It seems the whole emphasis is on helping others, not making them self-reliant. Christian charity.
15 Apr 2012, 2:05 am
God would have been a “coddler” if, instead of punishing us for sin and allowing us to experience the unpleasant ramifications thereof, He simply said, “Oh, it’s okay, it’s no big deal, you can keep doing it and I’ll shield you from the negative consequences because it makes you happy.” A parent who coddles their child is a parent who protects them from all harm and never exposes them to any risk. Clearly, that is not God as described in Genesis.
Your remarks on self-reliance seem misplaced. How do they relate to the “Cosmic Coddler” thing as volleyed by Peter and I?
15 Apr 2012, 3:26 am
You said God, instead of being a Cosmic Coddler, wanted man to become self-reliant. So, it’s relevant that Christianity hasn’t conveyed a great concern with person’s self-reliance.
The question is what standard of benevolence do we use to see if God is benevolent. One standard is that benevolence makes man free of suffering; another is that benevolence involves building man’s character by making him responsible for himself. God can proclaim that he won’t shield man from the negative consequences of his behavior. But if he provides almost nothing that *has* negative consequences by way of challenges, this contributes nothing to man’s character. Similarly, a parent who over-protected a child, so the child could do no wrong and no harm could befall him, would be coddling the child.
The Garden of Even and Heaven are places where there’s no pain, no labor, and no sin–except for the single possibility in the Garden. This projects a picture of benevolence as involving making man comfortable, safe, and satisfied, that is, coddled, all the while, perhaps, paying lip service to holding man accountable any negative consequences.
15 Apr 2012, 3:44 am
False. That’s what you heard, not what I said. Neither “responsible” nor “free” nor “rational” are synonymous with “self-reliant.” My actual view is that we should not be self-reliant (spiritually speaking, not mundanely speaking), since self-reliance is exactly what produced this mess in the first place. But at least now I see where you went off the path.
By that standard, God is benevolent: He made man free of suffering, and will continue to free men from suffering if they so choose. At the same time, He is not a coddler: he will not simply shield men from the effects of their sin.
By that standard, God is again benevolent: He has left us responsible for our own actions.
I agree. I don’t know about you, but the world I see has more things with negative consequences than I can count.
Broaden your focus. The measure of God’s benevolence lies in the evaluation of *ALL* that God has allowed, not just a myopic, pre-Fall consideration. When you broaden your focus to include *ALL* of reality, your claim that God is a cosmic coddler doesn’t fair too well.
20 Apr 2012, 5:54 pm
Stephen,
Do you perhaps write on this subject somewhere in your blog? I have to admit, I find Peter Hurford’s presentation persuasive, I’d willingly read your thoughts.
20 Apr 2012, 10:58 pm
Joseph,
Yes, in the “free will series”: http://tinyurl.com/6m7lrng
24 Apr 2012, 9:03 am
Sorry this took so long. I actualy wrote it a while ago, but then things really picked up at work and I completely forgot about it. This was a response to a bunch of stuff from before. Honestly, I was not finished with it, but my mind is in such a different place now I cannot really get back into it alone. Hopefully your responses will spark my flame once again! Enjoy
CL suggests that my substitution of “bad” for “evil” is merely a “semantic swap” with no real weight behind it. Thinking Emotions frankly states “Besides, what the hell is a “way of relating?” And Stephen Diamond asks “So, slavery isn’t an evil relation?” All three of these statements are linked. What CL and Thinking Emotions bring up are two foundations of my position that require more careful explanation. I believe Stephen’s question is the perfect context to unwrap these ideas.
By calling slavery an evil relation, Stephen conveys a belief that slavery is an unconditionally abusive relationship that in no form can benefit all parties involved (namely the slaves). Unconditionally harmful, unconditionally abusive, this is what is meant by “evil;” something that is completely devoid of benefit. Does bad carry this same connotation? No, it does not. Bad exists on the same range as evil, but to a different degree. Bad is harmful, but it is not unconditionally so. To “have a bad day” is not to say that the day was completely devoid of any goodness or benefit, but rather that there was a sizable amount of negativity involved. For something to be “a bad thing to say” and something to be an “evil thing to say” conveys two completely different degrees of damage. Bad does not mean evil. Evil means unadulterated abuse incapable of having any redeeming or beneficial qualities, or in other words, the essence of injury. By substituting bad for evil, I am attacking the metaphysical assumption of such an essence.
What are the ramifications of letting the axiom of “evil” go unquestioned? The notion of Evil—suggesting an unconditionally abusive relationship/object— leads to a purging mentality where the only feasible solution is complete removal of the source of evilness. Returning to Stephen’s question—so, slavery isn’t an evil relation? – The implication is that slavery as a relationship is purely harmful (to one or more parties involved) and thus must be abolished. What is the “evilness” of slavery that must be purged; and what efficacy is there in a purging?
-The Evilness of Slavery
Slavery—corrects me if I am wrong here—is the transformation of a human being into an object. What is the evilness of this action? The evilness—again, correct me if I am wrong— is that in becoming an object the dignity of the slave as a human is obliterated. To present the logic more clearly
Slavery transforms a human being into an object
The dignity of the slave as a human being is obliterated.
To obliterate is to completely and totally destroy something, thus the “evilness” of slavery lies in the obliteration of human dignity. However, the jump from (1) to (2) implies a priori that that objects fundamentally lack dignity .
Slavery transforms a human into an object.
objects lack dignity, or have dignity inferior to that of a human
Thus the dignity of the person, being human, is obliterated through a process of slavery, which transforms them into an object.
It cannot be denied that the “evilness” of slavery is tied to a cultural assumption held on the inherent dignity of objects, what I call object-dignity. Stepping back from our own ethnocentrism, we must admit that objects are not fundamentally inferior to humans in dignity. The samurai’s sword was his life. The artisan’s tools were their hands. There can be a highly religious bond forged between worker and tool that is saturated with reverence and dignity towards the object. In short, the cultural evidence of radically different constructions of object-dignity is overwhelming.
Slavery is dehumanizing in the sense that it transforms a person into an object. Any assertion that slavery is also by definition cruel, monstrous, and wicked is smuggled in through western connotations of the word “dehumanizing”. Dehumanizing, Losing the status of being human, does not always result in a loss of dignity. Just as what is “inhuman” does not always lacks sympathy, mercy, or kindness. Slavery can exist as a dignified and mutually beneficial relationship. The idea of this is culturally abhorrent, but that has less to do with slavery, and more to do with linguistic assumptions of English, as well as the fact that European enslavement of Africans was one of the most monstrous and cruel constructions of slavery ever conceived. Our understanding of slavery comes from this model, an atrocious model, but that does not make it the archetype. On the other end of the spectrum, we see slaves more akin to a servant class, and furthermore, a class with the potential of social mobility. Slaves in Africa were not transformed into pure beasts of labor; to the contrary, they were more like a secondary class within the family. Slaves could own propriety, marry, have their own religion, and overtime entered fully into the main family. I do not mean to romanticize slavery, but merely point out that it is not only possible, but historically accurate to acknowledge the existence of dignified slavery. The derogation of object-dignity that results in the “evilness” of slavery is not the result of slavery as an institution, but the byproduct of certain philosophical, cosmological, linguistic, economic, and spiritual positions in Western culture. Objects can be treated with as much care and respect as we afford our own selves. The Confucian conception of a social self goes farther to claim that the tools we make and use as daily components of our lives ARE organs of our self. In “The Social Construction of Reality” Peter Berger enriches this analogy, arguing that because human development is so irrevocably linked to language acquisition—language that is molded from relation to a specific environment and a specific sphere of actions—the human organism is more accurately described as comprised of human organs, symbolic organs, natural organs, and man-made organs.
If a master treats his slave with as much dignity and reverence as he or she does a part of his body, and that slave is with time able to transcend his or her class and enter truly into the master’s family, then what is the evilness of slavery? Looking beyond vague notions of the importance of free will, is it not love, dignity, and reverence that fill a life? If your immediate response is “that is not slavery.” That is only because The English notion of slavery is meshed with Greek and Christian connotations of a specific way of relating between slave and master, a bad way of relating. .
Thinking Emotions asked ‘what the hell is a “way of relating?”’ A way of relating refers to the elements a system—system meaning any object, subject, or structure— brings into a specific relationship. I say specific relationship, because different relationships allow for different elements. When a child interacts with their parents there are elements (ways of talking, acting, feeling, or thinking) that do not emerge out of that child, and then there are other elements that only emerge from him or her when in relation to their parents. The same is true in the relationship between lovers, best friends, siblings, enemies, etc. Different relationships bring out different aspects of our identity (ways of talking, acting, feeling, and thinking). The shades of our self are not unconditional; they require the right mix of actors to emerge, just as the tastes of a dish require the right mix of ingredients and procedures to emerge. A slab of steak is not intrinsically delicious; it is a combination of seasoning, cooking, and presentation that makes it delicious. A person is not intrinsically meaningful; it is a combination of places, ideas, people, and objects that makes us who we are, that defines our self. The quality of both a dish and a person depends on what is brought into the equation and how these elements are mixed together.
Just as there are many parts of a cow that can be used in a meal; there are many aspects of person that can be brought into a relationship. “A way of relating” refers to the choosing of elements that a person chooses to bring into a relationship that affects the outcome of the relationship. If mutual dignity, love, and reverence (even if not in equal amounts) are brought into a slave-master relationship, the results can be mutually beneficial. If cruelty, apathy, and arrogance are brought into a slave-master relationship, then the result will be partly or mutually denigrating. The harm or benefit a slave experiences is dependent on the way of relating between slave and master.
While I do not think the slave-master relationship should ever be a proliferous or static one, I also do not think it is an “evil” one. Perhaps it carries a greater capacity for abuse, but a germ of mutual benefit is always present.
To summarize, I argue that it is fallacious to assume that the transformation of a person into an object is an unconditionally abusive or injurious process. The “evilness” of slavery is not the result of slavery as a relationship, but of a cultural conception of object-dignity that produces a destructive “way of relating” between slave and master. But if what is evil about slavery is not unconditional to slavery, then it is not slavery that is evil at all.
24 Apr 2012, 11:54 pm
Tom,
What exactly does “unconditional” mean here, as in “what is evil about slavery is not unconditional to slavery…”? Does that mean the same as “slavery is not absolutely bad”? Also the same as “even slavery is not completely lacking in redeeming features.”
25 Apr 2012, 7:22 am
@ Stephen
Basically yeah. My argument is that “evil” is a conception of something purely bad/damaging, and that I do not think such a thing exists. When I say what is considered* (forgot to write considered) evil about slavery is not unconditional to slavery I am saying that what makes slavery seem evil really has nothing to do with slavery. It ahs to do with a way of relating.
There is nothing essentially evil about the relationship of marriage, but if abuse, contempt, selfishness, and domination are brought into the equation it becomes an abusive relationship. Slavery is not an essentially abusive relationship, it is an ideological belief about what is an acceptable way to treat objects that makes some constructions of slavery contemptible.
26 Apr 2012, 12:18 am
You seem to make two distinct points. I’m not sure of how they relate or even if they’re consistent.
1. Evil doesn’t exist because there’s no absolute badness.
2. Abstract social relationships aren’t evil; only the way they’re implemented in a given society.
I agree with #1, and I think consistently applying it leads to an error theory of morality. But you think, as I recall, that objective morality is possible without the concept of evil.
It may be that evil has a unique cultural meaning associated with purgation. I do see that connotation in the concept of evil. Is this inherent to moralistic system or specifically to Christianity, as you’ve suggested, I don’t know. Interesting question.
#2 is somewhat at cross-purposes with #1, and embracing #1 leads me to reject #2.