I want to get this down in writing, though it is certainly only a half-baked idea. It isn't even really an idea, but a stream of thoughts. And this is why I need to get it down: it's a thought experiment, or a series of thought experiments, a hypothesis that needs to be held up to scrutiny in order to be refined.It's on the nature of good and evil, morality, right and wrong. I've been ruminating on it, turning over this big ball of dough in my mind, adding ingredients here and there, throwing out the entire batch at times and remixing it. Now it's time for me to throw these into the oven, bake it, and see how it tastes, see how others think it tastes.
As with baking, putting these ideas out there for public scrutiny is final. Final in a sense that once it's out there, especially on the internet, you can't just take it back. Just as once a cookie is baked, if it's terrible, you just can't break it back down and get your eggs, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips back. However, you can take the entire batch, throw it into the garbage and start again. I need to actually try this and see how it tastes finally.
So here goes: Good exists.
Good exists inherently in the universe. It wasn't invented by humans, but I'm not sure that I can positively say that it existed before humans. It wasn't invented by humans anymore than intelligence or creativity was invented by humans. It goes hand-in-hand with those things, so whether it existed before humans, I guess is one of those points of debate. I'll assert that it did, but that's for a later time.
Good exists. That is my little leap of faith at which I start. It is the basis upon which I say I am a religious person. Science is based in fact. Theories that support certain facts are studied and tested until some fact, some evidence comes along to make that theory in its current state invalid. The theory changes and is re-evaluated until it no longer supports the evidence and must be again re-evaluated, ad infinitum. Philosophy and mathematics incorporate logic. "I think therefore I am." Logic is baked into that statement. Socrates used logic to prove that non-truths failed in their logical absurdity. Taking the logical inverse of some truth, he whittled it down to a point where it made no sense, thus the opposite of that case must be true. (I'm saying this badly, but again, this is just a thought experiment.) I have no evidence to disprove that Good does not exist. We can start with the premise that it does not exist and follow the logic through, and there is nothing that I think I can come up with that would make it a logical fallacy. Good may not exist. It's an examination that I want to work through later. However, I know that if Good does not exist in this world, then it is no ta world I want to be part of. And that is frightening. Too frightening for now, so I am starting with the premise that it does exist.
If good does not exist, then morality does not exist. Again, it's an assertion that I would like to examine later through its inverse, but provided I am making the assumption that Good exists, then I will also say that it is upon that assumption that morality is based. Let's now also assert that Evil then also exists being the negative counterpart or exact opposite of Good, Murder is evil. Rape is evil. Theft is evil. (As an aside, I think another idea to examine is that theft is at the heart of all crime, murder being the theft of life, rape the theft of sex and so forth.) One can argue that the idea that these things are bad or evil have emerged as a necessity of human evolution, that we are repulsed by the concept of murder or rape because it has been hard-wired into our DNA. If we were murdering and raping each other, we'd never evolve as a species in the first place. One can argue that the laws against theft were key inventions to us being able to live in an organized society (and thus not murder each other). This may be. Perhaps our sense of Good vs. Evil is some evolutionary necessity, that our sense of morality springs from us all trying to get along together. However, that begs the question. Perhaps we are evolving, but to what end? What's to say that evolving at all is good? Again, I simply have faith that it is. I believe, have mere faith in the fact, that we are being drawn toward some higher... purpose, for lack of a better term. And it is this higher purpose, this THING, that is not just the idea of Good, the Form of Good in the Platonic sense, but is God itself.
As with baking, putting these ideas out there for public scrutiny is final. Final in a sense that once it's out there, especially on the internet, you can't just take it back. Just as once a cookie is baked, if it's terrible, you just can't break it back down and get your eggs, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips back. However, you can take the entire batch, throw it into the garbage and start again. I need to actually try this and see how it tastes finally.
So here goes: Good exists.
Good exists inherently in the universe. It wasn't invented by humans, but I'm not sure that I can positively say that it existed before humans. It wasn't invented by humans anymore than intelligence or creativity was invented by humans. It goes hand-in-hand with those things, so whether it existed before humans, I guess is one of those points of debate. I'll assert that it did, but that's for a later time.
Good exists. That is my little leap of faith at which I start. It is the basis upon which I say I am a religious person. Science is based in fact. Theories that support certain facts are studied and tested until some fact, some evidence comes along to make that theory in its current state invalid. The theory changes and is re-evaluated until it no longer supports the evidence and must be again re-evaluated, ad infinitum. Philosophy and mathematics incorporate logic. "I think therefore I am." Logic is baked into that statement. Socrates used logic to prove that non-truths failed in their logical absurdity. Taking the logical inverse of some truth, he whittled it down to a point where it made no sense, thus the opposite of that case must be true. (I'm saying this badly, but again, this is just a thought experiment.) I have no evidence to disprove that Good does not exist. We can start with the premise that it does not exist and follow the logic through, and there is nothing that I think I can come up with that would make it a logical fallacy. Good may not exist. It's an examination that I want to work through later. However, I know that if Good does not exist in this world, then it is no ta world I want to be part of. And that is frightening. Too frightening for now, so I am starting with the premise that it does exist.
If good does not exist, then morality does not exist. Again, it's an assertion that I would like to examine later through its inverse, but provided I am making the assumption that Good exists, then I will also say that it is upon that assumption that morality is based. Let's now also assert that Evil then also exists being the negative counterpart or exact opposite of Good, Murder is evil. Rape is evil. Theft is evil. (As an aside, I think another idea to examine is that theft is at the heart of all crime, murder being the theft of life, rape the theft of sex and so forth.) One can argue that the idea that these things are bad or evil have emerged as a necessity of human evolution, that we are repulsed by the concept of murder or rape because it has been hard-wired into our DNA. If we were murdering and raping each other, we'd never evolve as a species in the first place. One can argue that the laws against theft were key inventions to us being able to live in an organized society (and thus not murder each other). This may be. Perhaps our sense of Good vs. Evil is some evolutionary necessity, that our sense of morality springs from us all trying to get along together. However, that begs the question. Perhaps we are evolving, but to what end? What's to say that evolving at all is good? Again, I simply have faith that it is. I believe, have mere faith in the fact, that we are being drawn toward some higher... purpose, for lack of a better term. And it is this higher purpose, this THING, that is not just the idea of Good, the Form of Good in the Platonic sense, but is God itself.
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