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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[wierd]

Mill's views are kind of loaded.

Rather than "Happiness and displeasure", I hold "empowerment and potential, and their inverse" as the measure.

EG, a person can be "Supremely happy" attached to life support with electrodes stuck into their limbic system. They are not, however, free to exercise their agency.

My views rectify this problem.

[Bohandas]

This mode of thinking makes some people think I am "Fast and loose" with my ethics, but this is untrue. While I might feel no problems whatsoever with pulling a pirate copy of software, I have DEEP reservations about going into somebody's house and taking their things-- no matter how hard the BSA, the RIAA, and the MPAA try to conflate those two things-- for example.

Also, beyond the enormous difference between taking something away from somebody vs. making a copy of something without depriving anybody of anything, even if they were the same there'd still be the additional extenuating difference between stealing from a person and stealing from a corporation; morally these are on opposite ends of the scale pf target acceptability. From least moral to target to ok to target it goes:
stealing from a person>tragedy of the commons and stealing from the government (tied)>stealing from an animal>stealing from a corporation

That one anti-piracy psa says that "you wouldn't steal a car" and "you wouldn't steal a purse"; I indeed wouldn't steal these things from people, but if I was certain I'd get away with it I'd gladly steal them from Time Warner or Fox or Disney without a twinge of guilt.

[scrdest]

Deontology (or Deontological Ethics) is an approach to Ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions (Consequentialism) or to the character and habits of the actor (Virtue Ethics).

I am not a deontologist. I am a utilitarian, that focuses on the consequences of actions. I do not personally ascribe to genuinely immutable concepts of good and evil. Rather, I perceive a sliding a scale of social acceptance vs consequence. EG- "Murder is unacceptable, but killing in self defense, and killing in war are acceptable, within tolerances."

Then either you'd be fine with socially approved, consequence-free genocide, or you have additional hidden caveats and thus the system as stated is incomplete, it seems.

That one anti-piracy psa says that "you wouldn't steal a car" and "you wouldn't steal a purse"; I indeed wouldn't steal these things from people, but if I was certain I'd get away with it I'd gladly steal them from Time Warner or Fox or Disney without a twinge of guilt.

You... do realize that even if it formally belongs to any of those companies there's a person - or people - who are going to pay for it indirectly, and it's probably not the CEO?

[Arx]

Also you're presumably okay with casual shoplifting?

I guess I'm a utilitarian and a deontologist. If there are no apparent consequences (good or bad) to a Biblically forbidden action, I won't take it. But if not doing something forbidden would clearly lead to a lot of death (particularly of non-Christians), I'm better off damning myself.

[TD1]

Why? They are going to their respective afterlives, which they presumably deserve.

What does a few more years mean against eternity, especially an eternity of your suffering.

[TempAcc]

Redemption.
There is no true absolute one sided damnation given by God (in most christian doctrines, or at least the non super fundie ones), a person only goes to hell by being both a sinner and not repenting.

In regards to transhumanism: there are several religions that embrace transhumanism. In fact, spiritism as a whole seems to welcome it as a necessary step in the evolution of humanity.

I'm very much a utilitarian, also.

[TD1]

I don't think that redemption is what Arx was saying. I think he meant that the life itself is what's important, when from a Biblical perspective it is not.

For example, there is a person who is definitely going to heaven by most definitions. They have sinned, they have repented, they have even done penance for the sake of argument. They welcome God into their hearts and minds. If it were against a Biblical doctrine, one that would send you to hell, but not one that would cause undue physical difficulty, would you then not save their life?

[Arx]

It is redemption, yes. To allow a non-believer to be killed would be to deny them their chance to repent.

As for your hypothetical: if nothing else, there's almost nothing I can do that's completely irredeemable. It's obviously optimal to save lives wherever possible, but I certainly wouldn't kill to save a single life.

[TempAcc]

Also, the bible does value human life, even of non believers, AFAIK, since human life, by itself, is sanctified, since it was created in the image of God, according to the bible. Thats the whole point behind the Genesis bits, and several bits of the great flood/Noah's Ark focuses on the importance of human life. In fact, the great flood bits are one of the few parts of the bible in which God seemingly regrets his actions, and imposes limitations onto Himself, so that human life is not destroyed.

Another point in which God puts value in human life is in the comming of Jesus. Since humanity was full of sin, but instead of wiping everyone out, decides to send his own son onto earth, to expiate for/redeem humanity, thus saving it from both itself and God's wrath.

Keep in mind, though, that documents such as the bible (as we known it today, at least) have been written through the ages by multiple people, from different backgrounds and different points in history. Its no wonder it may contradict itself at several points. Same goes for hindu scripture, the torah, buddhist literature (even more so for these, since most of these are a fair bit more ancient then the bible) etc.

[UXLZ]

Waitwaitwait, how can an omniscient being ever possibly regret its actions?

[TempAcc]

Seemingly, it depends widely on the interpretation of certain bits. The standard english translation is "And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." (EDIT: Actualy this seems to be one bit in which every translations agree on).

He also makes a covenant with Noah, promissing to not kill off humanity with a great flood again, or something, I dont remember that well, which would imply he regreted it.

[lemon10]

Yeah, according to the bible god regrets things quite a few times. (eg. 1: samuel 15:10-11, 10Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, 11"I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands."). Like many of the events (eg. If god was all knowing, then he would have known eve was going to eat the apple before he even created her) in the old testament, this pretty strongly implies that god isn't actually all knowing.

It has always seemed to me that its pretty clear that the biblical god isn't all knowing from his actions, despite the fact that the bible explicitly says he is.

[Micro102]

I don't think an omniscient being would even exist. Think about it. You now know everything. Everything you ever do or experience will feel like you've already done it for an eternity. There would be zero purpose to do anything.

[UXLZ]

Omniscience and Omnipotence always screw stuff up, I've argued against them quite strongly in the past (since omnipotence is a self-contained paradox and omniscience makes change impossible.) They aren't really things we can wrap our heads around.

[Orange Wizard]

Omnipotence isn't really Biblical AFAIK. Of course, the book is pretty clear that God is immensely powerful, but not so much able to do literally everything.

Omniscience is weird. Personally, I'm leaning towards a non-standard interpretation of the word "regret", but that's probably just stubbornness on my part.
(Also, Uxie, God doesn't change, so that's not really relevant.)