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The Happiness Box

Ladewig said:
All in all, I didn't find your story very useful in answering the question "why do atheists act in an ethical manner."
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Your call. You read it, you gave it a chance. Can't ask for more than that.

One question: Do you think my theoretical-father-who-doesn't-think-he-has-a-soul WAS acting like he could get punished for using emotion drugs AFTER he died in his last refusal?

Ladewig said:
Lastly , one minor note: how's chances of using clearer titles on future threads? A more descriptive title would allow posters who are interested in this topic to find it now, when the thread is active, and later, when searching for something from this thread.
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I was thinking like a writer. Short, sweet, and seductive is what you want for a title for a story, to draw the reader in. Sorry if it wasn't descriptive enough. Something like "THE IMPLICATIONS OF REFUSING ARTIFICIAL PARADISE FOR GRIM REALITY" might've been better if what you wanted was precision, I suppose.
 
Ladewig said:
Also, why do you post this stuff in the General Skepticism forum instead of the Religion and Philosophy forum?
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Sorry, I had no feel for the way things are arranged here.

Some admin can move it there if he wants. All right with me.
 
Man oh man, if we could get all the straw men in that OP into a boiler, we could cut down on buring coal by about 50% for a month.
 
Piggy said:
As the one who suggested soul research, I hope you don't mind if I try to rope things in a bit, bring us back to square 1.

What is it about this "soul" which makes a person act the way you describe?

I mean, I could say "People deny they have floobers, but they act as though they do. And if they didn't, the only reasonable thing for them to do would be to murder each other."
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Okay, sounds like you're zeroing in on what I'm trying to say.

Not murder, fundamentally, but act without giving any thought to how your actions would affect others. Whatever you can get away with is rational, up to and including murder.

I'm NOT saying it's right---I'm only saying it's rational, in the completely objective sense.


Piggy said:
Why do souls cause the behavior you describe?
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I would phrase the question a bit differently.

If people had souls, what would be the observed effects on their behavior?

If you---and everyone else---exist eternally, on a practical level this means you can NOT escape the consequences of your actions.

If you hurt somebody, that somebody can now make YOU pay. If you make him unhappy---he can make YOU unhappy. Because you can't go anywhere, can't escape.

In such a situation, your FIRST consideration now has to be how your actions will affect other people.

Grant, just for the moment, that people have immortal souls, eternal existence. How would this affect their interactions with each other, their societal institutions?

I think it would result in the concept of inescapable justice, phrases like "the long arm of the law." Television shows with names like "Cold Case Files" where a great deal of time and effort is expended in solving crimes twenty years (or more!) old. Entire cable channels devoted to justice. In stories this society create, the bad guy would ALWAYS get caught, EVERY single time. Justice, absolutely inescapable.


Once again, I apologize for not responding to everyone's posts. I would if I could, but I am under severe time constraints.
 
Jeff Corkern said:
Grant, just for the moment, that people have immortal souls, eternal existence. How would this affect their interactions with each other, their societal institutions?
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If we assume souls exist, people should act like they have souls. Therefore, souls exist. Q.E.D.
 
Jeff Corkern said:
If you---and everyone else---exist eternally, on a practical level this means you can NOT escape the consequences of your actions.

If you hurt somebody, that somebody can now make YOU pay. If you make him unhappy---he can make YOU unhappy. Because you can't go anywhere, can't escape.
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You know, I have to admit that I don't see how that follows.

In an infinite universe, can't I stay away from another finite being (such as a fellow soul) for an infinite amount of time?

If he can make me pay in the afterlife, what's preventing me from treating him unfairly for all eternity instead?

I don't see why the afterlife is necessarily one big Plane of Justice any more than the material universe is.
 
Jeff Corkern said:
In a different post, I made the observation:"If there are no souls, the only rational thing to be is a sociopath." Because without souls, it then becomes possible to escape the consequences of your actions.
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Here's a flaw in your logic. You start with the assumption that the only reason to have any regard for other people is to avoid negative consequences. From reading your posts, your reasoning seems to start with the idea that that's the one and only possible reason not to abandon your kids or shoot everyone you meet.

Another reason to do so is the love of others. The man in your story refused to abandon his children because he loves them. If someone wants to be good to others out of love for them, souls or lack of souls are irrelevant to that.

--Scott
 
Jeff Corkern said:
I think it would result in the concept of inescapable justice, phrases like "the long arm of the law." Television shows with names like "Cold Case Files" where a great deal of time and effort is expended in solving crimes twenty years (or more!) old. Entire cable channels devoted to justice. In stories this society create, the bad guy would ALWAYS get caught, EVERY single time. Justice, absolutely inescapable.
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Whose justice? Who gets to decide who is the bad guy? What about accidental deaths? Does that person get justice on the other side? What would constitute justice for that person?

If you believe in an eternal soul, then it follows you believe in God. Therefore, God must mete out justice on the other side. Why can't he do it here? Why do we have to wait?
 
If you believe in an eternal soul, then it follows you believe in God. Therefore, God must mete out justice on the other side. Why can't he do it here? Why do we have to wait?
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In fairness, I don't think believing in souls necessarily means you have to believe in God, and I don't think Jeff has implied that -- not God, necessarily. However you do bring up a good point. Jeff's precise definition of a soul says nothing about whether or not it can be hurt, injured, etc. For his theory to work, he needs to add quite a bit more to his definition of "soul." For example:

- Souls can feel pain
- Souls can inflict pain on other souls
- By some mechanism, souls are guarenteed to capture and punish the souls of people who "wronged them" on Earth (now this would seem to require some kind of objective arbiter, God maybe, to decide who is wrong and who is right)
- The people who "wronged" somebody on Earth cannot simply continue to do wrong in the afterlife

In other words, assuming for a moment that we all have a soul as Jeff defined it, there is still nothing that guarentees justice. Justice is not inherent in his definition. He is arguing that having a soul, in and of itself would make people act a certain way because justice would be guarenteed. But the last tenet of his argument doesn't come from anything.

Jeff, answer me this: Why is justice guarenteed in the afterlife? Your definition of a soul does not contain that anywhere. It is not a logical step that results from simply having a soul. Soul != guarenteed justice. Where are you getting that notion from? What is the logical progression from: "An ETERNALLY EXISTING, THINKING and FEELING structure that can exist WITH or WITHOUT a physical body." to "the bad guy would ALWAYS get caught, EVERY single time." You keep making that claim, but you have not shown how you got there.

Please clarify you basic argument: Is it
1) "If people have souls AND they are guarenteed justice in the afterlife, they would act a certain way," or is it

2) "BECAUSE people have souls, they are guarenteed justice in the afterlife, and therefore act a certain way."

If it is the second, then you will have to explain why people having souls logically means justice is guarenteed. If it is the first, then it changes your argument completely since you added an arbitrary condition to having a soul.
 
Jeff, you stacked the deck in your story. Aside from the obvious deck stacking of putting the answers you wanted in both peoples mouths, I mean.

In your story, how does getting arrested and hauled off to jail immediately after stepping out of the white square equate in any way with acting like you feared punishment after death? That is fearing punishment in the here and now, nothing more.

A fair take on it would have been, "Here smoke as much of this weed as you like but know before you do I feel you will be punished for it after your life ends."

Under those circumstances and minus the cops, I'd smoke the weed because I don't fear punishment in any afterlife.

Does that make me a sociopath? No.

Does that mean I am not a generally law abiding person? No.

Does that mean I would later desire junk food and some quality time with my own Happiness XBox360? You betcha.
 
Jeff Corkern said:
If you---and everyone else---exist eternally, on a practical level this means you can NOT escape the consequences of your actions.

<snip>

Grant, just for the moment, that people have immortal souls, eternal existence. How would this affect their interactions with each other, their societal institutions?
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OK. I see that point.

But I have a problem applying it to the soul question.

You say "Grant that people have eternal existence", then ask how it would affect their lives and our world.

But before we go to that next step, we have to distinguish exactly what we're plugging into the hypothetical scenario.

Important question: If people have souls (or eternal existence), do they then automatically know they have souls (or eternal existence)?

This is important b/c if not, then it won't change a thing. Our scenario will look just like before.

It seems that the effect of this thought-experiment would actually be to ask what it would be like if people believed they had souls.

And that's a very different question.

So let's back up one more time.

If we propose that soul-bearers are automatically aware of their souls, then we're in trouble b/c that means all the folks who believe they don't have a soul must actually not have a soul! So we can't go in that direction.

That means we must assume that soul-bearers aren't necessarily aware of their souls. So examining the difference between "having a soul" and "believing one has a soul" is kinda tricky if we take this route of plugging a soul into a hypothetical model of behavior.

I recommend this step first: What is it in the soul (not in mere belief in a soul) that affects our behavior?
 
Ok, so he didn't smoke in the consequence-free box when he actually SAW the policemen there to arrest him once he stepped out. And he didn't want to abandon his family, even if he would never feel the loss.

Sounds like he's just not an idiot and a jerk. Doesn't prove anything about souls.
 
Ausmerican said:
In your story, how does getting arrested and hauled off to jail immediately after stepping out of the white square equate in any way with acting like you feared punishment after death?
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My understanding at this (feeble) story is that he's not saying that you avoid the weed because of the afterlife - it's just an analogy. It represents how behavior can be affected by the threat of punishment later, even though in this case "later" is within a few hours.

So that's one more fallacy. Since delayed punishment can affect behavior, therefore it is the only thing that can effect behavior. All us atheists who are moral, are moral only because we have a deep-down but unadmitted fear of punishment in the afterlife.

But I choose not to abandon my wife and kids because I care about them. Not because I care about my memories of them, or care about the information stream that my brain is processing. I care about the physical, objective, them.
 
CurtC said:
But I choose not to abandon my wife and kids because I care about them.
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Further, even though I am an atheist, and I believe CurtC to be an atheist, I would in all likelyhood go out of my way to assist him given the need and opportunity. Even though I have never met, nor have I ever had any real relationship with CurtC.

I am not motivated in any way to kill him nor do I wish any kind of harm on him or anyone he knows. If he won the lottery, I would be happy for his gain and if I knew he lost a loved one, I would sympathize with his loss.

The argument that these facts point toward my having a soul has been refuted. I see no reason to equate humanity and empathy with a tangible soul.
 
Ladewig said:
Lastly , one minor note: how's chances of using clearer titles on future threads? A more descriptive title would allow posters who are interested in this topic to find it now, when the thread is active, and later, when searching for something from this thread.
Click to expand...

Jeff Corkern said:
I was thinking like a writer. Short, sweet, and seductive is what you want for a title for a story, to draw the reader in. Sorry if it wasn't descriptive enough. Something like "THE IMPLICATIONS OF REFUSING ARTIFICIAL PARADISE FOR GRIM REALITY" might've been better if what you wanted was precision, I suppose.
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No, that wouldn't have been a better title. A title as short as "souls" or as long as "A hypothetical to show that even atheists act as if they have souls" would have let the interested board users find your thread and read it. Even "The Happiness Box (souls)" would have been more helpful. As it was, I consider the topic very interesting and would have opened the thread much sooner if the thead had been clearly labeled.

The other reason a descriptive title is more useful is that a several months from now, someone may go looking for either this specific thread or for any thread related to souls and that person will have a difficult time finding this thread.
 
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Beleth said:
You know, I have to admit that I don't see how that follows.

In an infinite universe, can't I stay away from another finite being (such as a fellow soul) for an infinite amount of time?

If he can make me pay in the afterlife, what's preventing me from treating him unfairly for all eternity instead?

I don't see why the afterlife is necessarily one big Plane of Justice any more than the material universe is.
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Continuing with that theme, wasn't there a Norse mythology that believed that people you killed in this life would be your servants in the next life?
 
I know it has been pointed out in this thread before, but Jeff is actually making a very common logical fallicy in his argument. He claims:

If people have souls, they will act as if what happens after they die matters. People act as if what happens after they die matters, therefore they have souls.

This logical fallicy is called "Affirming the Consequent", and it takes the form:

If P, then Q
Q
Therefore P

Such as, if it is raining, then it is cloudy. It is cloudy, therefore it is raining. Do you see this does not work? There are many reasons to behave in a way that shows you care about the state of the world after you die, and your belief in a soul is only one of them. I personally do not believe in souls, yet I care very much what happens after I die. I acknowledge that life and reality are much more than a series of impulses coming and going from my brain. If I had a family, I would care about their well-being, and therefore I would rationally decide that I do not want to be put in the happiness box, and it would be consistant with my current belief system.
 
I tried saying something like that over here. However, no one made any mention of the movie reference I used. :(

That is just INCONCEIVABLE! :D
 
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