Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 April 30

= April 30 =

Revenge and Punishment
What's the difference between revenge and punishment?

Johngot (talk) 01:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * There can be many reasons for punishment, revenge is only one. Another reason for punishment is deterrence. StuRat (talk) 02:14, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * In the case of capital punishment, I've heard it said that it's not precisely punishment, but rather it's permanent removal. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:19, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It's both. Permanent removal is no fun. Most people like being here. Sometimes we're removed for no good reason, but when we go by capital punishment, it's at least ostensibly for some bad thing we did. Prevention is just gravy, and deterrence is the cheese. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:27, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Say there's a drought, and it's illegal to fill your swimming pool, with a $1000 fine. But you don't care, you can afford to pay, and you fill it.  The policeman comes and tickets you.  You've been punished, but might just look at it as an expense you are willing to pay.  Now your neighbour gets personally incensed, and pours a bucket off pee in your pool.  That's revenge.
 * μηδείς (talk) 03:07, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Punishment acts first and foremost as a penalty enacted by authority, as in it requires that the enactor is viewed as authoritative; and possibly as a deterrent for the punished or the witness, irrespective of who the crime is committed against. Revenge is the restitution for the crime committed against oneself, and does not require a level of authority. Plasmic Physics (talk) 08:00, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * See the Wikipedia articles titled revenge and punishment. -- Jayron 32 09:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * SemanticMantis (talk) 12:04, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Good Without God
God is good. But does one have to be good with God? Can one be good without God?

Johngot (talk) 02:10, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Religionists tend to say "No", while non-religionists tend to say "Yes." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:18, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would say it is more nuanced than that. Religionists may also say "you can be good" but you cannot get into heaven, or whatever the equivalent is, for that religion.  That is, being good is a necessary but not sufficient condition.  That is, nearly any member of any major religion would recognize that any person is capable of doing good acts.  Few major religions recognize that the acts themselves are sufficient for reaching the ultimate good state and oneness with God/Gods, etc. (Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, whatever).  For a specific example, see the Christian concepts of Sola fide and Good works and more broadly Salvation (Christianity).  -- Jayron 32 02:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Without God, being 'good' is meaningless and vain, because without a locus, 'good' has no absolute constraints - it is defined by someone's opinion. The problem this creates is that you can both be good and not good concurrently, depending on who you ask. So, no they're mutually inclusive when treated as absolutes. Plasmic Physics (talk) 02:40, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * According to whom and in what system, PP? μηδείς (talk) 03:02, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Which assertion? Plasmic Physics (talk) 07:45, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Just guessing: the first sentence. It sounds an awful lot like it's disregarding and contradicting whole subfields of ethics. But maybe you're just talking about normative morality. It's fine to consider that non-absolute or unconstrained -- but then again, there's no constraints(from a logical perspective) about what any given god thinks is good or bad either... so before you start calling a perspective "meaningless and vain", understand that that assertion can be applied to any religious notion of morality as just as aptly. SemanticMantis (talk) 12:01, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, normative, if that is what you call it. Personally, I do apply it to any religious notion of morality, with an addendum - being in communion with God, who is the transmitter of the moral absolute by way of conviction, the chances of committing a good work are increased, without full knowledge or understanding the moral absolute. Plasmic Physics (talk) 12:26, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * My point was, if you assert "Without God, being 'good' is meaningless and vain"- then you (logically) have to also accept that religious-based perspectives on morality (e.g. "With God, being 'good'") are equally "meaningless and vain" to people who don't subscribe to that religion. At least that's how I see it. Of course any given religious devotee thinks they have it right, otherwise they wouldn't be there... I think OP would do well to just go straight to the articles I linked below. I'm pretty sure none of our regular responders are professional philosophers or ethicists; I know I'm not :)SemanticMantis (talk) 13:08, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That is also true and acceptable. FYI, I don't think that I have it right, I just know that I want to have it right, and me trying is good enough for me. Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * But since there is no God, the twist is that you've been being good (or not) on your own the whole time anyway. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:55, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Speaking of "someone's opinion" .... --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:04, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing but the cold hard facts :) Adam Bishop (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There is no cold hard fact that disproves the existence of God. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * ...nor the existence of Invisible pink unicorns, of course. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:31, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Right. The one thing I might question is how something invisible would have a color. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:21, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Credo quia absurdum. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:34, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * True believers can probably see the color. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Or it is revealed to them! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:14, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Whatever works. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:03, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Catholicism holds, according to Aquinas, that following the natural law which is available to all men baseed on reason and an understanding of human nature is sufficient for doing good and avoiding evil. (Salvation through Christ is a separate matter, those who have heard the Gospel and believe and do not die in a state of mortal sin will ipso facto be joined with God in Heaven. Whether that applies to others is not revealed, but see Harrowing of Hell.)


 * Hence one can be a good person even if not a good Christian. This is why a secular state is justified in punishing crimes like theft and murder regardless of the beliefs of the criminals and victims.  Of course what exactly constitutes natural law and human nature is an open question (e.g., homosexuality) but the general principle is that belief in God is not necessary for being moral.  See the Noahide Laws as regards conservative Jewish belief.


 * μηδείς (talk) 03:00, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Agnostics think that since so many different kinds of gods were used to reinforce useful social mores for so long, that there's probably a way to do it from first principles, too, without reference to a spiritual afterlife, ghosts, imaginary beings, or superstitions. Aristotle's Ethics, flawed as they were in places, have few references to the moral utility of unquestioning belief in the supernatural. EllenCT (talk) 04:48, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Ask countless killed people and abused children of God makes people good. (The non-existent, social concept of) God is not good. Fgf10 (talk) 07:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't understand you're implying. No one here said that killers and abusers were made good by God. Plasmic Physics (talk) 11:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Einstein and the Dalai Lama think God and /or religion are not necessary to be good. Plato explained why "Good = what God defines as good" doesn't make sense. Iapetus (talk) 11:42, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Their opinion is their prerogative, but an opinion nonetheless. I view the Euthyphro dilemma as a false dilemma - that God and Moral standards as they are referred to, are co-dependent. God relies on his omniscience to perfectly adhere to these standards, while at the same time the standards only exist because He does. In effect, He is the transmitter of moral standards, who without, we are just guessing. Plasmic Physics (talk) 12:26, 30 April 2015 (UTC)


 * We do have a rather large and well-sourced article on ethics. Among other things, "ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality, by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime." We also have an article on good and evil, which outlines many approaches to the problem that do not depend on any deity. We also have a long article on morality, and it also describes many ways to define good without depending on any god. SemanticMantis (talk) 12:01, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I've heard Christians argue that morality derives from God's laws. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Again, that's not the Catholic position. Morality is not a command of God by fiat, it's a fact of our nature, discernible by all people by reason alone.  Salvation by God's grace is quite a separate issue. μηδείς (talk) 21:21, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * The folks I'm thinking of (Protestants) claim that moral laws arise from God, not from man. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:40, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * A Catholic might respond that a man who has himself for a priest has a fool for a congregation. In any case, Catholics don't hold that morality arises from human whim (Cardinal Ratzinger wrote treatises on the subject of moral relativism, Without Roots is actually a good quick read) but again from reasoning applied to human nature.  A good example is the Church's teaching that every human, whether they have heard of Christ or not, should know that murder is wrong. μηδείς (talk) 04:48, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That can't be right. I remember an account of a missionary to a particular tribe in PNG (I think), where murder was a quite socially acceptable component of everyday life. If someone from the tribe had a grudge, or simply didn't like someone, they would simply kill them, and no one would even blink as the practice had become so very pedestrian. Although this is precisely why the missionary was so successful in converting the tribe. Plasmic Physics (talk) 05:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * You're likely thinking of Don Richardson (missionary) and the notion of the "peace child". My memory of the story is that the gap Richardson found so difficult to bridge was not that the tribe accepted murder, but rather betrayal, and so they saw Judas as the sympathetic figure at Gethsemane, until he explained that Jesus was a "peace child" from God. --Trovatore (talk) 00:11, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm skeptical of (at least) the missionary's understanding. Would members of that tribe kill over any grudge except killing a friend?  Had they no friends?  Were they indifferent to the possibility of their own murder? —Tamfang (talk) 09:06, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not certain about their precise motivations, but it was not done out of ritual. They were certainly not indifferent, but not because of morality, but out of self-preservation. They didn't have any allies beyond their tribe. I suppose within the tribe, everyone were either friends or neutrals, the remainder being dead or soon to be. Plasmic Physics (talk) 10:36, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm skeptical of the whole story really. Sometimes I'm even skeptical that some of these "tribes" even exist. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:34, 2 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Before the Dawn (book) addresses this issue. Among sedentary rain-forest tribes in South America and New Guinea, intertribal war is a sort of sport.  Certain tribes are considered the enemy, and on occasion, a small band of young men will set out from one tribe, and kill a man from the other tribe and bring back a trophy.  The outgroup is not considered "us" so killing them is justified in revenge for their past killings of "us".  It's a kind of culture like that of the Miri episode of star trek, run by permanent adolescents who don't realize the death toll because it happens so slowly.


 * There was also a recent (since the 90's) documentary about an uncontacted tribe in the amazon who were known to pick off lone outsiders. The documentarians made contact and exchanged gifts, and explained that they would not kill the tribesmen if the tribesmen left the documentarians alone.  A good time was had by all, until one of the porters for the filmmakers was killed, since he wasn't perceived by the tribe as belonging to their group.  Once the mistake was made evident, there was no further peaceful contact, as the tribesmen expected to be killed by the filmmakers. μηδείς (talk) 05:52, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * But addresses what issue? I can't speak for Tamfang or Adam Bishop, but I have no problem believing much of what you said without having to look at the documentation. However what you have described seems to be quite different from what Plasmic Physics described which doesn't sound like intertribe warfare, but instead random, unregulated intratribe murders. (Some tribes may allow some killings in some cases, but even in those cases, it's normally in a fairly regulated fashion, not a chaotic system like described by PP where everyone is free to kill everyone else, apparently without consequence or fear of retaliation.) The example given by Trovatore appears to likewise describe something largely involving intertribe warfare, rather than people randomly killing people within their tribe without retaliation or some sort of code. N.B. I use the term tribe losely, since in some cases, the groups may not be particularly fixed, and so may often break up and join in different ways, with violence being involved in numerous ways. But again, we're still referring to a system where people are normally in groups (except for those people who lose their groups) and where violence tends to either happen between groups, or within groups but only in a regulated fashion. Nil Einne (talk) 14:10, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I am not sure the notion of random murders going unaddressed is an historical norm. Normally the victim's kinsmen would take revenge, or the killer might be ostracized, which happened a lot in Siberian tribes.  If the tribe had a chieftan he might kill the murderer for usurping his privilege.  The Germans had the custom of weregild, where the victims would accept a settled payment as restitution.  Of the studies I have read, mostly Russian work on Siberia and comments on rainforest tribes, a unjustified killing within the group does not go unaddressed.  Of course this is not the sort of thing one can google to get modern incidents in the news of tribal justice. μηδείς (talk) 19:46, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * There are also the traditions of feuding and dueling which are only recently disappearing. These traditions to have their rules of "honor".  It's only the rise of a disinterested system of law with a monopoly of force that allows such things to be put to an end, and we are all the better for it.  Although we have our own recent barbarities with the authorities "standing down" or allowing 'self-rule' in violent ghettos from Europe to the US. μηδείς (talk) 05:52, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * And, of course, the barbarities resulting from the authorities' own traditions of in-group honor. —Tamfang (talk) 00:36, 4 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Inspection of this editor's contributions and his evident familiarity with Wikipedia from his earliest edits strongly suggests that the questioner is a troll, and the question was posed disingenuously. RomanSpa (talk) 19:57, 30 April 2015 (UTC)
 * That would not be a big surprise. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:40, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * You nailed it in one, anyway. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:31, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's my favorite rant on the subject. —Tamfang (talk) 08:58, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Buddhism does not have a God, and Buddhist monks tend to be good people. Many atheists are good people. It is a general tendency for people to steer away from what is morally or ethically wrong in the eyes of society, with no need for any kind of God for guidance. Religions with Gods, however, tend to be the justification (whether true or merely just an excuse) for many wars and atrocities committed over the past few millennia, in which case, IMHO, having a God is worse than not having one. I don't know if trolls have Gods, but if they do, well, good luck to them in getting a life, or a girlfriend, or something. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 11:46, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know about Internet trolls, but Scandanavian trolls weren't Christian or good, in the capital God sense. Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr is a goddess who seems to have some sort of connection to a troll king. Seems to have sockpuppets, too. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC) 12:07, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * More often than not, it is not the religions with gods that justify wars and atrocities, but the men who use the religions to justify. In a manner of speaking, don't blame the dagger for stabbing the victim, but blame the murderer who used the cheese-knife as a dagger. Plasmic Physics (talk) 11:58, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No true Scotsman would ever use belief in Huitzilopochtli to justify mass murder of non-combatants. --Stephan Schulz (talk)
 * I did not use the No True Scotsman argument. I simply said that usually it is the person, not the belief system, which calls for violence. Plasmic Physics (talk) 04:54, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The notion of good and evil evolved first which ultimately gave rise to various religions and the notion of a God. You could perhaps still believe that God exists in the following sense. If some group of people stick to some religious doctrine, then collectively they are executing certain algorithms to run their society. So, you could then argue that such a society is a super organism which is that God they are worshipping, just like you are just a community of cells that collectively are executing certain algorithms. Count Iblis (talk) 16:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)


 * We have articles on secular morality and secular ethics, which reliable sources state are major production and service activities of secular, post-Enlightenment governments. EllenCT (talk) 18:58, 1 May 2015 (UTC)