Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 December 21

= December 21 =

Why is there Evil
If God is so Almighty, why does evil still exist? Did He intentionally let the Devil and such exist?? Bonkers The Clown (Nonsensical Babble) 12:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This is the problem of evil, a well-known theological and philosophical question with no universally agreed solution. Things you may wish to take into account: (1) Not all sources of suffering are the result of wilful evil action; there are plenty of things in the natural world which can harm us. These lack moral character, but presumably have the same ultimate origin as human actions, whether good or evil. (2) Belief in a personal devil is not necessary for the existence of evil (see point 3); there is no personal devil mentioned in the Torah, for example, and in Isaiah 45:7, God is represented as saying "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." (3) Evil is generally understood as the wilful misuse of our free will; without the opportunity to choose good, we do not meaningfully choose evil either. (Theologians debate the extent to which divine grace affects the meaningfulness of this decision.) So perhaps the answer is "Evil exists because we are able to choose between good and evil, and we choose poorly". But who knows? These things are all a matter of human perception. If there is a God, then that God may see things very differently to us; if there is no God, then terms like 'good', 'evil', and even 'free will' may have no intrinsic meaning at all, but only what we ascribe to them. AlexTiefling (talk) 12:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * God? Almighty? evil?, Devil? those are all words that are just act as a convenient help for people to talk to one another as far as I'm concerned. I don't need to think of a person as evil to be happy they go to jail for something they did. God and Devil, well I'll pass on those except to ask why one person's 'God' should be any better than another's or their lack of it or Buddha or Krishna or whatever.. Almighty? how can anything be almighty - can it overcome itself or do we just say cases where a contradiction might occur don't exist Dmcq (talk) 18:35, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Paradox and Fallacy Questions
Thank you very much. Futurist110 (talk) 20:51, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 1. What is the paradox called when your future self gives you the design for a new invention, and then when you're older you back in time and give the design to your younger self and so on, in a never-ending loop? The question here is--where did the design for this new invention originally come from?
 * 2. What is the name of the fallacy which states that you're doing something morally unjustifiable/morally impermissible if you're not using something for its designed function/purpose? For instance, you using a hat to drink water from instead of covering your head with it, or a woman getting an abortion instead of letting her uterus sustain a fetus like it was designed to?


 * I call the second one a woman's right to choose. --TammyMoet (talk) 21:00, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * That's not the fallacy name and this fallacy applies to men owning hats, for instance, as well as women owning uteruses. Another example of this fallacy would be saying that (I apologize for the graphic details) anal sex, oral sex, mammary sex, et cetera are morally unjustifiable because these body parts are not designed for a penis to be put inside them. Futurist110 (talk) 21:21, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The first isn't a paradox but you might be interested in predestination paradox. I would call the second an appeal to nature. Dmcq (talk) 22:06, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you. How can a design like the new invention in my scenario be created if no one creates it, but just keeps on receiving it and then passing it down? As for the appeal to nature, that might work for some of these things but I'm not sure if it will apply to the function/purpose of things like hats, since hats are not natural and they don't exist in nature. Futurist110 (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I would call your item 2 "obsessiveness". Specifically, obsessed with absolute rules. Like the movie character played by Kathleen Turner, who murdered a woman because she was wearing white after Labor Day. (I forget the title - a comedy, of sorts.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:44, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Serial Mom. —Tamfang (talk) 19:25, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed, like the character Sheldon Cooper, who says things like "We can't eat anything besides pizza on Fridays, because Friday is pizza night". StuRat (talk) 04:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The first one is a form of the Grandfather paradox. The answer to your question "How can a design ... be created" is the answer that as far as we know, it can't. --ColinFine (talk) 23:53, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * 1. Perhaps the Bootstrap paradox? -=# Amos E Wolfe talk #=- 00:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. I think that the bootstrap paradox is the paradox that I am looking for here. Futurist110 (talk) 04:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

It's an obvious POV claim to say that anuses, mouths, tits and uteruses were designed at all, let alone that they were designed with a single purpose in mind (whose mind?), so to discuss their use for other than that claimed single purpose as a fallacy is not appropriate here. HiLo48 (talk) 00:32, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The OP made no such claim, they simply asked what such a claim would be called. Just because someone asks about something doesn't mean they believe it. I must admit I get a bit annoyed by some in Wikipedia who want to remove all mention of weird ideas on the basis that we're promoting them by reporting what's written about them. Dmcq (talk) 01:33, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * OK. So maybe the fallacy is Intelligent design, i.e. the thought that anuses, mouths, tits and uteruses were designed at all. HiLo48 (talk) 01:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Intelligent design is not a fallacy per se, except perhaps of begging the question in fact. μηδείς (talk) 03:22, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I second what Dmcq has previously said. I acknowledge the existence of evolution, and I don't think that God/gods (if he/she/it/they even exist) had any role in evolution. I'm an atheist, so I don't think that God exists in the first place. I was merely asking about fallacy names for people who say these statements. Medeis, I think that begging the question might be the correct answer for the second one, since they assume that an object/item being used for its designed/purposeful function is good/morally justifiable and that using it for a different function than its designed/purposeful function is bad/morally unjustifiable. They assume that this premise is correct without elaborating why, even though I and many other people don't agree with this premise. Futurist110 (talk) 04:39, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * They also assume that things ARE designed. Once you move away from that idea, there is no "designed/purposeful function" to worry about. HiLo48 (talk) 05:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, in the case of man-made objects, like hats, they clearly were designed. In the case of biology, you can say that a certain organ has a primary purpose, but, of course, many organs or body parts have multiple purposes (some of which we may not yet have discovered). StuRat (talk) 05:52, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You don't have to search too long to find the novel uses some people have found for their various bodily orifices. Astronaut (talk) 14:57, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * See exaptation, btw. —Tamfang (talk) 19:25, 26 June 2013 (UTC)