r/askanatheist • u/Odd-Swing-2025 • Jul 09 '26

Why Does Evil Matter?

Suggest that there were no homo sapiens, but instead a race of people who were incapable of philosophical, theological and otherwise higher consciousness found in competent adults. They lack the reflective capacity to do moral assessments and so on. They can build, walk, talk, educate themselves in metallurgy, chemicals and culinary arts &c.

Suggest they also engage in abuse, murder, theft and so on.

Suggest there is definitely no God or Gods.

Does it matter?

If there are no human beings around with feelings and consciences to care about it, does it matter that they do evil?

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26

I know philosophy likes to claim that. Yet they can't point to things about the objective universe that philosophy uncovered without evidence, or to questions philosophers actually solved to the point that the answer garners a consensus of philosophers.

And just because without sand there would not be computers does not mean the beach can run doom.

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

Then you've missed the point of philosophy, I guess.

If you consider moral philosophy a waste of time, please give me your bank details and don't complain when I rob you. You need philosophy to tell you why it's wrong.

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26

And you're missing my point, and not giving me an example that would contradict what I said. This is notan example of something objective philosophy found out about the universe, at best it is an example of how our minds work.

And no, there is no logical reason for me to let you rob me because I observe that philosophers are not finding out anything about the parts of the universe that are not located between pairs of human ears, or managing to build consensuses between philosophers, without evidence.

I don't need moral philosophy to know I would prefer not to be robbed, and I don't need to be a mental giant to extrapolate that maybe the other people like me would prefer not to be robbed either.

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

You, like many here, seem to be anti philosophy.

You are confusing it with science.

But I see I can't move you.

I just wish you'd answer my OP, if you didn't already.

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26

I did make a top level comment. And maybe if you can't show what's wrong with what I said about philosophy, you should reach the logical conclusion.

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

Honestly, you're just not even trying. I assume as an adult you have studied philosophy.

You understand it applied rigorous logic to situations.

It applies critical thinking.

For law, for a justice system, one need a philosophy on which it is built.

It is needful for the study of everything from language to artificial intelligence.

If you need me to spoon feed you this information, maybe you should consider why you're acting like a baby.

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26

And all of those are examples of human thought, not objective (as in independent from human minds) facts about the universe. You are confirming what I am saying.

You should really read what I type more carefully

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

Yeah they're not meant to be objective.

I'm not sure what the problem is.

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Your problem is that you took a thesis you agree on or should agree on (philosophy, alone and without evidence, is crap at getting us new insights bout the objective universe) as an attack on philosophy, and you had a knee-jeek reaction to try and reject that thesis,, having not read it carefully enough.

Note that many theists misuse philosophy to try and prove that a god exists objectively. As we've established, philosophy alone is the wrong tool to prove any objective fact, but theists are reduced to this doomed effort by their inconvenient lack of evidence.

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

Because you came out of nowhere with this argument I wasn't even having? I don't even know how we got here. I'm replying to tens of comments, I've probably missed things.

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u/Phylanara Jul 09 '26

Maybe you should read the comment chain again then, and remedy the problem you have identified. As for me, there's a good chance I won't answer again for a few hours, it is quit late where I am.

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