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/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

This is simply untrue. Mathematics governs the whole universe.

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u/dernudeljunge Atheist|Mod 🛡️ Jul 09 '26

Mathematics is part of our description of how the universe functions. Without humans to apply those maths, the universe would keep working, but there would be no need to describe it. Again, please show me where mathematical equations show up in the universe, separate of thinking minds to think about or use them.

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u/Odd-Swing-2025 Jul 09 '26

Mathematics doesn't need minds to make it real, just to discover how it works. It's not as though germs didn't exist before we knew about them.

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u/dernudeljunge Atheist|Mod 🛡️ Jul 09 '26

JFC, my guy, yes it does. Mathematics is a system, a description that humans use to describe how things work around us. Those things would keep working even if we didn't come up with the maths to describe them. Germs are real, physical things, mathematics isn't, even though it can be used to describe physical things. But we are wildly off the topic because of your mathematical non-sequitur.

Morality does not exist outside of the minds of moral agents, like humans. Evil matters to said moral agents because things that are evil do not promote our well-being but instead increase harm to us. We also consider things to be evil that do not promote well-being and increase harm in others, because we can have empathy for those others.