Obviously if I am titling something "Part 2". There is a "Part 1" previous article to this blog, the immediately previous post. Which has set the context and tone of the conversation.
Defining evil then:
Stefan Molyneux defines evil thusly: Firstly, is an animal that harms another animal, like a Lion chomping on a Gazzelle, evil? He would say no. The reason is, is because animals do not have free will, which he defines as our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards. The lion has no internal ability to create abstractions and consider the utility of processes outside the animal. It has no ability to say that it will endeavour not to chomp on the Gazelle because St Liony wrote a book explaining why this is not ethical.
Defining evil then, once you have free will. The ability to create abstractions that are in opposition to objective reality. The ability to consider what 'St Liony' had to say about chomping on Gazzelles. The additional awareness can go one of two ways. it can work for virtue. Or it can work for the negative.
The way the negative works is that it prefers that other people do not use the strategy that it uses. If there is a singular thief in an entire society of honest people. Then he can go around taking what he wants and the populace is very unlikely to suspect what is happening. They will more likely think they lost whatever item was stolen. A society run that has had its thinkers stress the inherent benefit of theft, is likely to have a lot of anti theft tools. Guards, alarms, guns etc.
Where the animal predator. The Lion. Takes life to sustain itself. The evil being uses it's free will, it's ability to create abstractions etc. To increase it's ability to exploit the environment to levels that are not needed for survival. But the evil act is the act of saying, on the one hand, that theft is wrong, while doing the theft.
This is the justification for one way that we can catch others on negative behaviour, this taken from first principles, that explains why these sorts of contradiction and hypocrisy are proof of lack of virtue.
Faith:
My god this is turning out to be a longer article than I had envisioned. I wanted to go straight to what will be the tarot card analogy. But I cannot even get there yet. There will possibly be a part 3 on this series.
I have to diverge from Stefans opinion here, at least what I know of it. There are a lot of people all over the world that have strong, subjective and unprovable (hence unfalsifiable) experiences, that certain things are true. And that they choose to believe in their own interpretation of this, and not question this any further.
There are people that believe prayer is communing with a higher being, and do not believe that prayer is communicating with the subconscious mind, as one of many examples. There are people that believe that astrology, or tarot, is legitimate.
In truth, these things are not outside the reach of science to prove one way or the other. I have heard the founder of the Human Design discuss the potential science relating to these issues, in relation to neutrinos and such. But largely, as it stands, fields like astrology do not have that scientific backing yet. But it does have believers.
Stefan is a hard atheist, to him, God explicitly does NOT exist. I am not a philosopher, I do not tell others what to believe. I don't reach for conclusions. I reach for utility. From my perspective, there is a lot that can be expressed that is "faith". That is not really up for criticism. And the reason being, is that we cannot really know. Atheists and believers of all stripes say they can. But I do not believe we can. The world is too vast and mysterious.
Conflicts with Objective reality.
The reason I define faith, is that a good deal of what David says, a good deal of the belief in the Law of One. Is a kind of faith. It cannot be falsified. It is similar, in a way, to a Christian sermon. XYZ is true and should be followed because God said so or Jesus taught x. While some of it might be good arguments objectively. For instance, generally being nice to others has obvious practical utility, and it means you live in a civilised society. A lot of it to do with prayer and faith in a positive future, has no objective grounding.
Some statements though, even in these areas. Are able to be opposed.
In the video by David Wilcock I am evaluating, at 29 minutes he says: "The great spiritual teachers tell you you have to love yourself first and foremost."... OK, which spiritual teachers? When Jesus was asked what two pieces of advice did he give? Was this one of them or did he say something different? Does the Law of One agree from the quotes given? Are there quotes that conflict with this? What other spiritual teachings are there?
Statements of faith are things such as: "God has a plan for each of us". Statements that are hung on/ linked to, a more objective claim are things like: "All the great spiritual leaders said this". Because in the latter case, we can review what has been written and given and ask: "Well did they actually say that?"
Wrapping up:
I had planned this to be a single post before I got onto the review of David Wilcocks video and statements. But it is far longer than I intended. Because when wading into this area, there are different viewpoints on it. There are a lot of people that believe that anything from the law of one, any tarot reading, any astrology information. Is all fraudulent, and such people would possibly define any discussion on these things unethical. There are a lot of people that would viciously defend their right to hold such beliefs.
To wade through what is actually unethical vs. what is unproven, and potentially mad, requires a fair amount of definition of these nuances. I hope there will be just one last post on this before I can get to actually discussing how David uses the Law of One quotes.
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