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Effective Altruism

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Starlight View Post
    There's nothing to stop Christians being utilitarian in their morality. I held to utilitarianism when I was a Christian, for example, and concluded that Jesus and Paul in the NT with their "law vs spirit" talk are trying to express the thought that the OT was a rules-based "Do X, Don't do Y" divine-command morality and that such a moral framework was merely a temporary helpful teacher that ought to lead on to the NT moral ideal of loving others which is heart-based and not rules based and is thus utilitarian moral theory rather than divine-command moral theory.
    I haven't given this part much thought, so I'll not comment on it now hahaha

    A significant difference I've personally observed between US evangelicalism (which has a strong representation in this forum) and the international version of mainstream interdenominational evangelical Christianity I grew up with is the above difference. The interdenominational Christianity I am more familiar with focused strongly on character change in the heart of the Christian and thus on the fruits of the spirit - love, kindness, mercy, compassion, self-control etc, and thus implied / agreed with a very utilitarian morality of generalized benevolence toward others that is non-judgmental and tries to promote love and compassion. Whereas I've found that to a degree that repeatedly shocks me that US evangelicals do not seem to be strongly interested in that and instead hold strongly to a rule-based, judgmental, divine-command morality and very high on their to-do list is to hold up their official list of Dos and Don'ts and denounce anyone who isn't following that God-given list. The difference is quite stark, as the former primarily focuses on becoming a loving and kind and non-judgmental person while the latter primarily focuses on being judgmental and if you ask them "but what about being loving?" they literally answer with "the most loving thing I can do is call out people's sin to encourage them to repent". It's quite a jarring difference, and I trace it back to a significant difference in moral paradigm that is being embraced (it could be argued that Christians here are not strictly-speaking embracing utilitarianism and are still endorsing divine-command theory and are simply focusing on different biblical verses to US evangelicals, and are hence following the divine-commands to "love one another" and to bear the fruits of the spirit etc).
    I am not sure they would agree with your assessment of what they "are" and what they "are not". Then again, I am only starting to better know different Christian traditions in my country, let alone different countries, so I may not be the one to speak.

    I do imagine, though, that people's opinions and statements written here --presumably deemed judgemental by you or others-- are only part of the story, since I would imagine their Christianity is mainly about what they do in real life, so...

    One thing that complicates matters greatly when you introduce your "saving souls" idea into the utilitarian paradigm is the question of how much weight does one place on saving souls versus on earthly goods? A common Christian answer in history seems to have been that saving souls has infinite value which means that any focus whatsoever on earthly goods is worth essentially zero by comparison and hence is a utilitarian evil if it takes any time or effort or resources at all away from the only thing that matters which is saving souls. This problem can be alleviated by teachings that diminish the urgency of saving souls (like suggesting everyone might be saved in the end), or that suggest salvation is about character change into being love-filled people rather than about 'faith' or inviting Jesus into your heart etc, though those sorts of Eastern Orthodox and/or liberal protestant teachings seem to be treated with great suspicion by most US evangelicals. Certainly most "social gospel" Christians seem to have tended to be more 'liberal' and significantly de-emphasized the value of 'saving souls'.
    Jesus, Paul, James et al. certainly seemed to achieve such a balance, despite undoubtedly seeing Salvation as more important than you or I see it, so...
    We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore on Christ's behalf: 'Be reconciled to God!!'
    - 2 Corinthians 5:20.
    In deviantArt: ll-bisto-ll.deviantart.com
    Christian art and more: Christians.deviantart.com

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Bisto View Post
      I do imagine, though, that people's opinions and statements written here --presumably deemed judgemental by you or others-- are only part of the story, since I would imagine their Christianity is mainly about what they do in real life, so...
      Well sure, this forum is all-talk by definition. But if you look over in civics regarding what policies they want the government to implement in real life you see a pretty stark picture painted.

      Jesus, Paul, James et al. certainly seemed to achieve such a balance, despite undoubtedly seeing Salvation as more important than you or I see it, so...
      That seems a strange statement. An important question would be "how did Jesus and Paul understand 'salvation' and what did they see it as accomplishing and why did they value it?" Obviously the atheist effective altruism movement I describes in the OP, insofar as it ever uses the word 'salvation' understands it to me the radical transformation of a person's earthly life for the better and rescuing people in the third world from untimely deaths at the hands of preventable diseases etc. Whereas when evangelical Christians here talk about 'salvation' they are meaning something approximately along the lines of praying the sinner's prayer and having faith in God and thus having one's eternal soul enjoy heaven rather than suffer in hell. I would argue that how the NT writers think of "salvation" is probably closer to the former than the latter.
      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
        Joke's on you: You could have tried reading the other link that has a literal quote from Christians running a soup kitchen who explicitly said that they turned away atheist volunteers because they wanted to deliver a Christian message along with the food.
        That's a FAR CRY from your goofy "The volunteer asked the man to 'affirm your faith in God so you may be saved." That's just an incredibly dumb statement, and I seriously doubt it actually happened.

        And I love the totally unbiased "reporting" -- "Atheists Show Snobby Christian Soup Kitchen How To Actually Be Good People"
        Last edited by Cow Poke; 03-04-2017, 03:37 PM.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
          Well sure, this forum is all-talk by definition. But if you look over in civics regarding what policies they want the government to implement in real life you see a pretty stark picture painted.

          That seems a strange statement. An important question would be "how did Jesus and Paul understand 'salvation' and what did they see it as accomplishing and why did they value it?" Obviously the atheist effective altruism movement I describes in the OP, insofar as it ever uses the word 'salvation' understands it to me the radical transformation of a person's earthly life for the better and rescuing people in the third world from untimely deaths at the hands of preventable diseases etc. Whereas when evangelical Christians here talk about 'salvation' they are meaning something approximately along the lines of praying the sinner's prayer and having faith in God and thus having one's eternal soul enjoy heaven rather than suffer in hell. I would argue that how the NT writers think of "salvation" is probably closer to the former than the latter.
          While I am not sure the US Christians here would phrase or conceive of Salvation precisely as you have put it here, it seems pretty obvious to me that the NT writers didn't see both as two things to be contrasted. I would look for relevant quotes about it but I don't think they are necessary; you say you were a Christian for a long time, even a Christian apologist, so you should know what I mean there and why.
          We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore on Christ's behalf: 'Be reconciled to God!!'
          - 2 Corinthians 5:20.
          In deviantArt: ll-bisto-ll.deviantart.com
          Christian art and more: Christians.deviantart.com

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
            Joke's on you: You could have tried reading the other link that has a literal quote from Christians running a soup kitchen who explicitly said that they turned away atheist volunteers because they wanted to deliver a Christian message along with the food.
            And what's wrong with that? The atheists are free to run a soup kitchen delivering the food without the message!

            They ended up finding a "religious" organization run by two women who have nothing on their website about faith in Christ. They seem to be more interested in their stained glass windows and their organ than the Salvation message of Christ.
            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
              That's a FAR CRY from your goofy "The volunteer asked the man to 'affirm your faith in God so you may be saved." That's just an incredibly dumb statement, and I seriously doubt it actually happened.
              I don't quite understand your alleged skepticism related to this. On the one hand you seem to acknowledge the possibility that a Christian charity group might want to spread the gospel as part of their charity work. You acknowledge I've linked to an article where a Christian group admits to doing that. You've even critiqued another Christian charity group for not being Christian enough.

              Yet you've display what seems to be an unduly extreme level of skepticism, that crosses into trolling, towards a particular person who says they experienced this first-hand. Since you seem to acknowledge that this sort of thing does occur, it seems somewhat bizarre that you would take strong issue with someone who says they have experienced it occurring.

              Is your objection merely to the way they phrase it? e.g. when they say "The volunteer asked the man to 'affirm your faith in God so you may be saved.'", are you meaning essentially "that's not how I would phrase it when I share the gospel with someone, and I strongly doubt this is literally what the Christian volunteer said, because no Christian I know would say it precisely like that"? In which case I would remind you that this is an atheist person who is paraphrasing with regard to a conservation they were not directly part of and the point of their account is not to try and accurately report the exact phrasing of how the Christian tried to share the gospel with the homeless man before supplying the food, but rather to point out that the Christian volunteer was putting primacy on sharing the gospel over and above handing out the food that was at face value the point of the charity's work. Plus you are not the only Christian in the world and different Christians use different phrasings to try and share the gospel and encourage conversions, and people who are new to doing it might be very clumsy at it and phrase it in unusually silly ways.
              Last edited by Starlight; 03-04-2017, 04:19 PM.
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by Bisto View Post
                While I am not sure the US Christians here would phrase or conceive of Salvation precisely as you have put it here, it seems pretty obvious to me that the NT writers didn't see both as two things to be contrasted. I would look for relevant quotes about it but I don't think they are necessary; you say you were a Christian for a long time, even a Christian apologist, so you should know what I mean there and why.
                I spent about 6 years researching and writing a book on the subject of how the NT Christians understood salvation. I concluded they understood it to mean an inner moral change in the individual with linked outward behavioral consequences, whereby a person became more loving, compassionate, benevolent, merciful, generous etc and as a result did more to help others; and that it was their belief that God would judge people in the final judgment based on whether their hearts were full of love toward others or not.

                Jesus' final judgement account in Matthew 25 where he describes the final judgment as where those who helped other people in practical and meaningful ways (water, clothing, medical healing, etc) get eternal life and those who didn't get eternal damnation, is representative. When Paul talks about 'justification' I concluded that he is thinking of what we might call 'moral transformation' in which a person's heart gradually changes to be more loving of others, which makes that person a good person in God's eyes (i.e. what protestants typically call 'sanctification' and the eastern orthodox call 'deification'). Because the early Christians unanimously affirmed a final judgement according to inner character / good works, the way to be 'saved' in the sense of getting a positive final judgment rather than a negative one was to change one's inner character and one's deeds from unloving & malevolent deeds to loving & good deeds. Thus following the teaching of Jesus to love others ('faithfulness' to his teachings, not 'faith' in him or his existence) was a path to 'salvation' in that sense. (I put salvation in quote marks because IIRC NT writers use the term 'salvation' to refer to the moral transformation itself, rather than directly to the fact that a person might now experience a positive final judgement in the afterlife the way modern evangelicals do). Loosely speaking, this is overall fairly much what the Eastern Orthodox church typically teaches about salvation (you might find this much-cited Eastern Orthodox essay on final judgment interesting if you want to read more) and is also pretty similar to what liberal protestants have often taught with the social gospel and moral influence theory of the atonement, but it's obviously quite different to evangelical theology of salvation by faith alone through penal substitution (which I view as a complete misreading of the NT texts).
                Last edited by Starlight; 03-04-2017, 04:34 PM.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                  Yet you've display what seems to be an unduly extreme level of skepticism, that crosses into trolling
                  drama

                  towards a particular person who says they experienced this first-hand.
                  One person who's giving an account of what somebody else said. I suspect this person put their own twist on it.

                  Since you seem to acknowledge that this sort of thing does occur, it seems somewhat bizarre that you would take strong issue with someone who says they have experienced it occurring.
                  Somewhere in your cited material was the phrase "it's just not a good fit". That's true.

                  Is your objection merely to the way they phrase it? e.g. when they say "The volunteer asked the man to 'affirm your faith in God so you may be saved.'", are you meaning essentially "that's not how I would phrase it when I share the gospel with someone, and I strongly doubt this is literally what the Christian volunteer said
                  Pretty much, yes, and even if that one person said it anything like it's 'reported', it's certainly not typical.

                  because no Christian I know would say it precisely like that"?
                  Ya kinda overshot the runway here, my friend.

                  In which case I would remind you that this is an atheist person who is paraphrasing
                  EXACTLY, which is why I doubt that what he was paraphrasing was quite like what he claims it was.

                  with regard to a conservation they were not directly part of and the point of their account is not to try and accurately report the exact phrasing of how the Christian tried to share the gospel with the homeless man before supplying the food, but rather to point out that the Christian volunteer was putting primacy on sharing the gospel over and above handing out the food that was at face value the point of the charity's work. Plus you are not the only Christian in the world and different Christians use different phrasings to try and share the gospel and encourage conversions, and people who are new to doing it might be very clumsy at it and phrase it in unusually silly ways.
                  I don't know any Christian who understands how Salvation works that would say "affirm your faith in God so you may be saved."

                  The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                    Did your momma drop you on your head?
                    So are you arguing that one CAN do “good” without God, despite that unfortunate episode in the Garden of Eden?
                    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                      I don't quite understand your alleged skepticism related to this. On the one hand you seem to acknowledge the possibility that a Christian charity group might want to spread the gospel as part of their charity work. You acknowledge I've linked to an article where a Christian group admits to doing that. You've even critiqued another Christian charity group for not being Christian enough.

                      Yet you've display what seems to be an unduly extreme level of skepticism, that crosses into trolling, towards a particular person who says they experienced this first-hand. Since you seem to acknowledge that this sort of thing does occur, it seems somewhat bizarre that you would take strong issue with someone who says they have experienced it occurring.

                      Is your objection merely to the way they phrase it? e.g. when they say "The volunteer asked the man to 'affirm your faith in God so you may be saved.'", are you meaning essentially "that's not how I would phrase it when I share the gospel with someone, and I strongly doubt this is literally what the Christian volunteer said, because no Christian I know would say it precisely like that"? In which case I would remind you that this is an atheist person who is paraphrasing with regard to a conservation they were not directly part of and the point of their account is not to try and accurately report the exact phrasing of how the Christian tried to share the gospel with the homeless man before supplying the food, but rather to point out that the Christian volunteer was putting primacy on sharing the gospel over and above handing out the food that was at face value the point of the charity's work. Plus you are not the only Christian in the world and different Christians use different phrasings to try and share the gospel and encourage conversions, and people who are new to doing it might be very clumsy at it and phrase it in unusually silly ways.
                      Yes I personally saw this sort of thing happen during the aftermath of the tsunami, which engulfed the west coast of Phuket Island. The US Evangelicals who flew in with assistance insisted the victims remove their Buddha amulets and in some cases accept bibles before getting food and other necessities. The whole process seemed to be viewed as a missionary opportunity.
                      Last edited by Tassman; 03-04-2017, 07:32 PM.
                      “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                        As it happens I am relatively young (in my 30s) and have accumulated very little stuff as yet to sell off and give away. I am, however, currently trying to be more minimalist in my life and get rid of about a third of the stuff I do have.
                        Good, let's see how long that lasts.

                        Um, did you just call the literal words of Jesus "nonsense"? Aren't I the atheist here, isn't that supposed to be my job?
                        No, I'm calling your feckless parroting of that command nonsense.

                        As I noted to Meh Gerbil in another thread, you don't have to go back many decades (to about the 70s or 80s would do it) before you see that the number of people writing "atheist" on their census forms drops below 1% of the population in many Western countries. And if you live in a more-Christian area of the US, then the number of atheists in your area is probably still really really low. So it's not surprising you don't see them magically appearing at charities in your area if they're not common in your area. It's also worth considering the extent to which the charities you've participated in have been done under the banner of a religious organisation and whether they recruited volunteers such as you through churches - obviously atheists are less likely to volunteer for charities they are not aware of or which are religious charities.
                        No I was speaking of my experience in Soup Kitchens and Shelters - I knew the people involved and their Church affiliation. And BTW - our local Soup Kitchen and Shelter get the bulk of their funding, food and clothing from the local Churches. The fact is what you call Effective altruism has been practiced by the Church for centuries.You are late to the game. And unoriginal.
                        Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                          and in some cases accept bibles before getting food and other necessities.
                          I don't believe you, please back it up. For years I helped the Salvation Army, yes they did offer Bibles and Tracts, but that was never a condition of receiving help. Not at all!
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by seer View Post
                            I don't believe you, please back it up. For years I helped the Salvation Army, yes they did offer Bibles and Tracts, but that was never a condition of receiving help. Not at all!
                            EGGzackly.
                            The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                              So are you arguing that one CAN do “good” without God, despite that unfortunate episode in the Garden of Eden?
                              I think it's possible for a bad person to do good things. I also think it's possible for a good person to do bad things.
                              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                                Yes I personally saw this sort of thing happen during the aftermath of the tsunami, which engulfed the west coast of Phuket Island. The US Evangelicals who flew in with assistance insisted the victims remove their Buddha amulets and in some cases accept bibles before getting food and other necessities. The whole process seemed to be viewed as a missionary opportunity.
                                I think that's a steaming pile of horsie poo.
                                The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                                Comment

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