I'd like to see this since your 'pseudoscience' comment is pertinent to the OP and I'd like you to back it up. If cognitive biases like the Just World Hypothesis are 'bunk', then the question I asked has no merit at all.

I think the idea of a "just world" is extremely ingrained in people. "I don't deserve this", "He had it coming"... these are almost universal. Even though Fret raised a protest that this could be an effect of human reciprocity, most of us have been guilty about using these idioms to describe events where no human agent (and even no living agent) caused our misery.

It is likely connected to the "illusion of control" you briefly mentioned earlier. People don't like not being in control, it stresses us out. In controlled experiments, by removing control you can stress chimpanzees to death. So an illusion of control will make us feel better, and people are attracted to what makes them feel better. So suddenly we have a sneaking suspicion we (or the hapless tourists) are to blame for avalanches, heart attacks and whatnot.

The cases where we actually are to blame (where I did set of an avalance by careless skiing, rather than happening to sit in a chair in the wrong house) will of course reinforce our intuition regarding this.

So yes, I think you have a point in there somewhere... but I think it is buried deep.

You don't think that if we assume that the person to whom the bad thing happened had in some brought it upon themselves it might make a theist feel better that their god won't need to do that to THEM since they haven't done anything to deserve it?hy

So, it doesn't make the problem of evil go away since the question of why a loving, benevolent, all powerful god would allow/do something bad is still there, but the Just World hypothesis might kick in and make the believer feel better thus sidestepping the issue rather than it being unavoidable and becoming a major problem for them to deal with.



I don't think that this is the same thing. Have you never heard of someone dying young and wondered to yourself if they smoked, or were overweight or in some other way 'deserved' their early death? I know I have. The hypothesis suggests that this is our way of reassuring ourselves that it won't happen to us.

I wasn't expecting to have to defend the Just World Hypothesis, I thought it was an accepted psychological behaviour. I'm not really qualified to defend it.

Gotta go out so I'll read this bit properly when I get back.

Sure - I would simply hold that this is an "error of attribution", so to speak, as well as most of us being fairly well aware that there is not much logical ground to the question. I.e. survivors guilt, as the converse ("Why NOT me?") is a problem of religious people as well. Areligious people asking "Why me?" aren't really asking for a causal explanation per se, imo, but are more expressing their sense of unfairness. Which, I think, is perfectly reasonable: That you get cancer when the next 100 doesn'T is certainly not "fair"

Imo, there's a number of issues here that would need clarification before they could support - In 1966 (more so than today), using female subjects in a setting of presumably male operators introduces problems of deferring to authority, gender biases etc.
- The response of the subjects can equally be described as simply making sense of the situation without any appeal to "morality": Issuing of physical violence is highly reglemented in society, hence, seeing it being issued with great apparent pain to the receivers, in a university/"official" setting suggests a sanctioned issue of violence. Thus, as violence - if it is at all permissible in a legally sanctioned context - is generally a punishment for prior crimes, it's plausible to assume the receivers were legally guilty of some unspecified crime, thus, in an effort to relieve emotional stress, the difference between oneself and the shocked victim is pronounced.
- the bias as stated operates on a moral basis; the experiment, however, seems to be explainable entirely with reference only to justness/legality.

It might, but I don't know that this is a very prevalent way of how religious people think (certainly - you'll find many examples browsing the fringe...). In addition, I think this is still a somewhat (and ultimately too) loose way of phrasing it. Is the religious person thinking "The murderer dying of cancer is likely due to him being a murderer, so I don't have to worry?" I don't think many hold that. Or is it "The murderer being sentenced to death seems fair - so I won't have to worry about being sentenced to death."

That's basically my criticism on the original experiment setting: it takes results that can be explained entirely without appeal to morality and such and nevertheless posits a moral link. Such a moral link may or may not factor into the results (frankly, I don't really care one way or the other), but if it does, the experiment is simply poorly designed to make that link unambiguously clear.

See above: Feel better in what way?

My point is that when you're wondering that, you're not asking "Do they deserve it" but rather "is there are rational explanation for it." Its perfectly reasonable to ask whether they smoked, were overweight, owned a gun or were driving a car - as these are among the leading causes of early death. "Deserve", however introduces a kind of moral layer. And - speakign for me personally - no, I don't wonder whether a 25yr old lung-cancer patient who smoked 3 packs a day "deserved" it, nor do I think he does. I do think that he likely brought it upon himself. Which sounds somewhat similar, which goes back to my criticism of the initial j-w-hypothesis that I'm not entirely certain what it is even attempting to show or capture: that bad actions tend to have bad consequences (likely true, imo), that bad consequences tend to be be "deserved" (likely not true).

A different way of saying this is that directionality plays a role here: Arguing that bad actions lead to bad consequences is prima facie legit; arguing that bad consequences justify the stipulation of prior bad action is unfounded - but I'd be sceptical how prevalent this line of arguing actually is.

I'm not overly concerned with the "just world fallacy", it seems like it would make an arbitrary and contrived border for how we see intent in phenomena. Sure, we might imbue the "universe" or "god" with intent, but we do this with chairs when we stub our toe as well.

Also - in general I see no reason to suspect religious believers possess very different cognitive mechanisms from the rest of the human populace, something I have tried to explain to MB many times: Religious belief is not some unique cognitive mechanism or mental trait that means your brain is radically different from other brains.

As said, I think there is point to what MB is saying... but I also think it is buried deep.

It's the very fact that Theists are human and therefore as prone to the same cognitive biases as any other human that supports what I'm suggesting. In this case I'm not saying that their brains work any differently, I'm a little surprised by what you just said, I thought that was obvious.

Also, I've never said that theist brains are 'radically different' from other brains so if you've been explaining that to me, many times, you've been barking up the wrong tree. I may think that religious behaviour is influenced by our phenome, but that's not the same thing at all.

The irony is that almost every atheist on this board spends more time attacking things that they wanted you to say, rather than the things you actually said.

Psychoanalyze that.

He quoted what you actually said...

I'd ask you for a cite on this, an example at least, but hey, why waste both of our lives?

My final response to him on the matter was in post #71. I saw his response, but don't see anything else there that I need to clarify, since I'd just be repeating what I said in post 71.

Furthermore, he is quoting me out of context. Here is the full context of his last quote:

So, I am saying here that I will not be drawn into this debate, and his snippet-quote makes it seem as if I was setting up the context for a debate.

This is a very peculiar protest. First of all I used brackets ala this [...] which is a sign one is cutting out a quote, yet in your "clarification" of your post you did no such thing... and you even adamantly state that this was not in the context of attacking social psychology.

Yet this sentence, which directly follow what you quoted above:
...makes it clear that this is exactly what you are doing. What other "science" would you been talking about, when the only thing you have talked so far in the post are social psychologists?

At this point, you are not very easy to follow.

Cancer isn't an evil. Cancer doesn't care, if you're a good person that deserves a long and happy life, because it can't care. It's just a clump of cells trying to survive.

You're anthropomorphizing cancer. If I inject cancer cells into your body in attempt to kill or cause harm to you, then I committed an evil action. The cancer isn't what's evil.

Are we talking about God, or the Christian interpretation of God? I'm talking about God, philosophically.

What do you mean by "am I implying"? That's what it is!

I argued it from an objective moral standpoint. That position assumes that you accept that there are things and actions that good or evil in the absolute.

It wasn't about what we think or feel is good or evil. Because then it's just gg moral relativism.

I don't know the mind of God, ask Him. Perhaps the reasons are so complex that they're beyond human comprehension. Or perhaps it simply has to do with the fact that we have obscenely limited knowledge and God is omniscient. What we see as "not right" we only see because we know hardly anything.

No we don't. The creator doesn't need to justify an action (or lack thereof) to the creation.

I think my sentence has been misinterpreted. What I meant was that Theists need to justify to themselves why evil happens. It looks like you fall into the school of thought that accepts that evil is necessary and god must have a good reason for allowing/performing evil actions.

The question is still pertinent though. When that evil befalls a specific person, do you imagine that they in no way deserved it and that they were unfortunate innocents (and therefore it could just as easily happen to you), or that they must have somehow brought it on themselves?

Before wanting to understand why evil happens it seems necessary to understand what evil is as I can't say I agree with some of the definitions used in this thread.

I think that may be a red herring because this thread isn't about the nature of 'evil', it's about the human reaction to something bad happening to someone and I think we can all agree on what we'd consider 'something bad' to be. (The cognitive mechanism also works in reverse when we believe that good things happen to good people but that's not relevant to this nor would we need to define 'good' to discuss it).

I think that human reaction (whether you call it Just World Hypothesis, or Illusion of Control or whatever) has theological implications and may offer a neat way around the problem of evil, regardless of how evil is defined. I didn't choose the word evil, that's what the issue is known as. You could just as easily use 'the problem of not good' for the purposes of answering my OP question.

I don't know that the Illusion of Control and Just World Hypothesis are interchangable. I get that the Problem of Evil is an understood but if theists need to justify something they need to understand what it is they are justifying.

I didn't suggest that they were, Gangstaman did and he's a psychologist, I'm accepting his view on that.

I don't think you need to understand evil to hope that you're not going to die young of cancer. When you hear that someone died of cancer, what are the first thoughts that go through your mind?

Usually it's for the family occasionally it's regret for myself. I shouldn't be nitty about defining evil I just tend to think it's not a particularly useful term and in certain cases it's harmful to think of things in terms of evil.

So you don't tend to wonder why they died of cancer young and rationalise that they may have smoked, or spent too much time in the sun, or been exposed to harmful chemicals or in some way find a reason why it isn't likely to happen to you? (Or in your case, that god may have had a good reason to 'take' them young but again, for some reason that doesn't apply to you?)

In this thread or elsewhere? I'm only seeing a reference from tames_deuces as he suggested they may have similar roots but shys from saying they're the same?

I don't think I need to understand evil to hope that I'm not going to die of cancer, I don't consider cancer evil though I accept it may be defined as such for the purposes of this and similar discussions.

Not really no. I understand that there are behaviours that increase the chances of getting cancer but I understand that the absence of those behaviours doesn't always translate to not getting cancer. I accept that there's a medical reason why this happens.

In this thread, might have been the 2nd or 3rd page.


Ok, perhaps there needs to be a definition of what 'evil' in the context of the Problem of evil and the Just World Hypothesis would include then. It could be anything from Genocide to falling down some stairs and breaking your leg. Anything that you wouldn't want to happen to you and is severe enough that your mind would search for ways to reassure you that it isn't likely to happen to you.

In the specific context of religion, where god is all powerful and could have prevented any 'bad' thing from happening I think that the JWH has another secondary effect in that it allows people to sidestep why a loving god would allow something bad to happen to someone. Our natural tendency has a theistic impact. In a way, it tallies with Dawking's theory that religion itself is a secondary effect of how we've evolved (he used the moth and the flame as an example, are you familiar with it?)

Many people do, to the point that it's a recognised phenomenon and has a name. You're probably unusual if you never do it.

Go to your user profile and under edit options you can change the number of posts per page up to 100. It makes threads easier to follow.

This sidetrack is probably due to my nitty dislike of the notions of evil that are most frequently used. The fact that you'd consider the range of events that would qualify as wide as above reduces it's usefulness imo, however that's enough of my sidetrack and apologies. I understand the usage of it itt well enough to not want to derail further.

I'm not familiar enough with the hypothesis really but I think it's scope may be wider than that. It may be that it allows people troubled reconciling evil and a loving god but it's not just the religious who'll make reference to karma being a bitch or someone getting theirs. It also allows people to turn a blind eye to injustices on the notion that they'll resolve without their input.

I was just minded of this when I was watching a house restoration programme where a young woman died of cancer during the recording of the show. It was incredibly sad but I didn't consider what happened to be evil. Cancer could be argued to be the evil but then I'm back at a definition I'm uncomfortable with.

Ta.


Yes, on reflection it's far to broad and genocide isn't something you can decide people somehow earned and reassure yourself that it can't happen to you too. I think that definition should help establish a range of events that would provoke the Just world Hypothesis?


It's not a general rule and it doesn't only apply to the religious, I do it too.


Do you accept that there may be people who do consider it something that god could have prevented but for some reason chose not to with that young woman? They might then attempt to rationalise it, and that might be the Just World hypothesis. Tenuous I know but I strongly suspect it's at work somewhere in this.

I think you simply have it backwards:

This is basically a bias hypothesising that morally good deeds result in morally just consequences, which is fine. In the grand scheme of things, I'm not even sure it's wrong.

What you're hoping to get, however, is the converse: People hypothesizing (or even being biased towards assuming) that bad/unfair consequences are indicative of morally bad deeds prior. And it's telling that you seem to be unsure yourself how prevalent such a sentiment is. If you take that to the extreme, you'd have that someone entertaining the j-w-h could waltz into a hospital and tell anyone in the ICU that they really should have been more moral people earlier. I suspect, even among hardened evangelicals, you'll find few with a strong enough stomach for such a stunt.

You're getting hung up on the notion of "trying to find reasons why it won't happen to us." This is not the j-w-h, however, and the first part of this (trying to find reasons why it happened) is entirely rational. We are a curious breed - if **** happens, we want to know why.

What you need to show, first, is that we do it "such that we comfort ourselves" into knowing that it won't happen to us. It doesn't seem you have people here convinced that this is the most prevalent (or even somewhat relevant) factor of why we ask "Why did it happen to him." Then you'd have to find a way to get the directionality-issue out of the way: "if a then b" does not allow the conclusion "b, hence a". Only after you've clarified those two, you'll be in a position to specify more clearly, how it - third - relates to theodicy and religious rationalizations of the problem of evil.