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Old 08-17-2004, 02:43 PM   #1 (permalink)
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The argument from evil...again.

Yes, I know that we've heard this argument a thousand times before. But I have yet to see a theist come up with a proper refutation of the argument as opposed to merely side-stepping the issue.
The argument can be stated very simply with what certainly seems to be water-tight logic.

Lets us perform a simple reductio ad absurdum:

Assumptions:
(1). God exists
(2). God is all powerful and all knowing
(3). God is all good.
(4). Evil exists.

God, is omniscient and hence knew, at the time of creation, how the world would develop. He knew he was creating a world with evil. If god is omnipotent, he could have created it otherwise. Therefore if god is omnipotent and omniscient, he is also nasty. But God cannot be nasty, as he is all-good.
We have now arrived at a contradiction.
Therefore at least one of our assumptions is false:
Either;
(A). God does not exist
or
(B). God is not omnipotent and omniscient
or
(C). God is not all good
or
(D). We are mistaken in our claims that evil exists.


Now one thing I want to make absolutely clear from the very outset is that this argument does not claim to disprove the existence of all imaginable gods, only a small subset of all these gods; namely those that are all powerful and all-good. You can certainly have an all-powerful God, or an all-good God. Just not both.
Another way is to take a moral-relativist stance and deny that evil exists.
If you accept (A), (B), (C) or (D) then the Argument from Evil poses no problem to you, and you need not bother attacking it.

However many people insist on taking assumptions (1) - (4) as fact (most forms of Christianity for a start), and it is these people who need to face up to the implications of this argument.
Now I am sure that as a Christian you are under the impression that the Argument from Evil is old hat, and has been refuted long ago. This is the belief that I want to challenge with this post, and I want to show that the various refutations are in-fact nothing of the sort.

Objections

1. "All evil comes from (imperfect) humans"
This argument is a) false and b) irrelevant.
False: The existence of natural evil (such as famine, earthquakes, etc.), shows us that the premise of this argument is simply false.
Irrelevant: Even if it were true, all that this would imply was that God created us and this world, in the knowledge that some of us would be the cause of evil. If he were all-good and all-powerful, he would have created it differently. The original argument still stands.


2. "All evil comes from Free Will"
Again, both false and irrelevant: False for the same reason as above; the existence of natural evil.
And irrelevant for similar reasons.
If it were true, all this would mean was that God created us and gave us Free Will, in the knowledge that it would result in evil. The original argument still stands.


3. "God has a plan"
The existence of a divine plan, of which suffering is a part, is also irrelevant to this argument. All this does is make God a divine being with a plan, who created this world and no other, knowing that it would result in evil. Therefore he is not all-good or is not all powerful.


4. "We need evil for good to exist"
This is often stated as a brute fact, and given no foundations, All I can say is that personally, I do not see it as necessarily self-evident: We knew of the existence of matter long before the discovery of anti-matter, and we knew of the existence of positive numbers before the existence of negative numbers. In a world with no evil, I don't see it as necessarily the case that we would have no concept of good.
But this is irrelevant, and I will accept for the sake of argument that it is true:
Perhaps it could be shown that with no concept of "evil", we would have great difficulty in forming a concept of "good", but this is merely a statement about human psychology, not a statement about what exists. Perhaps we would not realise that we were living in a world surrounded by goodness: but us not knowing would not alter the fact. This is a question of epistemology, not of ontology, which is what we are dealing with.
It does not change the fact that God chose to create the world with good and evil, instead of just good.


5. "An all-good world is a logical impossibility"
It is generally accepted that we cannot expect an all-powerful being to be able to perform acts of logical impossibility (drawing square circles, etc.). So if an evil-less world were a logical impossibility, an all-good, all-powerful God could be excused from not creating it.
But just like statement 4, this claim is not self-evident, and would require a logical argument to show that it is true.
But again, for the sake of argument, I will assume that it is, in fact, true, and argue that it does no damage to the argument from evil:
The important thing to realise is that though a world with NO evil may be logically impossible, a world with significantly less evil than this one, is clearly not inherently contradictory, and hence is logically possible. Therefore an all-good, all-powerful god would be expected to create a world with as little evil as possible, while remaining firmly within the bounds of logical possibility. Hence the original argument still stands in a slightly modified (but no less devastating) form.


6. "Certain types of 'heroic' goodness, logically require evil"
It could be argued that things such as charity and compassion could only exist in worlds with poverty and suffering.
This seems like a fair point, but on closer inspection, we see that it does not help our cause, due to the massive amounts of suffering and poverty that exists, and the comparatively much smaller amounts of charity and compassion. As in the previous argument, we can see that in order to secure the logical possibility of the existence of charity and compassion, we only need a small amount of evil to exist. Hence the above modified version of the argument from evil still stands.


7. "We cannot hope to comprehend God"
Another point, which could be made, is that God is omniscient, where-as we have a very finite level of intelligence. Therefore we cannot hope to understand God's motives; hence the argument from evil, while not suffering from any specific failure of logic, is invalid none-the-less.
Again, we have what on the surface appears to be a good objection, but which crumbles on closer inspection.
Though we do not (and could not) understand God's motives, we can still reason about what is logically possible and what is logically impossible. We do not need to be omniscient, to realise that no being, no matter how awesome an intellect, could construct a square circle. On the flip side, we appreciate how a God could do something miraculous (though not logically impossible), such as turning water into wine. We do not need to be able to actually grasp how it is done, to be able to see that it is indeed logically possible.
So, we do not need to be infinitely intelligent to know a logical impossibility when we see one: and the argument from evil shows us that an omniscient, omnipotent, purely benevolent God is such an impossibility.




Apologies if I seemed to be repeating myself, but the above seven objections to the argument from evil are all somewhat related, and hence, their refutations take on a somewhat similar flavour.
I also apologise for the length of the post, but I did have seven misconceived objections to counter.
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Old 08-17-2004, 04:56 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Read "Blameless in Abaddon" by James Morrow, in which a lawyer sues God, working from the same list of questions. It will go into much more detail, with examples and counter-examples, with a nice dark storyline to thread it together. James Morrow writes wonderfully dark, dark comedy/realistic fantasy.
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Old 08-17-2004, 06:22 PM   #3 (permalink)
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Whats your point?
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Old 08-17-2004, 09:23 PM   #4 (permalink)
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1) Contrast, By having evil we can appreciate good

2) Greater goods are created through lessor evils.
Example: An earthquake ravages a city and many are left dead. People quickly move to help people through donations and volenteering. Without some lessor evils greater goods like mercy could not exist.

The argument from evil is fundamentally flawed because people pretend to know how an all knowing, obnipotent being would behave. How do we know that he would create a world without evil? The premise that a perfectly good being would try to elimenate evil is an assumption in this argument and it is a flawed assumption. Again i think the greater goods is one of the best examples of this. Disasters tend to bring the best out in people. Also as for evil in humans this is due to our freewill. Freewill in itself is a greater good but with it comes evils.
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Old 08-18-2004, 02:38 AM   #5 (permalink)
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I'm reminded of my ex-wife. When she was a child she would injure insects in evil ways so she could play nurse and help them get better.
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Old 08-18-2004, 03:24 AM   #6 (permalink)
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Art already said what I was going to say in a nutshell. Is it not evil to hurt things/people in order to have something to fix (read: "have people come together")?

I think both sides of the argument are flawed, because both assume to know what a dvine being would do in a given situation based on imperfect human emotion and our small human existence. Good and evil are relative to a people's society anyway, what may be evil to me, may not be evil to you (the Crusaders thought they were doing "good", the 9/11 hijackers thought they were doing "good"). So whose "good" and whose "evil" do we follow as a guideline for this argument?

In any case, I do think that if God (Gods, god) do actually exist, that it/he/they would lean more towards neutral than either good or evil, though I tend to lean towards thinking that God does in fact exist.
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Old 08-18-2004, 03:34 AM   #7 (permalink)
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Err not sure how I got back on this thread when I hit reply on the other thread!
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Old 08-18-2004, 03:37 AM   #8 (permalink)
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Wow... Nice theory and logically laid out.

Of course, evil could be defined a bit more clearly. Man-made evil, which I would define as one person intentionally causing another person harm and/or grief, is easily provable as being evil. But 'natural evil' is a bit hazy.

By natural evil, I'm assuming you mean disasters like hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanos, droughts, tornados, insect swarms, plague, famine, hailstorms, etc.

For these disasters to be considered natural evil, we have to assume that a god or gods is deliberately causing these events with the express purpose of causing human misery. Now modern science has researched most of these phenomena and found that they have a cause/effect relationship. Earthquakes are caused by tectonic plates shifting in the Earth's crust. Meaning that these disasters would occur whether or not humans are present or not.

Earthquakes are objective, not evil.

Of course, all this is easily dismissed by the argument of "God allows Earthquakes to harm human and therefore is evil", but I just thought I'd make a small point.
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Old 08-18-2004, 07:33 AM   #9 (permalink)
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Well, first off, I think Al Plantinga answers this 'problem' quite well in his book The Nature of Necessity. In fact, he answers it so well that contemporary philosophers of religion don't argue about the problem of evil in the way that you pose it any more. No one thinks that the existence of evil contradicts the existence of God. The argument revolves around to what extent the existence of evil is evidence against the existence of God, and so is referred to as the evidential argument from evil. But, of course, none of this is an argument.

I'll start out by saying that I agree with a lot of your points, so I'll only take issue with the ones I disagree with. A minor point is that you're missing a premise. You also need to assume that God is all-knowing, since otherwise, he might just not know about evil. But I assume that those you're arguing against will generally accept that premise. You make a brief point about the nature of God's omnipotence; I want to expand on that point and make a similar point about God's omnibenevolence.

It's often said that God is omnipotent; nearly as often, this is qualified by saying that God cannot do impossible things. To some this seems like a cop-out; if God is all-powerful, why can't he do anything? Well, because to be all-powerful means having all power. So God can do anything that power can do. But power cannot do impossible things, since there aren't really any such things. (As an illustration, picture a Platonic heaven of the forms. It includes the form of everything possible. When God creates, he takes one of the forms and actualizes it. But he can't actualize the impossible world*, because it doesn't exist in the world of forms. There's nothing there to actualize.) Second, his omnibenevolence neither entails that God will create a world without evil nor that he will create a world with the 'least possible amount' of evil (how would we judge that, anyway? How many 'malums' does this world have? How many could it have?) nor that we will understand why he allows the evils he does. It's possible that if God had prevented Hitler, 20 years later an even worse dictator would have come to power.

Which leads me to my next point; it's important to understand that CSflim is offering us a deductive argument with the conclusion "God does not exist". Now, deductive arguments are nice if you can get them. But all I have to do to refute it is show that it is possible -- not likely, not probably, not actual, possible -- that the premises could be true and the conclusion false. You might think that my point about Hitler is implausible. It probably is. The suggestion made that we might have some sixth sense about natural evils, had we not sinned, isn't particularly plausible. But I don't see that either is impossible. And their possibility is all I need.

So we come to the meat of the argument. CSflim asserts that:
Quote:
2. "All evil comes from Free Will"
Again, both false and irrelevant: False for the same reason as above; the existence of natural evil.
And irrelevant for similar reasons.
If it were true, all this would mean was that God created us and gave us Free Will, in the knowledge that it would result in evil. The original argument still stands.
First of all, it seems clearly possible that there might have been no world that God could create in which there is both free will and evil. (There are two sets of worlds that are relevant here -- the set of possible worlds and the set of feasible worlds. God can only create the feasible worlds.)** And it also seems possible that God might want to allow evil for the sake of free will.
Secondly, I'm sure you will want to argue that a good God wouldn't allow any evil at any price. But this seems obviously false. As humans, with our limited knowledge and foresight, we allow small evils for the sake of larger goods all the time. Consider a parent immunizing his child. He's allowing a small evil (the pain of the shot) for a larger good (immunity from certain diseases). Remember that there is no best possible world. There is almost certainly a limit to how much evil a good God would allow -- it seems unlikely he would create a world in which all the creatures were in constant pain. But it doesn't seem to me that the evil in this world, great though it is, is more than a good God would necessarily allow. CSflim argues that it could be better. Perhaps. But it could be much, much worse. There's an epistemological problem here. How do we quantify good and evil? How many bonums is a warm summer day? How many malums is a paper cut? It's easy to say that there could be less evil. But it's hard to prove. [For many of these points, I'm indebted to Tom Flint and Peter van Inwagen.]
Thirdly, it's important to realize that I'm not arguing that all evil comes from free will. I'm arguing that it's possible that God allows evil for the sake of free will. Plantinga has suggested that it's possible that, had we not sinned, we would be able to avoid natural evils. It's possible that free will is such a great good, it outweighs the evil we do. You might not think it likely, but the bare possibility is all I need.

*Just as a point of interest, yes, there is only one impossible world.
**This position is called Molinism, and if you're really interested, you'll want to check out Tom Flint's book Divine Providence. Briefly, the position is this. We have free will. This means that God can't just create any possible world he wants; because we have free will, we can do what we want. So, there's set of propositions called "Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom". These are of the form "If Agent A is in circumstance C, she will freely choose to do action X." The set of feasible worlds are those worlds in which the set of true CCFs are true. So say the CCF "If A in C then X" is true in W (the actual world) and Y (some other possible world), but in Z (another possible world), the CCF "If A in C then ~X" is true. Then W and Y are feasible worlds, and Z is not.
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Last edited by asaris; 08-18-2004 at 07:50 AM.. Reason: edited to explain Molinism
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Old 08-24-2004, 01:26 PM   #10 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by unoaman
Whats your point?
My point is that there are no omnipotent, omniscient, all-good, creators of the universe in existence.
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Old 08-29-2004, 08:03 PM   #11 (permalink)
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Well in reply to the first post i believe in christianity that Satan was an angel who was thrown out of heaven by God. If u are going by chritiantiy this implies God created a good universe and Evil came about of its own accord after God had created all things. Also iv noticed that when God is mentioned then people forget to think about the words they use. the word 'God' means different things to different ppl but id sat everyone takes the word God to mean the creator of all things with power over all things. Also i would have to say that God doesnt have to create anything for anything to happen, God could simply have set the conditions, rules, whatever and what we see now simply came out of that. If God created e.g. the big bang then he wouldnt need too create good or evil or free will as all these things would appear at least after we evolved. Thats what i mean when i say dont forget what u write, some people see god as a bearded man with a book and white clothes on a cloud still, and may or not believe in him. CSflim btw you cannot say there isnt an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good creator of the Universe just becuase you cannot comprehend how one could exist. You may have many arguements but there are no facts on this, the best we can come up with as a species seems to be discussed here in broad detail. Because you think an all good wouldnt create a world with hurt, but whats to say that this God hasnt seen the future and thinks that we need this painful time in order to achieve perfect things in the future? I mean lets be honest who says our definitions of these concepts are correct anyway? we are flawed animals trying our best to be more than what we are, but we are still flawed.
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Old 08-29-2004, 08:06 PM   #12 (permalink)
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wait, God is All good? since when? I mean, at least fromt the judeo-christian point of view God has done some very not-good stuff: 10 plagues, world-wide flood, starting a huge plauge b/c david took the census wrong, etc....
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Old 08-30-2004, 01:54 PM   #13 (permalink)
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From the Judeo-Christian point of view, triad, everything God does is good. But your version of the problem of evil isn't too much of a problem, and certainly easier to refute than Flim's version. God has done some stuff that seems bad, sure, but if he hadn't done it, we'd be much worse off.
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Old 08-30-2004, 03:01 PM   #14 (permalink)
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I think in order to rationally discuss this issue we first need to define terms. What is "Good" and "Evil"? CSflim seems to be assuming that an earthquake is inherently evil. How can this be? Do you blame the universe for having the movement of matter without your consent possible? The world does not have any malice or intent to hurt anyone or anything.

So you must be considering evil to be merely injury, and not in a moral sense wrong. Therefore it would follow that in this same context you are not considering good to be morally right, merely pleasurable. I suspect that the phrase "God is good" refers to God being morally right, not that God is pleasurable (although he/she/it may well be).

With God being morally right, in order for your argument to apply it must be established that injury is always morally wrong, but we have already shown that there can be injury (natural events) which are morally neutral. So, your argument requires more work.
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Old 08-30-2004, 03:07 PM   #15 (permalink)
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The point, I think, is that injury is 'bad', not 'evil'. That is, say I bang my shin against a coffee table. It would be 'better' if I had not banged my shin. Part of my argument requires the possibility of a distinction between one thing's being bad (my banging my shin and feeling pain) and the potentiality for that thing being good (it's good that I'm the sort of thing that feels pain when he bangs his shin).
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Old 08-30-2004, 08:10 PM   #16 (permalink)
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how can you assume the existence of natural evil?
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Old 08-31-2004, 11:35 AM   #17 (permalink)
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Because it's both:

1. Obviously bad when a mudslide wipes out a village.
and
2. Obvious that mudslides sometimes wipe out villages.
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Old 08-31-2004, 11:47 AM   #18 (permalink)
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You have established that it is bad, not that it is evil. We have two sets of terms here, things that are morally good and evil, and things that are bad and beneficial to us. We have also proven that they are not always the same thing; something that is bad for us as an organism is not necessarily morally evil, such as a mudslide.
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Old 08-31-2004, 12:35 PM   #19 (permalink)
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I'm well aware of the distinction; I'm just not sure how it affects Flim's argument.
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Old 08-31-2004, 01:09 PM   #20 (permalink)
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Well, for example the free will argument works now. In any case, assuming that God is taking the moral high road ("God is good" being one of the premises) it seems odd to use morality in the reductio ad absurdum.
e.g.
1) God holds the moral high ground.
2) I, making up my own morality, do not agree with one of God's actions.
3) God does not exist.

Eh?
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Old 08-31-2004, 01:51 PM   #21 (permalink)
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As I said, the free will defense requires that distinction. But the argument merely parses good as "not wishing unnecessary harm on someone." For that point, you don't really need the distinction between (non-moral) bad and (moral) evil.
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Old 08-31-2004, 02:31 PM   #22 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
As I said, the free will defense requires that distinction. But the argument merely parses good as "not wishing unnecessary harm on someone." For that point, you don't really need the distinction between (non-moral) bad and (moral) evil.
Actually, you do need to explain some more things. Such as, why do you think that removing the capacity for evil from the universe would be better.
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Old 09-11-2004, 09:22 PM   #23 (permalink)
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Alright. Guess I'd better weigh in on this one.

I see the point of a meaningful distinction between "bad" things and "evil" things. That is to say, assume for the moment that there is a God, that God has a plan, and that God is good all-knowing and all-powerful. One can make the argument, as above, that the earthquake is not provably "evil", and therefore is inadmissible in the argument at the top of this post.

I'll try to make my own answer, as I see things. Your mileage may vary.

God creates the world, God creates us to plunk down in it, decides that earthquakes and other such things happen to kill some of us so that the rest of us can 'learn' something, and claims to _love_ us? Sounds like a ****ing abusive relationship to me.

As to whether or not the earthquake is evil, well, either there's an afterlife or there isn't.

If there isn't (easier case), then IMO unless evil is correlated with some kind of temporal suffering, then I argue that it is ultimately meaningless. And the net result of an earthquake is just that -- temporal suffering. Ergo, the proposition that there is no afterlife implies that earthquakes are evil. Surely there are other ways for God to accomplish what needs to be accomplished in our world without causing such suffering to innocent people?

Now, if there is an afterlife, and our temporal existence is merely a cog in a greater machine, then things get a bit more difficult.

First off, either we can comprehend God's plan or we can't. If we can, then why does He need to start off the earthquake? Just to make a point? If we can understand God's plan, then why is He hiding it from us and letting bad things happen on such a grand scale instead? If He wants me to have faith in Him, and doesn't want to show Himself to me, all I can say is that that seems _wrong_-- kinda like "There's a mat at the bottom of this gorge that'll save you when I push you off. Yes, I know you can't see it from here. Stop whining. *push*" What's good about that?

And what if we can't understand God's plan? As mentioned in post #1, if _I_ can, given access to knowledge of past and future events, comprehend a series of events that causes less temporal suffering than that which God puts into practice, then I am either better or more powerful than God. And by my assumptions, that can't happen.

And anyway, what gives us the temerity to look at the "good" that comes from such things as an earthquake, and to assume "This is God at work", if we already tried to make the point that God's plan is unknowable? If greater good comes from lesser evil (and I'd like to see the good that cancels out some of the evil I've heard about (metaphorically speaking -- spare me your stories of goodness)), then it seems to follow that greater evil can come from lesser good (say, the earthquake _not_ happening). But we can't say that God is at work here because the end result is evil. It seems like mental masturbation to say "Well, this is part of God's plan, but that isn't because I like this better." And if the purpose of religion isn't to learn to be good rather than evil, then what is it?

Sorry about writing a novel here -- this is a topic that gets me going, and I'm interested in exploring it.
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Old 09-12-2004, 04:04 PM   #24 (permalink)
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God creates the world, God creates us to plunk down in it, decides that earthquakes and other such things happen to kill some of us so that the rest of us can 'learn' something, and claims to _love_ us? Sounds like a ****ing abusive relationship to me.

Ok, God makes the world and plops us in it, but what is the point of the world? Is it to make us happy? Do you think that is what it should be for?
From what I understand, heaven is the place designed to make us happy. Hell was designed to make people sad. Earth, that is to say the universe we know, was designed to have us figure out which we want.

Suppose God made a universe where people were never sad, were incapable of being hurt or feeling bad. What is the point?
Suppose God made a universe where people were always sad, were incapable of not hurting or feeling good. What is the point?

In both of these cases there is no choice in the matter, you just are the way you were destined to be. Your actions have no bearing on what you feel or what happens to you. Just as it would be cruel to create a being only capable of pain, it would be useless to create a being only capable of feeling pleasure. What are you going to do, prop it in a corner and watch it burble happily?
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Old 09-12-2004, 08:25 PM   #25 (permalink)
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I'm rather curious to hear CSFilm's response to the recent posts, as he has been strangely absent in contributing to the defense/development of his own arguments....

With that said, I offer my two cents. IMHO....
I believe that the original set of assumptions that CSFilm presents is somewhat lacking. To complete the picture, I would add one more:
5. God is just

Now, at first glance this would present an easy contradiction, since it is most hard for God to be both just and omnibenevolent at the same time. Since CSFilm was looking for a defense from a theist, throughout my defense, I will argue from a Christian perspective.

1. We see that God created a world that He considered "very good". There is no reference in scripture to evil at point in time, thus we cannot prove either its existence or its absence. However, considering that God is omnibenevolent, we can reasonably assume that evil does not exist at the early stages of the universe since direct creation of an evil world would contradict our original assumptions. Note that this makes objection #4 a moot point.

2. Man is created/evolved (whatever have you) and at some point disobeys God. It is reasonable to assume that from God's frame of reference, mankind is now "evil". God, if He is to be just, must administer justice.

3. The dilemma here is now complex. God knew this would happen from the beginning, and must be just, and must also be omnibenevolent. The solution is equally complex.....God allows natural & artificial "evil" as a temporary punishment for disobedience. God then allows mankind a means of restoration from the past disobedience (ie. Jesus & discipleship), with the natural & artifical "evil" as driving forces for mankind to consider issues of ethics, philosophy, spirituality, etc.

4. God's foreknowledge of this whole situation shows that CSFilm's objection #3 is no longer entirely irrelevant. From scripture, we see that God intended to create a situation where He would have a loving relationship with people who were equally willing to love Him in return. Knowing that mankind would need a little prodding to understand why such a relationship is important, there had to be both an understanding of the good/evil duality, as well as the offer of redemption and the promise of justice. For God, this takes foreknowledge, omnibenevolence, and justice. Take any of those qualities out, and you are left with a picture of God that does not adequately explain the current state of affairs.

Anyone who is particularly interested in getting a more theological perspective should read the first half of the book of Romans. Paul more or less works through this kind of argument.

Hope I didn't bore you all to death....
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Old 09-12-2004, 10:42 PM   #26 (permalink)
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This is an interesting discussion. I hope that throughout it, none of you take any of my vitriol personally; I certainly don't mean it so. (I'll let you know if I do )

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phage
Ok, God makes the world and plops us in it, but what is the point of the world? Is it to make us happy? Do you think that is what it should be for?
If you're asking my opinion, why do you assume that I think the world should be for anything?

Of course, even if I were to believe in God (I don't, but am still assuming He exists for the sake of argument), it doesn't _necessarily_ follow that our lack of happiness is incompatible with whatever other purpose the world has (although it might). More on this later.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phage
From what I understand, heaven is the place designed to make us happy. Hell was designed to make people sad. Earth, that is to say the universe we know, was designed to have us figure out which we want.
So I need to go through some kind of litmus test in order for God to find out something that He should already know having created me, not to mention that I could probably just tell Him... but no, we have to do it His way. Seems kind of silly to me. Why must God put such flimsy conditions on part of His love? If He does, He's not omnibenevolent, is He?

And anyway, hell seems like a terrible thing to slap onto us just because we (theoretically) wanted it. God seems to be making a choice about the rest of our eternity based on the blink of an eye (relatively speaking) spent here in the world. I'm reminded of a parent saying "You won't eat your broccoli? Then you'll be spending the rest of your life in your room! Muhahaha!!!" The punishment just doesn't seem to fit the crime, and the punishment is of God's making. Ergo, God is not omnibenevolent (heck, He doesn't even seem benevolent here).

To take another tack, posit that one or more newborn babies were killed in that earthquake (I'm sure it's happened at one point or another). Do you think their time on earth really could have been used to determine anything? If not, why were they killed so quickly? If so, it seems to me like a stupid thing to have to learn, especially the death part. One would have thought He would spare them so that He could get a better picture of what they wanted before forcing His choice on them so quickly. (If He couldn't, then He's not all-powerful -- I'm sure the laws of physics/nature could have been amended for this purpose. I dunno -- make babies earthquake-resistant or something. We wouldn't have noticed the difference. Honest.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phage
Suppose God made a universe where people were never sad, were incapable of being hurt or feeling bad. What is the point?
Suppose God made a universe where people were always sad, were incapable of not hurting or feeling good. What is the point?
In both of these cases there is no choice in the matter, you just are the way you were destined to be. Your actions have no bearing on what you feel or what happens to you.
Right, so presumably this destiny thing is bad because there was no free will involved in choosing it. But we do not always choose our suffering. Rather, it is sometimes inflicted on us despite our best efforts to stave it off. Sometimes we spend our whole lives suffering despite the fact that we have done nothing to earn it. What is the point of such suffering? Why is the world that God created not different in that it would prevent such needless suffering?

And anyway, if God created us and the world, what point could He possibly have to prove that He doesn't already know (being omniscient), and that we would have any hope of appreciating through suffering, with no other more benevolent course of action that God could take to teach us? Suffering is not an ennobling experience, as anyone who has suffered greatly can attest; if He is omnibenevolent, why would He want us to learn anything that requires suffering in order to be taught? If this isn't the case, why doesn't He ditch that portion of the suffering?

For example, if God created us, and loves us, why should we suffer His (relative) absence? What lesson should we learn from this other than that God can torture us if He feels like it?

Quote:
...Just as it would be cruel to create a being only capable of pain, it would be useless to create a being only capable of feeling pleasure. What are you going to do, prop it in a corner and watch it burble happily?
Yes.

Do you have a compelling reason why God should not have done this instead, barring just getting His jollies watching us and slapping down the ones that didn't please Him? See above point about abuse.
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Old 09-12-2004, 11:11 PM   #27 (permalink)
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<snip>
Quote:
Originally Posted by archpaladin
I believe that the original set of assumptions that CSFilm presents is somewhat lacking. To complete the picture, I would add one more:
5. God is just
Whoa, there. Justice implies a standard to which God decides to apply Himself. Unless you believe that there is a being greater than God, what compels Him to pick one standard over another? And why should He pick any standard at all, much less one that allows people like me to doubt Him and pay for it, when He doesn't even have the common decency to show Himself to me in such a manner that I could truly believe His existence?

Also, given that you are trying to amend CSfilm's argument, I think it's fair that you allow this hypothetical God to be just as long as it doesn't interfere with His omnibenevolence, or else you're arguing a different point. BTW, feel free to argue it -- I'm not trying to stop you I just think it should be explicitly stated.

<snip>
Quote:
Originally Posted by archpaladin
2. Man is created/evolved (whatever have you) and at some point disobeys God. It is reasonable to assume that from God's frame of reference, mankind is now "evil". God, if He is to be just, must administer justice.
I'm confused. If God is omnibenevolent and all-powerful, why did He give us the capability to disobey Him? Did He just want to see what would happen? That's shows callous disregard for us, and as such is not very omnibenevolent of Him.

Quote:
Originally Posted by archpaladin
3. The dilemma here is now complex. God knew this would happen from the beginning, and must be just, and must also be omnibenevolent. The solution is equally complex.....God allows natural & artificial "evil" as a temporary punishment for disobedience. God then allows mankind a means of restoration from the past disobedience (ie. Jesus & discipleship), with the natural & artifical "evil" as driving forces for mankind to consider issues of ethics, philosophy, spirituality, etc.
Whoa. Now you're implying that the earthquake victims deserved to be killed for disobeying God. There were babies in there, y'know? How could they have been saved in such limited time and brought to this "Jesus & discipleship" you mention?

Anyway, I'm sure I can think of much better ways for God to encourage mankind to consider issues of ethics, philosophy, spirituality, etc. than killing us off basically randomly.

Also, if He allows evil, and He is all-powerful, then He is at least partly evil, and thus not omnibenevolent. Justice doesn't enter into it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by archpaladin
4. God's foreknowledge of this whole situation shows that CSFilm's objection #3 is no longer entirely irrelevant. From scripture, we see that God intended to create a situation where He would have a loving relationship with people who were equally willing to love Him in return. Knowing that mankind would need a little prodding to understand why such a relationship is important, there had to be both an understanding of the good/evil duality, as well as the offer of redemption and the promise of justice. For God, this takes foreknowledge, omnibenevolence, and justice. Take any of those qualities out, and you are left with a picture of God that does not adequately explain the current state of affairs.
If God created us so that we would love Him, He could certainly have tried harder as far as I'm concerned. Why do we need prodding to understand these things, if God created us and wants us to know them? If He's all-powerful, it stands to reason that He could have given this knowledge to us another way than by allowing us to disobey Him. If He's omnibenevolent, He should have done this instead. Why would He plan to do something that was beneath Him?

Quote:
Originally Posted by archpaladin
Anyone who is particularly interested in getting a more theological perspective should read the first half of the book of Romans. Paul more or less works through this kind of argument.
Well said. I'll go off and read this now -- actually, might as well read the whole Scripture while I'm at it. Please bear with me as my understanding of it is imperfect at this moment

Quote:
Hope I didn't bore you all to death....
Not at all... if it needs to be said, it's worth saying.
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Old 09-13-2004, 02:15 PM   #28 (permalink)
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In response to Autochron:
Quote:
So I need to go through some kind of litmus test in order for God to find out something that He should already know having created me, not to mention that I could probably just tell Him... but no, we have to do it His way. Seems kind of silly to me. Why must God put such flimsy conditions on part of His love? If He does, He's not omnibenevolent, is He?
To paraphrase Duns Scotus: God, being perfect, did have have to create. But being perfectly just, if he created, had to create beings whose end was Himself. However, there is no route such that we can say this necessarily (in the logically sense) the route to God; God picked the route to Him. Why did he pick the route He picked? We don't know; what's more, we can't know unless we fully comprehend both human and divine nature. So, in answer to your question, your question is unanswerable.
Quote:
And anyway, hell seems like a terrible thing to slap onto us just because we (theoretically) wanted it. God seems to be making a choice about the rest of our eternity based on the blink of an eye (relatively speaking) spent here in the world.
Well, the easy response is that, even this relatively short period of time, God can tell which way we're going. Of course, that leaves unanswered questions. Some theories that have been proposed:
1. Annihilationalism. That dead people are not tormented in hell for eternity, but rather simply done away with. This is, IMHO, compatible with scripture, but I think scripture best supports the traditional view.
2. Temporary Hell. That dead people in hell aren't necessarily condemned there for eternity, but if they repent, they can still make it into heaven. There are two parts to this; one is that the condemned remain in hell by their own choice. This isn't really controversial. What's more controversial would be any position that some of the dead in hell actually choose to go to heaven; even this has been suggested, at least, by no less a thinker than C. S. Lewis (it's unclear if he believed it though).
If these two seem unsatisfactory, I guess the only response is basically my guiding response throughout the thread; it's just necessary to trust God.
Quote:
To take another tack, posit that one or more newborn babies were killed in that earthquake (I'm sure it's happened at one point or another). Do you think their time on earth really could have been used to determine anything? If not, why were they killed so quickly?
No one really knows what happens to dead babies. I personally don't think reincarnation is out of the question. Some think that baptized babies go to hell, baptized babies go to heaven. Some think all babies go to heaven. But no one this side of the veil knows.

He goes on to make a comment that I find in poor taste, but will respond to anyway. God does not enjoy punishing us. He doesn't to it to prove who's boss. We are punished for two reasons; correction, or because it's necessary. Those who are in hell are there because they choose to be; they aren't the sort of people who would enjoy heaven anyway. I've often thought idly that perhaps heaven and hell are the same place; what could be worse for an imperfect person than to be in the light of a perfect God?

Of course, I don't mean to say that all bad things happen as punishment. The Bible is pretty explicity about this. So why did God create a world in which bad things happen? I don't know. See above re: trusting God. See also my above post. I'm not going to repeat myself.
Quote:
I'm confused. If God is omnibenevolent and all-powerful, why did He give us the capability to disobey Him?
This is part of a hard set of questions, among which are also "Why doesn't God just appear in such a way that I would believe?" The answer is somewhat complicated. If you just want a summary, see above re: trusting God. So, the problem is that, if we were unable to disobey him, we would be unable to obey him; that is, to truly give him our love and obedience. God wants sons, not slaves, and certainly not robots. So why doesn't he make it more obvious that he exists? Well, my answer is two-fold. First of all, it's clear he could make it more obvious, but it's not clear that that would help. If he sent you an angel, or someone back from the dead, what are the chances you would believe them, compared to the chances you would think you had just eaten some bad cheese? On the other hand, if he made it too obvious, you wouldn't have a choice anymore, and it's the choice he wants. Consider the emperor who falls in love with a village girl. If he showed up in all his finery, how much choice do you think she would really have? Well, at least some you would reply. But you can see how the apparent stature of an invidiual has a strong effect on those who see him or her, right? Now imagine a similar scenario, but where the relative stature of the two is much, much greater. That's part of the situation God's in. The other part is that God can't appear to us without blowing our minds. Consider when Ezekiel (I think -- it could be someone else) sees God. He doesn't see God. He sees the appearance of the likeness of something kinda resembling the Son of Man. Moses can only see God's back. And, in any case, God's kinda already gone out of his way to make sure you know he's around, sending his son down to suffer and die and everything. Are you perhaps asking for a little much?

One last thing about natural evils: God does not cause them. (At least, not usually). He created a world that acts according to certain rules, and sometimes those rules hurt us. He created a world such that we live on round balls of rock that have tectonic plates that sometimes rub up against each other. If we hadn't fallen, who knows? Maybe we'd have earthquake detectors. But that's all just speculation; the point is that God isn't just sitting up in heaven thinking "Hmm...where can I throw out an earthquake today?"
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Old 09-13-2004, 08:45 PM   #29 (permalink)
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I think asaris's response is well stated, and I won't repeat anything he touched on except to say "ditto".
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Old 09-13-2004, 09:09 PM   #30 (permalink)
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The number of logical fallacies in the opening post is enough so that I feel I can't respond to any of them. The first one that jumps out at me as obvious as shit is this one...

Quote:
1. "All evil comes from (imperfect) humans"
This argument is a) false and b) irrelevant.

False: The existence of natural evil (such as famine, earthquakes, etc.), shows us that the premise of this argument is simply false.

Irrelevant: Even if it were true, all that this would imply was that God created us and this world, in the knowledge that some of us would be the cause of evil. If he were all-good and all-powerful, he would have created it differently. The original argument still stands.
First of all, "evil" is a quality of sentient beings. A hurricane is not alive, therefore cannot be "evil". Also, "evil" (in the way you use it) would dictate that evil is universal, and absolute. You might consider the actions of a "praying mantis" (an insect who kills its partner after mating) to be "evil", but I assure you that the process is essential to the species' survival. How, then, could that be considered evil?

Also, knowing "everything" does not necessarily mean God is a universal prognosticator. He could simply know every possible outcome, given a set of variables- and He may even know the probabilities of our actions, based on our personalities, environment, etc. Well-calculated assumptions are much different than being able to say, "at 2:01:57 am tomorrow morning, analog will roll over twice in bed". Again, being all-knowing simply means you know everything that could happen, not every specific thing that WILL happen. There's no way to prove that "all-knowing" means being able to predict the future. As it is, there is nothing to stand on here.

Oh, and point (if we are calling them that) 7 is completely senseless... do you seriously think omniscience falls victim to something as fallible as logic? "Logic" is defied on a daily basis by normal human beings... I fail to see how an all-powerful being would be hindered by a human-created concept such as "logic". Suicide, homocide, genocide, racism, rape, and other horrendous crimes are all illogical actions taken by human beings- if we can defy logic so easily, there is no doubt in my mind that God has nothing to do with the concept of logic, let alone is affected negatively by it. Omniscience > all, to nerd it up a little.

Discuss.

Last edited by analog; 09-13-2004 at 09:19 PM..
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Old 09-13-2004, 10:06 PM   #31 (permalink)
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Quote:
To paraphrase Duns Scotus: God, being perfect, did have have to create.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but why does perfection imply the need to create? That sounds kinda anthropomorphic to me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
But being perfectly just, if he created, had to create beings whose end was Himself.
Here again about justice: if we are incapable of fully comprehending divine nature, and thus the reason for God's particular standard of justice, how can we come out and say (even assume) that God is just in the first place? To do so would imply that He is just according to our standards (which are imperfect), according to His own standards (which are incomprehensible), or that He is beholden to a greater standard of justice that comes from above Him (which is impossible given the assumption that God is perfect). So how can we say for sure that God is just?

<snip>

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
So, in answer to your question, your question is unanswerable.
Fair enough, but see below.

<snip>

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
He goes on to make a comment that I find in poor taste, but will respond to anyway.
I'm sorry. That was in poor taste, and I hereby retract it. It's just that when I argue on this subject, I get a little under the collar I do apologize, and will endeavour to do my best not to do it again.

But it is salient to the argument that God should not have to punish us if He's perfect unless He intentionally lowered Himself when He created us in order to create an imperfect thing, which is an imperfect thing to do if He's all-powerful.

Quote:
Of course, I don't mean to say that all bad things happen as punishment. The Bible is pretty explicity about this. So why did God create a world in which bad things happen? I don't know. See above re: trusting God. See also my above post. I'm not going to repeat myself.
Some brief comments on that post...

(The square circle)
OK. Did God completely create the Platonic world of forms, or were some restrictions regarding them forced on Him by some other agent? If so, what agent would that be?
I just don't understand how we can conclude that God can't do certain things just because we can't imagine them... but that's mostly a side point, as you stated.

(Omnibelevolence not entailing...)
Actually, that is exactly what omnibenevolence entails... that one is inherently without evil. Given omniscience as well as the qualities stated above, it is an evil act to create the first evil thing ever created (even eventually evil things). Why would God do that if He's omnibenevolent and all-powerful? He could just as easily not have done it.

(The Hitler example)
So why should God have to suffer the lesser evil for the greater good if He's all-powerful? The point that I'm getting to is that since we can imagine that it's certainly possible for neither dictator to come to power (or, for that matter, for reality to be aligned so that a shot is not needed to prevent diseases), it follows that He could imagine such as well. So why didn't He create that world instead?

("God does not exist")
That certainly is not the conclusion of the argument, as CSfilm tried to make clear at the beginning of the post. The conclusion of the argument is that one of (A), (B), (C), or (D) must be accepted. (A) "God does not exist" is but one of these four. One could just as easuly conclude (D) "Evil does not exist."

(On trusting God)
I don't believe that it is necessary for me to trust God, and I certainly don't believe it necessary (or prudent) to trust anyone who claims to represent Him. But that opens up a whole new set of arguments that have no place in this thread. Care to make another? If you don't, I might... we'll see.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
This is part of a hard set of questions, among which are also "Why doesn't God just appear in such a way that I would believe?" The answer is somewhat complicated. If you just want a summary, see above re: trusting God. So, the problem is that, if we were unable to disobey him, we would be unable to obey him; that is, to truly give him our love and obedience. God wants sons, not slaves, and certainly not robots.
That gets me, right there. How can we conclude that our obedience is any more "true" (in a cosmic sense) just because of this theoretical free will involved? Sure, it sounds prettier, but unless you can show me that truth is beauty, I'm not getting anything out of that one. It just seems like cognitive dissonance on our part.
Besides, I'm not convinced that we even have free will.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
So why doesn't he make it more obvious that he exists? Well, my answer is two-fold. First of all, it's clear he could make it more obvious, but it's not clear that that would help. If he sent you an angel, or someone back from the dead, what are the chances you would believe them, compared to the chances you would think you had just eaten some bad cheese?
AFAIK His chances are pretty good, if we assume that He's all-powerful, and thus could quite easily convince me, who is mortal, fallible, and dependent on things like logic, etc.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
On the other hand, if he made it too obvious, you wouldn't have a choice anymore, and it's the choice he wants.
Again, how can you or anyone say definitively that "it's the choice He wants"? Without resorting to circular logic?

BTW, you're right... it was Ezekiel. (And how do we know that what he saw was really God, and not a piece of bad cheese? Outside of being convinced through Scripture? This isn't a rhetorical question -- I'm honestly curious.)

<snip>

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
And, in any case, God's kinda already gone out of his way to make sure you know he's around, sending his son down to suffer and die and everything. Are you perhaps asking for a little much?
I don't think so at all. After all, I wasn't around at the time, and so didn't see it. And as for my thoughts on the Bible... well, another thread is already covering that. I'll post there eventually.

It's amazing (and to me incomprehensible) that some people can just have "faith" in what they're told, and if any nagging questions come up, just to believe they should "trust God"... it just seems like a total cop-out.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
One last thing about natural evils: God does not cause them. (At least, not usually). He created a world that acts according to certain rules, and sometimes those rules hurt us. He created a world such that we live on round balls of rock that have tectonic plates that sometimes rub up against each other. If we hadn't fallen, who knows? Maybe we'd have earthquake detectors. But that's all just speculation; the point is that God isn't just sitting up in heaven thinking "Hmm...where can I throw out an earthquake today?"
No, but if you accept that He's all-powerful, He could have prevented them, so it all works out to the same thing. (Why did He create rules that would hurt us? Certainly we can imagine rules that would hurt us less than these.)
And as to the concept that we've fallen... pfft. I think I've argued against that enough already.

Again, I'm sorry about offending people with my thoughts or ideas, but ultimately I will bar no holds in my search for the truth. I used to accept the Christian faith and to think the way you do when I was younger... but that's changed now, and I can't in good conscience go back yet with the questions I have.
In case you're curious, no, I can't think of a single event that changed my mind, but rather through a sequence of little things. I may argue some of them later, but for now... that's enough.
BTW, I may not post for a while. Please don't take that to mean that I've given up
Later.
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Old 09-13-2004, 10:12 PM   #32 (permalink)
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Sorry, I'd really like to respond to analog's post (the point about logic is a good one), but I have schoolwork to do. I'll get to it as soon as I can, but it may be a couple days.
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Old 09-14-2004, 12:12 AM   #33 (permalink)
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Well, I'll start off with the glib comment that, since I'm older than you are, the implication of your last paragraph (that I'll grow out of it) probably doesn't hold up. Metaphilosophically speaking, no one ever searches for the truth "no holds barred". The search for truth is more like Neurath's boat, where we use some things we believe a little more firmly than other things to sort out our beliefs. The more philosophical people continue doing this for their lives; but it's never the building of an entirely new boat.

Re: Ezekiel. Yes, we think he saw God because it's in scripture, which, at our most liberal moments, we believe to be generally reliable, and at our more conservative, to be very, very reliable. Outside of that? Well, as far as I know, there's no reason outside of scripture to believe Ezekiel even existed, so, well, no.

Yes, I misspoke myself. God did not need to create.

Where does the standard of justice come from? Well, it comes from God, not anything outside of God. Your contention, that it requires some agent outside of God, is certainly mistaken. At most (and I'll dispute this as well), it requires some code, some abstract object outside of God. But it seems to me it only requires that God have nature; that is, that God is in a certain sort of way. Just as humans don't act against their nature (we don't seek evil for its own sake, for example), neither does God. Could he? I don't know. But he doesn't. Maybe the best analogy would be that of a really good person, to whom it simply does not occur to do anything that would be wrong.

I've argued (in what might be my best paper ever) that, if you want to hold that God created abstract objects, you have to hold the Aristotelian position; that is, that abstract objects don't exist outside of the objects that instantiate them. To pick an easy example, that means that, in order to create the color 'red', God simply had to create a red thing.

Re: Omnibenevolence: But God did not create any evil thing. There are two things God created that might be considered evil things: humans and natural disasters (and maybe or maybe not other alien races. But we don't know if there are any, and so that's a bit beside the argument.) But humans are evil by their own choices, and natural disasters aren't evil in themselves, but only in the effects they have. It's not logically necessary that natural disasters inflict harm. Ergo, God did not create anything that is essentially evil.

Re: Hitler example. My only point is that we don't know. It's possible God had to allow Hitler to prevent a worse evil. That's all I'm claiming. I've posted enough regarding free will in this forum and even this thread that I'll only go into more detail if you really want me too.

Re: God does not exist. Yes, you are right. But, since the argument is generally advanced by atheists against theists, it's not unreasonable to assume that the 'proper' conclusion of the argument is that there is no God.

On True = Good = Beautiful. I wish I had a proof, I really do. I think that, at best, I can show evidence for the Good being the Beautiful by simply pointing at the astonishing range of philosophers who have thought this, or something like it. (In brief, it includes Plato, Aquinas, Kant, Nietzsche, and Foucault. It's not an entirely unreasonable premise that anything these five agreed on must be true! ) But, of course, this isn't a proof, and I don't really have one.

Re: God convincing you. The question is not whether or not God could convince you. Of course he could. And, if you buy the whole Christian story, eventually he will convince you. The question is two-fold: whether or not he can convince you, and whether or not he's obligated to do more towards this than he's done.

Finally, re: Trusting God (and several other related issues). I'm not posting here to convince you, or anyone else, of the truth of Christianity. Of course, if you were convinced, I'd be elated. But that's not my main point posting in this thread (and often even less the point in other threads.) The main point is to show that Christianity is reasonable to believe; that, given the assumptions and tenets of the Christian faith, it is not unreasonable to believe in its truth. That's why comments about trusting God are apropos. I'd be foolish to think that you'd be convinced by an exhortation to trust God. But I'm hoping that you can see how it makes sense to someone inside the tradition. Our relationship with God is seen, in part, on analogy with friendship. And just like we sometimes need to just trust our friends, we sometimes need to trust God.
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Last edited by asaris; 09-14-2004 at 12:17 AM.. Reason: wanted something saved in case computer crashed
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Old 09-14-2004, 03:40 AM   #34 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
In response to Autochron:

...But being perfectly just, if he created, had to create beings whose end was Himself...
I don't agree on this point. To destine humans to eventually come to God would be to make the act worthless. Free will is crucial; just as an airbag cannot be courageous a being that is destined to good cannot be praised, and one destined to evil cannot be punished.
This does not keep God from having a plan or being omniscient, it is just required for anything we do to have worth.

Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
On[e] True = Good = Beautiful. I wish I had a proof, I really do.
It is good that you don't have proof, because if you did then there would be no merit to your belief.


Unrelated to the quote above it has been established that natural disasters are not inherently evil, but a rather strange modification has been made: that natural disasters are not evil in themselves, but are in the effects they have. What? I don't see how that follows.

In order to talk about good and evil there needs to be a definition of both. It has already been established that good and evil are different from the biological requirements of humans; hunger is not inherently evil, pleasure is not inherently good. Good and evil are intertwined with ethics, which makes religious references fair game.

God is good. God does good things, and things that go against God are evil. God did not create evil, he created Free Will. Free Will gives us the choice between good and evil, between doing what God wants and not.

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Old 09-14-2004, 04:39 AM   #35 (permalink)
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asaris: I didn't mean to imply that I thought you'd "grow out of it" at all. Far from it... it's just that this is where I am in my journey. It's more than possible that I got corrupted along the way, or something. It's even possible that I'll "grow into it" again. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

phage: I think my point was that if God created Free Will, then He created something less good than Himself that was apart from His own power, and given that that thing acts on itself, that means He isn't omnibenevolent.

More later.
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Old 09-14-2004, 05:33 AM   #36 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Autochron
...
phage: I think my point was that if God created Free Will, then He created something less good than Himself that was apart from His own power, and given that that thing acts on itself, that means He isn't omnibenevolent.
...
If I understand your point of view, it is not benevolent for God to create a being that is capable of doing wrong and then punishing that wrong, when he could have made a perfect being.

My point of view is that only a being with free will can have actions with worth and be rewarded, and that while because of free will the being can do evil it is not God's fault that the being behaves in that manner.
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Old 09-14-2004, 09:26 AM   #37 (permalink)
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Phage: there is a general difficulty here with how you are interpreting my post. And when I say that God created us "such that our end is him", I don't mean that there's any sort of necessary progression towards this end. I'm using Aristotelian language here, and so by 'end', I mean an end of the teleological sort. Because we have a rational nature, and not merely an animal or vegatative nature, we have a choice in the matter of whether or not we seek our end. Stones gotta fall; lions gotta hunt; but we don't have to be virtuous people. So I fully agree with your last statement.

Re: good, evil, and natural disasters. There are, I guess I want to say, different levels of complexity of the goodness and evilness of things. On a very simple level, pleasure is good, power is good, being is good. But since in the actual world, these things are tied up in all sorts of other things, some of them not good, its overly simplistic to say simplicter 'power is good'. So to some extent, I do want to say that pleasure is good. Now, natural disasters are not good or evil in themselves; this is equivalent to saying they are not inherently good or evil. But some of their effects are bad. I don't really see how what I said in my above post is any different from what we've been saying.

Re: Autochron and the less good. Your statement, "God created something less good than Himself" can be read in two ways, one of which is false, the other of which is true. On the ontological scale, yes, God created something less good than himself. Even if we were perfect, we'd still be less good than God. But on the moral scale, we were created just as good as God. I'm not sure how either the created ontological gap or the subsequent moral gap makes God the author of evil.
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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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Old 09-14-2004, 04:52 PM   #38 (permalink)
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Um, maybe this is simply the best way for God to accomplish whatever it is He hopes to accomplish by creating... anything. Maybe this is the path that leads to the best balance between our own happiness, God's happiness, and our own capacity to have free will and free thinking. Maybe God created to seek a companion, and is allowing us to develop on our own until earth produces a being of good that is also self-sentient and capable of carrying on a conversation with God that will keep him entertained. (I like that theory, don't know why.) Anyway, your arguement has a few holes, but I like what you're trying to do here. It's good for the hard-core Christian community (not saying like me, just saying) to get their feathers rustled every now and then. You'll never find truth if you always accept everything without thinking about it y'know? I have this tendancy to ramble... so I'm stopping now.
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Old 09-14-2004, 06:54 PM   #39 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by asaris
...and natural disasters aren't evil in themselves, but only in the effects they have.
It seemed to me that you were saying that some of the effects of natural disasters were evil, but in your most recent post you say that their effects are bad. You say that there are different levels of complexity of the goodness and evilness of things, and I think that separating the dual interpretations of "good" meaning both ethically good and beneficial to a being would help to clear it up. I will admit that I have a hard time staying consistent myself, but I think you have made yourself clear now.
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Old 09-14-2004, 09:22 PM   #40 (permalink)
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Thanks. I'm not always as clear as I should be on these forums, due in part to the fact that sometimes I'm posting in the middle of the day with a cup of coffee in my hand, and sometimes it's in the middle of the night with a beer in my hand -- you can probably guess which leads to greater clarity.
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"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

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