Both Mung and KeithS have asked me to weigh in on the question of whether the existence of evil counts as a good argument against Christianity, as KeithS has maintained in a recent post, so I shall oblige.
It is important to understand that the problem of evil is not an argument against the existence of God or gods, but against what KeithS calls the Christian God (actually, the God of classical theism), Who is supposed to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. KeithS succinctly formulates the problem as follows:
Let’s say I claim that an omniGod named Frank exists — omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Suppose I also claim that Frank regards seahorses as the absolute height of evil. The world contains a lot of seahorses, and Frank, being omnipotent, has the power to wipe them off the face of the earth. Why doesn’t he? Why does he countenance a world full of seahorses?
KeithS emphasizes that it is not enough for the Christian to show that God is on balance benevolent. Rather, the Christian needs to defend the claim that God is omnibenevolent:
The Christian claim is that God is omnibenevolent — as benevolent as it is logically possible to be. Finding that the items on the “good” side of the ledger outweigh those on the “bad” side — if that were the case — would not establish God’s omnibenevolence at all.
Finally, KeithS provides his own take on the problem of evil:
The problem of evil remains as much of a problem as ever for Christians. Yet there are obvious solutions to the problem that fit the evidence and are perfectly reasonable: a) accept that God doesn’t exist, or b) accept that God isn’t omnipotent, or c) accept that God isn’t perfectly benevolent. Despite the availability of these obvious solutions, most Christians will choose to cling to a view of God that has long since been falsified.
He even suggests how he would resolve the problem if he were a theist (emphasis mine – VJT):
Suppose God hates evil and suffering but is too weak to defeat them, at least at the moment. Then any such instances can be explained by God’s weakness.
It addresses the problem of evil without sacrificing theism. I’m amazed that more theists don’t seize on this sort of resolution. They’re too greedy in their theology, too reluctant to give up the omnis.
I think KeithS is onto something here. In fact, I’d like to ditch the conventional Christian views of God’s omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence. It’s time for an overhaul.
Why a God Who constantly watches His creatures cannot be omniscient
First, the conventional notion of God’s omniscience needs to be jettisoned. As I argued in an earlier post on the problem of evil, the problem of evil depends on the assumption that God’s knowledge of our choices (and of Adam and Eve’s choices) is logically prior to those choices. In that post, I upheld the contrary view (defended in our own time by C.S. Lewis), that God is like a watcher on a high hill: He timelessly knows everything that we choose to do, but His knowledge is logically subsequent to the choices we make, which means that He doesn’t know what we will do “before” He decides to make us. I have to acknowledge, however, that this is very much a minority view among the Christian Fathers and/or Doctors of the Church, and I can only think of two who argued for this view: namely, the somewhat heterodox theologian Origen (185-254 A.D.) and possibly, the Christian philosopher Boethius (c. 480- c. 524 A.D. – although his own personal views on the subject remain in dispute, as he elsewhere seems to reject the “watcher on the hill” analogy which he develops in Book V, Prose 6 of his Consolation of Philosophy, in which he declares that God “sees all things in an eternal present just as humans see things in a non-eternal present.”) Whether they be predestinationists or Molinists, the vast majority of Christian theologians who are orthodox – and I’m not counting “open theists” here – maintain that God’s knowledge of our choices is logically prior to those choices. I haven’t taken a straw poll of lay Christian believers, but judging from Christians I’m acquainted with, the “watcher on the hill” view of God remains a popular way of reconciling His foreknowledge with human free will, to this day. I believe the common folk are wiser than the theologians here.
Why are theologians so reluctant to accept the Boethian solution? In a nutshell, because they see it as detracting from God’s sovereignty, as it makes Him dependent on His creatures for information about what is going on in the world. God has to (timelessly) observe us in order to know what we are getting up to. I have to say I don’t see the problem here, provided that God freely and timelessly chooses to rely on His creatures for His knowledge of what they do. If He wants to impose that limitation on Himself, who are we to stop Him?
But if God’s knowledge of our choices is (timelessly) obtained from observing those choices, then we can no longer say that God knows exactly what I would do in every possible situation. On the Boethian account, God does not possess counterfactual knowledge: He knows everything I do, but not everything I would do, in all possible situations. Why not? For one thing, in many situations, there simply is no fact of the matter as to what I would do. What would I do if I won $10,000,000? I don’t know, and neither does God. Nor is this a bad thing: after all, if God knows exactly what I would do in every possible situation, then it makes no sense to say that in a given situation, I could have acted otherwise. (That, by the way, is why I find Molinism utterly nonsensical.)
And what about mathematics? Does God know the answer to every possible mathematical problem? I would argue that He doesn’t, as there are many branches of mathematics where the “rules of the game” are determined by the mathematicians theorizing in that area. In a different world, we would have had different mathematicians, and different branches of mathematics, with different rules. I see no reason to suppose that God knows all possible choices that could be made by all possible (as well as actual) persons.
The upshot of all this is that while God knows everything there is to know about His creatures, He is not omniscient. There are many counterfactuals that He doesn’t know, and there are many possibilities that He never contemplates, either. All we can say is that God knows everything about what we do (past, present and future), and that we can keep no secrets from Him.
Why God is a lot less powerful than many Christians think
Second, the traditional notion of God’s omnipotence needs to be discarded. On the classical view defended by St. Thomas Aquinas, God can do anything which it is logically possible for Him to do, as God. In recent years, however, the classical view has come under fire, from the Reformed theologian Alvin Plantinga, who refuted it using the humorous counter-example of a being whose nature allows him to do nothing but scratch his ear (which he does, making him omnipotent) in his book, God and other minds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), and also from the Catholic philosopher Peter Geach, who sharply criticized the traditional view in an influential article titled “Omnipotence” (Philosophy 48 (1973): 7-20 – see here for a discussion). In his article, Geach argued that God is not omnipotent but almighty: since He maintains the world in existence, He has power over all things, but He does not have the power to do all things.
What relevance does this have to the problem of evil? On the traditional view of God’s omnipotence, God could have preserved each of us from sin throughout our earthly lives, without violating our free will, as he did with Jesus and (according to Catholics and Orthodox) the Virgin Mary: we would still have possessed full libertarian freedom when choosing between alternative goods, but not when choosing between good and evil. And there are many Protestants who believe that individuals who are “born again” are infallibly elected by God, so that even if they sin, their final salvation is Divinely guaranteed. Why, one might ask, didn’t God make us all like that? The Catechism of the Catholic Church attempts to resolve the problem by appealing to the “greater good” of the Incarnation and Redemption – a response which I find unsatisfactory, since (as Blessed John Duns Scotus argued) there was nothing to stop God from becoming incarnate even if Adam had never sinned.
For normal human beings, their personal identity is determined by their parentage, and by the gametes from which their bodies were created. (I would not be “me” if I had had a different mother or father, or if I had been conceived from a different sperm or egg.) But what if God’s act of specially electing a saint to glory also determines that individual’s personal identity? In that case, there is no way that God could have refrained from electing that saint without making him or her a different person. And if I am not elected in this fashion, but possess the power to choose between being saved and being damned, then I cannot coherently wish to have been predestined for eternal life without wishing myself to be a different person. It follows from this that while God could have made a world of human beings who were all preserved from sin, or who were all infallibly elected, not even God could make a world in which each of us is preserved from sin or infallibly elected. In that case, God is significantly less powerful than Christian theologians like to imagine.
In recent years, New Atheists have argued that the designs we find in living things are inept, and that if a Creator existed, He could have done a much better job of making these creatures. Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates reply that living things are subject to numerous design constraints, and that just because we can imagine a more elegant design does not mean that it is possible to create such a design. Picturability does not imply possibility. Recent scientific discoveries regarding the vertebrate eye (see here and here) have done much to vindicate this line of argument. (The same goes for the laryngeal nerve in the neck of the giraffe.) We are a long way here from the traditional view that God can make anything, as long as no logical contradiction is involved. Physical and nomological constraints (relating to the structure of matter, and the laws of Nature which obtain in our cosmos) also need to be taken into account.
An additional reason for rejecting the traditional notion of omnipotence is that it commits one to maintaining that God can bring about states of affairs which are not properly described. When someone claims, for instance, that God could make a horse capable of flying, like the mythical Pegasus, what, exactly, are we supposed to conceive of God doing here? And how would Pegasus fly, anyway? Are we supposed to imagine God working a miracle, by raising a horse in the air? But in that case, shouldn’t we really say that the horse is not flying (by its own natural power), but rather that God is holding it up? Or are we meant to imagine an alternative world, where the laws of Nature are changed so as to allow horses to fly – in which case, should we call the creature in this alternate world a horse, or should we rather call it a shmorse? Or are we to suppose that God could come up with a physical design for a horse that would enable it to fly, even with the laws of Nature that hold in this world? But in that case, how do we know that such a design exists? There is not the slightest evidence for such a design, and aerodynamic considerations suggest that the enterprise of attaching natural wings that would allow an animal with the dimensions of a horse to fly, would be altogether unworkable.
Goodbye to omnibenevolence
Finally, the concept of God’s omnibenevolence needs to be tossed out, lock, stock and barrel. Theologians have always maintained, of course, that God could have made a world that was better than the one He did, simply by adding a few extra bells and whistles. There is no “best possible world,” as the philosopher Leibniz falsely imagined. But that does not prevent God from making a world which is free from all natural and moral evil – which raises the obvious question of why an omnibenevolent Deity would create such a world as ours. One traditional answer, given by St. Augustine in his Enchiridion, Chapter III, is that God allows evil for the sake of a “greater good”: “For the Omnipotent God, whom even the heathen acknowledge as the Supreme Power over all, would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil.” I think its time to candidly acknowledge, as Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has already done, that this kind of talk simply won’t wash:
Being infinitely sufficient in Himself, God had no need of a passage through sin and death to manifest His glory in His creatures or to join them perfectly to Himself. This is why it is misleading (however soothing it may be) to say that the drama of fall and redemption will make the final state of things more glorious than it might otherwise have been. No less metaphysically incoherent – though immeasurably more vile – is the suggestion that God requires suffering and death to reveal certain of his attributes (capricious cruelty, perhaps? morbid indifference? a twisted sense of humor?). It is precisely sin, suffering, and death that blind us to God’s true nature…
I do not believe we Christians are obliged – or even allowed – to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery.
But as KeithS has pointed out, there are problems with Hart’s own resolution of the problem of evil:
So in Hart’s bizarre world, we have a God who supposedly hates evil and suffering, yet chooses to permit them — and somehow this is all okay because it’s only temporary. Good will triumph in the end.
KeithS suggested that the problem of evil would be soluble if Christians simply acknowledged that God isn’t omnipotent or perfectly benevolent, but noted that Christians continue to “cling to a view of God that has long since been falsified.”
So I’d like to make a proposal of my own. In the first place, I’d like to propose that God is benevolent only in relation to the persons whom He decides to create. “Prior to” His act of creation, God is not benevolent at all. Thus when deciding what kind of world to create, God makes no attempt to choose the best one, or even a perfect one (i.e. one free from evil). Only after having chosen a particular world (for reasons best known to Himself) can we speak of God as being benevolent to His creatures.
In the second place, I’d like to propose that God’s benevolence to His sentient and sapient creatures is not unrestricted. After all, He allows His own creatures to be tortured to death, on occasion. Nevertheless, God is perfectly capable of setting limits to the amount of pain we have to put up with (thankfully, none of us has to suffer one million years of torture), of healing whatever wounds (physical and psychic) His tortured creatures have endured, and of bestowing the gift of immortality upon His sentient and sapient creatures (provided that they do not spurn it). Thus according to the picture I am sketching, God is ultimately benevolent, but not omnibenevolent. On this side of eternity, God’s benevolence is quite modest – but we can at least console ourselves with the thought that life could be much, much more painful than it is.
Finally, I’d like to point out that Christians have never referred to God in their prayers as omnibenevolent, but rather as all-loving. God loves each and every one of us with a steadfast, unshakable love which is greater than any of us can possibly imagine. The only kind of love we can compare to God’s love, in its steadfastness, is parental love. And most importantly, what God loves is we ourselves, and not our feelings. Thus God has no interest in maximizing the level of euphoria in the world – whether it be the aggregate level or the average level – because God’s parental commitment is to us, and not our states of mind. Being a loving Father, God naturally wants what is ultimately best for us, but He does not necessarily want us to enjoy a pain-free journey to our ultimate destination.
These proposals of mine have significant implications for the problem of evil. On the Judeo-Christian view, each and every human person is a being of infinite and irreplaceable value, loved by God. Two infinities cannot be meaningfully added to yield a greater infinity; hence a world with more people would not be a “better” world. What’s more, even wicked people are beings of infinite and irreplaceable value; hence a world with kinder people would not be a “better” world, but merely a world where people existed in a better state. Thus I would suggest that one reason why God tolerates evil acts (such as acts of rape or murder) is that there are some individuals in our world who would never have come into existence, were it not for these evil acts having been performed. The same logic can be applied to natural disasters: think of a man and a woman, living in neighboring towns, who both lose their families in a terrible earthquake, but are brought together in the aftermath of the quake, and who decide to get married, settle down and raise a family of their own. Such occurrences are by no means uncommon. Since the creation of any human being is good in an unqualified sense, God may decide to tolerate natural or moral evils, if doing so enables individuals to come into existence who would not have done so otherwise. Please note that I’m not saying He must, but merely that He may.
Fair enough; nevertheless, the skeptic might urge, the world is still a pretty awful place, and arguably much worse than it needs to be. Most natural and moral evils don’t result in the creation of new sentient or sapient beings, after all. There seems to be a lot of gratuitous evil in the world. Why is this so?
The Fall – and why it is needed to explain the mess we’re in
Traditionally, Christians have appealed to the doctrine of the Fall of our first parents at the dawn of human history, in order to explain why God allows these senseless evils to continue. John Henry Newman eloquently argued for this doctrine in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (Longmans, Green & Co., London, revised edition, 1865, chapter 5, pp. 242-243):
I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision, unable to say whence he came, his birthplace or his family connexions, I should conclude that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that he was one, of whom, from one cause or other, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and the condition of his being. And so I argue about the world;— if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists, and as the existence of God.
In their recent book, Adam and the Genome, geneticist Dennis Venema and New Testament scholar Scott McKnight have marshaled an impressive array of converging scientific evidence, indicating that the human population has probably never fallen below 10,000 individuals. That certain puts paid to literalistic interpretations of the Fall, but as Denis Alexander has described in his book, Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, one can still defend some notion of a Fall at the dawn of human history. Here’s how he outlines one possible approach to the Fall (although it’s not his favorite):
In the first type of approach (which has many variants), some people in Africa, following the emergence of anatomically modern humanity, became aware of God’s existence, power and calling upon their lives and responded to their new-found knowledge of him in love and obedience, in authentic relationship with God. However, they subsequently turned their back on the light that they had received and went their own way, leading to human autonomy and a broken relationship with God (“sin”). The emphasis in this type of speculation is on historical process – relationships built and broken over many generations.
My own belief is that God bestowed upon our first parents the responsibility for deciding the scope of Divine providence in ordinary human affairs. In their pride, our first parents chose personal autonomy, knowing that it would entail death and suffering for the entire human race: basically, they told God to butt out of everyday human affairs, leaving Him free to intervene only for very special reasons. To skeptics who would object that God should never have given such enormous responsibilities to our first parents in the first place, I would suggest that it is simply impossible for God to make intelligent beings without offering them an allotted sphere or domain in which they can legitimately exercise their freedom: that is what makes them who they are. As the first parents of the human race, our first parents had to have the responsibility for deciding whether they wanted the human race to be protected by God’s Providence or whether to reject God and go it alone.
As a Christian, I believe that God is just and merciful. I do not believe that it was unjust of God to test the human race at the beginning of human history; but I will acknowledge that in order to make sense of the terrible consequences of that fateful test, we need to maintain a view of history which sounds very strange to modern ears – instead of a gradual ascent to human self-awareness, as we might suppose, there was a First Contact between human creatures and their Creator. We need to envisage this as a cosmic, Miltonian drama, with our first parents as larger-than-life characters who enjoyed an intimacy and familiarity with God which we can only dream of, and who were given the enormous responsibility of custodianship over the lives of their future descendants. It may seem incomprehensible to us that they would give up their relationship with a God Who could satisfy all their needs, in favor of a death-and-violence ridden world like ours, but what they gained (in their own eyes) was the freedom to live as they chose. This, then, is why we’re in the mess we’re in. How long it will continue, I have no idea.
For those readers who would like a theological explanation of animal suffering, I would recommend Jon Garvey’s excellent online book, God’s Good Earth.
The problem of evil: A summary
We have seen that in order to make sense of the evil in the world, we need to abandon the notion of an omniscient God Who knows all counterfactuals and all possibilities, and Who knows what we do without needing to be informed by us. Rather, we should simply say that God (timelessly) knows everything we do, by constantly watching us. We also need to abandon the notion of an omnipotent God Who can do anything that’s logically possible. It turns out that there are a number of constraints which God is subject to, which prevent Him from creating any old world that we can imagine, and that prevent Him from having created us in a perfect world where no-one ever sinned. Furthermore, we need to abandon the notion that God is omnibenevolent. Christians have never worshiped an omnibenevolent Deity. Rather, the God they worship is a Parent Who loves us personally, and Who will never stop loving us. Such a God may however be willing to allow His creatures to be subjected to a great degree of suffering in the short term. He can only be called “benevolent” from a long-term perspective, insofar as He has prepared us for eternity with Him.
Finally, the sheer pervasiveness of the suffering in this world points to what Newman referred to as “some terrible aboriginal calamity” at the dawn of humanity, in which the entire human race paid the price for the proud decision made by our first parents to isolate themselves from God’s benevolent protection, for the sake of pursuing what they perceived as independence and freedom. God did not know that they would make that choice, but He gave them the power to decide the fate of the human race, and to “turn off the lights” in our world until God started turning them back on again, culminating in His Revelation of Himself to us 2,000 years ago in a manger in Bethlehem.
To sum up: the Christian view of history is capable of being cogently defended, provided Christians are willing to remove the theological barnacles that have attached themselves to its system of belief, and abandon the “three omnis,” in favor of a more intimate but less extravagant notion of God.
Except that your scenario doesn’t solve the problem of evil, which is the whole point of the discussion.
For the record, this is not my criticism or view. I personally think that even if there were a god of some kind and even an quad-omni god of some kind, suffering and pain would fine and necessary. However, if there was an omni god of some kind, particularly one supposedly benevolent, at some point during said pain and suffering, said god would at least…I don’t know…show some compassion and actually ask, “hey…you’ve been enduring some discomfort for some time now. You…uh…need any help there?” You know…something a decent, caring person might do, but with the bonus of it not costing said god a frickin’ thing.
Well, do let me know when you get around to fully unpacking what I actually noted. When you do, be sure to include some rationale for how an omni-entity that doesn’t even ask about intervening isn’t evil.
No, I’m simply answering the question.
Okay, I have no idea how you get any of this from what I said. I think the conversation is suffering because we are drawing from entirely different conceptual frameworks. No, not everyone would be doing it because that is not the particular experience most people are here for, obviously, and human experience goes back a long, long way. People would be coming here at different times and in different bodies and situations for the benefit of those particular experiences.
I don’t understand how you have constructed this objection. It isn’t “god” that is concerned with building character when an individual enters the simulation for the benefit of character building; it would be the individual. I’m sure you realize that your particular situation, in this particular time and place, is not the only scenario throughout history that could provide a similar character-building exercise (if that is what we are calling this particular kind of experience). You don’t develop all aspects of character and sense of values with one trip into the simulation. I would imagine it would take multiple such experiences to build a true depth and breadth to one’s individual perspective, if that is one’s pursuit in entering the simulation.
I think once again some sort of internal bias or conceptual block is preventing you from understanding what my proposal actually says. Some would get an easy enjoyable life because that is what they chose. Others suffer because that is what they chose. Not everyone who comes here comes here to build their character. You have not properly understood my comments. I never said everyone came here to experience the same thing, or to accomplish the same thing, or to simultaneously build the same attributes; I only said that a simulation like this, with no safe word easy out, provides an existential context through which certain experiences can be had which other simulations can’t provide. That doesn’t mean everyone comes here for the same reasons.
For whatever reason, you will not view this from the hypothetical higher perspective. If you chose to go through this life in pursuit of a goal that could only be achieved in this context, how is it benevolent for god to intervene when god knows that ultimately you will not only be fine, but much the better for having undergone the experience? Let’s say you go through 80 years here of pain and suffering, and it provides you the experiential context, when understood in context from a higher perspective after you die, to more thoroughly and deeply appreciate, love and value your pain-free, healthy, safe existence in the afterlife?
Under the premise, your higher perspective (from an eternal afterlife perspective) understood the price you would have to pay to acquire that perspective that would allow for the deeper, richer appreciation and enjoyment that only such a context could provide. Under the premise, you made the decision to go through with it because the price was well worth the goal. I don’t understand that, given that scenario, you think it would be benevolent of god to rob you of acquiring the goal at the end by intervening in your simulation.
Now, perhaps in order to gain that same afterlife perspective, you could have gone through several lifetimes of relatively minor pain and suffering to develop a rich and deep sense of joy for the conditions of the afterlife; perhaps some people do that longer version. Perhaps the short version is to get it all done in one life of extreme conditions. Perhaps you opted for the concentrated cramming session.
That may not be the only reason people choose such a life before coming in here, but that’s the one we’re exploring now as a possible explanation given our hypothetical scenario.
There is no concept of it being nice and decent without comparables. If all your existence you get whatever you want instantaneously manifested by god, you never even consider it to be a nice or decent thing. It’s just what is. Do you not understand that?
I realize you really believe this, but it’s just not true. Is it benevolent to give a drug addict money? Is it benevolent to give a child candy when they cry? Is it benevolent to give someone whatever they want when they feel any discomfort at all? Surely you realize there is a benevolence that goes well beyond satisfying immediate pains, desires or lacks and must override empathy at times when there is a larger lesson to be learned, value to be gained or character trait to develop.
I’m not lecturing you, I’m having a conversation with you about it. If you want comparables, I took care of my mother for years as her mental and physical health deteriorated. My siblings couldn’t even come to visit her because it was too hard on them. I’m currently the caretaker of another beloved family member who has terminal cancer and has been on death’s door several times the past couple of years.
No, I don’t think that measures up to your lifetime of pain and suffering, but it’s not like I’m talking totally out of my ass when we have a discussion about this kind of thing. Please understand I’m not trying to diminish or trivialize the experience you have had. I’m not saying it doesn’t give you the right to your emotions and your view. I’ve had pain in my life, both physical and emotional, but I don’t presume to understand what experiencing a lifetime of pain is like.
But, I don’t think the logic of my premise resides on understanding your level of pain and suffering. The question, IMO, is whether or not it is possible that it is, in the end, ultimately a better form of benevolence to let you go through this if you chose it and if the benefit is well worth going through it.
Now, your position may be that nothing is worth the kind of pain and suffering you’ve endured; the only response to that I have from my experience is that I have gone through things in my life that were so painful and so troubling that I wished for an easy out and considered blowing my brains out just to put an end to it. It was all I could do just to endure another second, another minute, another hour.
On the other side of it, however, I treasure those experiences and I have a deep appreciation for how those experiences changed me and have provided me the context by which I can deeply appreciate and enjoy things I completely took for granted or had no idea of before. That probably means nothing to you because, perhaps, you’ve never experienced “getting to the other side of it.”
I’m really not trying to offend you or diminish what you’re going through. I’m sorry if it seems that way.
Future events can affect the past,effect precedes cause,any examples?
Why would an omniscient entity need to ask you if you wanted an intervention?
It does not have to solve the problem of evil.
I’ve always wondered why I don’t feel pain before I stub my toe. Wouldn’t that make more sense?
So, Robin, if I understand you, your main contention is that there is no benefit worth the pain and suffering you are going through for as long as you are going through it; but that is not my premise. My premise is that there is something that makes it totally worth whatever we have chosen to go through here, even if it is beyond our current capacity to understand, and it can only be achieved by going through these kinds of experiences.
To defeat this hypothesis, you don’t get to change the premise and assert that the goal is not worth the ordeal or that there are other ways to achieve the same goal. That’s not the premise or the argument I am making. I’m saying that if a certain scenario is true, then an O3 god and the experience of even your degree of pain and suffering is reconcilable.
However, I accept that you do not consider my premise valid and you reject the hypothesis on that basis. I’m just saying that I believe the premise could be valid – there could be a goal that would make such temporarily inescapable pain and suffering worthwhile, and in that context, it would not be benevolent of god to interrupt our experience and prevent us from acquiring the goal came here to acquire, no matter how much we demand or beg him to from inside the simulation.
Somehow, there seems to be less pain and misery today in much of the world than there used to be. I guess there are few simulations willing to spend a few years of living ignorantly and malnourished for a few years, then dying of some horrible disease. Malaria, for instance, thanks to Behe’s Designer.
One has to wonder why it used to be a fairly popular choice, while rather less popular today. Well, I suppose we’ll know someday, and it’s all for the best (maybe most of the ones liking to die in uncomprehending childhood already have, while a number of stragglers continues the tradition), and that’s just what people need today. Etc., etc.
Or, you know, not. Rather than an elaborate ruse to make misery and suffering appear uncaused by the Designer, just possibly it is not caused by the Designer. Then the opportunistic evolution of P. falciparum from an autotroph makes a kind of sense, as does the other evidence of “accident,” whereas the story that people really want the uncomprehending miseries so frequent on this world fails to make any sort of sense.
Glen Davidson
Perhaps you meant to say that there are fewer people today willing to spend a few years of that kind of a simulated experiences? Who said we don’t have our choice of all experiences throughout what all of time and space has to offer?
No, not what they “need”; what they choose for whatever reason, given that what we are talking about is an actual avatar and not just a simulation.
Well, that’s possible, but that doesn’t address the logic of the permise and argument I’ve presented.
Simple examples. A student prepares for an exam. Birds build nests to house the eggs to come.
Actually it does, by contrasting a straightforward interpretation of the facts with a just-so story meant to prop up prior beliefs.
Glen Davidson
…by assuming your conclusion.
Because you’re not really paying attention to what others are writing or the implications of your concepts.
Ya think…?
Totally missing the point.
Here…let’s make this simple: if someone in your scenario can build up his or her character from simply banging his or her thumb with a hammer, getting his or her wisdom teeth removed, getting in a car accident, or even getting gout later in life, transplants of any kind and any associated illness is unnecessary given a benevolent god of any kind.
My whole point is that folks who come up with concepts like you’re proposing have no internal consistency or sense of scale. Or, for that matter, any sense of what benevolence actually is.
But whoever designed the system would be the one responsible for what constitutes “character building” characteristics in the simulation. If character building can be gained from getting a cavity, than nothing further needs be experienced for character building. Unless (which is what I’ve been pointing out) your god is not benevolent or omni-anything or if your scenario is simply inconsistent.
If only some minuscule number of individuals are going through such events, then such clearly is not a consistent or even practical approach to any type of fulfillment.
In other words, if some majority of folk aren’t getting the same level of “character building” experience – since clearly a majority of folk all need character – there’s either something wrong with the “character building” concept or the evil omni-idiot that put it in place.
Which I have no problem with. However, given this, if there is an omni-anything entity that can see the simulation, the fact that it isn’t checking those in the simulation from time to time to see if that want to choose a switch to an easy, enjoyable life, the problem of evil is right back at square one.
But you have said that other types of pain build character. If any pain less than 5 kidney transplants and all the associated illness builds character, then 5 kidney transplants is simply cruel and unusual (and irrational) in a world in which an omni-anything exists. It’s that simple.
How is it benevolent for any friend to simply not contact you at all when you are sick or grieving? Why…that would be the very definition of the OPPOSITE of benevolent, particularly if said friend was…well…omnipotent, omniscience, and…supposedly…benevolent.
I would personally kick in the teeth of any entity that allowed anyone else to appreciate love on any level without the exact same pain and difficulty I had along with those who in theory experienced love and happiness and character building without dealing with everything I went through. There in lies that internal inconsistency thingy again.
The problem is that if anyone can get any sort of “deeper, richer appreciation” at all without going through even one transplant, then the god of your scenario is evil. Pure and simple. If an omni-anything god is not consistent, the whole system collapses into the problem of evil.
…then your god isn’t an omni-god.
Once again, that’s not my argument. That strawman is insulting.
More strawmen. Utterly asinine examples given the discussion. As if omni-anything gods would ever even need to ponder quick fixes…
Actually, you did lecture me and Keith on our views about benevolence. Be that as it may, I don’t see any comparables in your situations above. Was your mom sick from her birth? Clearly not as you note. And yet her “choice” to have her health deteriorate late in her life provided some level of “character building” or some “deeper, richer appreciation” for either her or you or your sibling or whatever without even a fraction of even one of my transplants. That’s not benevolence, William, by any definition.
Which completely misses the point. I’m not trying to win some pity party. I’m pointing out that an actual benevolent…ANYTHING…, particularly an omni-anything, would have some level of empathy and care to check on how those under His or Her or Its virtual scenario are doing. That’s what BENEVOLENT thinking creatures do. Oddly, your sociopathic omni-idiot doesn’t even make trivial attempts to show benevolence, let alone any actual friend-like actions.
The point is given someone with my experiences compared against the experiences of the vast majority of other people on this planet and those who have ever existed, your scenario fails at addressing the problem of evil.
Which is simply question begging if allowing anyone else’s experiences is, in the end, ultimately a better form of benevolence. If anyone can get any sort of “deeper, richer appreciation” of anything from simply episodic experiences, any form of life-long suffering is unnecessary in a world of omni-anything.
And yet, there are those who do just that. Robin Williams comes to mind. That you and I found the fortitude to keep going or perhaps we’re just stupid for not taking the obviously easy option isn’t support for the validity of your scenario. If anything, it’s yet another weakness in that an omni-something good fairly easily offer some direct advice at such junctures and even help us take the easy option with no muss or fuss.
LOL! Five kidney transplants and you question whether I’ve experienced “getting to the other side of it”? You’re cluelessness is duly noted.
I’d suggest a little due diligence on transplantation if you don’t wish to come across that way.
Good point. So then, what’s benevolent about an entity that knows one needs comfort, but doesn’t simply show up and given it?
No. My main contention is that an omni-anything entity would not need any form of life-long…anything…to instill any particular learning experience. Thus, any example of even extended suffering of any kind is either an indication that there are no omni-anythings or that said entity is really evil.
Yeah. I get that.
Yes, I understand you think that, but I find your arguments to support such are internally inconsistent with my understanding of omni-anything. Your “god” in your descriptions and analogies is very much limited by the exact same conditions (time, choice, waiting for outcomes, consequences, limited resources, etc) we humans are limited by.
The problem is, if there are any other ways of achieving a goal with an omni-anything entity in the scenario, then any suffering beyond the minimum is simply irrational.
I’ve not argued for interruption. That’s that strawman of yours again. I’ve argued that a benevolent entity, particularly an omni one, would interact, most appropriately in the form of comfort.
William:
No, I’ve simply
a) pointed out that there’s a flaw in your proposal;
b) pointed out that your own behavior (in refusing to accept the “opportunity” to be tortured) confirms the flaw, as does Robin’s serious suffering; and
c) suggested an improvement that would bring your proposal more in line with what an omnibenevolent deity might do.
Uhhh…did you read the OP?
BTW, Robin, in all sincerity, I’ve got nothing but respect, empathy and love for anyone who has gone through/going through what you have endured and are enduring. You must have hella grit and resolve beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. You’re the master, man, no shit. If we meet on the other side, I don’t have room to say shit about “I told you so”, I’m just gonna bow down to the master and say “you da man”.
You’re totally entitled to looking at your situation any damn way you please and having any attitude you have. Don’t think for a minute there’s any demeaning or diminishment from my end. I’m in awe of your perseverance. Make fun of me and ridicule me and dismiss all you want, if you want. Gimme all the shots you feel like. You have earned that right a thousand times over and I ain’t gonna say shit about it.
The present time expectation of a future event not the future event itself, thanks for the clarification
keiths:
CharlieM:
So the baby chose to have her head eaten by the dog?
Robin said:
I agree completely, which is why there being some other way doesn’t meet the criteria. My hypothetical argument hinges on there being essentially no other way (other than a faster or slower process) to accomplish the goal one wishes to attain.
However, “easier to obtain”, IMO, necessarily means “less valued when obtained”. I don’t see any way around that basic equation.
CharlieM,
Regarding future events as causes, consider two scenarios:
1) A student studies for a pop quiz on Thursday. Thursday rolls around, and the student does well on the quiz.
2) A student studies for a pop quiz on Thursday. On Thursday, there is a shooting and the campus is locked down. The quiz is canceled and is not rescheduled.
The quiz happened in one scenario but not the other, yet the student studied in both. It wasn’t the quiz that caused the student to study. It was the expectation that there would be a quiz.
Again, the premise is that the greater benevolence is to allow the individual to acquire their goal, which in my hypothetical scenario necessarily means not providing interim comfort.
To me, that suggests an entity that isn’t very omni or omni at all. The phrase “there being essentially non other way” when claiming there’s an omni-entity in the picture is just a contradiction in terms.
Here’s the reverse problem then: your scenario suggests that I’m the only person who will ever attain the ultimate…whatever…when I die. Do you not see a problem with that premise?
Some kid with my exact disease is born, but alas through no fault or choice of his or her own, succumbs to the disease because…alas…his or her transplant simply doesn’t last like mine did. So he or she doesn’t get the reward he or she signed up for, simply because of an arbitrariness of biology?
Withholding comfort or support or interaction is not benevolence in my book. Letting someone suffer, particularly in a scenario where the let-er is omni-something – is just plain old cruelty.
ETA: Just curious William, but are you really suggesting that somehow providing comfort diminishes the value of the experience?
Robin,
What I love about the toilet paper example is that it reminds us that it isn’t just the horrific events, like the 2004 tsunami or the dog eating the baby’s head, that present a problem for Christians and other omni-theists (like William).
There’s an entire spectrum of examples, ranging from the minor to the momentous, that show the implausibility of an omnibenevolent God. Across the spectrum, they have this in common:
1) they don’t make sense in terms of a benevolent God; and
2) they make perfect sense if there is no God.
To be Christian is to fight tooth and nail against the evidence, or simply to ignore it.
Robin,
The kid gets to try again with another life. It’s like Vegas. The kid pulls the lever again and again until it comes up triple cherries, whereupon she gets the lifetime of suffering she’s been longing for. In William’s fevered imagination.
Do you feel yourself on a righteous crusade to enlighten these poor benighted souls? Do you not think everyone is entitled to their own personal beliefs or lack of them?
Jealous much?
So few have had such an illuminating experience.
Glen Davidson
Alan,
This is The Skeptical Zone, Alan. We discuss controversial issues here.
Right there with you on that. Just boggles my mind.
That’s what I want William to explain. If it’s possible to fail at a given chosen experience, it raises the question of how William’s scenario could work at all.
As I understand it, a participant has to willingly acknowledge all the ramifications of his or her chosen experience and accept that he or she will see it through to the end no matter what in order to get his or her desired reward. Except that apparently regardless of what he or she willingly agrees to, the system itself can boot the participant out do to the scenario’s random conditions, thus voiding (I guess) said agreement and reward. But Designer Forbid that said omni-entity interfer anywhere along the way…
The whole thing seems…umm…a little inconsistent to me.
It doesn’t look much like discussion to me.
But, Robin, if I recall, you used to be Christian until fairly recently. You must have rationalised those issues once, maybe discussed with other Christians.
Alan,
Reading it might help.
Well, then we disagree about what “omni” means wrt the premise. My definition is that an omni being can do whatever is possible. There are some things that are not possible, such as a square circle or a 4-sided triangle. My argument resides on the premise that it is not possible to experience certain things without also experiencing certain other things that provide for the context of that desired experience. For example, you cannot experience personal triumph over hardship without going through hardship. It’s a logical impossibility in my scenario, something god cannot simply “give” you. In fact, simply being “given” it contradicts and violates the whole thing.
This question demonstrates that there is some kind of conceptual/understanding problem between us. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can choose to go through the same situation you’re going through for the same reason if I decide to come back here. Or maybe I’ve already gone through it. Or maybe I don’t particularly care to achieve what such an experience ultimately offers.
If it is the case that you can end a simulated experience prematurely or accidentally, you can always sign up to complete your pursuit of your goal by choosing another appropriate life and re-entering the simulation. Think about the nature of what such simulations must be in order to be able to choose one will provide 80 years of pain and suffering – it means that you have more knowledge about that particular simulation than it’s entry point and conditions; you must be able to see how it is mapped out and what conditions you will experience throughout that life.
I think that whatever is random that occurs within the simulation is constrained to stay within the parameters of meeting the goal requirements of those who enter the simulation for whatever reasons they enter it.
Keith says:
I don’t think chance has much to do with the overall structure of lives we have chosen to live in a simulation created to give us the experiences we have chosen to engage with.
I would not describe my approach to many of these issues as rationalizing them. Rather, I think I just wasn’t clear one the implications/details of many of these types of issues.
Before I get into that, I’ll simply note that William’s particular scenario is completely new to me. I’ve heard somewhat similar concepts before, but William’s particular take is wholly new to me.
Similarly, the Toilet Paper Favor argument is a rather unique spin on the Problem of Evil to me. While I’d heard of the Problem of Evil waaaay back when I was younger and devout, I don’t think I ever really delved into it back then, and I certainly never heard anyone bring up something mundane as an item for contemplation.
As I’ve noted before, my rejection of Christianity was not a sudden thing; different challenges over the years have contributed to a slowly evolving take on Christianity that ultimately became a complete rejection somewhat recently. I think (though I can’t recall specifically) that The Problem of Evil was an early contributing factor in my questioning the Christianity.
In any event, the part that boggles my mind is the response to the Toilet Paper Favor situation. I think that it seems like a joke to those who are challenged to address it, so they don’t take it seriously. But it rather profoundly challenges the existence of an omnigod, particularly one that, in theory or claim, desires a personal relationship with all His creation. What’s more personal than the willingness to help someone with an awkward biological hygienic issue?
Sure. But I didn’t stop there.
Some of us do anyways.
Is your particular argument inductive or deductive, and if it’s inductive is it probabilistic, and if it’s probabilistic does it employ Bayes’ Theorem, and why won’t you answer these rather simple queries?
Mung,
Because I recognize them as obvious attempts at diversion. You have no answer to the problem of evil and are desperately trying to deflect attention away from that fact.
Vincent and William at least attempted to deal with it. You’ve got nothing.
Robin:
It’s interesting to watch disdain turn to befuddlement when you press believers on this and they realize that they can’t answer such a simple question.
Here’s a link to the original thread for anyone who’s interested:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
I liked Glen’s response:
Sounds just like William!
And this is yet another phenomenon that makes no sense in terms of a benevolent God, but perfect sense if there is no God.
I hold that omnipotent means “being able to bring about that which can be imagined.” I reject the examples of “square circles” as they are simply a contradiction by definition and thus not imaginable (not even imaginable by an omni-anything since man came up with the definitions of both circles and squares and all other geometric forms. So to me, something that violates a definition is not an impossibility so much as simply a semantic prevarication.
To me, an omnipotent entity cannot be constrained by the rules of this universe. If an entity is limited by anything – resources, time, physical laws and rules, scientific principles, technology, or methodology, it isn’t omnipotent by definition.
Matthew 19 states outright, “with God, all things are possible.” Ok…that seems to be a pretty straight-forward claim of omnipotence. Isaiah goes a bit further: “…I am the LORD that maketh all; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;” Alrighty then…
So yeah, to me omnipotence means basically, “if you can come up with it, I can do it.”
Again, I’m not arguing against that point. I fully agree with it.
Fine. I have no problem with that premise. The problem I have is that it falls apart the moment you suggest that the only way to experience hardship is to have five (or more) kidney transplants as a result of kidney disease from birth when no one on the planet who is or has ever been except one person has ever had that. Any time some can point to a single, unique experience of unparalleled hardship, the validity of the virtual-experience world becomes suspect. Why wouldn’t anyone else go for this level of hardship? Everyone else who is or has ever existed just wimps? Don’t need any character building exercise? Or is it simply a failure of the virtual system? Did said omnipotent creator(s) put too much randomness in such that every other participant died before getting very far in the trial? Kinda makes you wonder what that “omni” in front of “potent” is doing there then.
That’s my point.
Yes, you are missing the point. There’s a specific reason I used me as an example: I am the only person to ever have gone through this. Period. There have been a number of folks who have died quite early under similar circumstances, but there’s no one but me who’s gone through this. So in other words, if you did try and go through the simulation I’ve gone through, there’s about a 99.999999% chance you’d fail. Where’s the logic in that kind of build?
Kinda makes you wonder how effective this virtual system is or how “omni” the creators could have been.
If I’m engaged in a goal that no one has ever been able to come close to attaining except me, it kinda makes you wonder why anyone would ever choose it. And if everyone else who ever attempted it got killed and thus booted early from their goal, it kind makes you wonder how faulty the build is.
I”m not following you on this part. It seems to me that succeeding at one’s goal in your virtual experience scenario is pretty much random. Unless in your view, I got to pick all the particular events I would go through and their outcomes, in which case, where’s the experience?
See my previous question: where’s the experience then? If someone has already experienced transplantation enough to know what conditions are necessary for success, why go through one? Clearly the person has already experienced it.
The OP is all about solving the Problem of Evil, so don’t understand your question then.
Which problem of evil? Have you read nothing I’ve posted? There is no single overarching “problem of evil.”
Okay, we agree on what I need us to agree on to continue meaningful discussion.
I didn’t suggest that. What I said was that your situation could be an extreme, condensed version of what it would take to achieve a particular goal, and you – for whatever reason – opted to get it all done in one trip instead of it taking several lifetimes to accomplish. Others could obtain your goal perhaps by spreading out their experiences with an accumulation of less extreme conditions; however, a unique situation such as your own might offer a unique opportunity for many people to achieve many things.
But, don’t lose sight of the fact that I’m not claiming your situation is actually about obtaining some particular, or even one particular, goal. It could serve multiple functions to achieve multiple things for many, many people, not just yourself.
Okay, this is where the understanding between us broke down. If my premise is true, you are in a simulation. You are not the simulated body. Anyone else can run through your particular situation simply by entering that particular simulation scenario.
The depth of experience is attained by the nature of the experience: you don’t know that you have chosen this life and the events in it and you have no “safe word” easy out. You don’t even know there is an afterlife. That’s the whole point; to gain that which an eternally happy and safe world free from hardship, harm and want cannot by definition provide.
Well, obviously what you would gain from multiple transplants is not about the transplants themselves, per se. It’s about something else. I don’t know how it is in your experience, but in my experience the person we are taking care of has profoundly affected many, many people that have come into contact with her. The doctors and other patients are amazed at her. She inspires so many people it’s remarkable.
You may have come here with others for their benefit – you may have taken on this burden to help them unlock or find something in themselves they came here to find.
Or it might be something else entirely that we just don’t understand from this perspective; that’s not the point. The hypothetical scenario assumes that whatever we are experiencing, we chose it for a reason – it’s not random. And that the goal we are seeking is worth the pain and suffering, so much so that it is not benevolent for god to intervene to stop us.
IOW, we know what we are doing when we enter this life, we know what we are in for, and we know what the benefit will be when we are done. That doesn’t diminish the experience one bit because while you are here, you have no knowledge of all of that.
Well, you have no knowledge of it in most scenarios; I think there are scenarios where people can and do come here knowing, or find out while they are in the simulation that they are in a simulation – but, again, that is the experience they chose.
God and evil have not been shown to be logically incompatible. So, no
Are you going to argue for this or just claim that it is so?
Um. No.
keiths doesn’t want to be clear because he wants to avoid obfuscation. Makes perfect sense.
William,
Which makes it utterly vacuous. It is compatible with every possible state of affairs and its opposite.
It’s the trite “everything happens for a reason, dear” explanation.