[moderator’s note: Nonlin.org produced this at about the same time as his “Miracles” post. I delayed this, so that they could be discussed one at a time. I’m now publishing this one.]
[a note to nonlin – if all of your post is one block, it is hard to add a “more” break. Maybe a short introductory sentence as a first block would make that easier]
- “Problem of evil” is supposed to disprove God because,
• a) A God that is all powerful would be able to prevent evil.
• b) A God that is all knowing would know that evil happens.
• c) A God that is all loving wouldn’t want evil to happen and would take needed action to stop it.
• d) Evil happens.
• e) Since evil happens, these statements are contradictory.
• f) An all powerful, all knowing and all loving god cannot exist while evil continues.
Although short, this argument fails repeatedly:
• c) A God that is all loving wouldn’t want evil to happen, but would not necessarily take needed action to stop it due to other, higher reasons.
• d) Evil happens only in a theist universe. The true materialist would not believe in evil, hence this whole argument proposed by him/her would be meaningless and self defeating.
• e) There is no contradiction given the c. and d. counterarguments.
• f) Because there is no contradiction per e. counterargument, f. does not follow.
• g) And f. would not follow even if a. to e. were true, because the conclusion may miss some unspecified additional evidence, such as the fact that the human brain is not good enough to judge God, rendering this and many other such arguments false throughout. - How would we know ‘the good’ without ‘the evil’? We wouldn’t! Therefore Evil is inescapable as experiences are continuously normalized to include good and bad. There’s always a ‘too cold/too hot’, ‘too loud/too quiet’, ‘too much/too little death (who wished historical tyrants lived longer?)’, and so on. Whatever the range, there’s always an extreme good/bad. Cut the range in half and, what was moderate before, becomes extreme. Therefore, God tolerates the [necessary] evil to a certain extent and for a good reason, also as part of the free will deal He offered mankind. For those that say “there’s no need for this much evil”, the question is: “ok, then how much evil should there be?” In addition, the Book of Job clearly explains that it is not up to the lowly humans to second guess God. Those that did not understand this (Nazis, Communists, Eugenists, and many more) have tried to do better than God. But their dreams of evil-free societies invariably turn into nightmares full of evil.
- Evil should mean nothing to the materialist because of the determinism belief (despite the clearest experimental evidence that determinism is dead). And this is the REAL Problem of Evil. A problem only materialists should face since, according to any coherent materialist, not only were Stalin, Mao, Hitler not evil, but they also had no choice due to determinism. Yet mankind insists on calling those individuals evil and with good reasons. Seeing this dilemma, some argue for word substitution – suffering to evil – not noticing that the argument would thus go from bad to ridiculous. After all, God let Adam and Eve know ‘suffering’ will happen after the Original Sin transgression, and most people accept “no pain no gain”, hence suffering for a good reward. Others claim evil makes sense in “humanist morality”, clearly forgetting that, as determinists, they shouldn’t have the free will to do anything morally or immorally, just as stones and animals do not abide by any moral standards. Hume got this one thing right: you can’t derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’, therefore good and evil are incompatible with materialism.
- Is the concept of Evil just a human “evolutionary” adaptation? That doesn’t work because ‘ought’ was derived from ‘is’. The “original ought-is sin” is when materialists imagine the first RNA randomly happening and then, hocus-pocus, “evolution” with its ‘oughts’ takes over. The second is when we see no evil in the lion eating the gazelle alive, or the wasp turning the cockroach into a zombie food supply, the weasel killing all the chickens, peer violence, or even cannibalism, and infanticide. Yet we see evil in the human behaving like these (although infanticide against the unborn is OK – go figure). We do not need the concept of evil to avoid harm. But, aside from the mentally impaired, psychopaths, and a few hypothetical primitive cultures that supposedly do not know evil, all modern humans including the materialists know and oppose evil. Even communists are for “social justice” and fascists for the improvement of society, eugenists for the betterment of mankind and abortionists for “choice”. Not one of these stands for evil despite killing and persecution of the innocent. All these go to great length to hide, and minimize their evil deeds and often argue that – in fact – their opponents are the evil ones. “Sure, you have to break a few eggs to make omelet, right”? “But that’s not evil” is their argument.
You are not making any sense. Either God created us with the knowledge of good or evil or it is a consequence of eating the forbidden fruit.
You mean why I would rely on my moral intuition if it is merely some evolutionary adaptation? Because it makes me feel good and common sense tells me that if all people do so, it will result in a society I’d like to live in.
Still not seeing any is-ought fallacy.
Very true, makes one wonder why you used Nazis as an argument in the first place.
If you fail to understand Nonlin, it is your fault. I imagine he is the kind of person that keeps inserting his parking ticket into the verifier machine after it has been rejected for the nth time. “Nonono, it can’t be me. Read again.”
If you mention nazi’s in your OP, you played your Godwin prematurely.
Mhm. Not angry, but you wrote an angry retort, because you were unable to address the points made. Let’s add “not lying” to the list of “oughts” your imaginary friend failed to put into your instincts.
Let’s also add this as the main “ought” that you imaginary friend failed to put into your instincts:
You sure love defeating yourself.
Alan is apparently even unaware of what this website is called.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029401-100-babies-know-good-from-evil-is-this-morality/
Both. Newer generations are born with that knowledge.
Read the question again.
Why read when you can imagine?
Nonlin.org,
Hmm!
To recap, here’s where we stand on Q&A (most memorable):
Con: Theists don’t escape the is/ought problem. “God thinks X is immoral” is an “is”. “We ought not to do X” is an “ought”. The latter does not follow from the former.
Pro: God not only “thinks” it’s immoral. He told us so. And He told us to avoid immoral actions. And that’s the only reason why atheists also agree those actions are immoral. “Ought” doesn’t follow from “is” for theists. It follows from God’s commandments if you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, incoherent atheist, etc. “Ought” incorrectly follows from “is” only if you actually want to live the atheistic philosophy. But no one other than mentally impaired, and psychopaths live the atheistic philosophy. Because it is insane.
Con: We, atheists, do not fail the ought-is problem because we can see what kind of world it would lead to if we did [evil], and we generally don’t want to live in such a world.
Pro: You can only forecast (“see”) and “want” because you’re God’s creation despite protestation. This makes you an incoherent atheist. Follow the trail from the Big Bang and you see no rational jump from “is” to “ought”. As explained:
Con: God could simply create us with the knowledge of evil. No need to actually experience evil.
Pro: And He did. He also gave us Free Will and some chose to do evil which they know and hide (see 4.). And we recognize that as evil.
Con: You confuse atheism with materialism and strict determinism and then attack that strawman.
Pro: Separating atheism/materialism/determinism/evolutionism is incoherent and doesn’t match experience.
Con: I don’t think this is/ought problem arises for either theists or atheists — not without a lot more specification than anyone here has given to it.
Pro: Is-ought does not apply to theists. Example:
“1. Sam is stealing money from work.
2. Losing money by theft causes harm to Sam’s employers.
3. (One ought to not cause harm to his employers.)
4. Therefore, Sam ought to stop stealing money from work.”
It’s obvious that theists do NOT derive 3 from 1 & 2. They get this from the Ten Commandments. But [coherent] atheists have only the “is”. Hence ONLY atheists have a problem with is-ought.
Con: Isn’t it supposed to be free of evil? If God can make heaven free of evil, why not Earth?
Pro: See 2. Whoever gets into Heaven, already encountered evil on Earth.
Con: Materialism, in its current incantation, physicalism, only holds that all there is physical. That’s it. It doesn’t have to hold to determinism.
Pro: That’s why I mentioned “coherent materialist”. If determinism is dead and free will is theistic, then only randomness remains. And whatever happens is certainly not 100% random. So, what gives?
Con: You are getting dangerously close to moral relativism.
Pro: Not at all. It’s not like good and evil are reversed. Do you know anyone that thinks infanticide is good and not killing kids is evil?
Babies that get handed to me burst into tears. I must be the Devil incarnate!
Atheism is not a philosophy. It’s simply a view that gods don’t exist.
nonlin needs to get out more….
Wolves and Dogs Both Have a Sense of Fairness
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/wolves-and-dogs-both-have-sense-fairness-180963638/
Dogs’ innate sense of fairness being eroded by humans, study suggests
https://www.independent.co.uk/News/science/dogs-wolves-unfairness-acceptance-human-owners-pets-behaviour-research-vienna-a7779076.html
Yes, this must be emphasized: atheism is not a worldview. It is a feature of some worldviews, and I don’t doubt that there are many atheistic worldviews that are incompatible with one another. (As there are many incompatible theisms.)
Well then neither is theism
PeterP,
How many times have they replicated this study? What were the dog breeds? Oh and of course, the person doing the study already believes in the cognition skills of dogs! They have a degree in animal behavior! What the hell. No one in real science respects that field. What woo. I can’t believe you can fall for such pathetic studies. In fact, there are no studies that demonstrate animals even have a brain. There are studies that PURPORT to show that animals have a brain, but there are no studies that show this.
And who funded it? In fact, I will pay 1 million dollars to anyone who can show that dogs know fairness. I am calling your bluff. Just proof it PeterP. It should be easy. 1 million dollars, cash!
You have the same issues with nonlin’s study of morality in children?
newton,
Do you have the same issues with Jocks bogus cancer studies?
At least nonlins studies aren’t funded by big pharma! What could be more corrupt than them?
You misunderstand phoodoo. He doesn’t actually believe any of the words he just wrote, it’s a caricature he made up because he doesn’t have anything substantive to say in response, so he just tries to compile a post containing a collection of rebuttals he himself has received. Don’t lose sight of the fact that he only did that because he doesn’t have any actual answer.
We are in the phase of the argument where he has nothing left to say, but is compelled to keep posting out of some childish sense of pride. He’s completely beaten into a bloody pulp, but it’s the internet so he can just continue to scream to preserve his feeling that he’s saying something back.
Then newer generations do not need to experience evil to know good, and your argument from paragraph 2 is false.
This we started out with. You haven’t been able to talk your way out of it.
No. Rephrase the question. You are not being clear.
Rumraket,
Oh, so you don’t want a million dollars then? 光说不练
We have yet to determine whether they are bogus, objections alone only point out potential problems. The additional studies pointing to the same result reinforce the validity .But then you know that.
Oil companies, Fox News, Tobacco Companies.
If big pharmaceutical makes money off of cancer drugs, I assume is your point, they should be encourage any potential product which increases the demand for their cancer treatments products.
As for nicotine patches, big pharmaceutical companies and tobacco companies both profit from tobacco addiction.
You have a million dollars Phoodoo?
Notice that, according to this argument, companies with lung cancer drugs should be encouraging tobacco use. They aren’t quite that evil. On the other hand, such companies would rather that their patients were viewed as “innocent victims”, rather than victims of their own vices (reimbursement is better for innocent victims). So they are NOT motivated to demonstrate a link between bad behavior and lung cancer. And they generally don’t fund such studies.
Yes, I would agree with that.
I still want to know if people have to find food in Rummy’s stress-free world.
Seems pointless because no food could be bad. I guess you could just eat dirt. Or inhale, who wants to chew.
You mean a belief. Then it’s a religion. Which equals philosophy.
Fairness is not the topic today.
Monkeys too know fairness – see experiment with grape and cucumber.
But that’s not the topic.
Do you ever read?
“Con: God could simply create us with the knowledge of evil. No need to actually experience evil.
Pro: And He did. He also gave us Free Will and some chose to do evil which they know and hide (see 4.). And we recognize that as evil.”
Then why did you answer your own lame and fake question instead?
The “original ought-is sin” is when materialists imagine the first RNA randomly happening and then, hocus-pocus, “evolution” with its ‘oughts’ takes over.
Question 1 is:
How did the ‘is’ turned into ‘ought’? Because now we have a lot of oughts that apply to life but never to dead rocks – like “you ought to survive”, “you ought to seek food”, “you ought to reproduce as much as possible”, etc. Dead rocks only move as reaction to what happened before – that’s the ‘is’.
Question 2 is:
How do you get from violence, cannibalism, and infanticide being what animals do, to these actions now being known as evils, including to would-be relativists like Alan Fox and even to the perpetrators themselves (except the mentally impaired)?
Flatterer! 😏
No. You get to decide what you say. Don’t write a strawman script for others. I think humans created deities. But as I live in a reasonably secular society it impinges not at all in my normal life. Thus the earnestness of on-line theists is quite intriguing to me.
1. No idiot. t’s not a belief. In most cases it’s a disbelief. The proposal is “there’s a magical being in the sky!” The atheist says: I don’t believe you.
2. A single belief doesn’t make a religion you idiot.
3. Religions are not necessarily philosophies, they affect the person’s philosophical views, and some contain heavily-developed philosophies, but they’re not the same thing. Christianity rides over and misappropriates worldwide philosophy, but it’s not a philosophy.
Fairness is a moral/ethical issue you poorly informed idiot.
Before you complain of mistreatment, I remind you:
Stop calling everybody a retard, while displaying your astounding illiteracy, and you might be treated better.
I don’t believe there aren’t deities. So its not a belief?
I think he is mostly just calling you one. You’d prefer he used idiot?
So what’s up with all you materialists like Rummy and Omagain , they can tell us how the world is wrong, but are solely lacking any ability to give details about what an ideal world would be like.
I just want to know if we are required to move at all in this ideal world. Is immortality a requirement for that, or do you die, but others lack the ability to feel sad?
If you are happy when people die, will you be even happier if you kill them? Seems the biggest problem with your ideal world is you have to design it first. And you probably also need people who know what less than ideal is like first in order to do so.
There is a position in political science that the closest we can come to an ideal world would involve the greatest good for the greatest number (with the provision that nothing would be truly awful for anyone).
The problem is implied in a lot of common sayings — it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, and the like. The implication, stated directly, is that societies are not quite a zero-sum game, but not far from it. There is no free lunch. We can try to make lunches as inexpensive as possible, we can shift the costs around, but no matter what, someone ends up paying something. And for him, the greatest good for the greatest number does not seem to be reached.
So the proposition is, EVEN IF we should blunder upon the greatest good for the greatest number, and EVEN if that’s the best of all possible worlds, unfortunately we wouldn’t recognize that we were there, and endless “improvements” will always seem easy to achieve, if only others would cooperate! People richer than I should share some of their money with me, whereas those poorer than I have no right to my money. I’m a man of principle.
Omnipotence. Think about it. If I was omnipotent, I could simply make it so that sentient beings don’t suffer, but are always happy. I could design them that way, or I could design the world such that no unnecessary suffering occurred.
What you’re essentially saying, though you seem to be unaware, is that God can’t possibly design a world without unnecessary suffering. And yet I can easily imagine such a world, and how with omnipotence that could be realized.
You’re really not having much faith in God’s supposed powers here I have to say. You seem to be arguing from the premise that we have no reason to believe an omnipotent God that could implement such a design, exists.
Welcome to atheism phoodoo, what took you so long?
Rumraket,
Ok, so if you could design a world like that, what is so hard about giving details then? You say it can be done, so…do people have to move in this ideal world? Why? Are they immortal? Do they eat? Do they have to have relationships?
You claim you can imagine it. Why can’t you explain it then?
Here is a version
“According to the Summa Theologica, spiritual beings that have been restored to glorified bodies will have the following basic qualities:
Impassibility (incorruptible / painless) — immunity from death and pain
Subtility (permeability) — freedom from restraint by matter
Agility — obedience to spirit with relation to movement and space (the ability to move through space and time with the speed of thought)
Clarity — resplendent beauty of the soul manifested in the body (as when Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor)””
Nothing stops omnipotent Being from doing that whenever it pleases Him.
newton,
Ok so immortal. Well, there is the first problem.
The premise is that the world of physical beings are mortal. Otherwise we are all just Gods that have existed forever, and thus God would never need to create us.
Funny doesn’t seem like a problem to Catholic theologians. In fact it is the opposite, a good thing.
An omnipotent God, He created matter and the Laws which govern it, right?
First ,you need to brush up on the difference between immortal and eternal, second , if God is a non contingent being, He doesn’t need to do anything.
Third per Genesis” The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.“
The first couple were only forbidden to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore the tree of life and immortality was available.
Pray tell…
If you are immortal, the laws of physics no longer exist.
Sure, and I answer:
And you? Do you ever read?
You are right. How dare I try to guess what you mean? I should just have asked for clarification right away. I humbly apologize. It won’t happen again.
I am still not sure that I understand the question. Could you rephrase?
Nope. Sorry. Could you rephrase again?
Your words:
“Otherwise we are all just Gods that have existed forever
Immortal beings can have a beginning and no end, eternal beings have no beginning or end. Uncaused cause.
God creating a world such as Augustine describes, that world had a beginning.
Nope, it would just take a miracle.
newton,
No, there are no physical laws if beings are immortal.
You can’t smash the being in a giant steel press and destroy it, you can’t strap a being to a nuclear explosion and get rid of it, you can burn it to destroy it, so the laws as we know them no longer exist.
Furthermore, if you exist forever, and you can never be destroyed nor feel pain, you are a supernatural being. A God.
So if the materialist says he can imagine a world where bad things don’t exist, is that what they are saying, a world where everyone is a God? If God was good, why didn’t he make everyone a God?
To that I would reply, then why not make no one a God, that would be the same thing. How is one trillion infinite beings different than one infinite being? What does a trillion experience that one doesn’t?
I would say there is a difference between immortal and invulnerable. Invulnerability might well involve violation of physical laws, but immortality? Not so much.
I don’t accept that gods cannot feel pain. Why is that necessary? I’ll accept that outliving the universe as we know it might qualify as a goddish feature.
These are good questions, that only gods can answer. But us atheists have no hotline to the answers, as you godly folk do. Could you please submit your questions to the god of your choice and get back to us?
Flint,
I am not the one who claims you can make a world that has no suffering and which also has beings that actually do things. If you real out all pain, all death, all unhappiness, all boredom, then what you have left are just pleasure centers that would do nothing because why should they. If people could just fling themselves out of airplanes, jump through a tree shredder, and end up in the bottom of a burning volcano and just lay there and enjoy themselves, why do anything?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture
The Culture’s philosophy is one of peace and individual freedom.
Or perhaps something you are more familiar with phoodoo, the Star Trek universe. There there is no want, due to the replicators ability to create on demand and yet nobody is in a ball curled up simply experiencing pleasure as you seem to think will happen.
But more realistically, simply look at the lives of the rich. The best healthcare available, no pressure unless you want it and they typically don’t starve to death like so many people do. They still have ‘suffering’, the rich kill themselves just like everyone else. But at least they are free of the sort of suffering that’s actually being referenced here – unnecessary.
You simply cannot allow such fine grained analysis however, you must represent it as all or nothing in order for your worldview to continue to exist.
So given that, are the rich not experiencing the world as your god desires? Is their relative lack of suffering in this life mean they are going to hell in the next?
Out of interest, do you think Heaven is a real place? If so, will there be suffering in Heaven? If so, why? If not, then are you not having the problem there you describe instead of here?
What do you anticipate doing in Heaven?
Will all the babies who died from starvation be there also? And will you explain to them that their suffering was necessary so phoodoo could get to heaven?
So, what people are really saying is why did your got not just create us at the point of, say, achieving the sort of Star Trek society where unnecessary suffering has been aliverated through technology? We’d still need to make moral decisions, hearts would still be broken but there would be a distinct lack of babies starving to death…
All those people in the history books would therefore have been made up, and not real and did not suffer at all but to us it would seem like they did. So that’s one way your god could proceed without millions of people living and dying in ways you as a white man of privilege could never comprehend.
In the culture death is mostly optional. And people do do similar things to that which you describe. And then they get up and carry on with life. That your imagination is so lacking you cannot see that does not mean everyone else suffers from the same affliction.
By many metrics the world is getting better. And one has to assume that means that suffering is going down
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news
So presumably phoodoo’s god does not want this to happen and will be acting to increase the overall suffering levels sometime soon?
What happens when all those graphs reach the axis phoodoo? WIll your god appear and undo everything?