[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.
OMagain,
I don’t claim its possible to imagine Heaven. But you guys claim it is possible to imagine some world without suffering.
So you should be able to explain why people need to move at all in your sufferless world.
Or are telling me its just sort of like being rich? Ha!
Just noting that the “free will” argument, to which both you and Nonlin have appealed (and which is the core of Augustine’s theodicy) actually assumes a world without evil is possible.
If not, the presence of evil in the world can not be a consequence of us exercising our free will, since we don’t have a choice.
I have already explained that. That you chose not to listen is on you, not me.
That seems to be the limit of your imagination. so yes that’ll have to do.
Is there suffering in Heaven, in your opinion? Go on. get off that fence.
I think the real problem of evil is people like phoodoo arguing in favor of suffering.
If you believe suffering is a necessary part of the world why would you support eradicating it?
In fact, if that’s your belief you’d actively work towards increasing the amount of suffering in the world. You are doing god’s work.
So I don’t think that evil exists as something outside of humanity, but it is possible to label individuals as evil. And I apply that label to phoodoo.
You might be happy to do nothing but don’t project that onto everyone.
Why do the very rich do anything at all, when they could simply not move at all?
One problem with criticizing theology is that the claims have to be made extremely precise in order for us to have valid arguments, but then it’s hard to see how to establish the required premises.
For example, consider this:
1. If God existed, then He would have done everything in His power to make a world in which everything is purple.
2. But, not everything is purple.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.
That’s a logically valid argument, but while premise (2) is manifestly true, there is no reason why any theist must accept premise (1).
What the atheist would need to do here is construct a logically valid argument based on premises about the nature of God that the theist must accept.
I’m doubtful that there are any such arguments.
I’m just attempting to answer his question. But he ignores it and continues on as if the question asked was not answered.
Just not sure why you think there can be only one possible world , one possible set of Laws. Surely an omnipotent designer is not limited to only one choice of design or one set of Laws.
I agree, those laws would have been supplanted by new laws, new properties of living matter.
You are dealing with an omnipotent God ,who some believe has promised to return to the laws which existed before the corruption of man’s nature. Are you saying that God does not exist if men are mortal?
You probably believe everyone has an immortal soul, so everyone is a supernatural being already. Some believe that soul can feel . That part of the the being might still feel pain. We are just talking about upgrading the physical body.
As we have established theists think that. If only men had not disobeyed God, this world would be whipped cream and honey, as it if one obeys God sometime it may be again for the devout.
Materialists , I expect think the world is what it is, basically indifferent. Suffering and pleasure, life and death and good luck and bad. Meaningful and meaningless.
Actually, materialists probably do not believe man can be immortal, since the laws of nature are not controlled by the whim of a deity.
For a theist He did ,by your definition of God , when He created the Angels and the first ensouled humans. A materialist might wonder why theist thinks his God is omnibenevolent when He punishes all mankind , even innocent children, for the crimes of their ancestors.
Weird. Divine victim blaming as a dogma. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Materialists generally do not believe in God. As for theists, without fear of punishment and reward of immortality what is the point of believing in God?
The difference is ,for a theist ,you are one of the one trillion, you are preserved forevermore. For a materialist life is finite.
I don’t think that line of criticism makes any sense.
All that phoodoo is claiming — quite in line with Christian theodicy generally — is that a world with some suffering is better, all things considered, then a world with no suffering at all.
That doesn’t entail that therefore we ought to do nothing at all about suffering, or that we should increase it.
Someone could consistently think that a world with some suffering is better than a world with no suffering at all and also that a world with less suffering than what we have at present would be a better world.
Do you agree with this? I’m interpreting phoodoo as saying that in a world where everyone gets exactly the same pleasure and finds exactly the same meaning among all possible activities, they’d all be like the donkey starving exactly halfway between two piles of hay. And therefore, presumably, picking any one activity arbitrarily would cause the “suffering” of not picking everything else.
I’m not sure I buy into this. There are plenty of things I really enjoy, and I’ve never regretted not doing one while I do another. Do you?
Which things considered?
To some people it must do, otherwise why Mother Teresa?
I don’t think that anyone should take “the problem of evil” seriously, and I think that theodicy is both intellectually bankrupt and morally indecent. So I am not defending it. I was only pointing out that there’s a tradition of thought in which phoodoo’s claims are less silly than as interpreted in this conversation.
Nothing is hard about that. Here’s one example by which I could instantly improve the world we are currently in, if I was omnipotent.
You’re an animal caught in a forest fire, surrounded by flames with no way out but running through miles of burning forest. Which you can’t do, as you will either burn alive and suffocate on the smoke. So you keep running from the fire when it gets near, but in an ever shrinking circle, until finally there’s no more room to move away from the approaching flames. Then, you catch fire, and burn alive. You run for a short while in panic in the flames, but thankfully it’s over relatively quickly as you also suffocate and lose consciousness. But for a few minutes, that to you feels like an eternity, you suffer unimaginably as your fur is set on fire, your skin melts, and your eyeballs start to boil.
This pain you’re going through, this suffering you’re enduring in your final moments, it’s unnecessary. You’re are suffering for no good reason. If you could have escaped the forest fire, the pain of coming near fire would have been useful, it would have kept you alive. That would have been a useful pain, a pain that could teach you to stay away from fire, and to run away flames. But circumstance had it that you were caught in a large circle of flames, the fire surrounded you without you knowing this had happened, so you only started running away from approaching fire when it was too late.
Now I come along and I’m omnipotent. I make it so that animals like you who get caught in that situation, without the ability to escape, die without feeling pain. As you are finally caught in the flames, I just make you unconscious. You die without that extra few minutes of horrific suffering. I have removed one instance of unnecessary suffering in the world.
There, that’s it. Simple. Trivial, in fact, to imagine ways in which the world could be improved.
God could do this, but doesn’t.
KN,
That’s too low a bar.
A successful theodicy needs to justify not just some suffering, but rather all of the suffering we find in the world. Good luck to the theodicists with that.
KN,
I addressed a similar scenario earlier in the thread:
If you’re an omnitheist who thinks that tooth brushing is evil, then you face the problem of evil with respect to tooth brushing.
In general, the formula is:
1) If you’re an omnitheist who
2) believes that X is evil,
3) where X is something prevalent in the world,
4) you face the problem of explaining why God creates or allows so much of X in the world.
In other words, you face the problem of evil.
And I take it that the possible solutions to this problem are:
1)There simply aren’t any gods
2)There are gods but they don’t share our moral values
3) They DO share human notions of evil, but approve of it
Seems to me that all we need to do is design our gods to fit our observations.
Many go the phoodoo route and argue that at least some of the evils are necessary for goodness. Some will say that it’s part of God’s plan. God has set up the worlds with perfect foreknowledge and control over the events, such that every instance of suffering ultimately leads to some much greater good. Some go even further and say that only through that suffering are those greater goods even possible.
I have numerous problems with that. Among the foremost is that it’s a claim made in blindness and backed up by zero evidence. Many sentient beings have suffered and we have no evidence that them going through that ever lead to some greater good. It appears that they suffered and died for no good reason at all.
Playing devil’s advocate, there may be moral stances that incorporate pain as evil, but find it necessary for some higher purpose.
That’s all you would get rid of, and THAT would fit your definition of a world made by a God that is not evil? Everything else stays, but if you are caught in a fire, you die faster. Why couldn’t God have made THAT world! And my answer to that is, phooey!
First off, you yourself, given that world would still find more than enough to complain about. Secondly, why would you consider a world where people can go blind from disease perfectly ok for the suffering of man? What the heck is your standard, you have none. You just don’t want animals to take long to die?
So again, I say, you really can’t articulate a world that is free from suffering, and has any meaning at all, instead, you just say why doesn’t God interfere in a few cases you wish he would. Not all cases, just a few you would like. But you have no rationale for why you don’t want him to interfere in every case. But probably if pushed you would come up with ONE MORE case where you would want him to interfere, and then you would come up with another, and then another, and we would always wonder why you still don’t want him to interfere in ALL cases of suffering, but just sporadically.
So, who knows, maybe he has already interfered in quite a number of instances of suffering, that you couldn’t know about because they don’t exist. For instance, people’s heads don’t suddenly come spinning of the top of their shoulders like a circular saw, and kill their children and then return to the top of their head like nothing happened, only their children are shredded. THAT doesn’t happen. See, some unnecessary suffering has been avoided. Aren’t you satisfied, you said you only need to eliminate SOME unnecessary suffering. The rest is necessary. Or do you get to pick?
So sorry, I don’t believe you have created a world which makes any sense to anyone but you. I don’t think any other person exists who would think that a world that let’s animals die in fires much more quickly would be the “ideal” world void of unnecessary suffering. I don’t think you will have many converts to your worldview.
For your world to really satisfy, even you, you would have to keep going, and keep going, until all you end up with is all aspects of the world controlled by a God, no choice, and no motivation, and no greatness, and no progress. Just thoughtless being, just happy bacteria that don’t move and live forever.
phoodoo,
Do you seriously think that our world is the best of all possible worlds?
Well, if free will is a necessary component of the world, and the laws of physics are also part of the world, then it is probably just the way it has to be.
Is the reason you are afraid to speculate on Heaven is because you are unable to imagine anything other then the above as what it will be like?
Is your inability to speculate on Heaven tied to your instance that others are unable to speculate on a world without suffering?
You keep saying ‘if’ like you are not sure. When will you be determining the truth of the matter? Is your position not premature given those ‘if’s’?
Also what do you mean by ‘free will’ and ‘the laws of physics’? Does free will transcend the laws of physics?
And that’s your ‘answer’ is it? Seems like a common thread with you lot. Mind is a mechanism, suffering exists because that is probably the way it has to be.
Childish stuff.
I don’t think that necessarily follows. If the evil in the world is a consequence of us exercising our free will, and we haven’t made all the right choices (quite likely I’d say, maybe I am too cynical?), then this world is not the best of all possible worlds.
Agree. We could work a bit towards mutual understanding (both sides).
keiths,
I also kind of feel that even if this is not the best possible world there could be, that doesn’t make it evil. If the world really were evil, as some suggest, then most people wouldn’t want to live. And I think most be do in fact want to live in this world.
I am open to all kinds of spiritual possibilities, including that there are other levels of worlds. I could imagine a world with no physical pain, but I can’t really imagine one without emotional pain of some kind. Is that a better world?
And really, especially from a materialists point of view, is there any reason whatsoever to care if a baby shark has an upset stomach? Why?
That’s not even what I said. What I said is what is the alternative?
The alternative is a world without evil. If that world is impossible, then free will cannot be an argument for the presence of evil.
If an evil-free world is an alternative, but God made sure we don’t live in that world, because it is a horrible place (with 24-hour dirt porn channels), then again free will cannot be an argument for the presence of evil.
Don’t get me wrong: I am fine with whatever solution works for you. But “some evil is necessary” and “evil exists because of our free will” are arguments that don’t mix well, because in the former God is responsible for the current state of affairs, whereas the latter clearly places all responsibility with us. I think you better pick one and drop the other.
Why couldn’t the view be something like “some evil is a necessary consequence of our having free will, and a world with free will is better than a world without any free will?”
Because that already assumes that we would never make the decisions that result in a world without evil.
Well, I suppose here we’d need to think about what free will is and how to make sense of it in terms of the preferred theology. Whether it is possible for beings with free will to always choose the good without divine assistance is much debated. For those who don’t know much history of theology: the Pelagian heresy.
What if God is perfectly evil, and the only reason there’s not 100% suffering now is because it’s part of a perfectly evil plan to be completed in the afterworld, where we will all be subjected to eternal, maximal suffering, watching our loved ones being tortured and missing the days when we were living our relatively happy lives?
There is a lot of tension in trying to harmonize free will with an omnipotent and omniscient deity. He knew beforehand; He created it like this. How come He bears no responsibility and we do?
I don’t see how the world we have now could be completely in accordance with God’s preferred view, while simultaneously preserving man’s freedom. I realize there have been several attempts to harmonize that as well, but “He created it just so you freely chose to do X” never made sense to me.
It is interesting to learn how people have dealt with that.
That’s me. Thanks.
Then you’d sure be sorry you squandered it all here at TSZ.
One thought that has occurred to me here is that divine omniscience may be somewhat less than what we take it to be. It is commonly held (I think?) that divine omniscience holds that God knows everything. But this could be taken in one of two senses: either that
1. All propositions have a determinate truth-value, and God knows what truth-value is.
2. If a proposition has a determinate truth-value, God knows what it is.
The difference between (1) and (2) is that (2) allows for propositions that have indeterminate truth-values — they are neither true nor false because the circumstances that would make them true or false have not yet obtained. (Aristotle allowed for this kind of thing.)
The reason why this matters to the metaphysics of free will is that if free will is like creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), insofar as free choice brings into existence a chain of causal relations that would not have obtained otherwise, then there are no facts about that choice prior to one’s making it. Since there are no facts, then there’s nothing that even God could know.
I have no idea how this would square with any theology, orthodox or heterodox. I’m not a theologian and I don’t even play one on TV.
Yes, that would work, since God wouldn’t have known beforehand what the consequences were of granting man free will. Of course, that means we also have to say goodbye to the idea that this is the best possible of all worlds (good, nobody believes that anyway).
I guess the easiest solutions to the problem of evil involve qualifying omnipotent and/or omniscient to mean something that relaxes God’s absolute control over His creation. That would make for a more credible case that humans have the freedom to do all those silly things.
I understand some people make a good living that way.
Doesn’t work like that. You have a belief system. Not just one belief. That’s why you’re not just an atheist, but also materialist, evolutionist, determinist (free will denier), socialist, climate alarmist, abortionist, etc. with minor variations on the theme.
And you can’t escape: view is belief is religion is philosophy. And you’re wrong equating religion with deity. There are many atheistic religions.
Not everybody. Just you and a few other dimwits like you. And only when deserved. Which is almost always.
What you could and what you would are two different things. And not being omnipotent, you know nothing about God’s reasons. You’re just a typical armchair athlete/politician/writer/god/etc. Blissfully unaware.
I heard he is also a pianist.
Are you US American, BTW?
What is your point again? You asked (not answered) a question that already had an answer. As explained:
1. We would not know good without evil
2. Post Adam&Eve, God put the knowledge of good and evil in all newborn
3. 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.
So you’re on strike. Good for you.
You said this before. So? What has this to do with the REAL problem of evil?
Fat chance with “logically valid arguments”. Logic and atheism don’t mix.
Are you aware claims without some backing are worthless? Even when repeated.
It’s not “because”. You wouldn’t say “crime is happening because not everyone is in prison already”, would you?
What do you even care about God’s reasons? As atheist, why not explain how you got the “ought” knowledge of good and evil from a universe that just “is”?
Moderately funny. More importantly, did I nail you at least 80%? Of course.
It strikes me that the apologetics that we see here at TSZ is generally rather poor. They can’t even keep their omni-‘s straight. Self-selecting samples and all that.
I will note that non-lin has retired to the safety of the “God moves in a mysterious way” defense, foreshadowed in point 2 of his OP and the Book of Job.
Introduce any High School student of even middling intelligence to the story of Job, and their reaction is “Wow! That’s an awfully convenient load of cobblers.”
Later, s/he will notice that the same rebuttal applies to all theology.
So non-lin, the reality is that the Colorado River Toad God hates mammals. How dare you second guess his grand plan for eliminating them?
KN,
The standard Christian view is that God has complete knowledge, including of the future.
That’s a position known as “open theism”. “Open” because it holds that the future is truly open and that even God lacks knowledge of how it will unfold.
dazz,
That’s what I call the “symmetry test”. If the same logic can be used to argue equally forcefully for an omni-good God and an omni-evil God, then the argument fails.
KN,
One reason is that free will theodicies don’t address the problem of natural evil: earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, etc.
Another is that God can have his cake and eat it too. With the benefit of his foreknowledge, he can create only those who will freely choose the good over the evil. That way he eliminates human evil while still preserving free will.
Amazing that you know this when I didn’t. Anyway let’s tick the boxes.
I consider myself agnostic and also apatheistic.
Nope. Physicalist in that we haven’t exhausted physical explantations and haven’t found any non-physical ones useful.
I think current evolutionary theory a reasonably accurate model of biology. There isn’t another.
No.
No.
No.
I’m certainly alarmed that climate change is being ignored by folks who have the power to start to deal with the problem.
Nope (you know what an abortionist is, do you?) but I support every woman’s right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term.
There are other issues that alarm me as much as climate change: the rise of populism, the inexorable increase in human numbers and the consequent habitat and species destruction.
I also am somewhat ashamed that (as my daughter reminded me recently) it was my generation that has made the mess and it will be her generation that has to clean it up.
I see nobody has managed to come up with a coherent idea of “evilness” yet.
That’s really funny coming from you.