[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.
Right. But they can still blame God for it.
Since you think anyone can opine above their pay grade, when was the last time you asked for for your cat’s opinion? If not, why are you such a specie-ist? Yes, atheist brainwashing should be pretty much complete by high school, but not everyone is a dumb drone like those that think “evolution” did it.
Then atheist you are. 1 of 1
Same thing. 2 of 2
then 3 of 3
If not free will denier and not determinist, where is free will coming from? If artifact of “evolution” or similar, that’s 5 of 5.
Your rant at the end makes you a socialist. So 6 of 6
then 7 of 7 and 8 of 8.
Pretty darn good!
Example?
He’s looking for a definition. Until then, he thinks Hitler/Stalin/Mao was a cool guy.
Poor God, everybody picking on Him. Maybe time for another flood.
Encore. My point is that, to quote myself:
.. or you could argue that free will is the reason why evil is necessary, like KN did, but I haven’t seen you make that argument.
I’d like some appreciation for the fact that I am one of the few persons around here that tries to parse your (for want of a better word) logic.
Who is guilty of a crime? Is it the criminal or the warden? In the free will argument, evil is our own fault, and not obviously part of the Divine plan.
I don’t. I care about what people think are God’s reasons.
My pleasure.
I think the more insightful observation here, is that if I take the list of antonyms, that 100% describes you. Does that tell you something?
I didn’t say that the single example I made up would make the world contain no evil at all, all I said was that it would rather obviously be an improvement, which it would. The fact that I imagine a way in which the world could be improved by having less evil in it is a problem for you, not for me. Whether that improvement brings us to a world entirely without evil or not is irrelevant. The world I imagined would have less evil in it than the one we are currently in, hence it is easy to imagine ways to reduce evil in the world.
Yes I would. Even with that one example of evil removed from the world, there’d still be much more to be done. That’s a problem for YOU, not for me. You’re essentially making my argument for me. There is still MUCH to complain about. Your omnipotent God better get off his lazy, non-existent arse and do something about it, or keep appearing like he either doesn’t care, or doesn’t exist.
I don’t and didn’t say I did, and it doesn’t follow from anything I’ve written that I do.
My standard is my position on suffering. Does it take place? Is it avoidable? Is it necessary? If it happens, is avoidable with omnipotence, and isn’t necessary, then it should go. That’s my standard. Simple, really.
Why are all your putative gotchas and rhetorical questions so easy to answer? Are you genuinely unable to think on this topic, or just pretending?
At the very least, I don’t want them to suffer unnecessarily. That goes for all sentient beings. And it is clear and obvious that unnecessary suffering happens. So that’s a problem for you who think a good God exists. If your God is okay with unnecessary suffring, then your God isn’t actually a good God. It’s a-moral, or possibly immoral. God could be a sadist for all we know. Or maybe there just isn’t one.
Sure I can. I can imagine a world where nobody suffers, but God created them to be happy. God used his omnipotent to create sentient beings that were intrinsically happy and felt their lives had meaning. God created them explicitly for the purpose of experiencing happiness. The very meaning of their lives were to experience happiness.
That’s omnipotence for you. It’s magical. If you think this is a silly concept, take it up with your fatuous religion, not me.
I can do that too. Both options are available to me.
I can complain about the world not being perfect, and I can complain about the world not being better than it is even if that would not make it totally perfect. Both of those are logically coherent options available to me, and I am doing both because it’s rather easy and obvious. And the religious only have poor answers and flailing, just like you’re doing now. Making a fool of yourself for all to see.
Religious people who can’t see the problems with the idea of a perfectly good and moral God who is omnipotent, are fools.
But I DO want him to interfere in every case. I want God to remove all unnecessary suffering in the world. All of it without exception. And he could start by doing what I suggested in the example of animals who suffer unnecessarily in forest fires. Then he could move on to other examples, and remove them one by one until there were none left.
Yes, definitely. I could keep coming up with examples of sentient beings who suffer unnecessarily. That just means God has a lot of work ahead of him. But I hear he’s omnipotent, and can read minds, and see the future, so we could basically just skip to the end where the job was fully done.
So God could not make the burning animal not suffer unnecessarily? He’s omnipotent, but can’t do that?
Not even when the animal is a human being?
A world with nothing.
That would be better?
nonlin
Jock wrote:
Nonlin wrote:
You misunderstand. I was in a High School Religious Instruction class full of Christians, being taught by a chaplain. Given that we had all been raised (myself included) to accept the “this life is a test” variant of Anglican theodicy, we were comfortable with the existence of rape and murder, etc. as necessary consequences of free will.
However, the use of the story of Job to explain
1) Why bad things happen to good people, and, critically
2) God does not explain
struck pretty much everybody as fucking transparent. The Chaplain, a smart chap, was reduced to talking of allegory, narrative framing, and the possible motivations of the writers of that particular OT book.
To be candid, we didn’t learn about earthquakes, tsunamis and fires until French class.
I note that nonlin has failed to address the problem that anything he might do or say faces the same “you cannot know God’s will” rebuttal. His argument renders theodicy moot.
Here is a reading of a lecure by Rudolf Steiner on the problem of evil where “a few tentative steps” are taken to frame the problem.
He discusses its history from the Stoics, through St Augustine who sees it as just the absence of good, and Reginald John Campbell in The New Theology agrees with:
Plotinus believed that the involvement of spirit in matter is the source of evil, and Nakae Tôju, a Japanese pupil of Wang Yang-ming had a similar belief. Entanglement in matter brings with it will, and this will gives rise to desire, and from desire comes the potential for evil.
Lotze rejects the justification for the presence of evil given by Leibniz, that even though evil exists, this is the best possible of all worlds. Lotza’s way out of the dilemma was to postulate that the cosmos as a whole is ordered and harmonious, but the specific instances of evil must be due to a divine wisdom that from our limited position we cannot fathom.
Jacob Boehme’s solution was that In order for the Divine Being to know itself it must set up an opposition, it must create its own opposite in order to become self-aware. The beings that have been created form this necessary opposition.
Steiner wanted to show how puny our attempts to solve the problem of evil has been. He believed that to come close to solving the problem of evil will take more than we can attain by sense bound thinking.
The same Steiner lecture, but with a different translation can be found here, “Spiritual Science as a Treasure for Life: The Evil”
A world with no unnecessary suffering would be better than a world with unnecessary suffering, yes. Definitely. I’m not saying the world has to be empty, as in nothing exists. I am merely talking about unnecessary suffering.
A world with a million different types of unnecessary suffering, is a worse world than one with 999.999 different types of unnecessary suffering. Obviously. It has one more type of unnecessary suffering, and could thus be improved by removing that one extra type. And then another, and another, and so on.
Unnecessary suffering that a putatively omnipotent God could do something about. Yet doesn’t. But we’d expect a good person to do so. Still, God obviously refrains. It is only rational to conclude that there probably isn’t such a God after all.
If I could do something to help that person from experiencing the horror and pain of being burned alive, I would. I know that someone else is responsible, and carries the blame of setting him on fire. But even so, if I could, I would help him.
I would even go so far as to say that anyone present, with means and opportunity, is under some obligation to try to help him if they can, or prevent that situation from happening in the first place.
God doesn’t, yet presumably is able to, at no risk to himself. If God exists I am a better person than it. I think most human beings are.
Ironically the people torching him are theists, following what they believe to be God’s moral law. Until theists can clean up their own acts, they should shut their pieholes about morals when speaking to atheists.
Rumraket,
The assumption is the suffering is unnecessary. Maybe it is necessary as Gods own Son suffered. The Messianic prophecy-Isaiah 53.
Well, well. So this “omnipotent” god forgot to instill the “you shall not lie” “ought” on you. Quite the useless “oughts” for theists. They could not care less about following them, yet they want everybody to imagine that they’re “oughts” just on their say so.
You started calling everybody retards and dimwits, while showing very little self-awareness of your own idiocy. So, let’s keep quoting your supposed “oughts”:
You surely love making a fool out of yourself.
Pretty darn ad hominem. No big deal but the rules here ask that you take what interlocutors write at face value.
Are you seriously suggesting that the suffering of an animal caught in a forest fire it can’t escape, is necessary for something? If so, what is it necessary for, and how do you know it is?
One wonders how colewd decides what is unnecessary and what is not.
And finally we get to the rub. Christian hospitals with people like this making decisions on peoples health care.
I don’t. It’s useless to blame imaginary beings. I just point to the incoherence of believing in a magical being who is supposedly good and omni-everything, yet allows excessive suffering to occur.
Rumraket,
You’re making an argument from ignorance. There is no way you have the proper perspective is indeed we are in a created universe. It is impossible for us to judge individual events and how they fit into the big picture. See the story of Job in the Old Testament,
I already explained in 2. and you’re not clear why you disagree.
What?!? That makes no sense.
And as said before, why don’t you address the REAL problem of evil? From the materialist’s perspective. Sorry, physicalist. Physicist? Physician?
So you wouldn’t answer… Interesting. Let’s count that as 100%.
I am an open book, but… not all those have [single] antonyms. So it’s not clear what you want (other than antagonize).
The point is: atheists are wrong (a-gain) when claiming disbelief in God is the only thing that links them, instead of an entire philosophical system (religion). Do you agree? The few data points collected right here confirm.
Huh? That’s my rebuttal to your claim that you can second-guess God.
That’s what Job is partly about. The fact that you had a poor teacher and/or you were a poor student is irrelevant.
Rape and murder are NOT “necessary consequences of free will”. Again, poor student/teacher.
Totalitarians like to point out rape and murder are rare in their societies because “rape and murder are necessary consequences of freedom”. Would you rather live in a totalitarian society?
But to the materialist/physicalist, the world just is. No ifs, buts, un/necessary, better/worse, etc. So how do you even get the idea of a “better” world?
No retard. I love you, brother… and want you to do well. That’s the only reason I am spending my precious time telling you the truth. Try being less of an idiot in the future.
I do, and asked for an explanation. Because you’re incoherent in your belief in both free will and physicalism. I would like to know where the incoherence originates. As far as socialism, I am simply disagreing with your assessment based on your own words.
They don’t want to see. They’d rather be blind.
You cannot read your own book of “oughts.” Check again ass-hole. That was not about love but about your lack of self awareness. Still, you surely have a very interesting way of showing that your imaginary friend’s “oughts” are nothing of the sort. Good job in ridiculing yourself and debunking your own “points.” Keep at it. Thanks to imbeciles like yourself it’s very easy to demonstrate that your religion is far from being a foundation for ethics and morality. Good thing that society continues domesticating your religion so that it does less and less harm.
ETA: and that makes you a tiny little chihuaha barking and barking, thinking that it must sound like a wolf, yet making people laugh.
What were you barking about authentic “oughts” little chihuaha? That they’re really real? Sure, sure. You show us how real they are little chihuahua. Show us. We’re impressed by your majestic barking.
There was an explanation, you illiterate buffoon:
In the words of the idiot who wrote the OP: read again! If you don’t understand the answer, then ask for clarifications, but try and read for comprehension first.
The incoherence originates in your misunderstandings of atheism, physicalism, determinism, and maybe about free-will. You have to demonstrate first that physicalism means that there cannot be anything else but determinism. So far you have only claimed that to be the case. Claiming is not the same as demonstrating. Again, in the words of the idiot who wrote the OP:
I have explained, as have others, that physicalism is but an observation about the nature of what exists. So, a physicalist would think that everything is physical. Nowhere does that imply that everything is deterministic. Nowhere does that imply that everything is random either.
Your turn: how does physsicalism imply that everything is deterministic? While you’re thinking about it (if you can think at all), try and remember that experiments showing randomness in quantum mechanics, for example, are experiments in physics!.
I am making an argument from what we observe: The animal suffers in a situation where it’s suffering appears unnecessary.
Then by definition you do not have a good reason to think that these events are necessary or justified.
I’m sorry but it doesn’t say in the story of Job why animals appear to suffer for no reason, and to the extent the story can be interpreted to constitute a fits-all excuse for why God allows apparently unnecessary suffering, I have no reason to believe the story is true. I don’t even buy the purported justification that the story offers. It seems to me wholly unnecessary that sentient beings go through some of the suffering that they do, in order for them to also experience some of the goods that they do.
Is a baby shark with an upset stomach necessary or unnecessary suffering?
Furthermore, as a materialist, it follows that a baby shark is just a certain arrangement of chemicals, so why should it matter what happens to those chemicals? They just become other chemicals eventually.
Returning to your OP, I commented to point out there can be no problem of “evil” unless there is some idea of what “evilness” is. You haven’t addressed this and those that have have failed to establish a category that distinguishes evil from not-evil.
Side-tracking from this by suggesting folks who are (or who you frame as) atheists, materialists, socialists (and – heaven forfend – abortionists) are somehow incapable or incoherent is ad hominem smoke screening.
Alan Fox,
Alan, your point is so ridiculously misguided-expecting a theist, who doesn’t think the world is evil, to come up with a definition of evil to the atheists who claims evil is a problem for God.
If you don’t think evil exists, great, then you agree with him, it is not a problem.
However, for those who think it IS A problem, I guess it is for them to define what they mean, not him!
How could you possibly get it so backwards.
That’s interesting. I didn’t expect you to object to that. It seems quite clear to me that the entire story about A&E in the Garden of Eden is about humans corrupting God’s perfect creation by disobeying Him. In Augustinian theodicy, this point is made explicit : “The entry of evil into the world is generally explained as punishment for sin and its continued presence due to humans’ misuse of free will. God’s goodness and benevolence, according to the Augustinian theodicy, remain perfect and without responsibility for evil or suffering. ”
Who bears that responsibility in your view?
Because everytime I try to do that, you tell me off.
What I want is to make you aware of your tendency to pigeonhole all people that disagree with you into your one-size-fits-all “atheist bad guy” category. Frankly, that strikes me as a bit immature.
The “few data points” that I have collected in my lifetime lead me to utterly reject your childish us-against-them view. Just because people disagree with you on one single topic doesn’t mean you can automatically assume they disagree on everything else. Look at yourself: you forced Alan into your atheist stereotype when he was telling you half of the terms didn’t apply to him! Do you really have trouble dealing with more than two types of people?
Rumraket,
Sure I do as it is all a component of free will. Suffering in this world is temporary. You are labeling it as unnecessary and this is simply an assertion you are making from a very limited perspective.
Apparently believing in the existence of God and the soul is the only thing that prevents theists from agreeing with Dr. Manhattan: “A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there’s no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?”
Next time put in a spoiler warning please! Some of us are getting the info from the TV series only and I don’t think he has directly spoken those words yet (although his ex has implied that that is his opinion).
😃
BruceS,
That’s his line from the 1987 comic book!
I vaguely remember someone saying:
“It is impossible for us to judge individual events and how they fit into the big picture”
If it is impossible for Rum to know, then so it is for you. If you are right, then people and animals could very well be suffering for no good reason.
Now, I am pretty confident that you don’t believe that to be true. So why do you use the argument that we cannot judge God’s actions, whereas you do exactly that whenever you decide that God is good?
Corneel,
We have evidence about Gods overall plan. It’s called the Holy Bible. How familiar are you with this document?
I figured that was from the comics. I gave up on them after my early teen Spiderman phase in the late 60s, but I believe I am missing out on good literature in the newer stuff, given that the genre is now called graphic novels.
Anyway, speaking of reductionists, here is a special issue of Australasian Philosophical Review with Shaun Gallagher fighting for the good in a phenomenology-based, non-reductionist cognitive sciencee. Of course, he has to face the onslaught of reductionist evil-doers like Hohwy. Luckily, such evil is not a problem for him.
A materialist I presume.
I don’t know about Corneel, but I am very familiar with that book of fables. But, to the point: you say that we cannot judge, but then come back with a book filled with horrendous commands from some magical and vengeful being, as an answer about why this god is supposedly good. Are you familiar with that book yourself? Do you rather choose and reinterpret everything in it to fit current ethical standards? Do you ignore the old testament? Do you ignore the nasty parts of the new one? Isn’t this judging without having all the elements, yet based solely on your determination to forfeit your reason when dealing with this “being”?
If we cannot judge “God” then we cannot judge either way. Neither as good, nor as evil. If we can judge, given the horrendous book, then we can judge either way. You cannot have it both ways.
Nonlin.org,
Yes! That’s right!
Yes! It is!
Like I said, your apologetics is poor. Oblivious as you are, I will try to explain the problem you face. You argue that I cannot know God’s will; specifically, “you know nothing about God’s reasons”. This is also an important point in Job – God does NOT explain to Job the reasons behind his suffering (Job is in fact the victim of a “Trading Places”-style wager).
Here’s your problem nonlin: if I, DNA_Jock, cannot know God’s reasons, then neither can you, nonlin. So any and all claims that you might make about God’s intentions are groundless. Hence my assertion about the Colorado River Toad God and his plans for the human race.
Yes, I am glad that you agree! Rape and murder are NOT necessary consequences of free will. But the “this life is a test” variant of Anglican theodicy reckons that you need a bit of rape and murder around in order for life to be a real test – that was what I was brought up to believe. Silly, isn’t it? These days, I reckon that Cutting in line (a.k.a. queue-barging) would be sufficient level of evil and suffering to achieve the needed morality test – there’s no need for violence at all. That’s a minor blemish on the ‘free will’ theodicy. In French class, I learnt about the earthquakes, tsunamis and fires (especially those in 1755), and as an adult I studied inborn errors of metabolism; so for me, it is suffering unrelated to moral choices that is the problem.
They do? Really?
ROFL
ETA: somewhat ninja’d by Corneel. To respond to colewd: we appear to be more familiar with the Book of Job than you guys…
ETA2 and by Entropy, dammit!
Did you notice that I had a response to him there? 🙂
I am aware that you are at least open to the possibility of a supernatural (or immaterial) existence, but for those who are married to their materialist-atheist views, then of course there is no difference.
Any appearance otherwise is just an illusion. Just as is consciousness. Its just what some chemicals do occasionally.
But (wink, wink) we know no ones believes that. Let them pretend.
DNA_Jock,
What you appear not to understand is how it relates to the rest of the Bible. Your claim about competent readers not understanding anything about Gods will is false. I do have to admit you are making progress :-). Can you figure out why your claim is false? Here is a place to start.
Nope — I should have scrolled down before shooting my mouth off.
.
The papers I linked are on my to-read list, but I had a look at yours and it makes sense to me overall, although I do have my usual concerns about making room for PP-sytle representations and processing. Also, I think there is a need for more explanatory approaches than relying solely on DST. For examples,I think scientists can empirically justify studying isolated subsystems of a on overall EEE cognitive architecture.
I better post something on topic to balance my diversion of the thread.
If theists are not trying to provide a full fledged theodicy, but rather only a defense of the reasonableness of belief, all they need claim is that some aspects of God’s actions are unknowable.
It’s up to the theologians to then explain what humans can know about God and about human morality. I’ll plead ignorance on how they do that. But it’s not needed for the defense.
True, but off-topic.
nonlin, phoodoo, and colewd are most certainly attempting a full fledged theodicy. And they are really really bad at it.
nonlin asserted “you cannot know God’s will”.
No, silly billy. It’s nonlin‘s claim that you cannot know God’s will, not mine. Although I am enjoying your late addition of the qualifier “competent”.
Let me guess, “competent” will turn out to be synonymous with “agrees with whichever of the mutually exclusive exegeses that colewd was indoctrinated with”.
It’s an improvement over nonlin’s self-defeating argument, I guess.
Perhaps you meant to link to this video, which is on Job, although given what it says at 3:30 – 5:00, perhaps not.
😮
Nope, nonlin.
So you don’t know good from evil? 3 month old does, but you don’t. Because definition?
You’re mixing things.
First point was that you have a belief system. Not just one belief as you wrongfully stated.
Second, the coherence problem (which you have yet to address), is your belief both in free will and materialism (or whatever you call it).
You can’t see I am, not and do not represent Augustine?
What has “responsibility” to do with the REAL problem of evil? Namely, how the heck does a materialist even have a knowledge of said evil? Quit dancing.
Do your thing and don’t let anyone “tell you off” if indeed true. Which it isn’t. Given I asked you repeatedly to clarify.
Not the point, as explained repeatedly.
Wrong from A to Z:
1. Who the heck cares about “us-against-them”? This is about exchanging ideas and learning something.
2. Ditto “more than two types of people”.
3. Are you indeed disagreeing on a single topic? Don’t lie.
4. Let Alan speak for himself. He’s doing OK without help.
5. Back to the topic. And quit dancing.