The problem of evil.
Posted on: August 7, 2007 - 5:43pm
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The problem of evil.
It's simple.
I want a good theistic response to the problem of evil.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/
Basically the problem of evil seeks to refute the position of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient,
omnibenevolent being by citing the existence of evil.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
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I dont think I gave you credit the first time I responded to this.
I think you hit on the danger of discussing good/evil in a utilitarian or consequentialist framework.
So you might be supporting something Rhad said and be saying that we might be in the lower limit of evil, right now, and we wouldn't know it because we just dont know what all encompasses good and evil.
Or you might be saying: for any given event, there's no way to find every piece of good and evil that is a consequence and determine if there was more on one side or the other.
Remember, the theist side of the argument was the beginning of the discussion of consequentialism. It can and has been used to try to subvert the entire issue by saying basically: "evil exists, because the "all-good" god created it necessarily to maximize good".
Which can also be stated roughly as: "every action done by the deity has always created the most possible good (despite the creation of evil as a side-effect)".
Again, I concede to the theist (the one who holds the original position I am trying to refute, not your god.) that here they are right. However, I argue that there is no plain evidence (and here we fall into a subjective argument that I don't feel can be solved, because I allow them to hold that position.) that this is true.
Here's why:
In any event X with the set of good consequences G and evil consequences E, we can be reasonably sure there's no way that we're going to know all of G and E. And even further, G and E both include more events X which have more consequences, of which we won't know all. This can go on for a long time.
By making the argument that the "all-good" deity has always served in such a way to maximize G or the overall G (minus) E balance, the theist has made an ad hoc assertion which is logically unlikely.
I look at it as an ad hoc because it serves in the wrong direction.
There's simply no reason to assume that:
1) in any given instance, G has been maximized (since G and E have a lot of equally likely unknowns for us, there's no reason to assume what we don't know about G is greater than what we don't know about E. In the set of unknown E and G, they are equally likely to exist and neither is likely to be bigger. Furthermore, the theist asserts that G has always been bigger. Meaning throughout the course of all history, no event has made more evil than good, depite there being equal likelihood of good and evil consequences to any given event.)
2) overall, G has been maximized. (for the same reason above).
I know you don't like the term "maximized",
but if you think of it on a case-by-case basis,
in everything, even what we don't know,
the best possible option has always been taken (is what the theist asserts).
I give the theist this possibility, to hold on to, but not without great pain. (as I argued in earlier posts that we have good reason to believe there are instances in which the evil consequences really do seem to outweigh the good. If we can't know the other consequences, why assume the good outweighs the evil on the unknown? Only to support a previously positive assertion, ad hoc.)
Rhad, I got a response to your long post, finally on the way.
I gotta re-read it and I'm multitasking so it will be a bit.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
Do you mean functionally limiting it? Otherwise I don't get what you're saying.
I don't know quite how to say what I mean, but I'm trying to get across that absolute omnipotence just isn't something that works. Period.
Well I can do whatever I want with it, I can put it to any test and inevitably the omnipotence will fail. It doesn't matter if I'm limiting it to our frame of logic because, by definition, it still has to be able to work that way.
Yes
If omnipotent means all powerful, how can it not have the power to not be logical, and if has the power not to be logical, how can we say that omnipotent means all powerful.
I'm not saying it doesn't work per se.. merely that I think it's irrelevant even if it does.. because I wouldn't be able to comprehend it.
I'm not sure how this follows.
"Limits" do not pertain to "able to work" merely "able to understand."
If I perceive something has having no limits, it does not mean that it "cannot work" or "doesn't exist," merely that I cannot comprehend it how it works or in what way it exists.
At least.. that is how I understand it.
I dont think so.
I question the existence of free will at all, in the framework of the being we are discussing. I dont think it fits.
I think we're going to be ultimately stuck on this issue, sadly.
I think we disagree on three main issues:
1) The existence of free will at all.
2) what appears to be "intrinsically possble" with this deity.
3) what we can infer about the states of affairs throughout history
I think this is the wrong way to look at the actions of this deity.
Also, I'm holding on to the belief that free will is unecessary, unless you're trying to argue that it might have created more good than evil (read the post I made before this), in a consequentialist manner.
If so, have your free will and our debate has boiled into the point where the only answer we can possibly have is intuitive disagreement.
If I'm reading you right, you're basically asserting that free will, like everything else, had to be thrown in to maximize good, since removing free will affects so many things that (in ways we can't possibly imagine) the removal of it (totally or circumstantially) would somehow have created more evil than good, or not have created the most possible good.
I dont like the invocation of "Intrinsically possble" here. You have to either argue that it's intrinsically impossible or that we are just not prepared to know all the outcomes, therefore there was no reason for the deity to do something. (in the case of preventing
things that seem to be useless suffering)
You're right. These examples are useless in the current argument.
If I want to come up with real examples you're just going to invoke "logically possible" as if it means nothing.
Again I say, that if the deity was able to make the laws (or "conceptual variables" as you called them), then the deity should be able to change them temporarily (commonly called a 'miracle'.)
So then I say, why do children die terrorizing deaths from cancer? and, why does this and that happen?, etc.
If you want to push this away into a consequentialist "these things happen because there are such consequences we dont know. God is serving to provide the most good or most overall good in these consequences, despite evil like this", then I push you into my previous post made to Wavefreak. If you want to hold on to that viewpoint you've held on to an inductively unsound but still possible position.
Why do I need to state the way our world (completely?) works in order to state what is logically possible or "intrinsically possible"?
Again you are dismissing "intrinsically possible" as if it says nothing where it says everything. You're right, I can't describe everything about the way the world works, but I can give ways in which the deity could prevent earthquakes, tornadoes, needless suffering in certain instances, etc.
Here you can either say
1) there's some unknown property y about the deity or the state of the world which must make that impossible.
2) you dont know all the possible effects of that action (see my last post).
For example, tornadoes can be stopped by redirecting the wind in certain ways. It's unclear why this god would be unable to redirect wind.
So you can argue there's no way we can know what would have happened if the wind was redirected and the tornado never occured.
My response is that, yes, you can hold on to this assertion all you want, but I have submitted that I don't believe it is inductively likely. (last post)
I don't need to speculate on what a world would be like if it existed with the lower limit of evil. I have asserted that, whatever that world would be, it doesn't seem very likely that it is ours. You can assert all day that "it just is." or you can argue that "it's not clear, so it could be ours." These are weak assertions, however. I have submitted that "we live in a word that is the lower limit of evil" is evidentially weak (because there are instances where it seems clear that there are few unknown consequences and evil outweighs good, as far as we can tell. Also, and more importantly, because there's no reason to assume that there is greater good in the unknown consequences for any given action. Good and evil consequences are equally likely to be equally powerful in any given event. Asserting that "they just aren't." is inductively unlikely. Especially if you extrapolate the amount of different variables and events which would have had to create more good than evil throughout all time.)
By giving god an "all-good" attribute, we have speculated on the nature of god. We can deduce that an "all-good" character would have a vested interest in either maximizing good, minimizing evil, or creating the best overall balance of good (minus) evil.
Free will seems to be inherently neutral, overall, in good vs. evil. Aside from its consequences, there's no reason to believe that this deity would be interested in creating it for any reason at all, as I have repeatedly stated.
Again, if you want to argue that free will is somehow necessary to create more good (and we just don't know), then we boil down again into the subjective argument from my previous post.
It's logically inconsistent to believe that a character qualified as "all-good" would create something that produced
1)evil (in an absolute framework) OR
2) more overall evil (in a consequentialist framework)
I haven't seen any support that this is the case, so I'm assuming you're still arguing that freewill somehow provided a greater balance of good, or a greater amount of good in the end.
Previous post.
Even if we look at evil vs. good in an overall consequentialist framework, it's still a logical contradiction to believe this god would create (as stated above) something which makes more evil.
So you must be arguing that free will somehow increases/maximizes overall good.
This no longer seems to be relavent, but let me try to explain: If the theist side of this argument gives in and says something like
"well we don't know what god wants."
or "well we dont know what god can do."
or any similar statement, then the problem of evil has succeeded.
If we don't know what god wants/can do/will do, then how do we know that god is "all-good" "all-powerful" "all-knowing"?
From these three statements we can deduce and induce things about this god, all day long. (such as my assertion that there's no reason to create free will if it creates more evil than good).
I can say "less evil" and "more evil", because that's where we are in the argument.
We're at the same point, still.
You're right, we can't fully know, but my statement above still holds true. Actually, the assertion I made was too weak.
If you want to hold on to the assertion that an "all-good" god created free will despite it increasing the overall amount of evil in the world, then you are being logically inconsistent.
There is no explanation for my previous question. If you truly believe that this deity did something to increase the amount of overall evil in the world, then you're just being inconsistent. I dont think you are, so I dont think this is relavent.
You're right until after this point. I never said, "a greater evil is being served".
I made the point clearly that we "dont know" in reference to each event whether there will be greater good utility or negative utility.
Therefore, there's no reason to assume that there is greater good utility. Therefore, there's no reason to assume that there is a god who has always served in such a way to maximize good utility.
I'm not sure I had to make this post, given my previous post.
Interesting statement on morality, but irrelavent to our current discussion.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.
Your original post said "fictionally" which didn't make sense to me.
As for comprehending, that's just another thing I can ask for. Can the omnipotent being do these things and do them in a way that we can understand.
That's not what I meant, I'll put it another way:
We've constructed a test of said being's omnipotence. No matter the outcome of the test, the omnipotence will fail. I can request that this test be done under any number of rules, it doesn't matter because an omnipotent being should be able do it no matter what.
Such as.. "ability to make a logical being understand fully an wholey illogical action and even and illogical world."
Ah. I see what you're saying. Bravo.
Thanks.
Heh.. but, I can't do this anymore. Perhaps I concede, perhaps I do not, the REAL issue is, is that I'm spending way to much on this forum when I'm in the final weeks of class.
Hopefully I'll be able to get back to this. So keep your eyes open if you decide to stick around RSS.
Sounds good to me. We'll call it a "truce" for now.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell.