Thomas Metcalf

This thread is continued from here; I apologize for any slight inconvenience this splitting may have caused, but as we have had problems dealing with very long threads (due to a few glitches in vB) this will become SOP for threads longer than 250 posts. Jobar, moderator.


Originally posted by NonContradiction :

Do you grant, though, that if God is morally perfect, the problem of evil is still a problem?

NonContradiction

No, I don't. Here is the problem I have that I would be most grateful to you if you could solve:

If God isn't all-good because He doesn't prevent evil, then it follows that He would be all-good if He were to prevent evil. By a standard independent of God, you deem God not to be all-good for not preventing evil. Similarly, it follows, by a standard independent of God, you would also deem God to be all-good if He were to prevent evil.

However, the problem is that if God were to prevent evil, then no standard of good and evil independent of God would exist, so how could you deem God to be all-good for preventing evil?

Dr Rick

So what if we couldn't?

Besides, if it is for some reason important to an all good god that we deem him all good, he could simply tell us that he is all good or instill us with the ability to distinguish good from evil.

NonContradiction

So if God prevents evil, then He would be all-good, but His goodness would be based on a standard of good and evil dependent upon Himself. Therefore, God's goodness would be arbitrary, according to you.

So where does all of this leave God? He is in a catch-22. If He doesn't prevent evil, then He is going to be damned by a standard independent of Himself. If He prevents evil, then His goodness is vacuous since it's based on a standard dependent upon Himself. God is damned if He does and damned if He doesn't.

Xixax

In order for god to allow evil there must already be a standard by which to judge what is evil and not, so that we know it is being allowed. Even if it were not being allowed, we would still be aware of this standard.

We know evil from good by the outcome of the action, whether or not it causes pain or suffering. If we never experienced pain or suffering, we would still be aware that such a thing would be bad. I've yet to have a limb cleaved from my body, but I can imagine it would be rather painful.

God, being omnipotent, should be able to create humans* ( thanks to whomever started this ) that were knowledgable of what pain would feel like if it were to happen, but without filling the world with it so that they could appreciate the lack of that feeling.

Back to your point.

Why? I don't believe that to be true, and I don't see any arguments for it.

The rest of the post relies on that unsupported statement.

Dr Rick

Not at all; nothing an omni-max God does is arbitrary, in my judgement.

You lost me, here; If god is all good and leaves us in a state that is also all good, no one can or will damn him.

NonContradiction

If God is all-good because of a moral standard which is dependent upon Himself, then how can that not be arbitrary?

The point is He is in a no win situation. If He doesn't prevent evil, then He isn't all-good by a standard independent of Himself. If He does prevent evil, then He is all-good by a standard dependent upon Himself, which means that it's vacuous statement. Either way, God can't win.

Dr Rick

You mean He's not dependent upon Himself for His moral standard?

Tell me, what is the moral standard of the Christian God if it is not Himself? Every Christian with whom I've discussed this says morality is entirely determined by God. Do you disagree, or do you think it's arbitrary?

There is no reason that we must shift the standards based upon whether or not god follows them. Whether he or something else sets them, if he follows them he is by definition all-good, and if he doesn't, he isn't.

God could set a standard and not follow it, or something else could set the standard and he could not follow it, or god could set the standard and follow it, or something else could set the standard and he could follow it.

To whom is the omni-max god under these circumstances going to "lose" in this no-win situtation; what penalty or harm will come to him?

NonContradiction

And every atheist I have ever talked to has claimed that if morality is dependent on God, then to say God is good is a vacuous statement since God's goodness would be dependent upon whatever He says is good.




I don't think that you are getting my point.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by NonContradiction :

Actually, no. That's an instance of the Denying the Antecedent fallacy. All we can derive from "If doesn't prevent evil, then not all-good" like that is "If all good, then prevents evil."

Well, I would deem him better than he is now.

There would still be hypothetical evils. I could say "If flooding had killed 10,000 poverty-stricken people in India today, that would have been evil," even if God prevented that flood. So I could still identify good and evil entities and situations.