mattbballman

tom,

>>I said these are accidents.

I know of few accidents that do not have some antecedent and preventable cause.

>>>I doubt you'll have much success if you try to blame humans' suffering upon their refusal to follow God's laws unless you can show independently that God probably exists and probably has indicated to us the correct way to behave.

Then the argument either runs in circle or needs to start at another point, no?

>>>Are you saying the analogy provides more reason to disbelieve in God's existence as it stands now rather than if only a small number of children died?

More or less. But if you wish to go further the whole paradigm of free will needs to be inserted...and the orphange analogy becomes somewhat strained.

matt

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattbballman :

"I know of few accidents that do not have some antecedent and preventable cause."

Right. That's part of the thought experiment. Maybe the orphans were indeed just too stupid or rebellious to follow the security guards' rules. In fact, let's make them orphaned two-year-olds. And let's say the security guards didn't tell them the rules in any clear way.

"More or less. But if you wish to go further the whole paradigm of free will needs to be inserted...and the orphange analogy becomes somewhat strained."

You can insert it yourself. Maybe the security guards just couldn't protect the kids, because of someone's free will decisions.

wordsmyth

Perhaps the security guard only told one child the rules and then asked that child to pass them on to the others. That child told another child, who told another child, who told another child, etc. By the time the rules had passed (by word of mouth alone) to every child, no two children could agree 100% on the exact wording of the rules.

The child who learned the rules directly from the security guard has Attention Deficit Disorder (common among children, ya know ) and can't remember the exact wording of the rules either.

mattbballman

>>>You can insert it yourself. Maybe the security guards just couldn't protect the kids, because of someone's free will decisions.

That would line up well with reality.

matt

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattbballman :

"That would line up well with reality."

So let me get this straight. In the situation originally described, you wouldn't think it more likely than not that the security guards were on vacation, because of the mere possibility that all those alleged accidents were somehow caused by someone's free will decisions, in such a way that these decisions were (1) intended to produce these alleged accidents and (2) important enough not to be prevented from occurring, despite their damaging effects?

I'm willing to grant that if it for some reason seems intuitively probable that secret free willed people were choosing for all those alleged accidents to happen and it's very important that these free will decisions turn into actions (even though laws in the universe prevent lots of other free will decisions from turning into actions), one can reject my argument -- but I doubt anyone will find that intuitively probable.

luvluv

Thomas Metcalf:

I don't see how 3 follows from 2. Do we know that the best, or perhaps better put, the most plausible explanation is always the true one? Particularly in a situation which, as is the case with God's motives for allowing evil, we have limited information?

To be blunt, Thomas, I think this is really an exercise in propaganda. I don't really see how you can fairly present the case for theism in such skewed scenario. Most of the best defenses against the argument for evil are excluded by the situation you have drawn up. It's too loaded in your favor to convince any serious minded person who is informed about the issue.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by luvluv :

"I don't see how 3 follows from 2. Do we know that the best, or perhaps better put, the most plausible explanation is always the true one? Particularly in a situation which, as is the case with God's motives for allowing evil, we have limited information?"

The thought experiment and similar ones are intended to illuminate the jump from (1) and (2) to (3). You have to ask yourself whether you think all these remote(?) possibilities are enough to keep you from thinking it's more likely than not that the guards were on vacation.

"I don't really see how you can fairly present the case for theism in such skewed scenario. Most of the best defenses against the argument for evil are excluded by the situation you have drawn up."

Not at all. You're welcome to present any and all of those defenses that you want to try to answer the thought experiment. It should be noted of course that philosophers of religion on both sides of the debate generally seem to agree that most or all theodicies fail, and the only hope for the theist is the Unknown Purpose Defense. But. Let me know which defenses to the Argument from Evil you find compelling. It's hard for me to imagine any of them working very well (other than the UPD) so I don't want to try to offer some in place of an apologist who actually finds them convincing.

And also, let me back up a bit. I want to make sure you think we can estimate probabilities about nonexistence at all. Suppose I'm returning to my mansion, which has numerous closets, after a year of absence. Suppose I have a problem in some of them with an invisible moth infestation. Invisible moths are even more ravenous than regular moths, and they love to eat all kinds of clothes. Now suppose I go to one of my closets and open the door, and I see no evidence of damage to my clothes. Do you think that this is probably one of the closets with moths in it, or one of the closets without moths in it?

mattbballman

>>>So let me get this straight. In the situation originally described, you wouldn't think it more likely than not that the security guards were on vacation, because of the mere possibility that all those alleged accidents were somehow caused by someone's free will decisions, in such a way that these decisions were (1) intended to produce these alleged accidents and (2) important enough not to be prevented from occurring, despite their damaging effects?

If I catch the sentence right, more or less, yes.

>>>I'm willing to grant that if it for some reason seems intuitively probable that secret free willed people were choosing for all those alleged accidents to happen and it's very important that these free will decisions turn into actions (even though laws in the universe prevent lots of other free will decisions from turning into actions), one can reject my argument -- but I doubt anyone will find that intuitively probable.

Depends on their view of indiviual responsibility. Mine's rather high. Society's as a whole is rather low. I think in many dimensions; most people think in only one at a time.

matt

Wiploc

Let's try a simpler example then, to see whether you can work with the ideas being tested: Let's say Joe is one of those welders who works sky-scraper construction. Dangerous work. And Joe suffers from bad vertigo about every other day. He doesn't tell anyone about the vertigo because he doesn't want to get fired.

1. On days when he has vertigo, his odds of falling to his death are ten times as high as other days.

2. He suffers the vertigo on half the days.

3. Yesterday he fell to his death.

Question: Is it more than 50% likely that Joe had vertigo yesterday?
crc

luvluv

Thomas Metcalf:

Well, is anything other than the UPD really necessary? Most people do not have a problem with the notion that God could have a reason for certain instances of evil that we could not, at this time, understand.

Further, I think if your example is to be honest, that some of the children should fall out of the window and die, others go on to have fruitful and meaningful relationships with the guards (at a distance, somehow) and eventually go on to live fulfilling lives. I don't know how you would make allowances for the afterlife, which to me really terribly skews the whole affair.

I'm not familiar with these exercises, and at this point in time I have a hard time seeing where they would fit in honest philosophy. It's just a blatant appeal to emotion, in my book. If you can't make your case logically, then you don't have a disproof. Period. After that you can choose to believe or disbelieve as you see fit, but this experiment doesn't establish, or even help establish, any of the premises to the argument from evil. As I said, with all due respect, I don't think any person seriously considering the issue would be at all affected one way or the other by it.

Why not use full blown Christian theology as the thought experiment? That would seem more honest. Posit the possibility of a heaven and a hell, of real moral progress and real moral regression, etc, etc.

The only way a person could assess that using this scenario is via gut level intuition, which is quite often wrong or misleading. 3 does not follow from 2 unless you can independantly establish that the best explanation is always the actual explanation. And that still leaves a lot of plainly subjective and openly questionable criteria for establishing the "best" explanation.

I would say that there are probably no moths in your closet, or that they are dead or molting or something. But I couldn't say that there definitely were no moths in the closet with objective certainty.