rainbow walking

Hi Marz, Sorry for the delay in responding. I'm working away from home and having to access the forum via public library which has its time limits.


Originally posted by Marz Blak
Hello again, rw. Sorry it took so long to respond--I've been a bit busy. Since I anticipate continuing to be busy and thus not having time to carry on with a detailed, fine-pointed dialogue, I'll reply in a sort of generic way in an effort to give you a better sense of where I'm coming from.

Marz: Perhaps my use of the phrase post hoc, ergo proper hoc isn't quite right. 'After this, therefore because of this' captures some of the sense of what I was trying to say, but maybe wasn't quite exactly it.

What I meant was this: from my undertstanding of your position, your response to the 'unnecessary suffering' objection to it is in essence a counter-assertion that what the objection takes as being gratuitious suffering is not at all gratuitious; that such suffering does indeed serve a higher(?) moral purpose, and that the objeciton discounts the inherent moral value of humanity's struggle to overcome such suffering.

rw: One of the problems with determing "necessity" regarding gratuitous suffering" in the historical context, is establishing a baseline from which to build a case for unnecessary. From the individual's perspective any degree of suffering will always appear unnecessary. To humanity in the aggregate it becomes an entirely different ballgame. How much suffering was necessary to establish in man's mind that slavery is not a moral or ethical means of extracting labor from another human being? How can we give a descriptive response to this question? It appeals to our normative valuation and, since this is a subjective expression based on each individuals personal sense of value, it becomes an issue that doesn't support even an inductive argument that builds its case on an appeal to such valuations. It is enough to simply say that man has learned not to enslave his fellow man. Certainly were we to describe an example of slavery where humans are driven by whips, all of us would recoil in horror. But all slavery was not so orchestrated. There were indentured slaves who actually sold themselves into this condition to support their families. I suggest that this type of slavery still exists under a more carefully concealed terminology. So you can see that every aspect of our existence has its complications when considered thoroughly. If an omni-max being waved his magic wand and eradicated slavery, how many indentured slaves and their families would perish immediately? These are some of the complex issues that arise when looking at these questions from a historical perspective. So any attempt to ascribe "necessary and sufficient" to the many causes of suffering, in order to be evidential must be established from a baseline. Otherwise it's just an appeal to emotion and this is a fallacy.

Sorry I've just been informed my time is up Marz, so I'll get back to the remainder of your response as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Jamie_L

rw:

Man I hate coming into a thread 3-pages into it. Sigh.

Sorry to be kind of hit-and-run on your last PoE thread. I may do likewise here. My free time just ain't what it used to be.

With that said, here goes another potential PoE drive by:

First, let me reiterate that my PoE-type objections are to the notion of a being that is supposedly both omnipotent and optimally benevolent and capable of interacting with this universe. I can certainly conceive of a being who does the things you suggest, but I object to labeling that being as both benevolent and omnipotent.

In the OP you describe a process of moving towards maximum moral potential. At some point, there is an end state: the point at when man reaches his maximum potential for goodness. Now, while man on his own must follow a process of trial and error to get there, an omnipotent diety would require no such process to get man to that point. An omnipotent diety could will man into such a state. And anything that man learned from the process itself, any wisdom along the way, could still be given to man by a truely omnipotent being. The only reason for an omnipotent being that wants man to achieve that end state to accept a process that includes suffering is that the diety wants the suffering for its own sake. That is not benevolent. Alternatively, if the god is forced to accept the suffering: if the diety cannot create a human being that has all the wisdom it would have learned from suffering, then that diety is not omnipotent.

My second comment is one I made in the othe PoE thread (sorry to repeat myself, but I still don't think it's adequately addressed). By stating that this is the best possible process to achieve man's maximal moral goodness, it says that every evil that occurs is absolutely necessary. Every single instance of suffering: every earthquake that kills thousands, every freak lightning strike that kills someone, every infant born with horrible defects, produces more good than would have existed had the suffering not taken place. Not only is that a hard pill to swallow, it really speaks to a moral nihilism, or at least a moral confusion. Should we try to stop suffering? Why should we? Any suffering that happens must have produced more good than evil. Perhaps we should cause suffering, because any successfully inflicted suffering must have produced a greater good.

Lastly, I think that by arguing for a diety who sets up a world like this, you do, necessarily imply that this diety intentionally creates suffering. If this being created the universe, and if this being's goal is to help man achieve moral goodness through this process, then this being set things up so as to cause suffering. I have argued in other PoE discussions (and even above in this post) that an omnipotent being who creates a world with suffering does so only because he wants suffering for it's own sake. An omnipotent being does not have to use suffering as a means to an end, because an omnipotent being is its own means.

Once again, apologies for being almost troll-like in my post-and-runs lately. I can't guarantee a quick response to any replies this time either. But I'll try.

Later.

Jamie

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by rainbow walking :

Right, exactly. God could interfere without revealing his existence, as he has in the past, to reduce suffering.

In the case of the pot of boiling water, God could intervene and return the water to room temperature, while making any observers around forget that the water was boiling in the first place. The water would be harmless, the child would avoid being scalded, and the parent would realize that she needs to instruct the child not to do that, because the water could have been boiling. In fact, God could just plant the knowledge in the child's head that boiling water is dangerous. If it would be wrong to do that, then it's wrong for parents to instruct their children with that fact, too.

Straw man. I'm demanding God prevent more suffering than he does now. That doesn't require providing everyone with automatic knowledge or instinct. It requires intervening a few more times. That's easy.

Remember, all I have to do is show that God could have been morally better, to prove he doesn't exist. It would be morally better to intervene a few more times, because sometimes, teaching someone something is better than letting them figure it out for themselves. Right?

Do you wish there were less suffering in the world? Yes or no.

Ah, this is a very common theist mistake, which makes it troubling that you're erring this way. For evidential arguments, possibilities are never enough. Evidential arguments grant possibilities in the first place, but they provide evidence to doubt that those possibilities are probabilities. I provide evidence that God has failed in his responsibility, namely, that God could have intervened in some cases to reduce intense suffering. You can't just respond with "Maybe there was a greater good involved!" unless you want to accept global skepticism. Do I need to explain why?

Humanity's survival depends upon nothing except God's blessing, because God is omnipotent. God can teach us everything we need to know. God could just improve our ability to learn, itself, which is consonant with your claim that humanity's survival depends upon our ability to learn. Even if he didn't, God could teach us more than he does now, which would make him a morally better being. But it's incoherent to say there's a morally better being than a morally perfect being.

Koyaanisqatsi

I'm sorry, rainbow, but you keep avoiding dealing with salient points by saying, "I only need to show...in order to defeat PoE," but that's semantics, at best and nothing to do with defeating the argument; the salience of it and impact of it, nor does it address the logical extension of your own argument. You can't just say, "all I have to do is this and the argument is dead," if your own "this" doesn't hold up, yes?

To whit: An omniscient god would be able to know when humanity reaches it's greatest good. It would know (a) it is attainable and (b) it is desireable (that's why it set things up the way it did). This is part and parcel to your argument.

So, we're now in the year 10,321 (let's say); the exact point when humanity has achieved its "greatest good." From that year forward, no man inflicted evil will ever happen again and all natural suffering has been irradicated; no one dies; no one gets sick; no one inflicts harm (knowingly) on another living creature. We are all morally perfect beings as the end result of your "greatest good" journey. From that year forward, we would exist in an identical state as if god had simply mandated it from the beginning.

So what happens in 10,421? The same thing? How? There would have been one hundred years of absolutley no moral evil, so how did the offspring's offspring of that first generation learn to be morally perfect? What happens in the year 10,521? The same thing? How?

Your argument hinges on three things:

1. A "greatest good" is possible
2. Evil is necessary to achieve our "greatest good"
3. A non-interfering god instantiated evil in order to guide humanity toward their "greatest good."

Those are your conditions. You try to get around them by saying, "No, you would have to prove that a non-interfering god does not exist. All I need do is show how a greatest good could be obtained by a non-interfering god to defeat PoE."

But that's not true. You are asserting the existence of a non-interfering god, who, due to its omnimax abilities, has set all of this into motion.

Just as the PoE is in response to theists asserting an omnimax god, so to are our agruments in response to you asserting an omnimax god.

See?

So, applying the same logic to your assertion of a "greatest good" we see that it does not obtain in a logically consistent extension; i.e., what happens in the post "greatest good" world to maintain the "greatest good" absent evil?

It also contradicts god's omniscience, since, presumably, once we achieve our "greatest good" and become immortal, then everything that preceeded that state would be ancient and forgotten history; a status quo identical to if god had simply skipped all of that for us and placed us into the status quo of 10.321 to begin with.

Let's jump ahead one million years. It is now the year 1,010,321; greatest good plus one million years. We've now had one million years of moral perfection. But how? You're argument states that evil is necessary to achieve a greatest good; to teach us what is comparably good vs. what is comparably evil. But now there has been one million years of no evil to teach anybody the comparable good, so how do our future "greatest good" progeny maintain that "greatest good" absent evil?

And if it's possible (which it must be for your argument's conditions to be sufficient to defeat PoE), then why doesn't god's omniscience give over to omnibenevolence and therefore it simply mandates "greatest good" status quo? Just erase the first 10,321 years and go immediately to the "greatest good" plus one year of humanity?

See what I'm getting at? If there is a greatest good and we can acheive it through the necessary lesssons inherent (as you claim) in the existence of evil, then once we acheive it, evil will no longer exist. How then do we maintain a "greatest good" for, presumably, all eternity (since we will no longer die) absent this evil and, if we can achieve "greatest good" on our own, then god already knows we can achieve it on our own (due to its omniscience).

If that is the case (which must be), then why wouldn't god's omni-benevelonce kick in and just take out the unnecessary middle years?

See what I mean by taking your argument to its logical conclusion and showing how it is flawed?

You are saying it is necessary for god to not intervene, so that we can learn the lesson on our own, to achieve our greatest good. But god's omniscience would tell him that we can and have achieved our greatest good in a linear manner that god is not bound by, due to its omniscience. It would be able to see that in the year 10,321, humanity will have achieved its greatest good, if left all alone.

So, now that it knows this long before we actually reach the year 10, 321, why wouldn't its omniscience then give over to its omnibenevolence and just short-cut us all to the year 10,321 right from the start?

You've got to account for these questions or your argument is incomplete and therefore does not defeat anything.

You say it's important that humanity learn and earn this lesson, yet projecting forward one million years into our by then immortal future shows us that it is possible, allegedly, to exist in a "greatest good" stasis absent evil for all eternity.

Why, therefore, doesn't god simply apply what it already knows to be the case and collapse time for us, due to its omnibenevelonce, and implant the knowledge we had learned and earned in god's own omniscience projections and simply put us in the year 10,321 plus?

Couldn't an omniscient, omnipotent god simply imagine those 10, 321 years, see that we can achieve our greatest good absent his help and therefore, due to omnibenevelonce, remove the unnecessary suffering in between and grant us our "greatest good" status?

Marz Blak

No problem with the long delay--I've been a bit occupied otherwise as well.

I'm sorry, rw, but I just don't quite buy your line of reasoning. I don't believe it is, well, necessary to establish a baseline to make a PoE-type argument. Rather, as others say here, I think it is both necessary and sufficient to establish only that in our current reality there exist conditions and/or events in which any moral lessons which humanity is capable of learning (either from the standpoint of specific individuals or in the aggregate, as a race) could have been instantiated by other means not involving apparently gratuitous suffering. You seem to feel that it is impossible to conclude that such is the case, wheras I and a number of others who post here seem to feel that this is self-evident, or at least as apparent as any such thing could possibly be (given that the only way anyone could say such a thing with absolute certitude would be if he were omniscient as well--but that's another argument ).

Given our apparent diametrically opposed conclusions from the available evidence on this question, I suspect that any further discussion on this matter might not be fruitful. In fact, this suspicion aligns quite nicely with my earlier assessment of your argument, which is that it a is logically consistent and reasonable apologia but in my opinion not one which is persuasive to someone not adhering to certain ontological presuppositions which must support it at the outset.

rainbow walking

marz cont.: To this, my interpretation of your argument, my response is that there are a number of implicit assumptions upon which it is based that I fail to see as justified. Firstly, there is an assumption underlying this entire line of reasoning that there is indeed some objective or universal set of ethical principles. I think this is to say the least a debabable proposition. Secondly, even assuming the existence of such universal ethics, it contains an assertion that it is inherently better in some way for mankind to aspire towards them in the face of ethically objectionable conditions and events, rather than, say, having the purported omnipontent being simply create us as creatures imbued with these superior ethics. This is also an imminently arguable proposition to me, your theories about the relativity of value judgments notwithstanding (or rather, these theories being also debatable to me).

rw: Yes there are some basic underlying assumptions, presuppositions if you will, inherent in my argument. It is inherent in my argument that humans prefer to live as opposed to dying; that they prefer to live happily as opposed to miserably. It is also inherent in my argument that some basics revolving around these preferences, (assuming you accept those two preferences as a universal given), involve humans as social creatures and that such involvement requires some degree of basic ethical practices or virtues in order to facilitate social existence. These basics, in my opinion, represent a specific human, earth bound universal objective pattern of ethics that emerge in virtually every human social construct: things like prohibitions against murder, theft, rape etc. and so forth. Now I concede the application of these basics are often quite complex and hardly ever resolvable from a fixed position, hence we have evolved a highly complex system of justice to adjudicate these specifics. I am, and my argument reflects as much, a student of Aristotle’s virtue oriented ethics. Again I concede that we can debate the objective versus the subjective nature of morals and ethics but I also see no reason why this is essential to this argument per se. Perhaps if you could be more specific as to why you feel these presuppositions undermine my position I could address your concerns directly.

As to your second objection, it is essential I adopt this position in order that I defend the argument. The argument is based on accurate historical precedents and, while it certainly flows from a particular interpretation of history, (as do all such arguments), I see nothing in the interpretation that delineates from the norm.

Everyone continues to assert that such a being could have simply created a being with the preference for rightness fully achieved and by-passed all the pain and suffering required for that achievement. Such claims fail for two reasons:

1. The concept of preference inculcates a matter of choice, thus any creative act that negates this aspect of my argument is not addressing my argument. I have conceded numerous times that a god could have created a different creature that automatically expressed these virtues without the recourse of choice. So I am not challenging PoE on the basis of omnipotence. I have established an argument that requires such a being to respect man’s power of choice in the matter; an argument that maintains certain attributes of humanity that I also assume to be good and desirable.

2. My argument hinges on man’s historical progression also being a matter of a god’s choice. This incorporates omniscience and assumes that such a being would know the best way to facilitate man’s greatest good is to allow man to achieve it for himself. This allowance would compliment omni-benevolence and remain consistent to such a being’s attributes across the board. Continuing to assert omnipotence, while ignoring my argument and this being’s other attributes, incurs a contradiction. There must be one logical restriction to omnipotence: that being that omnipotence cannot trump omniscience. His power has no will of its own but is activated in concert with his omniscient will. All the objections raised thusfar continue to focus primarily on omnipotence while ignoring man’s will, god’s will and omniscience.

In closing this exchange I will say that all things are debatable to you, me, and everyone. For me the best virtues are not creatable by divine fiat. The very concept of virtue is established in its expression under fire. Without a test of some kind virtue is a meaningless term. How would a man know he is honest unless he has the opportunity to be dishonest and willfully chooses not to be dishonest? These are questions of logical import that cannot be ignored. To simply say a god could create a being virtuous and by-pass the testing and preparation of the will, wherein all virtues are ultimately expressed, is not logical. Can such virtues be a created act without damage to the creatures will? If anything, we may have here another logical restriction to omnipotence. Virtues absolutely require testing for expression. A being who exists in a state where testing is not available cannot be human. If PoE must destroy humanity to achieve its aim I say it is not a logical argument and fails…miserably.

rainbow walking

Hi Jamie,


Jamie: First, let me reiterate that my PoE-type objections are to the notion of a being that is supposedly both omnipotent and optimally benevolent and capable of interacting with this universe. I can certainly conceive of a being who does the things you suggest, but I object to labeling that being as both benevolent and omnipotent.

rw As do all my opponents in this discussion.

Jamie: In the OP you describe a process of moving towards maximum moral potential. At some point, there is an end state: the point at when man reaches his maximum potential for goodness. Now, while man on his own must follow a process of trial and error to get there, an omnipotent diety would require no such process to get man to that point. An omnipotent diety could will man into such a state. And anything that man learned from the process itself, any wisdom along the way, could still be given to man by a truely omnipotent being. The only reason for an omnipotent being that wants man to achieve that end state to accept a process that includes suffering is that the diety wants the suffering for its own sake. That is not benevolent. Alternatively, if the god is forced to accept the suffering: if the diety cannot create a human being that has all the wisdom it would have learned from suffering, then that diety is not omnipotent.

rw: It is not logically possible to create virtuewithout a means of preparation and testing. The concept requires, from the outset, the existence of less than virtuous possible alternatives, hence the existence of evil and the consequences that arise from evil. These normative valuations cannot be instantiated into a being who must willfully express and abide by them. Such a being would not be human. If you must destroy humanity to achieve PoE…what have you gained? An omni-benevolent being who knows that willfull virtue is better than robotic rote non-willful existence, would provide the best possible means for such creatures to develop both morally and scientifically. Omnipotence cannot trump omniscience without incurring a logical contradiction within PoE.

Jamie: My second comment is one I made in the othe PoE thread (sorry to repeat myself, but I still don't think it's adequately addressed). By stating that this is the best possible process to achieve man's maximal moral goodness, it says that every evil that occurs is absolutely necessary. Every single instance of suffering: every earthquake that kills thousands, every freak lightning strike that kills someone, every infant born with horrible defects, produces more good than would have existed had the suffering not taken place. Not only is that a hard pill to swallow, it really speaks to a moral nihilism, or at least a moral confusion. Should we try to stop suffering? Why should we? Any suffering that happens must have produced more good than evil. Perhaps we should cause suffering, because any successfully inflicted suffering must have produced a greater good.

rw: Moral confusion is an apt description of man’s current status. What type of moral clarity would you describe a creature as having who had been created such by divine fiat? How would such a creature know it was morally superior without a history of moral failure from which to compare? These are all important considerations my opponents continue to ignore.


Jamie: Lastly, I think that by arguing for a diety who sets up a world like this, you do, necessarily imply that this diety intentionally creates suffering. If this being created the universe, and if this being's goal is to help man achieve moral goodness through this process, then this being set things up so as to cause suffering. I have argued in other PoE discussions (and even above in this post) that an omnipotent being who creates a world with suffering does so only because he wants suffering for it's own sake. An omnipotent being does not have to use suffering as a means to an end, because an omnipotent being is its own means.

rw: Man has made great strides scientifically and, to a lesser degree, ethically against the potential and actual causes of suffering. Your objection ignores the other side of this coin. Man has also experienced much joy, goodness, love and virtue during his historical trek. How can you have the one without the other? Whether such a being is to blame for every pain and suffering a man experiences is a matter of justice. If the end justifies the means the cost analysis consequential ethic could very well become the clarifying factor in establishing man’s greatest good.

Marz Blak

Hello again, rw, and thanks for responding.

As you say earlier in your post, there are certain stipulations (which I find debatable) you must make for the sake of the construction of your argument; and moreover, in the preceding excerpt, you bring in more ideas (your theory of virtue and your naked assertion that the 'best' virtues are not imposed, etc.) which I also find debatable. Also, your last two statements regarding the definition of humanity would seem to indicate that we have very different ideas about what humanity is, or contains as attributes.

I must conclude, then, that your response here has only shown us to be further apart in our basic assumptions--something I stated as a suspicion in an earlier post, which has become even more clear from this more recent response of yours. I think that indeed perhaps we shall have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Best regards!

rainbow walking

Thomas: Right, exactly. God could interfere without revealing his existence, as he has in the past, to reduce suffering.

rw: And the problem for you arises rather quickly when conceding this logic, Thomas; the problem of establishing a baseline of pain and suffering to support your initial argument based on sufficiency and necessity. If you concede that such a being could also do this, without a baseline for your “evidence” how do we know he hasn’t? How can you accurately say that it couldn’t have been much worse? You can’t. You only assert that man has suffered too much without considering that perhaps he has been spared much more. Man could have rocked along for ten thousand years under Hitler’s fascist regime. These objections raised on the basis of “too much” ignore history and the fact that it could have been much worse. My argument has established both goalposts: “Too much” ending with extinction and “greatest good” culminating in man’s escape into the universe and indefinite life. Your objections are focused on the now and the past and totally ignore the future. Yes, God could have done these things. You don’t know that he hasn’t and I can’t assert that he has. But the point is established that your subjective assessment of “too much” has not been established on a historical scale that includes man’s past, present and future. Thus your “evidence” is lacking some essential qualities to justify its force against my argument.

[quote]rw: None of your descriptions of how a god could do this without possible adverse consequences has withstood my extrapolations out to some of those consequences.



Thomas: In the case of the pot of boiling water, God could intervene and return the water to room temperature, while making any observers around forget that the water was boiling in the first place. The water would be harmless, the child would avoid being scalded, and the parent would realize that she needs to instruct the child not to do that, because the water could have been boiling. In fact, God could just plant the knowledge in the child's head that boiling water is dangerous. If it would be wrong to do that, then it's wrong for parents to instruct their children with that fact, too.

rw: And my counter argument remains. You are positing a super safety man god. Man must learn to be responsible for his own safety and that of his children. It is part of his developing virtue in being considerate of his fellow man and children. Your example also leads us to the question: Why should such a being do this for one child and not for all? You haven’t been clear as to the degree of interference you’re advocating here.



Thomas: Straw man. I'm demanding God prevent more suffering than he does now. That doesn't require providing everyone with automatic knowledge or instinct. It requires intervening a few more times. That's easy.

rw: Why should he do this in some areas and not all areas? Who is to be spared and who allowed to suffer the consequences? Until you clarify these major distinctions your argument is incomprehensible. I am just taking the fairest route in interpreting your argument and positing the consequences of doing this for all and at all times. You seem to now be advocating some sort of selective intervention at basically insignificant occasions which is not consistent to the parameters of my argument. My argument is based on historical man, not specific instances of specific occasions for suffering. In order to be consistent to my argument your examples must be fairly applied to all humans across the board throughout history, thus you must be advocating a total eradication of, for instance, any occasion for children to be scalded by pots of boiling water.

Thomas: Remember, all I have to do is show that God could have been morally better, to prove he doesn't exist. It would be morally better to intervene a few more times, because sometimes, teaching someone something is better than letting them figure it out for themselves. Right?

rw: Then you really don’t comprehend the parameters of this discussion. It would be morally better for man to acquire his own greatest good than not. This is, and always has been, the parameters of my argument. Your attempts to show that a god could have intervened in specific cases doesn’t address the bigger question here. It is your subjective opinion that intervention in specific cases would be morally better, and it probably would for those immediately involved in that specific case, but for humanity in the aggregate, which is the basis of my argument, it would not. Thus omni-benevolence would consider the greatest good for humanity in the aggregate to be more ethically desirable than the immediate sparing of a child’s pain. Men make these choices everyday. It is sometimes necessary to hurt a child in order to help them. That’s the entire concept behind ‘discipline”. If you think of humanity in the aggregate as that “child” it might be easier to comprehend the scope of my argument.



Thomas: Do you wish there were less suffering in the world? Yes or no.

rw: No. I wish there was NO suffering. But not at the expense of NO progress.

[quote]Thomas: Prove that that's really the greatest good. That's what I've been asking you to do the whole time. I've provided strong reasons to doubt it with "bees" and "boiling water."

rw: I'm not obligated to prove such a claim Thomas, just show it as a logical possibility.



Thomas: Ah, this is a very common theist mistake, which makes it troubling that you're erring this way. For evidential arguments, possibilities are never enough. Evidential arguments grant possibilities in the first place, but they provide evidence to doubt that those possibilities are probabilities. I provide evidence that God has failed in his responsibility, namely, that God could have intervened in some cases to reduce intense suffering. You can't just respond with "Maybe there was a greater good involved!" unless you want to accept global skepticism. Do I need to explain why?

rw: Your subjective opinions do not constitute evidence Thomas. You have only pointed at suffering and declared it to be “too much” and have then assumed that it must mean an omni-max being couldn’t exist. Your only “evidence” is the fact that people suffer. Your assessment of “too much” ignores an entire panoply of reasons, the historical progress made in response to suffering, the future of man in the aggregate who requires the ability to experience pain and suffering, not only for his survival, but for his future evolution, just to name a few. You have yet to establish the “too much” from this perspective. You continue to focus on isolated cases that are nothing more than straw men themselves.

[quote]rw: This alone proves that man's survival depends on his ability to learn. Short circuit this survivability factor and man may not survive.



Thomas: Humanity's survival depends upon nothing except God's blessing, because God is omnipotent. God can teach us everything we need to know.


rw: How? Don’t you mean…implant us with everything he wants us to know? What about the things WE want to know? You have to have a classroom to teach.

Thomas: God could just improve our ability to learn, itself, which is consonant with your claim that humanity's survival depends upon our ability to learn.



rw: Improving our ability to learn, by our own efforts, is also part of our learning Thomas.


Thomas: Even if he didn't, God could teach us more than he does now, which would make him a morally better being. But it's incoherent to say there's a morally better being than a morally perfect being.

rw: How does one teach virtue without suffering the consequences of learning what is not virtuous? Your arguments continue to ignore these obvious hurdles Thomas. And, as always, fail to address why a god would be morally perfect to by-pass the “will” of man to obtain an objective that man, (you and other opponents of my argument for instance), have willed to be better than allowing man to acquire these virtues himself and practice them voluntarily by choice.

rainbow walking

alix: To my knowledge, the POE has never been used as a proof for the non-existence of a God; rather, it is a demonstration that the presence of unecessary evil and suffering is inconsistent with a being who is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

rw: It is claimed as a logical proof that such a being doesn’t exist. If “inconsistency” is all PoE is arguing my task just became much better defined.

[quote]rw: It isn’t necessary I predict man’s entire history…how could I? I only need demonstrate enough to justify man’s historical progressive journey and the role evil and suffering plays in that progression. I need only show that such a role is not an automatic indictment against the existence of an omni-max god. Which, of course, it isn’t.



alix: Your solution to the 'indictment' posed by the PoE is to assert that unecessary evil and suffering do not exist: that all evil and suffering is necessary to advance man along a 'meta-path' to a goal desired by the omnimax being.

Unfortunately, you have not demonstrated why the omnimax being could not simply create the state of affairs wherein the goal is achieved, although such a thing is clearly within the capacity of an omnipotent being, and just as clearly satisfies the lack of evil and suffering desired by an omnibenevolent being.

rw: The “goal” I’ve articulated in my argument is a goal of man as a virtuous creature, (preference for rightness), by his own will. If you understand the requirements inherent in the concept of virtue you have your explanation as to why a virtuous creature, by divine fiat, is not a logical possibility.

[quote] rw: The tremendous amount of pain and suffering endured by man thusfar is a testimony to man’s stubborn, ignorant refusal to face the obvious causes of his predicaments. We’d rather invent new and imaginative ways to squeeze labor from our neighbor to turn the natural resources we need into goods and products for our comfort and existence and to hell with man as a species. It is, and always has been, “What’s in it for me?” Until we develop a happy medium between that and what’s necessary for our future, nothing will change but the names and faces.



alix: While this diatribe is well-written, it does not appear to have any particular relevance to the logic behind the PoE. In fact, by implying that some 'happy medium' is required for change, you leave open the possibility that all of the evil and suffering experienced by man is for naught - that the goal will never be achieved. In which case, you omnimax being has created suffering and evil for no purpose.

rw: Yes, with man as a willful participant, this is indeed a possibility that must, by necessity, be left open. If this proves to be the case then man has a viable charge against the existence of such a being.