Hawkingfan

Non,
Why don't you start supporting with evidence this ridiculous assertion that totally begs the question:

NonContradiction

You changed the terms of the argument. We are talking about pain and suffering, not about what is morally immoral, moral, or amoral.

Therefore, your last sentence should read as follows: Inconvenience, as included in your definition, IS NOT pain and suffering. I would argue that inconvenience IS painful, albeit, not as painful as living through a holocaust. There are degrees of pain and suffering, so I don't see where your example refutes my assertion in P1.

NonContradiction

So what? If the existence of patience logically implies that pain and suffering MUST exist, then it gives God a good reason to create pain and suffering.

Remember, Philosoft challenged me to come up with an example to refute premise 3 of wiploc's argument, which I did.

My example of the virtue of patience refutes premise 3. God wants us to have the virtue of patience more than he wants to eliminate all suffering, and that something else, namely patience, cannot obtain unless there exists some suffering.

NonContradiction

Who is begging the question? I was challenged to provide an example which would refute premise 3 of wiploc's argument, which I did. Why don't you start telling me what is wrong with my example?

Wiploc

wiploc (crc):
> 1. If a god knew everything, including that we suffer, and
> 2. If that god could do anything, including stop our suffering, and
> 3. If that god more than anything else really wanted to prevent our suffering, then
> 4. He would prevent our suffering.
> 5. Therefore, if we do suffer, therefore there is no such god.




Hey wait a minute.

Starting with a different premise is far different from refuting my premise.

You don't believe god can do anything, right? (For instance, he can't both teach us patience and prevent suffering.)
And since he can't do both, he has to pick one --- and preventing suffering is not his top priority.

That's your position, and it's my position too. The PoE proves you are right. If god could prevent suffering, and if preventing suffering were his top priority, then we wouldn't suffer.

Therefore, there must be a limit to his power, like he can't do logical contradictions. And he must have to choose between preventing suffering and something else (like teaching patience). He can choose teaching patience over preventing suffering for reasons that seem good and sufficient to him, and which we would agree with if we understood them and had god's wisdom. But the bottom line is still,
1. he can't do everything (isn't omnipotent), and
2. preventing suffering isn't his top priority.

That's your position, right? That's also my position. It's also what the PoE proves.

You haven't refuted any part of the PoE. You've merely accepted the truth of the PoE, and taken a position compatible with it.

Tell me I'm right.
crc

Philosoft

We're also talking about the PoE, which does bear on God's moral actions.

Quote:

Therefore, your last sentence should read as follows: Inconvenience, as included in your definition, is not pain and suffering. I would argue that inconvenience IS painful, albeit, not as painful as living through the holocaust. There are degrees of pain and suffering, so I don't see where your example refutes my assertion in P1.

Well, if you're just going to define your argument correct, then you win. All I need to do is come up with a single counterexample. Thus, I can imagine a mental state associated with inconvenience that I would not consider remotely painful. I'd say the scope of "pain" is far too ambiguous to support a rigorous proof.

Dr Rick

Patience is not absolutely contigent upon the existence of suffering, or at least you have not provided a logical proof that it is. In the absense of a logical proof, there is no reason to accept this assertion, as there is nothing "obvious" about it. Can you provide a logical argument that proves that suffering must exist for there to be patience, and why an omnipotent god could not instill us with all the patience he wants us to have without using suffering?

Just_An_Atheist

It seems to me that evil is only necessary on a minute level for patience. For instance, one could have patience while waiting for a particularly long busride, or patience to accomplish what one wants out of life. It would seem to me that one doesn't need the haulocaust to happen in order to learn, and practice, patience.

NonContradiction

Hi Dr. Rick:

I don't agree. I believe that patience is absolutely contingent upon the existence of suffering, and I will tell you why. Imagine, as a thought experiment, a world where there was no death, no disease, no moral evils, no natural disasters, etc. In other words, imagine a world without any pain and suffering whatsover. For what reason would anyone need to have patience in such a world? It is obvious, at least to me, that patience is absolutely contingent upon pain and suffering. It seems to me that it's quite possible to have pain and suffering without patience, but it's impossible to have patience without pain and suffering.

Dr Rick

Something is not logically impossible unless it can be logically proven to be impossible. That you may hold a firm belief about something is not a logical proof, nor is it a substitute for one.

You and I might not be able to imagine how the cosmos began as a singularity (the Big Bang), but that does not make it logically impossible for it to have happened that way. Similarly, that we cannot imagine or even describe how patience can exist without suffering does not make it logically impossible for the former to exist without the latter.