Ensign Steve

You're right. I meant that the original PoE in the first place concludes that an omnimax god is a logical impossiblity. The FWD tries to deny that conclusion, so any valid arguments against the FWD just reinforce that.

rainbow walking

Hi Zardock,
Good reply. Very thought provoking.

And she came to be his wife…how?

Z: Semantics. I apologize, I mis-stated the law in question - Any MARRIED man is disallowed from feeling desire towards anyone who is not his wife. Or, in a more interesting form, 'Any attached individual is disallowed from feeling desire towards anyone who is not his or her consort.'

Rw: Not what I meant by the question. How does a single man distinguish his wife from the myriad of prospective women before they marry? Please, be imaginative. What with all these “god can do anything” attributes to work with, impress me.


Uh, excuse me but have you ever heard of cause and effect? You think the absence of something has no consequences? Try expelling all the air from your lungs for two minutes and I wager you’ll change that tune.

Z: God. We're talking about a law engaged by an omnipotent entity. Are you telling me God is limited in his power? God could, reasonably, BREAK the law of cause and effect, seeing as he created it.

Rw: Reasonably you say? I’d like to see you support that without gods attributes to lean on. So are we to infer from this that god can commit evil (break his own law) to effect a greater good? And the message this sends to man, (the end justifies the means) thus advocating lawlessness will effect this greater good…how?

Z: If it is your contention that he cannot, this discussion is at an impasse, as you are stating your God is not omnipotent.

Rw: Well, since you’ve high-jacked his attributes and have him breaking the law right and left, he’s also not very good either, so it’s not I who have diminished his omni-maxiness…but you. Thus I can only conclude PoE as defunct an argument against the FWD as I’ve ever encountered.

Z: My argument no longer applies to such a deity, hence, if that is your claim, this discussion ends.

Rw: You mean the deity you’ve diminished? My claim is, and will continue to revolve safely around a logical foundation. Yours, on the other hand, appears to have lost its footing somewhere in your imagination.

Uh..o’kay, and what becomes of entropy when all this extra energy is displaced to perform these mighty feets, (if you’ll pardon the pun)?

Z: Still God. Still omnipotent, unless you wish to change that statement. God created the universe, hence he created energy, hence, entropy can be violated by God, hence, no argument here.

Rw: Amazing. How does an all good god remain so while violating the law? Are we to infer from this that the law is not good, and ought to be broken? Keep in mind I’m not the one advocating such behavior…you are. But you are right in one respect. There definitely is “no argument here”. Hell, you’re shooting your own self in the foot point blank.

Z. Your further comments on this subject (except one, which I will get to) seem to revolve around the idea that changing these laws would create too many 'consequences.'

Rw: But you haven’t been advocating a change…electing instead that god simply violate and break them at will. I could, as you appear eager to do, (if I so desired), declare victory right here by default. And you were very specific in your choice of terms so I don’t see how you have any recourse to semantics as an out.



Z: In general, I will answer these objections in EXACTLY the same manner: God is not bound by the laws of consequence. God is God. God is omnipotent.

Rw: And how is god to unbind himself from those laws and remain god? Need I remind you that you cannot alter his attributes to suit your fancy? God may not be bound by natural law but man is. God cannot change or break those laws without consequence to man. So your claim that god can do anything remains true of god but not for man. Anything god does will have consequences for man for this very reason. If god violates the law of consequence in order to effect an eradication of evil, since addressing evil is itself a consequence of gods intervention, god thereby renders the effect inconsequential and evil remains un affected. Logic cannot be violated without consequences.


Z: Again, if you wish to object to that statement, this argument cannot reasonably continue, and would reach an impasse.

Rw: What’s the hurry?

Z: (That's not saying it's not a valid claim to make, but you should know that I'm not going to continue trying to attack the FWD if that is your position.)

Rw: That wouldn’t have anything to do with my position diffusing your arguments only power, the power it derives from gods attributes, would it?

Z: Your final statement bears mentioning on this subject:

...so why not skip all the bullshit and just poof another universe into play?

Z: That's exactly what I recommend, except the term 'another' is misplaced. My assertion is that an omnimax deity would have, by defintion, upon creating a universe of ANY KIND, imbued with the qualities and laws I've been mentioning.


Rw: Alrighty then, rather than mis-place a term, you prefer that god replace this universe. I understand what you mean though, if god altered this universe in any way he would be effectively replacing it with another. And, if we allow that god can do ANYTHING, then he certainly can do this without much effort. But I’m wondering why you get to use god’s power of “anything” and I should just take a passive role. There’s no good reason why I can’t invoke this magic voodoo formula as well, or better than you can. In fact, I think I can checkmate you in this paragraph and put an end to the misery of PoE without further ado. Invoking gods ability to do ANYTHING, called omnipotence, I see no good reason why god can’t simply alter any one of his own attributes. Do you? I mean, out of your own imagination you have declared that god can do anything so let’s just see how far you’re willing to let this go. I submit that god can alter his attribute of omnibenevolence without contradiction to his “doanythingness” and leave the current universe as is. Freedom of will remains in tact, evil continues and god changes. If god can do anything he can choose to do nothing to this universe and change himself. Since, as most atheists have astutely observed, god doesn’t do anything noticeable anyway, nothing will change…except god, and who would notice? Since the Problem of Evil, for the sake of this argument, is only a problem when contrasted with god’s omni-benevolence, removing this attribute solves the problem. PoE ceases to be and FWD wins the day. In this way the PoE remains only as a problem for those who continue to exercise it as a freewill choice…man. We can all stop arguing about it being god’s problem and start working on solutions.
It’s been fun…

Zadok001

Good answers. Let's see what I can do with 'em. Warning: This is being written almost immedietly after I woke up. Expect typos.

"Z: Semantics. I apologize, I mis-stated the law in question - Any MARRIED man is disallowed from feeling desire towards anyone who is not his wife. Or, in a more interesting form, 'Any attached individual is disallowed from feeling desire towards anyone who is not his or her consort.' "

Rw: Not what I meant by the question. How does a single man distinguish his wife from the myriad of prospective women before they marry? Please, be imaginative. What with all these “god can do anything” attributes to work with, impress me.


I'm not sure I understand the question. A man does not have a wife before he marries, hence distinguishing his wife from the masses seems like a non-functional attribute. Assume, for the law we end up with, the second law I stated above: "'Any attached individual is disallowed from feeling desire towards anyone who is not his or her consort.'" Under this law, our current (note I'm functioning under American prosuppositions here, this law would have to be different for other folks) system of dating and marriage would continue to function in EXACTLY the manner it functions today. The difference would be that while someone is in a relationship, they are incapable of cheating.

It could be argued that this would create issues with the ability to break up a relationship. I would hold steady and claim that, while some breakups may not occur, the ones caused by differences between the two individuals involved in the relationship (the most common sort, in my experience) would continue.

Uh, excuse me but have you ever heard of cause and effect? You think the absence of something has no consequences? Try expelling all the air from your lungs for two minutes and I wager you’ll change that tune.

"Z: God. We're talking about a law engaged by an omnipotent entity. Are you telling me God is limited in his power? God could, reasonably, BREAK the law of cause and effect, seeing as he created it."

Rw: Reasonably you say? I’d like to see you support that without gods attributes to lean on. So are we to infer from this that god can commit evil (break his own law) to effect a greater good? And the message this sends to man, (the end justifies the means) thus advocating lawlessness will effect this greater good…how?


I can't support it w/o God's attributes. That's because God's attributes are the whole argument.

You seem to now be pushing a normative value on a naturalistic phenomenon. I always viewed the laws of nature as neutral, morally. I don't see how 'breaking' the law of gravity would be inherently evil, hence, I don't see how breaking the law of cause and effect would be inherently evil. Furthermore, I'm not recommending 'changing' the natural laws. I'm recommending whole new ones!

Also, note my earlier disclaimer: New universe, new rules. If we existed in a universe wherein causation was violated occassionally, WE WOULDN'T HAVE A LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. Remember, we're making natural laws, here. No 'message' is sent when God violates causality, owing mainly to the fact that causality in our bizzaro world is violated regularly. We would have a general rule of cause and effect, and we would probably figure out in short order the exceptions to that rule. (Today we have the finite "rule" that matter has a finite density. Exceptions are black holes. We don't call it a 'law' because there are exceptions to it.)

I think it's safe to say that, as long as I'm not recommending alterations to THIS universe, and advocating a whole new one, changing the laws of nature isn't inherently evil. (If it were, it begs the question: When the universe was initially created, was it an evil act? After all, God was breaking a 'law' of sorts: There is no universe.)

"Z: If it is your contention that he cannot, this discussion is at an impasse, as you are stating your God is not omnipotent."

Rw: Well, since you’ve high-jacked his attributes and have him breaking the law right and left, he’s also not very good either, so it’s not I who have diminished his omni-maxiness…but you. Thus I can only conclude PoE as defunct an argument against the FWD as I’ve ever encountered.


Again, you seem to be assigning a normative property to natural laws. I contend that it's not inherently evil to make different natural laws. The attributes I'm assiging our deity for the purpose of this discussion are:

1. Omnipotence: Capable of doing anything.
2. Omniscience: Knows everything that can be known.
3. Omnibenevolent: Is perfectly loving.

Nothing else. My assertion is that such a deity cannot have created this universe and govern it still. (Note: It's possible to swing around the 'and govern it still' clause. I'll explain that a little better later.)

"Z. Your further comments on this subject (except one, which I will get to) seem to revolve around the idea that changing these laws would create too many 'consequences.' "

Rw: But you haven’t been advocating a change…electing instead that god simply violate and break them at will. I could, as you appear eager to do, (if I so desired), declare victory right here by default. And you were very specific in your choice of terms so I don’t see how you have any recourse to semantics as an out.


Again, it's important to note a key difference here. While I feel I can safely say God can violate any natural law if he wants to, that's not actually what I'm recommending. I'm claiming God should have created a different universe, sans evil by judicially applying natural laws. 'Changing' laws is a secondary issue.

"Z: That's exactly what I recommend, except the term 'another' is misplaced. My assertion is that an omnimax deity would have, by defintion, upon creating a universe of ANY KIND, imbued with the qualities and laws I've been mentioning. "

Rw: Alrighty then, rather than mis-place a term, you prefer that god replace this universe. I understand what you mean though, if god altered this universe in any way he would be effectively replacing it with another.

Not quite. My claim is that the deity in question would have been REQUIRED to imbue any universe with different rules. Since our universe exists, we can reasonably assume that Das Uber Deity doesn't. Changing the rules isn't really related.

And, if we allow that god can do ANYTHING, then he certainly can do this without much effort. But I’m wondering why you get to use god’s power of “anything” and I should just take a passive role.

/begin{taunting}
Oh yah? Whatcha gonna do? Huh? Huh?


/end{taunting}

Invoking gods ability to do ANYTHING, called omnipotence, I see no good reason why god can’t simply alter any one of his own attributes. Do you?

Aside:Actually, this is one of my favorite philosophical playthings. What happens if God decides he wants to be a vengeful bastard? What happens if God cuts off his own omniscience? (Does he have the ability to put it BACK, without any knowledge, most notably the knowledge of HOW?) What does the resulting universe look like?

I mean, out of your own imagination you have declared that god can do anything so let’s just see how far you’re willing to let this go. I submit that god can alter his attribute of omnibenevolence without contradiction to his “doanythingness” and leave the current universe as is. Freedom of will remains in tact, evil continues and god changes.

Yups! Sure can! And this is where that "and govern it still" clause comes back. A few important things to note.

First, omniscience. If God knows everything, he knows the future - And specifically, he knows his OWN future. He knew he would eliminate his omnibenevolence. Problem is, when he found this out, he was omnibenevolent. He would see that his choice would create suffering. This doesn't change his choice to remove his omnibenevolence. However, if we assume God was still omnibenevolent when he created the universe, HE WOULD HAVE STILL LAID LAWS THAT PREVENT EVIL. (You could claim he threw out omnibenevolence pre-Creation. That works. But it also means that an omnimax deity doesn't exist, and didn't exist in the beginning; hence, the PoE is satisfied, and the question is moot.)

Second, that pesky "and govern it still" line. Now, I already explained how it would be a problem for our deity to take away this power without allowing the PoE to work. Even so, if our deity removed his omnibenevolence at ANY point, the 'and govern it still' clause kicks in and the PoE is again satisfied.

I'm aware I didn't mention the 'and govern it still' clause earlier in this argument. That's because (at least in my mind) it's usually completely secondary to the issue. However, I would feel comfortable conceding the prior argument ENTIRELY to you, and simply saying that I'm now altering the PoE to see if I can win that way. Is that an acceptable notion? Call this new statement the Revised Problem of Evil: RPoE.

If god can do anything he can choose to do nothing to this universe and change himself. Since, as most atheists have astutely observed, god doesn’t do anything noticeable anyway, nothing will change…except god, and who would notice? Since the Problem of Evil, for the sake of this argument, is only a problem when contrasted with god’s omni-benevolence, removing this attribute solves the problem. PoE ceases to be and FWD wins the day.

(Note my revised PoE.)

Absolute. But the FWD didn't really 'win' in a traditional sense. It moved the goalposts, and the PoE sans "and govern it still" clause has a problem scoring. It's still possible, note my first objection to your last passage. But in general, this is just the same thing as your last post: We changed one of the PoE's required attributes. The PoE doesn't disprove the existance of God. It disproves an omnimax deity. If we're changing God's attributes, we've got no omnimax deity, now do we?

Dr Rick

The PoE does not "blame" anyone, it is an argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient (o,o,o) god. The FWD is that evil would be allowed by an o,o,o god because without evil humans could not have free-will. The problem with the FWD is that it puts limits on god because it implies that a god could not/would not give humans FW without allowing evil, which contradicts the concept of an o,o,o god.

Rick

ReasonableDoubt

RW:

According to the Old Testament, God violated natural laws right and left- when he allowed snakes and donkeys to speak, when he stopped the sun in the sky to allow Joshua to win a battle, when he took Elijah up into heaven...

and the New Testament- when Jesus raised people from the dead, healed them, walked on water and had Peter walk on water.

If that's not altering the natural physical law I don't know what is.

Zadok001

Now why didn't I think of that? Oh, that's right: It's because I'm a F*CKING IDIOT!

Der. Excuse me while I go expunge some uneeded brain cells.

ReasonableDoubt

Zadok, if you're replying to me- I was saying to Rainbow Walking that according to the Bible God violated natural law through miracles quite frequently. Rainbow Walking's argument was that God cannot violate those laws. I was pointing out- yes he can according to the Bible.

GunnerJ

From the first page:

Comment: It seems pretty obvious that I'm arguing againt your reponse to the POE, that god gives us a free moral choice because he wants people to willingly chose him. The brunt of my argument is to make a point about what this argument implies god's character is like.

Also:

Comment: the unspoken minor premise is that you don't consider humans to already be robotic, as evidenced by your earilier reponses, which you later contradicted, as we shall see.

Firstly, thisI have already adressed this:

This post came right after your initial objection. It is tedious to try and debate with someone who either cannot or will not make the effort to follow the flow of a discussion.

Secondly, it is very dubious to claim that my whole argument rests on the assumption that we are slaves. As I have already pointed out, and you either missed or ignored, you could have inserted any other term (servents, followers, sex partners, etc.) and the argument would have been just as valid.

Now stop tap dancing and pony up.

I beg to differ! You initially claimed that we have the capacity to do evil because we have free will, because god did not want us to be "robots." You then claimed that or capacity to do evil is limited, which undercuts your earlier claim. What's so amusing about this is that you have, in one stroke, castrated your entire argument and confirmed mine. The fact that you didn't even realize it makes it doubly funny.

Technically, god hampers freedom, and technically, he already has. (Well, technically, he doesn't exist, but who's counting?) Guess what? That's the whole fricken' point! Wait, wait; here comes the money shot...

BINGO! God has, apparently, already limited our ability to do evil. If we aren't already robots because of it, how would limiting us further make us robots?

Oh, you say that only the complete limitation of the capcity to do evil is what makes us robots? We've had you covered for a long time! See, you've never even validated your esoteric definition of free will as "the ability to do evil." The most common definition of free will is "the ability to make free choices in and of one's own volition." If our will is already limited by physical law, and yet we still have free will and are not "robots," then why would further limiting our ability to do evil, even to the point of removing it entirely, make us robots? Do you even know what a robot is? (PROTIP: It's not "a being who can't do evil.)"

It's a good thing we don't hold you to the same standard, or we'd never reply to you.

Seriously, do you think this type of cop-out impresses anyone? I'm starting to think you define a "coherent argument" as "any argument i don't feel threatened by."

Dr. Retard

SOMMS made this same mistake more than a year ago here. I don't understand it. The question is not whether SOMMS has free will. It's not whether we humans have free will. It's whether God ought to always allow us to exercise our free will.

luvluv

I'm waaay behind here so I'll do my best to catch up today:

Thomas Metcalf:

My point was that God could have multiple reasons for allowing evil to exist. Some of the evil that exists, like adultery or slander, might be explicable in terms of free will. Other evils, like natural disasters, might be explicable in terms of the soul-making theodicy, which states that overcoming all evil, even natural evil, can perfect character in a way impossible through other means

I think the multiple theodicies can function like layers of filters. Evil that is not explicable within one theodicy would trickle through and be explicable in terms of another theodicy. So one would have to combine ALL relevant theodicies in their examination of the P.O.E. to ascertain whether or not there is sufficient reason for evil.

Reasonable Doubt:

I don't know that there will not be evil, of some kind, in heaven ultimately. But what is the problem with everyone in heaven being free but having developed the character (through character perfection on earth or in purgatory or whatever) to be able to use that freedom perfectly? Could it be that heaven is popluated with beings who have perfected the operation of free will and are able to be free without ever sinning?

bd-from-kg:

I think this all flows from a basic misunderstanding of what free will actually constitues, and the smuggling in of some basic determinisitic assumptions.

Free will, in the Christian sense, ultimately means nearly total control of one's destiny. From the deterministic view one would assume that Satan had to have some "genetic" predisposition towards the temptation of pride in order to have become the evil force He is today. But in Christian terms, according to free will, Satan need have had no such predisposition. He could have been "genetically" or dispositionally identical to the other archangels and THROUGH HIS OWN CHOICES become totally corrupted. So it is not necessarily the case that God INTENTIONALLY let Satan loose on the world (in Christian theology Satan is not really "set loose" to do just whatever he wants anyway. His actions are often restrained by God's counter-action). God could have known and probably did know that Satan would rebel, but that doesn't mean it is His fault or intention that Satan rebelled. Of course, according to Protestant theology anyway, God chose to go ahead and make Satan. But how different is this from His choice to make any of us, (or at any rate to allow any of us to exist) despite the fact that many of us will rebel against Him and reject Him. God is more than capable of redeeming all the evil that Satan causes, just as He is capable of redeeming all the evil that we cause, and the Bible tells us that He will do so.

Now, on the other hand, there is the Aquinian notion that Satan and all angels are, like God, necessary beings. In which case God did not create Satan.

Well, free will is not the ENDS, free will is the MEANS. God would not be satisfied creating just any world so long as there is some form of free will. That would be putting the cart before the horse. I think God is interested in creating a world in which SOULS can reach the ultimate state of perfection. A world, like this one, in which freedom is nearly total might be a better world for spiritual development than some other world.

I think we have to keep in mind that, according to Christianity, God is more interested in creating good of the most complete kind than he is in preventing evil. My personal belief is that God prioritizes the promotion of goodness over the limitation of evil.

There is a limit to how much any earthly dictator can truly eliminate free will. It is possible that even under the most onerous dictatorship a person can have enough freedom over his own actions to grow or develop spiritually (the soul-making theodicy) and thus the purpose for which freedom is given(soul making) can still operate. In fact, it is quite often in the midst of these societies which are lacking in freedom that real heroism is displayed.

More later...