tw1tch

Zadok

So either A-God creates beings that don't do evil or B-God creates a universe where beings can't do evil.

Either way we have no freedom.

Your weakening your case here.


Yes. In exactly the same way that locking someone in a jail cell does not remove their freedom to
...eat beef.
...do jumping jacks.
...think about carrots.

However, no rational position would hold that people in jail are free.



No amount of subject-switching or name calling is going to make your case Zad...either

A-We have freedom/ability to do evil.
or
B-We have no freedom/no ability to do evil.

You can have one or the other not both. You and many other here (Thomas, Rimstalker) want to say that A* exists...
A*-We have freedom/no ability to do evil.

You (and Thomas and Rimstalker) have yet to address the fact that this is a logical absurdity.




Correct. He could and did. We were the ones who chose to pursue evil. Not God.

More importantly...why do you feel compelled to blame God for your evil actions?



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

ReasonableDoubt

Hey Zadok:

The verse you were looking for:

Isaiah 45:7
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

tw1tch

Rimstalker,
1-Do you have an argument? I have yet to see you proffer even a stable position...much less a valid argument? By all means enlighten us.

2-Your entire original reply was based on a fallacy. Namely that we are slaves. I need not even read the rest of your argument since it is based on this fallacious assumption.

3-It hasn't. In fact both you and Thomas are in a box you can't get out of.

Notice:
If you claim:
'God could have made the universe so we couldn't do evil' THEN you hamper freedom.

If you claim:
'God could have made a world where there was less evil' THEN you are forced to conclude that He did...because He could have made a world with mental genocide...but He didn't.

Either way, your argument (Thomas') fails.


4-I need only reply to coherent arguments. When your posts start containing them...I'll start replying to them.


Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Zadok001

ReasonableDoubt:

Thank you! I'll try to remember that, but I doubt my memory will keep track of it for more than four hours or so.

tw1tch:

You seem to define freedom in a very unique way. Would you be so kind as to grant me a full-fledged definition, so we can argue with stationary goalposts?

One of us is very confused, and I'm honestly not sure which. At point does "freedom" cease to be by your definition. In this case, you seem to be saying that 'free' is the opposite of being in jail, or at least that the two terms are mutually exclusive. And yet, people in jail have the freedom to do both good and evil. Hence, this implies that some other standard is floating out there that you haven't adequately identified to me.

To wit: In this example, you state that a person enjoying freedom to do good and evil is not 'free.' I presume you wouldn't claim, however, that they lack free will. Their will is merely restricted, which is exactly what I propose for your deity. Are you implying that putting someone in jail denies them free will? I would call that a radical interpretation of the text.

You are yet to give me a rational reason to believe that these two things are connected. The statement boils down to this:

A- We have freedom/ability to do X
OR
B- We have no freedom/no ability to do X

If you rationally accept that proposition (and indeed, you MADE THAT CLAIM!), then you have to consider what happens when I put "Walk through walls" in place of X. Obviously, we have no freedom. That's absurd, hence, I challenge that the two states of affairs you present do not adequately describe the options we have.

God created us. God created the elementry particles which make us up. God created the world around us, and all its causes. God, therefore, created both the desire to do evil and the favorable results procured by doing evil. Such a God is clearly not omnimax. Look, you can't dodge the problem by blaming it on the world. The world is God's creation. If I build a bomb, and it explodes, the bomb is not to blame: I am.

I feel no such need. I don't believe there IS a God, hence, all my mistakes and evils are my own, and I am to blame completely. If there is a God, however, the situation changes drastically, and suddenly my evil is causally related to God's actions. As a utilitarian and a consequentialist, I would then consider God to blame.

I'm also going to respond a bit to your response to Rimstalker, since I feel it's relevant.

...both you and Thomas are in a box you can't get out of.

Notice:
If you claim:
'God could have made the universe so we couldn't do evil' THEN you hamper freedom.

If you claim:
'God could have made a world where there was less evil' THEN you are forced to conclude that He did...because He could have made a world with mental genocide...but He didn't.

Either way, your argument (Thomas') fails.


The first claim we take direct disagreement with. Free will is limited, but not eliminated. Since free will is already limited, and since free will can easily be increased to compensate for limitations on the ability to do evil, there is no way to rationally conclude that removing the ability to do evil destroys free will.

The second claim is more interesting, and you're correct. If God created the world, then God did so in a way that is less evil than it could have been. That in no way changes the issue at hand, which is that this world STILL contains evil, and COULD contain less. Hence, either God isn't omnimax, or you think no evil or suffering in the world could be eliminated without destroying free will. The first idea is a victory for us, the second is INCREDIBLY unsupported.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by tw1tch :

Strawman. My position from the beginning has been that God should step in to prevent some instances of extreme moral evil, such as baby-torture.

We wouldn't be robots if we lost the ability to make one choice. I'm not saying take away our ability ever to do anything bad.

Once again, I'm not saying God should remove our ability to do evil. I'm saying God should lessen the frequency of the successfull doing of evil. If simply have some constraints makes us robots, we're already robots.

This is a mere psychological point and therefore irrelevant. There is a conceivable point at which that question would be unreasonable -- you still have to show we've already reached that point.

Then God doesn't know what'll happen in the future. So you don't believe in the God of the Bible after all.

If you deny that conditional, then free will can exist without suffering and evil. So God could get rid of the consequent without prohibiting the antecedent. But He hasn't.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by rainbow walking :

Plenty of people attempt it. If you don't, that's fine.

Because there's no reason to think we wouldn't be agents if we failed to torture babies more often.

Meh. That's something that's pretty acceptable. I'd gladly give up the ability to learn what it feels like to torture a baby if it meant no babies were torturable.

Okay. Think of this world, the actual world. We'll call it w0. Suppose that in w0, when people try to torture babies, they succeed 80% of the time. Now think of a slightly different world, w1. It's exactly like w0 except that in w1, people successfully torture babies only 70% of the time. The reason is that natural laws exist that cause people to fail more often; maybe they get distracted, or someone catches them, or their implements of torture break or don't work, or they form the false memory that they've already tortured the kid, or whatever else.

P1. It would have been better for God to create w1 than w0.

God is omnipotent and has complete control over natural laws.

I don't see how this is relevant. Accept or reject P1. Whether or not I have my own preferences about how much is a good amount, you have to agree that this much is too much.

I'm not. I'm saying if He did exist, a contradiction would obtain.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Why would He do that?

Vague? I've mentioned baby-torture several times now. I'd sacrifice my freedom to torture babies if it meant no one else could either.

Right now He allows a range of good and evil choices. You believe all we need is a range of choices. So I'm saying He should let that range exist only among good ones.

Strawman. No matter how many crazy ideas you might claim I have, you still have to accept or reject that there's more baby-torture now than there ought to be, or that there are more evil people now than there ought to be.

There is nothing within the commonly accepted definitions of "omnipotent" that prohibit self-duplication. If you have a rival definition, please present it.

Huh? Did you even read what I wrote? If the weather person knows it will snow, then it must snow. If the weather person strongly believes it will snow, it still might not snow.

That's what FWD requires. If you don't believe that, you've rejected FWD.

Zadok001

Just for the record, and for those who haven't caught onto this just by reading, my argument is separate from Tom's. His attack on the FWD is much more limited (and much easier to prove) than my own. Either one works to show the FWD is inadequate, mine is just a little more aggressive about it. (As a result, mine is probably worse.) That means that attacking Tom's arguments using statements made by me would be rather stupid.

Tom, I apologize for this quasi-hyjack. I had no intention of diverting your thread actively, but it's quite obvious I have. I'll back out if you'd like.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Zadok001 :

Not at all. I'm always glad to see new angles. But could you point me to a place within your responses where you propound your own, additional argument against FWD?

Ensign Steve

For what it's worth, I think all 10 of them are great. Any one of them would stand alone to make an omnimax god a logical impossiblity, but why stop at one when you can have ten?! I think the separate arguments have gotten confused together because 10 logicial impossiblities is a lot for any one person to wrap his brain around, especially one who so wants to believe in said logically impossible thing. So such a person might try to confuse the arguments by combining them, mixing and matching them, showing how they may or may not contradict each other, when each one is actually able to stand alone.

Jen

Zadok001

It's not fully independant. My argument is merely set up as an extension of your own: I'm claiming that under the PoE, in spite of the FWD, an omnimax deity is still required to eliminate ALL evil, as per the following statement:

"That's what makes this argument so much fun! Realistically, it boils down to requiring God to eliminate ALL freedom to do evil, as well as natural evil! In other words, eliminate evil altogether. Sure enough, that's exactly the claim that the PoE makes to begin with: An omnimax deity, by definition, must not allow evil to exist. Evil exists, hence an omnimax deity does not."

It's just an extension, but it is seperate since I'm making statements in direct contradiction to your own:

"...it boils down to requiring God to eliminate ALL freedom to do evil..."

As opposed to:

"My position from the beginning has been that God should step in to prevent some instances of extreme moral evil, such as baby-torture."

It's just a stronger, less defensible position for me. I don't like arguing from 100% solid footing, so I tend to take arguments other people present and shove them. I didn't intend to imply my argument was totally unique.

JenniferD:

Technically speaking, I don't think several of these entail logical impossibilities. They just point out places the FWD doesn't adequately patch.