Jobar

Soma, your arguments all reduce to "God works in mysterious ways"- which basically means you don't have the least idea if you are right or not.

If humans have no common referrent with god on the meaning of 'good' and 'evil' then you simply have no way of saying that god affects mankind's morals and ethics. This may be fine for a deistic or panentheistic god-concept, but the Christians, Muslims and Jews will all deny you.

copernicus

I understand perfectly. You are making the point that the definer of "good" and "evil" necessarily stands outside of human judgments of "good" and "evil". I agree with that hypothetical point. My only criticism was that you hypocritically and inconsistently insist on judging that god as "benevolent" or even "omnibenevolent". This is a criticism of you, not your putative god.

First of all, we all face different exposures to evil and/or temptation to sin (from a religious perspective). The scenario I posit is merely that people observe during their lives that sinful behavior gets punished. What is wrong with that, and how does it rob anyone of free will? When you punish a child for bad behavior, is that child deprived of free will? When a criminal is sent to jail, is that criminal deprived of the free will to commit crime again? Nonsense. The child is still free to disobey, and the criminal to become a recidivist. I am not arguing that God could endow people with full knowledge of good and evil, but I like your thinking here. Why not? The only thing that puzzles me is why you think that this would strip people of free will. How so? Whether God gives us instant knowledge or exposes us to evil experiences, we still have the free will to commit evil. The problem with the current system is that everyone has different experiences of evil, yet your god judges everyone by the same yardstick. Moreover, God remains coy about his existence--leaving only clues and hints that are easily misinterpreted. I really find your reasoning bizarre on this matter.

Maybe. But what the Taoist has to say seems irrelevant to the points that I have made. Some people experience darkness, while others never get to experience it fully. By your logic, that means that different people have different knowledge of evil. So why does the same standard apply to all, regardless of their exposure to evil? Do you not find this bizarre?

It ought to be, since that is the very notion that you espoused. However, you really ought to read Candide. Voltaire does a real number on the Panglossian mentality.

On judging God "benevolent":
I agree that it doesn't refute the "God concept". It refutes the christian "ascription" of God as "benevolent". God is not benevolent by human standards. You appear to acknowledge this, but then you call God "benevolent" and "omnibenevolent" anyway. When I pointed out your inconsistency, you deflected my question by saying that christians "typically assign" this quality to God. Please don't try to weasel out on me. Do you agree with the typical christian assignation or not? If not, then admit it. If so, then please explain how that fits in with your earlier statements that God is neither good nor evil.

Vorkosigan

I will say, for its sake, that Christianity at least teaches that god suffers the same pain that we do, because he is a part of creation itself.

It's dangerous to fall in love with one's own rhetoric, cave. The mystical beauty of this thought obscures its unmitigated evil, as it is meant to. Your god cannot suffer the same pain as we do, because if I had the power to heal my son of his cognitive deficits, I would. Therefore, god does not ache as I do. Period.

Vorkosigan

Treacle Worshipper

But "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Is everyone therefore going to Hell?
TW

the_cave

I appreciate the warning, and you're quite right to raise your objection. But I still find the rhetoric meaningful, in the following way.

(I should first note that it could be that god doesn't suffer our pain, but neither caused it nor has the power to change it. I understand those who wonder what difference it would make whether such a god exists, or why it would be worth paying attention to, but at any rate the problem of pain--i.e. the problem of evil--would not be a refutation of it.)

I suppose I could just try and be sanguine and argue "Well, the existence of freedom necessitates the possibility of evil, so I accept the suffering we bear that god can't." That's one way I could respond to pain. Not a very satisfactory way, but I admit it's at least coherent, and sort of gets god off the hook (again, in a somewhat unsatisfactory way.)

But there might be another way for a theist who also believes in an incarnate god (in whatever manner, pantheist, Christian, etc.) Let's start by assuming that god does, in fact, suffer exactly our pains. What would such a god have to be like?

He would have to feel as limited as we feel--he would have to have the same limitations as we do. What if this is actually what god is like? I know most theisms argue for an omnimax God, and most Christians believe that Jesus was that god. But in principle, I can imagine a god who is omnimax without the presence of space and time, but when present within space and time, is limited by the features of that space and time. Such a god would suffer with us, and his tools to relieve that suffering would be as limited as we are. This doesn't make me feel much better about suffering, nor am I suggesting it should make you feel any better. I'm just saying that I think there's some room for it in theology.

copernicus

I think that this response feels unsatisfactory because it is ultimately incoherent. Freedom does not necessitate the possibility of evil, nor is the direct experience of evil necessary for one to understand and abhor evil. Humans can learn through vicarious experiences, and most of our experience of evil is from indirect sources. I have never committed murder nor seen a murder committed. I have seen a lot of depictions of murder, and I have known about the possibility of murder since early childhood. Indeed, this is true of the vast majority of humans. Are we deprived of free will because our experiences of evil are vicarious? That strikes me as completely irrational. Hence, there is no necessity for evil to actually occur in order for people to understand its consequences and to know to avoid it. The entire "free will" argument is a non sequitur.

The real point in all of this is that the very idea of "God" seems to fly in the face of reality. Life is just as atheists expect it to be. The conundrum for theists is that they have to defend the idea of a ridiculous being. One requirement they have is to come up with plausibile scenarios that justify the existence of evil. I do not agree with my fellow atheists who think that PoE is a weak argument against theism. They are being too hasty. We would do better to take the religious apologists at their word and make them explain the logic. It isn't there. Remember that this debate is not about proof or disproof of the existence of god(s). It is about the plausibility of such beliefs.