phlebas

The problem of pain dissolves even better when there is no god

Why? Doesn't the ultimate end result have any bearing on the present situation and choices? How can you say something is good if it leads you down the primrose path to eternal torture (or whatever you think hell is)?

Silly me. I thought you were dealing with the real world

Two things:

1) I never said anything about "mindless."

2) You're making a static problem again, one that has no useful application to anything. If we're going to posit your God, we're going to have to deal with ultimate consequences, not Polaroids.

For your drug thing to be a good analogy, you would have to have immortal kids.

<strong> </strong>

In fact, one would preclude the other.

The problem of pain is as uninteresting to me as the problem of evil, for the same reasons. Arguing about either will go ultimately nowhere. (Which is ironic, because it was originally the PoE that drove the wedge between me and the church. That wedge is no longer there, but it's been replaced by a yawning chasm )

The more interesting (and insoluble) question at the core of both is "why would an omni-god create anything at all?"

No. But it's a better result that eternal torture/pain/damnation/whatever you call it. I realize that what makes someone happy differs from person to person, but in Heaven (or Hell) wouldn't God account for that?

Since I believe we have one life and no afterlife, I would not drug my kids, should they occur. I feel that a few decades of real life, with all its highs and lows, is better than the same amount of time in a giggly stupor. (Or, at least, I feel that I am not omniscient enough to make that determination for anyone else.)

But you insist on ignoring eternity, which I find interesting. If I was a believer in an afterlife, and I thought that I could maximize my child's eternal happiness by fucking up his mortal life, I could consider that a fair trade.

Fortunately, there is no such drug, so Christian parents have to stick with tales of terror

wordsmyth

More good for whom? For God? Not possible that an omnibenevolent being could become MORE good as the attribute itself represents the most possible good.

More good for us? It would seem that free will is not for our own good as humans have perpetually used their free will to hurt themselves and each other.

This is a loaded question and assumes that the highest good humans can achieve is only accessible through suffering, thus the big IF at the beginning of your question. You have nothing to base this assumption on other than your attempt to defend your deity’s alleged omnibenevolence with the suffering that exists in the world.

Human free will has demonstrably been one of the greatest causes of human suffering and yet your assertion is that it’s all to achieve a greater good.

Perhaps the suffering free will causes here on Earth is simply a warm-up for your “omnibenevolent deity’s” great torture camp in the hereafter.

They are NOT mutually exclusive because we are questioning the actions and motives of a being that is alleged to have BOTH attributes, not just one. Only a being who possesses omnibenevolence and omnipotence would have a disposition toward the greatest good and the ability to enforce it.

As someone already pointed out, your use of the term slave is an emotional appeal. Lacking free will is a far cry from toiling in the fields while Angels whip us into submission and force us to sing Kuhm-buy-yah all day… oh wait, that’s the xian heaven.

Again, your use of the term slave is an appeal to emotion. You have posited that pain and suffering is for the greater good, yet dismiss the possibility that an omnibenevolent deity would remove free will for our own good.

An omnibenevolent being could not become more good through any means. If a being is capable of becoming more good, then that being is not yet omnibenevolent.

Do I need to point out the places described in the Bible in which the xian deity deceived people? Do you suppose that deception was for some greater good? Now lets look at your question again… “How could you say a God who deceived anyone was “omnibenevolent”? and your answer… “He would not be, even if you couldn’t know it.”

That is not true at all. There is some good that could come from my analogy of the child playing with fire… that child would learn not to play with fire… if the child didn’t die of course.

In my analogy there is no guarantee the child playing with fire would burn himself/herself. It’s a good POSSIBILITY though.

</strong>

No, what you want is an analogy that reflects YOUR position or one that you can more easily rebut. Sorry, but I'm not going to help you rationalize the irrational.

In my analogy of the child playing with fire, the child gains an understanding that fire is harmful and not a toy. If the possibility of suffering is eliminated, then the child will not learn that fire is harmful and not a toy.

It seems to me you aren’t interested in figuring out anything other than how you can defend your deity’s alleged omnibenevolence in the face of human pain and suffering.

So all those parents who prefer to home-school their children to keep them away from the drugs, violence, etc. are really just being bad parents? I’m so glad we have you to pass judgment on them. Yes, I see now that those parents obviously do not have their child’s best interests at heart. We all know the child could never hope to gain any social skills outside of a school environment. I wonder what all those youth programs like 4-H and the Boyscouts are teaching them; probably that suffering is for their own good.

Again you are assuming that the greatest good can only be achieved through suffering. You have not even begun to demonstrate this to be true.

This is an even worse analogy from you. It assumes that love could not exist without suffering and that is wholly fallacious. This is nothing more than a baseless analogy and a loaded question.

We ARE talking about two different things when we say “good”. You continue to posit that suffering is for some completely incoherent “greater good” in an attempt to defend your deity’s alleged omnibenevolence. You have yet to provide a single coherent example. Your analogies fail in so many ways, but mostly because they allow only for what we humans could and/or would do, not what an omnibenevolent AND omnipotent being could and/or would do.

Since this debate is in regards to the motives and disposition of an omnipotent deity who is alleged to be omnibenevolent, the two attributes cannot be considered mutually exclusive.

luvluv

Guys. I'm not typing in Greek here. This is really starting to get discouraging.

It is unbelievable, wordsmyth, that you are accusing me of defending God's omnibenevolence in a thread that is titled (BY ME!) "I'm not sure omnibenevolence exists".

Let me bottom line this for you, folks. If you can't define what is good, then you cannot say that the suffering or evil on this planet disproves God. I'm fine with it if you folks want to say that good doesn't exist, because that means in your mind, that the presence of suffering and evil in the world doesn't have any bearing on the existence of a good and omnipotent God. None of us knows what good is, so we can't examine God's claims of goodness. If this is what you all are saying, that God is logically possible even with pain in the world, I'm all for it.

However, if you are saying that God is not possible because of something in the world that is not good, then you need an objective definition of good. One that applies independant of the existence of man or the actions of God. Good has to have a consistent meaning independant of the nature of our existence (God could program us to like evil but evil would still be evil) and independant of God's actions (God's actions can be said to be evil even though He did them). If there is no such thing as an objective good and evil, then the problem of pain does not exist.

In posing the POE you are assuming the existence of an objective good and an objective evil. If you don't know what good is, how can you say that there can't be a good God?

I'm saying, K, that we can come to an agreement on what goodness is. I know suffering is worse than not suffering if those are the only two options. But I'm not sure if suffering is better than not suffering if some greater goal can be achieved through suffering that is not available through not suffering. The whole story of my life has been gaining greater gifts through suffering (relationships, education, jobs, etc) then through the avoidance of suffering. Therefore it would be totally illogical of me to say that the presence of suffering is always evidence that an endeavor is lacking in goodness. I don't have sufficient evidence to make that claim yet.

wordsmythasks me how I know that some forms of goodness can only be achieved through suffering. I have stated (repeatedly) that I know this because there is a goodness that comes from struggling to reach something on your own and through your own choices that is not possible if that thing is simply given to you. A person who earns his wealth has come into possesion of good attributes (work ethic, a sense of accomplishment, a first hand awareness of how wealth is built from nothing, an empathy with the poor, being a self-made man) that is not available to the person who inherited the wealth.

In short, independant of the activity that is done, can a measure of goodness can be ascribed to the process by which that activity is being done? Is it more good to go through school and have all the experiences of school and all of the interaction of it, or is it better to just have a disk with knowledge shoved into your head?

Let's just hypothetically say that good is an objective thing. Lets say that by whichever option we choose we will define an objective good by which to judge God. What you are missing, wordsmyth, is that if there is no objective standard of goodness it is just as arbitrary for you to call suffering bad as it is for me to claim it may, in the end, be good. This is the case if we are dealing with the LOGICAL problem of pain (are God's attributes logically contradictory) though I know it would not deal with the EMOTIONAL problem of pain (God's attributes may not be logically contradictory, but I don't like them). The emotional problem of pain is a good reason not to follow God, but not a good reason not to believe in Him.

phlebas, the problem of pain states that there is enough pain NOW, within our observation, to say that there cannot be ANY God which is both good and all-powerful. I am not discussing hell (yet) because we are trying to see if that claim is true. One can be a Christian and not believe in hell (I for one do not believe in a hell of constant torture, I am an annihilationist.) Whether or not there could be an omnipotent good God who created a hell is a good question, but it is a different question from whether or not there could be a good omnipotent God who created the world we now live in. Even if we were to say that a good omnipotent God could not invent hell, that would not eliminate the possible existence of hundreds of other Gods that claimed to be all good and all powerful. Or do you just not believe in the Christian God?

The Problem of Pain states that we can eliminate the possibility of a good, omnipotent God right now just because of the suffering we observe on Earth. If you bring Hell into the equation, that is a totally different argument. Perhaps better titled the Problem of Hell. If you want to debate that, I don't have a problem with it. But understand that it's a seperate question.

Sorry if this is kind of disjointed.

Edited to add:

My point in trying to tie us down onto some agreed upon definition of evil as we describe it, is that we can eliminate the problem of evil even from our perspective. What we ask God to do would not even be what we would do, given the ability.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

MrDarwin

luvluv, I don't believe it's possible to leave out the "emotional rants". It is the extremes of suffering that make me question the existence of a benevolent (not omnibenevolent, just run-of-the-mill benevolent) God. Not stubbed toes, not potty training, not vaccination: the really, really awful stuff like children being tortured and murdered. It is precisely because of the extreme emotional impact of such things that I have entered this discussion.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

MrDarwin

Aha! You're finally starting to get it.

MrDarwin

luvluv, do you believe there are such things are objective good and objective evil? If so, perhaps you can answer a question for me: is it objectively evil for one person to take the life of another?

K

luvluv:

I agree 100 percent that there is no problem of pain or evil given my definitions of good and evil. However, my good and evil are fundamentally incompatible with the existence of any kind of god that relates in any way to human morality.

That is why I am assuming, for the sake of argument, that some version of the Christian God exists - along with the objective measure of good that He would create or be measured against. Looking at some of the typical descriptions given for this god (all-powerful, all-good), I am saying that this world give us evidence that God can not possess both of these qualities.

I believe that an all-powerful and all-good god would, by His very nature, create a world without any suffering. But, I'm going to grant you the suffering involved in a struggle that leads to a greater good. I am only focussing on needless suffering. If there is no needless suffering, I will grant that there is no inconsistency (in terms of evil) in your version of God.

The trouble is, I see lots of suffering that appears needless. My question to you is, "what is the greater good in the suffering that appears needless to us on earth?"

If the answer doesn't involves deferring to God's plan and His knowledge of goodness, then the problem of evil still exists. We're just saying that God's definition of good is different than ours and discussion about His nature is nonsensical. It does make it a little tough to worship a God whose nature can not be described using our language. Is good really good?

We are looking for a common definition of greater good. For this dicussion I am assuming you version of God exists and objective good and evil. I would ask you to provide a definition of greater good that is consistent with the assumptions and the world we see.

wordsmyth

No, not Greek. You are typing in typical incoherent xian doublespeak. Irrational theistic dogma is discouraging to most of us as well.

Yes, that’s quite true. You have repeatedly exchanged goodness with omnibenevolence. If you will concede that the xian deity might be benevolent, but not omnibenevolent, then we can proceed. Since YOUR thread title was about your own uncertainty, every thread you have posted thus far seems to be in defense of omnibenevolence rather than just goodness.

So, to sum up… if you will concede that your deity is not omnibenevolent, then we can proceed. Otherwise, you are indeed attempting to defend his alleged omnibenevolence.

It is not specifically the xian deity that I am attempting to disprove. Instead it is only said deity’s alleged omnibenevolence that is in dispute.

This statement is completely incoherent. Nobody to this point has claimed that good doesn’t exist. Only that your deity’s cannot be omnibenevolent (i.e. ALL GOOD). If you continue being so profoundly obtuse, I will have to assume you are just being willfully ignorant.

I think everyone here is well aware what good is and pain and suffering are not good. For an omnipotent being all things are possible and nothing is impossible. That is what the definition of omnipotent means. Even that which would seem logically impossible to us, is completely possible to an omnipotent being. As I’ve said before, you simply have no understanding of the implications of the omni aspects of your own deity’s alleged attributes.

</strong>

Good and evil are not objective laws like gravity and thermodynamics. Even so, there is a general consensus among humans that pain and suffering is not good. When another option is available that could eliminate pain and suffering altogether, then it goes from not being good, to being malicious.

If our free will is so important for this incoherent “greater good” that you continue to assert, then why would God limit our free will in so many obvious ways. Just think for a minute about all the things we are incapable of doing and how easy it would have been for God to allow the possibility of doing them. So if God has placed some limits on our ability to express our free will, how is that good?

First, you are again interchanging “good God” with “omnibenevolent God”. The dispute and even the title of this thread, which was written BY YOU, involves omnibenevolence (ALL GOOD). There is a big difference between being good and being ALL good (i.e. omnibenevolent). Now, as to the question of objective good and objective evil… Since you claim that we don’t know what good is, I would ask what makes you such an expert. How is it you are able to judge, but we cannot. Has your deity endowed you with some special juju that the rest of us don’t possess? Just say no to the juju, kids.

Whoa! That seems in direct contrast to everything you have stated to this point.

Now you are positing that greater goals can only be achieved through suffering. Do I really need to reiterate that nothing is impossible for an omnipotent being. Whatever these incoherent greater goals that you assume your deity wants us to achieve, he could just as easily help us to attain them to exactly the same degree without pain and suffering. Every single analogy you have posited so far is assuming there is some kind of limit to omnipotence. What you repeatedly fail to understand is that the whole meaning of place omni at the beginning implies NO LIMITS.

Ok, now rationalize why it would be impossible for an omnipotent deity to grant you the same gifts, to the same degree, and with every possible benefit that comes with them without suffering. Or are you going to start placing limits on what your alleged “omnipotent” deity can do again?

It is illogical to posit that an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity would allow pain and suffering for any reason. The only possible solutions are that God is incapable of eliminating pain and suffering (omnibenevolent, but not omnipotent), unwilling to eliminate pain and suffering (omnipotent, but not omnibenevolent), or the xian deity is neither omnipotent nor omnibenevolent and thus not a God at all, but rather some mythical and incoherent creation spawned from the imagination of Bronze Age goat herders.

Again you are placing limits on the capabilities of your omnipotent deity. Any “goodness” that comes from struggling to reach something on your own can just as easily be granted by an omnipotent deity. There is nothing that any amount of pain and suffering can provide that an omnipotent being could not also provide without the need for pain and suffering.

False analogy and fails to address why an omnipotent being could not provide the person with “work ethic, a sense of accomplishment, a first hand awareness of how wealth is built from nothing, an empathy with the poor, being a self-made man”, etc., without the need for pain and suffering.

Any knowledge gained by going to school could also be granted by an omnipotent being. Can you posit a single benefit of going to school that an omnipotent being could not provide? If you can then you clearly have not read or understood any of this reply.

Since you do not KNOW that suffering WILL, in the end, be good, but rather only posit that it MAY be and as you have not given a single example of anything that could be gained through suffering that an omnipotent deity could not grant without suffering, I would say your entire argument is illogical and irrational. It is the general consensus of humanity that needless suffering is bad… well, an omnipotent being could eliminate any and all need for suffering, therefore any and all suffering is bad if there is a deity and if said deity is omnipotent.

Omnipotence and omnibenevolence are only contradictory in a reality where pain and suffering exist. Since pain and suffering do exist in our reality, then yes, omnipotence and omnibenevolence are contradictory attributes for any deity.

Lets define good and evil.

<strong>Good</strong>
adj.
<strong>1.</strong> Being positive or desirable in nature; not bad or poor: a good experience; good news from the hospital.
<strong>2.</strong> Of moral excellence; upright: a good person.
<strong>3.</strong> Benevolent; Kind: a good soul; a good heart.
n.
<strong>1.</strong> Something that is good.
<strong>2.</strong> Welfare; benefit: for the common good
<strong>3.</strong> Goodness; virtue: there is so much good in people

<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=good" target="_blank">GOOD</a>

<strong>Evil</strong>
adj.
<strong>1.</strong> Morally bad or wrong; wicked: an evil tyrant.
<strong>2.</strong> Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful: the evil effects of a poor diet.
<strong>3.</strong> Characterized by or indicating future misfortune; ominous: evil omens.
<strong>4.</strong> Bad or blameworthy by report; infamous: an evil reputation.
<strong>5.</strong> Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.

n.
<strong>1.</strong> The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.
<strong>2.</strong> That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction: a leader's power to do both good and evil.
<strong>3.</strong> An evil force, power, or personification.
<strong>4.</strong> Something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction: the social evils of poverty and injustice

<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=evil" target="_blank"> EVIL</a>

Just for the sake of argument, lets also see what the definitions of benevolent and malevolent are, shall we.

<strong>Benevolent</strong>
adj.
<strong>1.</strong> Characterized by or suggestive of doing good.
<strong>2.</strong> Of, concerned with, or organized for the benefit of charity.

<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=benevolent" target="_blank">BENEVOLENT</a>

<strong>Malevolent</strong>
adj.
<strong>1.</strong> Having or exhibiting ill will; wishing harm to others; malicious.
<strong>2.</strong> Having an evil or harmful influence: malevolent stars.

<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=malevolent" target="_blank">MALEVOLENT</a>

I would say that #2 (and #5) from Evil and #2 (and #4) from Malevolent fit the xian deity perfectly. There are numerous examples of this throughout the Bible, so there is ample evidence.

Jobar

luvluv, and all- lately I've been thinking a lot about the quest for absolutes that I seem to see our theistic members embarked upon. In this thread, luvluv, you are struggling with the most difficult of God's absolute properties.

As a relativist, I think it likely that no absolutes exist- certainly none we can demonstrate. But, just for fun, I tried to conceive of some sort of ultimate good which I could conceivably experience.

If I won a billion-dollar lottery, in the instant of the best orgasm of my life, given to me by an eighteen year old supermodel who adored me and would never ever even look at another man, while blissed out on the best MDMA (ecstasy) ever made, right after I had discovered a formula which allowed me to keep the physique of a twenty-year-old as long as I desired- oooooo yeah, that would be goooooooood! But- is that an absolute good? The orgasm and the drug effect will end, the money (and perhaps the supermodel) will pall, and maybe even life will eventually become a burden.

What are you seeking here, luvluv? A best-possible-good, like my little thought experiment above? An absolute *definition* of good? Or the omni-good which you say you are doubting?

luvluv

I'm sorry I have to progressively edit this instead of posting all at once because I keep losing everything when I use the back button on my browser.

K:

I would argue that the greater good is to share in some extant, qualitatively, the life of God. That is to become like Him, sharing in some measure his attributes of absolute goodness, power, and knowledge. I believe the ultimate end of the human story is to enter into a union, so to speak, with the Godhead; to particpate as an equal partner with the trinity. To do this in any meaningful way, one would have to do this freely. God could certainly simply attach a new member of the Godhead onto "Himself", but this would be a meaningless activity. I believe we are destined for total intimacy with God. This intimacy would be meaningless if it were not entered into freely. It's meaning would be lessened if it were entered into without, to some extent, our own effort. (This intimacy can be distinguished from salvation, which requires very little effort, only assent. The Bible is pretty clear in stating that there are levels of salvation: even in heaven, you will only go as far as you are willing to go.) This intimacy of real, free persons with God is the ultimate good I believe we are striving for.

Now, this intimacy is somewhat like a wedding. Let's say you had the power to create a robot which was physically in all ways totally indistinguishable from a woman. You could program this robot-woman to love you and only you, and to be just the type of woman you've always wanted to be in a relationship with. Now, on the other hand, you have a real woman, who has a mind of her own, her own interests, her own likes and dislikes, who you could not control.

Which would you rather be in a relationship with?

The point is, it is true that God could have just created perfect beings to enter into intimacy with, but these beings would not have been "real" unless they had real choice in the relationship.

I disagree to a certain extent. If we admit at the outset that the God whose existence we are questioning is 1) Good and 2) Omniscient, then we cannot draw any sound logical conclusions on his existence from the fact that we see suffering that we cannot understand. The problem of pain would not amount to a disproof but only to a sort of dead end.

If I went back to the middle ages and put a cancer-ridden surf through chemotherapy, he would be convinced that I was trying to do him unecessary harm. He would be quite justified in thinking me malevolent, but also quite wrong. If you want to assume that suffering is meaningless simply because you don't understand it, you cannot do so LOGICALLY. In other words, you cannot arrive at the conclusion because all other possible answers have been sufficiently ruled out, you would have to leap to that conclusion. To some extant, you would be rationally justified (though one could rationally justify a jump in the other direction, that a good God exists, as well) but you would not be logically sound. That is what I meant (MrDarwin ) when I said that the problem of pain is emotional and not logical.

If you admit 1) That some pain is necessary for free will, and 2) Humans have no absolute way of assessing what is necessary and what isn't, then you cannot come to any conclusions about God's existence from the exploration of the problem of pain. You would simply decide on God's existence out of your pre-existant prejudices.

Beyond that, I have been arguing for a few pages now that it is the consistent environment which is necessary for genuine moral freedom which prevents God from intervening in the seemingly unecessary cases. I have argued, borowing from C.S. Lewis, that a consitent environment with fixed laws is necessary for real moral freedom and real interaction between free agents. (I would like to extensively discuss that part of Lewis's book with you at some point). For this reason, God has a GENERAL non-interference policy except when absolutely necessary. I, and most Christian theists, believe He intervenes when it is necessary to his ultimate goal only. If he intervened on the basis of suffering, then he would have to constantly intervene. No environment in which God must constantly and miraculously intervene, so as to prevent ANY suffering, would be consistent with free moral choice.

Beyond all of this, K, what my whole preamble about the definition of goodness is geared towards is this question: why is suffering the ultimate judge of goodness? Why do you and others feel that suffering is the one quality that goodness would not allow in any degree whatsoever at any time? What I'm asking you guys to do is to prove to me that suffering is the accurate measure of goodness?

Jobar's response has prompted me to clarify that goodness and suffering are not opposites. Good's opposite is evil. Suffering's opposite is pleasure. Now if pleasure is your defintion of good (which is how I take Jobar to define goodness) then yes suffering is totally incompatible with goodness. However, I would argue that pleasure and goodness are not synonymous. I hate to be crass, but it is likely that pedaphiles might enjoy their addiction, does this make it good? Sadists and massochists derive pleasure from hurting themselves and others, does this make what they do good? (I'm speaking of Sadists and massochists in a purely non-consensual sex way. Guys like Jeffrey Dahmer and the Boston Strangler)

So I'm saying since good and suffering are not mutually exclusive, and since they're not opposites, how is it that suffering came to be the definer of what is good?

wordsmyth:

wordsmyth, I'm sorry but this is not the position of Christianity. It is the long-standing, historical position of Christianity that omnipotence does not include the ability to do the logically contradictory. Pick up any book on apologetics or theology and you will find that to be the consistent opinion of Christianity. You cannot disprove the existence of the Christian God, at least, with your definition of omnipotence: you would only be proving that God does not have a quality which Christians have already told you he does not have.

With respect, it is not that I do not understand what the word omnipotence means, it's that you, perhaps, have not argued with enough apologists. I am not aware of a single apologist or theologian who ascribes to God the ability to do the logically impossible. If you insist on using your defintion, this is just going to become a shouting match. In order to prove to me that my version of God does not exist, you have to prove that some of the qualilties Christianity attributes to God are inconsistent with what we see. The God you are disproving is not the God I worship, so while you may have eliminated the existence of those gods with the problem of pain, you have not eliminated the existence of at least one possible God, the Christian God, against whom the problem of pain does not succeed.

Lets just use the inheritance argument I began above. Let's assume that being a self-made man and having earned your wealth yourself,is a good quality. How can one who has inherited wealth be a self-made man?

Keep in mind: it is the actual possesion of the trait "self-made man" which is good, not the APPEARANCE of the trait "self-made man". God just fooling the man into believing he was self-made if he really wasn't would not solve the problem, for the man would not actually posses this good quality, he would only think he did. How can a person BOTH have all of their money by virtue of inheritance AND not have any money that he did not personally earn?

So if earning your goodness is a goodness itself, then how can it be GIVEN to someone without losing some good: the good of earning your virtue through your choices?

Yes, the quality of having actually gone to school and earned the knowledge through your own work. You cannot give someone the actual good quality of having accomplished something on their own. You can give them a counterfeit "feeling" that they had done something on their own when they really had not, but I do not see how a being could do this and establish his benevolence because he would be using deception.

Further, you seem to have a result oriented view of morality rather than a process oriented one. Do you think there is any value in finding out knowledge for yourself, or do you think the only good thing about knowledge is the knowledge itself, and that the means by which you acquire it have no potentiality for goodness? I believe learning things through your own effort is a good quality independant of the thing being learned. I believe there is an intrinsic goodness in earning good things that cannot be acquired just by being given those things. You cannot give someone the natural, internal reward of having expended their own effort.

I think you are misunderstanind me slightly. I did not mean by this thread to say that God was not totally good, but to say that He was not infinitely good. I'm saying omnibenvolence is a nonsense term. It is lilke saying something is infinitely triangular. Infinite triangularity is not even a property which exists, it's nonsense. But an object can be PERFECTLY triangular. This is what I mean about God. He is perfectly good, but I got the impression that people were implying that he had some sort of infinite goodness which logically is unsound. Once something is totally good, it's as good as it can get. There is no such thing as infinite goodness.

I do believe that God is totally good, as I have been saying throughout this thread, but I think the term omnibenevolent (which I'm pretty sure someone on this board made up, I've never heard a Christian use that term) is a term which has no real meaning. I maintain, nonetheless, that God is totally good and totally lacking in evil.

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>