rainbow walking

Jamie: Gosh I've been busy. But I've got a minute or two, so let me try to respond to rw's comments on my earlier post.
Hi Jamie, I was wondering where you got to.




Jamie:I don't know that we have made equally valid statements. Omnibenevolent+Omnipotent seems to obviously tilt the scale towards no casualties. To me, this seems to make my statement more valid than yours.

rw: No, it just shows the bias in your statement and mine.

Jamie: Suppose an abusive parent beats one child to death, but another survives the same violent episode with a mild concussion. If I say "if that parent was a good person, both children would still be alive," and someone else says "yes, but if he wasn't a good person, both children would be dead", are both statements equally valid?

rw: Then your analogy is saying that God intentionally caused this specific flood. Is that the same as not preventing it?

Jamie: In the flood example, you essentially have to argue that it was logically impossible for God to prevent even one of those casualties without causing more suffering elsewhere. Not one. In other words, it was logically necessary for all those people to die. That's rather a big can of worms to open up to say that every evil that comes to pass is logically necessary.

rw: Oh no, I concede to you the logical possibility that he “could have”. But does this make it logically necessary that we arrive at a conclusion that he doesn’t exist, or doesn’t care what happens to man?




Jamie: Not necessarily. If all flooding were eliminated, but there were still other evils, we're not necessarily back to the purely logical argument. The strength of the evidential arguement is taking specific evils and showing that they are logically possible to eliminate.

rw: That’s not its strength, as you suppose, but its un-doing. Your version ignores several key elements, such as omniscience, man’s greater good, man’s responsibility, just to name a few.




Jamie: I don't see how this is a defeater for PoE at all. If a parent tells his child not to play with guns, does that alleviate the parent's responsibility to keep loaded guns away from the child? If the parent leaves a loaded gun lying around the house, and the child kills himself accidently, is the parent completely in the clear because the child didn't "do his part"? Having the power to stop an evil brings with it a moral responsibility. If one is benevolent, one will seek to fulfill that responsibility. If one is omnipotent, one will be able to fulfill that responsibility. It is a blight against God if he sits back and says "I'm not going to help you, even though I can." This is especially the case if we consider the individual victims are not necessarily the humans with the responsibility or ability to deal with these things. In the case of the flooding example, if some of the dead are infants, is it okay that they did not survive because they didn't "do their part"?

rw: Your analogy fails to take a great many factors into consideration. Let’s take the “loaded gun” example and make it more consistent to the reality of what we’re discussing. Let’s say you have 12 generations of families. In the first family the parents invent guns. Let’s also say this family has five children and, as a result of this loaded gun scenario, one of them is killed. Now you have four children with experiential knowledge of the dangers of a loaded gun around children. The surviving children grow up, have families, and make a conscious effort never to own a weapon, explaining why intellectually to their children. Now thier children grow up and, not being a first person witness to the accident, buy and own guns with no such accident occurring. Their children go through the same basic process so on and so forth for eleven generations and suddenly…bang! It occurs all over again. (Similar to the relative frequency of deadly floods in any given area). The knowledge that loaded guns in the hands of children is a no no was available yet ignored.

Now, who do we blame for this second occurrence? The parents who invented guns or the ones who left a loaded one in reach of their children, in spite of the knowledge and history of the potential danger?

The knowledge that living in low-lying areas incurs a potential flood hazard is available, yet people still build homes and live in these areas. The knowledge of these dangers is available and people know it. If they ignore the danger and perish as a result it is not God’s fault nor his obligation to prevent them from realizing the consequences of their ignorance. The impact of their death serves as a reminder that man is obligated to specific behaviors consistent with his environment. If he fails in his obligation, he pays the price. Over and over and over until he gets the message.

Now, you can argue that God is at fault for setting up the initial conditions of man’s environment and even that God is at fault for all the deaths incurred by the first flood that taught man the dangers of flood waters, or the first of any such occurrence that leads to suffering. But after that, man shoulders the responsibility. Unfortunately, if you argue God’s culpability in the initial stages, you’ve left the arena of the evidential PoE.
In response to your last sentence about infants killed in the flood, were they not the responsibility of their parents? So if their parents ignore the knowledge of the dangers of where they are living, where does this leave us?





Jamie: So, in essence, you are admitting that it is logically possible to eliminate evil. Thus, an omnipotent god could eliminate it.

rw: Yes, I’ve conceded the logic.

Jamie: You seem to have now shifted to a different arguement: it is benevolent for God not to eliminate evil if man can do it for himself. Again, I disagree that this is benevolent.

rw: As I expected. And your alternative is to have God intervene at every case where death or suffering could occur? If not, he’s not God. And the end result of this is…instead of man taking any responsibility for his actions God becomes his babysitter. Let me ask you this: Does man still retain an autonomous will in this world where God prevents him from ever being harmed or dying? Can man willfully jump off cliffs in anticipation of being rescued from death in this world, for instance?




Jamie: But the PoE can be about specific cases of intervention. One does not have to go to the extremes to show that the current state of reality conflicts with the existence of an omnimax diety. If God is able to intervene to stop even one specific evil, and God is omnibenevolent, God would intervene to stop that one specific evil.


rw: And which specific evil would you have him stop?

Jamie: It appears that there are many specific evils in which God does not intervene. Therefore, God either cannot intervene (not omnipotent, or does not exist) or God chooses not to intervene (not omnibenevolent).

rw: It appears to me that there are no specific evils in which God intervenes. But why does that bring us to your specific conclusions? What about historical man? Or man’s greater good? Or God’s knowledge of these things? What if such a being wants to, but won't allow himself to?

rainbow walking

Hi Thomas,
Good to hear from you again.




Thomas: I think you have. If X is necessary for Y then Y could not exist without X. If X is sufficient for Y then X could not exist without Y. They look like conditionals.

X is sufficient for Y: if X then Y
X is necessary for Y: if Y then X

I claim childbirth is sufficient for a greater good but not necessary.

rw: Now Thomas has introduced a rather bizarre argument. If childbirth itself is not necessary I fail to see how man could expect to achieve anything good or otherwise in only one generation. Clearly the concept of “greater good” presupposes an historical progression to mankind that necessitates procreation. Inspite of Thomas's X's and Y's, if you cut man off at the womb there is no greater good to be achieved, unless Thomas is proposing that it could be achieved in one generation. Childbirth is both sufficient, (as a means of procreation) and necessary to the achievement of man's greater good...period.

Thomas also seems to have changed his tune somewhat. His initial objection was that “the pain of childbirth” was sufficient but not necessary. Now he appears to be arguing that childbirth itself is sufficient but not necessary. If all Thomas is trying to say is that childbirth is a “sufficient” means of securing the future of mankind, then we have no argument here because I concur. But then Thomas appears to be arguing himself into a contradiction in declaring it to be unnecessary. If childbirth is not necessary to the security of mankind’s future, and I see no reason why that security doesn’t qualify as a necessary part of man’s greater good, then why does he argue for a God to lessen the pain? Without childbirth, mankind has no future and can achieve no greater good. If that doesn’t qualify childbirth as “necessary” then what does?


Thomas:That means I deny the conditional "If greater good then childbirth." And for a conditional to be false, I just have to tell a story in which the antecedent obtains but the consequent does not. Now, suppose God neutralized some of the pain of childbearing mothers. Even if this were so, the babies would still be born, especially if God gave them a little help. So I've disconfirmed the conditional "If greater good then childbirth," and shown that childbirth is not an example of necessary suffering.

rw: Now Thomas seems to be quite confused. No one is arguing that a diminishment of pain would prevent women from having children. In fact, I should think it would have the opposite effect; that many more women would have many more children. Thomas’s perplexing arguments require some clarification before I can adequately address them. I was under the assumption that his initial objection to childbirth was launched under the auspices that the “pain of childbirth” was sufficient but not necessary. I am going to proceed on that assumption until he clarifies his position.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Would a reduction in the “pain of childbirth” serve the greater good of man? I am persuaded that the answer to that question will determine both the necessity and the moral obligation of God.

One thing Thomas’s logic has not established is the degree of reduction he believes would be “sufficient” to demonstrate God’s moral responsibility. Quite frankly, I don’t know how we can establish a percentage of pain reduction that would satisfy Thomas’s claim. Since the amount of pain experienced is different for each woman, trying to establish pain reduction by degrees might help some women and not others. What if God were to reduce the pain by 50% and this still left women in such pain as to be a burden on Thomas’s conscious? One wonders if a percentage of reduction would ultimately satisfy Thomas and why? Why should he then feel that half the pain is a moral victory? Were I Thomas, the ethical thing to do would be to accept nothing less than total pain reduction across the board. After all, if God can do half, he can do all. The only logical solution then is to eliminate it altogether. Why should a woman have to suffer at all when she’s contributing to the greater good of man anyway, right?

O’kay then, now it’s my turn to tell Thomas a story.

There came a day when a man named Thomas, a champion of women’s rights, came to stand before the Lord and argue his case for the elimination of the pain incurred during childbirth. Oh, he was brilliant and his arguments sound. His oratory echoed through-out the halls of eternal justice with resounding conviction until even the Lord himself was almost persuaded. And when he had finished, a silence fell across the room and not an angel one dared breath as they all waited in anticipation of the Lord’s verdict.

For what seemed an eternity the Lord looked at Thomas and then turned away to stare into the universe at the splendor of his creation. As he turned away one could almost swear they saw a tear in the corner of his eye.

Finally God spoke, “Thomas, have you fully considered the consequences of your petition?”

The sudden, sharp clarity of the Lord’s voice took Thomas by surprise, “I…I don’t understand your question, Lord”, said Thomas.

“This is true”, said God, “And you still wouldn’t understand no matter how I tried to explain it, so I’ve decided to create for you, just in this one instance and only for the duration of this exorcise, an alternate state of affairs resplendent with a world identical to your own in all ways except women, in this alternate world, are free of the suffering and pain that you have argued so passionately for me to eliminate. I will take you on a five hundred year journey through this world and conflate it down to five minutes”

Having said this both God and Thomas vanish from sight and are gone for approximately five minutes. When they return Thomas’s face is ashen, his hair disheveled, and he appears to be quite shaken and emotional. A glistening trail of half-dried tear stains could be seen beneath both his eyes. After a moment passes and he regains his composure somewhat, he clears his throat and turns to God, “Lord, I hereby withdraw my petition and apologize for having brought such a frivolous case before you.”

As Thomas turns to leave, his young assistant approaches him with a look of concern and bewilderment on his face, “I don’t understand sir, you had the case in the bag. What happened? Where did you go? What did he do to you?”

“He took me to hell…hell on earth”, Thomas replies, “I had no idea eliminating the pain of childbirth could have such devastating effects in such a short amount of time.”

“What…what do you mean?” asks the young protégé.

Thomas continues, “What I mean is that without the prohibitive effects of the current levels of pain in childbirth, women began having children indiscriminately. Oh, it started off innocent enough, mind you, but then somewhere along the way it got out of hand. I saw mass starvation on a scale you can’t even imagine. Bloody, bloody wars over land and resources that couldn’t keep up with our rate of reproduction. Genocide and slavery and suicide and…and”

Thomas turned away obviously shaken again in the recounting.

“And”, his young protégé queried expectantly.

“Cannabilism”, Thomas dropped his head and began to gather his notes.








Thomas: Huh? What responsibilities? How are we to discover that it's our responsibility to feel pain?

rw: I’m referring to our responsibility to alleviate pain as much as we practically can.

Thomas: And why is this a greater good than reducing women's suffering?

rw: Man has reduced women’s suffering greatly. Ever heard of an epideral? It’s a special type of anesthetic that numbs the body from the waist down.




Thomas: Then God is morally imperfect. It is possible to imagine a morally better being, one who reduces the pain of childbirth more. (It's morally better to prevent useless suffering than to allow it. If you deny that, you're not working within the bounds of what most humans take to be ethically sound.)

rw: Yes, but you haven’t established “useless” in your argument…anywhere. You’ve just assumed it. The current levels of pain in childbirth serve to restrain enough women from indiscriminate pregnancy so as to hold the population growth to a level consistent to our limited resources in most parts of the world. It is a fact that many, many women have themselves sterilized after having one or two children just because of the pain and discomfort of bearing and birthing children. The current level of pain experienced is just enough to not be prohibitive in serving the greater good of man via reproduction, and is just prohibitive enough to serve the greater good of man via throttling somewhat the threat of over population…maybe not enough, gauging from the population growth in just the last ten years. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Why should a God be held morally responsible to fix something that isn’t broken? You seem to think that just because you can isolate the pain of childbirth in your imagination that it somehow is also isolated in reality and is useless.



Thomas: There has never been a necessity for wisdom teeth, because God could have provided us with more efficient digestive systems.

rw: Sure, why stop there, why don’t he just digest the food for us…yes? Clearly Thomas has shifted the parameters of the CP to facilitate this response, and his imagination. We’re no longer on the subject of a degree of pain reduction but the wholesale modification of our physical anatomy. One wonders if we aren’t headed back to the traditional PoE in as many increments as it took to get to the modified version.

I refer Thomas to point number 22: Thus necessity should not be argued from a position of what was, or now is, but by what can be, if man is to have any role in the acquisition of his own greater good and an omniscient God would know this. So the determination of any cause of suffering can be tested by this rule of necessity for its sufficiency or insufficiency as it applies to man’s greater good.

The reason I included this point is to keep our focus on man’s role in the acquisition of his greater good, as it is evident that man does have a role to play and a responsibility to that acquisition. One such good example is dentistry. Man has resolved the problem of wisdom teeth without an appeal to redesigning his digestive system. It is vital that we do not let Thomas’s vivid imagination and assertions of what God can or should or aught do, cloud our judgment of the consequences of his assertions, especially since we can anticipate a deluge of such assertions before this discussion ends. It is also becoming clear that no matter what rational and factual arguments we muster Thomas is always going to have recourse to these assertions, in spite of accusing me of extreme skepticism. Apparently, when it comes to what man can accomplish himself, Thomas is so extremely skeptical that he feels an appeal to God would have been the better route. Need I remind Thomas that extreme skepticism is self negating?



Thomas:I hope you don't really think that. I don't find it plausible at all.

rw: No, you wouldn’t, but then, that’s the problem isn’t it. We are forced, by this standard, to appeal to personal subjective opinion. Since bigotry and genocide have both occurred in our world, obviously there have existed many people who don’t share your opinion. And no, I don’t really think that. That’s why I included the disclaimer, (which you omitted), under the right circumstances..



thomas: Because he would tell us, the same way a parent would tell her child why she has to go through the pain of a vaccination. Unless you want to deny that we can know whether God would tell us about our misconceptions, in which case you have to accept global skepticism.

rw: Again we find that Thomas would prefer we surrender our science to divine fiat. He seems oblivious to the FACT that we already have valid medical explanations for why a woman has to experience pain during childbirth. She knows this before getting pregnant. It has to do with her physiology. You know, spitting something out from between her legs that weighs anywhere between five and eleven pounds? Again, why is God obligated to tell us something we either already know or have the practical intelligence to figure out? Is he advocating a medical explanation? Is God required to give us a detailed medical brief on the pain of childbirth? I’m not aware of any misconceptions about this medical procedure, are you? (Outside of your belief that the pain should be reduced, which I think most medical personnel would agree, but not as to your solution) How would Thomas advocate God pass this information along? Through a minister? Or perhaps hold a private consultation with each woman prior to entering the delivery room?

25. Thus we can follow the consequences of the CP out to its ridiculous conclusions. If God were to undertake just one of Thomas’s complaints why should he stop there? Pain of childbirth is history? Great! Let’s move on to…and so forth, until we’re back in that magical mystery world of never ending bliss where our every whim is met with an abundant supply of anything we can find plausibly imaginatively necessary. You don’t really think Thomas’s charge of immorality against this God will end with the eradication of pain at childbirth…do you? Nah…didn’t think so. Observe his next round of arguments.

Ikea

[delete]

Thomas Metcalf

rainbow walking :

There's quite a lot here so I'm going to try to grab the most relevant points.

Imagine the possible world (call it w1) in which childbirth is 10% less painful, and humans' emotional capacities are increased to compensate for any loss of sympathy, compassion, etc., as well as humans being instructed not to have as many children, or the amount of resources required to support human lives be decreased. w1 is logically possible, and it is morally better to actualize w1 than it is to actualize the actual world. Yet God did not actualize w1. Therefore, God is not morally perfect.

Now I'm going to look through your post to try to find a response to that sort of argument.

Yes, that's the question. And the answer is obviously "yes," if all the other goods can be preserved. And because God is omnipotent, they can.

Irrelevant. All I have to demonstrate is that the current level of suffering is too high. Whether or not I'd be satisfied is a fact about my own psychology, not about whether there's too much suffering in the world.

I don't find this at all convincing. Women don't choose not to have children because it's as painful as it is now; if they do, please point me to a journal article that says as much. In my experience, women choose not to have children for a great many other reasons. And even if the pain of childbirth being this much instead of 10% less were causing women to have fewer children, God could just as easily decrease the amount of resources necessary to sustain human lives, or instruct humans about the consequences of having too many kids such that they'd choose to do it less often, etc. (Note that this would not produce a reduction in free will; God allows us to know all kinds of facts and no one thinks that his allowance for us to know these facts constitutes a denial of our free will.)

You have a very dim view of God's power. God can reduce pain at will.

On the contrary, we do not know why this suffering occurs, because as far as we know (on the hypothesis of God's existence), it is unnecessary. We know what causes it, but we don't know why it's necessary.

rainbow walking

Thomas: rainbow walking : There's quite a lot here so I'm going to try to grab the most relevant points.

rw: Are you sure you grabbed them all? As you say, there were quite a lot of them. Is there any particular reason why you considered these to be the most relevant?


Thomas: Imagine the possible world (call it w1) in which childbirth is 10% less painful, and humans' emotional capacities are increased to compensate for any loss of sympathy, compassion, etc., as well as humans being instructed not to have as many children, or the amount of resources required to support human lives be decreased. w1 is logically possible, and it is morally better to actualize w1 than it is to actualize the actual world. Yet God did not actualize w1. Therefore, God is not morally perfect.

rw: In such a scenario there will be no apparent change. All things being equal, except for 10% less suffering, Thomas, having an equivalent increase of empathy, will still be arguing his CP with me for another 10% reduction, believing that the current level is too high, (due to his equal amount of empathy and compassion), and it’s cascading turtles all the way down.

No matter how you try to modify your arguments to anticipate my responses you’re still going to end up back at PoE in its original form. The moment you modify nature you’ve instantiated an entirely different universe. If you try to use God’s attributes to modify this world, without instantiating a new state of affairs, you have God violating the laws of physics. Then you’ve cancelled your foundation for PoE in any version because a God who violates the law automatically loses his appeal as a superior moral agent. If you negate his attributes in your use of them to support your arguments, PoE fails to obtain. It’s either change the laws of nature, in which case you’re no longer arguing your CP, or violate them, in which case you’re no longer arguing an omni-benevolent God, or find another way. The noose of PoE, in any version, is around your neck…not mine. Those attributes, which you fathom are your magical arsenal against me, is the noose from which you will hang your own arguments and PoE will fail to obtain. As I imagine you are beginning to discover. The evidential PoE is by far the weakest.



Thomas: Now I'm going to look through your post to try to find a response to that sort of argument.

rw: Don’t you think that’s a bit disingenuous? That is not the argument my responses were submitted to address. We started out with your Contemporary PoE, remember? How can you then submit a totally different argument, (even if you think it’s based on the original), post it after the fact of my last response, and then claim to sift through my response for points that you arbitrarily deem to be consistent to an argument I was not addressing? I have no problem with you launching an argument consistent to your CP but don’t use it as a framework for replying to a response I addressed to a previous line of argumentation. This only facilitates a disregard for the more salient points I argued based on your previous reply, points not specifically aimed at this addition.



Thomas: Yes, that's the question. And the answer is obviously "yes," if all the other goods can be preserved. And because God is omnipotent, they can.

rw: And you can direct me to what argumentation to support this answer?



thomas: Irrelevant. All I have to demonstrate is that the current level of suffering is too high. Whether or not I'd be satisfied is a fact about my own psychology, not about whether there's too much suffering in the world.

rw: Your evidential version of PoE incorporates the evidence of suffering so I am well within my rights to require that this question, which is RELEVANT to your evidence, be resolved. As to your demonstration of the current levels, whatever that happens to mean, (I suppose it’s another of those irrelevant things), I am still awaiting some form or type of argumentation supporting this assertion.



Thomas: I don't find this at all convincing. Women don't choose not to have children because it's as painful as it is now; if they do, please point me to a journal article that says as much.

rw: Certainly, as soon as you point me to a journal article that says the current levels of pain in childbirth can be reduced no further by medical treatment.

God is not obligated to do for man what man can do for himself.

My wife, her sister, my neighbor’s wife, and one of my fellow employees wives have all taken steps to ensure they never get pregnant again and have cited this very reason. My wife chose sterilization and had it done immediately after having our second son, before she left the hospital. Her sister compelled her husband to have a vasectomy for the same reason, (although they had three children before doing so). My neighbor’s wife chose sterilization after having two children and my fellow employee’s wife chose the same method. Wasn’t the current level of pain in childbirth your argument against God? Are you now going to defy reason by arguing that such a level actually encourages women to have children? I guess when you started down this evidential path you didn’t anticipate the evidence might not work so easily in your favor.

Thomas: In my experience, women choose not to have children for a great many other reasons. And even if the pain of childbirth being this much instead of 10% less were causing women to have fewer children, God could just as easily decrease the amount of resources necessary to sustain human lives, or instruct humans about the consequences of having too many kids such that they'd choose to do it less often, etc. (Note that this would not produce a reduction in free will; God allows us to know all kinds of facts and no one thinks that his allowance for us to know these facts constitutes a denial of our free will.)

rw: It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a proponent of the evidential PoE runs to God when his evidence is challenged by a more accurate interpretation of his evidence. Need I remind you, advocating God make all these alterations to our environment, to facilitate this reduction in resources, is a modification to your CP because those modifications take us right back to an entirely re-created universe. Follow the physics of this one alteration and see how many abrogations of natural law you’re foisting upon God. And, to do so in this state of affairs, makes God a lawbreaker. Now either he’s a morally superior being or a common criminal. If, in order to bring about your wishes, he has to break the law, it is your arguments that fail to obtain, not God’s attributes, because you are the one using them to support your arguments and break the laws of nature to do so. God is not obligated to subject himself to a charge of conspiracy.



Thomas: You have a very dim view of God's power. God can reduce pain at will.

rw: And you have a very dim view of man’s proper role in the procurement of his own greater good and no argumentation as to why God should reduce something you’ve yet to establish as “useless or unnecessary”. We started off in an effort of establishing these adjectives as apropos to the reality of this world. What happened to that enterprise? There were a great many points cogent to that endeavor in my last response which you seem to have glossed over and now appear to be proceeding forward as if the whole question has been resolved when it hasn’t.



Thomas: On the contrary, we do not know why this suffering occurs, because as far as we know (on the hypothesis of God's existence), it is unnecessary. We know what causes it, but we don't know why it's necessary.

rw: “Unnecessary” is another unsupported assertion on your part. What is your position on childbirth in relation to man’s greater good? Is it sufficient, unnecessary, both or neither? I’ve already given a detailed description establishing the necessity of the current pain levels of birthing a child. They stand un-refuted so how can you say we don’t know why it’s necessary? The current pain levels are a prohibitive factor that act as a natural barrier to over populating a planet of limited resources. Many women don’t want to experience the pain of childbirth at its current level, in spite of the medical advances, so they are more careful not to get pregnant. This is not rocket science.

Dr. Retard

My neighbor shouldn't play his music at 140 decibels. He should turn it down. I do not know exactly where he should stop. But the volume should be lower than 140 decibels.[1]

A traffic cop shouldn't give me a $7 million ticket for driving 60 in a 55mph zone. I do not know exactly what the amount of the fine should be. But it should be lower than $7 million.

Whenever (i) some level is way too high, but (ii) we don't know exactly where it ought to be, the fact remains that it is way too high.

and

Why in the world would God's moral status be compromised by his violating the laws of physics? I mean, just obviously, what about miracles!?. "Violating the law" isn't always bad. This "common criminal" thing is one of the most bizarre metaphors I've ever seen.

Really? Even if man doesn't know how to do it at first, and so man has to spend centuries trying to figure out a way to do it?

Take the death of the mother in childbirth. This was much, much, much more common 2000 years ago. Since then, we've gradually figured out how to bear children without killing the mother. In the meantime, though, countless women died.

Do you think God had no obligation -- being morally perfect, mind you -- to help out?

[1] Unless, of course, the music is Manowar.

rainbow walking

doc: My neighbor shouldn't play his music at 140 decibels. He should turn it down. I do not know exactly where he should stop. But the volume should be lower than 140 decibels.[1]

rw: If you're questioning his moral integrity and your only solution is that he abrogate the laws of physics affecting the way sound travels in air, such that it affects everything about the way everyone can hear anything, just to secure your personal convictions about the decibel levels, then, yes, I think you have some splaining to do Lucy.

doc: A traffic cop shouldn't give me a $7 million ticket for driving 60 in a 55mph zone. I do not know exactly what the amount of the fine should be. But it should be lower than $7 million.

rw: Again, if you're questioning his moral fibre, and the only resolution you propose is that he alter nature in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to drive over 55, same response applies.

doc: Whenever (i) some level is way too high, but (ii) we don't know exactly where it ought to be, the fact remains that it is way too high.

rw: Seems to me that we aught to establish a baseline first before we go declaring something excessive...yes? If there's a viable reason for the baseline to be higher than our personal convictions let us feel comfortable with, which of these considerations aught we to give the most authority, when any alteration to the current level could adversely affect, not only us, but everyone?




doc: Why in the world would God's moral status be compromised by his violating the laws of physics? I mean, just obviously, what about miracles!?. "Violating the law" isn't always bad. This "common criminal" thing is one of the most bizarre metaphors I've ever seen.

rw: If I establish a set of laws for everyone and they become binding for everyone, I have no legal or moral right then to change those laws, just because I'm the one who established them.

How long would you remain a player in a football game I started, having established the rules of the game, if I were to change the rules if, or when I thought you were winning? But, apparently, when you think you're losing, you have no moral restraint whatsoever preventing you from demanding I change the rules to help you win. Seem fair to you?

However, this doesn't preclude finding and using loopholes in the law. It's done all the time. It also doesn't preclude playing one law against another to achieve a specific effect, like flying. Again, that's done all the time.

Miracles have no place in this argument. We're not arguing the xian God.



rw: God is not obligated to do for man what man can do for himself.


doc: Really? Even if man doesn't know how to do it at first, and so man has to spend centuries trying to figure out a way to do it?

Take the death of the mother in childbirth. This was much, much, much more common 2000 years ago. Since then, we've gradually figured out how to bear children without killing the mother. In the meantime, though, countless women died.

Do you think God had no obligation -- being morally perfect, mind you -- to help out?

rw: In as much as you admit that man has finally resolved this issue to some degree, then obviously an omniscient God would know man would do so. People are going to die of something regardless of what it is. These arguments are an appeal for God to provide man with immortality when extrapolated out to their logical conclusion. Had such a being stepped in and done something to help man prevent these women from dying in childbirth, and ten years later these same women begin dying from some other natural cause, then the same argument has the same appeal. So it boils down to God aught to instantiate a state of affairs where man is immortal and his every wish and whim pops into existence in any quantity upon demand.

Wyz_sub10

It would seem to me that if a state of affairs where good exists without evil is not possible, then the state of being omnibenevolent is also not possible.

With all the talk about what an omnibenevolent entity is limited to due to logical possibility, it seems that what is being overlooked is that, perhaps, an omnibenevolent being is not logically possible.

Therefore, the PoE should be simply supplanted by the logical impossibility of an omnibenevolent being to begin with.

rainbow walking

wyz: Re: competition, there are "divine" ways to address this without totally removing wants or subjecting people to the misguided competitive drivings of others.

rw: Perhaps but would they serve the greater good of man?

wyz: But really, not everything is due to the above, or can be settled as you propose. A small child horribly burned in a fire is not suffering due to limited resources or competition.


rw: Not directly , this is true. You often have to delve several layers beneath the cause/effect analysis to identify the competitive factor. The child’s burns are an example of the first law of thermodynamics. If you were to instantiate a state of affairs where the rule of limited resources applies and you also want this state of affairs to last a long time, (maybe even an eternity), then obviously you have to have a way to prevent the limitation on resources from canceling your state of affairs completely out of existence. Thus you arrange matter with a peculiar property of being able to change form and states without total annihilation. Thus the burns on the child represent this theoretical explanation and tie right back into the rule of limited resources. After all, humans are a limited resource.
So all the basic resources, (those described in the periodic table), can be seen to be both limited and eternal as they combine, decompose, and recombine into complex compounds. This is explained in the first law of thermodynamics and represents a re-cycling process. Take an apple for instance. You can eat an apple and, once eaten, to you it appears to no longer exist. But appearances can be deceptive. It has merely begun the long process of re-cycling such that its chemical composition is returned to the world to become a part of many other resources. In this light you get the amusingly paradoxical possibility that you, in eating that apple, may have possibly eaten the same apple, or a few atomic particles thereof, that Adam and Eve ate, (assuming such people are not just a myth). Or you may have just eaten a part of what once was your great, great grandfathers brains. Or you may even eat from the same apple three times. Of course, the probability factor is extremely low but the logical possibility remains.



wyz: Fair enough. But it's Genesis, itself, that gets the PoE ball rolling in the first place. (But that's for another thread).

rw: Perhaps, but it only takes a few logical extrapolations to get the ball rolling back from whence it came also. :^D

wyz: Nature can compete with Adam, but it would be more difficult to justify fire competing with mankind. (i.e. fire consumes a person as a "resource").

rw: See above reference.

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wyz: Okay. But I'm not sure that solves any PoE issues. It might be a message of warning, but is god thus saying competition is a necessary evil? Despite Adam having to compete with nature, and Abel competing with his brother, it's hard to see any of this as "necessary" (especially considering the population was supposedly 4).

You may reason that this competition was a result of Adam's sin. But that is quite different than saying it was necessary (or an act of benevolence, for that matter).

rw: No, the rule of limited resources has no normative value in and of itself. It’s just like any other theoretical law and only serves as a description of our current state of affairs…but since PoE is arguing our current state of affairs is evil and painful, I guess by association PoE is also arguing that every aspect of it is tainted…which is ironically what xians are saying but the xian is never going to concede that God had anything to do with it.




wyz: Hmmm...I don't think I can agree there. Some atrocious acts can occur in the pursuit of life and happiness. We would neither call these acts 'good', nor the prohibition of such acts 'evil'.

rw: Such acts are propagated by somebody in pursuit of their own life or happiness in such a way as to create a victim of someone else. Both are competing for their respective lives and happiness and, for some reason, one of them begins to view the other as a source to be exploited. It happens all the time in society and between societies and between institutions in a society, for instance, when a public officer abuses his powers to secure some personal benefit at the expense of his constituency. We call this corruption.

wyz: To be honest, I'd define 'evil' (in the broadest sense) as an act that hinders the maintenance (or development) of a sustainable society. 'Suffering', IMO, is something not necessary connected to evil.

rw: That is a definition consistent with social ethics and is the most commonly applied form of morality.



wyz: I'm okay with all of this, except to note the marked difference between "evil acts" and "bad things happening".

rw: My designations are just meant to be basic and not authoritative. These descriptors are used inter-changeably all the time such that practically any of them convey basically the same idea.




wyz: Is a random murder caused by dimentia an act that flows from competition?

rw: Some psychosis is created by chemical imbalances and others are triggered by circumstances from the past like abuse and torture. While they appear random to us, inside the psychotics mind he has devised some reason or another for the act. As I said above, often the limited resources pressures are several layers deep thus not immediately apparent. A great deal of emotional competition goes on in any society as its people interact and relate. Because psychosis is the exception rather than the norm, such determinations would have to be made on a case by case basis.

wyz: Certainly the suffering caused by a tornado does not fit this description.

rw: The law of non-contradiction. A is A: A molecule cannot be both an H2O molecule and an oxygen molecule at the same time. Nor can they occupy the same space at the same time, (rule of limited resources). Air and water vapor compete for limited space in the atmosphere creating high and low pressure systems as it’s heated and cooled along with a host of other phenomena that result in all complex weather patterns.



wyz: I agree with this, too. But I think it only addresses "willful evil", and the suffering caused thereby. It doesn't address other suffering.

rw: If you mean suffering caused by natural phenomena, they have natural explanations and are not directly caused or influenced by a god. If you mean suffering caused by diseases these are explained by evolution and the struggle/competition to survive.

wyz: I want to make this last point (which digresses from this particular discussion a bit).

For me the PoE highlights the following:

- evil and suffering do exist

rw: I concur.

wyz: - we (as a society) recognize there are problems with evil

rw: I concur


wyz: - if this evil is to be discounted as *not* problematic (in the presence of an omni+ creator) then it would be embraced or, at least, recognized as necessary

rw: If it were not for the consequences perhaps, but any person or society that embraces evil in any form soon perishes. It exists due to the rule of limited resources and the competition engendered by sentient beings struggling to exist under such conditions, whether a god exists or not.

wyz: Then:

- why is evil recognized as a problem?

rw: The consequences make it impossible to ignore.


wyz: - why do we take measures to prevent or eliminate suffering?


rw: Because we value our lives.


wyz: - why, for most religions, is this (measures to reject evil/eliminate suffering) part of human expectations?

rw: To engender obedience which was the primitive system upon which societies were built. Modern societies have learned to synthesize cooperation with competition without the need for rigid holistic norms. Hence we have an American society based on the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. It extols the virtues of the individual as well as society.

wyz: It creates a circle - in the simplest sense, if evil was truly a facilitating device, part of god's necessary world, then we would embrace it (at least on some level) and recognize this.

rw: Except the consequences make that inadvisable and man has historical precedent for knowing this…among other things.

wyz: I have never heard (although it may exist) a J/C position that recognizes or embraces the starving of the multitudes. It seems that most J/C positions do, indeed, recognize this as a problem.

If it's not a problem with god, why is it a problem with us?

rw: Premeditated evil doesn’t have to be actualized. It’s a willful choice…except in those cases of dementia. Evil, as a concept, isn’t a problem for anyone. It’s only when it becomes an event that the problems arise.

Wyz_sub10

Do you have reason to think that "misguided competitive drivings" contribute to the greater good? I realize that is a fuzzy notion, not well defined. But a defensive that says "well, it could be for the best" isn't really saying anything about the particular issue. You could say the exact same thing about torturing birds.

In the same way that you dropping an anvil on my head is an example of physics and demonstrates gravity (and the inability of my skull to crush the anvil, as opposed to the reverse). But the act of you dropping the anvil or me standing there have nothing to do with the physics involved in the end result.

The child does not have to burn to "satisfy" the thermodynamics. i.e. it is not necessary to have this happen, just as it is not necessary for you to drop an anvil on my head. (At least give me time to get out my Acme umbrella, first).

You're losing me here. I'm not sure I know the specifics of "the rule of limited resources", but I'm quite sure that an omnipotent being has a wealth of avenues to ensure limited resources don't have the effect you are stating above without making it necessary for little girls to burn themselves.

Actually, it would seem to me that this would have the opposite effect. A burned (but not dead) child would require more resources. Speaking as someone who has worked in healthcare for many years, I can confidently say that the cost to maintain a sick or disabled individual imposes a significant financial burden on resources. It would be better, in such cases, for god to snap his fingers and snuff her out painlessly.

No idea what you mean by any of this. So the girl, as a resource, changes "states" to demonstrate resources are limited?

Okay.

RW, what the christ are you talking about? And what does this have to do with suffering?

I understand the concept, but are you eventually going to tie this in to how a girl's burns are necessary? What "resources" do you think are being conserved here?

And in every breath I draw are molecules from Caesar's dying breath...and?

According to SOMMS, my great-grandfather was just a mass delusion and/or conspiracy....but I digress.

I hope you're not explaining this to the girl in the burn ward, because is she hasn't been put to sleep by now, she's likely very trying to set you on fire.

I think, first off, one has to accept the "rule of limited resources" to begin with, which, in the presence of an omnipotent being, I don't see why this is required. I understand that you will tie unlimited resources to goals and ambitions and health competition, etc. But there's no necessary reason to accept it. The fire doesn't have to burn the girl. If it does, it certainly doesn't have to leave her in pain. Why not burn her but make it painless in the years to follow (because it ain't)? Why not just kill the girl in order to end her suffering?

BTW, if xians never concede god's involvement in this necessarily evil state of affairs, then isn't that the PoE, right there?

Okay. So then why define evil as you have defined it? It seems that we agree that interfering with the pursuit of happiness is not a good moral measuring stick.

See above.

Okay.

But those reasons may not be legitimate. You may shoot the barista at Starbucks because you fear all the coffee has been poisoned (please don't shoot the barista at Starbucks, BTW). But that is not a legitimate reason - necessary cause. If you are going to make a jump between brain chemistry and resources, you had better explain this further.

That's fine, RW, but you haven't demonstrated why any of this is necessary. How does an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being allow for imbalances in brain chemistry that allow for such psychoses? Emotional competition is not necessarily consistent with competition for physical resources. You cannot assume that just because we have 'x' number of trees to work with, that we also have 'x' "number" of love or confidence to work with. (Besides, if god is omnibenevolent, can't he give you all the love you need?)

What you are describing is a clockwork scenario - god connects the machinery, winds the watch, and that's that. That certainly isn't the J/C god, to be sure. But even discounting that, there is nothing about that god that demonstrates omnipotence or omnibenevolence. I would argue that it contradicts omnibenevolence.

God could simply steer the tornado away from people (more on that below). Or he could have created a world where air interactions were below the threshold of major disturbances.

You are giving me physical explanations for a tornado, as you had for why skin burns. I aware that there are explanations for these things, and I understand that you are trying to tie it all in to resources.

But god supposedly chose certain resources, chose then way they would interact, defined the laws (including thermodynamics and all of physics). You are saying “it is what it is”, which is not to say that anything, or the results of anything, are necessary.

One could argue that everything can be deemed to be caused by a being if that being created all and knows all, but that's something to think about.

Even if they were not caused by god, the question remains on why they are allowed to happen. The PoE isn't necessarily why suffering was created, but why suffering is allowed to exist.

Evolution, it was seem, was a pretty poor choice of vehicle for an omnibenevolent/omnipotent being. While we can agree that evolution did occur, you'd be hard pressed to argue that evolution was a necessity.

Plus, disease is, in no way, a necessity of evolution. Evolution did not require that humans succumb to disease - that's just the way it worked out. Unless, of course, you are arguing that disease is god's tool to keep the population trim.

If so, we are back to the benevolence issue - pretty mean way to do that, wouldn't you say?

Isn't that a problem?

IMO, humans struggle to exist under the present conditions because god does not exist. I agree with much of what you say above, despite my protests, but only to the end that this is the way it is and there is no all-loving, all-powerful god to watch over us.

If a being is omnipotent, then resources are only limited to the end that he so chooses. If, indeed, he does choose to limit resources, than we must question the benevolence behind a "plan" that makes suffering necessary.

I want to return to "steering the tornado" at this point. In another post you noted that you did not want to consider miracles or add divine acts to the mix. I'm not sure why not. After all, if you exclude miracles than you are essentially excluding omnipotence. I have already stated that the exclusion of omnipotence eliminates the PoE.

It seems unfair for you to insist that omnipotence is part of the god equation, yet any display of or reference to this power is not allowed in formulating solutions to suffering.

The consequences are problematic - evil is a problem. We supposedly have an omnibenevolent god that we recognize as such despite being repulsed by the consequences of his benevolence.

And losing our lives is problematic. Are you suggesting that if we really embraced god's love we would not value our lives? It would seem this is what you are saying - there is no PoE, according to you. It is our problem, not god's.

And if we did not value our lives, would that not make our lives valueless, and run contradictory to any purpose they could have been for creation to begin with?

In the first part of your response, you seem to be saying that reducing suffering is a function of obedience rather than 'goodness'. What is 'good', then?

The second part of your statement confuses me a bit. You are saying that modern societies can compete without having to follow strict rules. Regardless of the validity of this statement, I'm not sure what the relevance is. Yes, society encourages competition. Yes, there are relatively few universal rules that "handcuff" this (but still many rules). Yes, it sometimes results in suffering. But this goes back to my last statement - if this is the case, then you world you describe should promote "dog eat dog" to the fullest degree - it is good to compete for resources, in fact it is necessary.

You mean the consequences that god has defined? They're still god's rules. You are simply advocating that we accept the necessity, theoretically, but resist it in practice.

Can you not see the PoE in this paradox?

Has does this differ from my statement, way back in the discussion, that evil or suffering can exist conceptually? You seemed to think it was a problem, now you are saying it is not a problem.

It seems clear, RW, that you are not actually arguing for an omni- god at all. You are clearly describing a watchmaker god that sets up the universe and let's it wind down.

I agree that in this universe, the PoE isn't a 'P' at all. But for the omni- god, there remains much to address.