Dr Rick

...and I missed it; I withdraw my characterization of your argument against him as a "strawman" and apologize for doing so.

Rick

GunnerJ

SOMMS is either a troll, someone who likes to thrash his own version of other people's arguments rather than their own, or a total moron. This is the only conclusion I can draw from his refusal to show me just how he "boiled down" my argument to "god is selfish because he gave us freedom." One way or another, I have no need to further discuss anyhting with him.

SOMMS, on the off chance that you area legitimate poster, one of my arguments was that if you defend god's permittence of evil by saying that he wanted us to freely choose his way, then you imply that god is selfish, because his desire for willing (slaves, servents, followers, groupies, partners in crime, WHATEVER) is acted upon regaurdless of the very real negative consequences it has on us. In other words, he didn't consider the harm his fetish for willing (slaves, servents, followers, groupies, partners in crime, WHATEVER) would have on said willing (slaves, servents, followers, groupies, partners in crime, WHATEVER), and is therefore acting selfishly.

I don't expect you to really understand this, and how it differs from your strawman version of it, but it is helpful for those casual onlookers who might be hoodwinked into thinking you have a point.

And then, there's still the rest of my post to deal with. (PROTIP: Just because A preceeds B, B is not necessarily dependant upon A, so don't try to cop out by saying that the rest of my arguments are obviously based on this one.)

Again, I fully expect to wither see some absurd parody of my actual point here argued against, of a pithy one liner doubting the "coherence" of my argument without demonstrating why. But that's OK. That's what makes a good troll: persistence and knowledge of how to push someone's buttons.

For example:

See, either SOMMS is too dumb to tell the difference between "If x then y" and simply "y," or he is purposely not dealing with this distiction. If the later, it is because he's trying to pull a fast one and hopes no one will notice, or he is purposely trying to piss us off.

It's the new trilema: dumbass, dishonest, or disturbence!

GunnerJ

Don't be so fast to make a retraction. There's a difference between saying "if someone does x, then he is selfish" and "he is selfish." See my post above.

Dr. Retard

rainbow walking:

A quick response to the most puzzling part of your post:

Um, if God were to render people unable to rape each other, how would that punish the innocent?

"Hey, I'm innocent! I've never raped anyone in my life! So where does God get off with this blanket prevention of rapes! He should only prevent proven rapists from raping, and quit restricting the freedom of innocent people who are just thinking of becoming a rapist."

???

luvluv

Rimstalker:

And what if the ability to act freely is the best for US, not simply the best for God? What if the ability to act freely is the only way finite agents can reach their highest potential?

If, for example, freedom were an independantly good thing, then isn't it possible that a virtue freely chosen is MORE GOOD than a virtue imposed? (by virtue of having that extra good thing, "freely chosen" in addition to the virtue) In such a case, wouldn't an omnibenevolent God (interested in bringing into existence the most possible good) be motivated by His own character to make us free?

(and this is only one possible example, I'm not suggesting that this is actually why freedom is best for us.)

tw1tch

Philosoft,
Right. My question to you is this...what evidence/reasoning do you have that this was not already done? A person can't commit mental genocide for example. I'm sure you see this right?


But you don't seem to be happy with this situation. Why?




Uh...I'm going to need you to expand on this a bit more.

Can you please give reasoning why you feel...
...is an arbitrary definition of Freedom?


It doesn't really seem arbitrary to me. And I think most people on this planet would be happy with this definition.



Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

GunnerJ

First off, luvluv, I want to thank you for actually considering what I'm saying instead of twisting it around into a more convienient form.

That may very well be the case. But it wasn't SOMMS' argument. His argument was that the reason God gave us free will, and thus made it possible for us to hurt each other, was because he wanted willing servents. His desire, apperently, overode any concern for the danger he put us in.

However, if you'd like to argue a version of FWD that states that free will is beneficial for humans, I'll play. Let's just make sure we understand that I was arguing a different case with SOMMS.

Well, let's think about this. Saying that someone hasn't reached her potential means that she isn't doing the best she can, in other words, that she's not making the right choices to become the best "version" of "her" that is possible. If we had no free choice, we would be meeting out potential by default, since our actions would be determined and thus, we couldn't make any choices to be other than what we are: what we are is set, there is no other possibility, better or worse.

However, I am not arguing a loss of total choice, only a partial loss.

I'm not even sure it makes sense to talk of virtuous choices without the ability to choose otherwise. But that's not the point. A being who is omnibenevolent wants to eliminate pain and suffering (as a corollary of wanting to do good, so long as reducing suffering is considered a good thing, and passages from the NT suggest that the Xian God thinks it is). If god is more interested in promoting virtue (getting others to be good) than eliminating pain (doing something good), he's not omnibenevolent. Thus, such a defense is really just a concession to the POE: it admits that god cannot be both omnibenevolent and omnipotent and exist.

Well here you employ another definition of omnibenevolent. I hate to use the old tack of bringing in a dictionary, but Websters doesn't include "bringing good into existence" as a quality of a benevolent being. Doing good, yes, but there's a subtle distiction between "wanting to do good" and "wanting others to do good."

rainbow walking

Hi Zadok,

I appreciate your efforts to teach me and hope you will continue to do so.




Z: I'll say again. Omniscience is incapable of being an guiding force. Omniscience tells us what IS. It is knowledge, such as "The wall is white." "The cat is black." "I am 6'1"." Etc. To say that omniscience can tell us what to do is a naturalistic fallacy:


rw: My response to this is twofold:

1. First, on a human level, normative values are taught, thus they are learned, thus they are a form of knowledge. They are a form of knowledge I call EXPERENTIAL knowledge, as opposed to intellectual knowledge. You can teach a person all the qualifications of love, for instance, and when someone talks about love they’ll understand the concept on an intellectual basis. But once they EXPERIENCE love they’ll have a much fuller normative comprehensive knowledge of the concept. This is similar to teaching a child not to touch the burner of a stove. You can instill an intellectual understanding of why they shouldn’t do that, but until they actually EXPERIENCE getting burned, it remains just intellectual knowledge. That burning sensation will instill in them the normative value of hot stoves in contact with human flesh. They’ll avoid it like the plague.

2. Secondly, you have committed the fallacy of equivocation here between limited human knowledge and omniscience. Omniscience is considerably different from human limited knowledge. Omniscience is knowing all possible past, present and future events. This is different from human knowledge as it puts its possessor on an entirely different level. From this perspective predicting how its possessor’s normative values should guide it are not cut and dried. A simple example should suffice:


1. Joe is dying from a rare form of cancer but he has a healthy heart that he plans to donate to medicine.

2. The recipient of his heart will be a 16 year old girl who, twenty years later, finds a cure to cancer, thus saving the lives of literally millions.

3. I love Joe and ought not let him die so young.

4. But there are one hundred and eleven million people whom I love as much as Joe, who will contract this disease before humanity evolves beyond the reach of diseases, therefore if I don’t interfere with Joe’s death, none of these people will die of this disease.

You see the complications that arise in your response when we take into consideration omniscience as opposed to human knowledge? If you were omnipotent and omnibenevolent but only possessed limited human knowledge, you'd rush right in and save Joe's life. But then, later, you'd discover the price that humanity had to pay for your omnibenevolent behavior. It's not likely they'd view you as being so omnibenevolent.


Z: This in no way entails action without forethought or consideration. Omnibenevolence is our 'guiding' force, however. It is the aspect of a being that allows that being to decide which, of a range of actions, is the 'correct' action. Omniscience CANNOT do this on its own, under any circumstances. It requires a normative idea.

Rw: And since we allow that normative idea to be love, (however that’s translated), it is the task of PoE to demonstrate that allowing evil and suffering contradicts that idea and account for the ramifications of omniscience.




Z: You therefore allow that something can both exist and not exist simultaneously?


Rw: Something other than god…yes. That would be my only limitation…that god cannot will himself out of existence and still exist.


Z: There are two ways I can go with this. Either way, the PoE wins.

Method 1: Under your definition, God both exists and doesn't exist simultaneously. Therefore, the PoE is correct: God doesn't exist. This is a relatively primitive method, and it accomplishes nothing.

rw: See my qualification above. Yet PoE is no more correct than incorrect in this case because god also does exist. As you say, it accomplishes nothing.

Z: Method 2: The second method is more useful. Basically, you are claiming that the definitions in use are non-functional. By such reasoning, you are effectively negating omnipotence from our deity. (By the definition in common usage.) Hence, our deity is not omnipotent, and therefore the PoE is successful in disproving the existance of said deity.

rw: If you allow that he is capable of abrogating the rules of logic, that allowance precludes definition changes because only an omnimax deity would be capable of negating logic. It doesn’t follow that humanity can. If you make an appeal to this aspect of his omnipotence you must, again, show how this will not adversely affect man or his autonomous will. But if this position is too complicated to facilitate meaningful discussion I’ll agree to your limitations.



Z: See previous on the naturalistic fallacy. God's omniscience tells him what IS, his omnibenevolence tells him what SHOULD BE, and his omnipotence allows him to act accordingly. In conjunction, he is REQUIRED to act accordingly.

rw: Not quite, this god’s omniscience tells him every potential could be…miles apart from what is. Same equivocation fallacy applies.

Thanx for the clarification you gave. It was helpful and well articulated.



Z: By having different natural laws. Again, simply put: The claim "The world has evil in it" is not a priori. If I negate it, I get "The world does not have evil in it." No contradiction is apparent. As a result, it is a 'possible' thing: It can exist. Hence, God is capable of creating such a world.

Rw: This appears to be a straw man since I don’t recall saying this was a contradiction. Barring that, you haven’t shown how this god can create such a world without incurring a whole heap of other logistical problems. That’s why I insist you describe how such a world works. You have to assume such a world is possible or PoE doesn’t get off the launch pad. It’s when you try to escalate the assumption beyond the possible that you run into problems.



Z: That metaphor deserves to be permanently mounted in the White House.

The 'would' here comes from omnibenevolence. Remember the naturalistic fallacy above? Ok, here we go.

rw: Yes…and its evisceration. :^D

Z: A deity that is omnipotent and omniscient but has no normative qualities never acts. It just sits there.


rw: But he’s already acted or you wouldn’t be here making this statement. That you are demonstrates conclusively his omnibenevolence can be expressed permissively or providentially.

Z: It knows everything, and can do anything, but it won't.

rw: You just negated that claim by typing that sentence.

Z: It has no normative qualities. Such a deity is TOTALLY without guidance for its powers. (In fact, this is true of any being: No normative qualities, no independant action.) (And no, it wouldn't just do something for fun. That would require "I ought to act if it would be fun to act." That's normative.)

rw: O’kay, let’s run with this. Normative values are based on experiential knowledge. This, accompanied by other forms of knowledge, allow judgment calls about how to act, when, in what manner, or even not to act. Omniscience takes this to a whole nuther level.

Z: Fortunately, the deity in question has a normative quality: Omnibenevolence! It's all-loving. Now, omnibenevolence basically prevents our deity from having OTHER normative properties. (What's it gonna have? Omnimalicence creates a contradiction. Any amount of evil creates a contradiction. Extra 'good' cannot exist in excess of omnimax. No other normative properties can be squeezed in.)

rw: According to the mythological record, from which this omnimax deity has been derived, this god also hates evil, which I suppose could be attributed to its omnibenevolence. But goes towards showing that omnibenevolence doesn’t preclude other normative values. Obviously he’s capable of hate, even if it’s expressed as an act of love.

Z: So, what can we conclude? We can safely say our deity has only one guiding normative principle: Love. Now, said deity ain't got nuthin' else that can tell him what to do.


rw: Cept his omniscience that tells him a whole heap more about what his doing anything will incur down the road. Omnibenevolence doesn’t tell him WHAT to do, only WHY he’s doing what he does or does not do. Big difference. “Why did god do nothing?” Because he loves you. “Why does god do that?” Because he hates evil.

Z: In absence of an action based on love, he does nothing.


rw: Or his omniscience tells him that doing nothing is the best way to express his love for you and his hatred of evil.

Z: He sits still, and looks around. (Remember, omniscience can't guide an action independant of a normative claim.) Therefore, any action this deity takes is based on love, and love alone.

rw: And since he’s done nothing to eliminate evil and suffering, he therefore don’t wuv us no more…unless any action he takes to eliminate evil and suffering will have a different effect that doesn’t equate to love in the final analysis. Omniscience would allow him to see all possible consequences of every potential action or in-action. From this knowledge he would be able to plot the best course for the maximum effect of demonstrating omnibenevolence.

Z: That means that if the deity chose to create, it would create only the most loving environment possible.


rw: Only if his purpose for creation was to create a slew of congenital dependents.

Z: Such an environment would not contain evil.


rw: This is true, but then humans would not be human and freewill would not exist.

Z: This world contains evil. Hence, such a deity did not create this world.

rw: This world contains humans with freewill that enables them to grow, mature, progress and become benevolent creatures themselves. Rhetoric does not support assertions. Show how humans can attain to their full potential in a world other than this one. Until you do you are just spinning your wheels with what this god COULD do and an even weaker WOULD/SHOULD do, without justification.

Z: What seems so unnatural about all this is that I'm assigning principles of action to a being that, by definition, is infinite. That seems really counter-intuitive,

rw: And I’ve demonstrated why that seems counter-intuitive. It’s because of the fallacy of equivocating limited human knowledge with omniscience.

Z: but once you understand the naturalistic fallacy, everything else falls into place rather neatly.

rw: And once you see the fallacy isn’t naturalistic but an equivocation, everything falls out of place rather abruptly.

Z: *phew*

I need to go deal with a parrot now. I'll try to post again later this evening, but I may not get a chance.


rw: O’kay. I’ve enjoyed and appreciate your efforts. Hope to hear from you soon.

luvluv

Rimstalker:

By highest potential I meant, basically, "greatest goodness." If freedom is an independant "good thing", and a particular virtue, say, chastity, was an independant good thing, then a freely chaste person involves more good than a chaste person. Thus our highest potential for goodness lies in free choice.

That does not seem self-evident to me. If you are right, and if God must be more interested in eliminating suffering than in promoting virtue, it seems that an omnibenevolent God would never create anything at all. But can we really say that God would have been more moral to create nothing (for none of us to have ever existed) than to have created the world He did create? Would nothingness be in any way morally superior to our current state of affairs?

I would disagree with this notion, I would think that the term omnibenevolence would be more likely to mean the promotion of goodness than to mean they reduction of suffering. Otherwise, we must assume that the act of creating NOTHING is more moral than the creation of beings capable of infinite joy if these beings had a non-zero probability of ever suffering.

But we must keep in mind that omnibenevolence is an abstraction (and as far as I know an atheistic one) of the character God is truly said by Christianity to have, which would be more accurately described perhaps as "moral perfection." It would seem to me that a God who emphasized reduction of suffering over promotion of goodness (not necessarily moral virtues, btw) would be somewhat cowardly (or, at the very least, overly risk-averse). And while there is no contradiction involved in an omnibenevolent entity being cowardly, that would contradict with what most of us believe to be the character of the Christian God. No theist believes in a cowardly or overly risk-averse God, but if God's character can be described solely as omnibenevolence then it would be perfectly consistent for God to be a coward. So this term is obviously insufficient. I think it would be more appropriate to use the term "morally perfect" in the P.O.E. I would agree with Tercel (in another thread) that God is probably not omnibenevolent if omnibenevolent means "primarily interested in the elimination of all suffering." I don't think this applies to the Christian God, and a P.O.E. thus constituted could not therefore have anything meaningful to say about God's existence.

(For instance, if "omnibenevolent" means the elimination of suffering, then we can see that an omnibenevolent being is not morally perfect. An omnibenevolent being would do a child's homework for her if the workload was causing the child to suffer. A morally perfect being would insist that the child do the work herself, even if this caused the child suffering. Most theist's would thus characterize God as morally perfect rather than omnibenevolent.)

Well, as is evident by now, I consider the term "omnibenevolent" to be innacurate in the first place. The Christian God would be more accurately described as "morally perfect", IMO.

If omnibenevolence means "primarily concerned with the elimination of suffering, to the exclusion of all other considerations" then the Christian God is not, has never been, and has never been promoted as being, omnibenevolent. If omnibenevolence means this, the P.O.E. does not apply to the Christian God.

If omnibenevolence means "primarily concerned with the promotion of goodness, to the exclusion of all other considerations" then the Christian God is omnibenevolent, but this is only a PARTIAL description of His character. He has other attributes (a willingness to risk in the pursuit of goodness) that are morally good, but which are not entailed in the term "omnibenevolence"

Either way, the P.O.E. as you describe it cannot be really conclusive. Either it does not apply to God, or it omits or fails to mention other aspects of God's character which have bearing on the argument.

rainbow walking

Um, if God were to render people unable to rape each other, how would that punish the innocent?

My reply was based on your proffered solution to resolving rape. You said, "too bad for autonomy of will" That would be to diminish everyone's freewill over a much lower percentage of would-be rapists. It just drains the drama right out of life.