Theli

"Evil" is an interpretation of certain conditions wich does exist in reality. Generally, "evil" is suffering and mental/physical discomfort. I am sure even de Sade felt discomfort in something.
Take cancer for instance, as the number of people who dislikes cancer grossly outnumbers the people who likes cancer it would be in the best interest for humanity to have cancer removed from our reality. So why is it here? To please the extremely few at the cost of the many?

Doesn't make sense.

Taffy Lewis

Thomas Metcalf,

I believe your "possibilist UPD" is a strawman. I'm not aware of any theistic philosophers who employ it.

So if I'm unaware that there is change in my co-worker's pocket then I should believe there is no change in my co-worker's pocket? This seems implausible. The sensible position is to refrain from believing that there is and also refrain from believing that there isn't change in his pocket.

You might respond that i could have good reason to believe either way. Maybe I'm aware that in the past he has had change in his pocket most of the time. But even when I am aware that in the past he has had change in his pocket fifty percent of the time, your principle would still suggest that I should believe he has no change in his pocket. Again, this doesn't seem sensible. The sensible thing is to not believe either way.

I believe that I am not a brain in a vat because I think I have good reason to believe things are as they seem. It seems to me that I am sitting at my computer. As Richard Swinburne has argued, it is a basic principle of rationality that how things seem to be is good reason to believe that's how things are unless you have reason to believe otherwise. Since it seems to me that I am sitting at my computer, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, I should believe I am sitting at my computer. My sitting at my computer is not compatible with my being a brain in a vat and thus the latter is unlikely.

If we don't accept Swinburne's principle or a principle very much like it we won't be capable of holding any rational beliefs. So if you don't accept such a principle you can't even begin to formulate an argument from apparently gratuitous suffering.

And notice that Swinburne's principle makes a claim about how things are. Your attempt to argue that something isn't the case (a negative existential claim) is very different. And it is different for the reason I gave in my first post. How things seem not to be is only evidence that things are not that way if you have the additional background belief that if things were that way then you would likely be aware of it. Or expressed another way: its seeming to you that X doesn't exist is only good reason to believe that X does not exist if you have the additional background belief that if X does exist it is likely you would be aware of it.

But as I've said, I am aware of loving parents failing to reveal to their children information their children want, including information the parent can reveal. So I don't think your analogy has any force.

NonHomogenized

Re the OP:
Excellent point. I haven't heard this idea before, but it seems, at least as far as I can ascertain, sound.

In my always humble opinion, a deist god does one about as much good as dinosaur repellant. I mean, okay, no, I can't disprove it, but, even if it does exist,so what? How would a universe with a deist god be any different than a universe without a god, for all practical purposes?
As for a pantheist god, pretty much the same thing. How would my life be any different if there were a pantheist god? Okay, so I'm a itty-bitty piece of this whole universe-sized god. So what? (there's also the issues of burdens of proof for any type of god at all, which no one has met yet, but that's another issue entirely)

That's a wonderful response to that issue! Just so you know, I'm stealing that If anyone asks, should I credit it to you?

Steven Carr

There certainly seems to be pointless suffering, which an omnibenevolent God would not allow.

And you have no reason to believe otherwise.

Your analogy of God with parents fails because a) parents are not omnipotent , able to prevent their children's suffering and b) God is unique, so all arguments from analogy fail anyway.

And the unknown reasons defense is, by definition, an admission that you have no knowledge of a reason to believe otherwise.

Steven Carr

Are you saying that when people suffer and they pray in despair 'Why , Lord? Why?', then they have no reason to believe that their prayer will ever be answered?

'Every' instance of evil? Isn't this a strawman formulation of Metcalfe's argument.

Give us one instance of evil for which God has given us reasons.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Taffy Lewis :

Unless you think you're in a position to estimate the background probability of change being in her pocket based on past experience with her (or with her pocket). If you're not, then you should believe there isn't, because most things don't have change in them.

What do you think of my claim that most possibilities are not actual? Does it follow that inductively, we should disbelieve until we have evidence to believe?

Now, I wish to strengthen the inference if I can. Suppose you are about to start college, and you're taking three classes, with professors BonJour, Baker, and Taylor. You know ahead of time from talking to a friend that one of them generally doesn't like to take questions from the class during class, one of them is pretty much moderate in how much he or she takes questions, and one of them strongly encourages class participation. But you can't remember which one is which. Now suppose you're in BonJour's class and he doesn't take a single question. In Baker's class, she takes several questions from the class, and Taylor exhorts the class to ask questions. Which one do you think is the one that really doesn't like to take questions in class? If you think it's BonJour, why are you assuming that if he had a good reason not to take questions on that particular day, you'd know about it?

Last time I was in the Reading Room, re-shelving books, I formed the belief that there were no squirrels in the reading room. But for all I know, there could be invisible squirrels. We are acquainted with several instances of knowing when there's a squirrel in the reading room, but we have no idea how to estimate what proportion of the total instances of squirrels in the reading room that is -- because there could be invisible ones. Do you think I made an error when I formed the belief that there are no squirrels in the reading room?

We can think of a good reason in this case for the parents not to reveal that information. So we've got the analogue of a meta-theodicy here. But we can't think of any good reasons for God not to reveal that information, and we can think of one good reason for him to reveal that information. So the Evidence Scales are still off balance.

Jamie_L

Thomas,

Alright, you've got me convinced.

And, in layman's terms, it appears what your (D*) essentially says is: the UPD indeed involves an UNKNOWN Purpose. If it is unknown to us, we have no reason to choose any of the trillions of possible Unknown Purposes over any of the others.

And that makes perfect sense now that I look at it further. How can a theist say to someone: "God has an Unknown Purpose, and I know what the details are."?

Jamie

bd-from-kg

Thomas Metcalf :

Getting back to the argument in the OP:

Not so. Actually this argument is pretty weak. Let me illustrate.

Let:

HA = God does not exist”
HT0 = “God exists and has no unknown purposes”
HTN = “God exists and has unknown purposes that give Him a reason to withhold the reasons for seemingly gratuitous suffering”
HTP = “God exists and has unknown purposes that give Him even more reason to tell us the reasons for seemingly gratuitous suffering.”

Now if we assume the God has no unknown purposes, the only possibilities are HA and HT0. But HT0 (we will stipulate for the sake of argument) is untenable given the evidence of gratuitous suffering, leaving only HA. (This is the baseline POE argument.)

Now the theist points out that HTN is also possible. Now of course there’s no way to objectively or nonarbitrary set a priori probabilities for any of these hypotheses, but just for the sake of illustration let’s suppose that the existence and nonexistence of God are equally likely a priori. For now let’s also assume that HT0 and HTN are equally likely a priori. This gives an a priori likelihood of 0.5 for HA and 0.25 for HT0 and HTN. Since the evidence (i.e., the existence of gratuitous evil) eliminates HT0, we’re left with an a posteriori probability of 0.67 for HA and 0.33 for HTN. (Again, this is based only on the existence of gratuitous evil, leaving plenty of room for a better final probability for HTN based on other evidence.)

What happens if we now take HTP into account as well? Again, let’s assume that all three theistic hypotheses are equally likely. This gives an a priori probability for HT0, HTN, and HTP of 0.17 (again setting the a priori probability of HA to 0.5). Since the evidence eliminates HT0 and HTP, we’re left with an a posteriori probability of 0.75 for HA and 0.25 for HTN. A slight reduction for the only theistic hypothesis left standing, but hardly serious.

The bottom line is that introducing HTN yields a substantial a posteriori probability of God’s existence (at least if one assigns this hypothesis a significant a priori probability). Introducing HTP as another possibility with the same a priori probability doesn’t do much to change this result. (In fact, the smaller you set the a priori probability of HTN, the less effect introducing HTP has.)

Note: I think the POE argument is actually a pretty good one, and the UPD is very problematic. But not for the reasons you give here.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by bd-from-kg :

So the theist gains 0.33 with the introduction of HTN and loses only 0.08 with the introduction of HTP. Then my suggestion doesn't "completely neutralize" the UPD, but only removes some of its force. My OP was aimed at the evidential arguments from evil that don't just assign a priori probabilities and eliminate the impossibilities. When you phrase it the way you did, the UPD is unsuccessful anyway because it only secures 0.33 (or 0.25) for the theist.

I normally claim it leads to some pretty damaging skepticism, and that that is the biggest problem. What reasons do you have to reject the UPD?

bd-from-kg

Thomas Metcalf:

But that’s only the a posteriori probability (using my set of arbitrary a priori probabilities) after taking gratuitous suffering, and nothing else, into account. Presumably the theist will argue that there’s other evidence to be taken into account which is favorable to the theistic hypothesis. (All this can be made rigorous via Bayes’ Theorem, which can be applied iteratively by defining the “a priori” probability for each step after the first as the “a posteriori” probability from the previous one, and redefining the “baseline information” as including the evidence taken into account on the previous step.)

Ah, that will take a little longer. I’ll get back to you tomorrow when I’m fresher and have some time. Basically I suspect that we’re pretty much in agreement about this, but my answer might have a couple of new wrinkles (or it might not).