Theli

You never answered my question, you made a claim regarding freedom, constant happiness and a condition that made the two impossible to co-exist. It doesn't matter weither or not god is pleased with the universe as it is or not, this condition must have been created by god, and through that the suffering it brings.
So, if god consider the universe to be a success then he must also support suffering and evil.

I must confess that I myself have driven over some people and tossing grenades on a dancefloor full with people (in the game ), and it doesn't matter much to me, no. However, if the people in the game had a sense of morality and could understand the suffering I cause them then they would not call me good.
Yet the christian god, who if having created the entire world appears to have as little regard for the people in on this planet as I have for the figures in GTA3, is being called good by humans who believe in him.
Morality, or good and evil is only one factor to make our actions diverse. An omnipotent god could have created countless others.
From my experience, binary morality such as good and evil only makes up a small fraction of our choices. Desire, for instance has much bigger influence.
I would have no problem with that. Placing moral judgement on all our choices and actions appear to criple our freedom, not strenghten it.

Nic Hautamaki

Theli first

right off let me say I agree with the tone everything you wrote, I'm arguing on behalf of a theist. But I do still believe that her points are rationally valid here.

"You never answered my question, you made a claim regarding freedom, constant happiness and a condition that made the two impossible to co-exist. It doesn't matter weither or not god is pleased with the universe as it is or not, this condition must have been created by god, and through that the suffering it brings.
So, if god consider the universe to be a success then he must also support suffering and evil"

Well, the God that she is arguing for DOES support suffering and evil. The tack she's chosen to take is that it's possible to support suffering and evil and still be 'all good' in a manner of speaking (namely, hers). Remember that the specific goal of her God is put free willed beings onto a planet, let them go at it however they will, and hope that they will wind up coming to him (whatever that means to a theist). The typical counter arguments are that the evil and suffering we have here are not necessary. But she disagrees, she thinks that it is necessary.

"I must confess that I myself have driven over some people and tossing grenades on a dancefloor full with people (in the game ), and it doesn't matter much to me, no. However, if the people in the game had a sense of morality and could understand the suffering I cause them then they would not call me good.
Yet the christian god, who if having created the entire world appears to have as little regard for the people in on this planet as I have for the figures in GTA3, is being called good by humans who believe in him."

This does not really address my counterargument precisely because you admit that ONLY if the people in the game world understand suffering and morality would your actions be evil. I assume that you mean by understanding suffering, being able to experience suffering, as we do. So, in a world where no being can experience suffering, there is no morality. It appears you agree with me here.

"Morality, or good and evil is only one factor to make our actions diverse. An omnipotent god could have created countless others.
From my experience, binary morality such as good and evil only makes up a small fraction of our choices. Desire, for instance has much bigger influence."

Oh I agree with you here, and so does she. I already addressed this counterargument a couple times though. While she doesn't disagree that you can have free will without being able to choose evil, her God is only interested in your moral choices. That doesn't mean that everything you do has some kind of moral connotation, what it means is that God doesn't give a hoot what you do aside from your moral choices. God doesn't care about whether you prefer mayo or mustard, but he does care about whether you prefer maiming babies or giving to charity. That's the sort of free will that matters, and the sort that it is imperative we have in her idea of a perfect world.



And now Mr. Metcalf:

quote:

"We have hypothetical universes, unless you want to accept a rather strong modal skepticism, one there is no reason to accept. There is a hypothetical universe in which cancer is 10% less painful."

She spefically denied that random human suffering is an indication of God being evil. Basically her only counterargument to this is "why should we expect that we deserve to live our lives in total comfort and bliss?" She denied that suffering is intrinsically wrong or even bad. To be honest I 100% agree with you here but I'm not sure how I can go any further than "I disagree with you, I think it is wrong that we are randomly submitted to great suffering against our will by an all powerful being" All she says in response is 'Why?'



"Your opponent is a blasphemer, because your opponent is presupposing that God is not omnipotent. An omnipotent being can give us any knowledge we need."

Not exactly, she's not arguing about God's capabilities, she's arguing about his desires. Her God doesn't want us to just know things, and he doesn't want us to be born perfect, her idea of a perfect world is one in which people are born (on average) in a sort of 50/50 (god or not) state, and decide to go to God on their own free will.



"That's patently false. If I choose to murder every conscious organism on earth, but am incarcerated before I can, I've still done evil."


While that's true, her point is that the authorities would not even know to incarcerate you, nor would there be any need, if it were physically impossible for you to harm anyone. In order for there to be authorities who go around incarcerating people at all, there has to be a need for them. See, the underlying problem here is that her perfect world is built around notions of Justice, not Happiness. Her perfect world is a world that is perfectly Just, and in order for Justice, and morality, to even exist, so does evil. My problem is how can I convince her that Happiness is better than Justice conclusively?


"Only to show it is most likely. It is most likely that some suffering is gratuitous (because, if God is omnipotent, for any particular evil E, more likely than not, God can prevent it without precluding a greater good G), and any gratuitous suffering is too much gratuitous suffering."

I agree with everything there, and that's the problem. There's no way to prove anything, only abductively argue from intuition.


**editted typo

Stephen T-B

(Is my question too stupid to address?

Or does no-one know the answer?)

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Stephen T-B :

Evil actions are just actions that we agree are morally impermissible.

Right. But it's much easier to get the atheist to accept the first definition than to get her to accept the second.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Nic Hautamaki :

Well, it isn't. It's evidence that God doesn't exist, which is different.

No atheist is asking for that. The atheist is asking for, say, babies to be tortured 10% less often.

The following is a moral fact that everyone (with the exception of some psychopaths) accepts: It is better to prevent suffering than to allow it, all else equal. Your opponent accepts this, but prefers to pretend to deny it when she's arguing with you. If she doesn't accept it, I'd find it hard to think of a reason why she would mind if you hurt her.

She's going to have to argue that a world in which babies are tortured 10% less often, and cancer is 10% less painful, would be worse than the current world. No one has ever figured out a way to make that seem remotely plausible.

And I'm saying that evil can exist without suffering. Intentions can be evil, and people can prevent those intentions from coming about.

I don't think you can, but she's going to have a hard time arguing that the two are mutually exclusive.

I don't agree with that. Arguments from incoherence show that God cannot possibly exist, because his attributes are self-contradictory. If the atheist can show that gratuitous evil probably exists, she has shown that God probably doesn't exist, because the probability that God doesn't exist if gratuitous evil exists is unity.