SRB

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Originally posted by SRB
Furthermore, there are different levels of suffering in different parts of the world. SRB
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It is not silly to say that there are different levels of suffering in different parts of the world. It is instead an obvious truth!

If all humans ceased to exist tomorrow, there would still exist suffering of non-human animals. It follows that suffering does not exist only as a human concept.

Your sentence that begins "As animal man..." is ungrammatical and I can make no sense of it.

SRB

Steven Carr

Lots of people have tried to show the impossibility of a world containing only one-legged people when they can see that almost everybody has two legs.

However I have shown that it is possible that there is a world where people are systematically deluded about how many legs they can see. Most commentators consider it more or less successful that the mere possibility of such a world is enough to show that there is no contradiction between :-

1) I can see that most people have two legs
2) people only have one leg.

Will Plantinga now agree that people have only one leg? After all, there is no logical problem of legs.

It is the height of sophistry that Plantinga can create a fantasy world bearing no relation to reality, simply to resolve a logical contradiction, and illustrates the depths to which these people will sink , in order to have something, anything, to paper over the contradictions in their belief-systems.

Volker

Main purpose of the POE is to show that it is not impossible that there is a benevolent creator of the world (god). If theists fail to prove that god is benevolent, they can be accused to worship an evil being (a demon).

To prove that god is not evil, take the following prerequisites:
(1) God, the creator of the universe, exists, and he is benevolent.
(2) If someone is benevolent she/he would either prevent suffering or would help someone to avoid suffering.
(3) There is evil in the world.

Now (2) and (3) are undisputed. (1) is assumed for the sake of the argument. If I assume that god is benevolent, this contradicts (2) and (3). To resolve the contradiction, you have to pass five lines of reasoning (most arguments won't pass the first line):

(A) Every new assumption has to be justified. No ad hoc arguments are allowed.

If your arguments can pass this test, we go on to the next step:

(B) It must be shown that your description does not contradict the world, neither does any statement contradict any other of the defense.

Most arguments will have been defeated to this point, but assuming we can make it to the next line:

(C) You must now show that it is not possible to reverse the argument.

This has to be explained. Consider that you have a plausible explanation for the POE that is all sound. Now we reverse arguments:

If the creator is evil (e. g. satan), and we have some good things happening in the world, can we still justify that the creator is evil?

If we can reverse the justification to show that the opposite ist true, too, than something ist very wrong with the argumentation and we can discard it as false. No argumentation that I've seen today will it make past this line of reasoning. If A and ~A can be defended with the same arguments, the arguments are invalid, no matter if you detect the problem or not.

But still, if you assume that you can go beyond this, we have still two tests to pass:

(D) If you make it to this point, you will have proven that god cannot create a world without evil. This makes all religions that expect that there is a paradise wrong (esp. christianity).

(E) And you have to defend two more points that make a benevolent creator highly improbable (if not to say logical impossible): (a) we have been created without being asked if we want to suffer, (b) even if we will go to a better world this won't make all suffering undone.

Most reasoning will show its weakness at (C). If you carefully consider alle the points, you will see that it is logical impossible to solve the POE. Therefore, you have the following options:

(1) God is not omnipotent - in fact, he is not very potent, because he can't take away suffering that we can cure. If he can't interfere with the world, we are more poerwfull than he is, because we can intervene.
(2) God is not benevolent, but is in part evil. Though you should stop to worship an evil being, a demon.
(3) God does not interfere - deismus.
(4) God does not exist - atheismus.
(5) God is completely unknowable - taoisms/agnosticism.

Either case, religions like christianity are proven to be wrong.

anonymousj

Volker,

Your premise 2,

is, as it stands, obviously false. Any one of the participants here can describe actual situations in which people (it is likely that they themselves have done so, if, for example, they have children) have let others suffer (in some measure or other) for the other's own good, and this 'letting' in no way reflects malevolence.

anonymousj

Steven Carr

But we are not omnipotent beings who are hampered in the methods by which we can do good.

anonymousj

My objection was aimed at premise 2 in Volker's argument. Either your remark makes no point against my objection to that premise OR I am missing something. Do you think premise 2 in Volker's argument is true, as it stands?

anonymousj

SRB

This is very unfair. Plantinga (correctly) pointed out that there is no clear logical contradiction between God's existence and the existence of much apparently pointless suffering. He did this because many prominent atheists at the time thought otherwise. To be sure, this does not address evidential arguments from evil, but so what? Plantinga's point was nothing to do with evidential arguments from evil. It was still a point well worth making.

SRB

Steven Carr

And Plantinga came up with a paper-thin rationalisation , for which he had no evidence, which defied common sense, and , as it happens, the very Christian beliefs he is supposed to be defending. (While in the latest book I saw, deliberately misrepresenting a point that Mackie went out of his way to clear up in The Miracle of Theism)

Christians will tell you that God can create beings with free will who never choose evil, and that he has actually done so. Angels, such as Gabriel and Michael, were created with free will and have never chosen evil.

So Plantinga's claim that all beings suffer from 'transworld depravity' is nonsense.

Amos

As a metaphysical aside:

But the if they are our arch angels why are they not performing their duty as God-send and Mary-send angels to each and every one of us? Because they fell, rather, Michael is often caused to fall in the sin against the HS and after which Gabriel becomes redundant.

Volker

Not quite. With more power comes more responsibility. If someone is drowning and you're not able to help (e. g. you can't swim), nobody will blame you for doing nothing. But if yo can help and just sit there watching a man down, you will be made responsible for his death, because you could have helped.

Sometimes we can't act without hurting other people. But if you have the choice, and you can act in different ways, one which involves hurting and one which does not involve hurting other people, which way would you chose? Everyone acting responsible would chose the first way, and you will be rather suspicious if somenone choses the second way.

This is the consequence of being omnipotent or very powerfull. Being benevolent means acting with care and responsibility. Neither can be seen in nature.

The theists has now to argue that god can be both: powerfull and not-acting. Most of the time this is done with the free will argument as a higher good. This fails on every three lines: there is no free will, free will is not a consistent explanation, and you can reverse the argument: satan has invented the free will to cause his creation to suffer, though invariably something good will arise out of (t)his way. Free will is a way to make man irresponsible for what he has caused, a trick, to bring moral mishap into the world etc.