SRB

RW seems to say contradictory things here: that a child being attacked by bees is "unnecessary" and yet also "promotes man’s greater good." RW implies that it is better if the suffering is stopped, but yet says the suffering serves some overriding purpose. Which is it?

Certainly the issue of moral obligation is irrelevant here. Irrespective of whether I have a moral obligation to prevent apparently pointless suffering, and irrespective of whether the suffering is my fault, it is clearly true that I will generally prevent harm coming to people whom I care for greatly. I won't stand back and watch a child get attacked by bees and fail to act on the grounds that it is not my fault, or that it is down to the parents to sort the problem out!

Thomas' idea of bringing up specific instances of suffering is well taken, especially instances of particularly gruesome and seemingly pointless suffering. What we would like to hear is some explanation for why God lets kids suffer and die from cancer, or get raped, for example. RW would do well to focus on those specific examples. If RW can provide a credible explanation for why God allows that sort of thing, I for one would concede that RW has gone a significant way to resolving the PoE.

There are many such worlds that contain far less suffering than our world. Consider all the ones like ours except where kids don't get raped or suffer and then die from cancer.

Consider a father who watches one of his children get raped, and watches his other child suffer and die from cancer. Let us say that the father could easily have chosen to intervene and prevent the suffering in both cases. When asked why he did not prevent the suffering the father claims it was necessary for the development of something called a "preference for rightness." He claims that without the cancer and the rape, the people concerned would all be robots. What would we say in response? Well for one thing we would say that the father is nuts. Whatever this "preference for rightness" is supposed to be, it is highly dubious to suppose that rape and cancer promote it. Even if they do promote it, they are clearly not worth it!

SRB

rainbow walking

Hi Koy,
Glad you could join us.

Koy: I think another problem is (and we've talked about this before) that you're looking at human history and then trying to justify it through "god" eyes, instead of looking at human history (and its "progress") as necessarily independent of any god.

If you start with the premise, "Gods don't exist," then the status quo of humanity is entirely obtained due to the resilience of mankind; due to mankind having no choice in the matter. We have progressed in spite of not having a god to help us progress.

Rw: But that’s essentially what I’m saying Koy, in arguing that God doesn’t interfere in man’s progress I’m positing the exact same scenario as if God doesn’t exist. Only I’m arguing that this needn’t be the case just because he acts as if he doesn’t exist.

Koy: See what I mean? You're looking at our status quo and then factoring backwards to arrive at a god, when our status quo is the result of no god.

If there were a god with the omnimax qualities you state, then our status quo should be radically different and that, of course, is the crux of the PoE.

You are attempting to contradict this through a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, by stating that because we have the status quo we have, this is the only possible status quo and an omnimax god would know this, thus the omnimax being created it in precisely this manner.

Rw: It does appear to be the best path without negating man’s will or ending up with simpletons or robots. I’ve heard no better path described. All I’m hearing are blanket assertions that God is omnipotent over and over when I’ve conceded that point from the outset. But omnipotence isn’t the only attribute and even it has logical limitations. His attributes must be able to work in concert without logical contradiction. You can’t assert his omnipotence will enable him to do something even if his omniscience has determined not to do it…see what I mean? I have given a fair defense of my position against every example and against claims that his omnipotence should automatically, of its own volition, make things different. I’ve defended why this won’t work and demonstrated the logic but still getting hammered with the omnipotence thing. Somebody needs to tell me how God can by-pass the meta-path and create a man without a history, no experience, no base of valuation, and this be a better man than one who has earned his place in line. It just isn’t logical and I await a convincing argument to the contrary.

Koy: All this does is equate a god with a no god scenario; since with or without a god, we still arrive at our status quo.

Rw: Thank you for being the first person to recognize that. It is the strength of my argument.

Koy: As others have pointed out, you need to explain why a god can't create us perfect and why such perfection won't retain its status quo over time.

Rw: I have time and again. It incurs a logical contradiction within the values I’ve described man would express when he realizes his greatest good. Those values are identical to God’s but to a lesser degree. How does one have benevolence when one has no history of events relating to compassion? How does one have the capacity to do almost anything God can do when one has no history of doing anything? How does one have knowledge without a history of experience? You see the logic and what needs to be described by my opponents to break that logic? It’s unbreakable. Their only recourse is to return to the traditional PoE and have God instantiate an entirely other state of affairs sans evil and suffering.

Koy: In other words, you're not remaining logically consistent to the givens; you're instead interchanging a god scenario with a no god status quo.

Rw: Only in relation to the meta-path. I’m still defending the existence and integrity of a God, but from an entirely unanticipated direction.

Koy: For example, a world in which all humans are created perfectly would result in a world always populated by perfect individuals. There would be no "entropy of perfection," since a god exists to insure (a) we are created without such entropy and/or (b) god would account for any possible entropy and correct for it.

Rw: Perfection is not listed among God’s attributes or the attributes of man, at his greatest good, in PoE, so I’m not obligated to argue around it.

Koy: Postulating a perfect world (i.e., morally perfect humans inhabiting this world) ipso facto means that there would never obtain a scenario in which we acted immorally and would therefore mean that the status quo is incapable of changing to a less than morally perfect status quo.

Arguing that we didn't earn this perfection is therefore irrelevant, since we would have no need to earn it; it would be instantiated just as all other aspects of this god's creation would be instantiated and we would know nothing different.
Rw:How do you have morality without good and evil? How do you understand good and evil without experiencing it? How does perfection attain without normative value?

KoY: This is, of course, why the free will fallacy was created, but, again, to remain logically consistent, if we do indeed have free will, then a god scenario is equivallent to a no god scenario. The god of the free will scenario would simply be equivalent to the big bang, for example, where existence is set in motion and god self-annihilates for all intents and purposes.

If a god is not there to effect change (in keeping with free will), merely instigate evolution, then such a being is entirely irrelevant to our existence and effectively non-existant to us. It would never be able to let its identity or purpose be known, either directly or through inferrence, thus it would also have to program into us these parameters, so that at no point do we ever contemplate its existence.

Thus, by contemplating a god's existence, we ipso facto negate the free will god and we're once again back at a god who effects change.

If we posit a god who effects change, then there is no reason this god can't intervene more directly and make any changes it wants to, such as we see in the bible.

So, to remain logically consistent, one must either argue for a free will god (which equates to no god at all, effectively) or a god that does and will effect change directly in mankind's evolution.

If the latter, then we have PoE.

Rw: I haven’t incorporated freewill in my argument…only man’s will. Whether it’s free or not is irrelevant. As long as he has choices, meaning availability of both good and evil, that’s all the rope I need to hang PoE out to dry.

rainbow walking

Hi Marz,
Glad to have you back. I enjoyed our last discussion immensely and look forward to doing so again.

Marz: Hi, hope you don't mind my jumping in here. I've been following this and related threads for some time, and not having read every pertinent post I am uncertain, but it seems to me that rw's position may have changed.

Whereas what I now am seeing from him would appear to be an affirmative theodicy on his part, where I became aware of the argument he was making it was not an affirmative theodicy per se, but rather a more abstract argument that the PoE cannot pertain against an internally consistent epistemology refuting it:

(From http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread....threadid=53798:)

Rw: You are absolutely correct Marz in your astute observations. We are now discussing the Modified version of PoE from the one you and I were discussing. This version, which Thomas called the “Contemporary Version” or CP for short, doesn’t negate all evil and suffering but calls for a reduction in one or the other or both. Likely its proponents realized the disadvantage in postulating a world sans all evil and suffering and have retreated to this position to avoid the logical contradictions in the former.


Marz: Obviously, it is one thing to argue that the PoE can be defeated by an appropriately formulated epistemology, and quite another to argue that such an epistemology must pertain and that the PoE is therefore entirely indefensible. The first case is obviously much easier, as it sets aside the larger question of whether accepting the validity of the epistemology 'defeating' the PoE is warranted.

So what is the argument, then?

Rw: It is as stated in the OP. If you’ll read the first paragraph of the OP I noted the change in argumentation.

Marz: If it is the former--that it is possible to formulate an internally consistent epistemology which opposes the validity of the PoE--then I for one would certainly agree (while seeing it overall as little more than an exercise in question-begging).

If, on the other hand, it is the larger argument as to whether there is warrant to hold as valid such an epistemology--in this case, the 'Best Possible Path' approach put forward by rw--then it still seems to me that the objections to such an approach put forward by his opponents here are not satisfactorily addressed by his counter-arguments. It seems to me that rw's response to the 'unnecessary suffering' objections opposing him do indeed amount to little more than a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, combined with more than a smattering of Unknown Purpose.

Rw: What is this fallacy of which you speak? And as far as unknown purpose, I thought I’d elucidated the purpose quite clearly? Where have I left room for this claim?

Marz: In other words, to my thinking, while rw's approach is self-consistent, it seems to me that in order to accept it as valid, one must accept certain presuppositions about the existence and nature of god on, well, on faith. So to my thinking, it is good apologetics, but like all apologetics with which I am familiar, it is persuasive only to those already predisposed to believe it.

Rw: I was under the impression everyone in this discussion assumed his existence for the purpose of presenting their respective arguments? Did I miss something here?

Marz: One final word: as a relatively new visitor to these boards and a complete dilettante in matters philosophical, I must thank you all for giving me the opportunity to read and learn.

Rw: Ditto.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by rainbow walking :

Zero, because God is omnipotent. You've still got a very strange ethical principle lurking around here, that even in the case of the child being stung to death by bees, it would be worse for God to plant the information in the heads of the kid's parents than to let the kid die in excruciating pain. I'm sorry, but that goes against all of my moral intuitions, and I trust it goes against pretty much anyone else's.

But as I said, humanity could still self-improve. Humans would just be better at self-improvement from the beginning. God would create the beings that start out just as depraved and ignorant as we do, but who are better learners. The quantity of self-improvement, in the end, would be the same.

And for the record, I don't agree that an earned good is better than an unearned good. If I see a toddler about to tip over a pot of boiling water on her head, I'm going to stop her instead of letting her "earn" that "good" herself.

Well, first of all, you seem to be accepting libertarian freedom, which is pretty dubious. But beyond that, all you've really got here a form of the soul-making theodicy. It's just not obvious to me, or to very many other people, I hope, that earned goods are always better than unearned goods.

rainbow walking

Hi SRB,



SRB: RW seems to say contradictory things here: that a child being attacked by bees is "unnecessary" and yet also "promotes man’s greater good." RW implies that it is better if the suffering is stopped, but yet says the suffering serves some overriding purpose. Which is it?

Rw: It is both. The meta-path provides for man to suffer only as much as it takes to learn from the causes of his suffering and how to avoid it in the future. If men refuse to heed the lessons the suffering will continue on, unnecessarily. In this case I’ve described the lesson to be learned which incurs a potential threat to man’s greater good. Man must learn to be responsible for his children.

SRB: Certainly the issue of moral obligation is irrelevant here. Irrespective of whether I have a moral obligation to prevent apparently pointless suffering, and irrespective of whether the suffering is my fault, it is clearly true that I will generally prevent harm coming to people whom I care for greatly. I won't stand back and watch a child get attacked by bees and fail to act on the grounds that it is not my fault, or that it is down to the parents to sort the problem out!

Rw: You would if to interfere in one instance then demands you interfere in all such instances and creates a situation where parents no longer worry about the welfare of their own children. It is a fact that people are going to suffer to some degree at various points in their life. It’s unavoidable. People often gain valuable insight about their own existence during trials and periods of suffering. They also learn how to empathize with others who are suffering and are motivated to help. There are many levels of influence suffering has on man…not all of them bad. For instance, if someone murdered your family in their sleep while you were away and the perpetrator was caught, what kind of suffering would you be wishing upon him?

SRB: Thomas' idea of bringing up specific instances of suffering is well taken, especially instances of particularly gruesome and seemingly pointless suffering. What we would like to hear is some explanation for why God lets kids suffer and die from cancer, or get raped, for example. RW would do well to focus on those specific examples. If RW can provide a credible explanation for why God allows that sort of thing, I for one would concede that RW has gone a significant way to resolving the PoE.

Rw: All of these are regrettable and deeply sorrowful things but none of them are pointless. They serve, if nothing else, to impress upon us our responsibilities to one another and to ourselves to learn from them, work to address their causes and prevent them from happening in the future. Man has a future iff he can indeed make these connections. His future will negate such horrific instances of suffering as these entail. His future is in his science and in his appreciation of choosing the right above the wrong. Many of these current causes of suffering are specific to our planet. Our planet is an ecosystem of limited resources that is over populated with people competing for those resources. The result is starvation, disease and war. One resolution will occur when man makes it into the stars. The universe is not a place of such limited resources. Man’s individual life is also currently a limited resource. Once his science cracks open the secrets of his genetics, old age and death, as an inevitability, will no longer dog his steps. This will entail a drastic reduction in the current levels of suffering encountered in our world. When man is able to leave this world he will leave behind many of its diseases and evolutionary setbacks that create new and dangerous new viruses that threaten his existence as a species. Man’s current moral growth is that of a pygmy. It lags far behind his technology. One day this will no longer be the case. A lot of the pressure on man now is the result of his confinement to this single planet. Once that’s resolved and the pressure abated, man will be able to shine as a moral agent. Being confined to this world forces competition and the accompanying psychological effects of that competition create most of the climate for evil in this world.

An omni-max God would know these things and with an eye on man’s potential, refrain from interfering, even though it chokes his omni-benevolent spirit to do so. His will and mind over-rule for the greatest good of man.



SRB: There are many such worlds that contain far less suffering than our world. Consider all the ones like ours except where kids don't get raped or suffer and then die from cancer.

Rw: And the only thing keeping us from them is our technology. When we get there, if we’re not up to the task morally, these worlds too, will be corrupted by our stench.



SRB: Consider a father who watches one of his children get raped, and watches his other child suffer and die from cancer. Let us say that the father could easily have chosen to intervene and prevent the suffering in both cases. When asked why he did not prevent the suffering the father claims it was necessary for the development of something called a "preference for rightness." He claims that without the cancer and the rape, the people concerned would all be robots. What would we say in response? Well for one thing we would say that the father is nuts. Whatever this "preference for rightness" is supposed to be, it is highly dubious to suppose that rape and cancer promote it. Even if they do promote it, they are clearly not worth it! [/quote]

rw: I suggest you think again. These cases are not necessary for man to learn what doesn’t work, yet man continues to flail away at what he knows is wrong in spite of the carnage. You have misrepresented my claims somewhat but I’ll leave it alone for now.

SRB

That is impossible. To say that the child being attacked by bees is unnecessary is to say that it is unnecessary for some greater good. The event cannot be both necessary and unnecessary for some greater good. It's one or the other.

If the actions are regrettable then they are not pointless. It's one or the other. One should not regret something which was necessary for an overriding good. One should instead, on reflection, be glad that it happened.

Clearly no loving father would stand by and watch as one of his kids gets raped and the other suffers and dies from cancer if the father could easily intervene. Such a failure to intervene would be a paradigm example of uncaring and unloving behaviour. The father's protestation that he did not intervene in order to impress things upon people (who exactly?) and teach lessons (what exactly?) would not dent this. There are less harmful ways of impressing things upon people and teaching lessons to people. Even if there are no less harmful ways of doing these things, the given benefits (which are still very unclear to me) are obviously not worth the harm involved. Imagine the father in the story is your next-door neighbour, and you read about his failure to intervene in the newspapers. Would you say, "Bob next door had reasonable grounds to do nothing but watch while one of his kids got raped and the other kid suffered and died from cancer" or would you say "Bob must be as nutty as a fruitcake"?

SRB

rainbow walking

Rw: It is both.


SRB: That is impossible. To say that the child being attacked by bees is unnecessary is to say that it is unnecessary for some greater good. The event cannot be both necessary and unnecessary for some greater good. It's one or the other.
Rw: It is both. It is unnecessary that a child with parents should have to suffer this affliction. It could have been prevented by a responsible parent. It is necessary to man’s greater good as long as parents continue to ignore the consequences of leaving children unattended.


SRB:
Thomas' idea of bringing up specific instances of suffering is well taken, especially instances of particularly gruesome and seemingly pointless suffering. What we would like to hear is some explanation for why God lets kids suffer and die from cancer, or get raped, for example. RW would do well to focus on those specific examples. If RW can provide a credible explanation for why God allows that sort of thing, I for one would concede that RW has gone a significant way to resolving the PoE.

Rw:
All of these are regrettable and deeply sorrowful things but none of them are pointless. They serve, if nothing else, to impress upon us our responsibilities to one another and to ourselves to learn from them, work to address their causes and prevent them from happening in the future.


SRB: If the actions are regrettable then they are not pointless. It's one or the other.


Rw: I repeat: All of these are regrettable and deeply sorrowful things but none of them are pointless. You appear to have misread my statement.

SRB: One should not regret something which was necessary for an overriding good. One should instead, on reflection, be glad that it happened.

Rw: Why? One would be better off to wish the overriding good were obtainable with less suffering. But men refuse to heed the lessons taught by these instances and so such instances continue to occur over and over.

SRB: Clearly no loving father would stand by and watch as one of his kids gets raped and the other suffers and dies from cancer if the father could easily intervene. Such a failure to intervene would be a paradigm example of uncaring and unloving behaviour. The father's protestation that he did not intervene in order to impress things upon people (who exactly?) and teach lessons (what exactly?) would not dent this. There are less harmful ways of impressing things upon people and teaching lessons to people.


Rw: Have you followed any of my discussions with Thomas? Continually going over and over these individual examples to extrapolate out to consequences other than those desired is getting tedious. Rape is an act perpetrated by a man. Man has laws to deal with these crimes. God is not needed. Cancer is a long standing disease, the study of which has led geneticists to discover other, more valuable things about the human body; things like how certain genes produce natural chemicals to prohibit cancer and how those chemicals, when not needed also cause the body to age. So there are potential greater goods coming out of this fight against cancer.

SRB: Even if there are no less harmful ways of doing these things, the given benefits (which are still very unclear to me) are obviously not worth the harm involved.


Rw: Unclear to you? I didn’t spell them out for you in our last exchange?


SRB: Imagine the father in the story is your next-door neighbour, and you read about his failure to intervene in the newspapers. Would you say, "Bob next door had reasonable grounds to do nothing but watch while one of his kids got raped and the other kid suffered and died from cancer" or would you say "Bob must be as nutty as a fruitcake"?

Rw: God is not obligated to do for man what man can do for himself. And an omniscient God would know his inaction would incur such charges as this, atheism, agnosticism…all the negative impact…and still hold steady to his will for man to transcend these pages of his history.

rainbow walking

What purpose does it serve for this child to suffer like this?

Most children have parents [...] The moral burden here rests upon her parents. God is not morally obligated to baby sit for neglectful parents. The message here is that parents are responsible for the safety of their children, which is only right. To do so promotes man’s greater good. How many children have to suffer and die before adults get this into their thick skulls?



Thomas: Zero, because God is omnipotent. You've still got a very strange ethical principle lurking around here, that even in the case of the child being stung to death by bees, it would be worse for God to plant the information in the heads of the kid's parents than to let the kid die in excruciating pain. I'm sorry, but that goes against all of my moral intuitions, and I trust it goes against pretty much anyone else's.

Rw: And if you continue to assert omnipotence in the face of omniscience you invalidate your CP because you are invoking a logical contradiction in the use of his attributes.

Tell me something Thomas, do you support abortion rights, capital punishment and the war in Iraq?

People die everyday Thomas of something. It’s a fact of our current history. Your CP wasn’t based on death but on a reduction of suffering. Do you wish to now modify your CP again to argue that God should grant everyone eternal life or he doesn’t exist? What is the difference between this child dying of bee stings and her parents dying in an auto accident? Why do either of these scenarios place an obligation on God?

Rw: Self-improvement is an integral aspect of man’s greater good and built into the meta-path. For God to have by-passed this process would not be to man’s benefit for the same reason I outlined for Alix. An earned good is better than an un-earned good.



Thomas: But as I said, humanity could still self-improve. Humans would just be better at self-improvement from the beginning. God would create the beings that start out just as depraved and ignorant as we do, but who are better learners. The quantity of self-improvement, in the end, would be the same.

Rw: Humans have the potential to be much improved now if they wanted to Thomas. Self-improvement isn’t a matter of learning. People already KNOW that many things they do are wrong but they still do them. Self-improvement is a matter of the will Thomas.

Thomas: And for the record, I don't agree that an earned good is better than an unearned good. If I see a toddler about to tip over a pot of boiling water on her head, I'm going to stop her instead of letting her "earn" that "good" herself.

Rw: Tipping a pot of boiling water on ones head is not a good Thomas.

rw: Such a preference must be developed into the realization of man’s greater good, otherwise man becomes a robot operating from a program or an animal operating from instinct. I don’t think an omniscient God would see any relevant value in this.



Thomas: Well, first of all, you seem to be accepting libertarian freedom, which is pretty dubious.


Rw: I promote nothing but man’s will. Man has a will to do what he wants to do. If he wants to do a thing the right way, he will. If not, he won’t, unless compelled to do so for reasons outside his control.


Thomas: But beyond that, all you've really got here a form of the soul-making theodicy.


Rw: ?

Thomas: It's just not obvious to me, or to very many other people, I hope, that earned goods are always better than unearned goods.

Rw: Really? If you were sick and in need of an operation would you prefer to be operated on by a surgeon who earned his degree via university and med school or a quack who conferred a degree upon himself after having read a magazine on treating head lice? If what you say above is true, let us hope you never find yourself in need of surgery.

Alix Nenuphar

rw:

Your statement:
Appears to be illogical. If I may?

To repeat:

P1: God created the world.

P2: The world contains unecessary suffering.

P3: God cannot create unecessary suffering.

C1: Therefore either P1, P2, or P3 is false.

You are currently arguing that P1, P2, and P3 are all true. Whether you introduce a metapath (for which I would appreciate a definition) or not, the logic above is correct.

You cannot accept P1, P2, AND P3 without a logical contradiction.

Your meta-path concept is unclear, but I believe that what you are stating is that a timewise development of certain characteristics is a good in and of itself and that any suffering or pain occasioned by that timewise development is therefore necessary to achieve the higher good.

In which case, you are actually arguing that there is no unecessary evil or suffering in the world; i.e. P2 is false.

SRB

God is needed in some cases, because rapes happen with nobody around to stop them, and it would be better all round if they were stopped. The fact that there are laws to deal with rape does not change the fact that it would have been better if rapes were stopped.

These benefits could have been acquired by less harmful means. Genetics could have progressed just fine without cancer. In fact genetic discoveries may have progressed even quicker, since scientists could have spent time doing more general research rather than wasting time trying to stop the specific problem of cancer. Even if scientific progress would be hindered should a cure for cancer be found tomorrow, it would surely be worth it. It would be most uncaring and unloving to keep it a secret if I discover a cure for cancer tomorrow. My protestations that it is better if the cure is kept secret would be deemed ridiculous. That's because it is so obvious that any known benefits arising from there being no cure for cancer are clearly not as weighty as the suffering caused by cancer itself.

You didn't give an answer, but I take it that you would go for the "fruitcake" option. Am I right?

SRB