Steven Carr

As always, Christians revert to moral nihilism, when pressed.

If I say it was wrong for God to create smallpox, and it was good for us to vaccinate against smallpox, and destroy the virus, the cry goes up :-

'How do we know we are doing good when we wipe smallpox from the face of the earth?'

I wonder why Jesus blamed the people who passed by the Samaritan, when they could have retorted 'We can't change history by helping him. For all we know, he could have gone on to become a mass-murderer.'

And we know Christians would nod their head in agreement, because that is how they absolve God of passing by on their other side.

Clutch

matt,

I am still waiting for you to say anything of relevance to my initial comments.

But I'm glad to see that you agree with my assessment of your own position: that it is the tired old argument from ignorance: How can we know that it's possible, in some suitably evasive sense of possible, for God to make a better world than this one?

How can we know that the Holocaust wasn't really justifiable?

How can we know that John Wayne Gacy wasn't doing the best thing, all things considered, when he murdered those children?

We are finite beings with finite knowledge. There is always the chance that information beyond our ken makes good moral sense of situations that strike us as awful. So we must withhold judgement in all cases. Our moral vocabulary no longer has any application whatever.

The moral nihilism at the heart of Christian apologetics announces itself yet again.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattbballman:

"Since Drange is proposing a proposition, he has to support it."

I supported it: "God is omnipotent, and humans bring about L all the time, so there is reason to suspect it is more likely than not that God could bring about L."

"How do we know that by making certain good choices that we actually didn't propogate past atrocities?"

Remember, this is just more "maybes." Sure, we don't know that. But give us a reason to think that humans never bring about L; there is already good reason to think they sometimes do. I will borrow Carr's example: I drink water and cease suffering from thirst. Sure, maybe I've thereby condemned someone else to suffer, but there is absolutely no reason to think I have. In terms of our experience, we often do things that don't produce suffering somewhere else -- and God, omnipotent, ought to be even better at that.

"What if by creating someone who chooses less evil that the evils such a person does commit are qualitatively more atrocious."

Do you really want to reduce the theist response to "maybe" and "what if"? There's no reason to think that the evils a person does commit will probably be qualitatively more atrocious, so I will withhold belief in that proposition.

"On what basis do we say S* is better if we do not appeal to the interrelated panoply of history?"

Once again, this is just a "maybe." I've provided some reason to think S* would be better, ceteris paribus. You must show that, probably, all the "ceteris" won't be "paribus."

"She must prove how S* is feasible."

Now you think because of counterfactuals of freedom, God can't even create the humans He wants to create? Maybe for every state of affairs x, it's infeasible that God create x: then God would be omnipotent if He were completely impotent? I hope this isn't your position.

"i've already noted that someone who makes the assertion that God can constrain our choices more carefully leading to a world with fewer evil choices must prove it."

And I've already supported my side. God is omnipotent. Some evil choices are very bad, and some evil choices are not very bad; God allows much of the former and constrains much of the latter. There is good reason to believe constraining our free will isn't always bad, because God does it in the case of even minorly evil actions -- so it makes sense to extrapolate to very evil actions. It's your turn to show that we can't make this extrapolation.

"Now that this is in perspective, how do we know that by creating S* we are not actually creating a Dr. McCoy or a Marty?"

There's just as much reason to think that our skepticism belies an ignorance of the fact that S* will actually be much better. I've already provided reason to think that S*, ceteris paribus, would be better. It's your turn to give reason to suspect S* probably wouldn't be better.

"You can have the last word."

I don't really appreciate the insinuation that the "last word" is what I seek. You've been a competent opponent, but it seems that you have failed to recognize what has been noted very early in this thread. Guthrie is propounding an objection (as it happens, one of Plantinga's) that is designed to undermine a deductive argument. Against a deductive argument, "maybe..." and "what if..." and "how do we know that it's not the case that..." will suffice, but not against Drange's evidential argument, unless you want to descend into almost global skepticism.

I'll restate my observation: Perhaps it's infeasible for God to create a maximally good world unless He fools us into thinking earth is 4.6 billion years old when it's really just 1,000 years old. Thus, you have to abandon your belief in the age of earth. Repeat the experiment for any a posteriori belief.

Jamie_L

I'm no master logician or atheologian, but:

It seems to me that using the defense that attempts to reduce suffering may in fact not reduce suffering creates an unusual situation. In order to argue that God cannot create a world with less suffering, one must argue not just that certain attempts to achieve less suffering may fail, but that ALL attempts to relieve suffering MUST fail. Or, restated: human beings NEVER reduce the total suffering in the world.

This line of reasoning suggests God has arranged things to achieve the minimum possible level of suffering and the maximum greater good. Thus, suffering can never be reduced further. The extenstion of this is that whatever suffering exists is absolutely necessary, and attemting to reduce that suffering is a step in the wrong direction. One must assume any attempt to reduce suffering ACTUALLY results in no net gain, at best, or an increase in suffering at worst.

Jamie

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Jamie_L:

"The extenstion of this is that whatever suffering exists is absolutely necessary, and attemting to reduce that suffering is a step in the wrong direction."

This is a very important point. If no suffering is gratuitous, then every time I cause you to suffer, that suffering is necessary for a greater good. In fact, perhaps I ought to try to make everyone suffer as much as I can, because every time I succeed, I must be making possible an equal or greater good.

The theist's reply would be that the greatest good might be that I never try to cause anyone to suffer in the first place, but then again, God would prevent me from choosing to make people suffer if it were better than I not even make that choice.

mattbballman

Thank you for your comments. I shall respond shortly. This has been one of the most fruitful discussions I've had on the subject.

matt

Synaesthesia

The way Voltaire put it was: "All is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds."

I love that.

mattbballman

metcaf,

These "maybes" and "skepticisms" serve to show why the argument from evil must be argued and not assumed. It is not a "default position" -- I hope that is made clear. And I think, to some level, it has become somewhat clear to you when you say, "Sure, we don't know that." Therefore, it cannot be assumed lest one be guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam.

matt

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattbballman:

"These 'maybes' and 'skepticisms' serve to show why the argument from evil must be argued and not assumed."

Of course, and that is what Drange has done and what Guthrie has failed to address. There are good reasons to think God could bring about L and God wants to bring about L: He is omnipotent and He is morally perfect, respectively. These provide some evidential weight, and that is why "maybes" alone won't answer an evidential argument. We go from "apparent lack" to "actual lack" in our daily discourse all the time, so "maybe God exists" won't function as a defeater for the inference from "apparently gratuitous" to "actually gratuitous" -- unless it functions as a defeater for pretty much every a posteriori justification inference.

The Unknown Purpose Defense, in my experience, has been acknowledged by the best philosophers of religion to fail unless positive evidence for theism can be provided to outweigh the evidence against it the atheist has offered. I and the rest of the atheological world await that evidence.

mattbballman

carr,

Sure, God could create us as angelic beings but to be such a being is not to be human. If God desires to create a world where earth and human beings exist then thay may entail a certain amount of evil being permitted. And that's the point, we are not angels so the comparison is weak.

Secondly, your statement that by drinking you reduce personal suffering. However, the proposed thesis of the argument from evil is not how to reduce personal suffering but global suffering. How can evil be reduced without perturbing the good in the world?

Thirdly, the free will defense is not dependent on transworld depravity. I invoked depravity to explain Christian theology why no human beings are created who do not sin. The free will defense only requires that counterfactuals be possible.

Finally, God does not ask his creatures to have His omniscience. We have no idea what extended repercussions would result from our decisions to do good or harm. And this is why the problem of evil is bankrupt for its proponents claim to tap into this omniscience to construct a world with less evil but the same good. So, how can this be done?

matt