Mark_Chid

I'd also like to point out that in the Bible Christ gives a new Commandment - 'To love the Lord God'.

Love that is COMMANDED? How is that possible? God ORDERS us to love him? Whats that all about?

wade-w

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[ September 01, 2002: Message edited by: wadew ]</p>

MrDarwin

!!!!!!

Anybody else want to take this one on? Let's just say that I have apparently been misled that Christians believe that God is the creator, and that nothing would exist were it not for God willing his/her/its creation into existence.

This is quite an interesting way to view it, but I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the contradictions. You admit that nothing God does can have unintended consequences. Yet one of the things he/she/it did was creation, one of the consequences of which is suffering. The inescapable conclusion is that God intends us to suffer and I'm not talking about potty training, I'm talking about people being subjected to the most depraved treatment. The inescapable conclusion is that God wants children to be raped, tortured, and murdered. Watch the news, these things do happen. These things are consequences of God's creation. These things are the intended consequences.

Oh, I would much rather exist than not exist. But that's a rather easy one to answer because I rather enjoy my existence. The fact that I have had a lucky, an easy and a happy life is one of the things that forces me to ponder why other humans, whom I think have no less worth than I do, suffer the most horrendous things. Why should I be so lucky, when people are being tortured as we speak, as children are being abused or murdered? Perhaps my attitude will change when I am old and infirm (or perhaps even sooner) but nothing can change the fact that I've been lucky enough to have had a pretty darn good life.

[ September 01, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

I have seen both the free will defense (FWD) and the unknown purpose defense (UPD) mentioned here as a defense of Christian theism against the problem of evil.

I do not think I have seen these specific objections to FWD answered: Our moral choices are constrained all the time. I could choose to snap my fingers and cause 1,000 beings to suffer, but this choice would not be fulfilled. God limits the expression of this moral choice of mine, so why can't He limit the expression of the choice, say, to torture a baby? A related objection is that sometimes two people have conflicting free will desires, but the morally worse of the two is actualized. One person's desire must fail to obtain, but God chooses to let the evil person's desire obtain rather than the good person's desire obtain. Why?

I also posted an objection to UPD in another thread, and I do not believe it has adequately been answered. UPD depends on there being some suffering that is logically required for some good. That means it must be a contradiction to say "Good g1 exists, but torture of babies does not exist." This is not an explicit contradiction, so to defend theism in the face of torture of babies, the theist must make it plausible that someone could derive an entailment of "some babies are tortured" from any good g1. I do not think that is possible. If g1 requires that babies are tortured, God should use g2 instead, which is identical to g1 except that it does not require babies to be tortured. This is possible for any good gx, unless what makes gx a good is that babies are tortured. In this case, God would not be morally perfect.

At least until one of these defenses is successfully, well, defended, or another defense to the problem of evil is offered, I will believe God does not exist.

K

luvluv:

I didn't find any answers even remotely satisfactory in C.S. Lewis' "The Problem Of Pain".
He seems to assume that this world was perfect and then shows why pain is needed in it. He doesn't address at all the fact that an omnipotent God could make a world DIFFERENT than the present one without pain.

He talks about how pain leads people to God. He never deals with how this leading through pain doesn't interfere with free will. He doesn't deal with why an omnipotent and omniscient being can't come up with a better way to lead us to him. He doesn't address the fact that pain also drive people away from God.

On tough issues, Lewis uses the typical handwaving. He argues that maybe God's definition of omnibenevolence is different than ours and since He's God, He's right. Also, any really tough things can be blamed on Satan. How convenient. It's too bad this omnipotent and omnibenevolent god is powerless against Satan. I think I'm starting to see who the real omnipotent diety in Christianity is.

I have to admit that I didn't take his arguments with an open mind. I was hoping for something of substance though. There wasn't much more than the weak arguements that have been flying around on these boards.

MrDarwin

Or, it's too bad that this deity created a creature like Satan in the first place, knowing in advance all the trouble this creature would cause. There's that nagging little problem of omniscience again--we have to conclude that God wanted Satan to turn out exactly the way it did, because if not, God surely would have created Satan a little bit differently.

[ September 02, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]</p>

MrDarwin

luvluv, ultimately the concept of God presented to me by Christians is chillingly Machiavellian: that the end justifies the means, no matter how horrible those means are.

luvluv

Philosoft:

I'm not aware that there are any decisions that have no moral component to them whatsoever or that do not at least lead to moral complications eventually. Could you describe such a decision for me?

There is a problem of evil, which is that human beings use their free will to willfully inflict suffering upon each other. Then there is the problem of pain, which is that human beings are beings such that they can suffer. A world of limited human moral freedom could solve the problem of evil, but not the problem of pain. Without direct intervention such beings could still trip and break their arm or run over their child while backing out of the driveway.

This is beside the fact that a being that has it's will restricted does not have free will. A person who has limited moral freedom does not have moral freedom at all. If none of his decisions that are related to morality are free, then he is a being sans morality.

It is a little clearer to me now why you ask about God's purposes, but as I have been telling you if it is possible to conceive of such a God, who desires our free will, and if this does not contradict his omnipotence or omnibenevolence, then the problem of pain does not exist. We don't know empirically if such a God exists, but such a God would solve the problem of pain, therefore the problem of pain is not a problem. If God could have a value which would allow Him to be omnibenevolent and allow suffering, then you cannot say that the presence of suffering automatically makes him less than omnibenevolent or less than omnipotent. Therefore, the conclusion of the problem of pain, that God must either lack power or goodness or both, is false. There is no "must", he MAY lack goodness or power OR he may have goodness, power, and a character consistent with goodness and character that allows for suffering for a purpose.

Now, you can CHOOSE to believe in any of these scenarios: lacking in power, lacking in goodness, lacking in power and goodness, non-existant, has power and goodness but has an attribute that allows suffering for a purpose. BUT none of these scenarios is impossible, therefore the problem of pain does not exist.

You cannot say that because there is suffering, God doesn't exist.

Kass:

Kass, you're missing one of my points, which is that all evil requires a good thing to work on. Evil does not exist on it's own. The ability to follow rules is a good thing that can be perverted to evil ends, just as sex can be perverted to rape. The capacity for sexuality in humans is always a good thing, but it can be used badly. The ability to follow rules is a good thing, without this ability there could be only chaos and nothing else. The ability to follow rules is the only thing that makes society possible. However, this good quality can be abused, like all other evil is the abuse of a good thing. The rules may not always be good, and the ends towards which the rules are meant may not always be good, but the ability to cooperate and follow through with rules is always a good thing.

wordsmyth:

It is pretty much assumed that when Christians say free will they mean free moral will. I guess if you want to play a semantics game we can. You can assume that whenever you see me, or any other Christian apologist, say free will they mean free moral will. Even in a non-moral world, the scenario with the farmers you drew up would lead to suffering. The farmer who planted too late would not have enough food and would suffer. So suffering would be present in a world even where no moral choices were allowed, so that would not solve the problem of pain.

I have explained why suffering is a necessary aspect of freedom. It's very simple. Some choices are better than others. The person who makes the lesser choice will suffer relative to the best choice possible. If choices have absolutely equal consequences, then there is no choice. Even in your scenario with the farmer, the farmer who plants later suffers.

It's not ad hoc. A God who gave people free will PRIMARILY so that they may freely choose to serve Him would have to reveal Himself to them at some point. He would have to present Himself as a real choice, this act is the very reason free will was given in the first place. Secondly, your assertion that God is constantly interfering in human affairs is off-base. God's direct intervention even in the Bible is relatively rare and is isolated around a handful of events: The Exodus, the establishment of Isreal, and the ministry of Christ. All of these were clearly meant, as even the Bible says, to establish to people that the God of Isreal was real, and that the Messiah was actually the Christ. In other words, they were all with the intent of providing humanity with the option of choosing to know and obey him. Beyond that, God rarely directly intervened in the Bible. Even given that, God restricted his direct intervention to a single nation of people: the nation through which His messiah would emerge. The rest of the world has been generally free from direct intervention.

1) Again, this is simply semantics slight of hand. Whenever you are dealing with ANY Christian apologist they only mean one thing when they say free will and that is free moral agency. They do not, and never have, meant the ability to choose between meaningless options.

2) Man did have moral freedom in the Garden. The very act of eating the fruit itself was an act of moral disobedience. They knew that they "ought not" eat from the tree in the garden. The awareness of an "ought" is a moral awareness. Several statements of Eve and Adam in the Genesis story indicate that they did know they were not "supposed" to eat the apple. What they got from eating the apple was a sense of guilt and of seperation from God. It was their first taste because it was the first time they had disobeyed God. It is plausible that they did not gain a moral sense from eating the apple, it was that by eating the apple their moral sense was first triggered.

3) Your statement that the Genesis story proves that God did not intend for us to have free will is incorrect, it proves exactly the opposite. If God had not intended us to have moral freedom He would not have put the tree in the Garden. He would not have even provided us with the choice.

4) So, for instance, disease is simply bad but not evil? Is that what you're saying.

I am dividing the two problems into the problem of evil and pain. Are you saying that you have no issues with the problem of pain, only with the problem of evil? You don't mind people starving to death or falling off cliffs or kids having cancer so long as there is no evil intent behind it?

What I have been trying to explain to you is that eliminating the problem of evil will not eliminate the problem of pain. Choices in such a world would still lead to pain even if they did not lead to evil. Then there is the seperate question of whether or not human suffering is not exactly what we mean by evil, whether it is caused by other humans or falling rocks. If we consider human suffering evil, and not just painful, then even in a world with no moral agency there would be evil in the sense of human suffering.

Getting past that, though, in a world with no moral agency there could be no meaningful human relationships at all. If I had no choice as to how I would treat my fellow human being, how could my relationships have any meaning. If I had no choice but to hug you when you needed one, then I, personally, would have no more to do with my act of hugging you then I would have to do with going down instead of up if I were to walk off a cliff. Love would be an imposed law on us all, that we were no more capable of participating in than we are with participating in electro-magnetism. It would simply be a means of explaining what we, in fact, did with people regardless of our choice. I would hug people who needed hugs but there would be no "I" in it, my own emotions and feelings need not be involved, the laws of nature in such a world would cause it to happen. This in itself is slavery, and slavery is not a good thing.

No, I think it is you who has to explain why Omni-benevolence would be directly equivalent and ultimately reducible to the will that the object of your benevolence never suffer at all. If people are to improve themselves through their own power they will have to exert effort, which is in differing degrees painful. Can you explain why omnibenevolence would a) not want it's object to develop on it's own or b) would care more about it's object not suffering than it's improving?

The more a person loves an object, the more the person will allow that object to suffer IF that suffering is for it's greater good. I would not care if the random stray dog had rabies shots, but I would make sure that my dog had rabies shots. If Omni is a source of comparison, you must show how the unwillingness to let an object suffer, even when the suffering leads to a greater consequence, is an example of more love as opposed to the unwillingness to let an object suffer no matter the consequences. In other words, if you cannot even demonstrate that an absoulte unwillingess to allow suffering is in some tangible degree better than a conditional allowance of suffering, then you cannot ascribe absoulte unwillingness to suffering to omnibenevolence.

If we are not even sure that it is BETTER, we certainly cannot ascribe it to BEST.

You're right, the analogy does fail to completely address the issue. But it is sufficient in that for the parents the only possible option is the flu shot because there is no better means for them to prevent their child from getting the flue. From all options available to them, the flu shot is the best possible option.

Now, in light of this, it is important to remember that Christians have always said that omnipotence means only the ability to do what is logically possible. It is not possible for God to give free will to people and not allow the possiblity that they will use that free will to harm themselves or others. A controlled free-will is a contradiction. It is like a square circle. It is either free or it is controlled. Like the parents are limited by current medical technology, God's omnipotence is limited by what is logically possible. For a person to have free will and not have the ability to use it wrongly is not logically possible.

Anything more acute and permanent than the suffering that is allowed. The most pertinent example I can think of is that it is better to give a child the temporary suffering of discipline than to allow him or her to become depraved and totally undisciplined.

Only if you believe that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible which, according to classical Christian apologetics, it does not.

Jack:

You're taking me way out of context here.

Here I was simply trying to say that the allowance of suffering was not incompatible with goodness. The use of force was an unintended portion of the analogy not relevant to the point I was making.

As I have conceeded to wordsmyth, the analogy is not completely effective since it is hard to draw an analogy for omnibenevolence and even harder for omnipotence. For the shot analogy I should have probably substituted the school analogy. A parent is right for putting a child in school, even though he may suffer there, because school is also the only way he can better himself. Therefore, a good parent can place his or her child in school even though it is possible for the child to suffer there.

I do believe that it is morally okay for a finite being to ocassionally force a totally dependant, unknowing finite being to some good without it's consent if the good is assured.

Agan, though, this is a point where I agree with wordsmyth that the analogy does not suceed compeltely. It is possible that the parents, if they were omnibenevolent, would not force the child to take the shot, but that would only be an omnibenevolent action if the person making the action knew that allowing the child to be vulnerable to the flue served some greater purpose. Only God could know such a purpose. The child's parents would not be justified in not forcing the child to take the flu shot because they have no way of knowing whether or not leaving the child vulnerable to a disease was somehow beneficial to the child or the world in the long run.

As I have conceded, God can only be omnibenevolent IF the suffering we know see has some ultimate purpose that can be judged to be worthy of the price. Only omniscience can know this, so only God has the option of the possibility of allowing some suffering to occur and not forcibly intervening, because only He knows whether or not that suffering serves a greater end. This is a case where we must remember, as wordsmyth pointed out, that the parents are in a different moral position because they are not omnipotent or omnibenevolent. If they were, they might have other options other than to force the child to have the flu shot. But if God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, then He cannot force anyone to do do good.

And it is also important to remember another objection of mine, that if God were to force people to do good IN EVERY ACTION it would be total slavery BECAUSE God is omnipotent. The parents have a limited and lessening ability to force their children to do anything, and everyone can agree that beyond a point the parents forcing moral behaviors on their children would be immoral. God's doing so would obviously be immoral becuase he would have no limitations, He could force everyone to do exactly as He wished all the time. This is obviously incompatible with freedom and goodness.


More later today, kids. I need a break.

[ September 02, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

K

luvluv:

You are correct in saying that if we can conceive of a god who is omnipotent and omnibenevolent who still allows suffering, then there is no problem of pain. The problem is, I (and I think most others here) can not conceive of such a god. There have been no convincing arguments given to suggest that such a god could possibly exist. I don't mean evidence for the existence of God. I mean that we haven't been convinced that omnipotence and omnibenevolence don't automatically rule out allowing suffering.

luvluv

Maybe we should start by trying to define benevolence. I can be pretty evil to a child and not make it suffer. The worst thing you can do to a child is simply to give it everything it wants and to never ask for any effort at all from it. Let it eat what it wants, as much as it wants, do what it wants (including playing in the street, etc. for how can I restrain it from it's will without causing it suffering?) and generally let the child become the center of it's own universe.

If I do this to a child, have I been omnibenevolent towards it? I have by your definition, that omnibenevolence means only that the object of that omnibenevolence not suffer.

And certainly, I could use my omnipotence and make that child do everyting I wanted it to all the time, but then the child would not be free and I, in making a slave, would not be good.

[ September 02, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>