wordsmyth

Its my understanding that the importance of free will is specifically related to whether or not an individual believes in God. God may have wanted us to have free will about whether or not we believe in him, but judging by his reaction to the whole original sin incident, it would seem he did not want us to know anything about good and evil. If God did want us to have the free will and knowledge of good and evil, why did he tell Adam to stay away from the tree and why did he curse him after he ate from it.

Pain and suffering is unneccessary in regard to ones decision to believe in God and often serves to drive a person's belief away from the alleged omnibenevolent xian deity.

sandlewood

Perhaps there are two different definitions of “free will” being interchanged there. There is the freedom to choose to worship God, to not worship him, or to believe he doesn’t even exist. Then there is the freedom to choose between good and evil. Two different things. If God values having someone freely choose to worship him, then why should he care whether that person chose between good and evil during his lifetime? (And therefore, why is freedom to choose between good and evil considered an important kind of freedom?) All we really need to satisfy God is the freedom to choose him or not. We don’t need the freedom to choose evil.

I like wordsmyth’s concise, easy, slam-dunk of an answer. I think that takes care of it. God obviously wanted for humans not to know the difference between good and evil.

I’m not sure what any of this has to do with weak or strong atheism. Can someone enlighten me?

Nic Hautamaki

The problem lies in the strength of the argument. I believe I misspoke myself above. I meant that that defense is why we accept that God is not proven to not exist, not simply that belief in God is less rational than disbelief. I realise that inductively and abductively we atheists hold all the cards. I'm trying to take it a step further though.

The whole point of theodicy, and the PoE, is to see whether or not there really is too much evil in the world. We accept that it seems like there is, and the evidence seems to point our way. However there is a critical problem with this: we have no other universes to compare our own too. Perhaps we humans actually have it really good, compared to if God were less than omnibenevolent. There's really no way to prove that every single shred of evil is in fact necessary. My opponent simply answered as follows to that formulation of the argument: If God ever took away a person's option to commit a sin, he would no longer have sin. And if God simply removed the consequences to it, humanity as a whole would miss out on an opportunity to realise the harm that sinning causes.

Of course this seems like a real stretch, but can it be conclusively disproved? It doesn't seem so. I told her that God could have made us learn and grow by being happy, rather than by experiencing tragedy, and I pointed out that many if not most people do not learn and grow by tragedy. However she merely answered that that in order for our choices to have moral meaning, they must have real and tangible consequences to us. Remember that she doesn't place much stock in heaven or hell, so you can't use that as a possible real and tangible consequence. She's only concerned with what happens on earth. Therefore sinning must have a negative consequence on earth, in order to be a meaningful choice.

Of course it still seems like there's way too much suffering in the world anyways, but is there anyway to prove it?

markfiend

Instant karma's gonna get you?

I can think of many examples where "sinning" has not had a negative consequence on earth.

One example from fishbulb's post:

Nike "sins" by employing child labour (or slavery)
Nike makes large profits, a positive consequence.

Stephen T-B

Sinning and acting in an anti-social manner are not necessarily the same, and do not necessarily have the same evil consequences.

I don’t know the origins of the Seven Deadly Sins (Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth,) but none of them on tits own - without commensurate actions - is intrinsically anti-social.

Sins put your soul in mortal danger, they do not damage society.

Not putting your soul in mortal danger is what very much of the Bible is about. It is NOT about being a nice person.

This is, I think, absolutely crucial to our understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus Christ introduced an element of humanitarianism, but not such a major one that a great many Christians, including the entire Roman Catholic Church, has been able to over-look it.

Evil, in Biblical terms, is not at all the same thing as Evil as we understand it; when this fact is understood, we might start getting somewhere.

Theli

Did this problem, or condition if you will, exist prior to god and outside of his control or did he actually create it?

sodium

Good afternoon. As you know, I'm the Minister of Defense for the new government. Some of our new policies with regard to criminal justice have proved controversial, so I'm going to use the free air-time this station has been graciously forced to provide in order to explain them.

We believe that a policy should have a firm rational basis, and who better to provide that basis, then the field of Christian apologetics? Yes, our new criminal policy is based on the truths revealed when proving that God does in fact exist. You see some people (primarily the mentally ill and over-educated) have claimed that if God existed, he would rid the world of evil. But, recent research has proven that this would in fact not be a good thing, as it would diminish the far more important value of free will.

This fact is the new basis for our justice system. Now, some critics complain that if we do not prevent people from performing acts which we all acknowledge as evil, for example murder, rape, polling late in an election, then in fact we will allow a great deal of suffering. And we acknowledge this fact. But this is more than offset by the amount of good created by the additional free will.

The opposition party doubts this, but let's assume for the sake of argument that we are wrong. Then, God would start intervening to reduce the evil at the expense of free-will. So, we would still avoid the evil, and at no expense to the taxpayer. Let us pray that the opposition is able to construct a more coherent argument.

Still others, particularly those from the powerful Victim's Lobby, claim that in fact their freedom will be reduced, their freedom from rape, murder, etc. But this is equivocation between freedom from something and freedom to do something. Only the latter is truly free will, which God obviously prizes so highly. But, they say, surely my freedom to do something can be diminished if I am suitably maimed or murdered. But even though this is the freedom to act, it is not usually the freedom to choose good or evil. Preventing someone from carrying out an evil act now in order to allow someone else more opportunity to choose evil in the future would be a speculative venture at best, the kind of radicalism my government does not support. Nevertheless, there is always an authority higher than my government, who will intervene if He judges it worth the cost.

Rather than being frightened, I would expect people to be thrilled with the opportunities presented by our new policy. That is, opportunities for abstention from immoral acts. In the past, your avoidance of evil was only partly your own doing. You were not really given the full choice between good, and unrestricted evil. Now, your choice of good (as my government recommends), is far more meaningful. This is all the more true for the people who suffered the most under the old policy, namely inmates in our various institutions, who we were all but prevented from properly abstaining from the various cruelties for which they were incarcerated.

So to summarize, long live Judeo-Christianity, God bless, and goodbye.

Nic Hautamaki

Theli, God made the world that way, and I believe she is perfectly happy with it like that. Her perfect world has nothing to do with people's happiness, remember.

Regarding the consequences: Sure Nike does not feel negative consequences of it's slavery of children, but that's not the point. The point is that the children do experience it. The fact that they suffer for Nike's greed is the meaningful consequence of Nike's action. She seems to be perfectly happy with that. I guess I can kinda see where she's coming from. Think about when you are playing a game like Grand Theft Auto 3. Nobody will ever be hurt by what your game character does. Doesn't that kinda eliminate the moral significance of it all? Who is a better person, somebody who plays Grand Theft Auto only following the mission objectives while killing as few people as possible, or a person who plays Grand Theft Auto with no regard to the game character's lives and kills indiscriminately. You have to ask yourself: does it matter?

If God were to similarly remove our ability to cause harm to others, don't you think that our choices would become similarily meaningless with respect to morality? That's what she says when she wants God to preserve the consequences of the evil choices people make: if there are no evil consequences, the choices themselves don't really seem evil anymore, thus removing morality from the picture entirely.

Stephen T-B

I'm becoming more confused by the minute. Can someone clear this up for me, please -

Are "evil" actions those which we judge to be anti-social,
or are they actions which the Bible and the priesthood say will get us sent to hell?

Secondly, am I right in thinking that these two definitions do not necessarily overlap?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Nic Hautamaki :

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.

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.

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.

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.