tergiversant

1) God is morally perfect
2) People should act morally
3) :. People should act as God does
4) God does not act to prevent evil
5) People ought not act to prevent evil

Which of these premises do theists reject?

tergiversant@OklahomaAtheists.org

<a href="http://www.OklahomaAtheists.org" target="_blank">OKLAHOMA ATHEISTS</a>


[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

Kantian

I refuse to speak for theists or atheists, but from my perspective:

1. God is not morally perfect. See Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
2. Not everybody is an equal, rational, autonomous being.
3. Since God is above human conventions, nobody should act like God.
4. God is either impotent and cannot stop evil (in the form of suffering), or he is malevolent and allows evil, or the third possibility that evil is not really evil but some form of "discipline" for a greater good. *hey i can speak like a theologian!*
5. People allow evil for the greater good all the time.

All of your points are easily rejected by me alone, much less theists of a various color.

One-eyed Jack

Mssr. Kant, I don't think orthodox Christians would find it so easy to refute these points. I expect the first two points, which lead to the others, find strong support in the Christian scriptures, and even stronger support in Christian interpretations of the scriptures.

Christianity finds itself in a bit of a bind. Having constructed a theological absolute--an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good God--it now must reconcile this construction with an increasingly knowledgeable populace who see suffering and evil worldwide and can with increasing ease research links between totalitarinist theocracy and the Christian evangelical philosophy (well, such as it is). For example, the goals of the Christian dominionists--R.J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Jay Grimstead, and many others--parallel the goals of the Islamic Taliban. The population of the USA is increasingly unlikely to miss the connection.

I think tergiversant's set of theses are more applicable to fundamentalist Christianity than to generalized theism. In that domain, though, I expect them to be rather difficult for Christians to overcome.

I could be wrong.

Kantian

One Eyed Jack, the book Fear and Trembling is an analysis of the moral implications of God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son. It sheds light on how God is not beholden to ethics. So in a hermeneutical way, the book draws upon a biblical story for support of the <a href="http://allfreeessays.com/student/free/Teleological_Suspension_of_the_Ethical.shtml" target="_blank">Teleological suspension of the ethical.</a>

Tercel

tergiversant,
Well number 3 looks like a bit of a problem. Presumably God has a bit more power and resources at his fingertips (omnipotence etc) than your average person. So how exactly are people supposed to "act as God does"? Clearly they are not capable of doing so.
Also, according to Christian doctrine, the fallen state of man makes man incapable of acting in a morally perfect way.

Hence perhaps your premise needs to read something like "People should try to do their best to act in the way God wants them too". Since the NT's pretty clear that God wants us to loving thy neighbour, be humble, patient, tolerant and generally an all-round nice person, I don't see a problem.

Perhaps your problem really is just the Argument from Evil/Suffering, and this is a roundabout way of approaching it?

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Jobar

In fact, doesn't Jesus say "Resist not evil" somewhere in the NT? And don't some sects- the Amish, IIRC- base much of their morality on this?

tergiversant

Premise (3) follows from (1) and (2). If people ought to act morally, and God is the perfect moral exemplar, then people ought to act as God acts. Which of these two premises do you deny?

If some arbitrarily powerful deity is morally exemplary, and yes does nothing, then people should have no problem whatsoever following her moral example regarding intervention. One requires very little power to do nothing at all.

This does not change the fact that people ought to behave morally. We do not let people off the hook on the grounds that they are only human.

This would not follow from (1) and (2). The question at hand is whether we humans should do as god does, not as god says.

This particular problem is closely related to the AE, in that it is raised as an objection to the UPD. If God has good moral reasons for allowing suffering, then it would seem that it is moral for us do permit it as well, assuming that God is morally exemplary (as many theists claim).

[ August 17, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: tergiversant ]</p>

Automaton

Yes. This is one of the more clever refutations to the "God only allows the necessary amount of evil to exist" objection to the argument from evil.
1. It is God's will that there only be the necessary amount of evil (omnibenevolence), and God's will must be actualized (omnipotence).
2. Therefore, it follows that this possible world W only has the necessary amount of evil.
3. Humans should do nothing to contradict God's will.
4. By ending some evil X, and changing this world into W1 rather than W2, where the evil still exists, one is contradicting God's will as W2 would only be a possible world if it contained the necessary amount of evil, and thus W1 would be defeating God's Greater Purpose or somesuch.
5. By consequence, no human should ever act to prevent evil.

Tercel

No it doesn't. The wording doesn't match up perfectly, which suggests that there are either hidden premises or something is being fudged.

As I've pointed out, God has different abilities to people, making the conclusion that they should act the same unwarrented, since they clearly cannot act the same.

I see two other problems with your argument.
1. The idea of God being "perfectly moral" brings up the question of what exactly you are asserting when you say that. (Euthrepo dilemma etc)

2. God as the creator and sustainer of everything, the offended, judge, redeemer etc of Christian theology puts him in such a different moral position (amoral?) to people that it is absurd to expect them to act in the same way.

Perhaps your argument would be better formulated along the lines that "God does not act how He tells us to act"?

Assuming of course that whatever reasons God has for allowing suffering are not God-specific reasons. Since attempted solutions to the question of evil almost ALWAYS attempt to provide God-specific reasons, I do not see how this is any different whatsoever from the question of evil.

Tercel

Automaton,
The glaring problem I see is that if I do something and the world becomes W2, then that is the world which God created and has the "necessary" amount of evil. However much I act to reduce the amount of evil in the world, the world will still be the world God created at will still have the "necessary" amount of evil.

If God is omnscient then he would have known that I'd prevent that evil ahead of time too, so I'm not even "changing" the possible world God created by preventing that evil.
And of course it is entirely possible (as most Theodicies suggest) that the "necessary" amount of evil has something to do with human free-will and hence my efforts to reduce it in fact reduce the "necessary" amount of evil.