O-Tom

There is an easier way to disprove God and that is to examine the word, "God", and to see if its definition is intelligible. If unintelligible, then God cannot possible exist.


[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: O-Tom ]

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: O-Tom ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Plump-DJ:

"But the problem as i see it is how much of the suffering that exists is caused by God and how much is caused by us? How much of the suffering in this world is prolonged and exagerated by our own choices, our own reactions to the things which happen in our lives and our own indifferences to others suffering? We seem oft caught up in our own lives."

I think it's still morally better to prevent useless suffering than to allow it, even if one is not the direct cause of such suffering.

"1) Why does this entail considerable moral and epistemic skepticism? I don't see the link."

Suppose you say God might have a morally justifying reason for not revealing how all the intense suffering we observe is justified. We can say, similarly, that maybe God has a morally justifying reason for not revealing that the world is only 100 years old, or that the world is actually highly disordered rather than ordered, or that the universe's existence extends infinitely into the past. For any empirical observation we make, we can say God might have a morally justifying reason to lead us to believe that we have made that observation accurately, when in fact we have not.

As for moral skepticism, if we accept that every instance of suffering actually creates an equal or greater good, the obvious conclusion is that we ought to try to create as much suffering as possible, because all suffering we successfully create will have an equal or greater justifying reason.

One of the best reasons to deny the Unknown Purpose Defense, however, is that it just seems unlikely to be true. There is quite a lot of intense suffering with no apparent morally justifying reason, and it just seems most likely that at least one of these instances of suffering simply has no morally justifying reason.

Leading theologians such as Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen agree that theodicies seem to fail consistently, and many leading apologists have decided to concentrate on confirming God's existence, which would totally disconfirm the existence of gratuitous suffering. Evidence for God's existence is reason to accept the unknown purpose defense.

"2) Why is this not a real honest (meaning intellectualy acceptable i suppose) possibly if God is strongly omnipotent? I've seen good answers to this qusetion. One example is that it's not possible for God to create a universe without the possiblity of suffering while at the same time creating persons who can choose him or choose Good in any meaningful sense. How can you know what good is without the bad, light without darkness?"

But if God is strongly omnipotent, God can do anything. He can indeed create a universe without the possibility of suffering while at the same time creating persons who can choose Him or good in a meaningful sense. God can perform any action whatsoever. God could even cause people to be free while simultaneously always forcing them to choose Him.

"3) The last part of this point you make i think is the real problem. It's like this scenario. Either you can jump off the cliff ('Weeeeeeeee') or you can have God push you? See the problem? Your choice is not much of a choice at all, and has lost any real meaning as a 'choice'."

I'm afraid I don't understand your point here. A strongly omnipotent God can provide you with a choice all the time while continually precluding the existence of suffering; He can indeed do anything.

s0uljah

Hi Thomas!

I would like to address two points of your post.

"because no one has provided a workable definition of "omnipotent" yet"

I agree with you. Our understanding of terms like omnipotent is incomplete at best.

"The strongly omnipotent GA's existence is disconfirmed with the existence of suffering."

Suffering is one of the greatest obstacles to Christianity, my religion. Its very difficult to reconcile suffering with an all-powerful, all-loving diety.

But, if we realize, as you do, that omnipotence is hard to define, and if we realize that finite beings also can not completely define God's reasons for allowing suffering, then concluding that suffering disproves God doesn't follow.

Have a good day!

Plump-DJ

The argument from evil has a logical and a "probablistic" version, at least that's all i've come across. The logical version must deal with *all* the possiblities in order to come to the conclusion. One possiblity is that God cannot achieve his ends without allowing certain amounts of suffering in the world? To make our choices meaningful we must be able to choose "wrongly" and he can reward those who suffer. Is any of this possible? I don't see how anyone would deny this as being merely possible, and as such i don't see how one can raise the contradiction from a purely logical standpoint.

In regards to the "probablistic" version, that again comes down to where one assigns their value or "probability" points. For example, the possiblity of making real meaningful choices (bad or good) ranks very highly on my value points list, which goes in favour of God's existence.

I was objecting specificaly to the logical version which i assumed everyone was talkinga bout. (hence the title -- Disproving God is Easy) If you wish to argue that God's existence is unlikely or improbable then that's a different argument, and as i said above it's not so easy at all because it invovles the assigning of value or probability points.

Amos

The problem with "God created the Universe" is that the Universe must exist outside of God and that is not what mythology holds to be true. God is the creator of all things and all things are created and therefore made in the image of God. This places the intelligent design within creation and the essence of creation (image of God) prior to existence.

Thomas Metcalf

Hi there.

Originally posted by s0uljah:

"I agree with you. Our understanding of terms like omnipotent is incomplete at best."

But if we don't know what "omnipotent" means, how can we say God is omnipotent? Or do we indeed know what the word means?

"But, if we realize, as you do, that omnipotence is hard to define, and if we realize that finite beings also can not completely define God's reasons for allowing suffering, then concluding that suffering disproves God doesn't follow."

In my experience, any attempt to define "omnipotence" will run into a problem. As for the problem of suffering, however, I only intended the strongly omnipotent God to be disconfirmed thereby. We know what it means, in part, to say God is strongly omnipotent: He can do anything (including the logically impossible). If this is the case, God could have no justifying reason for suffering, because no suffering is necessary for anything at all, even suffering itself.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Amos:
"The problem with 'God created the Universe' is that the Universe must exist outside of God and that is not what mythology holds to be true. God is the creator of all things and all things are created and therefore made in the image of God. This places the intelligent design within creation and the essence of creation (image of God) prior to existence."

So God existed before He existed? I'm afraid I don't understand. I was under the impression that most apologists believed God is outside the universe.

Nickolaus

Thomas, it looks like you're still a little new here, so let me introduce you to Amos...

Amos isn't a traditional apologist. He has his own explanation for everything, and his beliefs bear little similarity to any one mainstream religion or theological construct. So just keep that in mind when reading his posts.

Primal

For that to work one would have to ignore or redefine God's omnipotence. If God *can* do anything God could achieve any end without allowing for any amount of suffering, surely a being that can do anything can do this. Again though if you are going to redefine/ignore omniptence then we are not speaking of the same God and the absolute argument from evil was never meant to refute that version anyways. The argument is still sound given the premises though, and still applies soundly to the God in question.

God could make choices meaningful without invoking suffering if God was truly omnipotent.

Not really, most of the time in life we go by probabilities without assigning probability points. I know for example that it is unlikely that a meteor will slame into me in the near future, or that some monsterour plant will sprout out of the ground to eat me. Do I know this via probability points? Nope, I know this via aproximation. Demanding exact measurements for all probable reasoning is known actually as the "line drawing fallacy" i.e. at what exact dollar is a person to be considered rich or poor? If I say Bill Gates tomorrow will team up with aliens to enslave mankind, and you say "unlikely" and I ask for probability points, what would you give me? Is the event therefore "likely" if you cannot give me thse points? Is it 50/50? Is it on equal footing with the assumption that Bill Gates will not do this tomorrow due to a lack of explicitly assigned probability points?


[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]</p>

Primal

Amos: Are you saying that all things in what we call the universe were made out of God? Or are you saying that there was mere nonexistence prior to God, and God established all of existence even his own, in which case you run into contradiction?