SRB

PO
...But the Principle of Credulity breaks the tie here, so I am not convinced your example disproves my principle.

SRB
I suppose there are people who have memories of the world being older than 100 years. Let us replace the "100 years" with "200 years." There is no direct sensory evidence that supports the proposition that the world is older than 200 years. Of course, there is overwhelming evidence that the world is older than 200 years, but that evidence is inferential rather something that arrives directly at people's senses. If you think otherwise, please supply an example of a direct sensory experience that the world is older than 200 years.

PO
It is not obviously true that God's paramount desire is to encourage everyone to love him.

SRB
According to Biblical Christianity, God's command that people love him maximally is his "greatest" command (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30). That is excellent reason to suppose that God would remove the secrecy about evil which serves as a major obstacle to people obeying his greatest command. It is of course logically possible that God's expressed desire is once again overridden by something else that he once again neglected to mention to us for a further unknown reason, but that is very implausible. One would need to postulate a third (self-referring) unknown purpose to account for God's secrecy about his need to be secretive. I don't understand how anyone could suppose such a hypothesis explains the relevant data equally as well as the hypothesis that God does not exist.

PO
...Presumably, it is counter-productive to the farmer's purposes that he hit mule 100 times.

SRB
The only reason that the loving farmer does not hit his mule 100 times is that it would probably be unloving for him to do so.

PO
..it does not seem that he is able to reach that burden of proof.

SRB
There is no such burden. Even if God is not obliged to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, as a loving being he would probably do so. Since AE can be presented in such a way that it dispenses with all talk of moral obligation, your objection is unsuccessful.

Even if we accept talk of obligations, your objection is morally dubious for it contains the assumption that an omnibenevolent being can only be expected to do what he is obliged to do. But that requirement seems to be far too weak. It seems contrary to God's perfect goodness to suppose God watched the planes crash into the WTC and was not motivated to do anything purely because he had already done his moral duty and nothing beyond the call of duty can be expected of him.

PO
However, you have given no reason to think God is obligated to instantiate Smith-1 rather than Smith.

SRB
Again, AE need make no reference to moral obligations, and in any case I reject the idea that an omnibenevolent being can only be expected to do what he is obliged to do. As a loving being, God would have a strong reason to create Smith-1 rather than Smith.

SRB
"In any case, it is most implausible that a loving deity would create a world such that the stability and safety...."

PO
The whole point of the UPD is that we don't know why God would do that.

SRB
I do not understand what you are aiming for. You hop from one theodicy to another, and I show that all of them are highly implausible relative to what is known. Furthermore, all unknown purposes that God might have are unknown (so cannot be described in any satisfactory detail). The best the theist can do is say "God has a purpose but I do not know what it is." What more you are aiming for I do not understand.

PO
But my argument at least provides a reason; God did this so that the possibility of salvation could be realized. After all, one cannot be saved if one has not sinned.

SRB
Without more detail this is no "reason" worth hearing since one can readily imagine God sending people to heaven without them sinning, or can imagine people sinning without there being natural disasters.

Are you aiming to show that it is logically possible for God to allow inscrutable suffering, or are you trying to provide something that meets the minimal standards to qualify as a satisfactory explanation? If you are trying to show the former, it is something I already grant. If you are trying to show the latter then you will fail.

SRB
"If such sensitivity is logically required for people to go to heaven, how and why should that be so?"

PO
No theodicy is required to demonstrate this point. The question is whether it is consistent with God's plan to allow such sensitivity; it clearly does seem consistent with God's plan to bring about salvation. In order for your argument from evil to work, you must show that God is not morally justified in instantiating the said sensitivity in the world with respect to His plan. This you have not done.

SRB
There is no way to derive a contradiction from the proposition "God has a purpose for the suffering but nobody knows what it is." So the fact that you claim apparently pointless suffering is logically compatible with God's existence is nothing remarkable. If you attempt to construct a theodicy (which I take to be a known purpose defence) from what you have said by telling us what "his plan" is supposed to be, I claim I shall have no difficulty showing such a thing to be very implausible relative to what is known. So long as you refuse to answer basic questions about what you say and instead appeal to UPD, then you have not done any better than merely claim ignorance about God's purposes. In effect you have actually made things worse, because you are only defending the idea that God has unknown purposes which are connected with human salvation, rather than unknown purposes generally.

The strongest evidential arguments ever constructed do not show that the negations of their conclusions are logically impossible. So the evidential argument from evil does not attempt to show apparently pointless suffering is logically incompatible with God's existence, only that it renders God's existence unlikely. You say I have not shown that God lacks unknown reasons (connected with salvation) for allowing apparently pointless suffering. Please see the top half of this post where I argue that God's justifying unknown purposes (in general) for allowing apparently pointless suffering probably do not exist.

SRB

TerryTryon

It has been stated that perhaps god allowed evil in this world because his utimate goal is to bring about salvation and in order to need salvation one must have sinned.

This argument is circular. God created wicked people so that he could cure them of their wickedness. There is no conceivable reason why an all-knowing, all good, all powerful entity would create beings with defects with the purpose of correcting those defects. God, by definition, cannot create such beings. Or to put it another way, such beings and the god of the theologians cannot exist in the same realm.

It is ironic that man created god in order to make sense of a world where evil thrived and benevolence is often a survival hazard, but the more one examines the god myth the more it loses explicatory value.

The argument becomes circular, "God does this so he can undo it." (Sisyphean tasks are the punishment of gods, not the labor of gods.)

The argument becomes a vacuous argument from ignorance. "Assume there is an entity that is all powerful, all good, and all knowing. This being allows in his creation certain attributes totally alien to his nature." Why? "It could be for any number of reasons that we cannot specify, but if you don't believe in our god, the burden of proof is on you to rule out each and every one of these hypothetical reasons."

Jobar

Fascinating discussion, gentlemen.

I have been trying to concisely sum up the arguments presented here-

1. Pleading an unknown purpose for God leads quickly to a form of agnosticism- a theistic one, but agnosticism nonetheless.

2. Ignoring 1, the UPD seems to require that God is either a. less than omnibenevolent, or b. less than omnipotent.

I am always glad to see a discussion going on here that forces me to strain to understand the points being made- one reason I have not contributed is that I have been having to work too hard just to keep up! Let me attempt to add something now, though.

What if the purpose of God is not only unknown, but unknowable? Does it change your individual takes on the question? Does it require a purely mystical response, as seems to me? Such an admission by any theist would also seem to make the conclusion that agnosticism is the closest approach to truth inescapeable.

Philip Osborne

This will probably be my last post for this thread:

"So we have eliminated consequentialism and divine command theory. I would then respond that an ethical theory...."

It is wrong to murder a person because it is an essential property of that person that he has a right to live. Even in your example, in which the murder of an innocent person x causes 10,000 people to be saved, our moral intuitions seem to support the idea that x still retains his right to live.

"I claim that k1 is better than k, and therefore to create k1 is morally better than to create k, and so God will create k1, if He exists. It is indeed impossible for God to...."

The point of my "best possible world" theodicy is that this reasoning cannot be used, because it would have to be repeated ad infinitum and would lead to the absurd conclusion of God being made unable to act by such an embarassment of riches. For instance, there is a world k2 such that it is better than k. Therefore, God would create k2 rather than k1. But then there is a world k3....ad infinitum. As long as the principle I have enumerated stands, God is morally justified in instantiating k. I don't see any reason to think it false.

"I suppose there are people who have memories of the world being older than 100 years. Let us replace the "100 years" with "200 years." There is no direct sensory evidence that supports the proposition that the...."

Presumably, the evidence that the world is more than 200 years old is scientific, and science relies fundamentally on empirical observation. This empirical evidence which supports our scientific conclusions that the world is more than 200 years old is the direct sensory evidence you seek.

"According to Biblical Christianity, God's command that people love him maximally is his "greatest" command (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30). That is excellent reason to suppose that God would remove the secrecy about evil which serves as a major...."

Supposing you are correct about God's love of humans as his most important purpose, it seems plausible on the basis of Christianity that the bringing about of salvation is a result of God's love for people, and is the most important way of God showing His love. Again, it does not seem that there is any need for God to reveal His reasons to bring about salvation.

"The only reason that the loving farmer does not hit his mule 100...."

Actually, hitting his mule 100 times might make it harder for the mule to do the work the farmer wants it to do, and pragmatically, this is the strongest reason for the farmer not to do it.

"There is no such burden. Even if God is not obliged to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, as a loving being he would probably do so. Since AE can be presented in such a...."

I assume that God is both omnibenevolent and morally perfect, which would seem to imply that God is obligated to be omnibenevolent if He is to remain morally perfect. If this is so, then the notions of what God is obligated to do and what God as a loving being chooses to do are logically equivalent.

"Again, AE need make no reference to moral obligations, and in any case I reject the idea that an omnibenevolent being can only be expected...."

It seems to me that if what God is obligated to do is logically equivalent to what God qua loving being will do, then AE can in fact be refuted by references to what God is obligated to do.

"I do not understand what you are aiming for. You hop from one theodicy to another, and I show that all of them are highly implausible relative to what is...."

Yes, I am using many different theodicies. The reason is that I don't think all questions pertaining to the problem of evil can be answered with reference to just one theodicy.

In any case, the reason relates to my TI theodicy. God wanted to bring about people who were touched by original sin. But there seems a plausible sense in which instances of suffering provide a logically necessary condition for such people's existence.

"Without more detail this is no "reason" worth hearing since one can readily imagine God sending people to heaven...."

The original point I made was that salvation is a thing of such moral value as to outweigh the value of simply sending sinless people to heaven. This is plausibly true on the basis of Christianity.

"There is no way to derive a contradiction from the proposition "God has a purpose for the suffering but nobody knows what it is." So the fact that you claim apparently pointless suffering is...."

The sensitivity of the world in the beginning may have provided a necessary condition for many people's existence after Adam and Eve. This seems to make sense if one takes Genesis literally and considers Adam and Eve to be the first humans.

"It has been stated that perhaps god allowed evil in this world because his utimate goal is to bring about salvation and in order to need salvation one must have sinned."

As I've mentioned, it is plausible to suppose on Christian assumptions that salvation from sin is a morally more valuable thing than sending sinless people into heaven.

-Philip

[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]

[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: Philip Osborne ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

"It is wrong to murder a person because it is an essential property of that person that he has a right to live. Even in your example, in which the murder of an innocent person x causes 10,000 people to be saved, our moral intuitions seem to support the idea that x still retains his right to live."

But I think there is a difference between x having a right to live and it being morally wrong to kill x. "To save the lives of 9,999 people" is an action whose intentions are morally pure, and "to refrain from saving the lives of 9,999 people when one could" has less than pure intentions. If we accept UPD, it seems we must abandon these evaluations. Similarly, "to attempt to increase the total goodness in the world" is an action that seems always to be morally good.

Of course, I would be quite satisfied if my objection to UPD just forces the theist out of utilitarianism and divine command theory ethics.

"The point of my "best possible world" theodicy is that this reasoning cannot be used, because it would have to be repeated ad infinitum and would lead to the absurd conclusion of God being made unable to act by such an embarassment of riches. For instance, there is a world k2 such that it is better than k. Therefore, God would create k2 rather than k1. But then there is a world k3....ad infinitum. As long as the principle I have enumerated stands, God is morally justified in instantiating k. I don't see any reason to think it false." (Italics original.)

But I think we've already covered this. k1 would certainly be better than k, and then k2 might be better than k1, but I'm not asking for a best possible world, or a world with the greatest amount of good. I'm just asking for a world with the minimum amount of suffering, and we know that such a world is possible, because the minimum amount of suffering is zero.

I think it quite appealing to accept the principle "For every possible world w, there is a possible world w1 with as much goodness as w but no suffering." To deny this principle is to claim that suffering itself is a form of goodness, or that some Good is better if it depends on some suffering. I don't see how the good-making properties of this Good would be affected if we removed "depends on suffering." No good is logically tied to suffering unless it is defined that way.


If that was indeed your last post on the subject, I have to say thank you for providing by far the best opposition to my objections I've witnessed and has helped to refine the language in which I should present them.

StillDreaming

TM
"I'm just asking for a world with the minimum amount of suffering, and we know that such a world is possible, because the minimum amount of suffering is zero."

My impression is that this is about the question whether or not good and evil are opposites on the same dimension: good = -evil (or whatever the exact relationship is). Since only in that case they can be added up, like in:
3 evil + 5 good == 2 good + 0 evil. No preference for one above the other.
And of course: 3 evil + 6 good &gt;= 2 good + 0 evil. (better than)

In case good and evil are different dimensions, they cannot, in general, be added to cancel out each other. Then it makes sense to say that a world with zero suffering is always better then a world with suffering, irrespective of the amount of goodness.

Personally, I feel more for the latter point of view.

(Apologies if this has already been addressed, I didn't read the entire thread. But it's an interesting discussion indeed)

[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: StillDreaming ]</p>

SRB

PO
This empirical evidence which supports our scientific conclusions that the world is more than 200 years old is the direct sensory evidence you seek.

SRB
There are certain observations that are perceptual in nature (e.g. the observation of deep valleys) which are used to infer that the world is older than 200 years. The Principle of Credulity provides a means to defend the belief that there are deep valleys, since that is a perceptual belief, but not the belief that there being deep valleys makes an old-earth likely, or the belief that an old earth is likely. So nothing you have said has met the sceptical challenge posed. Plausibly the reason for thinking that the old-earth hypothesis is more likely than the hypothesis that God exists and has an unknown reason for making the world seem older than its true age of 200 years, is that the former hypothesis much better explains the data than the latter one. This has import for the likelihood of the unknown purpose defence.

PO
Supposing you are correct about God's love of humans as his most important purpose, it seems plausible on the basis of Christianity that the bringing about of salvation is a result of God's love for people,..

SRB
The secrecy surrounding suffering is an obstacle to people loving God, and people's love is what God says he wants. People try to understand why God allows suffering, but can't understand it, so become suspicious or distant from God, and love him less. The very best explanation for why this obstacle to people obeying God's "greatest" command has not been removed, or why God has not at least said *something* about the matter, is that God does not exist. The hypothesis that God has a string of unknown purposes to account for him behaving contrary to how we would prima facie expect him to behave, is a worse explanation on almost every criterion we use to evaluate explanations.

SRB
"I do not understand what you are aiming for. You hop from one theodicy to another, and I show that all of them are highly implausible relative to what is...."

PO
Yes, I am using many different theodicies. The reason is that I don't think all questions pertaining to the problem of evil can be answered with reference to just one theodicy.

SRB
Theodicies are something very different to the unknown purpose defence. To have a good theodicy is to have an *explanation* for why God allows the most abhorrent forms of suffering, that meets the minimum standards required to qualify as a satisfactory explanation. All your theodicies have failed to meet this standard because you have failed to answer the critical questions I have given, always eventually appealing to God's mysterious purposes. But that line of response is utterly contrary to the aim of a theodicy. If you eventually intend to appeal to God's mysterious purposes to answer fundamental questions about why there is so much suffering, then why tack lots of other controversial assumptions upon your appeal to God's mysterious purposes? There is no advantage in doing that over simply saying "God has a reason but I do not know what it is." So I see much of your exercise here as a waste of time.

PO
In any case, the reason relates to my TI theodicy. God wanted to bring about people who were touched by original sin. But there seems a plausible sense in which instances of suffering provide a logically necessary condition for such people's existence.

SRB
No, it is not plausible to say that God "wanted to bring about people who were touched by original sin" if God is supposed to be loving and being touched by original sin entails there being as much suffering as we can see. More would be needed to show that such a thing is plausible. You would need to give a reason to think a loving being would want there to be original sin, and give a reason to think that there being original sin logically entails there being so much suffering. To suppose without argument that there is a connection of logical entailment between apparently disconnected propositions is not at all plausible.

PO
The original point I made was that salvation is a thing of such moral value as to outweigh the value of simply sending sinless people to heaven. This is plausibly true on the basis of Christianity.

SRB
Why is it so valuable for people to be "saved"? On the face of it that is like sending a child into a burning building so the firemen can rescue him. Much more would need to be done for it to be plausible that a loving person would do such a thing. If Christianity commits itself to such implausible things, so much the worse for Christianity. One cannot assume the truth of controversial Christian doctrines here (see below).

PO
As I've mentioned, it is plausible to suppose on Christian assumptions that salvation from sin is a morally more valuable thing than sending sinless people into heaven.

SRB
Even if this is so, there is no reason to believe Christian doctrines are true, so all such considerations are irrelevant. An analogous response would be if I defended atheism from the Fine Tuning Argument by using objections that presuppose (without argument) the truth of certain highly controversial beliefs entailed by one particular atheistic worldview.

SRB

[ August 20, 2002: Message edited by: SRB ]</p>

Thomas Metcalf

I think the theist could say that some worlds with suffering are better than some worlds without suffering. Consider two almost identical worlds, w1 and w2. In w1, 10,000 more people as in w2 are 10,000 times as happy. In w2, one person is 99.999% as suffering-less as her counterpart is in w1.

I agree that we can't think of an easy way to add good and evil together, but I think it still makes sense to say that some worlds have more goodness and less evil than others, and that some worlds with suffering in them are better than some worlds without.