MrDarwin

Here's something I posted in the "Should an omnibenevolent god be obeyed" discussion started by luvluv over in Moral Foundations & Principles, but I think it's more appropriate here:

This is an important point. luvluv has made much of the "big picture", that suffering is necessary for God to achieve his/her/its ultimate goals (one of which is that we have free will). But if somebody is doing something really nasty to me (like killing me slowly) I would really have to wonder, where is the evidence of God's benevolence towards me?

luvluv, this goes back to our other discussion: where is the evidence of God's benevolence towards individual humans (or other animals) when that individual human or animal is suffering? Or does "omnibenevolence" simply mean that the good of the individual doesn't matter much, compared to the greater good?

Suppose a child has been kidnapped, and the kidnapper calls the child's parents and allows them to speak to the child. The kidnapper is doing the most unspeakable things to the child, even as the parents speak to him, and it is clear that this will continue until the kidnapper kills the child. There is nothing the parents can do about it. And the child asks, "Why is this happening? Why isn't God helping me?"

What should the parents tell this child?

luvluv

phlebas and wordsmyth:

Folks, that's hardly the point in our overall discussion. The question is WHAT WOULD BE MORE GOOD. If the greatest good we can achieve has to go through suffering, yet God can make us not suffer and still have us be happy but not attain our highest good, which option would ultimate goodness choose? This is the question at hand in this debate. This is a metaethical discussion in which we are trying to define goodness. I really would like you folks responses to the problem at hand. Which of the above options, if they are mutually exclusive (and I'd argue they were even for omnipotence) would be most demonstrative of good?

(I know I asked the question but I asked it tangentially to prove a point. None of you would think it was good if you were to be made a slave. It doesn't matter what God would make you think, we are discussing what goodness actually is, not what you think it is. God would not me more good by fooling you to think that your own slavery was good. He would be decieving you and would be more evil than you perceive Him to be now. How could God become more good through deception? How could you say a God who decieved you was "omnibenevolent"? He would not be, even if you couldn't know it. It wouldn't solve the problem of evil.)

wordsmyth and ex-preacher:

All of your analogies are loaded in your favor. In all of your analogies, there is no good that can come from the risk. My argument is that there is good that can come from putting people in situations where there is the POSSIBILITY of danger. I think we should come up with analogies that more appropriately reflect our two positions. One in which there is definitely something to be gained in allowing the possibility of suffering, and one in which there is definitely something that is lost if the possibility of suffering is eliminated.

In case you guys haven't noticed, I'm really interested in this thread in figuring out if the avoidance of suffering, in and of itself, is the ultimate good. That is what is at question here. If you're not interested in that particular question you should go to the problem of pain thread, but again I don't see how you can honestly address whether or not there is a good God if you don't even have a good working definition of what good is yet.

My analogy would be the school analogy. School is the only place where a child can learn not only information, but how to interact in a group with other people. Now, in going to school, the child will risk suffering in various degrees. He will risk rejection by his peers, academic failure, heartbreak, peer-pressure, drugs, etc. On the other hand, the parent could keep the child at home and give him a moderate education but the child would lead a more sheltered existence and not be as capable socially nor as experienced in handling tough social situations as the child who went through school.

Now, which of these options would goodness take? The option which allows for the possibility of suffering but through which the child could reach the greatest good, or the path that minimized suffering but also limited the amount of goodness the child could achieve?

Another analogy would be romantic love. Certainly romantic love (and probably all loves) open up the possibility for an incredible amount of hurt, but also for an incredible amount of happiness and fulfilment. Would goodness give us the power of romantic love, risking the pain for it's rewards, or withhold romantic love from us because it entails the possibility of too much suffering?

I think the above scenarios are more fair because they are not as loaded. I could see how a reasonable person could choose either option. But I'd like us to explore these scenarios and really try to find out what goodness is. Otherwise we'll never get anywhere because we might be talking about two different things when we say "good".

Lets leave out the emotional rants and try to really answer the question in a rational way. Once we can define what good really does, then we can address all of these incredibly loaded questions you guys keep asking me.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

Philosoft

There is no thing or force called 'evil,' yes, er, no. I would, however, call its usage intersubjective. That is, I can say I think behavior 'b' is evil and you would have a rough idea how thinking about that behavior makes me feel.

<strong> Then, of course, you are reduced to defining maximal benevolence tautologically. If we can't look quantitatively at particular actions in order to say, "all these actions are benevolent, therefore the being in question is maximally benevolent," how are we to determine what is maximal benevolence if, by definition, some of the individual actions will not be definitively benevolent?

phlebas

With respect, luvluv, I think it's right at the heart of the discussion.

You make it sound as if there is some objective definition of "good" by which we are all measured, even God. I disagree.

All right, assuming the standard-issue Christian god being, complete ith Heaven and Hell and all the dealer-installed options.

It would be better to be an ignorant slave. We would not know the difference in our pitiful lives, and we would not have the threat of eternal punishment waiting for us. Torture is one of the most evil things you can do (indeed, if it's not #1), so any path which avoids that for the maximum number of people is the best possible path.

In this case, removing the threat of hell for everyone would be the "most good."

<strong> Let's see -- working at someone else's whim for a few decades with the guarantee of an eternity of bliss afterwards, or freedom which is indistinguishable from that slavery, plus the threat of an eternity of torture. Yeah, tough choice.

<strong> Man, that is one weird sentence.

So, who defines this standard of Ultimate Good? If it's not what I think it is, how could I know what it really is? Why is freedom + torture "more good" than slavery + bliss? If my standard of good disagrees with this Ultimate Standard, why should I care?

Keep in mind that "slavery" in this sense isn't the same as what we normally associate with slavery. No angels with whips making us sing songs while we toil in fields. In fact, your use of the word is an emotional appeal which isn't particularly valid. If we are predestined by God, we wouldn't necessarily be enjoying life less than we are now.

<strong> If God, by omission of action, allows even one person to burn for eternity, then he is already more evil than I can bear.

<strong> If it ends with the maximum number of people being eternally blissful, then it's the best path.

<strong> [quote]How could you say a God who decieved you was "omnibenevolent"? He would not be, even if you couldn't know it.[qb][quote]

So God withholds information and allows me to believe something that's not true, all for the sake of my illusion of free will. So what? He does that all the time anyway, by not proving himself to doubters or to people of other religions.

[qb]Just FYI -- I don't think the PoE is a particularly strong or useful argument.

Non-praying Mantis

Unfortunately, there is a problem with your analogies:

God is supposedly omnipotent, which means that God is capable of setting up reality any way that God wants reality to be.

Parents send their children to school so that they can learn more about the world around them. In doing so, they also experience suffering in various degrees, such as you have outlined above. However, parents really have no better choice.

Parents cannot control the world, except in very limited ways. They can only try to provide the "best of all possible outcomes" for their children. Sending their children to interact with, and possibly suffer at the hands of other children are consequences of their choice to send their children to school. They are powerless to prevent these side-effects.

Not so God. If God is all-powerful, then God would be able to design the system such that things such as the above do not happen. In other words, God does not have to choose the "best of all possible outcomes." God can choose the best outcome! All outcomes are possible.

The same is true for love. When humans attempt to find love, we are usually trying to do at least one of several things: have sex, find a person who we can live with, have fun, find someone to grow old with, etc.

We are again forced to choose between the best of all possible worlds. If we do not risk getting hurt in relationships, we usually do not get any of the benefits. People who do attempt to enter relationships think that the possible results outweigh the possible harm. But, again, we have no choice in the matter.

God, supposedly all powerful, would have always have the choice of getting the benefits without the pain!

NPM

luvluv

phlebas:

If there is no such thing as an objective good then there is no problem of pain.

You're loading the question by calling it torture. What we are dealing with is the possibility of suffering and often at one's own hand. There is no torture that is automatically involved.

If you are talking about Hell, that is outside the bounds of this discussion. The question is whether or not the amount of suffering we experience on earth is sufficient to cause us categorically rule out the possibility of ANY good and omnipotent God. This thread is about the definition of goodness as used in the problem of pain only.

Beyond that, the question is about whether or not, as we define goodness right now, GOD HIMSELF would be doing more good by making us happy robots (is that better than slaves?) then by making us real human beings. The question is not about how happy we would be, the question is about how good God would be. And an essential part of my argument is that there is a measurable goodness which comes from learning how to do something on your own and of your own volition. I believe that this virtue is good regardless of whether or not we were programmed in such a way that made us unaware of it. I am arguing right now, and perhaps we should discuss this, that it is more consistent with goodness to reach a goal of your own free will and with your own effort than to have it given to you, and I'm arguing that this would still be a virtue even if we were programmed, or decieved, to think it wasn't. I am an essentialist. I believe that virtues come from God's unchangeable nature. Therefore, what is good would not change simply because we changed.

Please understand: The question is not would we be happier, the question is would God be more good? For the problem of evil to exist, goodness must have more than an arbitrary meaning. It must exist independant of human minds, or else there is no standard of good to judge God by. If it exists independant of our minds, then God's goodness cannot be established simply by our happiness if we were "programmed" to be happy robots.

I could give my kids (if I had any kids) some kind of drug that made them deliriously happy all day long, to the point where they withdrew totally from life and sat in their room in zoned out bliss all day long. They would be totally happy. Would I be a good parent if I did that? I say no because I believe goodness is something other than mindless bliss.

And again, hell is not in question here. There could be a good, omnipotent God and no hell. What the problem of pain posits is that there is enough suffering on this planet to eliminate the possibility of the existence of a good, omnipotent God.

So you are contending that bliss is the ultimate arbiter of goodness?

Would it be good if you had a drug which would make your children 10 times more blissful then they ever had the opportunity of being otherwise, even though the drug would also make them functionally an invalid? If they had to be stuck in their bedrooms, fed through an IV, using a bed pan, never having children, getting married, learning anything, doing nothing BUT being happy... would you be more good than a normal parent? You would have fulfilled your own criteria. You would have guarnteed him bliss. So would you do it? And would you do it even if the child did not want it done? If he kicked and screamed for you to stop, and begged you to live a real life? To be consistent, you would have to say yes. The child's free will, after all, means less than it's happiness.

And please don't come at me with all the God could do otherwise stuff, I'm not asking you that I'm asking you to come up with a sufficient criteria of good. If you stick by your own criteria, would you drug your child? If you are comfortable with your own criteria, you should have no problem answering the question.

Well, that's the only honest position you could have after you stated you didn't believe in the existence of an objective good.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

luvluv

NPM:

a) Theists have always said the opposite. Theists, for the most part, do not believe that God can do literally everything, but only everything that is logically possible. You cannot give something a controlled-free will. If you give it real free will, and real options, it can make the wrong choice.

b) You are not discussing the topic of the thread. I am trying to get out of you guys a consistent opinion of what goodness actually is, and I am trying to get you to be consistent in it's application. If you believe that allowing the possibility of suffering is less good than not allowing the possiblity, then you should be applying this criteria to your own life and the life of your children. Otherwise, you do not actually believe it to be the case.

Again, this thread is EMPHATICALLY NOT about what God could do and not do. An essential component of the problem of pain is whether or not it is good that God DID WHAT HE DID. In order to judge that, we must know what goodness is apart from any consideration of some other thing God could have done. What difference does it make if God could have created the world another way if we have no criteria for judging whether that other world God could have created would have been better? This thread is about establishing what goodness is independant of God's actions, because if we can't do that we can't judge God's actions as being good or bad.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

K

luvluv:

This is probably going to make debate tough because we are going to be starting from totally different premises, but I do believe that NEEDLESS suffering is one of the greatest evils in this universe (ok, I don't believe in "evil", but I'm not going to drag this into Moral Foundations). I'm not talking about the struggle that is sometimes necessary to achieve a greater goal.

If humankind were to somehow find a way to wipe out disease, would that mean that we had reduced the amount of overall good in the universe? Would it mean that we had done something that God was incapable of?

If we work to alleviate the suffering of an individual have we necessarily reduced the amount of overall good in the universe? Can we say that the act was guaranteed not to be benevolent? If the answer to the previous questions is "no", does that mean we've been more benevolent than the maximally benevolent God?

Would we be slaves if God had given us a nature where we longed more than anything to do His will (the spirit is strong and the flesh is strong)?

These questions are just to point out that without a definition of the overall good that is gained by suffering. I know that's what you're looking for, and I think that's a good way to start. I've indicated that I believe eliminating needless suffering would be a good thing. What specific greater good do you believe is achieved by not eliminating NEEDLESS suffering?

WARNING: be careful about talking about overcrowding or survival of the species because you might be playing into my hand.

luvluv

K the problem of pain posits that if God were good no one would ever suffer. I think the only way to progress this discussion is to find out, at base, whether that assesment is true.

We can't even really argue about needless suffering because we have no idea how to define needless. What if 100 more people reach ultimate goodness because of the presence of a particular form of suffering on earth than would have reached it otherwise? Is it still needless?

If there is a God, we must assume that he has a better grasp of whether or not a particular form of suffering is needless than we do, and we can assume that at some point we may not be able to see why. (Just like the child I mentioned on the other thread can see no reason that his parents are allowing a stranger to poke a cold needle into his arm [flu shot]). I know this seems like begging the question, but what I am saying to you that whether there was a God or not there would be instances when the amount of suffering exceeded what WE thought was necessary. But if there is a God then in those instances we would simply be wrong, but that would not eliminate the existence of God. The fact that we occasionally see things we think is needless is no disproof of a God who we assume has a better knowledge of what is needless than we do.

That's why I think the question the way you frame it is not going to get us anywhere. We have to define good, and define it in a way that is consistent with our own concept of ideal human interaction. If we wouldn't think the drug scenario I layed out above was a good option for ourselves, we can't say that a functional equivalent would be good for God.

In other words, what is good has many different gradations that we can all, to a certain extent, agree on. We may not know what is best and what is worst, but we can make pretty good judgements about what is better or worse. But when dealing with a concept like "needlessness", we are incapable of coming to an understanding of what is truly needless as opposed to something we aren't able to see the need for. There are no shades of needless, no comparative analogy by which needlessness, as opposed to goodness, can be discussed. Something either is needless or it isn't, and we don't have the capacity to know whether it TRULY, independant from our perspective, is needless. We can, however, get a grasp on whether on option is BETTER than another, even if we cannot define ultimate goodness. But if we can find a "better" then that should at least point us in the right direction.

Did anybody understand any of that?

(Not being a smart aleck, I'm just wondering if I'm being clear.)

K

luvluv:

I think that is what many of us find so frustrating (or interesting - depending on your perspective) about discussions like this. When God does not fit our definitions of good, we are told that His definition may be different, and we can never know. If that's so, how can we call Him good, or benevolent, or omnipotent, or anything that we know in our language? His definition may be different. How can we know He is good unless we can measure His goodness by our standards? We would have to go by more than His word. A liar could certainly tell us He was good. If good to God is synonomous with suffering (how do we know it's not), Heaven could be endless torment and torture while Hell could be mindless bliss. Guess which one I'd pick?

I know this will sound a little over the top, but I'm trying to point out that without consistent HUMAN definitions, discussion about these topics is pointless. If omnibenevolent in God's definition means purple in mine, all rational discussion about the traits of God falls apart.