Does it violate free will if the person was never given the desire to do something in the first place?

Great Debates
741

Again; in a universe with an omnipotent being, all suffering is unnecessary, because all it would have to do is will suffering to not exist and it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t need to be omniscient, or even omnibenevolent; just have enough idle concern to decide “suffering begone” and that would be that.

People keep grossly underplaying what “omnipotent” means because the concept completely destroys their defenses of a benevolent creator. Words like “necessity” are simply nonsense in conjunction with an omnipotent.

742

So I take it you’re fine with the implication that, in general, this means evidential reasoning does not move towards the truth, making it essentially pointless to even propose an evidential argument?

743

This is still simply not true. If A entails not B, then no omnipotent being can make it such that A and B obtains. If it is at least possible that A entails not B, then it is at least possible that no omnipotent being can bring it about that A and B obtains. Thus, if it is at least possible that free will entails non-zero suffering, then it is at least possible that no omnipotent being can make it so that there is both free will and zero suffering. It is possible that free will entails non-zero suffering, because it is possible (it does not entail a contradiction) that every concretely instantiable being with free will causes suffering at least once in every possible circumstance (transworld depravity).

744

It’s not possible both because free will itself isn’t even coherent much less possible, and because “suffering” is just a mental experience in the first place.

And “zero suffering” is just a red herring anyway, as has been pointed out many, many times in this conversation. As is the attempt to use logical arguments to support a religious concept based on the denial of logic.

745

A contentious philosophical position, of course, such that it is hard to allocate any great credence upon what follows from it. I know, to you, this is obvious, but the rest of us have to take into account the (remote, I’m certain) possibility that you might be wrong. Besides, of course, for ‘A entails not B’ to be true, A need not be true at all, so that really doesn’t buy you much.

I’m not sure if I get the intended argument here. Is it just that because it’s ‘just a mental experience’, God could make us just not have that experience? If so, that’s just question-begging, as what God could or couldn’t do is exactly the point of contention.

The point isn’t ‘zero suffering’, but that ‘non-zero suffering’ covers everything from infinitesimal to ubiquitous suffering, such that neither of these is inconsistent with it.

If it is based on the ‘denial of logic’, then there should be all the more call to appeal to logical argument. It should be no trouble at all to uncover the logical fallacies or faulty premises at its core. But that just doesn’t seem to happen.

746

No, because there is zero question that an omnipotent could do such a thing. That’s just another example of trying to evade the issue by pretending than an omnipotent is powerless.

747

That’s the rub. The statement you had me agree to was that observing Freddy Krueger appear sadistic is evidence that Freddy Krueger is actually sadistic. I did not agree with the inference that Freddy Krueger probably is sadistic. I would, of course, agree with the inference if I thought this was a pattern with no other reasonable explanation. But without these further assurances that everything else is equal, I have to reject the inference.

So that is why I say the categorical proposition doesn’t hold. The conclusion of an inductive argument is a proposition with a threshold baked in. When you conclude Freddy Krueger is probably evil, you have done more than just say that there is evidence supporting that; you have also concluded there is enough evidence to come to a conclusion, and you have evaluated the evidence, and you have assumed the evidence as a whole likely supports the conclusion. It is unreasonable to extrapolate all this the instant I see him appear to do some unspecified violent sadistic acts, with no further context whatsoever. Shoving someone and laughing could be a violent sadistic act. It could also be horseplay. I am not so hasty to judge someone as evil.

~Max

748

Stop – you’re agreeing with me.

I have not claimed that any specific amount of evidence should make us draw any conclusion.
My point has only been that the observation of apparent sadism (say) is grounds for believing that that being is sadistic, and the more instances, the more grounds. I’m glad we’re on the same page on this.

It may seem a pointless thing to argue, but it’s exactly the thing that @Half_Man_Half_Wit has been contesting. His position has been that no amount of apparent sadism would give us reason to doubt that god is omnibenevolent. Your position aligns with mine and counters his.

Now, if you’re asking my opinion on what conclusion to make overall, I find it laughably silly to conceive of this being the best possible world that an omnimax being could make. But the evidential problem of evil does not require making that claim.

749

You misunderstand Half_Man_Half_Wit’s argument, and mine, since we made the same argument. Merely asserting there is evidence that an omniscient omnipotent God allows suffering gives no reason to believe God is not omnibenevolent. You would have to argue there is evidence that God allows gratuitous suffering. To do that you have to conclude at least one concrete piece of evidence is more likely than not evidence of gratuitous suffering. To do that, you have to commit to a threshold. So you see, the inductive argument comes one step earlier–determining whether a given observation is evidence of gratuitous versus necessary suffering–not about God’s nature.

~Max

750

No – I can quote you exactly where @Half_Man_Half_Wit has agreed with the statement that no amount of apparent unnecessary suffering would give us any grounds to doubt god’s omnibenevolence. You can make the claim that I’ve misunderstood something at some point, but not on the basis of my last post where I am reiterating exact words that I have put to HMHW multiple times.

In terms of your position, you just agreed that observing Freddy Kreuger doing apparently sadistic acts would give us reason to suspect he is a sadist and now immediately want to backpeddle when I said that Freddy Kreuger could be God.
As I said upthread – arguments or defenses of God always land on special pleading eventually.

751

As far as I am aware, I would apply the same standard to Freddy Krueger. I’m personally willing to commit to a threshold for God, remember? Persistent, apparently gratuitous suffering, with no intelligible explanation. For the same reasons I gave when judging Freddy Krueger. You are the one who said that was unnecessary. I still claim it is critical.

~Max

752

You misread me. As @Max_S has pointed out, my position has been that only suffering/evil we have grounds to think is gratuitous yields valid evidence against tri-omni God. You merely claiming it to be so is no more grounds to think so than my claiming the moon to be made of green cheese is to think it is. You need to give some reason why a given instance (or type or pattern or intensity) of evil is gratuitous, and the strength of the inductive argument will essentially be the strength of that reasoning. This is why I have claimed repeatedly that in the hell-world scenario, making a very strong such argument would be very simple; it still has to be made, however.

My main objection is your claim that any evil whatever gives us grounds to doubt God’s existence. If that were so, then this kind of evidential reasoning is rendered inconsistent in the sense that it probabilifies a wrong conclusion in some cases. Hence, this gives the theist defender against such an argument the easy out to just reject it as not a reliable guide to increasing the likelihood of having true beliefs—and perfectly validly so. Only to the extent that you supply grounds to believe a certain evil is gratuitous are you making an inductive argument against tri-omni God.

753

Just stating that the conclusion of an argument you don’t like is wrong is, however, not likely to convince anybody not already sharing your dogmatic beliefs.

754

Biological facts are not “dogmatic beliefs”.

And I don’t expect to convince anyone, ever. Immunity to persuasion is the nature of faith.

755

I am not talking about thresholds, and thresholds were not mentioned in the point being put to you. You agreed with my position:

…but then didn’t like it when I pointed out that Freddy Krueger could be God. Because, when it comes to God, and this defence of the problem of evil, we’re supposed to ignore evidence.

756

I haven’t misread anything, I’ve put this point to you multiple times:

Now, you can argue that your position is more than just this, fine. But when I summarize that your position includes that no amount of suffering gives us any reason to doubt then I am being accurate.
This, by the way, is why I stopped responding to you because I remembered / realized that you never update your position in any of these threads. It’s why Irishman and Voyager left; it’s just pointless. Perhaps claiming that you never meant that observation of suffering gives us reason to doubt an omnimax god is the closest we’ll come to you acknowledging a problem with your position.

757

The quoted bit doesn’t appear to substantiate this assertion. As noted above, we need grounds to believe some suffering to be unnecessary, and your bald assertion it is doesn’t suffice for that. Not for nothing is the motto of the Royal Society nullius in verba—don’t just take anyone’s word for it. What’s missing—as pointed out to you surely dozens of times by now—is a reason to believe some suffering unnecessary. That is where the evidential argument takes off—see Rowe’s Bambi or Sue-cases. Without something of that form, you’re not even making a formally valid argument.

No amount of suffering without any reason to think any of it unnecessary. The mere fact of suffering does not entail that any of it is unnecessary, hence, does not constitute evidence against a tri-omni God.

Again, this is just the same way evidence is handled in any case.

Consider:
– “These fingerprints on the scene are evidence of guilt of the person to whom they belong!”
– “Why?”
– “Because the person did not have any regular access to the crime scene, so their fingerprints should not be expected to be here.”

Versus:
– “This suffering is evidence against a tri-omni God!”
– “Why?”
– “Because for such-and-such reasons, this sort of suffering is not what is expected if there was such a being.”

All I’m asking for is an answer to the above ‘why?’. But this amounts to a reason that some suffering is unnecessary, and you’re adamant that you don’t have to provide this—that, indeed, any suffering at all can be taken to be evidence against God, even though we know that suffering of an indeterminate kind, quantity, or distribution is perfectly possible given such a being. It just doesn’t make sense—it’s like saying finding fingerprints always and under any circumstances ought to be considered evidence of guilt.

Not to mention the fact that this pulls the rug out from under evidential reasoning, since it no longer can be considered to probabilify the right conclusion—another point you’ve chosen to ignore.

It’s somewhat presumptuous of you to ask me to update my position: that would require you to make a convincing argument first, or respond to my arguments in a convincing manner. But here more than ever, I’m not even advancing a position that is specifically my own, it’s just (my understanding of) the most widely accepted view in the literature.

And frankly, this is the part I just can’t understand: I can take you not agreeing with me, random schmuck on the internet, but if literally every cite provided so far explicitly disagrees with your position that any evil at all constitutes evidence against God, shouldn’t that at least instill a smidgeon of doubt? How do you just look at all of this and go, nah, it’s everyone else that’s got it wrong, my reasoning is perfect?

758

Maybe to make this a little more concrete, in the bit you quote, I explicitly talk about needing further assumptions (as I have, of course, many, many times):

Now, the case you’ve been posing is:

The answer to that is, of course, no. What would make the case, however, would be an assumption of the form ‘apparently unnecessary suffering typically is unnecessary suffering’. Then, the above would justify the inference that there probably actually is unnecessary suffering, and thus, yield evidence against a tri-omni God.

Of course, that would be a very strong assumption, and consequently, rather difficult to justify—there is no particular reason that whether suffering is necessary from a point of view sub specie aeternitatis is readily apparent to human sensibilities. But that would be the sort of thing that’s needed to at least make a formally valid—if not especially convincing—argument.

But lacking this the argument simply isn’t complete.

759

There’s a difference between arguing the point and describing what your position is.
I said that you believe that no amount of suffering, in itself, with no additional knowledge of whether it’s necessary or not, gives us any reason to doubt that God is omnimax.

You protested this summary, so then I quoted you.

And now you’re trying to argue the case for why you think this statement is correct…so I correctly summarized your position, no? Or are you taking back the claim?

Right. So I accurately summised your position. In itself, no amount of suffering gives us reason for doubt, in your view.

760

No, that’s not what you said:

These are different, as pointed out above:

Your original statement reads (to me, at least) as if I claimed there is no possible grounds on which to doubt God’s existence based on that of suffering, when my actual point is that God’s existence can be doubted on the basis of unnecessary suffering. Leaving that out is a biased summary of my stance.

What I reacted to was you disagreeing with @Max_S, when he correctly summarized my (our) position:

We’re both saying that only evidence that disagrees with a hypothesis is grounds to disfavor that hypothesis. You seem to be saying that when you don’t know whether it disfavors the hypothesis, you can just assume it does.