please elaborate.
no one has yet proved that “free will” even exists. no one has even defined what free will even is, or what exactly is free.
now, once you figure out a response to that objection, consider the nature of omnipotence. please, for a moment, think of what it is like to be able to do anything. surely, one could create a man with free will, but without the ability to do evil. that capacity exists in all of us, and as such, if we were created we were done so by an at least slightly impotent being, or a being without concern for the lives of good people.
Lib, what happens when something bad happens to good people’s bodies, and those good people like their bodies?
Ramanujan wrote:
People who treasure their bodies are most likely disappointed when they see what they treasure wither away before their very eyes. If not murder, then cancer. If not cancer, then age. None of them will last for much more than a hundred short years.
But good people treasure goodness above all else. And they cling to it eternally.
Vanilla wrote:
I already did.
[ol][li]Whoosh][/li][li]can we calrify, just for the record, whether you’re a Biblical literalist, or whether that’s just the position you’re expecting your opponents (in this debate) to hold?[/li][/ol]
(Gaudere be praised)
You misunderstand. It is not based on MY judgment, it is based on the Judeo-Christian concept of God. The J-C god has the characteristic of being all-loving.
Let’s take a little example: The Loch Ness Monster is said to live in a lake in Scotland. Now, if you tell me that the Loch Ness Monster exists, AND that it lives in a lake in Scotland, AND that you saw it in your closet, I will tend to doubt your story, because it’s unlikely that it could be in Scotland AND in your closet simultaneously. But notice that I’M not TELLING you that Nessie is in Scotland; I’m merely pointing out the inconsitency in your own belief.
So, in the present example, God loves all children, yet murders children. I am not presuming to substitute my judgment for God’s; I am merely pointing out the contradiction inherent in a being who is ostensibly all-loving, yet murders the innocent in order to accomplish a goal that could just as easily be accomplished without murdering the innocent.
How does Pharoah’s guilt become the children’s guilt? Do you not contend that God gave us individual free-will? To hold an innocent person accountable for the crimes of a guilty person is ALSO inconsistent with being all-loving.
Please read the O.P. again, and reconsider if you want to ask me that question.
I disagree. You can’t attribute EVERY instance of birth-defects to human folly.
Drug use is not the only way for birth defects to happen.
Yes, genetic defects are caused by genetic error. That’s merely a truism.
To believe that ALL birth defects are the result of pollution by modern industrialized society is to believe that they did not exist in pre-industrial man. Highly doubtful.
You can make a case for some birth defects being the result of human folly, but I don’t believe you can say that all birth defects are.
Would a loving parent allow her innocent child to die, if it were in her power to prevent it? I think not.
There is an objective reality. None of us can experience it. When we have percieved something, the reality has already changed.
Not really. Subjective reality may be just as valid as objective reality, but there is, by definition no information exchanged between peoples “delusions” (as I call them, for lack of a better word: I am not the one to declare that a person’s subjective experience is invalid) If there were meaningful information exchanged between people’s subjective expereinces, they would by definition not be subjective and would assume some objective reality. It would then be up to science to classify and study this.
**
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not really, objective reality is a theory, because it fits the best observations. It is impossible to entirely prove a theory. It would be possible, within the realm of science, to show that objective reality is no longer the best universal model, if the facts overthrow this theory.
**
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well, according to our present best working model, objective reality will continue to exist after the last “intelligent” life is around to “observe” it. Of course, science could be wrong, but science has a framework to change to fit new information as it becomes apparent.
This, of course, only applies to objective reality in the present universe. I am not claiming that non-informational exchangeing realities do not exist (either subjective realities or post-death one-way existence “barriers”.)
Ludovic wrote:
I agree with your first two assertions, but your last assertion gives me pause. Are you saying that perception is pro causa?
You’re teetering. If there is no way to exchange the information, then a falsifiable test cannot be devised. Science is not equipped to evaluate nonfalsifiable phenomena.
That doesn’t address the point I made, which was that an objective reference frame is necessary for an objective proof. You agreed with this earlier.
Still, I don’t know what you mean by objective reality being a theory. It is generally considered to be a metaphysic.
I agree with your last assertion. Certainly there can hardly be imagined anything more flexible than the principle of falsifiability.
But why that is tacked on to the other sentence escapes me. You seem to be speaking about reality in an ontological sense. In other words, you’re discussing the nature of reality. And that’s not within the scope of science either.
Science is a very specific epistemology, and is merely a branch of philosophy, not the whole of it.
It’s good that you’re open minded. There might also be a reality that is both objective and subjective, i.e., universal.
With all due respect Lib, that wasn’t a direct answer to my question, or the OP. The OP is about what God supposedly values: the moral choices that god is said to have made in creating a world that doles out violence without rhyme or reason, and is chock full of morally imperfect beings. The argument is that this is inconsistent with the particular claim about God.
So, again, are you saying that all the bad things that happen are illusions? If God comes down from heaven, stomps on a baby’s skull, is God’s defense then simply that what happened is an transitory illusion, so get over it and praise my goodness?
With all due respect Lib, that wasn’t a direct answer to my question, or the OP. The OP is about what God supposedly values: the moral choices that god is said to have made in creating a world that doles out violence without rhyme or reason, and is chock full of morally imperfect beings. The argument is that this is inconsistent with the particular claim about God.
So, again, are you saying that all the bad things that happen are illusions? If God comes down from heaven, stomps on a baby’s skull, is God’s defense then simply that what happened is an transitory illusion, so get over it and praise my goodness?
Apos
I couldn’t have answered your question or the OP more directly. You say:
And I had written:
and
If the OP asks what God values, and I say directly that He values goodness above all else, then how was it not a direct answer to the OP?
And when you asked:
And I responded that
When I have explained that “people” has two different meanings depending on context, why is that evasive merely because I have unloaded the complex question and have addressed both parts?
What do you mean “again”? You did not mention “illusions” before. You asked whether bad things happen to people, and I spent two hours giving you an answer.
If your mother had balls, she’d be your grandfather. I don’t appreciate your cavalier and disrespectful treatment, Apos. You say you mean no disrespect, and yet you ask me a question like that. And I cannot point out problems with the way you put things because you will say that I am “correcting” you.
I do not have to posit that God stomps on baby skulls merely to satisfy your disingenuous inquiry. Was that some sort of veiled reference to Our Dawson? If so, it was the very pit of bad taste.
We believe that our grandson still lives.
Regarding the “whoosh,” yeah, I wasn’t sure. As to the second question, I think I expect the believers in this debate to hold the position that the Bible, being the sacred text of their belief system, presents a reasonably accurate picture of the deity they choose to worship. I’m well-aware that many people regard some Bible stories as being allegorical, rather than literal, but even as allegory, many of these stories collapse in a heap of contradiction, or just don’t make any sense.
[Hate to leave just when it’s getting to the fun part, but I’m off for two weeks in a place where it was 82 degrees yesterday, as opposed to the 20 degree temps here, and no, I will not be spending all my time in some Internet cafe! Please continue with the petty bickering (Lt. Cmdr. Data)]
There are other possibilities that do not lie between the extremes of ‘absolute literal truth’ and ‘complete fiction’ - for example, there is ‘biased account of the victor’.
I find it entirely believable that the Bible contains reasonably accurate accounts of humans trying (and sometimes miserably failing) to interact with God (and vice versa, but that’s more subjective of an opinion), but I don’t see why we can’t view the ‘God made me do it’ statements with just a little caution.
—If the OP asks what God values, and I say directly that He values goodness above all else, then how was it not a direct answer to the OP?—
Because the question was in regards to seeing this value in the world. The OP ALREADY agrees that this is what god is claimed to value, so an entire post repeating this point does not directly address the OP.
—You asked whether bad things happen to people, and I spent two hours giving you an answer.—
I’m still not sure what the answer is. Is it “No, those things the argument thinks are bad things are not actually bad things.” What I want to know is whether this is simply a denial of one the premises (that bad things happen to people), or whether it adds anything to the discussion of the validity of the argument.
—I do not have to posit that God stomps on baby skulls merely to satisfy your disingenuous inquiry.—
I was not being disingenuous. Would you care to justify that accusation? You offered a doctrine in which physical harm appears not to be any sort of harm at all. That doctrine, however, seems to be consistent with any sort of behavior whatsoever from God, any sort of temporal world created.
I still do not know who Dawson is. If he is your grandson that died, I’m very sorry to hear that. But if you gave an hypothetical example in a post of your most beloved one being crippled and killed by a cruel rheumatic illness, not knowing that I had such a beloved one, I wouldn’t call you “disingenuous” for it.
Apos wrote:
What I did was explain how what might appear evil might not be evil at all, and what might appear good might not be good at all. I explained why. I explained how. I gave examples. I supplied the underlying theory, the practical interpretation, and the metaphysical context. Your charge of evasion is outrageous.
If you think I intend to waste another moment explaining something that I have explained to a fare-thee-well, you are mistaken. If you don’t know what I meant when I labored before to answer you, how will you know what I mean if I give you the Cliff Notes?
I offered a “doctrine” in which the entire physical realm is morally irrelevant. Your failure to acknowledge a distinction between moral and physical harm does not constitute my failure at describing the distinction.
Dawson was crippled and killed by a brain tumor. It literally cracked his skull. It is common knowledge at StraightDope and was announced and discussed here. If you didn’t know about it, then you did not intend to be crass and it was an unfortunate coincidence that you used the imagery you did. But you just beat all I’ve ever seen. When I apologize to you, you ignore it. When I praise you, you do not respond. But when I express my opinion in practically any thread about practically anything, you are all over me like a Chihuahua. You don’t want me to “correct” anything you say. You think that I evade every issue. You give absolutely zero credibility even to hours of work that I put into faithfully answering your questions. You preface things “with all due respect,” and yet you extend to me the respect that is due a throw rug. There’s really no point in my responding to you. I can just hold a dialog with myself, it’s so predictable. “Have you stopped beating your wife?” “No, but I have never beaten her to begin with.” “That doesn’t really answer my question. It wasn’t about what you’ve done in the past.” I am really saddened by this because I really want to debate with you as your peer, but you are simply determined not to allow it. I guess I have to concede that to you.
I’ve only scanned this quickly, but as far as I can see, no one has picked up on the inherent gag in the thread title:
Why does God let good things happen to bad people?
NOT “Why does God let Bad things happen to Good people?”
Years ago, I used this as a hack title for an imaginary book: When Good things Happen to Bad People.
The Schadenfreud of the blessed.
“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain to the righteous and the unrighteous.” — Jesus
Lib, I have responded here
—I am really saddened by this because I really want to debate with you as your peer, but you are simply determined not to allow it.—
I understand that you have concluded this somehow (and for some reason thinks expressing it sarcastically will help), but I don’t feel its any sort of accurate characterization of me. What what can I do to change it? What past interactions are unresolved and have left frustration in your mind?
I feel that “Have you stopped beating your wife?” “No, but I have never beaten her to begin with.” “That doesn’t really answer my question. It wasn’t about what you’ve done in the past.” is a viciously unfair characterization of the nature of our dialouges. But, if that is your opinion, where did that happen? What can I do to change it?
—What I did was explain how what might appear evil might not be evil at all, and what might appear good might not be good at all. I explained why.—
Ok. So, is this explanation tantamount to a denial of the premise? Or the validity of the argument? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m dumb. I can’t pull the answer to that question out of your original post.
You have to appreciate that for someone who doesn’t believe in what you believe, the “why” might seem as totally unintelligible as Korean to a 1480s Englishman.
—If you don’t know what I meant when I labored before to answer you, how will you know what I mean if I give you the Cliff Notes?—
So the motto of the SD is “to fight ignorance… except if it takes more than one try”? I don’t claim to have perfect insight into your thoughts, and maybe I misread. Correct me. Don’t assault me.
—I offered a “doctrine” in which the entire physical realm is morally irrelevant. Your failure to acknowledge a distinction between moral and physical harm does not constitute my failure at describing the distinction.—
I don’t feel that I’m trying to reject the distinction at all. Maybe I misunderstand it. What I was responding to is precisely my understanding of what the actual implications of it are, as understood by me. And they give rise to implications that seem incredibly strange to me.
My thought process is this: if I accepted what I understand to be your doctrine, then I can envision myself as sitting around and then seeing any sort of physical atrocity commited by your god, and by your doctrine I could have no moral complaint against what that god did at all. Because it is of no moral consequence. And I DO feel as if, if a God created the natural world, that God seems to be comitting pointless atrocity all over the place. So, I don’t get it.
Yet, when I give an example of just such an atrocity, you (out of left field to my mind) object in horrified tones that I’d even envision such a horrible thing. But how can it be horrible if it is of no moral consequence? Given what I understand of your doctrine, I REALLY don’t understand the source of the outrage, especially if harm done physically is not morally wrong. As you quote, your God sends metaphorical rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. The metaphorical question is: why does he send rain on either? How can something be wrong if outcomes are of no moral consquence? What can morality mean if it is utterly indifferent to any temporal outcome?
Now, maybe I’m misunderstand your doctrine. You can explain that to me, and maybe I’ll get it. My example, in part, expresses my understanding. If it is wrong, at least you can see how, explain why it is wrong, and maybe my understanding increases. Maybe mine doesn’t, but the understanding of some lurker on the same wavelength doesn’t.
And if you want to know what I was thinking of, I was thinking of a child I know killed in an earthquake, in the way I described. If God created the world, then created it with earthquakes. My question is: why? How can that design decision be justified in a way that dosn’t simply justify ANYTHING by definition (which is how I understand your response: it simply excuses God of any and all possible state of reality or outcome)
—It is common knowledge at StraightDope and was announced and discussed here.—
As you are so fond of pointing out, I’m a relative newcomer to SD.
—When I apologize to you, you ignore it.—
Maybe, to me, apologies to me are highly embarassing to me (though I’m not sure I even remember where you had cause to ever apologize to me). Maybe my concern is not any sort of personal acknowledgement of wrongdoing, but simply a change in behavior. You don’t know me. You don’t know my feelings about apologies.
—When I praise you, you do not respond.—
First of all, I lose a lot of threads to board creep, which I try to solve as best I can. Second of all, praise FRIGHTENS me. Personal interaction that deals with my own person in anything but a very abstract sense is extremely uncomfortable. My instinct are to go red, and to run away. I realize that this is abnormal, but I have a serious problem I can’t overcome.
But when I praise someone, I don’t do it to get recognition of it, or to get favoratism, and I can’t hold it against them if they continue to disagree with me. I do it because I care about someone, and want to encourage them, but mostly because I can’t help myself. I personally never expect any sort of response (realistically, can’t emotionally deal with any response). Y
Your posts are some of the most intriguing I’ve found here. I don’t think your long posts are wasted effort (even if I didn’t think so, no doubt lurkers find them important), but I’m not necessarily going to respond to everything I like or agree with. I’m going to push on the points and ideas I think continue the debate because I don’t know any other way to really understand the differences between your thinking and mine. The similarities speak for themselves.
—You don’t want me to “correct” anything you say.—
Remind me: when did I object to correction as a general principle? I don’t recall this being a paradigmatic element in our interaction. And if I’m trying to relate what I understand of your opinion, I very much DO want you to correct me.
—You preface things “with all due respect,” and yet you extend to me the respect that is due a throw rug.—
I don’t feel that I try to extend to you any lack of respect at all. Tell me what you feel demonstrates a lack of respect, and I really will look carefully at it to understand how I’m coming accross.