Fallacy of the excluded middle. There are more possibilities than a world of pain, suffering and death, or a “bliss-filled utopia.”
I can conceive of many serious challenges that could give life meaning without the existence of horror, disease, and senseless pain.
Please, don’t do me any more favors.
God’s will might be mysterious. However, if you assert He has a reason you accepted the obligation of explaining that reason.
So God is only benevolent to some people? Tough luck for the rest? Kind of a funny definition of omnibenevolence.
Hey, I didn’t do anything. How can you call punishing me for someone else’s sin “benevolence”?
Come on, Christians, wake up! Even I know Christian theology well enough to make a better case than you’ve been making. Are you as lame at defending your own theology as the Creationists here are at defending their pseudo-science? Does some atheist have to emulate Scylla and make your own damn arguments for you?
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. - Phillip K. Dick
Libertarian said pretty much the same thing, and I asked him basically what I will now ask you: what basis do you have for that statement? Why would making everyone happy make them slaves?
So suffering is a punishment? Is hemophilia a sin?
That doesn’t make any sense
Just because it’s a necessity doesn’t mean it violates free will any less.
You’re implying that everyone in the Old Testament is going to hell.
To prevent this, God would have had to intervene in every situation.
It is commonly accepted among Christians that God intervened after Jesus was crucified.
Then who does control it? On one hand, you say that Nature doesn’t do anything on its own, yet on the other hand you say that God doesn’t cause it to do anything. So who causes it to do what it does?
A car is just like Nature? I don’t think so! A car had many outside forces working on it: the driver, the road, other cars, the fuel, etc., etc. Nature has no outside forces working on it, except (from the Christian point of view) God. So anything in Nature God isn’t controlling, Nature must be controlling itself. And since God supposedly created Nature, that means that everything is either indirectly or directly controlled by God.
CalifBoomer
Perhaps It didn’t create humans with knowledge of Good and Evil, but It did create the serpent, and gave the serpent knowledge of Good and Evil, and It did send the serpent to give humans that knowledge. Sure, God was rather circuitous, but that doesn’t absolve It of responsibility, it just shows It to be devious.
How does someone’s else decision affect whether or not I suffer? It sounds like a depravation of this free will that you hold so dear for me to not even be able to choose whether or not I want to suffer or not.
No, it’s not. Someone asks why there’s evil and suffering in the world, and you say that it’s because some people ate an apple?
Yes, that’s right, it’s the Divine Weasel. “You are totally innocent and free of any knowledge of what is right or wrong. Enjoy the lovely fruits of the garden. Everything here is for you to enjoy. Oh, except one thing which will kill you if you eat it, but since you don’t know right from wrong you’re bound to try it sooner or later. Really, I don’t see how you can avoid it. But, just in case you do know to obey me, let me create a serpent to convince you to try it. Since you don’t know good from evil, you’ll have no objective way of determining whether his advice is better or worse than mine, so I pretty much expect that you are going to eat it and then thou shalt surely die. Have a nice day!”
This thread is about theodicy: the rational reconciliation of God’s omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. In fact, the whole concept of theology is the rational inquiry into the nature of God from the premise that He exists. Such rational inquiry by Christians has more than a millenium of distinguished history behind it.
This board is dedicated to the pursuit of rational inquiry usually through the method of dialectical adversarial debate. Again, this form of inquiry by philosophers has millenia of distinguished history.
Heck, I’m not even insisting on empiricism. I’m willing to accept the premise that God exists.
I don’t know about you, but a God that requires you to get a lobotomy, to abandon rational inquiry altogether, is a pretty lame God. I don’t discount Faith, but no thinking person can stop at faith, stop their mind completly.
For instance, take Lib. As Christian as they come. I don’t often agree with him, but that man’s mind is turned on! If there’s an antonym to “blind faith,” he’s it.
Get with the program. How many times do I have to say “rational inquiry” for some of you to understand what this forum is all about?
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. - Phillip K. Dick
Correct me if you feel that I am wrong but I feel that Libertarian dissected the original question rather well into its essential components. Namely:
Why does God allow His people to suffer?
Why does He allow evil to exist?
Since then new questions related to the first two have cropped up. As I see it the new questions boil down to:
If we assume that God is the creator of existence as we know it all things in this world are a direct or indirect result of his action. If this is so how can God be omnibenevolent/omnipotent/etc. if such things as disease are also products of that creation?
If we assume that God allows tragic things to happen in modern times because he does not wish to impose on our free will why did he intervene during Biblical times?
If we’re assuming God exists and is endowed with certain characteristics allow me to add one which supersedes the others mentioned. Namely that he is perfect. Do perfect beings do things at random? Of course not. Perfection implies, nay demands, that perfect choices are always made. Indeed if we assume that God is omniprescient then he must see all possible choices available in all their clarity and by nature choose the only correct choice. Therefore all of Gods actions MUST be by design. Not just any design. A perfect design.
It is fairly easy to create what appear to be contradictions by assuming omnipotence, omniprescience and omnibenevolence without accepting also the characteristic of perfection. If however, you do accept the perfection of God then in a general sense you could answer questions 3 and 4 with the question: “If, for the purposes of this debate, you accept the assumption that God exists and is perfect how can you argue that any product of his action would be contrary to a perfect design?”. In other words if you declare the constant that God is perfect then you can’t logically argue that his design must not be because of personal perspective regarding current and past events.
Before more specifically addressing questions 3 and 4 let me say that the answers to these are often influenced by religious doctrine. Different religions will posit different reasons based on their specific system of beliefs relative to God. My answers to questions 3 and 4 will probably not be representative of all (or even very many) religious beliefs.
Answer to question 3: I believe that God created the system which we identify as nature (which I will loosely categorize as all things which in some way affect earth, from microorganisms to the effect of gravitation on the earth from other heavenly bodies) and then allows things to occur. God therefore knew about disease and its effects when he “set things in motion” as it were. Why would he allow the development of such a destructive force? I’m sure I can’t definitively answer the question but 2 possible reasons might be:
Life is roughly, a test. If we accept this then it seems reasonable that there would be mechanisms in place which would cause death, thus ending the test (unless anyone thinks that a test which never ends could ever really be a test)
The properties found in nature require a perpetual cycle of destruction and creation. To exclude humans from that process would by necessity cause problems. To illustrate, can anyone think of any physical thing that, if once it was created it was never destroyed in its current incarnation, wouldn’t cause systemic problems of great magnitude?
Answer to question 4: If you believe in God then you must be familiar with the concept of covenants. Covenants are defined at www.dictionary.com as “A binding agreement, a compact”. Religions are fraught with them, the most common being the general “If you are good you will go to heaven when you die”. People in biblical times (and some might argue today as well) enter into covenants where when they do what God commands he is required to hold up his part of the bargain. Every instance of divine intervention that I can remember is a direct expression of the idea of covenants.
Let me address a few more items which were worded as statements rather than questions:
“If God is omnibenevolent, he cannot allow evil to take place. If God is omnipotent, he can stop absolutely anything from taking place.”
Define evil (evil in this context requires a definition since different people have different definitions)
Omnibenevolence does not necessarily mean restricting the actions of all to only good. If we posit that life is a test it’s a pretty meaningless test if we can’t choose evil.
Omnipotence does mean ability to stop anything, it does not necessarily mean it is always the correct choice to do so.
“Fallacy of the excluded middle. There are more possibilities than a world of pain, suffering and death, or a “bliss-filled utopia.””
It certainly is true that there are more possibilities than the extremes. However if I am prevented by divine intervention from making a specific choice do I truly have free will? In other words if God allows me to do anything I want to to another person except hurt them what options do I have left? Very few. Essentially all words coming out of my mouth and all actions must be monitored or I must be isolated from all human contact (this is assuming that hurtful words, body language and actual physical violence among other things all fall under the category of harm).
“Then who does control it? On one hand, you say that Nature doesn’t do anything on its own, yet on the other hand you say that God doesn’t cause it to do anything. So who causes it to do what it does?”
You speak of nature as though it were an entity. Of course it’s not. Nature is a self maintaining system composed of trillions (probably more…) components which interact with each other according to their design and circumstance. It doesn’t require conscious control since it was designed to be self managing.
Grim Beaker
To the world you might be one person but to one person you might be the
world.
We are prevented from making specific choices all the time, through lack of physical capabilities. I cannot destroy everyone in the world. Does this mean I lack full free will? If you accept that we may be restrained by lack of ability to do an evil without affecting our free will, what can justify our ability to, say, abuse children? Why didn’t God give children the ability to have mini-forcefields that pop into place when someone tries to hurt them? Heck, that wouldn’t even prevent someone from being able to freely choose to hurt the child, just prevent them from actually doing it. (I ask this question every time. I haven’t gotten a really good answer yet, IMHO, so I keep asking.)
Greetings,
Ouch, the dominance games here are very sharp and pointy.
A quick point,
One cannot use Christianity to prove Christianity.
I hope I am not the only one who has heard of Kurt Godel.
The Adam and Eve story in the garden isn’t just about them discovering good and evil. It is inventing good and evil. Before this there was no evil. The opposite of good was bad. Since evil exists only within Judeo-Christianity, one cannot prove God exists by proving YHWH is not evil.
However unbelievers can prove Christianity is inconsistant without going beyond Christianity itself. Therefore believers will allways be at a disadvantage.
Of course, they have God on their side.
Just wanted to put in my,
________________________2sense
I think that if there is a God, He is a dual natured one.
That is to say - God is both good and evil. If God created everything, then he created everything, plain and simple.
That includes all the good things that we love and praise and hold as holy, as well as all the we hate and fear and see as evil.
The definition of omnipotent :om·nip·o·tent (m-np-tnt)
adj.
Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful. See Usage Note at infinite.
n.
One having unlimited power or authority: the bureaucratic omnipotents.
Omnipotent. God. Used with the.
So - to answer the OP, if there is no suffering, how would you appreciate any blessings that came your way?
My uncle has a simpler way to state this: If the boat didn’t rock, how would you know if you were still afloat?
So ,it seems that some out there thimk that it’s God’s plan to allow the unfortunate to be unfortunate as it has a purpose, thus children may starve, animals become extinct ,poor people are poor just to teach them(or us maybe) some divine lesson.
The defence in God’s favour is usually
1 It’s our fault
2 It’s God’s unknowable purpose
Using these in combination has allowed the powerful to justify at various times slavery ,war, colonialism, racism ,denial of basic rights even denying the faithful the right to even read the bible itself.
Ah! But ,say the faithful, these are the sins of man not of God,in that case why the hell trust anything that the faithful tell us.
Some of the posters herein my opinioncome perilously close to saying that the suffering of others is part of God’s plan and it is justifiable.
I wonder how many would truly feel the same way if they lived in a land where the suffering could be eased by clean water,where debt repayments take priority over basic health care,where 8 year old children support families by making sportswear for millionaire athletes whilst comfortable first worlders spout a message about a God they have never heard of.
What seemed right centuries ago is often regarded as evil now and there ain’t any guaruntee that our heirs will feel any differant about us.
Oh ,by the way ,I DID smash me thumb with a hammer chiselling out some brickwork about an hour ago ,if I do it again will it be my fault or God telling me to shut up?
My definition of free will seems to be slightly different from your definition of free will. Let me see if I can clarify my definition.
I tentatively define free will as the ability to choose any course of action (or inaction) within your physical limitations.
By this definition I do have the capability of doing violence since it is inherently within my individual physical makeup however I do not inherently have in my physique the ability to destroy everyone in the world. Defined this way I still have free will. I’m assuming that your definition would not state that free will would be the ability to do anything. If that were so then by that definition for free will to exist would essentially require omnipotence for all. Now if you’re wondering why God implemented the physical limitations that he did that would be another question altogether.
Grim Beaker
To the world you might be one person but to one person you might be the
world.
“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ,” she said.“I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.” --Mother Teresa (The quote is legit, AFAIK, although it’s not talked about much in Pro-MT sites.)
That is my question. Since we have some physical limitations to our evil, why not a few more? I fail to see that an inability to abuse children limits my ability to make moral choices any more than an inability to destroy everyone. So why wouldn’t a wholly good God limit our ability to abuse children? We could even want to hurt them, which is a moral choice; we would just be physically restrained from doing so. We obviously don’t need to be able to do every possible evil in order to possess free will.
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically, we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.
I apologize for misunderstanding your question. On to business…
I think it can be argued that wanting to do something and actually doing it are two different things. Is the person who murdered someone committing the same level of sin as someone who thought about it but did not? What I’m trying to say is that, in my opinion, having the ability to formulate an evil desire in your mind does not morally equate to acting upon that desire. If we are restricted to violent thoughts instead of actions as our moral measurement we all end up being measured much more closely relative to each other don’t we? Is that accurate?
Having said that let us use your example of an automatic forcefield which prevents physical violence. I think it is a flawed metaphor but we’ll assume for a moment that it exists. Now lacking the ability to be physically violent sadists have only the option of mental, emotional and verbal abuse. Some might argue that those are more damaging tools in the first place. Does god now forbid communication? Where do you draw the line on to what degree physical limitations impinge on personal choices? You ask why not a few more limitations? I ask where do you draw the line regarding impingement on personal choice? Do we apply complete nonviolence to animals as well? What about plants? Regards.
Grim Beaker
To the world you might be one person but to one person you might be the
world.
I am asking why He drew the line where He did and allows us full rein to abuse children, but not to kill everybody. Doesn’t it make sense to you that a wholly good God would have not allowed us to abuse children? Not only do the children get hurt, but it makes them more likely to abuse others, and it becomes a vicious circle that God could have easily avoided. So can you, as a theist, explain why it’s not OK to allow us to kill everybody but it is OK to allow us to hurt innocent children?
When we make laws, we decide, “this is accpetable, this is not”. So presumably, that’s what God did–he decided it wasn’t acceptable to allow us to kill everybody, or to make other people suffer horribly by just a thought, or to be able to “curse” others and make their lives miserable. Very well. But I have a problem with a wholly Good God plonking “child abuse” firmly in the “acceptable” section. I accept a certain amount of “evil must exist for free will”, so not banning communication, fine; not preventing anyone from ever being hurt, fine; but why not disallow child abuse at least! He’s obviously already decided that some things are too evil for us to be allowed to do.
Um, no. If God is all knowing and all powerful, he ought to be able to create a system in which such things never have to happen. And it needn’t be a miricle or “intervention”, either. He ought to be able to have set up the whole system from the beginning so as that such occasions never arose.
Grimbeaker said:
Two problems with this: One, disease does not equal death. Many diseases are merely crippling, chronic, and painful. Leperosy dosen’t end any test. Secondly, there is no reason why all people who will ever live could not all exisit simutaniously together until the big “game over” sign in the sky appears, at which point everone lines up, single file, for judgement. Or some such system. Cancer is not needed for for God to put a beginning and an end on things.
Grimbeaker agian:
[quote]
he properties found in nature require a perpetual cycle of destruction and creation. To exclude humans from that process would by necessity cause problems. To illustrate, can anyone think of any physical thing that, if once it was created it was never destroyed in its current incarnation, wouldn’t cause systemic problems of great magnitude?
[quote]
It dosen’t matter what we can think of. If God is truly all powerful and all knowing than he can create a world without these problems. The fact that he did not must be regarded as a choice.
I do not think the “God has to let you suffer so that you can have free will” arguement holds any water at all. The argument is usually presented like this:
Bob has free will.
Bob chose to hit me.
God let me hurt so that Bob would have free will.
This only works if we hold God to our logical constraints. If God is truly eternal (all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good) he would be able to create a world with different logic behind it, where the excersise of free will by one person against another did not cause pain to the being who was acted upon. In matters of free will, it is the choice to act, not the act itself, that is sin. I can’t imagine how such a world would be shaped, but I don’t have to–if God is truly all powerful, He can imagine and create such a thing.
The arguement that “we have to have the bad to appriciate the good” also dosn’t stand up. If you are a Christian, this stance means that you believe that Man before the fall was not happy or blessed, when the bible clearly states that He was both. It is pretty standard Christian doctrine that unity with God results in such a total happiness that it need not be tempered with sorrow. It also dosn’t explain how dispropotionate the world is–why do some of us get to lead charmed lives, and other people get hit with tragedy after tragedy after tragedy?
Finally, you can not justify evil (or pain) in nature by saying “God didn’t do that. God just set the system in motion.” Humans can sometimes get away with that, because we are limited and cannot predict the ultimate outcomes of our actions. If God lacks nothing and can do anything, than He is quite capable of setting in motion a system which does not lead to pain and suffering. The fact that he did not means that he chose not to.
In my opinion, the only graceful way out of this for a believer is to say: “God is ineffable, his ways are not mine, and I will accept on blind faith that all is well” That is a perfectly acceptable stance, and if it is some uppity undergraduate giving you the haircut about it, what you do is, you throw the Ontological arguement back at them and let them gnaw on it for a while. That way everyone is frustrated.
“Ah! But ,say the faithful, these are the sins of man not of God,in that case why the hell trust anything that the faithful tell us.”
I hope you are not making the sweeping statement that all people are of the same moral calibre. Assuming that you aren’t making a sweeping statement all people are fallible. The “faithful” as you term it no less so then others. In no way though does the fact that all people make mistakes create the conclusion that all faithful must therefore be lying. To be objective we must discriminate on a case by case basis the truthfulness of things regardless of their source.
“Some of the posters here in my opinion come perilously close to saying that the suffering of others is part of God’s plan and it is justifiable.”
I agree that it’s tragic but why is it perilous? Can people be judged as stingy if they don’t have an opportunity to help those in need? Can they be judged as compassionless about the suffering of others if there is no suffering? I’ll refer to an earlier post of mine when I ask “Where do you draw the line?”. Because I do not live in a mansion am I “suffering”? Being good isn’t just the absence of evil actions/thoughts.
“I wonder how many would truly feel the same way if they lived in a land where the suffering could be eased by clean water,where debt repayments take priority over basic health care,where 8 year old children support families by making sportswear for millionaire athletes whilst comfortable first worlders spout a message about a God they have never heard of.”
I can answer this question and the answer is “not very many”. Have you heard of Maslows hierarchy of needs? Essentially it states that people will be first concerned with physical needs, then with mental/emotional needs. If someone is starving then of course their first concern will be food. I don’t see how this contradicts or supports anything.
“Oh ,by the way ,I DID smash me thumb with a hammer chiselling out some brickwork about an hour ago ,if I do it again will it be my fault or God telling me to shut up?”
Of course not. From my viewpoint God allowed it to happen and will allow it to happen again.
Grim Beaker
To the world you might be one person but to one person you might be the
world.
Short answer: The omnipotent being allows you to choose whether you will suffer in given circumstances or not. That is YOUR omnipotence.
No, I don’t. I don’t choose to suffer, but I suffer anyway.
–As you say it, so is it true. The caveat here is that it works this way too:
“I choose not to suffer, so I will not, until I choose to.”
Don’t believe that I am suggesting you **deny **any aspect of your experience of suffering, rather that you embrace all aspects thereof.
You will find it difficult or impossible to do this if you believe that the universe can be unjust/that things happen in a random order. I can’t imagine the universe to be unjust, or that anything happens by chance, or that anyone dies before they are quite ready to do so.
God cannot intervene, to do so would be to deny that we have free will. It’s not evil, it’s impartial.
Can you explain that?
Gladly. If god were a human figure and looked down from heaven on his cloud and saw your next door neighbor hitting his baby girl with a stick, he could not intervene on the baby’s behalf without removing free will from your neighbor. You neighbor is CHOOSING whether consciously or unconsciously to experience a world in which he beat his daughter with a stick. The act itself is a natural, logical progression that came to be because it was created by every entity that has come into contact with your neighbor since his first earthly experience.
We the people can choose not to create the environment in which beating kids with a stick is the only possible outcome. Thus far, we as a people are not doing that, but only because we would rather act as if we are actually separate entities from the kid beater.
