obviously “good” is the most subjective feeling in the world. it could be anything that triggers the plasure centers of your brain. for some people, it’s autoerotic asphyxiation. for others it’s a poster of a cat with an ironic caption. for a lot of us is watching others feeling BAD. if God wanted to regulate this and bestow “good” upon everyone with his omnipotence, he would be caught in quite the paradoxial predicament.
In fact, i’m not even sure what “evil” is supposed to mean. If God is evil for letting the AIDS baby die, am I evil? Is evil restricted to conscious acts? Can an accidental act be evil? If an evil act has ancillary benefits, does it mitigate, or even offset the evil? What would you expect God to do that would make him not evil?
According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the earth and all living creatures in between. Even according to the less literal denominations such as Catholicism, God created the universe and the earth and through natural processes like evolution, ensured that life was created and shaped to our present state. In either case, God would have had to directly and intentionally create and shape the HIV virus. You (uh, presumably) had nothing to do with a baby dying of AIDS. As long as the baby’s doctor knows too and it isn’t your baby, not doing anything is akin to driving past the scene of an accident in which paramedics are helping the injured.
Someone falling asleep while driving and causing an accident that kills another driver would be described as irresponsible, criminal, and probably even reprehensible, but it would be stretch to call it evil. Reckless indifference to danger might be called evil, but usually evil is all about intentional action. The intention behind it doesn’t have to be evil (since someone committing an act that could be described as evil likely has their own rationalizations or justifications). But your third question once again goes back to one of the key problems - if the death of one baby leads to the parents devoting the rest of their lives to charity, is it worth it? Do the ends justify the means, particularly for the baby?
Since beings are finite, I don’t believe in the possibility of ever-increasing pleasure. Two things. Good sex is good without reference to bad sex. The things that cause our pleasure centers to fire are absolute. Second, even if some evil were necessary, do we need quite as much? Wouldn’t one child drowning in a swimming pool do the job as well as tens of thousands drowning?
True but irrelevant. We’re not saying a totally evil entity is running things either. That things could be worse does not refute the claim that things could be better.
But we’re the ones suffering. You’ll have to do better than just assert that god must make us suffer. If even on baby is killed for no reason, omnibenevolence goes right out the window.
If you were talking to someone who believes the Bible is literally God’s word spoken from heaven on high to our ears, then you’d have really good questions that would require that person to soul search, or just ignore the issues you’ve raised and live in their blissful bubble.
I think the flood story was an account of a large catyclysmic flood (that there is some archeological evidence for…as well as flood stories from many many ancient cultures) that was given meaning by making it a spiritual story - a morality lesson. Looking that the OT from a socio-historic perspective, God’s “chosen people” were likely pagans, worshipping gods of the sky, the trees, the animals, etc. They attributed everything to deity because that was the best explanation they had. So was that really “God” or did it just happen and people built a story around it?
Again, we assume “bad things” are punishment, or that God should save us from everything bad. What do we stand to learn, gain, develop or grow from if everything is happy and “good” all the time? Maybe periodic cleansings are needed to spur evolution? There could be macro-purpose in such events, and people, who are quite self-centered and think on a rather small scale overall, thought it was “all about them” like we usually do and applied a meaning that is flawed and faulty.
Or maybe this God character is just a vindictive bastard.
Lot’s of people are mono-theistic and don’t view God as viciously as the OT portrays him.
Yeah, I’m somewhat skeptical about even the theoretical possibility, but for the sake of argument I was assuming god could do it.
If good sex happens to be the worst part of your day, is it still good?
I’m not necessarily sticking up for omnibenevolence; I’m just saying that “God is Evil” doesn’t hold water if he actually exists. And if he does exist, then apparently we’ve been wrong about misery-prevention being so important to the moral order of the universe.
Suppose god showed up and said the following: “Look, I’m not your fucking nanny. It’s not my job to keep you from being sad. The whole point of your existence is to figure out how to stop killing each other in wars, how to keep your kids from drowning in pools, how to keep people safe from hurricanes, and how to put the bad things that do happen into perspective (you suffer way more than your brain chemistry requires, believe me). Once you’ve figured all that stuff out, the universe will be better off for it, and you’ll be better off. And if you never figure it out, well, it’s still morally better than if I hadn’t taken off the training wheels.”
How would you dispute what he says? Personally I don’t see the inherent value to struggle and difficulty, but if god says I’m wrong then apparently my ethics are confused.
An omnipotent god wouldn’t need any of that. It wouldn’t have to drag us through all the unpleasant intermediate steps, no need for evolution and growth; just poof and he’d have whatever he’s aiming for.
Yes.
That’s only true if you buy the idea that God is automatically right.
I’d say that he designed us and the universe poorly if he had good intentions. I’d say the fact that we mere mortals can improve upon his work demonstrates that we are either more competent or more moral than he is. I’d say that his statement demonstrates that he has the same regard for us as so many lab rats. And I’d say that he’s in no moral position to make claims about what is “morally better” and what isn’t.
I’ve been making that same basic point in “existence of god” threads here for several years now. I’m glad to see that someone else expresses this in a similar manner.
God is whatever you make him/her. Everyone creates their own, individual, personal idea of “God” (of course, some people choose to create no god at all–we call them atheists). This leads me to the best answer and explanation (that I am aware of) to the eternal question: “Does God exist?”
While I am an atheist*, I believe that ultimately (and quite paradoxically) the answer to the question is indeed, “Yes. God exists.” But God exists entirely as a personal concept in each theist’s mind, and is different in every single case. Therefore, this existence is wholly meaningful only to the individual who is positing (and therefore creating) it.
Many theists believe that they are worshiping the same God that others in their religion do yet none of them define God precisely the same way. In fact, they seem never to be able to satisfactorily define it at all. This is as it should be, however, because this creation has no real definition outside of the individual believer herself (or himself).
No one can really completely define God for the same reasons that one can never fully describe one’s dreams. That is–the thoughts, memories, experiences, etc. that make up an individual’s dream or concept of God are far too uniquely personal to describe beyond a elementary outline. This God has no complete meaning or complete reality outside of that individual’s head.
For group discussions of God or Gods it is most useful to think of God as “X” because there is not, and never can be, a constant value for God. The very word (much less the concept) “God” means something different to every single person who has ever lived, or ever will live.
*If I conclude that God exists, how can I consider myself an atheist? Because I have no belief in “God” as it is described by others (i.e. God having any reality outside of an individual’s personal concept). My idea of “God = X” differs so significantly from any concept of God that I have ever encountered that I feel it is most useful to label myself an atheist.
You’re not engaging the notion of “god,” but rather just giving answers that apply to any mortal, finite authority figure you disagree with. You may as well be claiming that if Superman was real, you could beat him up.
I wonder about a God who is called a good father, picks out one group of people excludes the one’s who are also His creation and His children. Helps the one group kill another. This same God was supposed to know that some of His children would be bad but created them anyway. I wonder does this God get His kicks out of seeing some of His non-chosen suffer or even be killed? I do not believe it was God, but the writer of the story and the people who like to believe they were special and used God as an excuse. This same idea seems to be going on today in many places!
The essential difference here is about power though, I have no power to cure AIDS whether I stop to help or not, the God of the Bible could and that is what makes ignoring its suffering evil IMO.
No, it only requires equating “free” with “not predetermined.” If the choice has already been predetermined, as you say it should be, then it is clearly not free.
There’s two ways for this to go: God cares about people, or he doesn’t. If he does care about people, what does that mean? Anything at all? Unless I’m missing something, if god cares about us then things that are bad for us, are bad for him, due to that sympathy/empathy thing. If you love your dog it at least bothers you when it gets slowly lowered into a meat grinder, right?
If god isn’t completely impartial to humans, he either likes seeing us run through the meat grinder, or he doesn’t. I’m just going to take it as axiomatic that a god that revels in our pain is evil, if you don’t mind. I’m aware that the contrary argument can be made (“things are good because they are God’s will”), but I find it to be an uninteresting attempt to define the problem away.
So. God is either good, evil, or completely impartial to human pain. If he’s impartial to humans, a reasonably good case can be made that to us, he’s evil. (You could alternately make the argument that we’re a plague on the universe that should be exterminated as quickly as possible, but I see that as another uninteresting attempt to define the problem away.)
No, by my logic, if there was a (reasonably omnipotent) god, the only way he could not be “evil” was if life for all sentient beings that he cared were at a maximized level of happiness, to the limits of the god’s ability without compromizing the god’s other objectives. In fact, I think that this arguably could be the definition of being good.
It should be noted that I don’t believe that evil is needed to “appreciate” good. Certainly appreciation of good reacts to knowledge and experience, in a variety of non-linear ways, but that doesn’t mean that ongoing blissful ignorance is a worse state than being glad that you aren’t currently immersed in boiling pitch. I’ve never lived in Somolia. Seriously, I don’t think I’m missing out much for the lack of the experience.
BUT - even if we grant that an awareness of the pain you’re missing will heighten your enjoyment of momentary lapses in pain, you’d still have to argue that the world we see is the optimal balance of pain and pleasure to maximize subjective enjoyment. Which would certainly mean that nobody dies immidately after suffering - if you don’t get a chance to experience the rebound after, then the suffering has no benefits. And last I checked, immidiate pre-death suffering occasionally happens…
What we see doesn’t matter - we know logically that our experience must me maximally positive, unless god doesn’t care about us or is forced to make us suffer to meet some higher objective. (And omnipotent gods can’t be forced, by definition.)
The thing about free will, is where does the choice come from? Any knowledge, preferences, or personality you have are predetermining factors, and all these can (and arguably, must) be stripped out the part of the decision-making process that you are claiming grants you freedom. And when you have stripped out all that is predetermined, all that is left is randomity, by definition, since it’s uninfluenced by anything.
But rather than trying to get anybody to agree on an objective definition of “free will”, how about answering this: does God have free will? Becuase if he does, he proves beyond doubt that it’s possible to have free will without ever choosing to do evil. So, since we could have been greated as good with free will, why would god make us otherwise*?
Or, if you prefer the Genesis account, why would he put us in a room with a large red button marked merely “don’t push me”, that would turn us to having the bad kind of free will?
I have a problem or two with this (aside from the whole question of how you define “happiness”):
For one thing, it sounds like you’re equating being less than maximally good with being evil. If I cooked you a delicious dinner, but it wasn’t as delicious as I might possibly have made it, am I evil?
If the world God created and the existence he blessed us with is better than nonexistence, but still has room for improvement, it seems to me to be stretching things a bit to call such a Creator “evil.” (Though I can still see the problems with calling such a God “omnibenevolent” or “supremely good” or some such.)
For another thing, what if some sentient beings are not at a maximized level of happiness due to their own choice? Is a God who gives people the opportunity to choose and/or earn great happiness “evil” in comparison to a God who forces them down the paths that maximize their happiness?
Right now, I have the choice whether or not to post this reply (or even to reword my response in various ways before posting)—or at least, it sure feels like I have that choice. By “free will” or “choice” I mean that whether I do so or not is not completely determined by the previous state of the universe—at this moment it could go either way—but neither is it randomly determined: it’s something I can control. That’s what I mean by free will; and my experience tells me that I have either free will or the illusion of it. And I don’t know how to tell which it is (free will or the illusion) without making question-begging assumptions.
That’s why I like seeking God out on my own without established religion getting in the way of spirituality.
When God hates all the same things and people you do and you are always the special chosen one…you’re probably making god in your image instead of trying to find any truth on the matter.
It comes down to knowledge and capability. And, of course, just how evil you have to be to be “evil”. The latter question is handily avoided in any theological discussion where the god is claimed to be perfectly benevolent, of course. (Which in practical terms is all such discussions.)
For the former question, suppose that you know somebody is out of work and desperate for a job. You know of two job openings, both of which the man is qualified for; one is a hard, stressful, long-houred job that pays a barely-adequate subsitence wage, and the other is a wonderful, high-paying, low-stress, fun job. By any measure your friend would be better off in the second job; if you tell your friend about the first job and keep the second job a secret, are you evil?
By POE definitions, yeah, you are, because you’re certainly not perfectly benevolent. By any measure, you’re kind of a jerk. If you have the knowledge and capability to give somebody an optimal result, deliberately withholding the optimal result for no external reason (and omnipotent gods can’t have external reasons) is malicious, pretty much by definition.
There’s two ways to argue this. I’m going to argue the latter.
The first argument is that when god creates a people with a predisposition to get themselves into trouble, then the act of creating these people is an act of evil.
The second argument is that I can concede that until I finish convincing you that there’s no such thing as meaningful free will, that I cannot ‘win’ this point. However, as long as there are still earthquakes that take out Haiti, I don’t have to.
The thing is, your physical state is part of the previous state of the universe - including your mental state*. And at any point in your internal decision-making process, it is strongly-if-not-entirely determined by the state of your mind a pico-instant prior.
You do have the illusion of control, and in a way you have control - if by ‘you’ you are speaking of the part of the universe inside your mind as opposed to the rest of it that’s on the outside. There are mechanisms inside your head that operate largely unaffected by events outside (well, give or take a swing of a lead pipe), and this independence of thought from the external world gives you a justified reason to think of yourself as ‘free of will’. But the fact remains that despite your freedom from outside influences, you are decidedly not uninfluenced by your own thoughts and prior thoughts. And within the realm of your own head, your decisions are either determined by your own preferences and thoughts and knowledge and the deterministic decision-making processes that use these things - or there may be some random elements that feed (slightly) into the result, giving you a (small) amount of nondeterminism.
So yeah. You have control over your decisions - but you don’t have control over the processes in your own head that actually make the decisions you make. Inside there, there is just determinism and randomity**.
This argument assumes either a materialist universe or one where the ‘supernatural’ is on a timeline running in the same direction as ours - because if not a lot of things break down, including our own sense of identity in our timeline. If your thoughts aren’t being created in the order we experience them but instead are edited in random order by an external author, then we aren’t real at all and free will certainly doesn’t exist.
** Or there’s some other person mind controlling you, who isn’t you (since your experience doesn’t include theirs). Don’t laugh - I write fiction, and this happens to the characters in it all the time. Of course, people this is happening to obviously don’t have free will.
I think the whole whiny,* “God’s a big meanie cause he smites us with famine, pestilence, war, death and whatnot”* is just a red herring. You know how it sometimes feels good when your tooth aches a little and you wiggle it with your tongue to get that ol’ pleasurable-pain thing going? Well God’s like your tongue, only acting on a much grander scale.
