Without omnipotence, you are right. A person alone might trip and break a leg and suffer great pain, but there is no evil involved because no one could have prevented it. An omnipotent God could have prevented it, subtly (having him fall on his ass, not on his arm.) That’s not quite the PoE since it is not human caused evil, but I think it is similar.
Omnipotence and omniscience are logically contradictory - but that is yet another thread. That problem has nothing to do with the world as we see it assuming non-benevolence.
Voyager, what you are saying all makes sense if you believe in there being a “soul” that somehow trascends natural reality. That is, a player playing the game. If you are PacMan, that ghost kills you dead. There might be other PacMans for the player to play, but you are dead. If you are the player, then yeah, you can afford to lose some PacMen to learning.
Same playing Monopoly with the kids. Losing still sucks at the level of the game. It rocks because you are not only playing Monopoly, but you are also playing “Dad” and your kid beating you is a major win in the game of “Dad” which matters a whole lot more than Monopoly.
So yeah, losses can always be written off as long as there is a level above the game where you can take it all in in perspective. If you are the play piece, not so much.
Well, if there is no objection to suffering under a non-benevolent god, then the biggest remaining topic (besides several good ones that deserve their own thread) is: Could an omnipotent god prevent suffering?
We have been going on circles on this point because we cannot agree on the meanings of “omnipotent” and “suffering”. For the purposes of this discussion, benevolence is then irrelevant.
So, what is omnipotence and what is suffering?
Experience is subjective. Think the Matrix. You could have your own Matrix world where it rained however you like. Or, you could be partially integrated into an objective reality (one shared with others), but still have the subjective experience of being rained on however you like. If you reacted to your ‘personal rain’ others might perceive your behavior as odd, to the degree your behavior effected objective reality…but there’s nothing contradictory with things being a little odd.
The same way God does. Being omniscient, he knows all of that, regardless of whether he has experienced it (which he might find difficult to have done, given he’s omnipotent and thus not subject to hardship or want). Thus, by his own existence he demonstrates that it’s possible to have knowledge without experience, and by his omnipotence, he certainly has the power to grant/copy some or all of that knowledge to others.
Knowledge is just data, really. Memories? Just data. As a practical matter the only reason we humans bother to learn anything the hard way is because we are unable to implant knowledge directly into brains - you know, like they did in the Matrix movie. (“I know Kung Fu!”)
Can you remember your accident? Sure. Your memory is just data. Copy that directly over. Then it would be exactly the same for them as for you.
Omnipotence is either 1) the power to do anything, 2) the power to do anything that is not logically impossible.
Suffering can be loosely defined as an unpleasant experience. (How unpleasant it must be to qualify may be subject to debate; it can arguably be extended to “anything non-optimal”)
Objectively speaking, there’s nothing logically impossible about the prevention of unpleasant experiences, at least nothing that I have ever heard of. Any scenario that proposes to make suffering necessary typically involved imposing additional restrictions on the nominally omnipotent god, such as a requirement to teach via the gauntlet of experience or the need to allow people the ability to do real harm to others.
In our universe, losing at something might lead to physical, as opposed to psychological suffering. If you lose out in an interview, you might be unemployed and go hungry. A world without suffering would have to prevent this also. But we are designed to suffer for all sorts of stupid reasons also.
Sure he could. But the world that results might not be very good. An omnipotent god could make someone burning up in a fire feel no pain. He could make someone who is shot feel as little as your standard action hero. That’s for no suffering. Minimal suffering is also possible, and might lead to a better result. So when you eliminate benevolence, suffering is unimportant to the discussion.
Because it’s simple to stop suffering if you’re an omnimax god. Remember that it’s not simply a matter of such a god only being able to start the ball rolling, and then having to leave well alone; he doesn’t have to create the universe a certain way and then wait for everything to go to plan. It can intervene. If he creates a universe where evolution doesn’t happen, then he can directly mutate beings, in a form of intelligent design. He could impute motivation to tree-dwelling beings.
It seems to me that post #1 is almost entirely about suffering, despite the title. Perhaps you meant to write something different?
It wouldn’t have been the first time if I had. I think just took the easy way with the title since the POE is a well known label.
I disagree. I don’t see an omnimax god needing to change things to fix shortcoming of his creation.
I’m not talking about shortcomings in the creation itself, but those created due to free will.
Oh, ok. That opens the whole other mess about free will vs omniscience and an unchanging god. But I can see a god needing to react to unforeseeable (I miss my spell checker) actions from free willed creatures.
ETA: Although I still don’t see an omnimax god breaking natural laws to act and respond.
I think it would have to, whether overtly or covertly.
Why would he not just have created other laws that led to where he didn’t need to cheat them? What could possibly surprise him into needing to change and adjust? Having to cheat can only come as a failure of omniscience.
Well, people having free will enough for God to have to react at all (rather than just acting initially so things turned out spiffy in the first place) is also a failure of omniscience… but that’s another debate. For this one I think it’s sufficient that if something does come up, God can correct it instantly and without cost or effort.
This is a good point too, and one I was getting at earlier with my talk of natural disasters. I got the idea from your posts that you didn’t think a universe where there were such situation-specific results was an acceptable answer. Hence why I went on to have a go at pointing out flaws with even general law-based universes.
Agreed to borh. I don’t think an omnigod would have to react at all, and if it had, I don’t think every possible universe is determinable by a set of universal variables that lead to it (that is that you cannot tweal creation so that one way it leads to you wearing a red shirt today and with other variables it leads to an identical universer where you are wearing a white shirt)