No. Really, it isn’t. Not in the slightest. It needs only be possible for the car to be white – for there to be an optimal universe in which evil exists – to rebut the (logical) POE. I’m really not sure what the problem is. Perhaps just try to tell me where this paraphrase of the argument:
goes wrong. (By the way, Leibniz implicitly asserts the same logical impossibility, when he argues that the absence of evil and free will/variety/whatever are inconsistent; I merely take this back one step.)
That’s also pretty much the distinction between the logical and evidential POEs: the logical one asserts that it’s flat inconsistent for a being possessing omnimaxness to exist when there exists evil, since said being, owing to its omnimaxness, is both capable and willing to eradicate all evil (this capacity, obviously, being what Leibniz’ argument casts doubts upon). The evidential POE on the other hand merely argues that based on the amount and severity of evil, the existence of an omnimax god seems unlikely – it just begs belief that such a being could not have done at least something to make things a little less sucky.
On the contrary, if an optimal world that includes evil is possible, then the logical POE is disproven (as, obviously, it is then not impossible for god to exist if the world includes evil).
That isn’t a lemma, it’s the claim of the POE.
The impossibility in the paragraph you quoted referred to the impossibility claim made by the POE – that omni-god and evil are impossible to coexist.
That thing doesn’t even allow god to walk all the seven bridges in Königsberg without crossing one twice, and I’m supposed to believe it allows him to do all the stuff you claim based on merely your say-so?
Only if it’s logically possible for the entity to do so. And yeah, you’re gonna say it’s obvious, or perhaps obvious or even obvious that this is the case, but really – that don’t make it so.
Just pretend we’re in Königsberg pre-Euler. Somebody might argue: “God is omniscient, so he knows the way to walk the bridges without crossing one twice; god is omnipotent, so he can walk that path. Hence, god can walk across all seven bridges without crossing one twice. Conversely, if he can’t, he’s either not omniscient or not omnipotent.” I might answer, much as I do now: “Well, there’s obviously some things god can’t do, like creating square circles, even though he’s omnipotent. So he might not be able to walk across the bridges without crossing one twice, and still be omniscient and omnipotent.”
That’s pretty much the POE – asserting the impossibility of god being both omniscient and omnipotent and yet unable to walk each bridge only once vs. asserting the impossibility of god being both omnipotent and omnibenevolent and yet unable to create an evil-free world – and Leibniz’ answer – pointing out that even given omnipotence, there are things that god can’t do. The argument is unsound when applied to the Königsberg problem, and it is unsound now; the premise, that an omnipotent being can do all it wants to do, just isn’t true.
Only if it is able to.
Regardless everything else, this isn’t right: if a mother inoculates her child against some sickness, she doesn’t want (or like) that it has to suffer being stung by a needle; she wants it to be resistant to some disease. You can’t judge intent without knowing the ends.
Since he can do everything he wants…?
He just as much asserts a logical impossibility: that it is impossible to achieve whatever higher purpose without evil happening.
This is badly jumbled up. The logical POE asserts that the only world compatible with the existence of an omnimax god is one in which no evil at all exists – which, again, is shown false if there is no such world, i.e. if the optimal world includes some minimum amount of necessary evil. The evidential POE then attempts to argue that we’re not at a minimum amount, by noting that there’s a shitload of it around. Proponents of the evidential POE generally admit that it’s not a rigorous proof, just that the observed amount of evil has severely adverse effects on the likelihood of an omnimax god.
That’s just where you get mixed up; it’s merely intended to counter the argument “it’s logically impossible that my car could be white”.
Well, that’s a bit of a reading list; however, your first post, I think I replied to, and as for the rest, you seem to regard the logical POE – what I mostly discussed in this thread – as unimportant, and wrt the evidential POE, I’m not sure we’re that far from each other in views; basically, mine is that to the undecided, the evidential POE provides grounds to reject the existence of god at least on a likelihood basis, yet the believer may act entirely rationally in continuing to believe despite evidence, as from his point of view, this evidence is exactly what he should expect given that there exists an omnimax god.
I’m not sure where you make the difference between creation and intervention – I don’t think that one should assume different rules to apply to both, so that in both cases, god is similarly constrained, and may not be able to better the world despite his omnipotence.
No real religion believes the argument presented in the OP of this thread either, though: if the argument in the OP is correct, then there is no such place as heaven. It’s one of those “bait and switch” arguments, like the ‘first causes’ argument, where some G “God” is argued for that has no resemblence to the existing canon, which is then removed and replaced with the entirely of Christian belief once one has stumbled their way through their proof of ‘G’.
Besides which, Last Thursdayism relates rather directly to the current argument through the discussion of what it means to be omnipotent. I maintain that any god worthy of the title “omnipotent” could have popped the universe into the state it was last Thursday, which raises the question, what did he put us through last Wednesday for? (And 9-11, and Katrina, and the Black Death, and Krakatoa…)
The argument in the OP doesn’t show that there can be an optimal universe in which evil exists - it asserts that, in proposition 8. There is no argumentive support for the statement whatsoever, anywhere at all in the argument; it’s merely a late-game-intriduced premise. Surely you can see this?
So if that’s the conclusion of your argument (and honestly, it’s hard to tell due to the extraordinarily informal presentation of it), then the argument is rhetorically fallacious in that it assumes its conclusion.
If that isn’t the conclusion of your argument, (and as noted it’s hard for me to tell), then the argument isn’t rhetorically fallacious; it’s merely unsound. But that’s no better from the standpoint of disproving the (logical) POE.
Tries to cast doubt on, anyway.
Doesn’t that kind of depend on which POE you’re talking about? Like, which one do you suppose I’ve been talking about? Let’s check the evidence:
I’ve explicitly framed the POE as discussion the intersection or lack thereof of “optimal” possible worlds and ones which resemble ours, where “optimal” explicitly did not necessarily mean “having zero evil”. I seem to recall you commenting positively on that formulation of the POE.
I’ve presented examples of logically possible worlds that are not devoid of evil, but still have demonstrably less evil than ours.
What POE does that look like? Admittedly, I have not been going all wishy-washy about how this changes probabilities - my argument definitively proves that we are not and logically cannot be in a possible world that has an omnimax god. However I do this without relying on the fact that the POE usually points out that evil is (indeed) completely impossible. Which I guess means that I am arguing the “evidential” POE, by whatever pointless and arbitrary distinction there is between the two.
So to review:
You) You present a fallacious/unsound argument for the necessity of evil
Me ) I point out that the argument is fallacious/unsound.
You) Your argument would prove that there is necessary evil, were it sound.
Me) My formulation of the POE is unfazed by the introduction of necessary evil, despite being logically rigorous and providing absolute disproof if the premises are accepted.
I believe that’s where we stand.
This is probably the crux of your argument: something that attempts to give proposition 8 the backing it needs to be something other than a baseless claim.
The thing is, this carries no argumentive weight, because the notion that logical impossiblities are omnipresent and all-pervading is, frankly, stupid - and regarding evil, immediately disprovable. There are myriad examples of people without cancer, which proves that not-having-cancer is logically possible. Same for virtually any problem you can name; the exceptions are very, very rare. Improvements for problems are certainly physically possible in most cases, which proves that they are logically possible as well.
Of course, there could be *non-*physical ways that these effect other things; for an obvious example, a lack of horrific death to watch may cause god to get bored, and thus unhappy, resulting in an indirect drop in his happiness when other people’s happiness increases. But I will address this anon.
BZZT! Review the definition of omnipotence I presented. God can get the universe into any logically possible state instantly. This means that he can get the child into the innoculated state without passing through the “stung by needle” state and collecting 200 evil points. Which is to say that for an omnipotent entity, the ends cannot ever justify the means; it’s logically impossible, because the omnipotent entity can by definition achieve his ends with no intermediate steps and no cost, aside from those logically* necessated by the specific state he entered - as in, he can’t have the universe be in the “the child is innoculated” and “the child is not innoculated” states simultaneously.
So what does this mean? It means that every action that occurs and every situation that comes to pass not only serves one of god’s ends, it is one of god’s ends. Directly. Provably. If pain happens, it’s because god prefers the universe to be in a state where people are feeling the pain, above all other possible world-states.
So yeah, god’s intent can be known trivially, because everything we see is quite literally and provably the physical manefestation of his intent. Now, his motivations might be a hair more obscure; he could be causing the pain because he is bloodthirsty, or bored, or because he’s capricious, or malicious, or insane; there’s no way to be sure quite which specific motivation is driving his choice to allow the universe to be in a state where pain is occuring. But we can be certain that that world-state itself is most pleasing to him for one reason or another, above all possible others.
I’m well aware that you’re probably going to be tempted to grab the “logically possible states only” thing above and run it infor a touchdown, but it’s simply not going to work, as the notion that there are so many contradictions lurking everywhere that there are only one or two logically possible states is provably false.
Damn near. And you don’t get to just assume that you’ve proven that curing one single child of cancer would cause the world to disappear in a puff of logical contradiction anyway.
Ah! Yes! THIS is interesting!
Why? Because when one starts talking about higher purposes, you almost instantly prove that God is not omnibenevolent.
Let’s review what we know about omnipotence. God can attain any possible world-state instantly. Thus, if his end is achievable, he can achieve it instantly. It’s not about working towards a goal; god doesn’t do that. It’s about selecting a world-state or a collection of legal world-states that optimally satisfies his desires, whatever those desires may be. A situation which can be without loss of generalization be described as the act of selecting a single possible world-state that maximizes his desires.
Remember - single state; no condition in any state can be necessary to achieving any other world-state, becuase that would violate omnipotence. Which means that for there to be a “higher purpose” that necessitates evil in the single world-state, then it has to directly contradict the absence of evil in the single world-state.
Which means that if God were to, say, select the world-state where a hurricane smacks into New Orleans with the result of causing massive amounts of death and suffering, then his mysterous purpose must be directly served by that evil, in the sense that it would be logically impossible for that purpose to be served if the event didn’t occur.
When you have a god that is so completely discarding benevolence in pursuit of his ‘higher goals’ (watching the pretty weather patterns swirl), then he provably doesn’t consider benevolence to be all that important. And thus, he is not omnibenevolent.
Put another way, as mentioned earlier an omnibenevolent god can be defined as one that only selects/allows possible world-states where evil is minimized. If a god ranges outside that set of possible worlds for any reason, then he does not qualify for the title. He might qualify for some other label (‘omniweatherlover’? ‘omninoninterventionalist’?), but not ‘omnibenevolent’.
No jumble at all - I am just not walking the general path. There is a rigorous formulation of the “evidential” POE, and that’s the one I’ve been debating. Not that you’ve disproven the traditional “logical” formulation of it either - you assert that there are no possible worlds with zero evil, but the arguments presented largely ignore the implications of omnipotence and criminally overstate the probability that any speculated circumstance would be logically impossible.
Then the argument in the OP assumes its conclusion, and even when you do get around to (rhetorically) arguing for the notion that virtually anything imaginable is logically impossible, that argument is still extremely uncompelling.
I really would’ve preferred, instead of typing up another monster, you had replied to this part of the previous post:
Do you agree with this? Disagree? If so, why?
Why would you say that? It’s perfectly possible for heaven to be a part of this world, even if it could not exist on its own.
Well, that’s an assertion. You could’ve equally maintained that an omnipotent god could have walked every bridge in Königsberg exactly once; doesn’t mean he can.
8 merely follows from the fact that, if all simulations have played out, it is not an a priori given that necessarily one of them contained no evil.
I was kinda hoping you’d been talking about the one presented in the OP…
And if you’ve been talking about the evidential one, do you then concede that the best of all possible worlds argument goes through for the logical one?
I haven’t; I’ve presented an argument that comes to the conclusion that there exists a set of circumstances such that it is possible for evil to be necessary.
So, your problem of evil doesn’t have any problem with evil, as such. There’s just too much of it, and you can tell because.
Actually, almost everything is logically impossible – in the sense that the sentences of any language that can’t be derived from some axiom system greatly outnumber those that can.
But it does not prove – and in fact, has no bearing on the question at all – that little Timmy not having cancer is logically possible. See, there are numerous configurations of seven bridges such that you can traverse each exactly once; that doesn’t mean that it’s possible for Königsberg’s bridges to be thus traversable.
Only, of course, if it’s logically possible for him to do so.
No. If he is constrained by logic at all, he is logically constrained in the ways he achieves his ends. For instance, if he wanted Königsberg to be created the way it was because he liked the geometry, the fact that you can’t traverse each of its bridges only once was completely incidental to his intent.
Actually, it’s trivially true: for some given axiom system, there is only one set of theorems you can prove from it. Every other set of theorems is logically impossible to derive.
If I don’t get to assume that (which I’m perfectly fine with), you don’t get to assume that whatever’s convenient to you is logically possible, either.
I’ve stated that the probability may well be infinitesimal; that doesn’t actually change anything.
This is logically invalid, given that its conclusion doesn’t follow from its premises. There’s nothing about square circles being logically impossible that makes a world without evil logically impossible, any more than square circles being logically impossible makes circular circles logically impossible.
The fact that god can’t do the logically impossible is not a “gotcha” - it’s been built into the notion of omnipotence from the beginning of the discussion. (It had to be, or Voyager backstabs God and it’s all over.) If you think that you can whip out square circles and surprise anyone or trip anyone up, then you obviously are a few pages behind in the debate.
I happen to be aware of what “possible world” means. Under the actual definition, different time-slices are indeed different possible worlds (or ‘world-states’, as I have been calling it to try and remove some of the obfuscation from the argument). Which means that if at some point in the future it’s possible for people to be in heaven, then it’s possible now, and only not happening because god is not interested in people being in heaven.
Of course, you could argue that at that point in the future heaven will be accompanied by a hell, and that heaven is only logically possible because there’s a hell. Of course, for that to make a lick of sense, that would mean that heaven is connected to and reliant upon hell, in an extremely direct manner, since logical possibility is not interested in ephemeral connections. Which would mean that god is fueling his and his followers happiness with the (inarguably) unjustly disproportionate suffering of hell’s victims. Whoops: that’s not omnibenevolet; that’s predatory. Poof goes the argument.
Which means that if the situation in general is better most or all of us are in heaven, then it’s a better world-state than the current one. Poof goes your argument.
That’s how heaven relates to this discussion. Of course the current world-state isn’t optimal in the eyes of Christianity; don’t you remember original sin and all that? Fallen world? Remember that?
Page me when you understand the definition of “omnipotent”, because you are explicitly wrong.
No, it’s not an a-priori given: it’s an explicitly proven point in the ‘logical’ variant of the POE. Which your argument certainly doesn’t disprove, as you’d realize if you actually tried to write your argument formally.
The argument present in the OP is shit. It doesn’t have a clearly stated premise or concusion. Based on what you (sometimes) say its conclusion is, it assumes its conclusion in proposition 8. To the degree that it says anything at all it does so by doing overtly fallacious trickery with the meaning of “possibly”. If it does not do that then it begins and ends on a “maybe” that has no logical meaning whatsoever.
I’ve talked plenty about the argument in the OP. You don’t seem to like what I say.
If by “the best of all possible worlds argument” you mean the one in the OP, it’s fallacious horseshit, and certainly disproves nothing.
For an unsound and/or fallacious meaning of “possibly”. Sorry, I know how modal logic works. “Fallacious/unsound argument” is an accurate and possibly charitable way to describe the argument in the OP.
Because of the several arguments and proofs I’ve provided to that effect, yes.
Though I will note, you have also failed to give me any reason to think that there is any necessary evil at all. You have not presented any refutation at all to the logical POE, besides baseless and unsupported assertions that no, really, curing one child’s cancer is logically impossible, due to the mysterious ways you imagine that logic works. So all forms of the POE stand unassailed by the arguments you have presented so far, not just my preferred one.
Perhaps this is your problem - this is a critical failure to understand how basic logic works.
In actual logic, the only way something is logically impossible is if its negation can be derived from the axiom system under discussion. Consider the following axiom system:
A1: Socrates is a man
A2: All men are sexist
Now, with these axioms in play, is the statement “Lucy Liu is a woman” logically impossible? The answer is of course no: one could add it to the list of axioms without causing a contradiction to be derivable, which is what being “logically impossible” or “logically disproven” means. (The terms are equivalent in meaning.)
This being the case, as you say, the sentences of any language that can’t be derived from some axiom system greatly outnumber those that can. So the vast majority of things are in fact logically possible.
Does that help you see the problem with your position?
There is a REASON why the configuration of bridges matters, though. By what Mysterious Ways are you proposing that curing cancer will cause evil to necessarily occur elsewhere, in defiance of God’s will? Keep in mind that causality is completely trumped by God’s power.
Which it is by definition. The definition of omnipotence, specificially - if the starting state is logically possible, and the ending state is logically possible, then any omnipotent entity worth the name can miraculously change things directly from one state to the other.
Congratulaions on completely misunderstanding my point, but regardless - you have hit the nail on the head. For god to be unable to cure little Timmy’s cancer, there must be something about the configuration of the universe itself that prevents this from happening without evil being instantly caused elsewhere. Instantly, because a change in time is a change in world-state that God can interfere with to miraculously break causality.
It can be shown that in the single world-state of any given bridge configuration, the configuration of the world-state implies certain things, such as about the crossability of the bridge. Similarly, there are logically inevitable outcomes to curing Timmy of cancer: all other thing remaining the same, the number of people infected with cancer will drop. This is inevitable, unless something else changes; like if for some reason it was logically necessary that there always be N people with cancer, then curing Timmy actually would create a ‘bubble under the wallpaper’ effect and cause cancer elsewhere, negating the effect of curing Timmy. (Er, unless God moved the cancer to Hitler or something.)
The thing about all this, though, is that to make all the current problems of the world necessary, you have to assume a bunch of stuff like that: rules about amount of cancer and numbers of deaths and the like that are intrinsic to the world-state, and beyond God’s ability to effect. Which seriously doesn’t make any sense, since there is no imaginable place for these rules to come from, aside from the arbitrary declarations of a higher power (which contradicts omnipotence pretty badly).
Or to put it succinctly, the logical understructure of the universe doesn’t have Mysterious Ways. It just doesn’t - logical propositions have to come from somewhere, and somewhere that makes logical sense.
As noted, “impossible to derive” is not the same as “logically impossible”. In fact Godel proved that that in any sufficiently complex system there are some statements that are true that are impossible to derive!
So yeah, not trivially true; obviously false.
I don’t have to assume anything; aside from all the other situations that are obviously logically possible I also have all of history to sample indisputably possible world-states from. Unless you wish to claim that the level of good, or evil, or whichever in the world has always been constant, then we’re pretty much finished.
You’ve been awfully confident about declaring given possible worlds impossible if you think it’s nigh-certain you’re wrong.
As noted, this formulation technically doesn’t assume its conclusion - it is logically invalid instead. The difference between assuming your conclusion and the logical invalidity here is whether you bother to state your conclusion as a premise or not before baselessly declaring that you’ve proven it to be true.
Although, on consideration, I suppose the argument in the OP could also be considered to be logically invalid instead of assuming its conclusion, if proposition 8 is considered to have been supposed to be an inference rather than a poorly placed premise. Either way it’s blatantly unsound argument, of course, but it does make it unclear which particular slew of errors the argument in the OP is guilty of. Similar ambiguity is present depending on which meaning of “possible” “possible” has in your argument at any given line. As written it pretty explicitly appears to be a deliberately fallacious bait-and-switch, but one could argue that it’s just a very, very poorly written false premise that assumes the conclusion, which is the assumption I’ve been charitably making. There really are a lot of combinations of errors possible here.
If you wanted to avoid all this, you could of course attempt to write your argument formally, if not symbolically then at least with a clear premise and conclusion and using unchanging and pre-defined word-phrases placed in formal logic forms. That would allow us to clearly follow the argument, and clearly establish which specific errors and/or assumptions are being made.
Amusingly, this had turned into a debate among atheists over which is the best ground for disbelieving in our imaginary friend. On the one hand, I agree with HMHW that the logical POE doesn’t disprove omnimax. On the other hand, I agree with begbert2 that the OP doesn’t establish this. On the third hand (heh), begbert2 seems to believe the OP is arguing evil is necessary, where it’s pretty obvious to me what HMHW is asserting is that it’s possible evil is necessary. Or, as I stated earlier, it’s essentially an epistemological assertion that we can’t know to the contrary.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to redirect the discussion to the evidential problem of intervention, but no one seems to be interested in going there. No problem. It’s HMHW’s thread and, as far as I’m concerned, he gets to control the topic. But, this does mean I don’t have anything more to add. Carry on.
Err, huh? The conclusion is that the original argument’s conclusion doesn’t follow; this is established by a mere observation. The argument that’s being made is of the form of a modus ponens: if P, then Q; P; therefore, Q. P here being ‘god is omnipotent and thus, can do all that he wants to’, and Q ‘he can make a world without evil’. We then note that P isn’t true, since there are things god may want, but can’t do. So, Q doesn’t follow (Q or ~Q does). In what way does this not follow?
Let’s try to clear this up before we get sidetracked along even more blind alleys.
Exactly that, thank you.
Well, I’ve stated where I stand on that issue, so if you want to discuss that, I’m open.
As I said right there in the post you were quoting, right there after the bit you snipped out:
This little argument of yours under discussion starts with the sentence, “Somebody says, an omnipotent god can do everything he wants, so he can make a world without evil.” Now, this statement is a statement of what the atheists’ arguments are. That being the case, I assumed that you intended to actually represent those arguments - in which case “an omnipotent god can do everything he wants” clearly actually means “an omnipotent god can do everything he wants that’s logically possible”. Because, as I pointed out in my reply right there, that’s the way the argument actually goes, and pretty much how it has to go.
If you persist in pretending that the atheists are claiming that God can do the logically impossible, I will be forced to accept that you are explicitly and intentionally misrepresenting us. In which case, this is pretty much a textbook example of a strawman. Strawmen are so easy to knock down, aren’t they?
Does it seem like I’m flip-flopping around here with regard to what your specific errors are? The thing about this situation is, like with the argument in the OP, there are several different ways to define the actual errors in question. The fact that there are errors is not seriously disputable; the question is how one wishes to classify them. Of course I suppose this enables one to play goalpost-move with which specific error it is, in an attempt to claim that any particular accusation isn’t correct, but honestly I don’t see the benefit to this. If one is interested in honest argument 'tis better to actually correct the errors (cleaning up and formalizing the arguments as necessary to isolate and extract them) than to try and dodge a train by hopping back and forth between one rail and the other.
Ball’s in your court.
He better hope that’s not what he’s arguing, because in order to disprove the problem of evil he needs to show that E is true, and as best I know if all he shows is <>E, then he can’t get to where he needs to be. (Not that his argument proves <>E as such, but even so.)
Of course, if alternatively he’s using “possible” in its english “X or not X” sense, that is, “it may or may not be true that evil is necessary”, then his conclusion 1) is axiomatically true even without an argument behind it, and 2) it proves/disproves nothing at all, the problem of evil or anything else. So he’d better hope that’s not what he’s trying to say either.
Oh dear.
I think I’ve stated my position on this too: omnibenevolence necessitates intervention if it is logically possible for the world to be improved by the intervention. Or put another way, if god sees a fly land on his painting, and he doesn’t like flies on his painting, then he is going to shoo it away.
The counter to this, though, is the absurd claim that even with intervention the world could not be improved. This seems to be the exact claim that HMHW and Leibniz are making, though, so I don’t see how focusing on intervention strengthens the POE in any particular way. If the current evil-laden universe really were optimal, then it would be optimal whether or not it got this way through constant intervention or due to a hands-off approach since the ball was set rolling at creation.
Terms:
X - ‘it is necessary that X’ - X is true in all possible worlds
<>X - ‘it is possible that X’ - X is true in one or more possible worlds
E - there is nonzero evil (in the particular possible world under discussion)
begbert2, if I’m reading the IEP article on the logical POE correctly, “it may or may not be true that evil is necessary” is a valid defense. Have you read the article? That said, I agree HMHW merely assumes this and doesn’t prove it. And that, on it’s face, it’s not a particularly plausible assumption. Whereas Plantinga’s defense is generally considered successful.
As for creation vs. intervention, as I said, I prefer to look at the latter because most thinking Christians accept the Big Bang model. Both of you have noted, as did I in Post #235, that the same issues arise from a logical point of view. If we take an evidential point of view, however, and add in that the NT says God answers prayers, the POE becomes pretty hard to overcome. See, e.g., Voltaire’s Candide. It’s just not a rigorous logical proof. HMHW says he thinks this makes it weak as an inducement for the devout to abandon faith. Actually, in my observation, it has created far more skeptics than any line of logical argument. Those seem to appeal mainly to those who already don’t believe.
BTW, begbert2, rereading the last few posts, I notice you seem to think HMHW believes atheists claim God can do the logically impossible. You’re misremembering. The argument is pretty much exactly the opposite. Indeed, that was the point to which you were originally responding. HMHW (also an atheist) takes as given that everyone agrees God can’t do the logically impossible and asserts/assumes creating a world without evil may be one of those things. Whether this assertion/assumption is proven/plausible is the point under discussion from a logical point of view.
Well, in that case, you’d have to show that god’s omnipotence necessarily implies his ability to create a world better than ours – which you can’t, since the only way to do so is via induction, the problems with which Hume noted quite insightfully. All you keep doing is asserting the logical possibility of such a world, which of course is without impact on the argument.
No, I don’t. As I already pointed out, the POE poses ~E, the negation of which is ~~E, which is equivalent to <>E, which is of course implied by <>E. So since <>E implies the negation of the POE, showing it amounts to showing the POE false.
One way of showing this would be, using the ‘white car’ analogy in parallel:
There is something that is an x and that is P (there is something that is a thing that can have colour and that is white; there is something that is a world and that god can’t create) – this is born out by example, my white walls, or logically impossible worlds.
Hence, it is possible for something to be an x and to be P (it is possible for something to be a thing that can have colour; it is possible for something to be a world that god can’t create) – this is an immediate consequence from the preceding.
y is an x (my car is a thing that can have colour; a world containing no evil/less evil than ours is a world) – this is born out by experience/definition.
Hence, it is possible for y to be P (it is possible for my car to be white; it is possible for a world that contains no evil/that contains less evil than ours to be a world god can’t create) – again, an immediate consequence, from 3 and 2.
That y is possible to be P is equivalent to what was to be proven – that it is not impossible for y to be P (that my car is not impossible to be white, and hence, possibly white; that a world without evil/with less evil than ours is possibly one god can’t create, and hence, there possibly exists evil/at least as much evil as in ours in every world god can create).
Well, the proof is simply in noting that god can’t do everything he wants – that’s the same with Plantinga’s argument: god can’t both create a universe in which there is morally significant free will and no evil. I’m using essentially the same reasoning, but don’t see the necessity to anchor it in what I think is a much more dodgy assumption of the existence of free will. Plantinga’s argument is somewhat strengthened in plausibility by giving a concrete example of logical inconsistency; in my argument, such concreteness is missing, but the possibility remains, and as noted, it is only this possibility that matters. So while Plantinga has the more immediate appeal, it is in essence only a special, and thus somewhat weaker, case of Leibniz’ argumentation.
It depends on one accepting a logically incoherent definition of free will. I don’t, and so I reject his defense.
It leads one to immediately ask, “Does god have moral free will?” If he does, then that disproves Plantinga’s assumption that for a creature to have moral free will it has to be able to/inclined to choose evil. And if he doesn’t have moral free will, then it raises the question of whether he could create creatures with moral free will, which would be morally equivalent (to him) to causing evil directly.
Independent of the above points, according to the wiki it relies on the premise “There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize”, which as it happens is axiomatically false under the definition of “omnipotent” that I have stated that I am using. So there’s that too.
The fact that (per the wiki) “most philosophers accept Plantinga’s free will defence” doesn’t bother me much: I’ve met philosophers and they’re as human and capable of error as the rest of us. Possibly moreso.
This debate isn’t about the devout, because any intellectually honest devout person would never ever ever use any logical argument to support their god, due to the fact the logical arguments require the discarding of canon and defining God as something wholly dissimilar to any normal conception of the Christian God. As you note, this particular POE defense results in a god who is incapable of answering prayers or in any other way improving the world to even the slightest degree - making him a great deal less omnipotent than the average red cross employee. This is obviously not something that any devout person would accept.
As best I can tell logical arguments from god are only made when their proponent has lost sight of the forest for the trees - when they’ve become so enamored of the idea of creating a logical argument for “God” (or refuting a logical argument againt it) that they forget that the word means something to people. And the thing it happens to mean…isn’t supported by any logical argument for God to date. All of them argue for rather absurd toy gods instead, toy gods which have nothing to do with anything.
So yeah - what works or doesn’t work on persons concerned with logical proofs for god has little bearing on what works on normal humans. Having little Timmy die despite hours and days of prayer is more of a faith-shaker than any pageful of symbols and statements. (And for myself, I doubt the average person would see much of a distinction between the logical and ‘evidential’ POEs anyway. I know I certainly don’t.)
You misunderstand - the specific argument he was asking me to rebut asserted that atheists claim God can do the logically impossible. If it didn’t, it couldn’t show that the atheists’ premise was false by pointing at something logically impossible, as it was trying to do.
HMHW has been swapping between goalposts like a mofo. It’s understandable if it’s tough to keep up, but one must if they’re going to avoid falling into a trap.
You know, all my prior arguments are still there. You can assert bullshit like that the only way to do it is induction, but that doesn’t change the fact that history itself provides myraid altenate possible world-states that necessarily stand separately unless you’re stripping omnimax god of his creative and destructive powers as well.
It’s suspicious when you ignore my arguments, but when you start pretending I never made them then I take them as proof that they disprove your position.
Then you pointed out something totally wrong, then, because at no point does any variant of the POE assert that there is no evil in any possible world. It asserts that there’s no evil in any possible world that also has an omnimax god in it, but that’s a completely different statement, as you darn well ought to know by now.
That is, the POE actually has (G -> ~E) as an axiom. Which can be used do derive (G -> ~E). Which could only be used to derive ~E if one first shows G, which is not an axiom that any atheist will accept, as it is the statement that God cannot be imagined not to exist in any logically coherent universe.
If the POE actually did assert ~E, then it could be instantly be disproved by glancing around and noting that E is true in our possible world.
Since you started from an error, nothing that follows from the error can have any argumentive merit and thus it need not be addressed.
begbert2, what you say about the logical POE being more-or-less irrelevant as a challenge to the devout (starting with the paragraph “This debate isn’t about the devout …”) pretty much captures why I think it’s not important. I considered making a similar argument several days ago and decided it was too far outside the OP. But, yeah, I agree. And it seems we agree the evidential problem (whether considered as one of creation or intervention) is the real challenge to faith.
Which leaves us with this little thought exercise on the logical POE and the OP’s defense. Frankly, I don’t care very much about that and, so, will stay out of it. All I will add (as a fly on the wall) is that I think I was right that HMHW never claimed atheists assert God can do the logically impossible. Review Post #245. You were responding specifically to the Königsberg analogy. In context, this was his often-repeated claim (albeit, never proven) that creating a world without evil may be logically impossible.
I’m not going into the free will issue, as to which I noted earlier I have a position between Plantinga’s and that of both of you. That is, I think I can meet Plantinga, but I would do it on evidential not logical grounds, i.e, what I calll soft or psychological compatitibilism. But this is neither here-nor-there as regards the OP.
I’ve dealt with the ‘world state’ thing before – it’s simply not coherent. Something to my future may be in your present, even though we both share the same present moment. Furthermore, possible worlds include the possibility of making temporal statements, such as ‘it’s possible I had cornflakes yesterday’. If there only was the present world state as a possible world, that statement wouldn’t have any meaning. And in claiming the reality of any world state as a possible world, you still would have to show that it is logically possible for god to create each and every world in its state ex nihilo, and disappear it again, which you have so far only asserted.
The argument works equally well with whatever minimum amount of evil you care to specify – as I believe Voyager has pointed out, you can simply set that amount to zero to obtain the previously discussed case.
Which isn’t a problem of evil – it’s perfectly fine with the possible existence of god and the existence of evil. As you say, only if god is necessary does it follow that there is necessarily no evil; if (omnimax) god is merely possible, then it’s also possible for there to exist evil, and the whole thing is self-defeating.
Well, I still don’t see a difference between the logical and evidential POEs from a standpoint of what the argument actually is. There is a significant difference in delivery: the logical approach attempts to demolish the structure of belief in one swipe of the wrecking ball, and the evidential one instead attempts to send a horde of termites in to eat away at the foundations of faith. That latter being the less confrontational I freely admit it would be less likely to make the average theist become reflexively defensive, and thus may be more effective against the average theist, but the fact remains that, as best I can tell and all delivery aside, the logic behind the two remains essentially the same.
Nope: recheck the argument:
In this particular formulation of the argument, he’s specifically saying that square circles and Königsbergs disprove the claim that “an omnipotent god can do everything he wants”. This is explicitly an assertion that the original POE arguer’s claim is that God can do impossible things, otherwise there would be no contradiction between the fact that he can’t and the claim that god can do what he wants. Thus, since he is saying that I am claiming that god can do the logically impossible, he is attacking a strawman and the argument is garbage.
I freely admit that HMHW may have vaguely meant to assert that evil is necessary and thus my conclusion doesn’t follow, but the straight fact is that he didn’t do that. And I’m tired of playing the stupid sloppy fallacious rhetorical argument game: if he wants to argue against me he needs to do it right.
Well, like I said, I don’t see much of a difference between the logical and evidential arguments, so I don’t have much of an opinion on which one a person should choose when debating anybody.
Of course the world-state thing is coherent.
Temporal statements actually don’t effect the argument much unless you can come up with a way they effect the amount of evil in the world one way or the other. Can you?
I aximatically reject that any god that cannot control the state of the universe could be omnipotent. If you don’t like that, you have three options:
a) convince me to accept that “powerless, impotent, and completely incapable” = “omnipotent”, or
b) give up on this tangent,
c) keep saying things that are axiomatically untrue and prove yourself more wrong with every word.
Reread what I said, and reread what you said. You said that the POE asserts ~E. Do you have any idea what “~E” means? Try reading it slowly. Try writing it english. Here, let me help:
“In each and every possible world it is not the case that there is any evil at all.”
(If you don’t arrive at this as the meaning of “~E”, then you’ll have to go learn something about logical symbology before we can continue this debate.)
Now, assuming we’re on the same page - what does it mean if there’s no evil in any possible world? Well, it means that the statement “our world has any evil at all in it” cannot be true. That is, it’s saying that evil is impossible. Including in the world we see around us.
I personally guarantee you that the POE doesn’t assert that there’s no evil in the world we see. Take my word for it.
No: you are utterly failing to comprehend the POE.
From the top: Axiomatically, any possible world either has or doesn’t have an omnimax god, and either has or doesn’t have (unnecessary*) evil. This is true before any statements are made: there are four possible categories of worlds (which may or may not be empty sets):
A: Has an omnimax god, has unnecessary evil.
B: Has an omnimax god, has no unncessary evil.
C: Has no omnimax god, has unnecessary evil.
D: Has no omnimax god, has no unncessary evil.
All variants of the POE assert that based on omnipotence and omnibenevolence, category A has no worlds in it; it is the empty set.
All variants of the POE also assert that the universe as we know it has unnecessary evil to some degree, putting it definitively in either category A or category C based on its evil-level alone.
Of course, if both of the above statements are true that our universe is clearly in category C (since A is empty), and thus is not in the set of possible worlds with omnimax gods. QED, so to speak.
As you can see, at no point does the POE claim that category B or D is empty, and if either of them is not empty, then evil is not logically necessary. (In fact, it can readily be shown that at least one of them is not empty, as there must be some possible worlds with minimal evil/zero unnecessary evil.) It also doesn’t claim that gods are impossible, again because B is not claimed to be empty. So merely showing that omnimax gods are possible isn’t enough to disprove it.
I will note that all of the above consistently uses the modal-logic definitions of the terms-of-art “possible”, “necessary”, “impossible”, and “unnecessary”. If you do not understand these terms, then you will not understand me at all.
included to avoid confusing the issue with the so-called “logical” vs. “evidential” debate.
begbert2, by way of conversation not argument, I will try to explain briefly what I understand to be the difference between the logical and evidential arguments. The IEP articles linked earlier go into more detail and illustrate by example. The logical argument is deductive. The evidential one is inductive. The logical argument says omnimax and the existence of evil is contradictory. The evidential one points to various examples of evil (actually, I prefer the word suffering, but have decided to accept the prevailing term in the literature for purposes of this thread) and says this is very hard to square with the conception of an omnimax god (and especially difficult to square with the Christian God which the NT says answers prayers). The logical argument, if it goes through, is conclusive. The evidential one, by its nature, can be no more than probabalistic. The logical argument admits as defenses anything that’s logically possible, without regard to whether the defense is true or even plausible. The evidential one, by contrast, looks very much to the plausibility of the defenses. OTOH, the evidential argument is subject to an epistemological defense that we don’t have enough information to weigh the probabilities. This is derided by skeptics as the “mysterious ways” objection, but is generally accepted by theists.
As for the Königsberg analogy, I read HMHW’s post differently, but I’m not going to belabor the point. Maybe you’re right (though I don’t think so). In any event, I think it’s clear his overall argument is that eliminating evil may be a logically impossible problem, in the doesn’t-have-to-be-true-or-even-plausible sense permitted in a logical debate. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, that such a remote and implausible proposition can have standing in that context is a pretty compelling argument for chucking it in favor of the evidential approach.
One tweak, to be clear. The sentence “The logical argument says omnimax and the existence of evil is contradictory” means something very strong, not it’s ordinary English meaning (which is something very like the evidential approach). As a logician, you probably realize this, but for the benefit of others (like me) who aren’t, contradictory here means necessarily contradictory. This is why implausible defences are acceptable in the logical approach.
I merely point out that when you say, ‘god can do x’, you implicitly claim that x is logically possible, and that may not be the case.
Because you say so? The thing is, quite simply, that such world states don’t exist in a relativistic universe, which ours observationally is.
They may not impinge on the argument at hand, but the inability to make them nerfs the whole concept of modal logic.
That’s just question-begging then, as what god can and can’t do is exactly what’s under debate.
If there is an omnimax god, it does, yes.
It asserts that there ought not be any, the contradiction with which is what then implies the nonexistence of an omnimax god.
Except, of course, the variant you proposed, (G -> ~E), which, as we’ve noted, implies G -> ~E, which is true if, for instance, the antecedent is false (and the consequent is either true or false), i.e. if there’s not necessarily a god; which of course leaves open the possibility of god’s existence. So explicitly, your ‘problem of evil’ asserts that it’s possible that there exists a god in a world which includes evil.
It thus fails as a formalization of the POE, and it remains the case that all one has to show to show the (actual) POE false is the possibility of the existence of evil (in the presence of an omnimax god), and the argument I made two posts back (that you seem to have missed) holds.
The evidential argument is an attempt to logically disprove the attempted disproof by theists of the “There is unnecessary evil in our world” premise of the logical POE. That is, the theists attempt to declare the POE unsound using a (usually completely bullshit) argument to prove one of the premises false; the rebuttal is to logically disprove the theists’ (usually completely bullshit) argument.
It all still looks pretty firmly based in logic to me. (And the POE itself still looks firmly based in evidence.) Perhaps that’s my problem.
Depends on how you look at it. If the “evidential” argument disproves the frankly absurd claim that “There is no unnecessary evil in our world”, then that immediately renders the theists’ argument untrue and not even plausible, restoring the ‘logical’ POE to its unchallenged state.
Basically, you have the ‘logical’ POE. The theists throw up some logically fallacious and incoherent nonsense up to attempt to disprove it. The ‘evidential’ POE sweeps away their nonsense, leaving the ‘logical’ POE to continue proving its point; the evidential argument doesn’t disprove anything on its own. So I have a hard time thinking of it as a particularly separate thing. Though that’s just me.
What do you suppose happens when I do prove that it’s logically possible for it to be the case?
Not that you’re accepting any arguments to that effect. But let’s just play pretend for a moment and say that I did convince you that better worlds are logically possible. What would that do to your argument?
Okay, fine, I’ll allow you to claim that relatively disproves the notion of such world states, so long as you also admit that that interpretation of relativity is necessarily incompatible with any omnimax god.
Remember, omniscience means that he’s a universal simultanous observer. Unless I misunderstand my relativity, that means that he either creates world-states by the act of observing them - or that he can’t coexist with any universe with relativity.
I recognize that this isn’t normally a part of the Problem Of Evil, but I’ll happily introduce the sister argument ‘the Problem Of Relativity’ in, just to shut you up about pretending that relatively disproves history. That is, God now has been logically shown to not exist in any possible world that has unnecessary evil or in which relativity applies (by your understanding of relativity). So either we are in a possible world where I can use world-state arguments, or we’re in one where you can’t argue for the existence of God. One or the other.
I never said you couldn’t make them, so that’s not really a problem for me. You, on the other hand, are saying that possible worlds are disproven by relatively, which could cause a problem for various variants of modal logic…but it’s not my problem.
Compare two possible world-states: the universe as it is now if it came into existence billions of years ago, and the universe as it is now if it was created last thursday. The two universes are physically indistinguishable; all particles have exactly the same position and velocity and are otherwise similarly identical in state.
Now, the logical statement “is this pencil two weeks old” has different truth values in these two universes - well, depending on your definition of the term “two weeks old”. But if the two universes don’t have different levels of evil in them, then they’re equivalent from the perspective of the POE - which essentially allows us to rate evil based on physical world-state alone. And there’s no way it’s logically impossible for an omnipotent god to physically reconfigure the world into an exact replica of a different time. A better time. A time with less evil than now. Unless of course you’re arguing that relativity proves there no omnimax god, of course.
Right - you’re trying to make god completely impotent and then pretend that your non-capable god disproves the POE. Which is not a disproof of the POE - it’s a failure on your part to understand the argument.
I have this god next to me. It’s a styrofoam cup. It is omnibenevolent and omniscient, but completely impotent - it cannot change the universe to the state it was in last thursday, it cannot end the universe in the next moment, it cannot make humans invulnerable or omnibenevolent, it cannot cure cancer, it cannot make loaves and fishes multiply, it cannot turn water into wine. It can’t even move under its own power.
However, it can do everying that you’ve said “omnimax god” can do to our universe - because you haven’t allowed your ‘god’ to be able to do anything at all. Any action at all is “logically impossible” for him, for some mysterious and logically inexplicable reason.
Would you suppose that the existence of my styrofoam cup is a disproof of the POE? It’s a nonmimax god and it does exist, simultaneously with scads of unnecessary evil! Is this the great disproof?
Because I don’t see any real difference between the cup argument and yours, with your god that is mysteriously logically incapable of putting the world in physically possible states.
You can’t just leave that off. Have you ever done logic before? Are you vaguely aware that “G -> ~E” and “~E” are not logically equivalent statements? Do you know what the ‘if’ statement means?
For the love of all that’s dark and evil, I hope you’re not just twitting with me for your own amusement. Among other things, that’s against forum rules.
It asserts that there ought not be any if there is an omnimax god. If there is not an omnimax god, there is no contradiction.
Look, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but I’m talking about a logical argument here, even using logical symbology. When a person starts to indiscriminately lop the statements of the argument into bits, then the things they say about the argument start being untrue, whether they realize it or not. And no matter how convenient it may be in terms of fallacious rhetoric to misrepresent the argument, that’s simply not going to get you anywhere with me, since I am not going to play along.
Bolding mine - I’ll get to it in a moment.
You are completely and utterly failing to comprehend the POE. The POE is not interested in disproving God in all possible worlds. It does not want to prove ~G. The reason it doesn’t want to is because it doesn’t need to - it is only concerned about disproving omnimax gods in our universe. You know, the one with all the evil around in it everywhere? That one? You may have heard of it.
Now for the bolding - you are either doing more fallacious rhetorical worldplay with the word “possibility”, or you have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Consider the following very-simplified situation:
The set of possible worlds has exacly two members; worlds W1 and W1. The only notable difference between the two is that in one of them the ball is red, and in one of them the ball is not red. (Designated symbolically as R and ~R respectively.
So:
in W1, R is true, and ~R is false.
in W2, R is false, and ~R is true.
With me so far?
So: in this scenario, R is false, ~R is false, ~R is true, ~~R is true, <>R is true, <>~R is true, ~<>R is false, and ~<>~R is false (to cover all the bases). That is, in the english vernacular, everything is possible and nothing is impossible - when looking at the set of all possible worlds.
So: R is ‘possible’, in logical vernacular.
Does that mean that it’s ‘possible’ (english vernacular) for R to be true in W2? By your argument, it does. By your argument you’ve just disproved the statement “in W2, R is false, and ~R is true.”
I’ll just stop here and ask, do you see anything wrong with this? You should, obviously, but I’m asking if you do.
The POE talks specifically about what’s going on in our world, using observable evidence about the evil in our world as a cite. In its original form it doesn’t even mention other possible worlds; the modal logic stuff was tacked on afterwards by people who tried to use it to slip fallacious rhetorical wordplay into the argument, but if you cut through the crap, it remains a fact that the POE is only about what’s going on in W2. What’s possible but not actually true in W2 is no nevermind to it.
Now, if you did want to prove ~G, then you could try to do that; but you’d use the kind of arguments Voyager was giving earlier. You wouldn’t use the POE.
begbert2, I don’t know which of us is right (and, of course, it’s possible we’re both wrong), but we seem to be interpreting the evidential argument rather differently. But, as I said, I wasn’t proposing to open an argument about that, not least because it’s off-topic. Instead, I’m going to move along. You guys have fun.
Well, the argument, as such, would still stand – it would still be possible for god to be both omnimax and for evil to exist in the world. However, if you proved that there exists a world in which there is less evil than in ours, then god obviously wouldn’t actually be omnibenevolent.
I have no problem in admitting that. Hell, I believe an omnimax god is incompatible with himself! Of course, one could assume the position that relativity may be necessary for any universe to exist at all, i.e. may be a logical necessity, in which case it would just be impossible for god to know things he logically can’t know – things that are causally removed from him. But that’s besides the point.
I haven’t claimed anywhere that relativity disproves history, or any such nonsense. Your causal past is set in stone, barring time- or FTL-travel. A global history, i.e. a list of which events follow which, regardless of their occurrence in spacetime, however, is simply not a meaningful concept.
Thankfully, the problem of evil or relativity isn’t what we’re discussing here.
No, I’m saying that your world-states are an incoherent concept in a relativistic universe, and that they don’t have anything to do with how possible worlds are commonly understood in valuations of modal logic.
Nah, relativity’s perfectly fine with modal logic – it’s just your world states that don’t fit.
The problem is, we only know one of those worlds to be logically possible (whichever the one is that we’re in, that is).
This is again just an unsubstantiated assertion. Tell me, what logically possible means would god use to rewind the universe?
I’m not saying god can’t do anything of the things you allege he can do; I’m merely saying that it’s possible that he can’t, simply since there are things he can’t do. Again, I refer back to the argument I made a couple of posts ago, which you seem to accept.
Oh, come on, you’re not just gonna pretend I forgot all I wrote in this post, are you? The fact of the matter is that you can leave the ‘G’ part completely implicit, as long as the context is understood. The discussion that’s at hand here is, in a word, whether or not the existence of an omnimax god implies that there can’t be any evil; concentrating on the second part is merely a way to save writing. You did the same thing some posts back:
No. It’s simply that the formalisation of the problem of evil you proposed yields a true statement if there exists a world in which god exists, and there is (whatever amount of) evil (and of course, that world may be ours), a possibility which is precisely antithetical to the logical problem of evil (which asserts that both the existence of an omnimax god and the existence of evil can’t be true).
I’ve got no idea where you were trying to go with the red balls, incidentally, and what any of that had to do with what you bolded in my post. Basically, the possibility that a ball is red or not does not impinge on whether or not it is actually red; <>R is true in any world, whether or not R is, as long as R isn’t necessary. If you mean to say that if the ball in some world is not red, then <>R isn’t true (in that world), then that’s just the same error you made earlier, that P -> P. <>R is not a claim about that specific world; it’s a claim about every world.
The bolded part in my post referred to the inadequacy in your proposed formalization of the POE – that the implication yields a true statement when god isn’t necessary, i.e. when he’s contingent; so that if in some world (ours, for instance), an omnimax god exists, and evil also exists, as long as god doesn’t exist in every possible world, G -> ~E is a true statement. Which of course means that the existence of evil doesn’t mean that there’s no god (only that there’s not necessarily a god), which is the opposite of what you’d want a POE to say.
If it’s hard to see, just work through the argument: your formalization says, ‘if there is necessarily a god, then there is necessarily no evil’. In true modus tollens form, we observe that there is, in fact, evil, and hence, not necessarily no evil. This means that the antecedent must be false – that there is not necessarily a god. Of course, this means that it’s still possible for there to be a god – in short, the existence of evil means that there possibly is a god – and the argument has gone officially nowhere.
No, in its original form, it asserts the incompatibility of a set of propositions – that god is omniscient, that he is omnipotent, that he is omnibenevolent, and that there exists evil. Of course, this last one is derived from observation; however, this is a claim of logical impossibility, and hence, a claim about impossibility in all conceivable circumstances – taking into account modalities when discussing this is merely natural.
