The Problem of Evil (XXVII)

[Cato]

CL.

I did raise the strawman issue earlier, as did at least one other; it remains unchallenged.in favor of misrepresenting the position in order to assert characteristics of God which can't possibly be known.

My vitriol on the matter is due in large part to how disgusting and immoral I consider some believers' position on the matter.

Imagine a mother with ten children who concludes that all but one of her brood isn't loving her enough or in the manner prescribed. Her solution is to drown all but the one. Is there any doubt that labeling this woman evil is appropriate? I think it fair to say that nobody would accept a 'mysterious ways' defense in the subsequent trial.

Simply drop the omni-benevolent bullshit and we're all done here.

[SteveII]

Let's try it this way:

P1: An existing god, if omnibenevolent, would prevent all evil if it was able to.
P2: An existing god, if omnipotent, would be able to prevent all evil.
C1: Therefore, an omnibenevolent omnipotent god would prevent all evil.
C2: Therefore, if there were an omnipotent omnibenevolent god, there would be no evil.
C3: Therefore, if there is evil, there is no omnibenevolent omnipotent god.
C4: Therefore, anyone who believes in evil, and also believes in an omnibenevolent omnipotent god is wrong.

It's a proof.  Show me your defeaters. 

If I said "Two plus two is four," would you say, "That's only true if you deal with the defeaters"?

Defeater for P2

It is contingently impossible for God to actualize a world without evil because for every decision that a person made in the possible world, he could very well made a different one in the actual world (free will and all). Formally:

1. There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize.
2. A world with morally free creatures producing only moral good is such a world.

Contingently possible is a status of a proposition that is neither true in every possible situation nor false in every possible situation. Propositions that are contingent are so because they are connected to something else that together determine the truth value. An example: "I will be in Paris tomorrow if my plane arrives safely" Assuming I am on a plane bound for Paris, the truth of the proposition of me being in Paris tomorrow is contingent on my plane arriving safely.

[wiploc]

What we believe is that He does have the power to take away our free will but chooses not to.

Whether god allows free will by his own choice or cannot prevent it doesn't matter as there are now things outside his control, limiting the scope of his power and rendering him less than all powerful. The same reasoning is valid to show free will is in compatible with omniscience as it prevents certain knowledge of the future.

If he has the power to interfere with our free will, he can still be omnipotent.  A deist god could be omnipotent, all power but no action.

[wiploc]

Let's try it this way:

P1: An existing god, if omnibenevolent, would prevent all evil if it was able to.
P2: An existing god, if omnipotent, would be able to prevent all evil.
C1: Therefore, an omnibenevolent omnipotent god would prevent all evil.
C2: Therefore, if there were an omnipotent omnibenevolent god, there would be no evil.
C3: Therefore, if there is evil, there is no omnibenevolent omnipotent god.
C4: Therefore, anyone who believes in evil, and also believes in an omnibenevolent omnipotent god is wrong.

It's a proof.  Show me your defeaters. 

If I said "Two plus two is four," would you say, "That's only true if you deal with the defeaters"?

Defeater for P2

It is contingently impossible

I don't understand "contingently impossible."  Maybe you can help me out with a rephrase?  

You have more on contingent possibility below.  I'll say more there.

for God to actualize a world without evil because for every decision that a person made in the possible world, he could very well made a different one in the actual world (free will and all).

I don't understand.  Lets say there are two possible worlds:  In world A, George will skip breakfast.  In world B, George will eat ham and eggs.

Are you saying that if god decides to create world A, George may eat breakfast even though god created the world in which he does not eat breakfast? 

It's like the uncertainty principle? God only knows what will happen in a possible world so long as he doesn't create it?  If that's what you're saying, then your god isn't omniscient.  He doesn't know the actual future.  It's move number two:

Possible relevant responses to the PoE:
1. God isn't really that powerful.
2. God isn't really that knowing.
3. God isn't really that benevolent.
4. Evil doesn't really exist.
5. Logic sucks.  

If your point is that your god isn't really omniscient, then you aren't contradicting the PoE; you are agreeing with it.  

Formally:

1. There are possible worlds that even an omnipotent being can not actualize.

Technically, yes; but not relevantly yes.   That is, there are possible worlds that aren't created by a god.  But there's always going to be an identical one that is created by a god.  A god could create the one that is.  

2. A world with morally free creatures producing only moral good is such a world.

That's not a contradiction, so it is a possible world.  (It's actually an infinity of possible worlds.)  There is no reason an omnipotent god couldn't make such a world.  

If you want to say that god can't create a free-willed goodworld, I can say that god can't create a free-willed badworld.  In which case, I have used your own logic to prove there is no god in this, the actual, world.  

(I feel like I'm probably missing something here, failing to understand your argument.  So I should have shut up sooner, right?  But the sooner I shut up, the less likely you are to understand what it is that I don't understand, and the less likely you are to be able to explain where I went wrong.)

Contingently possible is a status of a proposition that is neither true in every possible situation nor false in every possible situation.

"Possible" means true in one or more possible worlds.  "Contingent" means not true in all possible worlds.  Contingently possible, then would mean true in more than zero but fewer than all worlds?  

Yes!  That's what you just wrote!  I got it!

Propositions that are contingent are so because they are connected to something else that together determine the truth value. An example: "I will be in Paris tomorrow if my plane arrives safely" Assuming I am on a plane bound for Paris, the truth of the proposition of me being in Paris tomorrow is contingent on my plane arriving safely.

Okay, so now I can go back to your original sentence with my new understanding, and see if it makes any sense to me now:

It is contingently impossible for God to actualize a world without evil because for every decision that a person made in the possible world, he could very well made a different one in the actual world (free will and all).

In world A, George skips his breakfast.  An omnipotent god would know he was going to do that.  So, if god created world A, George would skip his breakfast in the actual world because world A is the actual world because world A is the world that the god created. 

In a possible world that a god creates, for every decision that a person makes in that possible world, he makes the same decision in the actual world, because that possible world is the actual world. 

Therefore, it seems to me, your defeater is defeated. 

Sorry it took so long to work out what you were saying.

[Esquilax]

And why does he make that choice? Why so inconsistently, too, since our free will only seems to matter on Earth, and not one jot once we die? For that matter, how do you know this at all? It really does just seem like an argument of convenience, rather than anything based in verifiable observations.

Because free will is valued more highly than just about anything else (with the exception of knowledge of God). For one, without free will, we would not have love.

... And you don't have an issue squaring this statement with the fact that god stops caring for our free will the moment we die within your theology because...?

If you can't have love without free will, then your capacity for love becomes immediately curtailed upon entry into the afterlife, where god just chooses for you where you're going and what you'll do once you get there.

For that matter, how do you know any of what you just said is true?

And... wait. If knowledge of god is valued more highly than free will, and your position is that god allows incalculable suffering to occur in order to preserve free will because of that value, then... you don't see a problem there? You've got something you've just acknowledged is more valuable than free will, but this thing is specifically being withheld from humanity in order to preserve free will, and the motivation behind that, to you, is that free will has a high value, but you've just told us that the thing being withheld in order to protect free will (which is being protected because of its value) is more valuable than the thing it's being withheld to protect!

Your argument has a clear logical contradiction, Steve; it cannot be true.

[SteveII]

@wiploc

I am finding this conversation helpful to me in two ways. 1) it makes me think/research very carefully so that I uncover things I missed the first time I read about them and 2) by practicing, I will hopefully better articulate this and other things in the future. I freely admit that had I to explain all this again, I would have done it differently. 

You are getting hung up on the phrase "possible world". You are taking the phrase literally (understandably) but is has a meaning in philosophy and logic that is important to understand in order to use the concept properly. This was helpful to me in understanding the "possible worlds" concept:

• True propositions are those that are true in the actual world (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969").
  
• False propositions are those that are false in the actual world (for example: "Ronald Reagan became president in 1969"). (Reagan did not run for president until 1976, and thus couldn't possibly have been elected.)
  
• Possible propositions are those that are true in at least one possible world (for example: "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969"). (Humphrey did run for president in 1968, and thus could have been elected.) This includes propositions which are necessarily true, in the sense below.
  
• Impossible propositions (or necessarily false propositions) are those that are true in no possible world (for example: "Melissa and Toby are taller than each other at the same time").
  
• Necessarily true propositions (often simply called necessary propositions) are those that are true in all possible worlds (for example: "2 + 2 = 4"; "all bachelors are unmarried").[1]
  
• Contingent propositions are those that are true in some possible worlds and false in others (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969" is contingently true and "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969" is contingently false). all from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world
  

I agreed that in some possible world, given the tri-omni properties, God could "pre-plan" it so that there would be no evil. The reason I agree that is true is because the PoE argument is logically valid (not contradictory)--not because I think there is a world out there where God did such a thing "on paper". There is nothing wrong with the argument: it is broadly logically possible, that such a proposition could be true. 

I am claiming that #2 is a contingent proposition (see above) whereas you are claiming that it is necessarily true proposition. To support your conclusion that God does not exist, you need #2 to be a necessarily true proposition. I think it is a contingent proposition because of free will. It seems highly probable that God cannot actualize a world where every one of the trillions of decisions are freely made good (instead of evil) in spite of any attempt to "pre-plan" it.

The defeater is aimed at the omnipotence because omnipotence does not mean "can do anything" rather it means "can do anything logically possible" and not in the broad sense but in the narrow sense because we are talking about actually doing something for real.

[SteveII]

Because free will is valued more highly than just about anything else (with the exception of knowledge of God). For one, without free will, we would not have love.

... And you don't have an issue squaring this statement with the fact that god stops caring for our free will the moment we die within your theology because...?

If you can't have love without free will, then your capacity for love becomes immediately curtailed upon entry into the afterlife, where god just chooses for you where you're going and what you'll do once you get there.

For that matter, how do you know any of what you just said is true?

And... wait. If knowledge of god is valued more highly than free will, and your position is that god allows incalculable suffering to occur in order to preserve free will because of that value, then... you don't see a problem there? You've got something you've just acknowledged is more valuable than free will, but this thing is specifically being withheld from humanity in order to preserve free will, and the motivation behind that, to you, is that free will has a high value, but you've just told us that the thing being withheld in order to protect free will (which is being protected because of its value) is more valuable than the thing it's being withheld to protect!

Your argument has a clear logical contradiction, Steve; it cannot be true.

Regarding your first question, why do you think free will stops at death? I believe that we will still have free will but when faced with the glory of God, and given the knowledge of all truths, the human mind would not be able to contemplate disobedience. 

I did make a contradictory statement and thank you for pointing it out and giving me a chance to clarify. As I mentioned in a earlier post, Christians believe the purpose of life is not happiness but rather knowledge of God and as such has the highest value. With the advent of Christ, this knowledge of God expanded to include the relationship offered through salvation. What I should have said in my post was that freely arriving at that knowledge is extremely important to God. 

How do I know any of this is true? I don't know any of it is true. I believe it to be true.

[Gemini]

What is wrong with the idea of a Multiverse in which all possible worlds are exhasted and we just got a crumby one?

I don't see how full on modal realism could contribute a solution to the logical problem of evil. Logically impossible universes, such as those containing a tri-omni God and pointless suffering, still wouldn't exist, for the same reason that there would be no universes containing married bachelors.

Nor does that offer any advantage over "utilitarian" multiverse theodicies. If universes with on balance more good than evil increase the total goodness of the multiverse, then God might be justified creating them, even if some included a great deal of pointless suffering (and if I was going to argue against the logical problem of evil, that's the approach I would take).

I don't think those theodicies succeed, though, because God could create infinitely many universes with no pointless suffering, so creating universes which merely had on balance more good than evil wouldn't increase the quantity of good in the multiverse. Another objection would be that this just pushes the problem back a step. Instead of asking why God created a universe with evil in it, we're asking why God created a multiverse with evil in it.

[GUBU]

Whether god allows free will by his own choice or cannot prevent it doesn't matter as there are now things outside his control, limiting the scope of his power and rendering him less than all powerful. The same reasoning is valid to show free will is in compatible with omniscience as it prevents certain knowledge of the future.

If he has the power to interfere with our free will, he can still be omnipotent.  A deist god could be omnipotent, all power but no action.

If we have free will, then he doesn't have total power of us, then he isn't all powerful. And saying that he has power to interfere in our free will is pretty much saying we don't have free will.

[robvalue]

Okay so I've been doing some more research and I think I finally found something which could clear this up:

https://youtu.be/KlTh2EGXNgc