Solved Theodicy?

[AFTT47]

The bottom line is that if an omniscient God created the universe and set it in motion, it would have known what the outcome would be. There is no way to take responsibility off of God. It knew what the result of its creation would be and chose to follow through on it anyway. Free will is absolutely irrelevant here. Everything is the way it is because God made it so. It created the free will with prior knowledge of how it would be used.

[Mudhammam]

The bottom line is that if an omniscient God created the universe and set it in motion, it would have known what the outcome would be. There is no way to take responsibility off of God. It knew what the result of its creation would be and chose to follow through on it anyway. Free will is absolutely irrelevant here. Everything is the way it is because God made it so. It created the free will with prior knowledge of how it would be used.

I'd have to disagree. If we're talking about libertarian free will (and assuming it is a coherent idea, which I do not think it is), then the buck stops with the free agent. That's not to say that it logically follows that God is justified in creating free agents -- I would argue that any creation involving beings whom are less than perfect, even if that is in proportion to something less than some ultimate perfection, is a degradation from the prior state in which only the ultimate perfection existed, and, that by creating imperfect beings God was in fact degrading the total moral and ontological goodness which was then in existence, which does not seem consistent with any conception of a perfect being -- but I don't see that God is morally responsible for the bad choices that on the libertarian model begin and end with the free agents who are the first cause/unmoved movers of their own actions, even if he knew that in many instances evil would be freely chosen.

[robvalue]

Yeah, but if we have real free will, he doesn't know the outcome of our actions in advance. This is the contradiction, and theists often want to have it both ways. If God isn't able to know the future, which is a very reasonable proposition, he can indeed receive less of the blame. It's when he's given every opportunity and every power that there is literally no excuse for him. A less-than-all-powerful God can be argued to be doing its best.

[theologian]

Hello! This would be my first post here. Let me try to offer some alternatives:

1st, the reality of free will and God being all knowing doesn't have any contradiction. For, seeing contradiction here is to confuse the knower with a causer. An analogy can help us here. Scientist can well predict the weather, because they can know things from the sky by gathering information. We can therefore say the scientist are all knowing in this weather case. But, does it follow that the scientists are the ones who causes the storm or the good weather? Of course not. Same with God. God knows everything, even our choices and the consequences of our choice, without causing it.

2nd, we know that we cannot judge the whole plan based from the little we have. Borrowing some points from Bishop Robert Barron, suppose a page from the The Lord of the Rings have been separated from the book. Suppose too that that page was torn into pieces, such that a piece of it which has a paragraph where doesn't make any sense was read by someone. It will be unjust for the one who read that paragraph and to say something like that this is a senseless piece of writing which just show despair and suffering. So with the whole of God's plan. We can only look at the smallest detail of the whole history of creation which is still ongoing. We cannot therefore judge God's work with a small piece of what we know. Further, since the existence of God can be proved through sound argumentation, it follows that it is logical to believe His revelation, for He is all knowing and all good and therefore He can't lie and He knows all the correct answer to all questions. But, one of His revelation is the afterlife. If there is afterlife, then injustice and suffering and death will not have the last word.

[Arkilogue]

Yeah. Precognition and free will are at odds, no matter how much the theist desparately tries to wriggle out of it. And beyond it all is the question of "why". Why do any of this? And if you're going to do it, why be so shit at it? "Plans" are for beings that don't know the future and are trying to plot the best path. "Goals" are for beings who aren't certain of what they will achieve.

They aren't at odds, not on the human level anyway. The past has real inertia and the present has real potential, the future is a branching of possible trajectories with some being much more likely than others. Human level precog is the ability to look down the trajectory of potentials. We actually do it all the time but some are much more practiced at it than others.

God level precog is unnecessary. If you are the border conditions, nothing can go beyond you, and you have set the course of creation...it does not matter what free agents do within the system. Like the participants of a race, God sets the course, the racers are free to do their best within the system provided.

[Arkilogue]

Further, since the existence of God can be proved through sound argumentation, it follows that it is logical to believe His revelation, for He is all knowing and all good and therefore He can't lie and He knows all the correct answer to all questions. But, one of His revelation is the afterlife. If there is afterlife, then injustice and suffering and death will not have the last word.

God doesn't lie, but Man does all the time and nothing has prevented Man from changing the bible even if any of it's books were ever "directly inspired" by God. Worship not the object.

[AFTT47]

Even without omniscience, God should still be able to predict the outcome of his creation. I'm not omniscient but I know that if I build a car with a wooden dowel for a steering rod, who ever drives that car is going to be in a wreck. A wooden dowel doesn't have the necessary strength to work in that application. It will snap at some point and I know it. I would be culpable. God would be similarly culpable if he had any capability of predicting what his free agent creations would do. He should be able to do that. He knows what their capabilities and limitations are. If nothing else, he should be able to predict the probabilities of his creations doing evil. If he can't even do that, we're not talking about a God here - more like a mad scientist.

[Arkilogue]

Even without omniscience, God should still be able to predict the outcome of his creation. I'm not omniscient but I know that if I build a car with a wooden dowel for a steering rod, who ever drives that car is going to be in a wreck. A wooden dowel doesn't have the necessary strength to work in that application. It will snap at some point and I know it. I would be culpable. God would be similarly culpable if he had any capability of predicting what his free agent creations would do. He should be able to do that. He knows what their capabilities and limitations are. If nothing else, he should be able to predict the probabilities of his creations doing evil. If he can't even do that, we're not talking about a God here - more like a mad scientist.

Is the wooden dowel in your analogy the ability for man to do evil? Because I would say the ability to do evil is driving a perfectly working car through a crowd of people, instead of delivering things intact from one place to another without destroying the environment.

[robvalue]

Hello! This would be my first post here. Let me try to offer some alternatives:

1st, the reality of free will and God being all knowing doesn't have any contradiction. For, seeing contradiction here is to confuse the knower with a causer. An analogy can help us here. Scientist can well predict the weather, because they can know things from the sky by gathering information. We can therefore say the scientist are all knowing in this weather case. But, does it follow that the scientists are the ones who causes the storm or the good weather? Of course not. Same with God. God knows everything, even our choices and the consequences of our choice, without causing it.

2nd, we know that we cannot judge the whole plan based from the little we have. Borrowing some points from Bishop Robert Barron, suppose a page from the The Lord of the Rings have been separated from the book. Suppose too that that page was torn into pieces, such that a piece of it which has a paragraph where doesn't make any sense was read by someone. It will be unjust for the one who read that paragraph and to say something like that this is a senseless piece of writing which just show despair and suffering. So with the whole of God's plan. We can only look at the smallest detail of the whole history of creation which is still ongoing. We cannot therefore judge God's work with a small piece of what we know. Further, since the existence of God can be proved through sound argumentation, it follows that it is logical to believe His revelation, for He is all knowing and all good and therefore He can't lie and He knows all the correct answer to all questions. But, one of His revelation is the afterlife. If there is afterlife, then injustice and suffering and death will not have the last word.

Hello, welcome!

I find these analogies very flawed. To begin with, as is usual, God is being compared to a human and as such expected to be allowed the excuse of a human's lack of capabilities.

Scientists attempt to predict the weather. They do not know what the weather will be. God does know. And he did indeed cause it all, because he made all this, knowing what would happen. I don't know how he could be any more responsible. The constant efforts people make to try and relieve god's responsibility for his own creation seem to reveal the obvious gap between what one would expect and what one sees. Is this his plan, or not? He made it and he knows its future. Scientists neither made the weather, nor actually know its future. The anology doesn't work.

Secondly, you're suggesting God has some sort of restrictions and that if we understood them, suffering would make sense. If there are restrictions, either he made them himself, or they were imposed on him. In the first case he's still responsible. In the second he's not all powerful. Could he achieve whatever bizarre plan he wanted, with all of the positive outcomes, without the suffering? If yes, he's choosing the suffering. If no, he's not all powerful.

You can't have it both ways, I'm afraid.

What does he need with a plan, or outcomes? He can do anything, instantly. He has no barriers or adversaries.

[bennyboy]

Hello! This would be my first post here. Let me try to offer some alternatives:

1st, the reality of free will and God being all knowing doesn't have any contradiction. For, seeing contradiction here is to confuse the knower with a causer. An analogy can help us here. Scientist can well predict the weather, because they can know things from the sky by gathering information. We can therefore say the scientist are all knowing in this weather case. But, does it follow that the scientists are the ones who causes the storm or the good weather? Of course not. Same with God. God knows everything, even our choices and the consequences of our choice, without causing it.

The difference is that we are not claimed to be all-powerful. Nobody EXPECTS the weatherman to stop the rain.

2nd, we know that we cannot judge the whole plan based from the little we have. Borrowing some points from Bishop Robert Barron, suppose a page from the The Lord of the Rings have been separated from the book. Suppose too that that page was torn into pieces, such that a piece of it which has a paragraph where doesn't make any sense was read by someone. It will be unjust for the one who read that paragraph and to say something like that this is a senseless piece of writing which just show despair and suffering. So with the whole of God's plan. We can only look at the smallest detail of the whole history of creation which is still ongoing. We cannot therefore judge God's work with a small piece of what we know. Further, since the existence of God can be proved through sound argumentation, it follows that it is logical to believe His revelation, for He is all knowing and all good and therefore He can't lie and He knows all the correct answer to all questions. But, one of His revelation is the afterlife. If there is afterlife, then injustice and suffering and death will not have the last word.

If what is good to God is not good to man-- i.e. if it involves suffering of children, untimely illness and death, and so on, then why should we give a shit whether he has a plan, or whether he exists at all?