RE: The Problem of Evil, Christians, and Inconsistency
September 24, 2014 at 3:13 am
(This post was last modified: September 24, 2014 at 3:57 am by genkaus.)
Given that its a long post, I'll only address the relevant points.
You are not the first to come up with this objection. In fact, I think it was one of the first objections to the problem - that it equates suffering with evil. However, the assumption that the universe should be organized in such a way so that the end result is that everyone is happy has to do more with the concept of omni-benelovence than with the problem itself.
People commonly regard omni-benevolence to mean both all-loving and all-good.
If your god is all-loving, then the ideal end result is everyone being happy.
If your god is all-good, then the ideal end result is everyone being good.
The only way for these two attributes to never come in conflict would be if absence of suffering is the same thing as being good.
Those lessons are to ensure their continued happiness - not to subvert it. Parents are not omni-potent and therefore unable to subvert all things for their children's benefit - they realize that the kids have to live in the real world and if their happiness becomes tied to riding rough-shod over others or dismissing environmental concerns, then those kids won't be happy long.
That would be a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
Look at that guy - he is a criminal who stole, cheated and robbed his way to a rich life. Now he has a home, smart cars, a beautiful wife who doesn't mind him sleeping with other super-models and great kids. He knows he is not going to jail because he is paid up wit all the right people and his future is as secure as it can be. He always seems to have a smile on his face, he is always laughing and joking and enjoying his life - but you see, he is not "truly" happy.
Look at that other guy - he married to make his parents happy, he works a job he doesn't like to support his family, he is honest, decent and engages in charity. But he and his wife can't have kids, he lives in daily fear of getting fired and he hasn't been able to save much money. So, even though he always looks miserable and has a frown on his face, he must be "truly" happy because he always did the right thing.
Except, you haven't established that he was happy in the end.
This example perfectly illustrates the point I'm about to make about the nature of happiness and the inherent contradiction of Christian moral doctrine.
Epicurean view is that happiness is an absence of suffering.
Platonian view is that happiness is the result of doing the right thing.
Both views are correct - with the platonian view being a subset of epicurean.
In simplest terms, happiness is an emotional state achieved when your needs are being met. You suffer when your needs are not met. These needs are physical, biological and psychological in nature. On a basic level you need food, shelter and other basic amenities. On a psychological level you need companionship, love, security etc. One of the psychological needs is being able to act on your beliefs, to act according to the moral system you have accepted. So, if you believe that running into burning buildings to save people is the right thing, then doing so would make you happy because your psychological need to act according to your morals is being fulfilled. And for precisely the same reason, if you think that killing immoral people is the right thing, then doing that would make you happy as well.
This is where your Christian moral doctrine preaches a contradiction - they ask you to suffer in order to be happy. The condition for fulfilling one psychological need (of acting according to your beliefs) is the frustration of other needs - psychological and otherwise. They promote the idea of suffering - ensuring that you'd make yourself unhappy in this life - so that they can sell you the invisible product of "suffering free heaven".
You haven't shaken them - you've given me a chance to show their validity. We do accept the Epicurean view. Parents do want their children to be happy. Children are taught morals because all things around them are not going to rearrange themselves to their benefit. Abbot Christopher's argument is not sufficient to point us to a re-ordering of priorities. Maximilian Kolbe helps us see exactly where Plato's idea of happiness falls short.
Poetically put, though incorrect. The conscientious feeling one gets is the result of a complex interplay of contradictory biological instincts, taught and conditioned moral precepts and deeply held convictions - whether chosen rationally or not.
I subscribe to a moral code built on human needs.
For the record, while I agree that pleasure/pain is a valid basis for morality, I apply it at an individual level. Meaning, maximizing overall pleasure or pain should not be the goal of the society.
Utilitarianism is the the result of misapplication of the principle due to misidentifying the basis for determining pleasure or pain.
Given my view of how happiness correlates to which needs are being fulfilled, we get an idea about how to measure it. We know that things like freedom and security - things which are guaranteed by human rights - are basic human needs. The only way for individuals to be sacrificed to whims of majority is for those guarantees are no longer available. And since the society is basically made individuals, the decrease in happiness of every individual adds up to a significant decrease in happiness of the whole society. Whatever temporary additional happiness the majority draws from that, it is not offset by the overall net decrease .
To put it in simpler terms - if a person's organs are allowed to be harvested against his will to save others, then every person would live in fear of his organs being harvested at any time. The happiness of the few who do benefit from those organs is meager in comparison to the unhappiness of the multitudes living in that fear.
Except, watching people face the consequences of their actions is one of the psychological needs we have. It also helps fulfill the need for security.
The 'foundation' I subscribe to is the rational consideration of one's imperative needs. The pleasure/pain principle is a entirely incidental, though it serves as a useful indicator.
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: If we step back and, instead of launching into the problem, think about presuppositions of the problem then we begin to see the problem tells us as much, if not more, about Epicurus than about evil. Underlying the problem proposed is an assumption that the universe should be organised so that the end result is that everyone is happy.
You are not the first to come up with this objection. In fact, I think it was one of the first objections to the problem - that it equates suffering with evil. However, the assumption that the universe should be organized in such a way so that the end result is that everyone is happy has to do more with the concept of omni-benelovence than with the problem itself.
People commonly regard omni-benevolence to mean both all-loving and all-good.
If your god is all-loving, then the ideal end result is everyone being happy.
If your god is all-good, then the ideal end result is everyone being good.
The only way for these two attributes to never come in conflict would be if absence of suffering is the same thing as being good.
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: What Abbot Christopher gently challenged is that very notion. And so, as parents, do we subvert all things to ensuring the happiness of our children? Would we encourage them to ride rough-shod over others to secure their own happiness? Do we encourage them to dismiss any environmental concerns that might get in the way of their happiness? Surely not.
Those lessons are to ensure their continued happiness - not to subvert it. Parents are not omni-potent and therefore unable to subvert all things for their children's benefit - they realize that the kids have to live in the real world and if their happiness becomes tied to riding rough-shod over others or dismissing environmental concerns, then those kids won't be happy long.
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: For Plato, true happiness came from acting with virtue, knowing that we had done the right thing.
That would be a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
Look at that guy - he is a criminal who stole, cheated and robbed his way to a rich life. Now he has a home, smart cars, a beautiful wife who doesn't mind him sleeping with other super-models and great kids. He knows he is not going to jail because he is paid up wit all the right people and his future is as secure as it can be. He always seems to have a smile on his face, he is always laughing and joking and enjoying his life - but you see, he is not "truly" happy.
Look at that other guy - he married to make his parents happy, he works a job he doesn't like to support his family, he is honest, decent and engages in charity. But he and his wife can't have kids, he lives in daily fear of getting fired and he hasn't been able to save much money. So, even though he always looks miserable and has a frown on his face, he must be "truly" happy because he always did the right thing.
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: We can illustrate that with another story, that of Maximilian Kolbe. Kolbe was far from a saint in all his life, but he is known for one amazing act of heroism. He volunteered to die in place of a stranger, a father and husband, in the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz. He, with others, was placed in a bunker and left to die of dehydration. After two weeks, it is told, that he was still alive, so was finally killed by an injection of carbolic acid. This is about as far away from an Epicurean ideal of happiness than you can get. Yet, it very much fits to a Platonic idea of 'happiness'; dying knowing absolutely that you die out of love for others.
Except, you haven't established that he was happy in the end.
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: This, of course, mirrors the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and many martyrs have been 'happy' to follow the example of our Lord. Jesus, to Christians, was, and is, the image of what the 'Kingdom of Heaven' is like, and he suffered pain for a greater cause; he showed us another way, the Kingdom Way; and it is not necessarily a way without suffering. For Christians, suffering is subservient to the goal of love. Or as C.S.Lewis put it (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), 'perhaps God doesn't necessarily want us to be free from suffering; he wants us to love and be loveable'.
This example perfectly illustrates the point I'm about to make about the nature of happiness and the inherent contradiction of Christian moral doctrine.
Epicurean view is that happiness is an absence of suffering.
Platonian view is that happiness is the result of doing the right thing.
Both views are correct - with the platonian view being a subset of epicurean.
In simplest terms, happiness is an emotional state achieved when your needs are being met. You suffer when your needs are not met. These needs are physical, biological and psychological in nature. On a basic level you need food, shelter and other basic amenities. On a psychological level you need companionship, love, security etc. One of the psychological needs is being able to act on your beliefs, to act according to the moral system you have accepted. So, if you believe that running into burning buildings to save people is the right thing, then doing so would make you happy because your psychological need to act according to your morals is being fulfilled. And for precisely the same reason, if you think that killing immoral people is the right thing, then doing that would make you happy as well.
This is where your Christian moral doctrine preaches a contradiction - they ask you to suffer in order to be happy. The condition for fulfilling one psychological need (of acting according to your beliefs) is the frustration of other needs - psychological and otherwise. They promote the idea of suffering - ensuring that you'd make yourself unhappy in this life - so that they can sell you the invisible product of "suffering free heaven".
(August 29, 2014 at 3:07 am)Michael Wrote: And so, if you'll forgive that circumlocution, I'd want to shake up the assumptions behind the Epicurean problem as presented. Before we launch ourselves into the problem, do we actually accept the Epicurean world view that lies behind it? So, as parents, do we really just want our children to be happy (from an Epicurean perspective)? Should all things organise themselves around our children's Epicurean happiness? Or does Abbot Christopher point us to a re-ordering of priorities, even for our own children. Can the example of Maximilian Kolbe help us see something that Plato saw that Epicrus did not?
You haven't shaken them - you've given me a chance to show their validity. We do accept the Epicurean view. Parents do want their children to be happy. Children are taught morals because all things around them are not going to rearrange themselves to their benefit. Abbot Christopher's argument is not sufficient to point us to a re-ordering of priorities. Maximilian Kolbe helps us see exactly where Plato's idea of happiness falls short.
(August 29, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Michael Wrote: "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
Poetically put, though incorrect. The conscientious feeling one gets is the result of a complex interplay of contradictory biological instincts, taught and conditioned moral precepts and deeply held convictions - whether chosen rationally or not.
(August 29, 2014 at 1:21 pm)Michael Wrote: How would you explore goodness as an atheist? (And I don't mean that as saying you can't).
I subscribe to a moral code built on human needs.
For the record, while I agree that pleasure/pain is a valid basis for morality, I apply it at an individual level. Meaning, maximizing overall pleasure or pain should not be the goal of the society.
(August 30, 2014 at 2:34 am)Michael Wrote: The first is that when applied to society I think, though correct me if I am wrong, that it must lead to utilitarianism. That is whatever produces a net increase in happiness is best: that is how Richard Dawkins recently argued for abortion of Down's Syndrome children, perhaps forgetting, to the consternation of many Down's families, that they are frequently very happy people. RD, putting aside his misunderstanding that Down's Syndrome children and families frequently aren't unhappy, is probably being consistent with an Epicurean view. But equally consistent is harvesting organs from live people against their will. One person can save multiple other people (if good matches are assured in advance), potentially producing a net increase in happiness. utilitarianism can led to a tyranny of the majority; but it appears hard to argue against using its own logic.
Utilitarianism is the the result of misapplication of the principle due to misidentifying the basis for determining pleasure or pain.
Given my view of how happiness correlates to which needs are being fulfilled, we get an idea about how to measure it. We know that things like freedom and security - things which are guaranteed by human rights - are basic human needs. The only way for individuals to be sacrificed to whims of majority is for those guarantees are no longer available. And since the society is basically made individuals, the decrease in happiness of every individual adds up to a significant decrease in happiness of the whole society. Whatever temporary additional happiness the majority draws from that, it is not offset by the overall net decrease .
To put it in simpler terms - if a person's organs are allowed to be harvested against his will to save others, then every person would live in fear of his organs being harvested at any time. The happiness of the few who do benefit from those organs is meager in comparison to the unhappiness of the multitudes living in that fear.
(August 30, 2014 at 2:34 am)Michael Wrote: Another more classic problem with Epicureanism is a problem in formulating a justice system, because there is no inherent 'rightness' in penal justice. Imprisonment is a poor deterrent for crimes committed in the heat of the moment. Does that mean we should forgo any punishment, especially if no-one else is made happy by penal justice?
Except, watching people face the consequences of their actions is one of the psychological needs we have. It also helps fulfill the need for security.
(August 30, 2014 at 2:34 am)Michael Wrote: The third problem is on the foundation of the premise that it is good to reduce pain and increase pleasure. When we look at nature, red in tooth and claw, pain is warp and weft through the forces that drive nature. On what foundation is pain necessarily bad? Why should it become the primary of goal of humans to eliminate something that appears to be so 'natural'. Why not, for example, say that what is most important is the survival (or perhaps even improvement) of the human species, accepting any pain that might entail.
The 'foundation' I subscribe to is the rational consideration of one's imperative needs. The pleasure/pain principle is a entirely incidental, though it serves as a useful indicator.
