The Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense

[max-greece]

"Fraud, murder and fornication are all moral evils."

Ah yes - the Christian obsession with sex. A moral evil!

Do fuck off.

[Ryantology]

The conflicts you perceive are based on conflating moral with natural evils, not accepting finite knowledge as part of the human condition, ignoring the utility of pain, dismissing the role of our attitude while suffering, and limiting God’s justice to the earthly existence.

1. For a god, there is no difference between moral and natural evil, since he is personally responsible for every drop of rain that falls.

Taken individually, these mistakes appear to present a conflict between a just God and a fallen creation. A complete picture of the human condition reveals a different story, one in which He, brings justice to the wicked, restores the losses of the innocent, and redeems the suffering of the righteous.

Conveniently, none of this justice is visible to those who might benefit from knowing that justice is being served. It's a closed court in which no part of the process is ever revealed to anybody outside of it. Foregoing the obvious implication that God runs the ultimate kangaroo court, it's just another way that Christians rationalize, to themselves, that there is a just universe and we have to believe in it, lest we become victims of it.

Conflating moral with natural evils: A moral evil is when one person wrongs another. Fraud, murder and fornication are all moral evils. A natural evil is when natural events harm an unsuspecting person. Examples of natural evil include hurricanes, disease, famine, and wild animal attacks.

God is wronging people when so-called acts of God cause death, misery and devastation. I don't feel inclined to share your opinion that God deserves a special exception.

First, “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” God gave us the gift of life. It may be long or it may be short. Nevertheless it is life. To complain about the inequality of His blessings, shows a lack of gratitude, i.e. looking the gift horse in the mouth.

People who take back gifts after they are given are rightly regarded with derision (and occasionally, a mildly racist epithet).

Second, in themselves, naturally occurring processes hostile to humans are neither good nor bad. The believer considers them a net good, because they are part of the providential order. Forest fires clear the land for new growth. Earthquakes produce islands and mountains that serve as niches for various types of wildlife. Etc. Only our ignorance places us in harm’s way, which takes you to the next part of the response.

Naturally-occurring processes are neutral only in a universe that is not designed and directed by omnipotent supermonsters. Accounting for the presence of such a supermonster makes these acts deliberate and calculated acts of evil, by that supermonster's own moral codex.

Mankind lacks the omniscience that would allow him to avoid these hazards. God cannot be blamed for failing to make us equal to Himself in this regard. For God to create equals to Himself is logically impossible, like squaring the circle.

Justify this assertion.

Any created being must of necessity be less perfect than God. But could we not be made sufficiently aware? Perhaps, except that brings you to the next two mistakes.

Mankind need not be omniscient for this danger to be nullified. One need only a sufficient, absolutely finite, increase in sapience for that to be the case. Thus, God is to blame for his neglect.

Ignoring the value of pain & dismissing the role of our attitude while suffering: I like the proverb that, “Pain is a given; suffering is optional.” Pain serves as a warning of harm and signals injury. As such it is a net good, because it helps protect and inform us about dangers to our health and well-being.

An omnipotent being is, by definition, capable of creating beings that could enjoy all the benefits of pain without the pain. We feel pain because God wishes for us to feel pain. Another failure of reason.

Suffering relates to whether the pain we endure has value or is in vain. Athletes willingly endure pain to increase their strength and stamina. Patriots risk life and limb to protect the liberties of their country. It is only when your pain seems senseless that you suffer. It is at this point that you pray to the Lord for comfort and to give you strength. This is how you grow spiritually, by recognizing His authority and trusting that your suffering has purpose.

Again, suffering is necessary only because God wishes for people to suffer, as he could have chosen a theoretically infinite number of other ways to confer this benefit without the drawbacks.

“But why must suffering even exist?” you ask. A life without hardship would thwart your spiritual growth and personal development. A life of perfect ease* would not provide you with the opportunity to attain the spiritual maturity necessary to partake in the blessings of Heaven.

Again, for an omnipotent being, necessity is irrelevant. He designed it this way intentionally when he could have designed it in any other way.

The only reasonable objection to this of which I can think is this: still-born infants and the untimely death of small children seem not to allow enough time for such spiritual development. How do I account for this? I don’t know. In my denomination, children in the afterlife are raised by angels to become citizens of heaven. I suppose they can build on whatever small amount of suffering they experienced and observation of earthly injustice. I don’t know. To me this is a very minor objection.

Yet, Christians compare abortion to the Holocaust. It is, again, applying lower standards to the being who could have designed it in any other way. God could simply prevent these tragedies by not allowing conception. He deliberately allows conception and then kills them. Again, his omnipotent nature invalidates any explanation other than that he wants it to happen this way.

The problem of evil is only a problem if the wicked go unpunished and restitution is not made to their victims. If you only allow God to work his justice in this earth, then of course you find Him ineffective. You cannot forget that reward and punishment in the afterlife corrects the failures of our species.

Yet again, it is not necessary for God to operate this way. He can prevent the evil from happening, or he could punish the doers where it can be known that they are punished. He opts not to, why?

None of what I have presented makes any sense without taking God as a given, nor have I presented any of this as proof of God's existence, only to show that free will, local/temporary injustice, and natural disasters are not incompatible with a just and all-knowing God.

You have succeeded only in demonstrating precisely the opposite of what you intended, by assuming that an omni-max God has to operate within limits. Those omni-max qualities, all by themselves, invalidate every single point you have made. The only justice of the God you describe is the sort of 'justice' meted out by cruel and vindictive tyrants throughout history. That, of course, is the point of the Problem of Evil: it doesn't address whether God exists or not. It addresses the fact that you worship the purest form of evil.

[Chas]

There is no such thing as "free will". Neuroscience has proven decisions are made before we are conscious of them. They are composed of elements, many of which are subconscious. (Proven by PET scans, and MRI scans.)
One cannot be "free" to do anything, if one is constrained in any way by their past, or anything in the nature of reality.
Free will is an illusion, which has been debunked.
Please do try to join the 21st Century.

Fullerene, I think you go too far. Neuroscience has shown that we don't have complete conscious free will.
That we have free will is not disproved by these results, just that it is not simple if it exists.

Your conclusion reminds me of the followers of B. F. Skinner and D. O. Hebb - a leap too far.

[Tonus]

A natural evil is when natural events harm an unsuspecting person. Examples of natural evil include hurricanes, disease, famine, and wild animal attacks. Most people agree that when a villain or deviant suffers as a result of their own bad behavior (like my informed smoker example) they are getting their just desserts. Likewise, most people consider the suffering of the innocent at the hands of a villain (like the pedophile victim), morally equivalent to a wild animal attack, a natural evil.

Where would 2 Kings 2:23-24 fall into this? Is the animal attack an evil thing, or exempt because it was in response to another evil attack (name-calling would be considered evil in this context, yes)?

[Neo-Scholastic]

"Fraud, murder and fornication are all moral evils."

Ah yes - the Christian obsession with sex. A moral evil!

So I present three types of sins and you pick the one about sex. Sounds like you're the one obsessed with sex.

---

I'll take that as an "I give up." Thought you were above such trivial responses.

I explained my position. You disagree. No sense belaboring the point.

[Faith No More]

I explained my position. You disagree. No sense belaboring the point.

I did more than disagree with you. I pointed out the flaws that I saw with your position, and you chose not to add a rebuttal in favor of accusing me of spinning the facts. If you choose not to defend your position any further, that is fine, just don't slither away from the discussion with an accusation of twisting the information. It's contemptuous and beneath you.

[max-greece]

"Fraud, murder and fornication are all moral evils."

Ah yes - the Christian obsession with sex. A moral evil!

So I present three types of sins and you pick the one about sex. Sounds like you're the one obsessed with sex.

---

I picked that one out because I'd agree the other 2 are moral evils.

Here's the thing. Why choose fornication at all? Why not go with Rape? Child Molesting? Theft?

Sorry - still a Christian obsession.

[bennyboy]

I picked that one out because I'd agree the other 2 are moral evils.

Here's the thing. Why choose fornication at all? Why not go with Rape? Child Molesting? Theft?

Sorry - still a Christian obsession.

If you see sin as a pragmatic category, rather than one of offense of God, then the 7 sins make sense. They all involve either a delusional view of self and other, or the pursuit of the pleasures of a biological mechanism while neglecting its natural goal.

Theft is of the delusional type-- it reveals an inflated sense of the importance of self relative to others.

Unproductive sex involves spending time and effort in order to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, but gives little lasting satisfaction.

If you see morality as a combination of effective living, and a social contract letting other people live effectively, then it's obvious that too much of a fixation on sex (or food, or possessions, or power) represents immoral behaviors.

Before everyone starts squeaking in outrage, let me say again that this is just one way to view morality. I think for the most part, the Bible makes more sense when morality is viewed this way than when viewed as attempting to comprehend and obey the random whims of God.

[Faith No More]

If you see morality as a combination of effective living, and a social contract letting other people live effectively, then it's obvious that too much of a fixation on sex (or food, or possessions, or power) represents immoral behaviors.

I agree, except this isn't what the bible tells us. It tells us that any sex outside of marriage is wrong.

[max-greece]

"Theft is of the delusional type-- it reveals an inflated sense of the importance of self relative to others."

I don't quite get what you are saying here. God appears to agree with me that its a bad thing which I guess its why it made it into the 10 commandments.

"Unproductive sex involves spending time and effort in order to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, but gives little lasting satisfaction."

I'd disagree massively here. I'd say it can provide a lifetime of pleasure. Of all of the ways we have come up with for stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain its one of the least dangerous compared to drugs / alcohol etc.

"If you see morality as a combination of effective living, and a social contract letting other people live effectively, then it's obvious that too much of a fixation on sex (or food, or possessions, or power) represents immoral behaviors."

As opposed to the good things in life like war, rape, forcing your beliefs on others.....

Also you conflated fixation on food, possessions and power with sex. How is that even valid?

"Before everyone starts squeaking in outrage, let me say again that this is just one way to view morality. I think for the most part, the Bible makes more sense when morality is viewed this way than when viewed as attempting to comprehend and obey the random whims of God."

No squeaking here. The trouble with taking a view on biblical morality is that it is totally unacceptable in the modern world. If you attempted to follow biblical morality in any country in the Western World you would find yourself in prison. The only way to look at them would be as the random whims of God. Even the most benign commands are morally neutral, for example, why is it morally more acceptable to eat a steak than a pork chop?