The Problem of Evil, Christians, and Inconsistency

[Neo-Scholastic]

Better question...why don't you choose only good actions?

Go to Amazon.
Buy 'The Selfish Gene' by Dawkins.
Read it.

I read it. It's trash.

[Diablo]

Go to Amazon.
Buy 'The Selfish Gene' by Dawkins.
Read it.

I read it. It's trash.

[Mudhammam]

Go to Amazon.
Buy 'The Selfish Gene' by Dawkins.
Read it.

I read it. It's trash.

I don't even know where to begin.

---

Better question...why don't you choose only good actions?

Well now, if you're going to pretend to be as ignorant of the world as a three-year-old, I can certainly treat you like one.

You see, when you grow up you realize that things work in such a way that there are oftentimes circumstances of injustice, situations where people find themselves at different extremes of inhumanity through various incremental steps that at the time seemed reasonable and/or unavoidable. There's also this tendency we have as creatures that arose through natural processes to be very limited in our scope and grasp of the wider picture, and consequently find ourselves continually learning and re-learning ways on how to improve our responses to new and old challenges that enter into our path, obstacles that may or may not be a result of conflicting human interests and passions. I know this must sound very foreign to your apparently naive sensibilities but now that I've given you something to chew on, you can probably recognize how incredibly asinine your attempt to dodge the question came across to the rest of us.

[genkaus]

I never found the free will defence persuasive, even as a Catholic. I always argued along the lines that our choosing to do evil was not an integral part of our free will but an abuse of it, indeed, our will does not becomes more limited in Heaven but rather, it is truly freed as we are no longer under concupiscence, sin and the limitations of this material world and can truly appreciate and embrace the good. While God indeed could have created a better world, this was the world he saw fit to create for the unfolding of his will, the plan he has for us (this lack of context is something I think the possible worlds talk seems to miss). He could certainly stop any sort of evil that occurs today but he permits it for the sake of a greater good which would not come about otherwise. This last bit is, of course, something that is taken on faith by believers.

Bolding mine.

This seems like a long-winded way of saying "god works in mysterious ways" - which, as an answer to the problem of evil, is not useful at all.

You are saying that god allows evil to exist because it is required to achieve some "greater good" - but you don't know what that greater good is, you don't know why evil is necessary and you can't judge if there are any other options available. Atleast Christians who answer "it is required for free-will" give a definite reply that can be examined.

---

If you are speaking of the typical Omni max God know that is a catholic based version of the God, not of the bible. The bible does not say God is omni benevolent. Rather the oppsite. There are those in whom God of the bible hates.

Nevertheless, the rest of the Christianity believes him to be omnibenevolent and point to the bible to justify that. So, until you convince them all to change their view, we'll continue to regard omnibenevolence as one of your hypothetical god's traits.

Do you even understand the basics of biblical Christianity? God sent His son to die so all 'evil' would not have to be dealt with on the spot. Fore God sees all sin on the same level. it is our collective 'morality' that puts in on a sliding scale.

(Meaning if not for Christ's planned sacrifice we wouls all have to be dealt with eg the great flood.

Again a catholic construct based in greek philosphy. We are not free willed, rather the bible tells us we are slaves to sin with only one choice. That choice is to accept redemption.

This position is the perfect example of your hypothetical god's moral depravity and intellectual dishonesty.

1. Create something flawed and corrupted (remember, we don't have free will on that issue).
2. See all flaws and corruption as equal - even when they are not.
3. Realize that you don't want things that are flawed and corrupted.
4. So, instead of improving on those flaws and corruptions, create a loophole in the system which would allow you to accept those flawed and corrupted things anyway.

What makes you think this is meant to be anything besides a prooving ground?

Prove what?

If this world is not meant to be anything more than a prooving ground, then wouldn't it make sense to send a kid who did not 'proove' himself back through the mill?

So, we're sent back through the mill? You believe in reincarnation then?

"We are appointed once to live..." If we did not have a chance at life then why not give the one in question another appointment?

Precisely, why not?

---

My $.02...Free will is necessary is someone is to freely love another. How you think about this thought problem indicates how persuasive you find the free will arguement. You can pick one of two generally comparable female lovers. The first loves you because they recognize traits in you that they find attractive and want to be with you of their own volition. THe second, has been enchanted by a love potion and adores you for no particular reason. With whom do you want to spend the rest of your life?

And how does this relate to the problem of evil?

---

Those who do not seek the God outlined and described in the bible, follow the easy path out lined by religion. If and when a religious description seperated itself or even speaks about God where the bible does not, that religious description ceases to be about the God of the bible.

Is that so? So, in the other thread where you argued that Fr0d0, who believes in an omni-benevolent god, does believe in the god of your bible, you were lying?

[genkaus]

Given that its a long post, I'll only address the relevant points.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

---

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[ronedee]

I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the standard problem of evil argument and the typical conception of the Christian God as the omnipotent and omnibenevolent Absolute of all things...well almost all things, as his will is apparently unable to oversee the abolition of grotesque evil in the world. Christians regularly tout free will as the impediment to his omnipotence; they like to say, "Well, this is the best of all possible worlds because a world without any grotesque evil would also be a world with severely limited wills" (as if our wills aren't already severely limited by physical determinants). Anyway, putting aside the issue of free will and accepting the intelligibility of the concept as Christians would have us do (for the sake of my argument, not because I think it's intelligible), I would like to press this issue more to the point as I think it will demonstrate the vicious and utter vacuousness rampant in their philosophical outlook.

First of all, atheist always think: "IF there is a God, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?" My question would be; what is beyond man's control? We have it in our collective power as humans to fix most of those problems. And "with" God, it would be all the better!

It appears obvious that here we see a problem with the "best-of-all-possible-worlds" scenario arise. If this is truly the best possible world God could create, then what's all the fuss about heaven? If heaven is an even better domain to live in than earth (and I would sure like to think so), then Christians would seem obliged to revoke any notion of their sacred free will in heaven.

"But, ah!" the Christian is likely to retort, "in heaven, we choose to be good all the time! Our freedom is not impugned because we have made our choice on earth, since that is the purpose of our free will here, that it allows us to choose God, and that makes heaven an even better possible domain to dwell in! Therefore, no one in heaven will want to do evil!"

Because free will isn't necessary in heaven. Evil is eradicated! There are no choices between good & evil.

So, we're free in heaven, and it's even better than earth. If that seems consistent to you, just wait, because it gets worse. You see, from what I have gathered, Christians like to think that the aforementioned retort negates any objection that God could have just foregone this creation altogether and transported his children to this even better existence called heaven. Apparently, that we "choose" God is very important.

No. Ironically, and confusingly we really don't have free will. We "had" free will. As in our nature is sin, right from the get-go(Adam & Eve)! And God knowing the outcome? God actually chooses us! Fortunate for some. Unfortunate for many. A reason I don't try to convert anyone! Just spread the word for a few late bloomers!

And this brings us to the rampant vacuousness and inconsistency in their logic. Anyone with a cursory interest in history will easily observe that for the past 100-200 thousand years, the vast majority of humans who have been conceived (which is apparently when the soul gets miraculously created) have either died in the womb, at birth, or before the age of moral accountability, which for our purposes, we'll say is no less than ten years of age. So, granted the position Christians commonly take, there are BILLIONS of people in heaven (kids do go to heaven, right?), perhaps far more than are in hell, and none because of their "free will."

If this isn't inconsistency, I don't know what is.

Well.... how does man understand God? Through other men? Or can man actually think like God does? And strive for those elusive thoughts of the Supreme Being in the universe! The Maker of EVERYTHING!

For the sake of argument:

Who's to say how old those souls really are in those babies? Just because the flesh dies (maybe over and over again) that wouldn't mean anything to an immortal soul? What if this human existence were a school of sorts? What if we've had many, many chances to "get it right"? What "IF" God ultimately wanted us to be like Him? How would He go about doing that? Would He just hand it to us? And we would probably end up killing him... and each other? Because really, there can only be one God. I mean that's our nature. Its what we are.

"If we only had evidence?"

Just for the sake of argument... what "IF" God was smarter than us?

[genkaus]

My question would be; what is beyond man's control?

Weather.

We have it in our collective power as humans to fix most of those problems.

But there is no "collective" power.

And "with" God, it would be all the better!

Exactly - thus implying that we are without god.

Because free will isn't necessary in heaven. Evil is eradicated! There are no choices between good & evil.

So why won't your god do the same on earth?

No. Ironically, and confusingly we really don't have free will. We "had" free will. As in our nature is sin, right from the get-go(Adam & Eve)! And God knowing the outcome? God actually chooses us! Fortunate for some. Unfortunate for many. A reason I don't try to convert anyone! Just spread the word for a few late bloomers!

So, we don't have free will, we are not responsible for our sins and your god still condemns us to eternal torture? Why is he supposed to be a good guy again?

Well.... how does man understand God? Through other men? Or can man actually think like God does? And strive for those elusive thoughts of the Supreme Being in the universe! The Maker of EVERYTHING!

He imagines it.

Who's to say how old those souls really are in those babies?

Who is to say there are any souls?

Just because the flesh dies (maybe over and over again) that wouldn't mean anything to an immortal soul?

If such a thing exists.

What if this human existence were a school of sorts? What if we've had many, many chances to "get it right"? What "IF" God ultimately wanted us to be like Him? How would He go about doing that? Would He just hand it to us?

Sounds like a good idea.

And we would probably end up killing him... and each other?

Only if that is what your god handed to us.