Theodicy and the Holocaust

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 8, 2019

jayem said:
That argument is quite anemic. An evil and deceptive god could allow any ratio of contentment to suffering he wishes. Life is definitely better now than it once was. But that's largely a function of technology. In fact, I'll go Tom Hobbes one better. For the bulk of human history--even in what passed for a law-abiding society--life for most people was poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

You are the one who argued that if a God existed, He would be evil or indifferent - yet, your personal experience of life is good. You are being inconsistent.

Further, as Carl Emerson noted:

Carl Emerson said:
Forgive me for presuming to enter into dialogue at your level but isn't the fact of the resurrection a matter that demands attention and eclipses all doubts about whether a God is in supreme control and ultimate judge of good and evil? Surely we have overrated human suffering in the light of this outcome.

If the Incarnation and Resurrection is true, then an 'evil' God would be incompetent. I'll see your Hobbes and raise you Voltaire: If God did not exist, we'd need to invent Him.
For the product of religion is necessary - as was noted historically, though disputed today. If Christianity is false, the story remains so much better and powerfully positive. To quote Lewis' Puddleglum when facing the Green Lady's enchantment: "I'm for Narnia even if there is none." The health benefits of religion, the betterment of society by ending slavery, etc. made it a potent agent of good.

To get back to Hobbes, life has never been nasty or brutish or short - except if you apply anachronistic standards. Akin to if saying Lucullus or the ancient Sybarites had an awful life, because they didn't possess microwave ovens. Further, a function of technology? You do know the industrial revolution dropped the life expectancy significantly, as people moved into polluted cities and spread TB and the ilk. I disagree happiness or the worth of life can be objectively measured by material possessions; and life expectancy is much more related to hygiene and antibiotics than technology. Who are we to say that the mediaeval peasant had a worse life than the sweatshop worker or wage slave today? The criteria are hard to measure against one another. Further, high income and standard of living as measures of well-being are problematic, as they are coupled with increased suicidality: Happiest places have highest suicide rates, new research finds

jayem said:
Aren't you being axiomatic? You're claiming that God is the very essence and definition of moral perfection. But if a god exists as an independent entity, asserting he is inherently good does not make him so. Of course, you're entitled to your beliefs. But you, and most Christian believers are so invested in the idea of a benevolent god that

You can't play both sides. You are the one who said you are speaking of the Abrahamic God in your little theory, but now balk at the very term you claimed to be using. The Abrahamic God is not merely an 'independant entity', but a Summus Deus, a fount of Being, in essence the Form of the Ideal and sustainer of existence itself. That is why if morality exists, it must reflect Him then, as derived from Him. Either redefine what you mean by God, or stop trying to obfuscate your inconsistency then.

jayem said:
The existence of morality is easily explained as an evolutionary adaption to living in a society. I'm not claiming that God is evil. Personally, I don't believe any kind of supernatural god exists. My point is simply that if God exists, and has a moral nature, it can't be determined by what we observe.

Restating your axiom does not mean supporting it. The question you need to answer is why it would not be determinable by observation. In your theory we are assuming God exists, so your personal disbelief is merely a red herring. If a God did underlie existence, observing said existence would then point to characteristics of its creator - as reading a poem tells you about the beliefs of its writer. What do we observe but Morality, Natural Law, a sense of 'I ought to act in this manner'. Even infants show rudimentary morality. This cannot be "easily ascribed to evolutionary adaptation" in any reading, as the complex gymnastics of excusing acts like Altruism via Prisoner's Dilemmas and game theory makes plain. Not only that, but it actually amounts to the fallacy of appeal to motive to do so, so it isn't even logically coherent.

So again, merely stating God's moral nature must be on faith is not an argument, but a proposition which you have not defended in the slightest.

zippy2006 · Oct 8, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
For a long time one question has been bothering me, is the question of theodicy (arguments of God's Justice in the face of evil in the world), I am a Christian and I believe in God, but lately I have been very troubled with a negative image of God and also with the question of God's omnibenevolence in the face of evil in the world, such as the Holocaust (also known as Shoah).In the scriptures it is said that the Lord is onibenevolent, ok, but if God is omnibenevolent, where was the benivolence of God at the moment when over than 1 million Jewish children were killed in gas chambers and ovenss in Auschwitz? Every day I see that these attributes are totally inconsistent with the realities of this universe. I don't want to end up with non-orthodox ideas like Open Theism, ideas from that Death of God movement that started in the 19th century by secularists and liberal protestants or that Lord is simply powerful but not loving.

I know this discussion has been done many times, but I was wondering why you believe in attributes such as omnibenivolence, when the reality shows that this attribute don't have place in this universe.

It's very difficult for Christians to discuss these question related to post Holocaust Theodicy, and when they discuss the most they say is about freewill (which frankly, for me is a way to avoid the question).

I wanted to open this topic in the Christian Apologetics section, but I still can't post in that part of the forum.

My opinion is that if we look to the cross and the Jewish story then we see that God is always with his people, even in their suffering. Tinker's joke therefore has some small piece of truth to it--God was with the Jewish people in the shoah.

"Omnibenevolence" is a word that stands on the idea of good. "Good" is a complicated idea when you get down to it. Sorry, I don't have a great answer to your question. The topic reminds me of the old adage, "God writes straight with crooked lines." In some ways this idea of the shoah can be found in Daniel 3:8...

Sérgio Junior · Oct 9, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
As this hypothetical makes plain, we don't know the consequences of events. We think we can envision a better world, but if you pull a string at one end, it might unravel the cloth somewhere else. Essentially this is a paraphrase of Leibnitz again, but there really is no objective way of determining if it is even possible to have a better world than our own - while still maintaining our levels of agency. Even something that seems an obvious good, such as not allowing the Nazis to come to power, might in the long run have had far worse sequelae.

This is the danger of hypotheticals and supposition. We simply don't know, and thinking it could have been better somehow, is merely a complete guess - not even an educated one, really. So rather look at what we can all agree on - what currently Is, or what has been (though of course mediated by the prism of our intellectual frameworks, and the biases of historians). As I noted before, I can't watch my son toddling about, or feel the sunshine on my skin, and not conclude "that it is Good". Others have far worse lives surely, but certainly the balance is far more toward what we conceive as Good rather than ill. I don't have the ability to take the cosmic view, but my subjective view and reading of history, supports the view of Goodness lying below the surface. We name Wars, we seldom name Peace - in general people live their lives contentedly for the most part, though there might be pestilence and war and famine about. Evil is the exception rather than the rule - no matter if we see Naturalistic Materialists trying to excuse altruism and goodness on fallacies of motive; or those that anthropomorphise Nature red in tooth and claw, as if this is somehow evil.

Indeed, it should be common for Leibnitz to think such good and optimistic things, since he did not live in a scenario of war, disaster, calamity and poverty, I think the structure of this Leibnizian thinking doesn' t allow difficulties, I have read this for a long time ago Leibniz's phrase, I know that after that Voltaire satirized this idea of Leibniz, but I have no idea how Voltaire approached it. But I think the disasters and catastrophes that happen in this world simply refute Leibniz's idea of the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz probably shouldn't know much about suffering. I think Leibniz was one of the most optimistic philosophers ever. Although I said everything I said about tragedy in the best possible world, I have no idea what a better world would be like, and that's why I say you're right when you say there is no objective way to determine a better world. than that, but I think God could have made a world where we would be free but not do evil and not suffer (I know this is a big contradiction, but I think God is capable of doing such a scenario and I know that He does this in the future, but I don't understand why he didn't do it at the beginning of creation maybe I'll only know that when I'm with The Lord). I also think that ideas such as "evil exists for the greater good" and that "suffering teaches us something" are not so satisfying to many, and to some people who think this is a great insult and contempt for human suffering. Turning to the question of the Holocaust, and the miracles in favor of Israel in the Old Testament (although I don't consider events like Exodus to be of all the magnitude that is described in Scripture), I simply think God could have saved people in the Holocaust likewise, and if it affected the equilibrium of things, could He not simply restore that equilibrium in any way that wouldn't cost the lives of many?

Sérgio Junior · Oct 9, 2019

Silmarien said:
I would start by seconding Quid's recommendation and saying that you ought to read The Brothers Karamazov. I think it's the best formulation of the Problem of Evil out there, and is definitely worth reading. (An easier read would be David Bentley Hart's The Doors of the Sea, which is similarly themed.)

Actually since and 2017 @2PhiloVoid has pointed me to this Dostoevsky's work and other readings, but I haven't read it yet. It's time for me to follow these recommendations.

Silmarien said:
I don't have a problem reconciling human evil with a benevolent God because we are the ones doing it. I also don't think you should view these sorts of issues outside of the larger Christian context, since a lot of it is transformed by the eschatological promise of future world where everything has been redeemed. This world is fallen, and the Incarnation presents a taste of what God intends to do with it, but for the moment it remains fallen. I think the only real question for theodicy is whether any future perfection can truly justify present suffering, but I don't think we have the information necessary to make that judgement at present.

I think I agree with everything you said, Silmarien, but the question that always came up was why didn't God create the universe with the same perfection that we will experience in the future? But we have no way of knowing anyway (at least not in this life). And I also agree with @Carl Emerson, when he says: "from eternity's perspective the temporary suffering will be eclipsed by the love in God in Jesus".

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 9, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
Indeed, it should be common for Leibnitz to think such good and optimistic things, since he did not live in a scenario of war, disaster, calamity and poverty, I think the structure of this Leibnizian thinking doesn' t allow difficulties, I have read this for a long time ago Leibniz's phrase, I know that after that Voltaire satirized this idea of Leibniz, but I have no idea how Voltaire approached it. But I think the disasters and catastrophes that happen in this world simply refute Leibniz's idea of the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz probably shouldn't know much about suffering. I think Leibniz was one of the most optimistic philosophers ever. Although I said everything I said about tragedy in the best possible world, I have no idea what a better world would be like, and that's why I say you're right when you say there is no objective way to determine a better world. than that, but I think God could have made a world where we would be free but not do evil and not suffer (I know this is a big contradiction, but I think God is capable of doing such a scenario and I know that He does this in the future, but I don't understand why he didn't do it at the beginning of creation maybe I'll only know that when I'm with The Lord). I also think that ideas such as "evil exists for the greater good" and that "suffering teaches us something" are not so satisfying to many, and to some people who think this is a great insult and contempt for human suffering. Turning to the question of the Holocaust, and the miracles in favor of Israel in the Old Testament (although I don't consider events like Exodus to be of all the magnitude that is described in Scripture), I simply think God could have saved people in the Holocaust likewise, and if it affected the equilibrium of things, could He not simply restore that equilibrium in any way that wouldn't cost the lives of many?

Leibnitz was born in the dying years of the Thirty Years War, so much of Germany was in ruin and poor for decades thereafter. I think his optimism justified from his own life, where after losing out on many fronts, he ended up a courtier of an unimportant house - whose star then sharply ascended, as the House of Brunswick suddenly became an Electorate and would inherit the British throne. Voltaire satirised him in Candide, where the bruised and battered protagonist wonders: "If this is the best of all worlds, what must the others be like". Voltaire never wrote a formal refutation that I am aware of.

Justifying evil as for the greater good risks ultimately excusing it, and rendering it not evil, but just misunderstood. As if the ends justify the means. I don't think that very Christian, which calls for a renewal or restoration. Evil is something bent out of shape, not a frame meant to help shape us - that said, the wound does alter the finished product. You cannot know if you have character unless facing adversity though, as you don't know the strength of a rope till you pull on it. Coddled children that had no opportunity during which they may have hurt themselves or failed or tested themselves, would inevitably be spoilt. There is a fine line between protecting your kids from harm, and denying them opportunity to grow as people. These are difficult questions with no ready made answers.

One must also bear in mind that Compelle Intrare is a powerful form of Gospel - many turn to God only when they have no avenue otherwise. There are no Atheists in Foxholes, as the saying goes. I don't know how God would have, or in what manner he might have, saved people in the Holocaust - though I know of Maximillian Kolbe that saved one Polish man, or Otto Schindler, or Nicholas Winton of the Kindertransport, or so. Ultimately we can speculate on what might have been, but such things are always shrouded in mist.

On this, the Day of Atonement, it is imperitive to remember that such evil is ultimately our wrongdoing, that we are supposed to atone TO God for. We can try and turn the tables and ask why God didn't prevent it, but it is us that failed Him. The crux of the matter, is that in the Christian view God did do something extraordinary about such sin, after all.

brinny · Oct 9, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
This word doesn't exist in the Bible, as you may know this is a Latin term and that means "all good" and "infinite benevolence", and it seems that some verses give this idea (such as Psalm 100: 5, James 1:17 and Mark 10:18).

The living God is holy and just.

He is also merciful. That is why He did as it is written in John 3:16, and that is, that He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to shed His blood on the cross, and die for you and me, and anyone who accepts Him as their Savior.

How is this not merciful and gracious?

By the way, there is nothing in the Bible where the living God claims to be "omnibenevolent".

It is written that the living God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient.

However, the Gnostics teach that the living God is evil. They would claim that it is the living God Who is responsible for ALL the evil in the world. Therefore, it isn't Lucifer/Satan, according to the Gnostics, who is responsible for evil, but GOD HIMSELF is. (Lucifer who was re-named Satan because in his rebellion he became the living God, El Elyon's "adversary").

As Jesus Himself said, Satan is the "father of lies" and a "murderer" from the beginning. (And "who" did this Satan want to "murder" first? Well he wanted to "murder" God Himself and to de-throne Him and sit upon His throne).

There's a verse that comes to mind:

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" ~Isa 5:20

Silmarien · Oct 9, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
I think I agree with everything you said, Silmarien, but the question that always came up was why didn't God create the universe with the same perfection that we will experience in the future? But we have no way of knowing anyway (at least not in this life). And I also agree with @Carl Emerson, when he says: "from eternity's perspective the temporary suffering will be eclipsed by the love in God in Jesus".

I have a bit of a taste for evolutionary theology, where people kind of focus on the ongoing, "incomplete" aspect of Creation, and one idea I've come across is that if the universe had been brought into being as fully perfect and "finished," it would have been indistinguishable from God himself. For it to have its own unique character, God needs to step back from it and let it develop with a degree of independence, but that is automatically going to lead to imperfections creeping in.

It's probably a bit close to process theology, but I think it's a pretty compelling version of the free will defense.

zippy2006 · Oct 9, 2019

Silmarien said:
I have a bit of a taste for evolutionary theology, where people kind of focus on the ongoing, "incomplete" aspect of Creation, and one idea I've come across is that if the universe had been brought into being as fully perfect and "finished," it would have been indistinguishable from God himself. For it to have its own unique character, God needs to step back from it and let it develop with a degree of independence, but that is automatically going to lead to imperfections creeping in.

It's probably a bit close to process theology, but I think it's a pretty compelling version of the free will defense.

The most obvious question I would ask such a theologian is, "How do you see/anticipate the relation between God and creation in the new creation, after the resurrection?" Process Theology may not profess to be credal, but that question is relevant for those holding to the early creeds.

Silmarien · Oct 9, 2019

zippy2006 said:
The most obvious question I would ask such a theologian is, "How do you see/anticipate the relation between God and creation in the new creation, after the resurrection?" Process Theology may not profess to be credal, but that question is relevant for those holding to the early creeds.

The theologians I'm thinking of are for the most part Catholic (John Haught, who draws from Teilhard de Chardin), so I would assume that they do claim to be credal. ^_^

It's not process theology proper, except insofar as any theology of becoming starts to lean in that direction. Especially these people who have a strongly theological interpretation of evolutionary theory.

It's been a while since I last read Haught, but I think the idea is that the universe is evolving towards New Creation, kind of in the same way the individual is. To what extent it would still be free and independent afterwards is a good question, but really just strikes me as a variation of the old question of whether and in what sense free will still exists afterwards.

jayem · Oct 10, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
You are the one who argued that if a God existed, He would be evil or indifferent - yet, your personal experience of life is good. You are being inconsistent.

My argument was that a benevolent God is not a logical conclusion when one observes events in the world. What is logical is that God--if such an entity exists-- is either evil and deceptive, dualistic, or morally detached.

And yes, my life so far has been quite satisfying. I attribute that to being fortunate in having good parents, good teachers, good health, and making some good decisions. My comment about God being good to me was an attempt at jocularity, which apparently missed the mark.

If the Incarnation and Resurrection is true, then an 'evil' God would be incompetent.

But if it's false, then it's a myth, written after Jesus's life to make the narrative more compelling. It's ultimately an event that must be believed as a matter of faith.

I'll see your Hobbes and raise you Voltaire: If God did not exist, we'd need to invent Him.

We can agree on Voltaire. He's one of my favorites. And he was correct--we did invent God.

The health benefits of religion, the betterment of society by ending slavery, etc. made it a potent agent of good.

Religion has made positive contributions to civilization. Many good and charitable works. The monasteries kept classical literature and philosophy alive during the Dark Ages. Most of the earliest hospitals and the great older European universities were established by religious orders. Let's not forget the many masterpieces of art, music, and architecture that were sponsored or inspired by Christianity. But Christianity also has blood on its hands. Mostly in the past. But I've read estimates that 5 to 8 million people died in the Catholic/Protestant religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. Even if secular issues, like politics and economics were major underlying factors, Christianity easily leant itself to putting a veneer of godliness on the power struggles between spiteful and avaricious noblemen and monarchs. Pascal, who was quoted in an earlier post, was very correct that men never do evil so cheerfully and completely as when they do it from religious conviction. And getting back to the OP: The Holocaust was not that far in the past. I won't blame Christianity alone. The Nazi/SS bigwigs rejected Christianity for their own bizarre made-up religion based on ancient Teutonic paganism. But for centuries, the Catholic and Protestant churches had indoctrinated Europeans that Jews were accursed, and were responsible for deicide. European Christianity fertilized the soil in which the Nazi's anti-Semitic seeds grew exuberantly. Where was the Church when Jews were harassed and beaten in the streets? With some exceptions (like Pastors Bonhoeffer and Niemoller) European Christians seemed to turn a blind eye when their Jewish neighbors were forced to sell their homes and businesses, were herded onto trains, and just disappeared. Did no one think something is amiss? If Christianity is supposed to make men better, this was an epic failure for the ages.

And all of these--the good and the bad--are compatible with a deity who is evil, but allows some good for purposes of deceit. Or a deity who is both good and bad. Or a deity who is uninvolved and lets events run their course whatever that may be.

If a God did underlie existence, observing said existence would then point to characteristics of its creator - as reading a poem tells you about the beliefs of its writer. What do we observe but Morality, Natural Law, a sense of 'I ought to act in this manner'. Even infants show rudimentary morality. This cannot be "easily ascribed to evolutionary adaptation" in any reading, as the complex gymnastics of excusing acts like Altruism via Prisoner's Dilemmas and game theory makes plain. Not only that, but it actually amounts to the fallacy of appeal to motive to do so, so it isn't even logically coherent.

But we also observe enormous evil. As in Nazi's crimes against humanity. And the sexual abuse of children as discussed in an another thread. Unless I missed something, I still haven't found a coherent explanation for why a supposedly loving God--who knows that such crimes will occur, and presumably has the ability to intervene--would allow a pedophile to brutalize a child. It makes no sense whatsoever that the free will of a sexual sadist would have a higher priority with God than the well-being of his victim. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point.

And BTW, I'm sure you know there are many papers in the peer reviewed psychobiology (and philosophical) literature supporting an evolutionary origin for moral instincts. Discussing this is off-topic. But here's a recent (2015) collection of articles on the topic. I admit I haven't read the book, but I'd like to. I perused it in my local medical school's library, and it seems to be comprehensive. It's expensive, but I might download it to an E-reader.

The Evolution of Morality by Todd K. Shackelford

Sérgio Junior · Oct 10, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
Leibnitz was born in the dying years of the Thirty Years War, so much of Germany was in ruin and poor for decades thereafter. I think his optimism justified from his own life, where after losing out on many fronts, he ended up a courtier of an unimportant house - whose star then sharply ascended, as the House of Brunswick suddenly became an Electorate and would inherit the British throne. Voltaire satirised him in Candide, where the bruised and battered protagonist wonders: "If this is the best of all worlds possible, what must the others be like". Voltaire never wrote a formal refutation that I am aware of.

Quid, I completely forgot that Leibniz lived at the time ofthe Thirty Years War :sorry:

, and that was a horrible scenario in 17th century in Europe, but having been a contemporary of the Thirty Years War, I think he remained quite optimistic when he said: "the best of all world possible" argument. I think it is very difficult for people to accept Leibniz's conclusions and that this world is the "best of all possible", precisely because of natural tragedies such as earthquakes, cyclones and others natural disasters, and it also seems that this optimism de Leibniz makes him seem ignorant of sinful human nature. But its possible that Im misunderstanding what Leibniz meant when he spoke of "the best of all worlds possible".

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 10, 2019

jayem said:
My argument was that a benevolent God is not a logical conclusion when one observes events in the world. What is logical is that God--if such an entity exists-- is either evil and deceptive, dualistic, or morally detached.

You are being inconsistent once more. You repeatedly claimed we cannot determine the moral nature of God except on faith, then turn around and say you can observe He must be evil or indifferent based on observation of His creation.

As I said, I disagree, as Evil is the exception rather than the rule, nor does evil have existence in and of itself - it is a way to try and reach a perceived good, such as material possessions or subjective feelings, usually. Such a view requires another metaphysical layer from which the valence of Good or Evil is derived - a type of Zurvan, as I mentioned earlier. In essence, such a God would be the Gnostic evil Demiurge, not the Abrahamic God as usually conceived.

jayem said:
But if it's false, then it's a myth, written after Jesus's life to make the narrative more compelling. It's ultimately an event that must be believed as a matter of faith.

Yes, the Resurrection is a matter of faith. Believing a man rose from the dead is no more believable on our assumed Uniformitarianism today than in the 1st century. The Gospels and Apostles are quite upfront about that, and the fantastic earth-shattering claim they are making.

jayem said:
We can agree on Voltaire. He's one of my favorites. And he was correct--we did invent God.

Voltaire was a deist. He thought our Reason was grasping at a real God, he even agreed with the existence of Natural (Moral) Law; he just thought much of our religion invented or mythic. This quip was in fact against Atheism.

jayem said:
And all of these--the good and the bad--are compatible with a deity who is evil, but allows some good for purposes of deceit. Or a deity who is both good and bad. Or a deity who is uninvolved and lets events run their course whatever that may be.

Or a Good God that allows Agency for whatever divine purpose of His own. Once more, this merely amounts to restating your axiom, not defending it in the slightest - and as noted above, inconsistent to your other claims.

jayem said:
But we also observe enormous evil. As in Nazi's crimes against humanity. And the sexual abuse of children as discussed in an another thread. Unless I missed something, I still haven't found a coherent explanation for why a supposedly loving God--who knows that such crimes will occur, and presumably has the ability to intervene--would allow a pedophile to brutalize a child. It makes no sense whatsoever that the free will of a sexual sadist would have a higher priority with God than the well-being of his victim. I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point.

Here is the rub though, does free will have a higher priority? The purpose would seem to craft children of God, which is mostly on a noumenal level it seems, on desire and response to the world experienced. This is not limited by their incidental experiences as such - think of Job. Doestoyevsky covers this nicely when he states "your ways are too hard" in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov, or when communal guilt is ascribed to all by Dmitry and Father Zosima. This is our failing, not God's. Sin begets Sin.

jayem said:
And BTW, I'm sure you know there are many papers in the peer reviewed psychobiology (and philosophical) literature supporting an evolutionary origin for moral instincts. Discussing this is off-topic. But here's a recent (2015) collection of articles on the topic. I admit I haven't read the book, but I'd like to. I perused it in my local medical school's library, and it seems to be comprehensive. It's expensive, but I might download it to an E-reader.

The Evolution of Morality by Todd K. Shackelford

I am very interested in this topic, as you might imagine. Thing is, much of this amounts to the fallacy of appeal to motive, to ascribe motives as a way of dismissing other options which you have no way of verifying; or special pleading; or good old fashioned Petitio Principii and question begging, where it is assumed it must be evolutionary in origin, and thus by hook or by crook it must be. It doesn't quite cut it. CS Lewis has a great bit in his Pilgrim's Regress where he has the virgin Reason battle the Spirit of the Age with three riddles which nicely encapsulates this.

If you take a step back; or apply simple standard logical method by reducing it to syllogisms, sorites and base propositions; it evaporates like mist before the sun. The Emperor has no clothes.

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 10, 2019

@jayem I wrote on Lewis' riddles a while ago for another thread. It is best to read the original in Pilgrim's Regress, but few have the time or inclination for primary sources today. So if you would permit me the luxury of quoting myself, instead of discussing it de novo here:

Quid est Veritas? said:
This modern belief that man only acts from selfish reasons, that he only acts to accrue pleasure or escape pain, or from the demands of 'selfish genes' is utterly facile.

CS Lewis covered this nicely in Pilgrim's Regress, where the maiden Reason faces the Spirit of the Age. She asks him three riddles: What is the colour of innards you cannot see? If an enemy is pursueing you, must your wife destroy the bridge you must cross to stop the enemy, or leave it standing for you? By what means can you tell an original from a perfect copy?
For instead of following what people give as their reasoned answers, there is always an attempt to 'get behind' what they are saying - trying to decide what the reason is they are thinking in this manner, in which way there is pontificating on inner workings not clearly visible. It is not a man, but an abstraction of man then, like a corpse cut open to expose his innards is not the same as a living person.
In like manner, as per riddle two, the position that they aren't selfish is dismissed as merely wish-fulfillment or what they desire to be the case - but the same is true of those that demand that all is 'selfish' and altruism an ulterior motive. They are just seeking to justify different positions.
So the third riddle, that all 'good things' are always thought to be copies of 'bad' ones. Honour is merely seeking fame, Love merely seeking lust, etc. Why not the reverse? That the virtues are primary and the other copies?

You can always find some 'self-interest' in any action, but that is because you are assuming the doctrine before-hand and then deciding what appropriate base motive to apply 'subconsciously' or not, to someone else. So Love of God is just fear of hell or expectation of heaven. Certainly either of these can follow, but they need not necessarily be the primary cause. It is merely a priori assumption to say so. Saints are merely sinners chasing a different kind of 'high' to such people, Religion an opiate.

This pseudo-scientific Total Depravity of denying goodness as a concept really has little grounds to do so beyond conjecture. It is because the modern world is so jaded, that all noble actions are treated as suspect. Regulus returned to captivity and death out of honour, or after Poitiers Edward III released many French captives knowing they would go home and send their ransoms back to him, or Jean II returning voluntarily to captivity when France reneged on the terms of his ransom. Today all kinds of other motives, social pressure or whatnot, are placed here - which may be the case in many, but certainly need not be universal.
I spent last night nursing my sick daughter, and it can always be said to be Oxytocin or my Selfish Genes at play - for Familial Love is such an abhorrent concept to be beyond the pale. No, we must lay open everyone and assume the inner workings of all their actions without evidence beyond conjecture. They are merely masses of hormones and nerve depolarisations, not reasoning creatures - merely automata lumbering forth at the whims of a selfish cascade of self-continuity - that nothing greater than base instinctual concepts dressed in moral window dressing exists.

Men and women have been sacrificing themselves for ideals and others for millenia, but now we get to pour slime on their examples and drag them down to our level. That is merely wish-fulfillment in my mind. Why are we so much more clear-headed than they?
Love of God is even more at play here. Many groups Loved God or their form of the divine, with no hope of reward or punishment - such as the Sadducees in Judaism, Hypsistarians or philosophic schools in Greco-Roman culture, or certain Bhakti cults in Hinduism. Sufi saints or flagellants, those suffering with Christ as the early Church taught, certainly gained nothing but beatific visions and ideals. You can certainly denigrate that too, if you wish, creating some facade to justify it, but that remains at heart a presumed doctrine built on the axiomatic assumptions. As long as you are presuming others' motives, you can always presume until it fits whatever framework you want.

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 10, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
Quid, I completely forgot that Leibniz lived at the time ofthe Thirty Years War , and that was a horrible scenario in 17th century in Europe, but having been a contemporary of the Thirty Years War, I think he remained quite optimistic when he said: "the best of all world possible" argument. I think it is very difficult for people to accept Leibniz's conclusions and that this world is the "best of all possible", precisely because of natural tragedies such as earthquakes, cyclones and others natural disasters, and it also seems that this optimism de Leibniz makes him seem ignorant of sinful human nature. But its possible that Im misunderstanding what Leibniz meant when he spoke of "the best of all worlds possible".

He based it on his Christianity. It was his own form of Theodicy. Basically, God is Good; God knows all possible worlds; God chose this one; therefore this must be the best possible world to achieve God's aims. Essentially he argued our sinful world would still be better than any other, as God would be aware of greater reprecussions and so.

I am of course greatly, and unfairly, simplifying a complex argument here. He proposed it in a dense book, and Leibnitz was a thorough thinker: I mean, he invented calculus and collected three voluminous tomes of notes to write a history of the house of Brunswick he never managed to finish.

2PhiloVoid · Oct 10, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
For a long time one question has been bothering me, is the question of theodicy (arguments of God's Justice in the face of evil in the world), I am a Christian and I believe in God, but lately I have been very troubled with a negative image of God and also with the question of God's omnibenevolence in the face of evil in the world, such as the Holocaust (also known as Shoah).In the scriptures it is said that the Lord is onibenevolent, ok, but if God is omnibenevolent, where was the benivolence of God at the moment when over than 1 million Jewish children were killed in gas chambers and ovenss in Auschwitz? Every day I see that these attributes are totally inconsistent with the realities of this universe. I don't want to end up with non-orthodox ideas like Open Theism, ideas from that Death of God movement that started in the 19th century by secularists and liberal protestants or that Lord is simply powerful but not loving.

I know this discussion has been done many times, but I was wondering why you believe in attributes such as omnibenivolence, when the reality shows that this attribute don't have place in this universe.

It's very difficult for Christians to discuss these question related to post Holocaust Theodicy, and when they discuss the most they say is about freewill (which frankly, for me is a way to avoid the question).

I wanted to open this topic in the Christian Apologetics section, but I still can't post in that part of the forum.

Sergio, in looking at your questions in this OP, one thing I'd like to ask you up front before commencing with any further discussion is a question that should apply to just about everyone else here as we attempt to discern and evaluate the various social and spiritual components involved in the Shoah, even as awful as it was, and it is this: Have you read and completely studied, becoming extensively familiar with, the contents of the entire O.T. ?

Because, if you haven't, this may play into how you're assessing this issue, or even related issues, and you may also be thinking about all of this with too much reliance upon Modern Day ethical intuitions that, all by themselves, are riddled with often unrecognized fault lines which run throughout their overall epistemic and axiological structures. Just say'n, my friend! One has to take these issues wholistically and not in little tid-bits that seem "appropriate" for today's supposed moral sensibilities, however humane or humanisitic they may be or seem to be.

Besides, as I've said before, the same analytic sauce that is good for the goose is, and should be, good for the gander as well. So many times this fact is ignored not only by Secularists, but by Christians, too, and on this point, I would further challenge any who would attempt to say otherwise. It's a painful truth, but as Christians, we have to face up to the fact that God is Sovereign and at times He very well allows us, or others, or even His own people, to suffer.

What we also have to keep in mind is that .....some suffering is something we may have brought on ourselves because we've left ourselves open to the judgment of God, and both our intellects and our intuitions refuse to engage this biblical truth; at times, any of us can make this refusal on all levels of our thought, which in the end doesn't do us any favors.

jayem · Oct 10, 2019

Quid est Veritas? said:
You are being inconsistent once more. You repeatedly claimed we cannot determine the moral nature of God except on faith, then turn around and say you can observe He must be evil or indifferent based on observation of His creation.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I’ll try one more time. My point is that it cannot be logically determined by observation that God is good and only good. That belief requires faith. The logical conclusion by an objective assessment of the world is that God could be evil and deceitful, both good and evil, or is morally detached.

Such a view requires another metaphysical layer from which the valence of Good or Evil is derived - a type of Zurvan, as I mentioned earlier. In essence, such a God would be the Gnostic evil Demiurge, not the Abrahamic God as usually conceived.

We are now pretty much on the same page. I stated, either in this or another thread, that a dualistic god is a Gnostic concept. But why couldn’t the godhead consist of both good and evil entities in eternal competition? Sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other. I see no way to prove or disprove it. If you don’t accept it, it’s by having faith in the traditional Abrahamic God.

Voltaire was a deist. He thought our Reason was grasping at a real God, he even agreed with the existence of Natural (Moral) Law; he just thought much of our religion invented or mythic. This quip was in fact against Atheism.

He was correct in his view of religion. All the gods of all religions exist the same way that King Lear, or Captain Ahab, or Superman exist. They’ll all products of the human imagination.

Or a Good God that allows Agency for whatever divine purpose of His own.

I will take that as an admission that God’s ways are incomprehensible to human logic and reason. Believing in God must come through faith. And that’s my point. Some people—like myself—are just incapable of such faith.

Quid est Veritas? · Oct 10, 2019

jayem said:
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I’ll try one more time. My point is that it cannot be logically determined by observation that God is good and only good. That belief requires faith. The logical conclusion by an objective assessment of the world is that God could be evil and deceitful, both good and evil, or is morally detached.

We'd have to agree to disagree, as I do think it logically determinable, and you keep just restating your axioms, so we are getting nowhere.

jayem said:
We are now pretty much on the same page. I stated, either in this or another thread, that a dualistic god is a Gnostic concept. But why couldn’t the godhead consist of both good and evil entities in eternal competition? Sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other. I see no way to prove or disprove it. If you don’t accept it, it’s by having faith in the traditional Abrahamic God

I said right at the start that this depended on what you mean by God. You assured me it was the Abrahamic God. Now finally, you have admitted you have at no point been speaking of the Abrahamic God. So everything you have said is utterly moot on a discussion of a Christian Theodicy. As long as you are speaking of an entirely different thing, and labelling it as another, it is no wonder your posts have been so hopelessly muddled.

So yes, if you assert that God must be beholden to an external code of morality, a Form as it were by which you can judge God himself, you are correct. That however, as I have been at pains to point out, is not the Abrahamic conception of God. You would label this 'faith' I suppose, but faith entails accepting this view - the Philosophic argument for a Summus Deus is an entirely different, reasoned, argument vs. a simple Demiurge, going all the way back to Plato. It is a philosophic argument, not a faith-based one.

jayem said:
He was correct in his view of religion. All the gods of all religions exist the same way that King Lear, or Captain Ahab, or Superman exist. They’ll all products of the human imagination.

That was not his view. He believed in a real God, a Moral God, whose nature and inherent morality was determinable, that set the world in motion. He did not think all the gods merely fictions, rather they were vague sussurations of the real thing, padded by myth over time. A closer description would be that they are each hypotheses, reflecting the veridical. I am sorry, but Voltaire considered Atheism idiotic and the whole point of this quip was that you would need to invent a God to support ideas like Reason, Law and the social fabric if it was the case. That functionally, Atheism was philosophically incoherent and deeply unsound. He used it in a tract attacking an explicitly Atheistic book called The Three Imposters that argued the three Abrahamic religions invented from whole cloth. You are literally disagreeing with Voltaire, here.

jayem said:
I will take that as an admission that God’s ways are incomprehensible to human logic and reason. Believing in God must come through faith. And that’s my point. Some people—like myself—are just incapable of such faith.

Ultimately, everything comes down to faith if you go deep enough. We all need to draw an epistemologic line in the sand somewhere and assume some Axioms. The five Tropes of Agrippa the Sceptic always apply - this is as true of religion as of science, so frankly I don't understand what your point really is? Yes, it is possible to disbelieve in anything, but that doesn't mean that those that do are in any way wrong about it because someone else holds different views in that regard. Essentially you argue your axioms don't allow a good God, and therefore you think it logically impossible - this is simply hubris, little more.

Sérgio Junior · Oct 10, 2019

2PhiloVoid said:
Sergio, in looking at your questions in this OP, one thing I'd like to ask you up front before commencing with any further discussion is a question that should apply to just about everyone else here as we attempt to discern and evaluate the various social and spiritual components involved in the Shoah, even as awful as it was, and it is this: Have you read and completely studied, becoming extensively familiar with, the contents of the entire O.T. ?

I have read the Old Testament books, but very superficially, I have never done a thorough and detailed study of the OT (so there are a lot of concepts that I'm not familiar with). In fact, I don't even know what to think about the spiritual components of the Holocaust, but if it's to say something about spiritual components I would say that the cause of the Holocaust was the sin of omission, we didn't do the good that James said to do, we knew we should do something in that situation, but we just didn't do it, the Holocaust was our fault, we failed to provide help to Jews who were being deported to the concentration and extermination camps, we are to blame.

Although I consider God sovereign above all things, I simply reject the idea that he has punished the Jewish people for their past transgressions, it was all the fault of people who simply rejected and ignored the dangers of Fascism. . Philo, in this OP I received better answers than I was expecting to receive, and the conclusion I draw from all that has been said here is that it was our ingenuity to trust the power in the hands of the Nazis who condemned many Jewish lives and yet we often attribute this to God and to the sin of the Jews, as Quid said: "I don't see any evil that can be put at the doorstep of God. I see evil done by men, for selfish and usually sinful reasons".

2PhiloVoid · Oct 10, 2019

Sérgio Junior said:
I have read the Old Testament books, but very superficially, I have never done a thorough and detailed study of the OT (so there are a lot of concepts that I'm not familiar with). In fact, I don't even know what to think about the spiritual components of the Holocaust, but if it's to say something about spiritual components I would say that the cause of the Holocaust was the sin of omission, we didn't do the good that James said to do, we knew we should do something in that situation, but we just didn't do it, the Holocaust was our fault, we failed to provide help to Jews who were being deported to the concentration and extermination camps, we are to blame.

Although I consider God sovereign above all things, I simply reject the idea that he has punished the Jewish people for their past transgressions, it was all the fault of people who simply rejected and ignored the dangers of Fascism. . Philo, in this OP I received better answers than I was expecting to receive, and the conclusion I draw from all that has been said here is that it was our ingenuity to trust the power in the hands of the Nazis who condemned many Jewish lives and yet we often attribute this to God and to the sin of the Jews, as Quid said: "I don't see any evil that can be put at the doorstep of God. I see evil done by men, for selfish and usually sinful reasons".

Well, I hate to say this, but UNTIL you've actually read the entire O.T. and become conversant with it, you might continue to be surprised that there are a number of things in it that will not only shock but also 'shake' the living daylights out of the ordinary, average Modern mind. And until we actually come to see God as the Sovereign over the State----all States----we'll just keep on making idols out our our current ethical intuitions that, themselves alone, keep on being unchallenged. I know this is a big, rough pill to have to swallow, but there's a whole train load of Axiological issues that HAVE TO BE engaged both inside and outside of the bible, and thus far in my experience, very few people have the "stones" to do so. Some of this is because even to bring up and dare to question any of the modern notions of ethics is tantamount to somehow being "anti-semitic."

However, I assure you I have ZERO proclivity for giving even an ounce of justification for the Nazi atrocities, if and when we try to assess their deeds on a mere existential and secular level. No, the Nazis were sick in the head, as are all those who are like them, but this doesn't mean that the non-Christian Jews have been completely innocent, and this, I say, is in accordance with the Law and the Prophets and the Writings, not just in reflection of what Jesus or Paul or Peter might have said.

I mean, at some point, for people to actually BE JUSTIFIED in their moral grievances, they have to do the ethical thinking and work that goes into addressing the possibility that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and thereby of [and as] Jesus..............is to be recognized as the Sovereign Lord, the Alpha and Omega, and not only as the innocent Lamb of God, silent before his shearers, slain before the foundation of the world. There is a reason that Psalm 2 and the book of Revelation, among most other bits of apocalyptic literature in the Bible are so ugly and involve the various suffering of God's own people(s), both Jew and Gentile alike, all of which causes immediate consternation in the reader. We're just going to have to deal with it all, though, rather than allow our anger at God to run away with us.

Does any of this make sense, my friend? I have to kind of challenge you on all of this because too many people have just ditched God, and thereby their only salvation in Christ, because they don't have the philosophical back bone or spiritual fortitude to look in the eye all of the ugliness of human sin as it manifests itself in all of its Shortfall from the Glory of God.

If you'd like for me to lead you through some discussion of the Old Testament, just let me know and I'll be glad to go further.

durangodawood · Oct 10, 2019

2PhiloVoid said:
....No, the Nazis were sick in the head, as are all those who are like them, but this doesn't mean that the non-Christian Jews have been completely innocent, and this, I say, is in accordance with the Law and the Prophets and the Writings, not just in reflection of what Jesus or Paul or Peter might have said.....

In what way have the Jews been not-completely-innocent that deserves mention in a paragraph about holocaust culpability?

Theodicy and the Holocaust

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