Good and Evil

Jeremy E Walker said:

I could do that. But it seems we have been talking past one another. I am no longer sure you and I even have the same argument in mind.

So we need to get on the same page.

Are you defending the deductive/incompatibilistic afe or the inductive/probabilistic argument for the more modest claim that there are evils that actually exist in the world that make it unlikely that God exists.

The first carries with it the enormous burden of having to show that God and evil are logically incompatible, the second carries a far more modest burden.

Which one are you defending?

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I'm defending what I have already laid out, that which you are now dodging. I didn't bring up the distinction between the logical and evidential forms of the argument, you did. So asking me which one I am now prepared to defend is just another way of you shifting your responses away from what I've actually written. Most of what you are dodging consists of questions. For example, the question regarding God's intervention in genocides.

Archaeopteryx said:

I'm defending what I have already laid out, that which you are now dodging. I didn't bring up the distinction between the logical and evidential forms of the argument, you did. So asking me which one I am now prepared to defend is just another way of you shifting your responses away from what I've actually written. Most of what you are dodging consists of questions. For example, the question regarding God's intervention in genocides.

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It seems to me you are defending the argument that the existence of evil and the existence of an omnibenevolent omnipotent God are logically incompatible. this means you are defending the deductive formulation of the argument.

it seems to me that you are saying that genocides have happened, therefore an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God does not exist for if He did exist and was omnipotent He could create a world without genocides in it and if He is omnibenevolent He would want to, but since genocides exist He cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

but neither of the above assumptions is necessarily true which is what they must be if the argument is formulated in its deductive incompatabilistic form. as long as it is logically possible that God desires to create a world of free moral agents, then this demonstrates that the first assumption is not necessarily true. it is logically impossible to force someone to freely do something. God cannot do the logically impossible.

If God decides to actualize a world in which He grants freedom of the will to moral agents, it is possible that these moral agents will use their freedom to commit genocides.

Jeremy said:

it is logically impossible to force someone to freely do something. God cannot do the logically impossible.

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" Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. And the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go." -- Exodus 10:18-20

Oh, that rascally Yahweh, doing the logically impossible!

BlueLightningTN said:

" Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord. And the Lord changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go." -- Exodus 10:18-20

Oh, that rascally Yahweh, doing the logically impossible!

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obviously the language is figurative. nor did God force pharaoh to do what he did against his will. Pharaoh did what he did because he wanted to. his actions were in keeping with his pride and egotism.

but lets grant your point for a minute that God can do the logically impossible. Guess what? The logical problem of evil goes up in smoke! it disappears! if God can do the logically impossible then there is no longer the argument from evil that claims he cannot exist alongside evil because he and evil are logically incompatible.

So what was your point?

Jeremy said:

obviously the language is figurative. nor did God force pharaoh to do what he did against his will. Pharaoh did what he did because he wanted to. his actions were in keeping with his pride and egotism.

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I see, it's another one of those "it doesn't mean what it says," figurative things. Even though Pharaoh hardens his own heart in other passages and it isn't figurative, this time it is because it goes against what you said. I love how the bible works for you.

but lets grant your point for a minute that God can do the logically impossible. Guess what? The logical problem of evil goes up in smoke! it disappears! if God can do the logically impossible then there is no longer the argument from evil that claims he cannot exist alongside evil because he and evil are logically incompatible.

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No... it actually just means that Yawheh has the power and uses the power to meddle in free will. It's not a logical problem at all... it's just more proof at how poorly you know the bible.

So what was your point?

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That Yahweh meddles in people's free will... as opposed to what you said. You really need to study the bible more before you instruct people on Yahweh.

Jeremy E Walker said:

It seems to me you are defending the argument that the existence of evil and the existence of an omnibenevolent omnipotent God are logically incompatible. this means you are defending the deductive formulation of the argument.

it seems to me that you are saying that genocides have happened, therefore an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God does not exist for if He did exist and was omnipotent He could create a world without genocides in it and if He is omnibenevolent He would want to, but since genocides exist He cannot be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

but neither of the above assumptions is necessarily true which is what they must be if the argument is formulated in its deductive incompatabilistic form. as long as it is logically possible that God desires to create a world of free moral agents, then this demonstrates that the first assumption is not necessarily true. it is logically impossible to force someone to freely do something. God cannot do the logically impossible.

If God decides to actualize a world in which He grants freedom of the will to moral agents, it is possible that these moral agents will use their freedom to commit genocides.

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It seems to me that you can't address what I've actually written in my responses to you. It seems to me that you don't want to go off script.

Archaeopteryx said:

It seems to me that you can't address what I've actually written in my responses to you. It seems to me that you don't want to go off script.

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Logical Problem of Evil [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

That article will tell you what you need to know.

I do not have to show that God has intervened in genocides to show that the existence of genocides and the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent is not logically IMPOSSIBLE.

All I have to do is show that it is logically possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing them. And it is certainly logically possible that He does.

Jeremy E Walker said:

Logical Problem of Evil[bless and do not curse][Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

That article will tell you what you need to know.

I do not have to show that God has intervened in genocides to show that the existence of genocides and the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent is not logically IMPOSSIBLE.

All I have to do is show that it is logically possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing them. And it is certainly logically possible that He does.

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I'm still waiting for you to address what I've actually written.

Archaeopteryx said:

I'm still waiting for you to address what I've actually written.

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Unless I missed something I think I have.

Jeremy E Walker said:

Unless I missed something I think I have.

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You missed this whole post. Perhaps because you keep returning to your script instead of addressing what I've actually written.

foolsmind said:

I saw the movie Maleficent last week. It's a new way to tell an old story of Sleeping Beauty. Maleficent, the evil witch, was really just misunderstood. Her heart was broken by the man who became king. And when his child was born (not Maleficent's baby), she curses the child to get back at the king.

In a conversation with one of the movie theater clerks, this young man seemed very impressed that it was a new twist on an old theme of good and evil. It didn't seem to matter what was being communicated (in my view, it was just a sympathy for the Devil polt intended to reach tender, young minds) as long as it was a different way of thinking. Because today, different is fashion.

So, what's my question? How do you define good and evil? I asked this very interesting young man the same question. He just stared at me for a few seconds. How do you know what to stand for or against in this world with movies like this one capturing your imagination, and it's teaching there is little/no distinction between good and evil? That's two questions, but all roads lead to Rome.

Looking forward to hearing your responses. It may take me a few days to get back in the discussion. I start a new job tomorrow! Whoop!!!

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I don't think that's what the movie was trying to convey. Rather, "evil" can often be another term for a good person who has been wronged and instead of dealing with those wrongs in a healthy way, they self destruct and try to hurt others. Often, people who harm others are hurting inside, themselves. The movie might want to show that we all have the propensity to do good or bad to others, because we are human. I don't believe in evil as in ...some outward force is taking a person over. Instead, I believe that we are all capable of doing positive and negative things to one another, based on our life experiences and how we respond to adversity.

Perhaps those who hurt others deserve compassion and maybe they could find the will to change their ways. That's not true for all people though. I'm not saying throw open the doors to prisons and turn a blind eye to wrong doing. But, there are often reasons people commit heinous acts and none of us are immune to doing "bad" things.

Archaeopteryx said:

A fallacious appeal to authority is not a good way of undermining an argument or position. If it were, then one could effectively argue against theism by appealing to the majority view of philosophers.

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1. Appeals to authority are not always fallacious. Why?

"Not every appeal to authority commits this fallacy, but every appeal to an authority with respect to matters outside his special province commits the fallacy. 'These pills must be safe and effective for reducing. They have been endorsed by Miss X, star of stage, screen, and television.'"
(W.L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion. Humanities Press, 1980)

2. I did not even appeal to anyone to undermine your argument. I appealed to the fact that your assumptions your argument are based on are not necessarily true which is what underminds your argument. I then said now you know why in the philosophical community, the LOGICAL/DEDUCTIVE formulation of the problem of evil is considered resolved and gave you a list of those who would affirm this.

Again from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we find:

"In response to this formulation of the problem of evil, Plantinga showed that this charge of inconsistency was mistaken. Even Mackie admits that Plantinga solved the problem of evil, if that problem is understood as one of inconsistency. It is, therefore, difficult to see why Plantinga’s Free Will Defense should be found wanting if that defense is seen as a response to the logical problem of evil. As an attempt to rebut the logical problem of evil, it is strikingly successful." - Logical Problem of Evil[bless and do not curse][Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

And again:

"...we should keep in mind that all parties admit that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil as it was formulated by atheists during the mid-twentieth-century.

If there is any blame that needs to go around, it may be that some of it should go to Mackie and other atheologians for claiming that the problem of evil was a problem of inconsistency. The ease with which Plantinga undermined that formulation of the problem suggests that the logical formulation did not adequately capture the difficult and perplexing issue concerning God and evil that has been so hotly debated by philosophers and theologians. In fact, this is precisely the message that many philosophers took away from the debate between Plantinga and the defenders of the logical problem of evil. They reasoned that there must be more to the problem of evil than what is captured in the logical formulation of the problem. It is now widely agreed that this intuition is correct. Current discussions of the problem focus on what is called “the probabilistic problem of evil” or “the evidential problem of evil.” - Logical Problem of Evil[bless and do not curse][Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Archaeopteryx said:

Perhaps even more troubling, however, is your use of selective quotation to support your appeal to authority.

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But I did not make an appeal to authority to undermine your argument so the charge is groundless.

Archaeopteryx said:

I have dealt with the free will defence, as my previous responses to you show. I see little to no reason to believe that free will would necessarily be undermined if agents had various options available to them that did not include the option to do evil.

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What you propose is that God should have actualized what we will call "W3". World 3 has the following conditions:


W3:

(a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is no evil or suffering in W3.

We need to determine if this world is logically possible or impossible. The world described is possible if the descriptions are logically consistent. If the descriptions of the world are inconsistent or contradictory, the world will be impossible.

Is W3 possible? Plantinga says, “No.” Parts (a) and (b) of the description of W3 are, he claims, logically inconsistent. In W3 God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. People in this world couldn’t do morally bad things if they wanted to. And yet part of what it means for creatures to have morally significant free will is that they can do morally bad things whenever they want to. Think about what it would be like to live in W3. If you wanted to tell a lie, you would not be able to do so. Causal forces beyond your control would make you tell the truth on every occasion. You would also be physically incapable of stealing your neighbor’s belongings. In fact, since W3 is a world without evil of any kind and since merely wanting to lie or steal is itself a bad thing, the people in W3 would not even be able to have morally bad thoughts or desires. If God is going to causally determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong in W3, there is no way that he could allow them to be free in a morally significant sense. Peterson (1998, p. 39) writes,

"if a person is free with respect to an action A, then God does not bring it about or cause it to be the case that she does A or refrains from doing A. For if God brings it about or causes it to be the case in any manner whatsoever that the person either does A or does not do A, then that person is not really free."

You charge that a good God would and should eliminate all evil and suffering. The assumption behind this charge is that, in so doing, God could leave human free will untouched. Plantinga claims that when we think through what robust free will really amounts to, we can see you are asking God to do the logically impossible. Being upset that God has not done something that is logically impossible is, according to Plantinga, misguided. He might say, “Of course he hasn’t done that. It’s logically impossible!” - - Logical Problem of Evil[bless and do not curse][Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Archaeopteryx said:

I also proposed that, even with the option to do evil available, evil itself could be lessened by God intervening directly to punish evildoers for their sins. You believe that God intervenes in some circumstances, raising the question of why he doesn't intervene more extensively in order to lessen evil.

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As long as it is possible that God has morally sufficient reason for not intervening directly or to not intervene more than He does, then your assumptions are not necessarily true. That is the beauty of the defense. It asks us to defend nothing more than that which demonstrates the argument to be invalid.

Archaeopteryx said:

It's not irrelevant to the discussion, however. In fact, it's central to it. You believe that God has intervened in genocides. This raises the question of why he chose to intervene then, what the extent of his intervention was, and why his intervention was not greater (i.e., preventing the genocide altogether). Far from being a red herring, these questions are exactly the sort that need to be considered if we are going to grapple with issue of why a good God would allow all manner of evil, except in those few instances where he ostensibly intervenes.

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Once again, if you are defending the LOGICAL/DEDUCTIVE formulation of the argument, you have to demonstrate that your implied assumptions are necessarily true and all I have to do is argue that it is logically possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons for allowing genocides.

The defense may not address any or all of your more existential questions, but if you have questions, then you should stop defending the deductive form of the argument and just ask me questions.

Jeremy E Walker said:

1. Appeals to authority are not always fallacious. Why?

"Not every appeal to authority commits this fallacy, but every appeal to an authority with respect to matters outside his special province commits the fallacy. 'These pills must be safe and effective for reducing. They have been endorsed by Miss X, star of stage, screen, and television.'"
(W.L. Reese, Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion. Humanities Press, 1980)

2. I did not even appeal to anyone to undermine your argument. I appealed to the fact that your assumptions your argument are based on are not necessarily true which is what underminds your argument. I then said now you know why in the philosophical community, the LOGICAL/DEDUCTIVE formulation of the problem of evil is considered resolved and gave you a list of those who would affirm this.

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You engaged in quote mining to do so because you knew that if you posted all the relevant text you would be undermining your own appeal to authority.

Again from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, we find:

<snip>

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If I wanted to read from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I would go to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

What you propose is that God should have actualized what we will call "W3". World 3 has the following conditions:


W3:

(a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is no evil or suffering in W3.

We need to determine if this world is logically possible or impossible. The world described is possible if the descriptions are logically consistent. If the descriptions of the world are inconsistent or contradictory, the world will be impossible.

Is W3 possible? Plantinga says, &#8220;No.&#8221; Parts (a) and (b) of the description of W3 are, he claims, logically inconsistent. In W3 God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. People in this world couldn&#8217;t do morally bad things if they wanted to. And yet part of what it means for creatures to have morally significant free will is that they can do morally bad things whenever they want to. Think about what it would be like to live in W3. If you wanted to tell a lie, you would not be able to do so. Causal forces beyond your control would make you tell the truth on every occasion. You would also be physically incapable of stealing your neighbor&#8217;s belongings. In fact, since W3 is a world without evil of any kind and since merely wanting to lie or steal is itself a bad thing, the people in W3 would not even be able to have morally bad thoughts or desires. If God is going to causally determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong in W3, there is no way that he could allow them to be free in a morally significant sense. Peterson (1998, p. 39) writes,

"if a person is free with respect to an action A, then God does not bring it about or cause it to be the case that she does A or refrains from doing A. For if God brings it about or causes it to be the case in any manner whatsoever that the person either does A or does not do A, then that person is not really free."

You charge that a good God would and should eliminate all evil and suffering. The assumption behind this charge is that, in so doing, God could leave human free will untouched. Plantinga claims that when we think through what robust free will really amounts to, we can see you are asking God to do the logically impossible. Being upset that God has not done something that is logically impossible is, according to Plantinga, misguided. He might say, &#8220;Of course he hasn&#8217;t done that. It&#8217;s logically impossible!&#8221; - - Logical Problem of Evil[bless and do not curse][Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

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I'm sorry, but am I interacting with Jeremy E Walker or with the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy? Look... I can copy-and-paste too!

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy said:

A. Even though it is widely agreed that Plantinga&#8217;s Free Will Defense describes a state of affairs that is logically possible, some of the details of his defense seem to conflict with important theistic doctrines. One point of conflict concerns the possibility of human free will in heaven. Plantinga claims that if someone is incapable of doing evil, that person cannot have morally significant free will. He also maintains that part of what makes us the creatures we are is that we possess morally significant freedom. If that freedom were to be taken away, we might very well cease to be the creatures we are. However, consider the sort of freedom enjoyed by the redeemed in heaven. According to classical theism, believers in heaven will somehow be changed so that they will no longer commit any sins. It is not that they will contingently always do what is right and contingently always avoid what is wrong. They will somehow no longer be capable of doing wrong. In other words, their good behavior will be necessary rather than contingent.

This orthodox view of heaven poses the following significant challenges to Plantinga&#8217;s view:

(i) If heavenly dwellers do not possess morally significant free will and yet their existence is something of tremendous value, it is not clear that God was justified in creating persons here on Earth with the capacity for rape, murder, torture, sexual molestation, and nuclear war. It seems that God could have actualized whatever greater goods are made possible by the existence of persons without allowing horrible instances of evil and suffering to exist in this world.
(ii) If possessing morally significant free will is essential to human nature, it is not clear how the redeemed can lose their morally significant freedom when they get to heaven and still be the same people they were before.
(iii) If despite initial appearances heavenly dwellers do possess morally significant free will, then it seems that it is not impossible for God to create genuinely free creatures who always (of necessity) do what is right.
In other words, it appears that W3 isn&#8217;t impossible after all. If W3 is possible, an important plank in Plantinga&#8217;s Free Will Defense is removed. None of these challenges undermines the basic point established above that Plantinga&#8217;s Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil. However, they reveal that some of the central claims of his defense conflict with other important theistic doctrines. Although Plantinga claimed that his Free Will Defense offered merely possible and not necessarily actual reasons God might have for allowing evil and suffering, it may be difficult for other theists to embrace his defense if it runs contrary to what theism says is actually the case in heaven.

B. Another problem facing Plantinga&#8217;s Free Will Defense concerns the question of God&#8217;s free will. God, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to any choice of morally good and morally bad options, God is free to choose a bad option. He seems constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to Plantinga&#8217;s description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that God would be significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for one&#8217;s actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that God&#8217;s actions could not carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to central doctrines of theism.

If, as theists must surely maintain, God does possess morally significant freedom, then perhaps this sort of freedom does not preclude an inability to choose what is wrong. But if it is possible for God to possess morally significant freedom and for him to be unable to do wrong, then W3 once again appears to be possible after all. Originally, Plantinga claimed that W3 is not a logically possible world because the description of that world is logically inconsistent. If W3 is possible, then the complaint lodged by Flew and Mackie above that God could (and therefore should) have created a world full of creatures who always did what is right is not answered.

There may be ways for Plantinga to resolve the difficulties sketched above, so that the Free Will Defense can be shown to be compatible with theistic doctrines about heaven and divine freedom. As it stands, however, some important challenges to the Free Will Defense remain unanswered. It is also important to note that, simply because Plantinga&#8217;s particular use of free will in fashioning a response to the problem of evil runs into certain difficulties, that does not mean that other theistic uses of free will in distinct kinds of defenses or theodicies would face the same difficulties.

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From the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy:

Michael Tooley said:

But even if the difficulty concerning the nature of libertarian free will is set aside, there are still very strong objections to the free-will approach. First, and most important, the fact that libertarian free will is valuable does not entail that one should never intervene in the exercise of libertarian free will. Indeed, very few people think that one should not intervene to prevent someone from committing rape or murder. On the contrary, almost everyone would hold that a failure to prevent heinously evil actions when one can do so would be seriously wrong.

Secondly, the proposition that libertarian free will is valuable does not entail that it is a good thing for people to have the power to inflict great harm upon others. So individuals could, for example, have libertarian free will, but not have the power to torture and murder others.

Thirdly, many evils are caused by natural processes, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and other weather conditions, and by a wide variety of diseases. Such evils certainly do not appear to result from morally wrong actions. If that is right, then an appeal to free will provides no answer to an argument from evil that focuses upon such evils.

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As long as it is possible that God has morally sufficient reason for not intervening directly or to not intervene more than He does

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This is problematic, meaningless even, if God is the source of morality and thus his own sufficient reason.

, then your assumptions are not necessarily true. That is the beauty of the defense. It asks us to defend nothing more than that which demonstrates the argument to be invalid.

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Dodging isn't a good defence. According to you, God has intervened to some extent in genocides. This raises the question of (1) why he chose to intervene then, (2) what the actual extent of his intervention was, and (3) why his intervention was not greater than it had been. Your response here is to appeal to nebulous "morally sufficient reasons" that he might have. It is no different to the "God works in mysterious ways" canard.

Once again, if you are defending the LOGICAL/DEDUCTIVE formulation of the argument, you have to demonstrate that your implied assumptions are necessarily true and all I have to do is argue that it is logically possible for God to have morally sufficient reasons for allowing genocides.

The defense may not address any or all of your more existential questions, but if you have questions, then you should stop defending the deductive form of the argument and just ask me questions.

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Stop defending the deductive form of the argument? I never sought to defend anything more than that which I've outlined. You introduced the deductive form of the argument because it suited your script for the conversation.

The defense may not address any or all of your more existential questions, but if you have questions, then you should stop defending the deductive form of the argument and just ask me questions.

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That's what I've been doing! You've been dodging those questions.

Now that you admit you are not defending the logical deductive formulation of the argument and that the logical deductive version of the problem of evil has been resolved, I will address your questions.

Jeremy E Walker said:

Now that you admit you are not defending the logical deductive formulation of the argument and that the logical deductive version of the problem of evil has been resolved, I will address your questions.

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Where did I say any of that? Tell me, where did I first talk about the logical form of the argument? It wasn't I who introduced it, it was you. You introduced it so that you could copy-and-paste (and quote mine) from internet resources instead of actually addressing what I had written.

Now that you admit you are not defending the logical deductive formulation of the argument and that the logical deductive version of the problem of evil has been resolved

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Didn't you read what I copy-pasted?

Archaeopteryx said:

Where did I say any of that? Tell me, where did I first talk about the logical form of the argument? It wasn't I who introduced it, it was you. You introduced it so that you could copy-and-paste (and quote mine) from internet resources instead of actually addressing what I had written.



Didn't you read what I copy-pasted?

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Then you don't think it has been resolved. Which means you still think its a good argument against the existence of God despite the fact that the assumptions that the argument is based on are not necessarily true. Yet you can't bring yourself to admit it is not a good argument. So why should I continue playing your little game?

I think Jeremy would rather discuss a discussion than actually discuss.

BlueLightningTN said:

I think Jeremy would rather discuss a discussion than actually discuss.

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I would rather talk with someone that is sincere. That's all.

Jeremy E Walker said:

Now that you admit you are not defending the logical deductive formulation of the argument and that the logical deductive version of the problem of evil has been resolved, I will address your questions.

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Hey, have you posted on the debate we have for this very subject yet? Just checking because my first post has been approved.

I often disagree with Archeaopteryx... even to the point of failing to understand his thought process. Still, I wouldn't be so rude as to say he is insincere.