The Problem of Evil

Resha Caner said:

I don't mind if you answer.

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I believe it is only a true logical problem for the traditional Abrahamic god, i.e. an all loving and all powerful being.

There could be incompetent "gods" but those are less like a god and more of a powerful human.

It still is a problem, though, if the same being who supposedly created the world is the being under question, even if the being is incompetent. The being would not really be competent, but malevolent because something of its power could change the reality it created.

Chany said:

I believe it is only a true logical problem for the traditional Abrahamic god, i.e. an all loving and all powerful being.

There could be incompetent "gods" but those are less like a god and more of a powerful human.

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You'll have to help me understand how you're using the terms "all loving" and "all powerful".

Chany said:

It still is a problem, though, if the same being who supposedly created the world is the being under question, even if the being is incompetent. The being would not really be competent, but malevolent because something of its power could change the reality it created.

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I don't see how incompetence makes a being malevolent. But - shrug - whatever. Same question. Is this really a logical problem for existence then?

Resha Caner said:

You'll have to help me understand how you're using the terms "all loving" and "all powerful".



I don't see how incompetence makes a being malevolent. But - shrug - whatever. Same question. Is this really a logical problem for existence then?

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There is only conflict in this if you believe in the existence of a deity that could prevent evil and supposedly doesn't like evil.

PsychoSarah said:

There is only conflict in this if you believe in the existence of a deity that could prevent evil and supposedly doesn't like evil.

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Do you have kids? I don't know ... maybe I'm a bad parent but I don't step in and stop every little thing my kids do even though I'm pretty sure it's going to go badly from time to time. I don't want it to go badly, but sometimes experience is the best teacher.

So, can you actually imagine a world where no evil choices exist? I can't. I mean, I can say "a world without evil choices", but I'm not sure that phrase has any meaning. It seems a Noam Chomsky kind of thing to me, so I'd be curious to know how you make sense of it. Or can I suggest we simplify this - rather than "good" and "evil" can we speak of God's will and what is not God's will?

Resha Caner said:

Do you have kids? I don't know ... maybe I'm a bad parent but I don't step in and stop every little thing my kids do even though I'm pretty sure it's going to go badly from time to time. I don't want it to go badly, but sometimes experience is the best teacher.

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What I am concerned with in the interaction with kids is that they will be able to deal with the world as it is - as opposed to the world that I have created so that they´d have to deal with it. I haven´t created the world, I haven´t created the natural laws, I haven´t even created them. I haven´t created anything. Not to mention I´m not omnipotent, not omniscient and not claimed to be omnibenevolent.
The god-parent analogy is terrible, in this context.

Or can I suggest we simplify this - rather than "good" and "evil" can we speak of God's will and what is not God's will?

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Yes, sure. That would simplify the issue:
An omnimax creator god and his creation containing something that is not "his will" is the very contradiction we are talking about here.

Resha Caner said:

Do you have kids? I don't know ... maybe I'm a bad parent but I don't step in and stop every little thing my kids do even though I'm pretty sure it's going to go badly from time to time. I don't want it to go badly, but sometimes experience is the best teacher.

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Would you, as a parent, allow your children to jump off a cliff, to teach them through experience?

Resha Caner said:

So, can you actually imagine a world where no evil choices exist? I can't. I mean, I can say "a world without evil choices", but I'm not sure that phrase has any meaning. It seems a Noam Chomsky kind of thing to me, so I'd be curious to know how you make sense of it.

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Can you imagine infinity? The nothingness you experienced before you were born? If no, does this mean that these things do not exist?

It is possible to imagine a world without evil in it, without worry and sorrow and pain, without people doing wrong and believing in wrong and making wrong choices. How can you not?

Resha Caner said:

Or can I suggest we simplify this - rather than "good" and "evil" can we speak of God's will and what is not God's will?

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No, because the concepts of "good" and "evil" are independent upon the will of a being, at least from an universal moral-absolutist's standpoint. If God wills that every living thing should live in unendurable agony, it does not make the action of putting every living thing into unendurable agony morally right. If God wills you to kill an innocent child for his amusement, killing an innocent child for his amusement does not become a good action.

Chany said:

Would you, as a parent, allow your children to jump off a cliff, to teach them through experience?

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Have you ever seen the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? At the end Jen does just that - jumps off a cliff, and Lo (her lover) allows her to. I believe the intent of the movie was to portray it as a beautiful thing, the right thing to do.

Chany said:

It is possible to imagine a world without evil in it, without worry and sorrow and pain, without people doing wrong and believing in wrong and making wrong choices. How can you not?

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As you'll learn, I do my best to choose my words carefully. I said I can't make sense of a world with no evil choices.

Chany said:

No, because the concepts of "good" and "evil" are independent upon the will of a being, at least from an universal moral-absolutist's standpoint. If God wills that every living thing should live in unendurable agony, it does not make the action of putting every living thing into unendurable agony morally right. If God wills you to kill an innocent child for his amusement, killing an innocent child for his amusement does not become a good action.

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So you're going to insist I adopt your omni idea of a god and then deny me that such omnimaxness extends to morality? You'll call a god all-powerful and then reserve the right to judge his morality? I suppose you can, but if such a being exists I don't see the point of it. You'll lose.

Resha Caner said:

I said I can't make sense of a world with no evil choices.

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Why is that?

quatona said:

Why is that?

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Maybe my imagination is too limited.

Resha Caner said:

Have you ever seen the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? At the end Jen does just that - jumps off a cliff, and Lo (her lover) allows her to. I believe the intent of the movie was to portray it as a beautiful thing, the right thing to do.

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Never seen it, and probably never will. I don't know the situation behind it, so I can't comment.

You didn't answer my question. Would you, as a parent, allow your children to jump off a cliff, to teach them through experience?

Resha Caner said:

As you'll learn, I do my best to choose my words carefully. I said I can't make sense of a world with no evil choices.

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Definitions of "choice" from Merrian-Webster. Please pick exactly which definition you are referring to:

: the act of choosing : the act of picking or deciding between two or more possibilities

: the opportunity or power to choose between two or more possibilities : the opportunity or power to make a decision

: a range of things that can be chosen

Unless you have a better one or something more specific in mind, then please share it.

Resha Caner said:

So you're going to insist I adopt your omni idea of a god and then deny me that such omnimaxness extends to morality? You'll call a god all-powerful and then reserve the right to judge his morality? I suppose you can, but if such a being exists I don't see the point of it. You'll lose.

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Can God create a boulder he cannot lift? Can God make square circles? The answer is no, not because any limit upon the power of a God, but because of the contradiction. Something cannot be a square and a circle; they are two logically separate categories. A requirement for a square, such as having four sides, can never be achieved by a circle, as a circle only has one true side.

Morality is in the same boat. Nothing can make love, hate, and make hate, love; they are two different categories of things. An all-loving and unchanging God cannot change and become hateful, no matter if he is all-powerful; it would be a contradiction. An all-loving God could not, by the definition of something all-loving, create a loveless scenario of endless, arbitrary, and undeserving endless torment; to do so would make him cease to be all-loving. Morality may come from God in some way, but it is not tied into his will solely because it is his will.

the three categories presented in the problem of evil are nothing more than a situation like this, really. The three categories, "an all-loving god", "an all-powerful god", and "the existence of evil" are logically incompatible with each other. Something must break and be abandoned among the three categories, or something must be added to reconcile them.

And we know evil isn't going to be the one to break, because of the three it is the only one that provably exists. So if a god does exist, it cannot be both all powerful and all loving.

PsychoSarah said:

And we know evil isn't going to be the one to break, because of the three it is the only one that provably exists. So if a god does exist, it cannot be both all powerful and all loving.

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Correct, although it is possible that there is something we are not considering; this is what people who hold a simultaneously an all-loving god and an all-powerful god. So far, every attempt has failed. I like "the twelve officers" parable I found; it shows absurd the common attempts are.

Chany said:

Correct, although it is possible that there is something we are not considering; this is what people who hold a simultaneously an all-loving god and an all-powerful god. So far, every attempt has failed. I like "the twelve officers" parable I found; it shows absurd the common attempts are.

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Hey, god even admits being able to feel anger and jealousy in the bible, so I don't know where people got the all loving part from.

Chany said:

You didn't answer my question. Would you, as a parent, allow your children to jump off a cliff, to teach them through experience?

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I wanted to make a point first, but I'll be more direct this time. You didn't address my request in post #22, and you changed the issue I was addressing in post #24. You changed it from A) "Can evil occur inside the boundaries a person sets, and the person still dislike that evil?" to B) "Did the person set the proper boundaries?"

The answer to your question is an obvious, "No," for me, but if you think that at all impacts the answer to question A above, it doesn't. We needn't go to such extremes, and as I was trying to point out, even at those extremes people can imagine "acceptable" circumstances. When young, my kids seemed to have an inordinate love for sticks and rocks. At first I stopped them from poking things with the sticks and throwing rocks at things. Somewhere along the way I no longer enforced that restriction. Did I pick the right time to give them that freedom? Some may say I didn't. We made more than one trip to the doctor as a result.

Yet, at no time did I think poking someone in the eye with a stick was a good thing.

Chany said:

Definitions of "choice" from Merrian-Webster. Please pick exactly which definition you are referring to:

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I would say "a range of things that can be chosen" is closest, though it might be better to say "a range of things that are possible" since it avoids the circularity of using "chosen" to define "choice".

Chany said:

Can God create a boulder he cannot lift? Can God make square circles? The answer is no, not because any limit upon the power of a God, but because of the contradiction. Something cannot be a square and a circle; they are two logically separate categories. A requirement for a square, such as having four sides, can never be achieved by a circle, as a circle only has one true side.

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And so you're insisting that a god can't be omnimoral. I disagree. Whether God is omnimoral is a different question, but it is certainly possible to imagine an omnimoral god. In the same way, I can imagine an all-loving god or an all-powerful god ... and yet that may not describe God. This conversation could be one large strawman. If those are the conditions you want to discuss, fine, but as for me I wouldn't be interested.

Hence, I need to know what you think that means, and why it applies to God.

Chany said:

Nothing can make love, hate, and make hate, love; they are two different categories of things.

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I can only think of two things you might be saying here:

1) If I have an emotion of hate (e.g. "I hate cauliflower") it would be a logical contradiction for someone to insist that means I love cauliflower. I would agree, but that is not what we're discussing ... at least that's not what I was discussing. Because, again, if a god says I must eat cauliflower before I enter his presence, and if I wish to enter his presence, it is irrelevant whether or not I hate cauliflower.

2) You're advocating some kind of moral absolute. That would surprise me, but if you are you'll need to explain why a god cannot encompass that moral absolute.

3) Maybe you mean something I haven't thought of. Please clarify.

PsychoSarah said:

Hey, god even admits being able to feel anger and jealousy in the bible, so I don't know where people got the all loving part from.

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As people typically mean "all-loving", I would say it isn't Biblical. At the same time, neither would I say anger or jealousy excludes love. One must consider the context.

Resha Caner said:

As people typically mean "all-loving", I would say it isn't Biblical. At the same time, neither would I say anger or jealousy excludes love. One must consider the context.

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Feeling negative emotions doesn't exclude feeling positive ones, I never said I thought god would have to be evil (though the Old Testament makes me wonder sometimes), just that god cannot be incapable of evil and thus cannot be considered 100% good.

PsychoSarah said:

Feeling negative emotions doesn't exclude feeling positive ones, I never said I thought god would have to be evil (though the Old Testament makes me wonder sometimes), just that god cannot be incapable of evil and thus cannot be considered 100% good.

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But you seem to be saying that anger is always evil, and so I would need to know on what basis you claim that.

If someone murders my child, I think anger is justified - it is not evil. How I act upon that anger is really what determines whether it is evil or not. Even then, I'm trying to say that such judgements of good and evil are not really left to us.

Resha Caner said:

But you seem to be saying that anger is always evil, and so I would need to know on what basis you claim that.

If someone murders my child, I think anger is justified - it is not evil. How I act upon that anger is really what determines whether it is evil or not. Even then, I'm trying to say that such judgements of good and evil are not really left to us.

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As an atheist, I agree, but scripture does not. It views all instances of wrath as sinful, thus defined supposedly by god. Jealousy is also an emotion god admits to feeling, and I can't imagine a situation in which that rather unproductive and antagonizing emotion could be considered "good".

Religion even treats angry thoughts without angry actions as sinful, so just feeling the emotion is a sign of malevolence as "determined by god". Therefore, by biblical standards of good and evil, god cannot be 100% good.

I don't believe in the religious notion of evil and free will. People choose their actions, right or wrong. To help or to hurt someone. Free will is a phrase thrown around a lot when something wrong happens, ie: 9/11. Why didn't God stop this, some will say. Religious people often answer...well, God gives us free will.

But, when a religious person gets a promotion at work, free will suddenly had nothing to do with it-and it was all God's doing.

I used to think like this...so I speak from experience.

If there exists a god, he doesn't need me to defend his ''motives.'' If there is an almighty, omnipresent Creator...he needs mere mortals to defend him? Hmmm.

PsychoSarah said:

As an atheist, I agree, but scripture does not. It views all instances of wrath as sinful, thus defined supposedly by god.

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I don't think this is true, so you'll need to show me the verse you think says this.

PsychoSarah said:

Jealousy is also an emotion god admits to feeling, and I can't imagine a situation in which that rather unproductive and antagonizing emotion could be considered "good".

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Again, context and the associated action. I am married. As part of that marriage, my wife is not to engage in a romantic relationship with another man. It's not an option where she can pick and choose as she thinks it suits the moment. If I see what I consider inappropriate behavior on her part, I am justified in being jealous. I am justified in calling her to account for that behavior.

Likewise, she can do the same to me.

PsychoSarah said:

Religion even treats angry thoughts without angry actions as sinful, so just feeling the emotion is a sign of malevolence as "determined by god". Therefore, by biblical standards of good and evil, god cannot be 100% good.

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I assume you're referring to Matthew 5:21-26. The context there refers more to hate than anger (as explained in 1 John 3:15). It is an anger that is left to fester until it produces the evil action we spoke of. Jesus is saying the issue needs to be resolved. There is no absolute proclamation that anger is always good or always evil. It can be either.