Talk:Problem of evil/Archive1

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[edit] The problem with the problem

Please note that I am a strong agnostic (I believe that it is impossible to have knowledge of God) and arguing from the Christian point of view here.

No, the argument is not strong. It was refuted quite well by Leibniz:

... it must be confessed that there is evil in this world which God has made, and that it was possible to make a world without evil ...
... the best plan is not always that which seeks to avoid evil, since it may happen that the evil is accompanied by a greater good. ... In this I have followed the opinion of St. Augustine, who has said a hundred times, that God has permitted evil in order to bring about good, that is, a greater good; and that of Thomas Aquinas, that the permitting of evil tends to the good of the universe.

If there is a God, and you and I have free will, then it is necessary for us to be able to do evil. Picture a world in which no one can choose to do an evil thing - however evil is defined. This would be a very boring place to be. In part, it is evil that allows for the varied creation that we do live in. Does anyone who has tasted free will wish to live in a world of do-good robots?

I have shown that the ancients called Adam's fall felix culpa, a happy sin, because it had been retrieved with immense advantage by the incarnation of the Son of God, who has given to the universe something nobler than anything that ever would have been among creatures except for it. For the sake of a clearer understanding, I have added, following many good authors, that it was in accordance with order and the general good that God allowed to certain creatures the opportunity of exercising their liberty, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil, but which he could so well rectify; because it was not fitting that, in order to hinder sin, God should always act in an extraordinary manner. To overthrow this objection, therefore, it is sufficient to show that a world with evil might be better than a world without evil; but I have gone even farther, in the work, and have even proved that this universe must be in reality better than every other possible universe.

o

do-good robots? God could have made the world any way he liked. It could have been evil-free and non-boring. An omnipotent being has that ability. People try to justify God's inclusion of evil in the world by limiting him, and limiting what's permissible. Even logic itself would be one of God's creations, don't forget - it could have been radically different. If an Abrahamic god exists, he's responsible for all the failings in the universe, bar none. Brianetta Brian Ronald, UK. Talk here 18:12, 5 March 2008 (EST)

In order to say that the problem of evil is a strong argument against the existence of God, one must claim that they have a clear view of the universe as a whole and God's plan for the universe. Short of being God themselves, this is very difficult to do.

--Shagie 15:26, 5 March 2008 (EST)

tl;dr  : ) But I can tell you've given it a lot of thought. --Star of David.png Radioactive Misanthrope 15:58, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Shagie clearly knows what he's talking about, but... "tl;dr"? What sort of arcane hieroglyphs are those? --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 16:02, 5 March 2008 (EST)
tl;dr = "too long; didn't read" --Star of David.png Radioactive Misanthrope 16:05, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Heh. That was too long? Drop by wp:Theodicy next time you have a few hours available. ;-) --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 16:09, 5 March 2008 (EST)
If the reference is made to what I understand of the god of 'Fundy' Xtians then I see no flaw as they claim to understand god in his goodness. Susanpurrrrr 16:11, 5 March 2008 (EST)


I took a class on modern philosophy back in college. A semester of reading Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, and Locke. It it was a very interesting class and the bit above is almost verbatim from one of my essays (it went a bit further into Leibniz trying to reconcile God's Plan, determinism, free will, and evil).
As a strong agnostic, I find it frustrating when people bring up arguments for or against the existence of God and overstate them or ignore the refutations.
Another bit of my college classes was one in formal logic. A deductive argument (what is attempted to presented on the article) is not 'strong'. It is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises and it is sound if the premises are all true. I don't believe that the problem of evil is a valid, nor a sound - and certainly not strong - argument. --Shagie 16:15, 5 March 2008 (EST)
The problem of evil is even more complicated. God never comes around to tell us what he wants, expects, or likes. All information we have on God and his motivations have been filtered through the human mind, an inherently unreliable instrument. We have no direct information aout God's will.162.82.215.199 16:16, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Furthermore, kenotic process theodicy as mediated by liberation theologians is awesome, philosophically sound-ish, and biblical! The fact that I'm writing a class essay on the subject right now certainly helps.--מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום
Just admit that you made that up.-- Asclepius staff.png-PalMD --Unhand me, scoundrel! 17:04, 5 March 2008 (EST)
I don't think so, although I must admit that, while I have heard of 'kenosis', I'm a little unclear on what precisely 'kenotic process theodicy' is. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 17:18, 5 March 2008 (EST)

Kenosis is a 'self-empytying'. In other words, it's an attempt to rationalise the all-powerful, all-knowing, etc God, which is demanded by several passages throughout the OT, with a human, suffering God, as found in the New Testament. In other words, God temporarily hangs up his divine mantle to suffer alongside humans. Keith Ward was talking about this at a lecture recently - he also had some interesting stuff to say about it with regard to free will.

I admit that I may have described it in, uh, not the most Occam's Razor-friendly terms. --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום

Hm. Isn't that pretty much the same as synkabasis syntabasis syn-ka-ta-ba-sis? Also, even though God descends to become the suffering human, that doesn't mean that he ceases to be also fully the omnipotent God, does it - with the hypostatic union and all that? --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 17:58, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Yeah, there is that term, but I think the difference lies that in the kenotic model, it's most definitely a self-imposed restriction - like in the garden of Gethsemane, and in the Temptation, he's makes it clear that, should he so wish, divinely solve those problems, but he doesn't - effectively, he's fighting with one arm behind his back. He could bring it out, but that's not what he wants. Synkatabasis doesn't stress the imposition, the 'humbling himself - even to death!' (Philippians) that kenosis does. --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום
Ok, yes, I see the difference. I'm not sure I entirely agree with that interpretation, but it's interesting nevertheless. I can haz essay when finished? --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 18:21, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Well, last time I use a piece of my work from wikipedia, I nearly got in very big trouble for 'copying my work from a public website'. I had to use the history to demonstrate who the author was. The best bit was when a whole lot of other essays appeared, with the same wording for that section. --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום

[edit] No justification for evil.

If God was good, he didn't need to create evil in order to bring about greater good: He's omnipotent. He makes the rules.

God didn't need to send Jesus down to Earth to die for our sins, except for the requirements of his own law. Laws he made, knowing full well what was going to happen.

It's self-evident that god is not completely omniscient, completely omnipotent and completely benevolent. He chose to create a world with a contrast, and everything, including rebellion, the fall of man and the requirement for the death of Christ in redemption, was all of his own making.

I contend that, if God is ultimately found to exist, that he is basically a bit of a twat. Let's just hope that the Christians are the butt of his joke, and not us. Brianetta Brian Ronald, UK. Talk here 18:07, 5 March 2008 (EST) Note: I'm atheist.

Isn't the issue that God gives people a choice, though? And it's that element of free will that causes rebellion, although it wouldn't have to. --מְתֻרְגְּמָן שְׁלֹום
See the bit I just added further up. God included evil in the available choices. He could have included different kinds of good, if he wanted - something that can't make sense in this universe, because it's something he didn't do. Evil could have been a non-concept, where true free will wouldn't have had a bearing on the goodness of any given thing. In this universe, of course, this isn't possible, but an omnipotent god could have come up with a universe where it was. Brianetta Brian Ronald, UK. Talk here 18:17, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Well, that may be possible, but since this is the only universe we know of and could likely comprehend, it's not very profitable to try to discuss others. In any case, no matter the universe, it wouldn't be much of 'free will' if the Almighty only allowed Man to choose between different types of good behaviour, would it? --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 18:32, 5 March 2008 (EST)
If he is an omnipotent god, what's to say he hasn't made an infinite number of universes, each one with different views of good and evil, and our view of good and evil is simply the result of the universe we live in? ThunderkatzHo! 18:28, 5 March 2008 (EST)
The question of benevolence is one of what do humans consider benevolent. Its a human ascribed trait of God. What about saying that God has created the most perfect of possible universes, after all, He is perfect. What constitutes perfect for God and perfect life for an individual human are not necessarily the same. The question is, is God benevolent an a personal level or on the scale of creation? I would argue the later - the John 3:16 does not read "For God so loved people" but rather gar Theos houto agapao kosmos... Kosmos is the root of the word cosmic and extends to the universe, all of creation.
Related, a universe with free will is a better one than one without. Would you rather have 10 print "Praise God"; goto 10; or a world where the beings praise you on their on free will? Can there be free will without the possibility of evil? That is a interesting philosophical question and I would contend the answer is 'no', just as it is not possible to have a square circle. --Shagie 18:31, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Is this where someone is supposed to ask if an omnipotent God couldn't create a square circle if he wanted to? ;-) --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 18:34, 5 March 2008 (EST)
No, because like the concepts of good and evil, square and circle are human constructs, and using our puny god-mirror powers, we made the concepts mutually exclusive. x2 + y2 = r2 always worked for me, though. humanUser talk:Human 18:39, 5 March 2008 (EST)


[edit] Verging on the problem of omnipotence

Above there are several statements that say in essence "god can change logic". This is again, another overstatement of omnipotence that theologians don't ascribe to God. The accepted definition of omnipotence is "being able to do whatever is possible". Making square circles, making 2+2=5, and other violations of logic are not things that God can do. It weakens one's argument when straw man arguments are used. --Shagie 18:37, 5 March 2008 (EST)

That's a bit of an oversimplification. As far as I know, there is no "accepted definition of omnipotence" - and I don't think that, for instance, Kierkegaard would agree with a definition of omnipotence that is limited by logic. Or Descartes, if I remember him correctly. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 18:52, 5 March 2008 (EST)
I can haz... AKjeldsen? TmtamesP 18:54, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Sorry, man. I'm a sovereign individual with free will and inalienable rights, so I'm afraid I'm not for sale. :-( We might be able to negotiate a lease agreement, though. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 19:00, 5 March 2008 (EST)
2 euros a month. TmtamesP 19:04, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Now why would a good little CP-er wish to buy(rent) another user? Eh? Pinto's5150 Talk 19:08, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Haha. Surely you jest. :-D --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 20:05, 5 March 2008 (EST)
Catholic encyclopedia - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11251c.htm - "Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible."
http://books.google.com/books?id=4XpCAAAAIAAJ is a good read too.
Aquinas - http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP/FP025.html#FPQ25A3THEP1
I welcome people to go hunt down other theologians. I beleive that the confusion over omnipotence is largely a naive understanding of a translation.
Looking at the origins of the word and concept, there are problems with taking the Latin omnipotence literally as all powerful. One confusing bit is that the gospels were not written in Latin, but rather Greek. There the word is pantokrator. Pan meaning all and kratos meaning dominion, rule, strength. A king has kratos over his realm. Demos (people) + kratos (power, rule) = Democracy. This is not 'snap my fingers and *poof*' power.
--Shagie 19:16, 5 March 2008 (EST)
I am personally inclined to prefer that definition of omnipotence myself, but it is far from the only one that has been used by theologians. I refer, for instance, to Descartes' Sixth Set of Objections and Replies, Reply 8 in particular, or to Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 20:05, 5 March 2008 (EST)
If I recall my Descartes properly, he never argued that God could defy logic, but rather an evil demon could meddle with your mind to make you think that things that were logical true were not (or that things that where logically impossible where true). This, however, did not make it such that God could defy logic. Unfortunately, I haven't read any of Kierkegaard's works. --Shagie 20:16, 5 March 2008 (EST)
[1] Briefly, Descartes argues in Reply 8 that since there cannot be anything, including such things as logic or mathematics, which does not depend on God, it is reasonable that God could also change these things if he so wished. How this could happen is beyond human understanding. Kierkegaard is more complex, but essentially says the same thing, that there cannot be anything that God does not have power over, whether or not it seems absurd to the mortal mind. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 20:23, 5 March 2008 (EST)

I believe you miss the point that Descartes is trying to make. He is trying to do two things - show that something is knowable and prove the existence of God. It was an argument against skepticism of the time that suggest that nothing was knowable at all. I do not believe that he was personally arguing for that definition of omnipotence, but rather that he was putting up every single possible thing that could prevent us from knowing something - even a God that was messing with basic logic. It should also be pointed out that once Descartes felt sure of the knowledge of God, he then limited what God was capable of doing by saying that God is good and not a trickster and so he wouldn't (can't) create things to deceive us and thus logic cannot be faulty. --Shagie 20:31, 5 March 2008 (EST)

Indeed, but he also points out (both in the Replies and the Meditations themselves) that all things are dependent on God, or perhaps rather the order and disposition created by God (or however it is he phrases it). It seems to follow from this that while God is not a deceiver and follows the rules and laws that he himself made, this is a voluntary limitation, since there is nothing greater than God that could compel him to do so, and that he could choose to do otherwise if he wanted. I'm not that well read in Descartes, so I could be interpreting him entirely wrong, but in any case, it seems pretty far from the scholastic approach of Aquinas. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 04:32, 6 March 2008 (EST)

[edit] No free will

If Free will exists why is Brainwashing possible? According to Christianity people don't have free will.God causes them to sin. Barbara Shack 03:53, 6 March 2008 (EST)

The (wrong) opinion of one guy on a message board is hardly representative of what "Christianity" says. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 04:34, 6 March 2008 (EST)

The Bible quotations are accurate. I've checked them. 1Kings 22:23 Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee. [2]

Ezekiek 14:9 And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. [3]

2Thressalonians 2:11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:[4]

Then there are the mind-benders like this:

Matthew 26:34 Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. [5]Barbara Shack 05:32, 6 March 2008 (EST)

Yes, the quotes are accurate in themselves, but we need to consider what they signify in the proper context, otherwise we're no better than the literalists. For instance, the passage in 1 Kings 22 is part of a longer narrative about King Ahab who has lost divine favour because of his idolatry and persecution of priests, among other thing, and it is for that reason that the prophets are made to lure him into a battle where he will be killed (And even that wouldn't have happened if he had listened to Micaiah in time). Not that I see what all this has to do with free will, mind you.
Now, in the Denial of Peter, and to an even greater degree in the Betrayal of Judas, we have a much more interesting problem. Jesus foretold that Peter would deny him and that Judas would betray him. Does this mean that it was predestined that they would commit these sins, which especially in the case of Judas was absolutely essential to the sacrifice of Jesus, and in turn to the salvation of mankind? But if it was predestined, can we really blame them for committing those sins?
Or maybe another explanation is that Christ, being fully God, exists outside of linear time, and so for him, those events had already happened. But that in turn leads to another problem: If Jesus existed outside of time, does that not diminish the impact of his voluntary sacrifice, cf. the above discussion of kenosis? In any case, these are some very difficult issues that touch at the core of Christian theology, and they cannot be answered simply by pulling up a few scripture passages and drawing some fast conclusions. --AKjeldsenGodspeed! 06:05, 6 March 2008 (EST)
There are other explanations without needing to invoke God. One question is are the gospels a perfectly accurate account or was that something written after the fact, inserted by someone else later for some reason. There are other insertions into other spots in the New Testament done by various people to push one message or another. Peter's denial can be explained that way. No need to invoke predetermisim there.
Some historians believe Judas to be of the sacarii sect (Iscariot being a corruption of the sect's name). That sect wanted a military leader to cast off Rome and establish a Jewish nation again. And here you've got a hippy messiah who isn't throwing lighting bolts around, suggesting to pay taxes to Caesar, and whatnot. What do you do? Sell him out (he's not the messiah and is causing some political problems locally that Rome might have to come in and settle). It doesn't take a great leap to suggest that Judas would or has already betrayed Jesus.
Returning to Leibniz, he suggests that free will is the ability to choose otherwise. A deterministic universe (something debated at Leibniz's time) suggests that if everything was exactly the same, you would always make the same choice. But the key there is that you made the choice - you could choose otherwise. And thus, free will and determinism (or a collapse of the wave form by the last friend of Wigner if you're into quantum mechanics) are not in conflict. Being outside time or being able to compute what would happen faster than it happens does not mean you do not have free will.
--Shagie 17:16, 6 March 2008 (EST)

[edit] Different people see different things as good or evil

In other words, "God is omnibenevolent." Simply, means that God is completely good according to at least one person's definition of good, since there are people who believe that allowing some evil to exist is good, the existence of evil does not in any way deny the existence of God.— Unsigned, by: 75.169.193.171 / talk / contribs

It denies the existence of any God whose morality doesn't include "allowing evil = good", i.e. most common ones. ~ Kupochama[1][2] 23:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
But if God is "omnibenevolent" (ie: all-loving) then surely he must also love the Great Beast and his False Prophet. So why does he cast them into a Lake of Fire when he releases all the other damned souls from Hell on Judgement Day? --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
What if some evils are really necessary for goods? Suppose God loves you, or me, or anyone, not just as a person in general, but as a particular person; loving you as a particular person, God chooses to create you. But what if your existence requires evil - a world without evil could have people in it, but it couldn't have you in it. Therefore, in order to create you, God must create evil. Yet, if God's intentions could be put that way, can we so easily question their goodness? (As to your comment about the Great Beast and his False Prophet, I am not a biblical literalist, so I don't think God actually does that.) --Zack Martin HolyMaratreanSigil.png 08:46, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
"God works in mysterious ways that we don't understand". Or, the only "definition" of good and evil is God's, which we won't understand, therefore the Problem Of Evil is moot as it's inherently from our perspective, not His. ADK...I'll insult your fork! 09:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the problem of evil is just God's. I think it is also ours. I realized this for myself, when I realized that I almost certainly only exist because my older siblings died. If they hadn't have died, my parents almost certainly would never have had any more children; and even if they still had more children, their lives would have been so different (having older siblings), none of them would have been me. So I only live because of their deaths, and all the good things that happened to me is just because of the evil of their deaths. But if all my good depends on evil for another, how am I really different from anyone else who lives - just maybe, personal circumstance make that connection more obvious to me than to others? So if all the good we know depends on evil (even if maybe there is some hypothetical good, different from the good any of us has, which could exist without evil), can we really blame God for creating evil? For me to attack God for creating evil is really to attack God for creating me, and even in my greatest moments of self-hatred, I can't manage to do that. --Zack Martin HolyMaratreanSigil.png 11:46, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
"God is a figment of the imagination" -> problem solved. ADK...I'll vote your clock! 11:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Forget about God, it doesn't solve another problem of evil - all our good requires evil, and so maybe our good isn't so good after all? God or no God, the Holocaust makes children smile. Because, in a world without the Holocaust, those children would not exist to be smiling, even though other children would be smiling in their place - so certainly, the Holocaust makes these children smile. --Zack Martin HolyMaratreanSigil.png 11:54, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

[edit] The omnipotence paradox

People ask the question, if God is omnipotent, could he create a boulder so heavy not even he could lift it? Well, if he's omnipotent then he's outside the laws of logic so he could create a boulder so heavy not even he could lift it and still be able to lift it. He could create a round square or a married bachelor. So why can't he make it so that evil can exist independantly of good? Why can't he make it so that you can experience happiness without knowing unhappiness? Once again, it boils down to the same answer: he's either great or good but obviously not both. That's why I don't swing with the whole Christian thing. --Let Them Eat Cake (talk) 21:49, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Same answer as I gave in section above, plus I'd add - I don't think omnipotence as "God can do anything" is a very useful concept. My preference is for the concept of "God can do anything anyone can; if She can't do it, no one can". Whether you want to call that 'omnipotent' or not is just a question of definitions. --Zack Martin HolyMaratreanSigil.png 08:48, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Some responses

So, in other words, this kind of god has no problems with allowing wars, genocides and plagues to ravage humanity, as long as the end product is just right for his or her tastes.

Yes. "Just right" meaning all the people whom she loves existing. Actually, in my belief, all the souls that have ever lived are willingly incorporated at the end into her soul, and in the circle of time the end is also the beginning, when she emanates forth once more the many souls of the many universes. What this means, is that she used to be us, and will be us once more; we used to be her, and shall be her once more. Thus, the existence of all particular souls is necessary for her own existence in her full particularity, thus she creates the evils necessary for her own existence. And, she loves us as particular persons with the same love with which she perfectly loves her very own particularity.

Of course, this kind of theodicy still has trouble to account for the fact that an omnipotent god could have simply created a set of humans in exactly the way he or she wanted them to be, without exposing past generations to needless suffering.

Only if she gave us false memories of the past. But if she had, some past people would have never existed (i.e. those whom we remembered, but who died before the cutoff at which the memories were false). She loves us, so she would not cause those whom we love to have never existed, to have been mere philosophical zombies of pseudomemory. Nor would she cause our past joys to be imaginary. She has more respect for us than that; she respects, and shares, our anti-solipsistic desires.

And if past evils were necessary for our existence, no human would have a right to complain about any injustice that might benefit future generations - after all, it's just as likely that the set of humans god really wants to exist is not the current generation, but some future one.

I would say the set of humans she really wants to exist is all who have ever existed. As I have said elsewhere, I believe that those whom she loves, yet hurts, for the sake of her love for others whose existence is purchased through those hurts, she compensates for their sufferings through the creation of other universe-branches in which things turn out more to their liking; and she grants them perfect knowledge of these universe-branches after death.

This formulation of theodicy also runs into some problems when it comes to daily application by anyone other than God. When you steal someone's television, it does no good to tell them that you only did it because you have a special love for the person he would be without a television.

But actually, no one really does steal a television because of a special love for the person they would be without one. To love someone you need to know them. The only person who could possibly have such a love would be one who knew the future; that is why this special love is beyond human capacity, it is only possible for the divine. Zack Martin HolyMaratreanSigil.png 11:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

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