Evil means a Christian God cannot exist?

[Deck Knight]

Should have checked in way earlier than this.

Anyway, briefly: I'm not blaming anyone in Haiti or wherever for their misfortunes. Human beings cannot be responsible for earthquakes of all things. I was merely stating any course of historical actions can be interpreted as an exercise in "evil" because of unintended consequences or unforseen calamity. Has nothing to do with "blaming" anyone. Which was the original purpose of the topic anyway, addressing how evil and a Christian God can exist simultaneously.

Free will is self-evident. Illogical courses of action are taking by people in societal systems all the time to either their folly or great reward. Logical courses of action within a societal system are followed to illogical end results with the same regularity. Brain states don't do the variation in the world justice, in fact you can't even test the theory because the "brain state" (read: response to stimuli) alters itself when the person is conscious they are being tested. Add to the fact the brain is a dynamic system and brain states change instantaneously, including over the course of completing any given action, that it's not a good basis for foundational discussions about human nature. Some people murder and immediately feel regret, other people murder and never question it. And some people get the opposite response based on who they just murdered.

If you can explain why these scenarios have played out in so many different individuals in so many diverse social and cultural contexts, based entirely on brain chemistry at the time directly preceeding, during, and after the murder, you deserve a medal.

It has the same applicability as The Matrix. Everything you know is an illusion created by your "brain," whose own existence you cannot even prove because that, too, is an illusion created by your "brain" for its own defense.

There is also no point in having a justice system if every human action can be explained as a function of brain chemistry. Not unless you want to alter all existing terminology to emphasize on weeding out aberrant biologically driven practices, but I imagine such a system would not be very tolerant of a whole string of behaviors.

Not to mention it would still be subject to its administrators brain chemistry as to what constitutes an aberrant biological practice. We already have enough trouble with murder vs. lethal self-defense when considering people as rational actors in a court of law where decisions are made by a jury of peers, never mind putting some fatalistic brain chemists in charge of society who'd rule by fiat.

Anyway I'm not a theologian so all that stuff is above my head, I prefer the moral constancy and backup of Catholicism more than specific debates about its canonical content.

What it basically boils down to is the Bible is authored by God but interpreted by Man, so whatever semantical games are played in defining the limits of omnipotency, omnibenevolence, etc. are all confusions stemming from imperfect human knowledge. "That's not what omnipotent means!" is a fruitless semantic argument because human parameters for omnipotence as defined in the English language (or even Hebrew) are inherently incomplete.

Even under human reasoning all-powerful and all-benevolent do not translate into endless coddling and protection from all harm. God is not a socialist; His existence does not seek to infantilize you and subject you to a litany of inviolable restrictions under penalty of death while micromanaging every aspect of your life and choking your intellectual, moral, and physical development.

Free will exists because in order to create a creature in His image God had to create a creature capable of free choice. How we are judged is not based on whatever litany of actions God forsees us doing in life, it is in how we choose to respond to life with each passing moment. Not that fatalism is even a necessary or relevant part of Christian existence. Since we do not and cannot know God, perhaps all He knows is what choices will be presented before us in life and leaves it up to us to decide. God hardly needs to exist in our time if He chooses not to, we can't even fathom perception of the infinite. It does not process in our minds. Nor do we even know what a being of infinite anything constitutes, all we have is our semantic definition of infinite to go by. At best we are applying traits we have come to loosely understand imperfectly to a being whose perfect nature we do not know.

It'd be like categorically defining Brain as smart or J-man as stupid when all you have to go by is whatever you understand those two terms to mean. After applying those two terms, you then try to say "Brain cannot possibly be hoodwinked, he's smart!" Or "J-man cannot possibly drive, he's stupid!" Just because omnipotent and omnibenevolent are more specific words does not mean they are being applied properly.

 

[MrIndigo]

Free will is self-evident. Illogical courses of action are taking by people in societal systems all the time to either their folly or great reward. Logical courses of action within a societal system are followed to illogical end results with the same regularity. Brain states don't do the variation in the world justice, in fact you can't even test the theory because the "brain state" (read: response to stimuli) alters itself when the person is conscious they are being tested. Add to the fact the brain is a dynamic system and brain states change instantaneously, including over the course of completing any given action, that it's not a good basis for foundational discussions about human nature. Some people murder and immediately feel regret, other people murder and never question it. And some people get the opposite response based on who they just murdered.

This isn't self-evidence of free will, certainly not as I defined it previously. If you're using a different definition, you need to specify what it is, as Brain pointed out, it's not a clear cut matter. Free-will and rationality are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and irrationality is not direct evidence of free-will, because it's impossible to determine how the decision is made. It could be entirely rational, but with unexpected assignments of values to potential outcomes.

If you can explain why these scenarios have played out in so many different individuals in so many diverse social and cultural contexts, based entirely on brain chemistry at the time directly preceeding, during, and after the murder, you deserve a medal.

We can't... yet. Brain dynamics research is still barely scratching the surface of the extraordinarily complex processes in the brain. After all, we still can't fully describe even single-molecule electron wavefunction behaviour, and a cell is made of millions of molecules and the brain is made of millions of cells. The fact that you get such different results is that the brain is an incredibly complicated device and exhibits chaotic behaviour; a tiny change to the initial conditions can generate a huge number of different outcomes. Homogeneity in the results from such a diverse range of configurations of brain cells and brain states would beggar belief if it was ever observed.

But research goes on. We have models with very few free parameters that predict to good accuracy the electrical response of the brain to the ocular stimulation of a particular image, and the experiments and analyses are getting more complex all the time.

It has the same applicability as The Matrix. Everything you know is an illusion created by your "brain," whose own existence you cannot even prove because that, too, is an illusion created by your "brain" for its own defense.

There is also no point in having a justice system if every human action can be explained as a function of brain chemistry. Not unless you want to alter all existing terminology to emphasize on weeding out aberrant biologically driven practices, but I imagine such a system would not be very tolerant of a whole string of behaviors.

This is an interesting point that I've thought about before as a legal-practitioner-to-be, given my belief that our brain is deterministic to the quantum limit. My current philosophy is tied to what is perhaps the fiction that while we don't have true free-will, we have the illusion thereof and it's strong enough that until we have fully determined the limit of determinability of the brain's function, the legal system can maintain acting as though free-will DOES exist. We will have hundreds, possibly even thousands of years before we get to that point.


One thing to note; it is supposed by some that even if the brain is deterministic, it may not be possible for conventional computers to operate fast enough to "predict" the outcome of a brain as fast as the brain can generate it given stimulus at the same time. If that's the case, it could be said that while the brain is theoretically predictable, the practical unpredictability serves as a substitute for free will, just as the practical impossibility of mapping out every conceivable chess configuration substitutes for a true game.

 

[lati0s]

When you say "you were 'forced' by your nature to choose as you did", you are implicitly saying that "you" and "your nature" are different entities, which, when you think about it, doesn't really make any sense. On the other hand, if one equates someone with their nature, then you would be stating that "you were 'forced' by yourself to choose as you did" - which is technically circular reasoning, but seems to drive the point that it was indeed your choice.

By 'you' I meant your consciousness and by 'your nature' I meant the atoms of your brain. since your consciousness is a consequence of your brain its thoughts and actions are determined by your brain state, eliminating free will.

 

[pmjc]

I agree with Brain. When people say they believe in free will, they usually implictly mean that they believe that there is some aspect of an individual consciousness that goes beyond the basic atoms and cells and wave energy in the person's brain.

Thus, my interpretation of lati0s' statement is that when he says "you were forced by your nature", he means that external component of the consciousness was invariably directed to a particular outcome by either external consciousnesses, or by limitations based in the biological hardware of the brain.

My personal belief is that there is no such external component. Consciousness and personality are deterministic based on the physical composition and status of the brain, and any external self is simply an illusion created by the hardware running it's processes. (Consequently, I don't have a belief that God can't be omnipotent on that basis; I don't believe in God because of other contradictions and irrationalities).

Free will is a concept that exists independently of low-level phenomena. That is, even if we suppose that all events in the universe, from the low-level movements of molecules, were determined by the Big Bang, free will still exists independently of that.

The fact is, when you go at a low enough levels, many high level concepts that we consider to exist don't really exist. For instance, every solid object you see is 99% empty space at a quantum level, however, when someone asks me a question like "What are you sitting on?", I don't respond with, "Empty space." Just because the chair I'm sitting on is mostly made up of empty space doesn't mean that the concept of chairs is therefore meaningless.

Likewise, when a teacher is discussing a novel in English class and asks a student "Why did Character A do X instead of Y?", he or she doesn't respond with, "It is meaningless to ask that question, since all the events are predetermined by the author and the characters have no choice in the matter." Another way of saying this is that we define "free will" to be a high-level cognitive concept that represents the basic unit of moral responsibility. Likewise, because of this definition, it should be independent of low-level physics and atomic movement.

So even if the events of the universe have been predetermined at the beginning, and are written in some great big book, we're still the writing, and we use "free will" to refer to the choices that we make in that book.

 

[Ancien Régime]

Free will is simply taking purposeful conscious action without PHYSICAL interference (i.e coercion). If one is conscious of their action, then it is an act of free will, regardless of whatever stimuli may have influenced the situation preceding. For example, my making this post has been influenced by myriads of varying influences. Yet in this moment, I am purposefully choosing to make this post instead of a host of other viable options. Now, if my mind responded to a different set of stimuli, or my brain was wired differently, the choice of making this post would not be open to me. But that is irrelevant to the question of free will - I am still making a conscious choice to write this post.

To me, determinism would only apply if the determining factors directly led to singular choice; the definition that I am seeing here seems to simply alter choice dependent on both external stimuli and the brain's response to such stimuli.

As to the "evil" question, if one starts with the premise that God exists, then the theist can argue endlessly that "God is omnibenevolent, therefore there was a good reason for allowing the Holocaust/allowing 9/11 to happen/not stopping the Haitian earthquake. Prove me wrong." By definition, divine motive is inscrutable by human reason - we can take wild guesses (like what DK alluded to - it's better for our moral development, keeping in mind that in Christianity our immortal souls transcend our physical bodies, to contend with evil, danger, and risk), but we really can't know, because by definition, we're dealing with a bigger entity than we can understand.

 

[MetalGearSamus]

By definition, divine motive is inscrutable by human reason - we can take wild guesses...but we really can't know, because by definition, we're dealing with a bigger entity than we can understand.

That's the entire point. If something exists that cannot be observed, tested for, rationally though about, or that serves no purpose in the workings of the world, there is no reason to think it exists. One or two old books aren't going to change that.

 

[cantab]

The second doesn't. The first one is Jesus (God) telling his disciples that he has to and how he will die. Either he knows what is going happen, or he took one huge lucky guess. You can also see many verses in the gospels where Jesus (God) Knows the evil thoughts of the pharisees. These two examples are a blatant display of Omniscience. I am willing to provide even more examples of God's Omniscience if you want.

It's not a blatant display of omniscience. Knowing something isn't the same as knowing everything.

So God can know his own future. He can also know the thoughts of humans. That doesn't mean he has to know every little detail of the Universe.

Another thing about God's omniscience - is he actually omniscient, or merely potentially omniscient? By "potentially omniscient", I mean, could God choose to know any thing, but also choose to NOT know any thing? Certainly, His omnipotence might be able to extend to Him choosing to not know the future of mankind, or any human, before it happens.
(Deck Knight seemed to touch on a similar idea.)

I believe that a person matures--becomes independent, confident, etc--when they realize this: that they have no explanation for why matter itself exists, period.

Matter exists because in a situation where there is the right amount of energy, some of that energy will be converted to matter. In the early Universe, there was a period with that right amount of energy, which lasted about 3 minutes.

Of course, that just shifts the question to "why is there energy", along with "why is there spacetime". But the existence of matter is perfectly explainable - though only in terms of the existence of something else.

One thing to note; it is supposed by some that even if the brain is deterministic, it may not be possible for conventional computers to operate fast enough to "predict" the outcome of a brain as fast as the brain can generate it given stimulus at the same time. If that's the case, it could be said that while the brain is theoretically predictable, the practical unpredictability serves as a substitute for free will, just as the practical impossibility of mapping out every conceivable chess configuration substitutes for a true game.

Somewhat off-topic: is there any idea of exactly how the brain compares to the theoretical limits of computation? It will be hard to work out, since the brain is extremely different to a conventional computer. For a start it's analogue. Maybe the best way to model it will be with analogue electronics. Analogue computers were used a bit once, but fell away.

It also seems reasonably evident that the brain uses a lot of its power running the equivalent of an operating system - doing things we DON'T consciously choose to do, like processing sensory inputs. And also a lot of its power providing the equivalent of library routines - things like handling the details of how your muscles move when you type, walk, eat, whatever. (Most of that is done by the cerebellum I believe). I reckon probably more brainpower is being used on that sort of stuff that on actual conscious thought; right now my brain probably has to do more work letting me see the screen, hear my music, and type at a pretty good speed, than it has to do determining what I'm actually going to write.

 

[MrIndigo]

Somewhat off-topic: is there any idea of exactly how the brain compares to the theoretical limits of computation? It will be hard to work out, since the brain is extremely different to a conventional computer. For a start it's analogue. Maybe the best way to model it will be with analogue electronics. Analogue computers were used a bit once, but fell away.

It also seems reasonably evident that the brain uses a lot of its power running the equivalent of an operating system - doing things we DON'T consciously choose to do, like processing sensory inputs. And also a lot of its power providing the equivalent of library routines - things like handling the details of how your muscles move when you type, walk, eat, whatever. (Most of that is done by the cerebellum I believe). I reckon probably more brainpower is being used on that sort of stuff that on actual conscious thought; right now my brain probably has to do more work letting me see the screen, hear my music, and type at a pretty good speed, than it has to do determining what I'm actually going to write.

Not yet, or at least, nothing that isn't heavily conjectured or philosophical. I think the most common belief is that the brain must be doing some kind of distributed parallel processing. However, since we don't actually understand how a brain does a computation yet, we can't really tie down how it compares to conventional computing.

 

[MrIndigo]

Free will is a concept that exists independently of low-level phenomena. That is, even if we suppose that all events in the universe, from the low-level movements of molecules, were determined by the Big Bang, free will still exists independently of that.

The fact is, when you go at a low enough levels, many high level concepts that we consider to exist don't really exist. For instance, every solid object you see is 99% empty space at a quantum level, however, when someone asks me a question like "What are you sitting on?", I don't respond with, "Empty space." Just because the chair I'm sitting on is mostly made up of empty space doesn't mean that the concept of chairs is therefore meaningless.

Likewise, when a teacher is discussing a novel in English class and asks a student "Why did Character A do X instead of Y?", he or she doesn't respond with, "It is meaningless to ask that question, since all the events are predetermined by the author and the characters have no choice in the matter." Another way of saying this is that we define "free will" to be a high-level cognitive concept that represents the basic unit of moral responsibility. Likewise, because of this definition, it should be independent of low-level physics and atomic movement.

So even if the events of the universe have been predetermined at the beginning, and are written in some great big book, we're still the writing, and we use "free will" to refer to the choices that we make in that book.

This is an interesting take, and one I quite like. You're basically saying what I used as a 'fiction' in my response to Deck, i.e. that our decisions seem freely decided to us even if they are deterministic and we would only ever come to one conclusion, and saying "That's not the illusion of free will, that IS free will".

 

[drifblim70]

Ok, now we're on free will again, so here I go. One of my crazier dreams has always been to look into the causes of seemingly impossible natural disasters/predicaments and see if I have any ideas on how to solve them. For instance, in SuperFreakonomics I read of one specific idea on how hurricanes might be prevented involving the cycling of warm water back into the sea before it could build up enough energy to become a tropical depression (or however that works, bear with me, I'm not sure on all the details)--and the insane thing was that it seemed doable, based on what they described. I haven't seen anyone say that the destruction of Haiti was somehow warranted by some past human action or that hurricanes and whatnot were somehow justified morally, so I assume I'm still on the same page as everyone else. I'm pretty sure at least one or two people have brought up the idea of divine logic being different from human logic/divine morality being unknowable, but w/e.

So let's say I'm a guy with free will in the "fiction" analogy described above. Hypothetically, let's say I manage to invent something like an anti-hurricane machine or whatever, and suddenly a natural disaster becomes solvable/preventable by a human; island nations everywhere rejoice at their newfound ability to avoid that danger. Yet God has never stepped in to solve these problems for us--he may have prevented storms from becoming hurricanes in the past, but every now and then he lets one through, his reasons remaining as inscrutable as ever. What then of our omnibenevolent, omnipotent God? Did he decide to simply allow humans to become heroes in a story that he created? There was a hell of a lot of suffering involved, wasn't there? Along those lines, then, doesn't all that completely contradict the idea of a benevolent God, if God is someone who is content to allow this suffering to continue simply to provide conflict, or even just a bored creator who decides to step back and allow humans to figure out how to prosper on their own (akin to the "divine parent" analogy inevitably discussed already?

Sorry if these ideas have already been gone over, I only came here two days ago :(

To J-man: You seem to believe that the Bible is infallible, that it was/is God's word, and you tell us that we can only argue with you if we have a Bible quote to back it up, "for only Scripture can reveal truth" or something. Are you incidentally aware of the actual historical origin of the Bible as Christians know it today?

Did you know, for instance, that it was assembled under the orders of a Roman Emperor--Constantine maybe?--around the year 300 AD based on several (like 60-80 iirc) texts that already existed? In other words, if the Bible is the word of God, are you sure we aren't missing any of it, or perhaps that some of it might not be as infallible as you think? Allow me to give you an example to look up:

The chapter directly after the Ten Commandments in the Book of Deuteronomy, iirc, details precisely what the Israelites are allowed to do regarding slaves--and it doesn't outright condemn human slavery, I can definitely tell you that much. Does that belong in the Bible, J-man?

 

[MrIndigo]

Ok, now we're on free will again, so here I go. One of my crazier dreams has always been to look into the causes of seemingly impossible natural disasters/predicaments and see if I have any ideas on how to solve them. For instance, in SuperFreakonomics I read of one specific idea on how hurricanes might be prevented involving the cycling of warm water back into the sea before it could build up enough energy to become a tropical depression (or however that works, bear with me, I'm not sure on all the details)--and the insane thing was that it seemed doable, based on what they described. I haven't seen anyone say that the destruction of Haiti was somehow warranted by some past human action or that hurricanes and whatnot were somehow justified morally, so I assume I'm still on the same page as everyone else. I'm pretty sure at least one or two people have brought up the idea of divine logic being different from human logic/divine morality being unknowable, but w/e.

So let's say I'm a guy with free will in the "fiction" analogy described above. Hypothetically, let's say I manage to invent something like an anti-hurricane machine or whatever, and suddenly a natural disaster becomes solvable/preventable by a human; island nations everywhere rejoice at their newfound ability to avoid that danger. Yet God has never stepped in to solve these problems for us--he may have prevented storms from becoming hurricanes in the past, but every now and then he lets one through, his reasons remaining as inscrutable as ever. What then of our omnibenevolent, omnipotent God? Did he decide to simply allow humans to become heroes in a story that he created? There was a hell of a lot of suffering involved, wasn't there? Along those lines, then, doesn't all that completely contradict the idea of a benevolent God, if God is someone who is content to allow this suffering to continue simply to provide conflict, or even just a bored creator who decides to step back and allow humans to figure out how to prosper on their own (akin to the "divine parent" analogy inevitably discussed already?

Sorry if these ideas have already been gone over, I only came here two days ago :(

If you assume that you have free-will. If you don't, then it could be that God guided your actions without you knowing, just as they argue he guided the writers of the Bible, etc.

 

[drifblim70]

Ok, but even if God guided my actions without my knowing, if said device/technique was invented, it would undoubtedly save many more lives than would have been saved before, prevent further destruction of homes and lifestyles, etc. That would mean that what was once considered unavoidable/God's will/whatever, no matter how tragic--hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, whatever--was suddenly proven avoidable, i.e. the deaths of those people due to those seemingly unstoppable (or divine) causes were suddenly meaningless/senseless. Again, does that not prove that God is not benevolent? God is supposed to exist outside of space and time, whatever that means, and he's supposed to be omnipotent/omniscient. In such a case, humans would be able to conclusively prove that at least one of the apparent contradictions in our (or at least the Christian) understanding of God was, in fact, an actual contradiction. Either God is not benevolent or God is not omnipotent/omniscient; an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God would have prevented those disasters for us in the first place, as

Oh wait--such things have been created. Vaccines have already been created for polio and various other deadly diseases, humans have figured out how to grow food reliably and feed themselves properly (with the right nutrients and whatnot), we figured out that germs existed and successfully targeted them as the cause of deadly infections (I'm getting that, again, from SuperFreakonomics), we established the United Nations in an attempt (however successful it was) to communicate more effectively and prevent needless violence. All of these things have certainly helped mitigate the pains of human existence. So why didn't God just give us these things from the beginning, with sufficient explanation of how they all would work?

"Free will," whether it exists or not, does not explain evil at all. And I'm already anticipating the Christian reponse to this argument--that "the ways of God are unknowable," that divine morality is somehow different from ours, that it will all make sense in the end. Really? Will it all make sense? Why, because the Bible says to trust God's plan? I just told you, J-man, where the Bible came from: a council of Romans trying to keep their country together and maintain order. You can look it up; even the Church declares it openly. (Unless you're a fundamentalist, which you seem to be; unfortunately, facts are not matters of faith, but of history.)

 

[lati0s]

voltaire, you pretty much just re-outlined the argument in the OP, if they didn't accept it then, why would they accept it now? dont take this as an insult I fully agree with what you are saying.

 

[drifblim70]

oh, sorry, should've read the OP again. well, meh, i dunno, maybe if I stated it more concisely or something it might have an effect. I don't know if anyone brought up the whole evil-condoned-by-the-bible thing (like the "Laws Regarding Slaves" or the burning of Sodom or whatever), but I thought maybe something straight from the bible could get to a fundamentalist.

I think the only way this discussion would ever induce a change in someone's opinion is if they're free to interpret it for themselves, i.e. they're not being set up as the main villain of the conservation or whatever and are left some time to ponder these things for themselves. I mean, "thinking for yourself" is basically the moral of the story anyway, as far as God goes.

But meh, time to answer the thread's title question: "Evil means a Christian God cannot exist?" Correct, evil means a Christian God can't exist, because the Christian God contains too many assumptions/inherent contradictions. Does that mean no God could possibly exist? No, but there's no point talking about it then, because "God" is a meaningless word, really. No one's ever seen one; everyone wants to ascribe qualities to their God, but why are they still doing so?

On the last page or two someone sent me a response as to why the question of "Why" was pointless, because the answer would involve purpose, which then pointed to some supernatural reasoning/creator for the universe. I guess so, but that's not what I meant. I meant it as the origin of something... not the classic "Why are we here?" but rather the colloquial "Why is this still here?" I meant it more as a metaphysical question, not one regarding purpose. I completely agree, existence itself needs no "purpose," but from everything logic dictates, it must have some origin somewhere. To say matter has no origin or that nothing existed before the Big Bang takes a leap of faith in itself, really...

 

[Anachronism]

I think you guys are forgetting about this quotation:

"Stop talking about this shit. If a God exists then what that God is capable of doing is something we will never understand. If he doesn't exist then we don't need to change anyone's mind (Not that these threads ever do)."

-Jesus

I hear the PRIESTS that made the Bible forgot to add this quote in.

 

[MrIndigo]

I like the story that the first page of the Bible came with the phrase "The following work is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to any places, objects, or people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Signed, Allah."

 

[Deck Knight]

Are those biblical quotes from Bullshiticus 1:1-5?

 

[pmjc]

If he doesn't exist then we don't need to change anyone's mind (Not that these threads ever do)."

I've had my mind changed before by a convincing enough argument posted on a forum. While I am aware that your cached thoughts are telling you that threads about the existence of God go nowhere, you should consider otherwise. One solid argument can be more than enough to persuade the unbiased reader.

 

[MrIndigo]

If you can explain why these scenarios have played out in so many different individuals in so many diverse social and cultural contexts, based entirely on brain chemistry at the time directly preceeding, during, and after the murder, you deserve a medal.

It has the same applicability as The Matrix. Everything you know is an illusion created by your "brain," whose own existence you cannot even prove because that, too, is an illusion created by your "brain" for its own defense.

There is also no point in having a justice system if every human action can be explained as a function of brain chemistry. Not unless you want to alter all existing terminology to emphasize on weeding out aberrant biologically driven practices, but I imagine such a system would not be very tolerant of a whole string of behaviors.

Not to mention it would still be subject to its administrators brain chemistry as to what constitutes an aberrant biological practice. We already have enough trouble with murder vs. lethal self-defense when considering people as rational actors in a court of law where decisions are made by a jury of peers, never mind putting some fatalistic brain chemists in charge of society who'd rule by fiat.

I had a revelation this morning that I should have had earlier about this point. The argument that fatalism implies that a justice system is meaningless is incorrect, or rather, makes an unstated assumption that punishment, that is, retribution by some divine mandate, is the only motivation for criminal justice.

This is not at all accurate; indeed, it's increasingly difficult to find a legal academic who thinks retribution for retribution's sake is justified at all. There are also motivating factors about prevention of recidivism, rehabilitation, protection of the rest of society, etc.

None of these are countered by a deterministic brain.

 

[Darkmalice]

I am a devote Catholic brought up by a Catholic family who went to a Catholic school. I have come across this argument of God cannot be all omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. I feel that each individual has to take their faith into their own hands and interpret it for themselves. Personally, I believe that evil exists because God is putting us through a test, but not in the way that the OP describes it.

If God was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, life would be perfect without evil, as God would give us everything we wanted plus more. But then what would the point of life be? I believe that life isn't perfect for a reason, a reason we will never find out but a reason that exists. We need to learn from a non-perfect world with evil, and learn how to differentiate good from evil, help others, and become good people ourselves whilst avoiding evil, something that is impossible in a perfect world where there is no need to help other people. It is only by learning such virtues that we can enjoy ourselves in heaven; if the world was perfect, it would be heaven, making the need for heaven and living with God pointless.

A part of the test is also developing faith in God (just pointing out that I believe everyone can go to heaven, and you don't need to be Christian to go to heaven). If God stopped evil e.g. didn't let the Jews die after being taken to extermination camps and soldiers surviving shots to the head, then it would be plain obvious that it was the work of the divine. Believing in God would be easy. Knowing that God exists, everyone would try to be as good as possible and cease any act of evil. Evil would then cease to exist, and it would be impossible for people to learn how to differentiate good from evil, help others, and become good people ourselves whilst avoiding evil. Hence the purpose of the test would be void.

With evil, having faith in God is also a difficult task, which makes the test of doing good and avoiding evil even more difficult. This means we learn more and are better prepared for the after live, so we will enjoy the after life even more.



This point is separate from what I have already stated, but I have heard a theory (can't remember who made it) that evil is a lack of good. Simply put, evil exists where good does not. If God made us perfect, we would be 100% good, and evil would not exist. We would then become like robots, only capable of doing good instead of having the choice to commit good or evil (and rendering the purpose of God's test void once again). Therefore, evil must exist if there is to be purpose in life, and I honestly doubt that any one individual is pure good.

 

[MrIndigo]

A part of the test is also developing faith in God (just pointing out that I believe everyone can go to heaven, and you don't need to be Christian to go to heaven). If God stopped evil e.g. didn't let the Jews die after being taken to extermination camps and soldiers surviving shots to the head, then it would be plain obvious that it was the work of the divine. Believing in God would be easy. Knowing that God exists, everyone would try to be as good as possible and cease any act of evil. Evil would then cease to exist, and it would be impossible for people to learn how to differentiate good from evil, help others, and become good people ourselves whilst avoiding evil. Hence the purpose of the test would be void.

But then the question is why God demands faith in this way? The test here is a perpetuity; the reason evil exists is to test us, and the test is for us to learn the difference between good and evil. That doesn't give a reason for why the test exists at all, because if evil was removed and only good was left remaining, the test wouldn't be necessary because we wouldn't need to know what evil was.

It also doesn't really answer the problems of the death of young innocents, who die before they can learn good and evil (or, in fact, to walk).

This point is separate from what I have already stated, but I have heard a theory (can't remember who made it) that evil is a lack of good. Simply put, evil exists where good does not. If God made us perfect, we would be 100% good, and evil would not exist. We would then become like robots, only capable of doing good instead of having the choice to commit good or evil (and rendering the purpose of God's test void once again). Therefore, evil must exist if there is to be purpose in life, and I honestly doubt that any one individual is pure good.

The other point to mention is that no action is purely good or purely evil either, and most exist in some middle ground. For instance, if you have a $1 coin, and you and two other people are starving and the $1 could only feed one of you, what's the "good" action? Do you give the dollar to Person A, or Person B, condemning the other and yourself to death?

 

[Darkmalice]

But then the question is why God demands faith in this way? The test here is a perpetuity; the reason evil exists is to test us, and the test is for us to learn the difference between good and evil. That doesn't give a reason for why the test exists at all, because if evil was removed and only good was left remaining, the test wouldn't be necessary because we wouldn't need to know what evil was.

When describing the test, I probably should not have described it as a test, but more as a preparation course. In other words, life prepares us for the after life. With no evil, we cannot prepare for the after life and what awaits us there, and we would not be able to enjoy ourselves as much in the after life. There is also the common belief that we would not experience joy without feeling sadness. With no evil, sadness would not exist (or be very minimum), meaning we would have less joy in the afterlife.

It also doesn't really answer the problems of the death of young innocents, who die before they can learn good and evil (or, in fact, to walk).

Everyone always brings up this argument. Not that it's a bad argument; it's a very good one.

The death of innocent people is required in order to make it obvious to the world that evil exists and is at large. And it teaches us sympathy, gives us a will to save lives etc. The deaths are needed as part of the preparation course. Also, if God saved the lives of innocent, then it would be obvious that God exists, which would defeat the purpose of the preparation course. All lose of lives are due to evil, and this includes death by diseases i.e. natural evil (as opposed to human evil). Some evil has to exist, or no one could be prepared for the after life. Some lives lost to evil is better than all not being able to enjoy the after life. In saying this, however, I do realize the severity of saying that these deaths are necessary, which cost people a "fair go" at life. I cannot honestly say that it is fair that these people do not get a "fair go." Though perhaps God has plans for them that we are unaware of. Perhaps they are reborn with a new life at some point or another to give themselves a proper shot at life.

The other point to mention is that no action is purely good or purely evil either, and most exist in some middle ground. For instance, if you have a $1 coin, and you and two other people are starving and the $1 could only feed one of you, what's the "good" action? Do you give the dollar to Person A, or Person B, condemning the other and yourself to death?

I agree with your point, though not so much with your example. You could split the $1 so that the two other people get half a meal each, saving you the evil of forbidding one person from access to the #1. Though in staying this, you wouldn't be able to completely satisfy the hunger of both people, and such a task would be beyond your power.

To expand on your point, I believe that human evil is a result of the natural human instinct to do what one wishes to do. For example, the bully steals the ice-cream from the toddler, because he wants the ice-cream for himself, or he enjoys watching the toddler be miserable. In a more dire example, Hitler blamed the loss of Germany in WWI on the Jew soldiers' lack of will and motivation who fought on the same side as Germany (though Hitler's belief was utterly false, as the Jews who did fight alongside Germany were motivated). Hitler was angered and expanded his hate to the entire Jewish community. He wished for them not to exist, as well as wishing for a Germany country with people of limited beliefs.

But in the same way that the natural instinct can create evil, it can also create good. For example, the father teaches his son to walk, because the father enjoys teaching his son, and the father wants his son to walk. Similarly, Gandhi helped all the people he did, because he wanted to.

The natural human instinct, however, has little to do with natural evil e.g. natural disasters, disease. As part of the human instinct, people try to minimize natural evil e.g. create vaccines to prevent disease from occurring, and that's because we don't want people to suffer from natural evil. The natural human instinct does not directly create natural evil.

 

[cantab]

This point is separate from what I have already stated, but I have heard a theory (can't remember who made it) that evil is a lack of good.

This I reject with a simple example. Suppose I'm walking down the High Street and there's a charity collector. To donate some money is good. If evil is merely the absence of good, then to walk on by without donating is thus evil. And if I pass them twice, to donate the first time and pass by the second is to take an evil action the second. This I disagree with. There must be good actions (donating), evil actions (for example stealing the collection box) and neutral or indifferent actions (walking on by). Considering evil as merely the absence of good forces you to consider indifferent actions evil. (And conversely, to consider good the absence of evil forces you to consider indifferent actions good). It also forces you to draw a sharp line between good and evil, which isn't possible - there has to be a continuum.

life prepares us for the after life. With no evil, we cannot prepare for the after life and what awaits us there, and we would not be able to enjoy ourselves as much in the after life...

The death of innocent people is required in order to make it obvious to the world that evil exists and is at large. And it teaches us sympathy, gives us a will to save lives etc. The deaths are needed as part of the preparation course.

But those who die are thus denied the chance to complete the 'preparation course'. From your statements, the conclusion is they are denied the full enjoyment of heaven - denied true happiness and fulfilment for eternity. That seems too big a cost.

 

[sonickid01]

The death of innocent people is required in order to make it obvious to the world that evil exists and is at large. And it teaches us sympathy, gives us a will to save lives etc. The deaths are needed as part of the preparation course.

I find it ironic that your username is Darkmalice. Dunno if someone said that already but yeah.

Your statement seems to show that these innocent people are just "death fodder" for the Christian God. Because he is supposedly omniscient and omnipotent he would have planned or at least known that these innocent people would not survive. Therefore, if they were doomed from the beginning, are they really innocent? Is God massacring civilians, his own people, supposed to make us inspired to save others and do good deeds? If we didn't would that be for the greater purpose of inspiring others to do good deeds? Therefore, would doing bad deeds, if they inspired another person to help someone or do good, be also a good deed because in the long run it benefited the world?

As Cantab said, there's no distinct line between good and evil. It's about perspective, and there is a continuum of "goodness" and "badness."

Thought I'd put in 2 cents.

 

[E-boy]

I haven't read through the whole thread but I'd like to say that God being omnipotent AND omniscient at the same time is a paradox on its own, therefore God (as defined by OP) cannot exist.

For example, take that God says "Tomorrow I'll wear red socks". He doesn't have the power to change this, because the premise (that he'll wear red socks) wouldn't be true.
If he HAS the power to change his decision (and decides to wear green socks) he wouldn't be all-knowing, because "I'll wear red socks" ceases to be true.