Well, if one can do it, billions can do it. I mean, if one can do it, could two do it? Or is one 'non-evildoer-with-free-will' a hard limit? Why not zero then?
Solve the Problem of Evil
- Thread starter Gary Childress
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Well, if one can do it, billions can do it. I mean, if one can do it, could two do it? Or is one 'non-evildoer-with-free-will' a hard limit? Why not zero then?
It's not a hard limit, it just becomes phenomenally unlikely.
For the same reasn why me being compelled to not murder my brother does not limit my possibility to actually do it. I absolutely can murder my brother. I just choose not to for various reasons. And there's no reason why there ought to be situations in which I am compelled to murder my brother should exist.
There's no reason why those different philosophies have to exist in your example; one of those people may eventually realize that his philosophy is wrong, and thus convert to the philosophy of the other. Does the fact that the thrown away philosophy now has no followers limit the possibility for that philosophy may be believed in? No, it doesn't.
We're dealing with God here - probability is irrelevant.Eran of Arcadia said:
If He is powerful enough to make the universe highly ordered at its beginning, he can deal with any other highly improbable scenario.
We're dealing with God here - probability is irrelevant.
Not in this case - we are dealing not only with God but with everyone else, who has to agree in this case.
Fayadi
Technocrat
It is not free if certain boundaries are drawn so that you cannot cross.
Is that a difficult concept?
He probably would eliminate evils by drawing boundaries, but apparently God did not create the Universe we live in that way.
Jazzmail
King
I contest that we, humans, have that much free will.
We have many behavioural limits.
For example, while any of us here could, on an intellectual level think about doing something truly monstrous to a child, we cannot actually do this. Empathy will overrule any such action, in a healthy human being.
Another example: modern armies train soldiers extensively in the act of killing against life-like targets, because military studies have shown that before we started training soldiers this way in the modern age, 90% of all soldiers did not shoot to kill on the battlefield. Our instinct not to kill another human being apparently need to broken first.
Killing ourselves is also something that is hard to, because of our survival instincts.
We are not masters over ourselves.
There are rare people who have no hard limits towards other people and we call such people psychopaths.
I do not think that free will is a valid argument in the problem of evil.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First of all, it would be bad for people who want to have their faith be in line with orthodoxy. While in America nobody cares about that (or at least they merely pay lip service to it, believing in the orthodox god exactly insofar as it suits their personal conception), it has been of historical importance. Still, one might wonder why we should give a crap about that. Okay, but changing the divine attributes just to stop an objection is still unreasonably ad hoc. Its difficult to see how one might come up with reasons to think that the conception of God needs a revision. While one might not care whether their conception of God is reasonable, falsifiable, and/or open to debate, that person ought not even engage in these debates. It would be much more honest of the person to just declare, with VRWCAgent, that its pointless to attempt to understand God.
I think that its all well and good, but for the fact that it is unreasonably ad hoc, and also conflicts totally with our considered moral judgments, which everyone but crazy new-agers and sciency people who haven't thought things through carefully believe to be valid judgments.
Again, if we take the Anselmian God, then evil is inconsistent with the essential properties of God. If we take some other God, then God is either a very very very bad person, or he is inept. When the choice is between a contradictory God, a very bad person God, or an inept God, I'd say the Problem of Evil is a problem indeed! Sure, the theist can always just say something like "well maybe little children dying of starvation, being murdered, burnt to death, etc. is good in the long run!!!", but we have no reason whatsoever to think that that judgment is correct. Its like the ID-Evolution "debate"... one of the maddening things about IDers is their tendency to concot these sorts of just-so stories. We make a considered scientific judgment that, say, radiometric dating falsifies the young earth hypothesis. The creationist can always spout back some story about how God made the earth look old because its more aesthetically appealing, or the devil tricks people into believing radiometric dating, or whatever. We can never convince the IDer otherwise, but that's his problem, not ours.
Similarly, we make a considered moral judgment that a being who either causes or allows gratuitous evil (or gratuitous suffering or whatever, if you hate the word evil) is a very bad being. If the creationist wants to just put their fingers in their ears, then fine, but that doesn't make the problem go away, that just makes the creationist unreasonable.
Note that a retreat to moral anti-realism surely is not an option for the theist (unless of course the theist is happy to have an inconsistent worldview).
Actually, I don't see any of that as a problem at all. According to my religious beliefs, we only know this because it has been directly revealed or can be reasonably inferred from what is directly revealed, so there is nothing ad hoc or just so about it at all. That is the basis for thinking it is correct, at least for me - without it, I would consider this all a possibility, but not the basis of my faith. I also wouldn't classify God as inept - who can say how difficult it is to create a universe with free will but no evil, compared to creating a universe at all?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
A lot of religious people would say that a being who has problems creating a Universe of his choice is no God at all.
Then again, I know you don't believe that God is all-powerful.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm not acquainted at all with mormon theology, but let me ask you this:
Suppose the following two statements are true, where x is just any proposition (not necessarily having to do with evil, it could be about, say, what color bananas are or something):
1. Mormon revealed theology says that x.
2. Our non-theological judgment is that it is not the case that x.
Given the truth of those two statements, would your conclusion be:
3a) So, Mormon revealed theology is wrong.
3b) So, our non-theolgoical judgment that it is not the case that x is wrong.
(I'm italicizing just to make it clear what the proposition is)
If your answer is 3a), then there really is a "problem of x" for Mormons. If your answer is 3b), then there's no particular point in engaging in discussion on the issue, for the same reason that there is no point in arguing with the IDer and his crazy stories about radiometric dating (of course we may argue with the IDer because its fun to make him look silly, but we wouldn't do that with the Mormon because they tend to be more honest, forthright, and wonderfully fantastic individuals like yourself).
Limits, but not necessarily problems. And why shouldn't such a being be God? We classify the gods of many belief systems as such, despite the fact that no one thought they were all-powerful - I mean, heck, we can't even disprove the existence of Zeus, and the Greeks didn't think he was omnipotent.
It is hard to answer without having a specific example of x. But I will try.*
I would say that 3b is wrong. But why is it wrong? Not because of any flaw in judgment or failure of human logic, but simply because everyone else lacks information that we have that makes it clear what the truth is.
But why should that stop us from discussing anything? Most beliefs, theories, and judgments are in fact correct; and it is possible for two people to argue passionately on opposite sides of an issue, when they are both way off. Doesn't mean they should just shut up. I am not saying here that I expect to convince anyone of anything, or to provide the only solution, to the problem of evil - just what I believe to be the case.
*Okay, so I thought of some examples. We believe certain things to be sins that a lot of other people don't. In that case, I would say that either it is perfectly reasonable to conclude they aren't sins, in the absence of revelation to the contrary, and God will take this into account; or, people's judgment is wrong - although there is nothing we, uniquely, and no one else, believe to be wrong that fits the second category.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If your answer varies depending on the x, let me ask you for what your answer would be with a few different x's:
1) Suppose x = Bananas are red.
2) Suppose x = 2+2=5
3) Suppose x = [insert your favorite food] tastes bad
4) Suppose x = [insert your favorite work of art] is a horrible piece of art
Also suppose that there is no question that Mormon theology really does say these things (so its not the case that there was some mistranscription of God's word and that what he really meant was that red delicious apples are red, or something)
My reason for asking these specific 4 is because they fall into domains that might be considered very different. 1) is a question about a synthetic, a posteriori proposition about the world, 2) is analytically true, 3) is a statement about your phenomenal life which you have priveleged access to, 4) is an aesthetic judgment.
Of course, we can still discuss the issue insofar as we are interested in eachother (I'm certainly interested in you
), but its not clear to me what the purpose of debate on the issue is. Most debates are at least in principle resolvable, this one isn't (unless the Mormon God decides to make his presence known to everyone for some reason).
I actually can't see there being revealed theology for any of those examples - since we consider revelation to exist to help us gain salvation, and thus will apply to moral judgments or questions about the nature of the universe that the scientific method can't help us with. We have reason for a reason, after all, if we can get the right answer on our own, we will. That's why, for example, there is no official LDS position on the theory of evolution.
Of course, we can still discuss the issue insofar as we are interested in eachother (I'm certainly interested in you
I wasn't trying to prove anything except that there exists a solution to the problem of evil, but none that preserve the omnipotence and the omnibenevolence of God. I wasn't trying to demonstrate that any given solution was the right one. That was what I started out doing, they never end this way.
Mise
isle of lucy
Again, you haven't explained why this is true... This is just a sentence. You might as well have said, "you need to be able to swim so that there is moral value in not swimming".
Why is this important? If there is a biblical account of morality that states that this is important, just say so, and I'll accept that as your belief
Assuming I grow all the bananas in the world:
1. I grow all bananas in the world
2. I never grow and ship rotten bananas
3. bananas on the table are rotten
All these statements could be true.
Thus
1. God created everything which exists including man who also given the ability to create. (in God's image)
2. God does not create evil
3. evil exists.
conclusion : there are now other creatures that has the power to create and impact the world around them.
atr94
Chieftain
God created all humans in his image and likeness, but humans have free will and can make any choices they want.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But moral judgments and questions about the nature of the universe are amenable to reason (pace whatever people like birdjaguar pronounce with utter vacuity).
What if revealed theology said that knowing that 2+2=5 is the way to salvation? Keep in mind that knowing x entails that x is true on every analysis of knowledge under the sun. What if it was merely believing that 2+2=5 and not knowing it?
I would think that an incorrect solution is something of a contradiction in terms, but whatever. I still think the PoE is on the table even for the God of revealed theology. Note that, unless God isn't nearly as powerful as we routinely think, he isn't just not omnibenevolent, but a horrible horrible person.
Perhaps to get things more concrete you could offer an analysis of how "potent" God is, if not omnipotent. You can't say god is impotent, because he fathered Jesus. That last sentence was a joke, but I really would find it interesting if you could say a word or two about what you (or Mormons in general) think the extent of God's powers are.
Mise said:
Eran said:
Mise said:
If I may interject a comment into this dialogue, I do think that Eran has something here if we take a certain view of normative ethics. If Ethics is grounded in harm, then I think Mise is right. If, however, Ethics is grounded in the moral character of actors, which is the virtue theoretic tradition (and the tradition most associated with Christianity), then Eran may be right that you need to be able to exhibit virtue in order for there to be moral value in an act, and there is no virtue embedded in an action taken because you couldn't have done otherwise anyways. Of course, there are various replies to this, on more than one level. For example, Mise (along with many consequentialists) might take this fact about virtue ethics and turn it into a general objection to virtue ethics. This is an area of extensive and complicated debate between consequentialists and virtue theorists, but suffice to say that neither of your positions is obviously indefensible. I could expand more on the debates in ethics about this stuff if ya'll want, but for now I think I'll try to make the case that even if eran is right, Mise still has an avenue of attack. So let me pretend I'm Mise for a second (i.e. when you read the following part to yourself, do so in a british accent):
"Okay Eran, suppose you're right! There is still a huge worry about the arbitrariness of the amount of evil we are allowed to commit. Why didn't God give us each an easily accessible button to push such that if we pushed teh button we'd cause immeasurrable torture to everyone, and that we were constantly tempted to push? Doing so would give us the opportunity to be maximally virtuous by resisting the biggest temptation that would cause the most harm, and so would be the most sensible thing for God to do if he is concerned with making us free to be virtuous! If the response is that "thats just too much evil" then why couldn't God have given us the ability to do less evil than we do now? We'd still be able to be pretty virtuous! And what about all the empirical evidence that moral character is largely heritable!? And what about all the bad stuff that happens naturally by no choice of anyone? etc. etc. etc."
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
So ... are you basically saying what Eran said, i.e. that what looks evil to us might actually turn out to be good in the long run?
If so, my reply is the same as Fifty's. I.e. in principle I have no way to absolutely rule that out, but it's really really way out on a limb, as just-so stories go. If your faith can move you to believe that it's ultimately good that a little girl burned to death in her home where lightning started a fire, well then, your faith can move mountains.
Free will is not incompatible with foresight. People who know me well can foresee what I will do in every case, if they are smart and knowledgeable enough. No skin off my nose if they do, and no freedom off my will.
The fact that I will do X does not mean that I can't do Y. The fact that I definitely will do X does not mean that I can't do Y. Determinacy is not the same thing as programming nor being limited.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
ZOMG Eran did as predicted!!!11!
This means that Eran is a programmed zombie with no free will! 
(NOT!)
Omniscience != predestination
The theorized combination of free will and omniscience works something like this:
A) God knows everything past, present, and future (omniscience)
B) All humans have free will
C) Our future actions have not occured yet
D) God cannot know our actions until we do them
E) Since God is outside of time, he is always there as we are doing each action
F) Therefore, there is never a point where D applies since God is not restricted to purely our time (again omniscience)
G) We conclude that God knows everything at every time, under this model, but only because we have freely chosen to do each thing
H) He does not know anything we have chosen not to do because we have not done them
Imagine it this way:
I am writing this message on CFC in 2009. In May of 2014, my pet rabbit dies and in grief I leave CFC...
Using the above principles under the same theory:
A) Right now God knows that I am going to leave CFC in 2014.
B) He would not know this if I was not going to leave CFC in 2014.
C) Even though he knows I will, it is not actually determined until I do it.
D) Anything God knows that I will do, I will do.
E) I do what I do because of my free will, not because God knows it.
F) If I say "aha", he already knows I'm going to leave in the future, I just won't leave, this doesn't affect anything, because in this case, we must therefore conclude that God already knew I was going to change my mind.
It's not infeasible to see how it would work, but only works when considering a being fully outside of time.
The theorized combination of free will and omniscience works something like this:
A) God knows everything past, present, and future (omniscience)
B) All humans have free will
C) Our future actions have not occured yet
D) God cannot know our actions until we do them
E) Since God is outside of time, he is always there as we are doing each action
F) Therefore, there is never a point where D applies since God is not restricted to purely our time (again omniscience)
G) We conclude that God knows everything at every time, under this model, but only because we have freely chosen to do each thing
H) He does not know anything we have chosen not to do because we have not done them
Imagine it this way:
I am writing this message on CFC in 2009. In May of 2014, my pet rabbit dies and in grief I leave CFC...
Using the above principles under the same theory:
A) Right now God knows that I am going to leave CFC in 2014.
B) He would not know this if I was not going to leave CFC in 2014.
C) Even though he knows I will, it is not actually determined until I do it.
D) Anything God knows that I will do, I will do.
E) I do what I do because of my free will, not because God knows it.
F) If I say "aha", he already knows I'm going to leave in the future, I just won't leave, this doesn't affect anything, because in this case, we must therefore conclude that God already knew I was going to change my mind.
It's not infeasible to see how it would work, but only works when considering a being fully outside of time.
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