Solve the Problem of Evil

[warpus]

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.

See, this is the thing. In your scenario, from our point of view, we all have free will cause we're running around and making decisions.

From this hypothetical God's point of view, the Universe is a static 4D bubble that doesn't change. From his point of view elements of this static Universe do not have free will - since static elements can't make decisions.

In your scenario, the question of free will changes depending on your point of view.

 

[puglover]

The way I see it, God didn't create evil. He created good, and with good comes the potential for evil. After all, nothing is "evil," just a misuse and twisting of something that is good.

 

[warpus]

The way I see it, God didn't create evil. He created good, and with good comes the potential for evil. After all, nothing is "evil," just a misuse and twisting of something that is good.

I think what people are arguing is that by being all-knowing and all-powerful, God can see the outcome of every action, and therefore, when he created the Universe, he not only created the Universe at time 0, but he also created it at every single imaginable point in time.

It's kind of like playing a game of plinko, and you know exactly which way the puck is going to go at every single peg (because the machine is rigged and you know exactly how). Now, by dropping that puck in slot A, you are not only deciding that particular action, but you are also responsible for where the puck ends up.

The counter-argument to that is of course that there is no way to arrange the initial conditions in such a way that you'd end up with no evil and creatures with free will running around, eating bacon, procreating, playing civ, etc.

Some would point to that argument and go "AHA! But that means that God can't be all-powerful, since an all-powerful God could figure out a way to arrange the initial conditions in such a way"

 

[Smidlee]

Anyone here having a problem with God's predestination vs Man's free will should read the book of Esther. While men has freedom to choose their action it's God who gets to determine the reaction/results. Mordecai explain this plainly to Esther in Esther 4:13&14.

 

[Fifty]

After all, nothing is "evil," just a misuse and twisting of something that is good.

What on earth does that mean?

 

[Irish Caesar]

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?

I suppose.

I'm more saying that God's judgment is better than my own, and those things I can't change aren't things I need to worry about.

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.

I'm not going to stand up and say "hey, it's good when bad things happen because there must be some good in it!"

But I also don't think that God can operate outside the laws of physics, and certain things that we call "acts of God" are more just due to unlucky coincidences or phenomena that nobody can change.

Again, I'm not really offering an answer... but I also don't really see any other way of reconciling bad things with a good creator any more than I could reconcile having no creator at all.

 

[El_Machinae]

Anyone here having a problem with God's predestination vs Man's free will should read the book of Esther. While men has freedom to choose their action it's God who gets to determine the reaction/results. Mordecai explain this plainly to Esther in Esther 4:13&14.

So I decide to speed while driving, and God decides that my hit-and-run victim should be maimed for life?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

But moral judgments and questions about the nature of the universe are amenable to reason (pace whatever people like birdjaguar pronounce with utter vacuity).

Does that mean that we can use reason to make moral judgments, or just that the moral judgments we make have to be reasonable? On what basis can we use logic to make determinations about something's moral value?

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?

The I would worry about that when it happened.

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.

I don't see it that way at all. If we are going to exist for eternity, then the suffering of a few decades is not nearly as significant as we think it is, but our perspective is skewed because those few decades are all we can see.

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.

He can do everything that the nature of the universe allows. I realize that doesn't seem like much of an answer, but we don't exactly have a detalied list. What He can't do would include doing things that are logically contradictory, for example. And He can't give people the benefits of having free will without also allowing us to be subjected to the penalties.

"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!

Well, I have to admit I don't know exactly why we are able to do the exact amount of evil we can, but not significantly more or less.

"And what about all the empirical evidence that moral character is largely heritable!?

It's what we do with what we have that matters.

And what about all the bad stuff that happens naturally by no choice of anyone? etc. etc. etc."

"Natural evil" is a different issue. It also helps us to progress through trials - Nietschze had it half right. What kills us can also make us stronger, since we keep existing afterwards.

Now, again, I am not arguing, here, that I am right about all of this, but I still view my arguments as plausible.

 

[kuukkeli]

I voted that all three are false (I don't believe in God/gods, and I don't believe in objective evil). Otherwise my stance is that from the christian point of view the problem of evil is unsolvable - none of the "solutions" are solid.

 

[Smidlee]

So I decide to speed while driving, and God decides that my hit-and-run victim should be maimed for life?

No, yet God can take something evil and turn in for good. For example the cross.
In your example shows our actions (sin or righteousness) effects others.

 

[Love]

No, yet God can take something evil and turn in for good. For example the cross. In your example shows our actions (sin or righteousness) effects others.

God doesn't exist

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

That's one solution, but it rather defeats the purpose of this thread to use it as the answer here.

 

[Smidlee]

God doesn't exist

The irony is in order to boldly make such claim you are more or less putting yourself in the position of God(a god).

 

[Love]

The irony is in order to boldly make such claim you are more or less putting yourself in the position of God(a god).

No, I'm just pointing out that there is no god, not even myself . Therefor the purpose of this whole thread is pretty useless.

 

[Smidlee]

No, I'm just pointing out that there is no god, not even myself . Therefor the purpose of this whole thread is pretty useless.

You still don't get the irony in your statement.

 

[Love]

No I don't?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

If the thread is useless, don't post in it. Otherwise you are basically openly admitting to making useless posts yourself.

 

[Fifty]

Does that mean that we can use reason to make moral judgments, or just that the moral judgments we make have to be reasonable? On what basis can we use logic to make determinations about something's moral value?

Its fairly close to how we make ordinary perceptual observations, in my view. We make judgments about what seems to us to be the case. This goes for moral judgments (e.g. "burning kids to death is wrong") as much as perceptual judgments (e.g. "that banana is yellow"). Sure, you can apply an arbitrary amount of skepticism here, but thats a general sort of skepticism towards reason and our capacity for judgments, not a morality-specific skepticism. Its also highly difficult for the religionist to be a moral skeptic, since religionists tend to be moral realists. Also remember that the Christian tradition (maybe not the Mormon tradition?) is that God does not determine what is right and wrong.

I don't see it that way at all. If we are going to exist for eternity, then the suffering of a few decades is not nearly as significant as we think it is, but our perspective is skewed because those few decades are all we can see.

The problem here is that you're going back and forth between which picture of ethics you want. To answer Mise's objection about having the ability to do evil you push yourself in a virtue ethics direction, but here you seem to be pushing yourself in a consequentialist direction. If morality really is grounded in moral character, than the evil that happens in these few decades really is significant (significant enough even to condemn someone to a stint in hell, so clearly God does not take these decades lightly).

Intuitively, would it be wrong to torture someone mercilessly for 5 minutes and then at the end of the 5 minutes wipe their memory so they don't remember being tortured? Of course its still wrong, even if the amount of time spent torturing is relatively minor and does not have any effect on their future happiness. This is especially true if morality is grounded in moral character. Someone who would be responsible for great evil is not a good person, regardless of whether the great evil causes long-term harm.

And He can't give people the benefits of having free will without also allowing us to be subjected to the penalties.

Why is that the one logically possible thing he cannot do?

"Natural evil" is a different issue. It also helps us to progress through trials - Nietschze had it half right. What kills us can also make us stronger, since we keep existing afterwards.

As far as I'm concerned this is just grasping at straws. Sure, occasionally natural evil strengthens character, but there are a whole range of cases of gratuitous, pointless evil. Spinning a story about how this giant range of cases might really be good is just irrational in the same manner as the YECer spinning stories about evolution.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I don't have time to fully respond, I will tomorrow.

 

[Fifty]

I don't have time to fully respond, I will tomorrow.

Not engaging me in hours of debate so that I can procrastinate studying for my math test? Surely you cannot explain away this evil you have committed!!!!

Just kidding, respond whenever!