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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhaveseeninawhile
Date: 3 Nov 2009 15:10:28
Message: <4af08e34$1@news.povray.org>
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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> I suspect they might be more amenable to the concept that God's "good"
> is superior (rather than inferior) to the human version.
And what exactly does that mean? That there are things God thinks are good
that we think are evil? That there are things we think are good that God
thinks are evil? Both?
If God thinks things are good that we think are evil, then God isn't
benevolent. After all, Hitler thought he was improving the race, so *he*
didn't think it was evil.
If God thinks things are evil that we think are good, then God's will is
that we do evil (as far as we know) things, which pretty much sums up the
"you deserve to be tortured" bit.
> Theoretically
> it could also be the case that the underlying concepts are the same but
> that God's decisions are so vast that we can't comprehend how the same
> principles are are work.
In other words, "God really is good, but he's so mysterious that we can't
tell that." In other words, "the evil you see isn't really evil, but it's
really good, because God willed it and God is good, even though we don't
have any evidence supporting that in his behavior."
> Nevertheless, I should make clear that I wasn't talking about
> "mainstream" Christian/Muslim viewpoints. Perhaps the author was, and
> by beef is really that he didn't make that more clear.
I think it's clear he's talking about a God who actually cares, yes.
> You could make the view work with a personal God by assuming that all
> our earthly suffering end up being for the better (or unimportant) once
> you consider the afterlife (not a traditional view, I'm aware, but I
> think it's consistent).
And I think that falls under the "it's not really evil after all" argument.
Neither polio and the holocaust are really bad, ya see, because otherwise
God would be allowing bad things.
> Oh yes, certainly. Under this view it's much tricker to make claims
> about what God wants us to do, although I still think it's possible. For
> instance, once could assume that morality is based on intent rather than
> action. Then we could still know what's good, and this would coincide
> with what God thinks is good. The difference is that we would have no
> reason to think that we would actually *do* what God would have done,
> but rather that what's important is that we did it for noble reasons.
Makes sense, but conflicts with people who want to tell you what to do
because their God said so.
> Certainly many people have exactly these views, but since I'd
> assumed he was making a broader argument his insistence on attacking
> that one section seemed like a "straw man" argument to me.
Fair nuff.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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From: Tim Cook
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhaveseenin a while
Date: 3 Nov 2009 15:12:32
Message: <4af08eb0@news.povray.org>
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Darren New wrote:
> You're confusing omniscience with omnipotence.
Er. Ah, that too.
But does omnipotence mean you must exert all forces yourself, or only
that you are able to do so? Can an omnipotent being create a mechanism
to do a subset of their work for them, or are they obligated to always
do all work at all times?
--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhaveseenina while
Date: 3 Nov 2009 16:21:59
Message: <4af09ef7$1@news.povray.org>
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Tim Cook wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> You're confusing omniscience with omnipotence.
>
> Er. Ah, that too.
>
> But does omnipotence mean you must exert all forces yourself, or only
> that you are able to do so? Can an omnipotent being create a mechanism
> to do a subset of their work for them, or are they obligated to always
> do all work at all times?
I don't think it matters, if you assert that an omnipotent being can have/do
anything he wants. If he doesn't want evil, he just makes it such that there
is no evil.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhaveseeninawhile
Date: 3 Nov 2009 22:01:52
Message: <4af0eea0@news.povray.org>
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Darren New wrote:
> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> "Of course, one of the consequences of this is then that we are also
>> too cognitively limited to understand what’s right and wrong"
>>
>> This, unfortunately, doesn't follow from the point I'm making. What
>> would follow is that we're too cognitively limited to understand
>> what's right and wrong for *God*, but it's perfectly consistent to
>> believe that doesn't at all preclude us from understand what's right
>> and wrong for humans.
>
Sigh.. Are we seriously rehashing a more than 2,000 year old argument
that Aristotle solve with, "I don't know, but the gods certainly don't
seem to have a clue either.", and Plato later "fixed" by stating, "Yeah,
well.. Even if the gods don't know, its real anyway, so must be like
some sort of thing that just exists, which permeates everything, so
those paying attention can figure it out." Both views are based on
*ignorance*, but the later one at least has the value of a) not positing
that a god has to make all of it up, or, even more absurd, that any of
the gods we have invented describe that god in the slightest, and b) it
would provide an explanation, if such a bloody thing was needed, for why
everything from Corvids, like Ravens and Crows manage to have bird
funerals, or a sort, to other primates, showing the capacity to let
themselves lose, to help a friend win.
It does present a problem though for people suggesting a god doing it.
Why bother making it so damn common, yet so inconsistent, and seemingly
bound *entirely* to the level of social interaction, cooperation and
mutual trust a species needs to survive, almost like an "adaptive
trait"? If, as a god, you could have made it bloody clearer that it was
put there divinely, that good and evil are real concepts, not just
general vague, "everything that my species doesn't like is evil, while
all the stuff that makes me feel nice I'll call good.", why make it
indistinguishable from something which that happened by necessity, not plan?
Its like the latest two Mr. Diety movies. One a angelic PZ convinces god
that its a lot of work to make everything in 6 days, but there is this
algorithm that will take a lot longer, will generate species with all
the same half assed mistakes that the deity planned to use anyway, being
lazy, it would just take a lot longer, but he would get all the credit
anyway. The next one was him talking to his son, trying to work out the
whole original sin, trinity, salvation thing, to which the result was,
"So, I am sacrificing myself, who is me, to myself, who is you, to pay
for a sin that never happened, because we used PZed's molecular machine
thing, instead of the 6 day creation, so no original sin was ever
committed?"
Basically, ridiculous, since it requires ignoring all the stuff that
implies that a god just simply *unnecessary* to come up with it in the
first place, and assuming that a god came up with it, because, well..
there just happened to be one, that's why! Think nearly the same
argument is going on over at a news paper site, sort of. Some clown is
using the same arguments in a book, to suggest the afterlife is real,
and, as usual, you get the bozos defending the idea showing up and
saying, "It doesn't matter if Einstein **specifically** and **clearly**
stated that he didn't believe in a god, so and so says he did, in such
and such book, I Googled it damn it, it must be right!", in their own
defense of, "See, smart people believed it, just like all the dumb ones
did, so argmentum populum, is *must* be so!"
There is nothing insightful (to who ever started this mess) about any of
it, unless you simply haven't seen the argument before. Just as there
are lots of people claiming that there is some "deep" theological ideas
underpinning modern theology, point to a bunch of scholars that are
supposedly making them, then, invariably, when those people are asked
what the "deep" issues are, they trot out the top 10 list of overused,
constantly rebutted, and/or just fallacious, arguments everyone else
uses. Its like listening to someone tell you that his shirt isn't red,
saying it is, being replied to that, no, its not red-red, but special
red, just as so and so, only to, when asking them, get the same, "No,
its not red at all.", argument. Not only are the arguments used in
religion all circular, their supporting authorities are moebius shaped,
with one referring to the next, who refers to the next, who refers to
the first one, none of them making any different arguments, or offering
better evidence, just an infinite regression of CC: tags.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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From: Patrick Elliott
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhaveseeninawhile
Date: 3 Nov 2009 22:09:52
Message: <4af0f080$1@news.povray.org>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Its like listening to someone tell you that his shirt isn't red,
> saying it is, being replied to that, no, its not red-red, but special
> red, just as so and so, only to, when asking them, get the same, "No,
> its not red at all.", argument.
BTW. Letters that go missing = evil. lol
'just as*k* so and so'
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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From: somebody
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhave seen in a while
Date: 4 Nov 2009 10:01:08
Message: <4af19734$1@news.povray.org>
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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rr com> wrote in message
news:4aefbee6$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> > Indeed, there's the epistemological issues. As a kid, many of us might
have
> > thought being forced, and sometimes tricked, into eating broccoli was
> > torture, and hence an evil act.
> I think that this is a bogus argument, basically because it's trivial to
> imagine a world where all the things that taste good are the ones that are
> good for you.
Yes but it's also trivial for a kid to imagine a world where everything is
sugar coated chocolate. He doesn't know the difference between bad food and
good for and doesn't care. If he did, he'd imagine a world where nutrional
food tastes good (like you do), instead of making chocolate only food. You
know about nutrition, so you are one level above the kid, but maybe there
are things that you (we) do not know, that make our imagination just as
naive to someone at a higher level of understanding.
> Being forced to eat broccoli seems like evil because it *is*
> evil - it's bad that healthy stuff tastes awful. Indeed, it's bad that
there
> even is such a thing as unhealthy food.
>
> This is the "it's good for you to suffer" argument, which is a subset of
the
> "it isn't really evil after all" argument that I found clearly described.
I'm not saying evil is good for you. But I don't buy the argument that
"since I could imagine a better world, there's evil in this one" argument.
First, imagining is not the same as realizing (incidentally, that's where
Anselm's ontological argument fails, but that's a different matter). Second,
"better" for who? I can imagine a universe where I'm god and everyone
worships me. Certainly, it's better for me than the present one. You are
inherently making a selfish claim if you say the world you can imagine,
however good and fair you believe it to be, is better than the real one or
one that somebody else imagines. By thinking that elimination of pain is a
universally good thing, for instance, are we not saying that maschists do
not count?
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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhave seen in a while
Date: 4 Nov 2009 10:45:19
Message: <4af1a18f$1@news.povray.org>
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somebody wrote:
> I'm not saying evil is good for you. But I don't buy the argument that
> "since I could imagine a better world, there's evil in this one" argument.
I think this is going back to the "no, we're not just talking about minor
imperfections" in the original article. Are you really claiming there isn't
anything bad or evil in the world?
> First, imagining is not the same as realizing
Omnipotence.
> "better" for who?
I can easily imagine worlds that are better for everyone. I don't think too
many people objected to the eradication of polio or smallpox. I think pretty
much everyone is hoping HIV doesn't mutate into a airborne zombie-creating
supervirus. Neither the driver nor the pedestrian is benefited by a head
going thru the windshield.
Maybe there are a few "insane" people who want to die of polio. However, it
would seem to be a better good to cure them of their insanity than to give
them polio.
In any case, I think this is pretty well addressed in the original article too.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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From: somebody
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhave seen in a while
Date: 4 Nov 2009 23:01:28
Message: <4af24e18@news.povray.org>
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"Darren New" <dne### [at] san rr com> wrote in message
news:4af1a18f$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> > I'm not saying evil is good for you. But I don't buy the argument that
> > "since I could imagine a better world, there's evil in this one"
argument.
> I think this is going back to the "no, we're not just talking about minor
> imperfections" in the original article. Are you really claiming there
isn't
> anything bad or evil in the world?
Sure there is - as far as I am concerned. But that only proves that the
universe does not cater to my needs or whims. While I can imagine better
universes from my pov, I cannot claim that it's universally (no pun
intended) and objectively better.
> > First, imagining is not the same as realizing
> Omnipotence.
Not even. I mentioned earlier at one point; I can imagine a man that's 400
billion light years tall. I can imagine a universe with 172 spatial
dimensions. But really, all I am doing is describing a single attribute in
rather abstract terms. Language allows us that much, but I don't think such
imagination counts as understanding by, well, any stretch of imagination.
> > "better" for who?
> I can easily imagine worlds that are better for everyone. I don't think
too
> many people objected to the eradication of polio or smallpox. I think
pretty
> much everyone is hoping HIV doesn't mutate into a airborne zombie-creating
> supervirus. Neither the driver nor the pedestrian is benefited by a head
> going thru the windshield.
Doctors, medical researchers, airbag and seatbelt makers probably benefit.
</cynical, tongue in cheek>
> Maybe there are a few "insane" people who want to die of polio. However,
it
> would seem to be a better good to cure them of their insanity than to give
> them polio.
You'd be taking away some groundbreaking art from humanity's collective
should all insanity be cured.
Now, what about the other side of things? In a perfect (limit of bettering)
universe, it's not enough to eliminate evil or bad, but good needs to be
maximized. Then the question becomes, is there a limit to good? How many
Bach's should a truly benevolent God give to his people? One, ten, a
million? I don't think any number is enough. For any perfection witheld from
sentient beings by an omnipotent being is itself an evil act. That's after
all, why one would think death is evil. In fact, an omnipotent god who fails
to bestow omnipotence, omniscience and omni-anything to his creations is
evil, is it not?
Hence the problem with imagination. It's easy to say that eliminating death
and suffering would eliminate evil. But it's not death itself, lack of
eternal life that's evil. That is, evil is in the lack of things, abilities.
If you give me eternal life, I'll find ten things that I lack, ten faults I
find with the universe. Give me those ten, and I'll come up with ten
thousand. Hence "just don't let anybody suffer" does not look like a
workable model to me. Much like a kid dreaming of a world where chocolate is
the only food, or me "imagining" a 172 dimensional universe.
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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsIhave seen in a while
Date: 5 Nov 2009 10:51:10
Message: <4af2f46e$1@news.povray.org>
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somebody wrote:
> Sure there is - as far as I am concerned. But that only proves that the
> universe does not cater to my needs or whims.
Well, yes, but that's the point being made, yes?
>>> First, imagining is not the same as realizing
>> Omnipotence.
>
> Not even. I mentioned earlier at one point; I can imagine a man that's 400
> billion light years tall.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
> Doctors, medical researchers, airbag and seatbelt makers probably benefit.
> </cynical, tongue in cheek>
I imagine almost all doctors would be quite happy if everyone was suddenly
totally healthy.
>> Maybe there are a few "insane" people who want to die of polio. However,
> it
>> would seem to be a better good to cure them of their insanity than to give
>> them polio.
>
> You'd be taking away some groundbreaking art from humanity's collective
> should all insanity be cured.
That's why "insane" is in quotes.
> Now, what about the other side of things? In a perfect (limit of bettering)
> universe, it's not enough to eliminate evil or bad, but good needs to be
> maximized. Then the question becomes, is there a limit to good? How many
> Bach's should a truly benevolent God give to his people? One, ten, a
> million? I don't think any number is enough. For any perfection witheld from
> sentient beings by an omnipotent being is itself an evil act. That's after
> all, why one would think death is evil. In fact, an omnipotent god who fails
> to bestow omnipotence, omniscience and omni-anything to his creations is
> evil, is it not?
I would think so. But that's, after all, the point. :-)
> Hence the problem with imagination. It's easy to say that eliminating death
> and suffering would eliminate evil. But it's not death itself, lack of
> eternal life that's evil. That is, evil is in the lack of things, abilities.
> If you give me eternal life, I'll find ten things that I lack, ten faults I
> find with the universe. Give me those ten, and I'll come up with ten
> thousand. Hence "just don't let anybody suffer" does not look like a
> workable model to me. Much like a kid dreaming of a world where chocolate is
> the only food, or me "imagining" a 172 dimensional universe.
OK. I am pretty sure I don't know where this conversation went now.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".
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From: John VanSickle
Subject: Re: The most insightful rebuttal to the argument from evil rebuttalsI have seen in a while
Date: 5 Nov 2009 11:13:35
Message: <4af2f9af$1@news.povray.org>
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Darren New wrote:
>
http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/challenge-suggest-a-more-evil-principle-than-this-one/
I reject the first premise on the grounds of lack of evidence.
Regards,
John
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