http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/challenge-suggest-a-more-evil-principle-than-this-one/


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4aee2616$1@news.povray.org...

>
http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/challenge-suggest-a-more-evil-principle-than-this-one/

It's longwinded and does not seem to bring anything new to the argument from
evil.

In fact, even as an atheist, I don't think the argument from evil is a
particularly strong one. For evil is a sliding scale. Imagine for a moment
that there were no death and suffering, at all, in another universe
populated with other beings. Would we then, those beings (forget religious
books for a moment), conclude that there were no evil? Of course not. The
most distasteful thing that's present then, however benign by our standards,
would be considered evil by those beings in that universe. Foul smells, say,
would become the very definition of evil, and those beings would ask and
conclude "why oh why does Beelzebub allow foul smells to be emitted? Since
such an evil exists, there can be no god".

And let's say their "god" or "laws of universe" prevented all foul smells
from being emitted, by sentinent and non-sentinent beings alike. Would that
be end of evil? No. It would then be elevator music, and the ability of
their fellow beings to compose such horrorful melodies would be construed as
evil. The bottomline is, then, if you want to eliminate evil, all
possibilities for objectionable outcomes or behaviours need to be pruned.
This will eventually eliminate *everything*, from bright lights to sharp
corners to hard to open blister packages to slow booting computers, since a
thinking being can find anything objectionable. This is close to, but not
the same thing as the free will argument.

So the premise, "there is evil in the universe", is, to quote Pauli, not
even wrong. I would counter that what we perceive as evil are simply foul
smells. For now we can go on the other direction and imagine a universe
where much worse things happen much more frequently. Does the fact that we
don't live in an Event Horizon (the movie) universe could mean there is no
evil? Hence, I think, the premise is meaningless.

One can, always, of course, focus on "evil as described in the Bible". But
if one's to take all of Bible as literally true (a point which even
christians don't take), then there are much stronger and less metaphysical
arguments for concuding that it's nonsense and inconsistent.

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somebody schrieb:

> And let's say their "god" or "laws of universe" prevented all foul smells
> from being emitted, by sentinent and non-sentinent beings alike. Would that
> be end of evil? No. It would then be elevator music, and the ability of
> their fellow beings to compose such horrorful melodies would be construed as
> evil. The bottomline is, then, if you want to eliminate evil, all
> possibilities for objectionable outcomes or behaviours need to be pruned.
> This will eventually eliminate *everything*, from bright lights to sharp
> corners to hard to open blister packages to slow booting computers, since a
> thinking being can find anything objectionable.

Not only would you need to eliminate any "negatives" - however benign - 
but also any "not-so-positives":

Even if you can eliminate all elevator music (ah, what a great world 
that would be!), people would find evil in some performance of Bach's 
music not because it was bad, but because the Chopin concerto they heard 
the other day was still better.


There is some truth to "all that humans deserve is punishment and 
death", if you read it with a different mindset:

"There's nothing good that you have a /right/ to, so stop bickering 
about the things in life that just aren't as perfect as you'd like them 
to be."

(Make sure to /not/ read this as an excuse to treat other people bad.)


> if one's to take all of Bible as literally true (a point which even
> christians don't take),

You'd be surprised.

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somebody wrote:
> In fact, even as an atheist, I don't think the argument from evil is a
> particularly strong one. For evil is a sliding scale.

So you're making exactly the argument of "well, the world doesn't really 

contain evil after all," which is exactly the phrasing I found interestin
g 
in the article.

You're doing the Descartes bit here. "In order to know good, we must know
 
evil first."  I think the fact that we *can* imagine things like Event 
Horizon means we have a pretty good idea of a sliding scale of evil. What
 if 
the "bad smell objectors" imagined Event Horizon and our world too. Would
n't 
they conclude the evil isn't all that bad?

> I would counter that what we perceive as evil are simply foul
> smells. 

"bulk of the discussion then becomes a matter of theists arguing that 
actually, the world’s pretty great, the evil things in it are per
fectly 
justified and necessary,"

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>
http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/challenge-suggest-a-more-evil-principle-than-this-one/

  I wonder what this fallacy is called:

1) If God is good, then X.
2) Clearly, not X.
3) Hence there is no God.

  Is it a non-sequitur? Deduction #3 does not follow from the other two.
(What would follow is "God is not good", not "there is no God".)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4aef114b@news.povray.org...
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>
http://directionlessbones.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/challenge-suggest-a-more-evil-principle-than-this-one/
>
>  I wonder what this fallacy is called:
>
> 1) If God is good, then X.
> 2) Clearly, not X.
> 3) Hence there is no God.
>
>  Is it a non-sequitur? Deduction #3 does not follow from the other two.
> (What would follow is "God is not good", not "there is no God".)

I don't know for sure, but it's not exactly in the spirit of a non-sequitur, 
anyway.

One of the most common problems that arise from using this kind of logic, 
aside from poor definitions and baseless assumptions, is that often the "X" 
in the first step refers to something different from the "X" in the second 
step, which confuses the bejabbers out of some people.

One of my favorite bits of silliness:

A candle is brighter than nothing.
Nothing is brighter than the sun.
Therefore, a candle is brighter than the sun.

:D

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Warp wrote:
>   I wonder what this fallacy is called:
> 
> 1) If God is good, then X.
> 2) Clearly, not X.
> 3) Hence there is no God.
> 
>   Is it a non-sequitur? Deduction #3 does not follow from the other two.
> (What would follow is "God is not good", not "there is no God".)

You'd think.

But there's an extra, assumed step:
1b) God is good.

Which, quite frankly, is a stretch.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Captain Jack wrote:
> A candle is brighter than nothing.
> Nothing is brighter than the sun.
> Therefore, a candle is brighter than the sun.

I prefer the form:
A ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Nothing is better than eternal happiness.
Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   I wonder what this fallacy is called:
>>
>> 1) If God is good, then X.
>> 2) Clearly, not X.
>> 3) Hence there is no God.
>>
>>   Is it a non-sequitur? Deduction #3 does not follow from the other two.
>> (What would follow is "God is not good", not "there is no God".)

Is every flawed reasoning a falacy? I think this is just a flawed reasoning.

> But there's an extra, assumed step:
> 1b) God is good.

Well, it's not assumed by the article in the link. It's explicitly stated. 
Obviously the same logic doesn't hold for Satan or Zeus, for example.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Darren New wrote:
>> But there's an extra, assumed step:
>> 1b) God is good.
> 
> Well, it's not assumed by the article in the link. It's explicitly 
> stated. Obviously the same logic doesn't hold for Satan or Zeus, for 
> example.


There's a further rather critical assumption in the article that's not 
explicitly stated: That the definition of "good" as it applies to God 
coincides with the definition of "good" as it applies to human actions.

I think it's a perfectly plausible position to take that our personal 
tragedies tell us quite a bit about human morality, but nothing about 
divine morality, and in context of this his arguments don't seem to 
work.  Of course this leaves open the issue of how we can coherently 
claim that God is "good" without being able to define what "good" means, 
but I can't see how he addresses this point.

Overall I was left with the distinct impression that he was arguing 
against straw-man versions to the resolutions to the problem of evil. 
Certainly there are people who do actually believe in things resembling 
these straw-man arguments, but it doesn't seem very philosophically 
useful to exert one's efforts in this direction.


I should qualify that I've never actually done any serious study into 
the problem of evil, so I'm more or less talking off the cuff here and 
might be making various substantial oversights/omissions.

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