Theodicy: God hates everyone

Started by Kirin, November 15, 2017, 03:52:03 PM

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Quaremerepulisti

Quote from: Pon de Replay on November 16, 2017, 12:25:54 PM
Again, I'm not following.  If you were omnipotent, you would not have to wait until the world "played out" to the end.  You could just intercede at the first instance of unintentional suffering and delete the experiment right away. 

But it's too late at that point.  You would have failed in your goal of creating a world without suffering.  The point is you need knowledge as well as power to achieve an end goal with certainty.  You have power to set up things at the moment as you wish, but they may entail a result you don't wish.  So I may desire to create a better world, and set up the parameters to that effect, but nevertheless end up with a worse one because that's what the parameters entail, and I won't know this until I see the world is in fact worse, and by then it's too late.

QuoteBut given omnipotence, there wouldn't be a "too late" where the creator had to look on helplessly as millions of years went by with countless numbers of sentient creatures suffering and dying.  That would be a situation brought on by a lesser or crueler and certainly not omnipotent god, and that does seem to be what's going on in the world we have now, possibly indicating that the creator is a demiurge—the notion, as Borges put it, "that the universe is the work of a deficient Divinity, one whose fraction of Divinity approaches zero, of a god who is not the God.  Of a god who is a distant descendant of God."  This may not be the case, of course, but it is at least more commensurate with the world we currently observe than a world with a loving god.

This is a fancy probabilistic version of the argument from ignorance, but it is still an argument from ignorance: the likelihoods are pulled out of a hat.

You don't actually know, given the existence of God, what the probability is of Him creating this world, or one like it, or some other one or one like that.  In fact you don't even know the probability is even mathematically well-defined and can therefore be evaluated, given that there is an infinity of possible worlds.  Nor, for that matter, do you know those probabilities for the demiurge.

QuoteSaying we don't know everything seems disingenuous; anybody could say the same thing about any deity or cult leader.  A fervent believer in communism might just as well say that Josef Stalin was a benevolent dictator even though he oversaw the deaths of millions; all you have to do is surmise some secret piece of information we're not yet privy to, but just you wait and see: when the People's Utopia dawns, all will be understood, and the sufferings of the past will be seen as justified "for the greater good."  In all of these cases we're forever being asked to consider a future paradise that (perhaps too conveniently) requires faith.

And that's of course just what they do say.  It's why ideologues are the way they are.  They have such a strong prior probability (subjective in the case of ideologues) that it is pretty much impossible for any amount of evidence to cause them to change their mind.  But in the case of Stalin, we do know something about human behavior and thus we can say P(Stalin = evil dictator | Stalin's acts) >>> P(Stalin = misunderstood good guy  | Stalin's acts).

But in the case of God, the cosmological arguments give a prior probability of one, before evidence of evil is brought into play.


QuoteBut for the sake of the discussion I'm not disagreeing with the claim that heaven exists.  The problem with both of your answers as to why there can't be "just heaven" is somewhat refuted by the few early Christian theologians who, surmising an omnibenevolent God, counted on an apocatastasis: where at the very least hell would function as purgatory. 

There are no problems with either of those answers, and apocatastasis, even if true or possibly true, doesn't refute them in the least; it would just provide a third possible answer.


Kaesekopf

I always find this question or concern to be principally man-focused and not God-focused.  It centers around fitting God into a box that I dictate, forcing Him to do things as I see fit, requiring He check all the boxes that I impose upon Him.

I'm never satisfied with that sort of action or manner of going about things.  I think you first need to take God as the "Start" before you start saying "Well, He needs to stop all evil otherwise He's a bad God and doesn't really love me." 

I also think a certain level of detachment is required in discussions like these to actually get anywhere.

(This post probably breaks my own subforum rules because I don't know much about philosophy.)
Wie dein Sonntag, so dein Sterbetag.

I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.  ~Treebeard, LOTR

Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.

Mono no aware

#32
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMBut it's too late at that point.  You would have failed in your goal of creating a world without suffering.  The point is you need knowledge as well as power to achieve an end goal with certainty.  You have power to set up things at the moment as you wish, but they may entail a result you don't wish.  So I may desire to create a better world, and set up the parameters to that effect, but nevertheless end up with a worse one because that's what the parameters entail, and I won't know this until I see the world is in fact worse, and by then it's too late.

Again, though, it's not "too late" because omnipotence would give you the power to end it if you had mistakenly set up some parameters that caused unplanned suffering.  Omnipotence would give you the option of annihilating everyone as soon as you saw you had failed; their suffering would've lasted only a nanosecond.  It would also give you the power to begin again, and you could proceed via trial and error until you got it right: because in any event, you already know that God has created a world without pain and suffering, because you believe in heaven.  Surely we can agree on that as a starting point: that there can be no "objectively greater good" than the Catholic concept of heaven.  What must be explained, then, is why God created the add-on world of the one we live in, with pain and suffering, and with the attendant hell that goes on for eternity.  You essentially have a "greatest good" (heaven), plus an extraneous creation (our universe) where evil is permitted "for the greater good" (even though the greatest good, heaven, was already in existence as a creation).  That's what presents itself as the difficulty.

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMYou don't actually know, given the existence of God, what the probability is of Him creating this world, or one like it, or some other one or one like that.  In fact you don't even know the probability is even mathematically well-defined and can therefore be evaluated, given that there is an infinity of possible worlds.  Nor, for that matter, do you know those probabilities for the demiurge.

You are correct, QMR; I don't know the probabilities.  But please see above, as I am not "pulling the likelihoods out of a hat."  I am going by what I can rationally observe.  The probability for the demiurge seems greater because you have implicitly conceded that it is possible to successfully set the parameters for a world without suffering, and yet what we find ourselves in is a world with suffering.  What I have already conceded is that a world containing evil might be necessary in order for humans to appreciate heaven; it may be that a human being must experience some modicum of earthly pain in order to appreciate the pleasure of the hereafter.  But that does not explain this world, where the suffering is doled out willy-nilly, and where some humans endure far more pain, with greater frequency, and for longer periods, than do other (more fortunate) humans. 

But if it were somehow necessary to subject humans to the material world in order to appreciate heaven, then surely lifespans would be equivalent, and suffering would be meted out equitably and kept to the necessary minimum; the world would be uniformly a foyer through which we all must pass first (and perhaps afterwards there could be a temporary stay in jannah before finally ascending to the mystical apprehension of the Beatific Vision).  The fact that this is not the case suggests a less benevolent creator.  And on top of the material world is the posited existence of hell, offering eternal torture for souls who were brought into the game through no choice of their own, and failed the test because they were saddled with a natural state that predisposed them to failure.

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMThere are no problems with either of those answers, and apocatastasis, even if true or possibly true, doesn't refute them in the least; it would just provide a third possible answer.

It refutes them in the sense that it works from the same original starting points (a loving god, the world we live in, and the existence of hell) and arrives at a result that contains, at least, less suffering, and resolves the existence of suffering by contending that it will one day all be forgotten, not even a memory.  Apocatastasis was condemned as a heresy because the eternity of hell was de fide, thereby preserving the doctrine but complicating theodicy.  It makes one's death the arbitrary point of no return as far as contrition is concerned: the damned do feel remorse and regret, wishing they could be saved, but they will never find forgiveness—not forever and ever.


Mono no aware

Quote from: Kaesekopf on November 16, 2017, 02:24:21 PM
I always find this question or concern to be principally man-focused and not God-focused.  It centers around fitting God into a box that I dictate, forcing Him to do things as I see fit, requiring He check all the boxes that I impose upon Him.

I'm never satisfied with that sort of action or manner of going about things.  I think you first need to take God as the "Start" before you start saying "Well, He needs to stop all evil otherwise He's a bad God and doesn't really love me." 

I also think a certain level of detachment is required in discussions like these to actually get anywhere.

I agree with you to an extent, but at some point, I think, a discussion of theodicy does have to come down to something like "requiring God check a particular box."  Because in Catholicism the nature of God as all-loving is a revealed truth about him, so that would presumably be the box we're looking to check against the observed reality and the Church's doctrines.

It is possible to keep the concern God-focused, nevertheless one obvious difficulty is that something like the monotheism of Greek philosophy is monistic to the point of being supremely apophatic, so even though we can be focused on taking God as the start, it quickly becomes an irresolvable snag to arrive at the difference between what can be rationally posited (an unmoved mover) and what can only be known through faith in revelation by grace.  I'm unsure if QMR is saying that the omnibenevolence of God can be rationally demonstrated, but he seems to be taking me to task for not seeing it.

Quaremerepulisti

Quote from: Pon de Replay on November 16, 2017, 03:45:33 PM
Again, though, it's not "too late" because omnipotence would give you the power to end it if you had mistakenly set up some parameters that caused unplanned suffering.  Omnipotence would give you the option of annihilating everyone as soon as you saw you had failed; their suffering would've lasted only a nanosecond.  It would also give you the power to begin again, and you could proceed via trial and error until you got it right...

I could avoid any and all suffering for sure by refusing to create anything at all.  But maybe there are some goods I want to have in my world which logically entail suffering or at least the possibility of suffering.  So no matter what parameters I pick, there will be suffering as long as I want those goods.

QuoteWhat must be explained, then, is why God created the add-on world of the one we live in, with pain and suffering, and with the attendant hell that goes on for eternity.  You essentially have a "greatest good" (heaven), plus an extraneous creation (our universe) where evil is  permitted "for the greater good" (even though the greatest good, heaven, was already in existence as a creation).  That's what presents itself as the difficulty.

Yes, so if it could be shown, via rigorous logical argument, that

1) There is no greater good served by a soul actually going to hell instead of heaven and
2) There is no greater good served by the possibility of a soul going to hell instead of the certainty of its going to heaven,

the Christian (or at least Catholic) God would be proven malevolent, and the religion therefore proven false.  1) is actually in fact true, despite the desperate efforts of Thomists to argue otherwise (e.g. along the lines of "it gives God the opportunity to manifest His justice.") and can be readily shown.  Sure, a greater good is served by hell given the soul's persistence in sin, but it is not true there could be a greater good (e.g. greater accidental glory for God) produced by a soul sinning and rebelling against God and being punished vs. the soul loving God and being rewarded.  Loving God means willing His good, which means willing His accidental glory which means, contradictorily, a soul in that situation desirous of willing His accidental glory to the max should sin.  That can't be.  This is a knock-down argument against the Thomist/Augustianian position.

But, they weren't asking the right question, which is whether 2) is correct.  Heaven is the greatest good, but there are degrees of greatness.  If making a free choice between good and evil for good, and thus obtaining a bigger reward, a higher place in heaven, a much greater union with God, is a greater good than the lesser union lost if heaven were a certainty but there was no free choice, then there is a greater good served by making such a free choice possible (which entails the possibility of choosing evil).


QuoteYou are correct, QMR; I don't know the probabilities.  But please see above, as I am not "pulling the likelihoods out of a hat."  I am going by what I can rationally observe.  The probability for the demiurge seems greater because you have implicitly conceded that it is possible to successfully set the parameters for a world without suffering, and yet what we find ourselves in is a world with suffering.

And this is a flawed argument, known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.  (Someone fires a gun into the side of a barn.  Afterwards, someone paints a bulls-eye around the bullet hole and this is used as evidence for the skill of the shooter.)  There is a set of possible "demiurges", a subset of which would create worlds with suffering, and a subset of which would create worlds without suffering.  So you are after-the-fact arguing for the demiurge based on the fact of suffering.  You are using P(Suffering | This Demiurge) when you should be using P(Suffering | Any Possible Demiurge).

QuoteWhat I have already conceded is that a world containing evil might be necessary in order for humans to appreciate heaven...

But that is not the argument.  You need to address 2) above.

QuoteThe fact that this is not the case suggests a less benevolent creator. 

There are no easy answers, but you've got some questions to be asked as well.  Exactly how many miracles do you expect God to work to prevent evil?

QuoteIt refutes them in the sense that it works from the same original starting points (a loving god, the world we live in, and the existence of hell) and arrives at a result that contains, at least, less suffering, and resolves the existence of suffering by contending that it will one day all be forgotten, not even a memory. 

That is not a refutation.  My claim is that If hell is eternal, then... [here is how omnibenevolence of God still holds].  Claiming maybe hell is not eternal and that that is a more desirable state of affairs does not refute my claim in the slightest. 

Besides, either it is or is not the case that repentance in hell is metaphysically impossible.  If it is not the case, then we simply have to deal with the fact they will never reach heaven.

Chestertonian

asfor these conversationsbeing focused on the human perspective....well, that's the only perspective we have, as humans. We don't see things from God's perspective, because we can't.  Or at least I can't.  Maybe God endows people with special abilities to see things from His perspective.  I think if we were able to see the why in why God allows suffering, it might make sense , but i am not sure.  We are children in relation to God.  Children are by nature egocentric.  It's just where they are developmentally.  It's like expecting my 14 month old son to consider the needs of the whole family and not wake us up every 3 hours at night with his crying.  That's 14 month olds for you.  I'd love to have God's perspective on the matter, and I'm sure if He wanted me to have that perspective, He would have given it to me by now.  Until then, I'm stuck with this pathetic human one.

It's a frightening thought to imagine that God is this malicious being that looks down upon you from Heaven with hatred and disgust, and wants nothing but to make you suffer horrible things because you fail at everything you try to do, and God hates you even more for failing because you will never be perfect.  As humans, when we love someone, we don't want them to suffer.  We don't like watching them suffer.  We may have to do things like imposing a logical consequence so that the child can learn the consequences of their behavior.  We have to hold our son down sometimes to give him insulin, you know, so he doesnt die.  But 95% of the time we're not making him suffer and there is a lot of tenderness and warmth in our relationship.  he might not always feel the warmth but most of the time he does.  He doesn't have everything he wants, but we are able to give him what he needs, to the best of our ability (although I'm sure there are needs that go unmet, needs that we may not even be aware of, but that is how it is with every parent and every child).  And there are many people in this world who have this kind of relationship with God--they may suffer a little bit in this life, but their life isn't all suffering and there is a lot of goodness that they can thank God for.  But then there are people whose lives are hell on earth.  You can't thank God for the beautiful sunset because you're imprisoned in a cell, or perhaps imprisoned in your own body and can't get out to look at the sunset.  You know that a sunset is happening somewhere, but it isn't happening for you and that's all you know.  There are no breaks from pain, or abuse, or starvation.  No goodness in this life.  There is a lot of penance you can do, but you also have nothing to be happy about and nothing in this life to look forward to.  At this point, it becomes impossible to see God as anything but a bully who enjoys beating you up, and you don't know what you did, or why he enjoys beating down on you so much.  Life seems like some big punishment and you're not even sure what you did to deserve it. 

on this thread James argues that we don't deserve anything good in this life at all.  We deserve hell.  but that's like saying that children don't deserve to be taken care of by their parents.  If I bring a child into this world, as a father I'm obligated to provide for that child to the best of my ability, with food, shelter, medical care, love, security, structure and boundaries.  If I punished my child 100% of the time, or deprived them of their basic needs, that's not fatherhood, that's neglect.  A good father protects his children from people who want to physically & sexually abusethem.  Yet we have a heavenly Father that permits children to grow up in incestuous, toxic households, and sometimes gives people lives that are hell on earth, with no goodness, and no respite from the punishment.  How do you love a parent who abuses you and never showed you any kindness or warmth?  Similarly, how can we love God if he gives us a life that is constant pain and suffering that stretches on and on for years?

another thing about the "we deserve hell" argument is that we didnt ask to be born.  Existence wasn't our idea, but we are stuck here, and there's no way to not exist anymore.  Sometimes people kill themselves thinking that this will end their existence, but it doesn't.  suicide is not the answer.  Their soul continues to exist after death, and considering that suicide is a grave sin, it may cause them to suffer forever in hell, which is so much worse than the suffering we experience here.  No, there is no exit on the existence train.  You just have to keep going.  If it were up to me, I would not exist on any plane of reality.  I don't think I should have ever existed, and I'm sure that my enemies feel the same way :)  I do not think my existence is a good thing, or any proof that God is good or loving. 

I've heard it said that when your life seems to be nothing but suffering, God is saving all of the sweetness and consolations for the next life.  Many priests have encouraged me to look to heaven as a reward.  But spending an eternity with God doesn't sound like much of a reward when God doesn't seem to love you or care about you.  Why would you want to spend eternity with the same God who abandoned you, permitted evil to happen to you, deprived you of good things in this life, not stupid things like "I asked God for a pony and he didn't give it to me" but basic stuff....like sleep.  The more I read about traditional catholicism the more God looks like this angry Dad who punishes you for getting an A minus and is never happy with you regardless of what you do...a Dad who only doles out punishment and never gives you any love or tenderness.  It becomes difficult to want to spend eternity with a God who only seems to want to punish you and watch you suffer.  It doesn't even seem like that much of a reward to be honest.  what's there to look forward to at that point





"I am not much of a Crusader, that is for sure, but at least I am not a Mohamedist!"

james03

Quoteon this thread James argues that we don't deserve anything good in this life at all.  We deserve hell. 
We don't "deserve" IN JUSTICE anything from God because we can't put Him under any obligation.  This is why the Law can't save you.   Now from other people you can deserve all sorts of things under the Natural Law.  If you never sinned, then you would not deserve torments in hell. 

This is why we prefer the relationship of Charity with God and the New Covenant.

Quotebut that's like saying that children don't deserve to be taken care of by their parents.
Parents are obliged by Natural Law to care for their kids.  God wrote that Law upon the hearts of men.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Mono no aware

#37
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMI could avoid any and all suffering for sure by refusing to create anything at all.  But maybe there are some goods I want to have in my world which logically entail suffering or at least the possibility of suffering.  So no matter what parameters I pick, there will be suffering as long as I want those goods.

But then this raises the question of whether "wanting these goods" is justified by the suffering of others.  For a creator to place the desire for these goods above the inevitable evil which will befall others suggests a selfish and anthropomorphic nature, which seems blasphemous to impute to a God who admits no deficiencies or selfish needs, at least if we are considering God as a serene and impassive being.  Only of a demiurge would we say something like "he wanted the company of souls to join him in his heaven, and this was the only way he could go about it."

So if the only way to avoid suffering is to not create anything at all, then yes, an omnibenevolent deity would pass on creation.  As I see it, however, your problem is not that God would have to refuse creation, because you are already conceding that God could've created "just heaven" and populated it with souls (minus the earthly trial to see who makes the grade).  Your claim, rather, is that "heaven is the greatest good, but there are degrees of greatness."  So for you, a creation of "just heaven" would not be quite the greatest good of all, and the earthly trial and the torments of hell would make heaven a little sweeter.  Therefore (according to you) suffering has to be brought in to get to that rarefied degree of great goodness.

I'm afraid your error in this respect rests on an inability to comprehend the definition of omnibenevolent.  You can't compartmentalize the suffering that exists, or shunt it to the side as irrelevant given the goal; you can't dismiss it as "well, it was necessary in order to get to the greatest good.  I did what I had to do, working within certain parameters."  No.  Collateral damage is only acceptable when the entity carrying out the task is fallible or callous, whereas an omnibenevolent entity would not possess the greed for an extra degree of great goodness at any horrendous cost, and would rest content with a very great good indeed, which is "just heaven."  Because the minute you introduce suffering, you have to account for it as your responsibility; it would be attributable to you, and you would cease to be "all-good."

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMAnd this is a flawed argument, known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.  (Someone fires a gun into the side of a barn.  Afterwards, someone paints a bulls-eye around the bullet hole and this is used as evidence for the skill of the shooter.)  There is a set of possible "demiurges", a subset of which would create worlds with suffering, and a subset of which would create worlds without suffering.  So you are after-the-fact arguing for the demiurge based on the fact of suffering.  You are using P(Suffering | This Demiurge) when you should be using P(Suffering | Any Possible Demiurge).

Well, I was actually surmising "any possible demiurge," so I apologize for giving confusion.  I did not claim the demiurge was necessarily Yaldabaoth or some such singular entity; nor was I even positing its existence proved, so I don't see how I was the "Texas Sharpshooter" there.  I was simply trying to make the most logical deduction based on observable reality (absent any faith in revelation by grace).  I was using it as a speculative concept, to consider what suppositions might be made about a creator.  Given the staggering amount of suffering in the world, the most reasonable conclusion would be that the creator was a less than perfect or all-loving divinity.  "Omnibenevolent" would appear ruled out.  Perhaps I seemed specific because I had quoted Borges' description of the gnostic demiurge.  I guess the most charitable idea of a demiurge was Plato's (and I wouldn't rule his out either) where the creator had the best of intentions and wanted to make the finest world he possibly could, but was forced to work with certain constraints and—wait, that sounds familiar.

:huh:

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMThere are no easy answers, but you've got some questions to be asked as well.  Exactly how many miracles do you expect God to work to prevent evil?

Only one, I suppose, but it would've been to create a world without suffering in the first place (or at the very least with equitable amounts of suffering and pleasure per creature.  Balancing the ledger sheets would be a start).  Although it looks like it might be, as you say, "too late" at this point.

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 16, 2017, 01:43:36 PMThat is not a refutation.  My claim is that If hell is eternal, then... [here is how omnibenevolence of God still holds].  Claiming maybe hell is not eternal and that that is a more desirable state of affairs does not refute my claim in the slightest.

Then your claim seems nonsensical.  If "[here is how omnibenevolence of God holds]" can be applied to any given amount of suffering, even eternal suffering, and if you can simultaneously dismiss a theology containing less suffering, then okay—that's your claim, but there's no way to have a discussion.  Which is strange because earlier you were contending that this world could bespeak God's omnibenevolence since it wasn't as bad as a theoretical world that was "hell without the pain of sense."  But now you appear to be saying that God is omnibenevolent no matter how much suffering he permits, even if it runs to the infinite.  Which again is fine, but unfortunately it is not really something we can rationally discuss.  You have asserted an unchangeable and unchallengeable dogmatic fact, invulnerable to any and all contradiction, so it is something you can know strictly and solely through faith.



james03

C.,
There is a difference from the need to profess the Truth and the need for Justice.  You must make that distinction.  Your life is a horror due to your illness.  My life is a horror since I lost my wife ("in saying these things, Job did not sin.")  However there is no offense against Justice.  The inability of modern man to understand Justice is why 100 MM people were murdered in the 20th century.  Consider Marx.  His life was horrible.  In his case he was responsible for it, but still he raged that someone with a high intellect should live in filth.  This is the rage of demons, who are an abyss of infinite hate.  At the core is the belief that God is evil.  It is due to pride.

One grave mistake I came across was an article that said if you could set up a confessional in hell, hell would be emptied.  Now it was written with a good motivation to promote confession, but it is an error.  Now perhaps at some higher level of hell the damned might use the confessional, perhaps, but hell would not be emptied.

Instead setting up a confessional in hell would bring the demons great joy.  Why?  Because they would refuse to use it.  LOOK!  I CAN ESCAPE THESE GREAT PAINS BY A SIMPLE ACT, AND I REFUSE.  WHY?  BECAUSE THIS IS HOW EVIL I AM.  WHY? BECAUSE GOD MADE ME LIKE THIS.  GOD IS EVIL.  I AM RIGHT AND HE IS WRONG.

Wallowing in pity is not harmless.  It sets you on this road.  And God loves you.  If you desire to curse Him and call Him evil for all eternity, He will allow it.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Quaremerepulisti

Quote from: Pon de Replay on November 17, 2017, 02:13:25 PM
But then this raises the question of whether "wanting these goods" is justified by the suffering of others. 

Of course it does.  But that is a different question and touches on a different attribute of God.  It is a question of God's love rather than His omnibenevolence.  Omnibenevolence only demands that He not allow gratuitous evil; that is to say, fail to prevent evil in the case where a greater good were likewise not prevented.  Love, on the other hand, demands that God prefer His creatures' good over His own.

QuoteFor a creator to place the desire for these goods above the inevitable evil which will befall others suggests a selfish and anthropomorphic nature...

Unless those goods pertain to His creatures.

QuoteYour claim, rather, is that "heaven is the greatest good, but there are degrees of greatness."  So for you, a creation of "just heaven" would not be quite the greatest good of all, and the earthly trial and the torments of hell would make heaven a little sweeter.  Therefore (according to you) suffering has to be brought in to get to that rarefied degree of great goodness.

Right.  And you haven't even come anywhere to close to refuting the claim via rigorous logic.  Your statements are an emotional reaction to the horrible reality of suffering, understood.

QuoteI'm afraid your error in this respect rests on an inability to comprehend the definition of omnibenevolent.

Well, that's actually where your error lies.

Quote...an omnibenevolent entity would not possess the greed for an extra degree of great goodness at any horrendous cost, and would rest content with a very great good indeed, which is "just heaven."  Because the minute you introduce suffering, you have to account for it as your responsibility; it would be attributable to you, and you would cease to be "all-good."

That is a mere argument by assertion that an omnibenevolent entity would not permit suffering, and likewise that the good gained cannot possibly outweigh the cost. 

I cannot prove to you, by strict logic and reason, without bringing God and His attributes into the picture, that the good outweighs the cost.  Neither, however, can you prove to me the opposite.  ("It seems to me" is not a proof.)  I can prove from reason that God exists, and that He is both love and benevolence, and therefore the good must outweigh the cost; otherwise, He would prevent it.  This isn't "faith" in the strict sense, but it does require a bit of trust to accept, obviously.

QuoteWell, I was actually surmising "any possible demiurge," so I apologize for giving confusion.

So how do you justify the claim that no possible demiurge would create a world without suffering? Or at minimum, the justification for P(Suffering | Any Possible Demiurge) >> P (Suffering | God)?

QuoteThen your claim seems nonsensical.  If "[here is how omnibenevolence of God holds]" can be applied to any given amount of suffering, even eternal suffering, and if you can simultaneously dismiss a theology containing less suffering, then okay—that's your claim, but there's no way to have a discussion. 

Well what kind of discussion do you wish to have?   I don't claim that the omnibenevolence of God holds in every epistemically possible world.  So what's the end game? The starting point is clearly that the actual world is not "just heaven", and there is even plenty of suffering here on earth.  Here are a couple options.

1.  Disprove God via the logical problem of evil.
2.  Provide evidence to think God doesn't exist (but not a strict proof) via the evidential problem of evil.
3.  Disprove Christianity (at least its non-universalist varieties) via the logical problem of hell.
4.  Provide evidence to think Christianity is false via the evidential problem of hell.
5.  Other.

james03

C.,
There is also practical advise available for you.  You have 3 options I can see:

1.  Do nothing.  That is easy, and it might turn out ok in the end.
2.  Turn to hatred.  You are free to do that.
3.  Do what good you can.  Develop meaning in life.

If you are interested in "3", you can purchase the "Self Authoring Suite" from Jordan Peterson.  Easily found with Google.  You will have to determine what would be a reasonable improvement that would allow you to bring some goodness to the world.  You can commit to telling your wife you love her every day, something that I can not do.  You can tell your boy that you love him.  You can ask your boy to show you the things he is interested in and what he can do.  You know he'll love that.  You can become a victim soul.  Let it be known that you will offer one day of your suffering for an intention.  If you aren't doing these things, that would be an improvement in the world.  Or maybe you do them, but aren't consistent.  Being more consistent in doing things would increase the goodness in the world.

Note, I have never done the Suite, but from what I read about it, it seems very sound.  I will probably buy it for my kids and for myself.
"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Mono no aware

#41
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 17, 2017, 04:19:17 PMBut that is a different question and touches on a different attribute of God.  It is a question of God's love rather than His omnibenevolence.  Omnibenevolence only demands that He not allow gratuitous evil; that is to say, fail to prevent evil in the case where a greater good were likewise not prevented.  Love, on the other hand, demands that God prefer His creatures' good over His own.

I daresay you're the one moving the goalposts now, QMR, because the Epicurean riddle in the OP only asks why God fails to prevent evil, not with your added qualification of "fails to prevent evil in the case where a greater good were likewise not prevented."  You seem to be making the inverse case of the classic formula "God allows evil in order to bring forth a greater good," and that is fair enough.  However the problem with this is that the "greater good" is not yet evident, else the amount of evil already permitted would've brought on a total utopia by now, so the "greater good" becomes the elusive golden prize that we can't see now but it's just around the corner and best you believe it.  It's therefore something to be taken on faith, which is fine from the Christian standpoint (as faith is "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not") but it kind of moots the original question, since Epicurus was asking to be shown.

Omnibenevolent simply means "all-good," and in a strict sense God could be accused of not having had that attribute the instant he chose to create this world with all its sufferings; that would've been the first opportunity to "prevent evil"—to forgo this creation.  As I understand it, your claim is that God can permit suffering, even eternal suffering, so long as the greatest possible good is achieved, which apparently is the elect being able to enjoy heaven, freely chosen.  And I am not being emotional here: that just presents itself as a scheme of rank unfairness, particularly given the eternity of much of the suffering.  It negates the claim of "all goodness."  That's the only observation I can make.  I remain open to an explanation that overturns this impression.

I hope I am being rational enough in my assessment.  I'm trying to keep this basic: suffering is an evil, pleasure is a good.  The first problem of this world is, as I offered earlier, the millions of children who are born into suffering and disease, and die knowing little else.  The second problem is the eternity of hell, as opposed to the theological option of apocatastasis or universal salvation.  I am not even unwilling to consider some measure of necessary suffering in terms of justice.  I believe in the death penalty.  But I don't see how you justify an eternal punishment for a temporal transgression; the punishment of hell grossly outweighs the crime.  It was said in the message of Fatima that more souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than anything else, so to give you an idea of how I perceive an unfairness here, I am considering a pair of teenagers who park at a lover's lane and make whoopee in the back seat of the lad's father's car, only to be killed in an instantaneous collision with a "ten-ton truck or a double-decker bus" on the drive home, dying in the rosy afterglow of their sin without having given an ounce of thought to repentance.  I'm unable to see the justice in punishing this youthful indiscretion with eternal torment.  Feel free to refer to this as an "argument from ignorance," but also feel free to enlighten me: how is their infinite suffering justified?

I suppose the discussion I've chosen here is your option no. 4: "provide evidence to think Christianity is false via the evidential problem of hell."  My exhibit A, then, being the problem of eternal punishment for finite crimes.  Because as Chestertonian has said, we are human beings, and the only rational perspective we have is the human one; we can only use human logic and human reason to suss these things out.  I'm not saying a Catholic parent wouldn't be justifiably livid at finding out their teenager was having premarital sex, and would probably ground them for a very long time and take away their precious iPhone.  But I don't think too many parents would want to consign their child to an eternity of torture over it.  Unless it was a homo thing.  Even then, it's still a maybe.

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 17, 2017, 04:19:17 PMThat is a mere argument by assertion that an omnibenevolent entity would not permit suffering, and likewise that the good gained cannot possibly outweigh the cost.

But so far you have not said much on this "good" that is to be "gained," so I can only assume that you refer (as I said above) to the ability of the elect (the few) to enjoy heaven, freely chosen, at the expense of both the earthly and infernal sufferings of everyone else.

Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on November 17, 2017, 04:19:17 PMSo how do you justify the claim that no possible demiurge would create a world without suffering? Or at minimum, the justification for P(Suffering | Any Possible Demiurge) >> P (Suffering | God)?

If a world without suffering were created, then the creator would've outdone God, who has a created a world with suffering.  Such a creator would be a perfect creator, and therefore God, not a demiurge.  Although it's your own claim that a world without suffering is somehow less preferable to the current one we're living in, so I can see how you might think a demiurge could create a world without suffering.




An aspiring Thomist

@ Pon
When a damned person dies, there soul is separated from their body and their will remains fixed in evil. I Dr. Feser wrote an article on this which I will try to find. But the damned suffer eternally because they eternally hate God and cling to evil.

Also, if shown sound arguments that God exists and that he is Omnibenevilent, would you admit that the problem of evil must have an answer? Put another way, do you think the problem of evil is logically or only probably disproves an All good God like Quare was asking?

Mono no aware

#43
Quote from: An aspiring Thomist on November 17, 2017, 11:12:22 PMWhen a damned person dies, there soul is separated from their body and their will remains fixed in evil. I Dr. Feser wrote an article on this which I will try to find. But the damned suffer eternally because they eternally hate God and cling to evil.

Correct, and we can agree: that is the orthodox Catholic understanding.  Nevertheless the damned do repent of their sins, albeit "indirectly" according to St. Thomas Aquinas:

Quote from: Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q. 98A person may repent of sin in two ways: in one way directly, in another way indirectly. He repents of a sin directly who hates sin as such: and he repents indirectly who hates it on account of something connected with it, for instance punishment or something of that kind. Accordingly the wicked will not repent of their sins directly, because consent in the malice of sin will remain in them; but they will repent indirectly, inasmuch as they will suffer from the punishment inflicted on them for sin.

So they certainly feel regret for their sins because they are being punished for them so painfully, but they can never be forgiven because, as you aptly put it, their "will is fixed" on the sins they did not repent of at the time of their death.  But this fixing of the will at death is (presumably) wrought by God, not by the damned themselves, since currently we souls who are sojourning on earth do possess the power to change our will, and to rue our lapses and malice.  Apparently, in the Catholic framework, this power is stripped of us at death, but that is not something we ask for—added to which, even if we chalk this up to "the rules of the game," the moment of death's arrival is often random and unpredictable, rendering the "freely chosen" destiny spoken of by QMR as unfair.  The couple in the example I mentioned earlier would've met their death in an instant, and in the bloom of their youth (which is a time in our life when we do not seem terribly disposed to reflection or self-doubt, and are usually more given to being swept up in "teenaged hormonal euphoria"; or as Aquinas puts it, "the base passions," which only tend to turn a mind further away from musing on the four last things).  Whereas other people are allowed to meet their end much later in life, after decades of mellowing out and accruing wisdom, and if they're Catholic they can summon a priest for the sacraments when their doctor gives them that grim final nod, and they can die in the state of grace clutching a crucifix.

Therefore the problem with QMR's "freely chosen" and also with the "fixity of the will at death" is that there is otherwise too much randomness in life that compromises the freedom of choice, even down to the earliest considerations like what religion (or lack thereof) a person's parents happened to belong to.  Being raised in Islam or atheism can harden an adherent's heart against the gospel, where even if one were to hear it preached they would be severely conditioned to reject it.  The world we inhabit seems less like a structured trial than a cruel lottery.  And fixing the will at death merely adds to the chaos and ostensible unfairness, because death chooses us and not the other way around (unless one chooses suicide, which only ensures damnation).  The variance between the suddenness of some demises and, in others, a generous period to methodically get one's spiritual house in order compromises the fairness.  Even a quiz show like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire made sure every contestant was certain of how they wanted to respond, when Regis Philbin would look at them with his poker-faced smirk and ask, "is that your final answer?"

Quote from: An aspiring Thomist on November 17, 2017, 11:12:22 PMAlso, if shown sound arguments that God exists and that he is Omnibenevilent, would you admit that the problem of evil must have an answer? Put another way, do you think the problem of evil is logically or only probably disproves an All good God like Quare was asking?

It might have an answer, but I don't think that answer is available to us on this mortal coil.  Here is what I readily concede:

1.  Empirically observable: the world contains myriad sufferings.
2.  Logically provable: God exists; the "unmoved mover."
3.  Taught by the Catholic Church: hell exists; it is populated with the souls of the damned; and the sufferings of hell have no end.

But I'm not able to see how God's omnibenevolence is logically provable (given 1 and 3).  In my own time I always accepted the doctrine of God's omnibenevolence as paradoxical (given 1 and 3) so I took it purely on faith, accepting it as a theological mystery that resisted a satisfactory explanation in this life, and figured that one would have to see things as God sees them in order to comprehend how suffering and hell can be justified ("for my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.  For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts").  Admittedly this did not give me much consolation.  I think most Catholics have one sin that continually hounds them, one that they can't quite shake; a sin that they find themselves confessing every time they enter the confessional.  Mine was always doubt.

To answer your question, though: if God could be proven omnibenevolent, then yes, the problem of evil would have an answer.  But the cart can't be put before the horse: resolving the problem of evil seems the only way of proving God's omnibenevolence (absent faith in revelation by grace, of course).



An aspiring Thomist

Here is an article by Dr. Feser discussing hell and why our will is fixed upon death:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-go-to-hell_29.html?m=1

Search Obstinate human wills for why our wills are fixed at death, but I supppose that won't answer your question since you will ask why God created a world that is set up in this manner.


QuoteTo answer your question, though: if God could be proven omnibenevolent, then yes, the problem of evil would have an answer.  But the cart can't be put before the horse: resolving the problem of evil seems the only way of proving God's omnibenevolence (absent faith in revelation by grace, of course).

No, if we resolve the problem of evil we have only proved that there could be an all good God. And it has been shown that there is no rigorous logical argument proving without a doubt that a good God cannot exist. We can only say it "seems" like an all good God could not allow this or that evil. The problem is we cannot be certain given our lack of knowledge of all of the relevant factors.

From the first mover argument or other cosmological arguments coupled with further reasoning it can proven that God must be omnibenevolent. I would have to read up on this but I will not bother if you think we must first prove that a omnibenevolent God could allow this or that evil. Why? Because the discussion will probably never end.

If we prove an omnibenevolent God exists through a sound deductive argument we prove that the problem of evil has an answer even if we do not know it. Furthermore, faith would not be necessary although for most people that is how they know.