Theodicy: God hates everyone

[james03]

Because it proves He loves me.

[Quaremerepulisti]

No, but neither is that the kind of world we would expect from an omnibenevolent God; we would not anticipate "hell minus the pain of sense."  So that thought experiment isn't helpful. 

You just moved the goalposts.  Since you answered "No", please admit my thought experiment shows the answer to the following:

Just curious, QMR: wouldn't a "morally worse" (but benign) world be preferable to a world with actual physical suffering?

is "not necessarily" (since I just provided a counterexample), and thus, allowing physical suffering is possibly justifiable in order to prevent an even worse world which would arise in its absence.

But again you're equating a moral condition with physical condition.  Which would you rather have your child be: sick with compassionate caretakers, or healthy?  "An opportunity for moral good" that comes at the expense of suffering is an opportunity we'd rather not have. 

That is a red herring.  Surely you're not equating objective goodness with what we'd subjectively like to have?  The question is not "what we'd rather have", but whether there is overall greater good in a world with perfect health but therefore no opportunity to show compassion to the sick, or the actual world where we have sick but also compassionate caretakers. 

Then you'll have to explain.  If "preventing evil prevents good," then it would seem to logically follow that allowing does cause good.

This is a denying the antecedent fallacy.  Lack of evil -> lack of good does not entail Allowing evil -> good.

You make a better case when you bring up the existence of individual evils, as opposed to evil in general. 

The only thought experiment we need to indulge in is to imagine a world just like ours tweaked with only a fraction less suffering: where instead of a young child being raped, the rapist  has a freak stroke or cardiac arrest and promptly dies, or else he lives but is suddenly smitten with impotence.  Already that's a less evil world than the one where the rapist doesn't die; and the more rapists-who-die-or-become-impotent-before-they-can-rape you have, the less suffering you have.

The bold is what is in dispute.  And it is not something that you can prove by rigorous logic.

We've already established that possibly, a world in which every possible harm done by humans to other humans is prevented by a miraculous intervention of God may turn out to be worse.  Therefore, if so, God must allow some harm to be actually done.  What is the optimum amount?  You don't know, nor do I.  But God does.

Also, the presence of evil being done provides the opportunity for the victims to forgive.  It is possible that this good outweighs the evil being done.

And not every suffering person has the wherewithal to get good help. 

But that isn't the question.  The question is whether others have the ability to aid the suffering.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I'd submit two points for further consideration:

1. All the possible ramifications of any given act cannot be fully grasped by an individual or observer. If indeed God does intend to bring a greater good out of event A or B, often it can only be truly understood a posteriori. Remember Joseph being sold into slavery, for instance. Other times, it cannot be actually grasped at all, since admittedly we do not have access to all the information. The principle, however, stands. The allowance of evil is not, per se, an indictment against God's absolute and perfect goodness.

2. Furthermore, any moral or physical harm that befalls humans in this life can never be construed as absolutely injust (in relation to divine justice) since all men by nature are sinners deserving of eternal punishment. It is by grace that we are saved, surely, but also by grace that we actually live. Life itself is not our rightful propriety, to begin with, but an endowment of God.

Point 1 is valid.  Point 2 however is not relevant to theodicy, since injustice is not the only possible evil.

[Chestertonian]

Because it proves He loves me.

Well that's nice that God loves you I guess.  It doesn't mean he loves everyone else

also how would your existence be dependent on Hitler and Stalin

I also am confused by why it would be just to deprive someone of every good in this life... isn't protection from evil and providence an essential property of fatherhood

[Quaremerepulisti]

Here is a thought experiment, QMR.  Imagine that you are omnipotent, and can create a world and populate it with sentient self-aware creatures.  Would you make it exactly like this one, with all its evils and sufferings?  Or would you make it more like a world where no suffering can be experienced, like in the Limbo of Catholic theology?

I'd certainly create a different world than this one based on my current knowledge.  Unfortunately, it may well turn out in the end to be a worse one.  Just like a medically ignorant person who refrains from undergoing a painful treatment, because all he can see is the pain, but ends up dead because the treatment was in fact necessary to save his life.  The relevant thought experiment is what I would do if I were omnipotent but also omniscient.

[james03]

also how would your existence be dependent on Hitler and Stalin

To ask that question reveals a premise of dualism, that I am an ectoplasm ghost piloting a body machine.  It is equivalent to asking, "Why couldn't God just put your soul in another body?".

If Hitler and Stalin were killed in their youth (and a Big If, communism and nazism never arised (change Stalin to Lenin) ), I would not have been born.  Therefore the fact that they were allowed to live proves God loves me.

[An aspiring Thomist]

@Chestertonian

I think you need to take a few important points from this discussion.

1. The OPs dilemma or the theodicy question does not logically disprove God. It fails as a deductive argument since it can always be argued that God allows evil for a greater good.

2. At best then it can be turned into a probabilistic or inductive argument. "It seems there is more evil than good and that not all evils are allowed for a greater good or some sufficient reason, hence there is no good God." The problem with this is we don't know or can properly asses all of the variables. Many of the saints say that one supernatural act of love is greater than all of the natural goods. In fact it could be argued that it is infinitely greater. Probabilistic arguments can be made on both sides.

3. There are sound deductive arguments which prove a first cause who must be God. To get to one transcendent, immaterial, necessary, creator and sustainer of all is possible through reason. Furthure arguments show that this God must be all good. We can deductively get to an All Good God which then trumps all of the probabilistic arguments from evil.

4. You have to accept that you might not be able to see how this or that evil will result in a greater good. But surely  in accepting this fact and sorrow for the love of God, you will have done greater good than the evil. "And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints."

[Mono no aware]

You just moved the goalposts.  Since you answered "No", please admit my thought experiment shows the answer to the following:

Just curious, QMR: wouldn't a "morally worse" (but benign) world be preferable to a world with actual physical suffering?

is "not necessarily" (since I just provided a counterexample), and thus, allowing physical suffering is possibly justifiable in order to prevent an even worse world which would arise in its absence.

I will admit that your counterexample ("hell without the pain of sense") does show that such a world would not necessarily be preferable, but I am merely saying that the world could be tweaked to be better than this one and not nearly as bad as your counterexample, and in any case whatever world we posit would have to be seen as commensurate with a loving god.  That's not the moving the goalposts; that is the goal.

Surely you're not equating objective goodness with what we'd subjectively like to have?  The question is not "what we'd rather have", but whether there is overall greater good in a world with perfect health but therefore no opportunity to show compassion to the sick, or the actual world where we have sick but also compassionate caretakers.

You seem to be supposing that every instance of sickness is met with swift acts of compassion, but much of the suffering in this world goes unmitigated.  So I'm not seeing how having "the opportunity to show compassion" makes this a world of greater good.  "What we'd subjectively like to have" is the only criteria we can go by.  I'm assuming that you yourself would rather have someone who only thinks about shoving a knife in your gullet (but doesn't), as opposed to someone who actually does shove a knife in your gullet.  Or that you would prefer for your child to be healthy, than for your child to suffer a severe illness.  Although I don't know; I could be wrong.  Perhaps you wouldn't.

Further, "what we'd subjectively like to have" has always been how humans have imagined heaven, so I don't think there's anything blasphemous about the notion.  It supposes that God has created a better world, one without pain and suffering, whether it's the blissed-out carnal and sexy jannah of the Muslims (with its banquets and houris) or the more mystical-tinged Beatific Vision of the Christians—"and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more;" "we see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face."  So the ultimate thought experiment has already been done billions of time over, every time anyone ever rhapsodized about heaven.  The question of theodicy is why there isn't just heaven, instead of an earthly trial period which most souls are going to fail (given the many and the few; the broad road and the narrow gate), thus extending the temporal test for most humans to an eternity of pain & suffering.

The title of Kirin's OP is actually wrong, though.  God does not hate the elect.

[Mono no aware]

I'd certainly create a different world than this one based on my current knowledge.  Unfortunately, it may well turn out in the end to be a worse one.  Just like a medically ignorant person who refrains from undergoing a painful treatment, because all he can see is the pain, but ends up dead because the treatment was in fact necessary to save his life.  The relevant thought experiment is what I would do if I were omnipotent but also omniscient.

I'm not following.  If you were ominpotent, how could you create a worse world unintentionally?  You'd be omnipotent; if your intention was to create a world without suffering (or with less or more mitigated suffering), you could do that: ex nihilo, heaven (or limbo), populated with souls.  To say that there is some factor that would make things go wrong in a "sorcerer's apprentice" way is to say that an omnipotent being is constrained by things outside of his power.  That would run contradictory to omnipotence.

[Quaremerepulisti]

I will admit that your counterexample ("hell without the pain of sense") does show that such a world would not necessarily be preferable, but I am merely saying that the world could be tweaked to be better than this one and not nearly as bad as your counterexample, and in any case whatever world we posit would have to be seen as commensurate with a loving god.  That's not the moving the goalposts; that is the goal.

That the world could be better than this one (meaning that there could be more good in it), admitted; that there is gratuitous evil (meaning, evil which could be prevented without thereby preventing a greater good), denied.

Now, all arguments that there does, actually, exist gratuitous evil in the world are fallacies of arguments from ignorance of the form: I don't see what greater good would be prevented by preventing evil X; therefore, no greater good is prevented.

Saying this is not "theodicy" strictly speaking; but it is nevertheless a refutation of the logical argument from evil.  Theodicy means constructing plausible reasons why God allows evil X.

You seem to be supposing that every instance of sickness is met with swift acts of compassion, but much of the suffering in this world goes unmitigated.  So I'm not seeing how having "the opportunity to show compassion" makes this a world of greater good.

Yes, but that is an argument from ignorance; and no, I'm supposing every instance of sickness is met with immediate compassion.

"What we'd subjectively like to have" is the only criteria we can go by.  I'm assuming that you yourself would rather have someone who only thinks about shoving a knife in your gullet (but doesn't), as opposed to someone who actually does shove a knife in your gullet.  Or that you would prefer for your child to be healthy, than for your child to suffer a severe illness.  Although I don't know; I could be wrong.  Perhaps you wouldn't.

But my enemy would subjectively like to see a knife in my gullet.  Another enemy would like to rape my daughter.  Subjective desires can clash. So, unless you want to just proclaim might makes right, there have to be objective criteria.  But if might makes right, you can't possibly accuse God of evil, since everything He does must be right by definition, simply because He has the power to do so.

Further, "what we'd subjectively like to have" has always been how humans have imagined heaven, so I don't think there's anything blasphemous about the notion.  It supposes that God has created a better world, one without pain and suffering, whether it's the blissed-out carnal and sexy jannah of the Muslims (with its banquets and houris) or the more mystical-tinged Beatific Vision of the Christians—"and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more;" "we see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face."  So the ultimate thought experiment has already been done billions of time over, every time anyone ever rhapsodized about heaven. 

Well, come on.  You may disagree with the claim, but Christians say heaven - that is, union with God - is objectively the greatest good one can have and produce reasons for the claim.  It's not - for us anyway - just a matter of subjective desire.

The question of theodicy is why there isn't just heaven, instead of an earthly trial period which most souls are going to fail (given the many and the few; the broad road and the narrow gate), thus extending the temporal test for most humans to an eternity of pain & suffering.

Yes, that is a good question, and sadly one for which Christians have at times given woefully unsatisfactory and quite objectionable responses.  There are only two possible answers:

1.  There can't be just heaven.  One must have made a prior choice to love God.  Heaven is only happiness for those who love God; it is torture for those who hate Him (or those who haven't made up their minds) to see Him face-to-face.

2.  The experience of heaven and the good of heaven is so much greater for those who had the prior opportunity to choose evil, and this is the greater good involved in failing to prevent the possibility of so choosing.

[Chestertonian]

also how would your existence be dependent on Hitler and Stalin

To ask that question reveals a premise of dualism, that I am an ectoplasm ghost piloting a body machine.  It is equivalent to asking, "Why couldn't God just put your soul in another body?".

If Hitler and Stalin were killed in their youth (and a Big If, communism and nazism never arised (change Stalin to Lenin) ), I would not have been born.  Therefore the fact that they were allowed to live proves God loves me.

1 i still am not seeing what turn of events necessitated the existence of Stalin and hitler ij order for you to be born

2 I am not entirely convinced that existence is a good thing or that our existence is any evidence of Gods love for us.  I am not sure if my existence is a good thing.  If i never existed the suffering would never have happened

[Quaremerepulisti]

I'm not following.  If you were ominpotent, how could you create a worse world unintentionally?  You'd be omnipotent; if your intention was to create a world without suffering (or with less or more mitigated suffering), you could do that: ex nihilo, heaven (or limbo), populated with souls.  To say that there is some factor that would make things go wrong in a "sorcerer's apprentice" way is to say that an omnipotent being is constrained by things outside of his power.  That would run contradictory to omnipotence.

But even an omnipotent being cannot do the logically impossible.  I would be creating what I thought was a better world, but its parameters would in fact logically entail a worse one, which I would not know of until the world was created and it played out.  But then it would be too late.

[Mono no aware]

But even an omnipotent being cannot do the logically impossible.  I would be creating what I thought was a better world, but its parameters would in fact logically entail a worse one, which I would not know of until the world was created and it played out.  But then it would be too late.

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.  You could whisk anyone negatively affected immediately up into heaven, where their brief moment of suffering would be instantly forgotten.  I don't know why you think it's "logically impossible" for a creator to rescue his creaturelings from a mistake.  After all, you're the one who thinks God can change his mind about things, given Vatican II.

But 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.

Saying 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.

Well, come on.  You may disagree with the claim, but Christians say heaven - that is, union with God - is objectively the greatest good one can have and produce reasons for the claim.  It's not - for us anyway - just a matter of subjective desire.

Even if Christianity weren't true, however, humans would still subjectively desire an afterlife similar to the concept.  It is a very understandable thing (humans being familiar with both pleasure and pain) to wish for a life where there was all pleasure and no pain.  The less hopeful among us might at least look forward to annihilation, where if there isn't a paradise there's a cessation of earthly suffering since, as Seneca had it, the state of being dead is the same state as that prior to birth: "death is non-existence, and I know already what that means.  What was before me will happen again after me."

But 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.  They figured that if this world must be, then surely all the sufferings therein would eventually be ameliorated in the end by God, in his infinite love, drawing every soul into the bosom of heaven.  They did not contend that the wicked would go unpunished, but that no wicked person would suffer for eternity; that even the worst person would pay his debt after aeons of torture.  Heresy or not, that is at least a better way of justifying a trial period wherein evil is permitted.  It's the only "greater good" that makes sense, since the damned did not choose of their own volition to exist and take the tricky test of this life, where the living walk on a perilous razor's edge between heaven or (more likely) hell.

[james03]

3. There are sound deductive arguments which prove a first cause who must be God. To get to one transcendent, immaterial, necessary, creator and sustainer of all is possible through reason. Furthure arguments show that this God must be all good. We can deductively get to an All Good God which then trumps all of the probabilistic arguments from evil.

Crucial.  Unfortunately the heathens are too simplistic to think of this.

[james03]

1 i still am not seeing what turn of events necessitated the existence of Stalin and hitler ij order for you to be born

If they never existed, then how could I be me?  They are part of reality.  Or consider that with such a drastic change my grandparents would never have married.  Therefore the allowance of Stalin and Hitler prove that God loves me.

2 I am not entirely convinced that existence is a good thing or that our existence is any evidence of Gods love for us.  I am not sure if my existence is a good thing.  If i never existed the suffering would never have happened

Our existence is more of a proof that God is the Prime Mover. Give DesCartes credit, he homed in on the importance of existence.  Where he went from there was tragic.  You can not divide the immaterial from the material.  Consider the heart.  The immaterial final cause that makes it a heart: "to pump blood".  Is "to pump blood" an ectoplasmic ghost that inhabits the heart?  No, "to pump blood" is the Truth.

My soul is the Truth about me.  I exist, that is the most abstracted kernel of my soul.  Since I exist, my existence is the Truth, e.g. it participates in Being.  Therefore God is the Prime Mover.

And since my existence is True, I can decide whether it is good by deciding whether Truth is good, or whether lies are good.

What is earthly suffering if our end is the Beatific Vision?  What profiteth a man who gains the entire world, but loses Salvation?  Conversely, what earthly price is too high if Salvation is the purchase?  Can the Innocent be killed for it?