responses to the problem of evil

zntneo
Superfan
Posts: 565
Joined: 2007-01-25
User is offlineOffline
responses to the problem of evil

So I was reading my local newspaper today and there was an article from the Associated Press http://www.douglasdispatch.com/articles/2008/03/29/news/religion/doc47eea0fa38a8a497123803.txt about this website I doubt God.com where pastors respond to skeptical questions. The main pastor said that basically the biggest question they get from skeptics are about the problem of evil (he actually said that it was about suffering not mentioning that it that called the problem of evil) . I thought his response was interesting

 

Quote:
that unlike other religions, the Christian God has himself experienced human pain, but from that pain came greatest good(Resurrection). So maybe there is a meaning in our earthly suffering as well

 

It seems to me that this is, given the fact that Yahweh is omnipotent, undermines his omnipotence by saying that God couldn't make it so that we did the same meaning with out the suffering involved. (Nevermind the fact that if God is omnipotent he could just give us without the suffering part). I was wondering what others thought of this?

 

We also discussed the problem of evil in my intro to philosophy class, part of the way my professor, who I think is an open theist, defended my argument that I gave about God being able to make the universe without suffering, was that God can only do things that are logically possible, such as he can not create a married bachelor and he cannot create a rock that even he cannot lift, I've found this to be an ad hoc redefinition of God in order to save his God from reputation, he only redefined that way once the problem was brought up. He then went on to say that may be God cannot create the universe without allowing suffering because it is logically impossible to do so, ie causes logical contradictions.  So I was wondering what others thought of this too.

 

 


Rev0lver
Posts: 171
Joined: 2007-02-24
User is offlineOffline
a meaning in our earthly

a meaning in our earthly suffering?

so we get to ressurect too? awesome!


MattShizzle
Posts: 7966
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
That's pretty stupid. Rather

That's pretty stupid. Rather than go through it himself and say "yeah, suffering sucks" and let it go on, and create EVEN MORE suffering through hell, why not just eliminate it? Wouldn't he have known it sucks before hand? (being omniscient and everything) Also, how is a universe without suffering not logically possible? Granted, it isn't realistically possible but there's no contradiction and the idea can be realistically imagined.

Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team


HisWillness
atheistRational VIP!
HisWillness's picture
Posts: 4100
Joined: 2008-02-21
User is offlineOffline
 The problem with "evil"

 The problem with "evil" and "God" is that you can get dragged into an unproductive dialogue about definitions. "Evil" is the kind of unwavering moral construct that is characteristic of a fundamentalist (or perfectionistic) mind. If you take out the supernatural, and view the world as humans exhibiting human behaviour, it becomes much clearer and easier to understand. With the "God" concept (which is always changed around since nobody knows what it really means), it's difficult to figure out the world.

Save yourself the trouble of trying to understand the supernatural - it's a massive relief when you can view people as a very intelligent and talented primates. All the pressure and bullshit tends to float away, and you're left with a more realistic picture of life.

Your philosophy professor is quoting some very old and tired metaphysics (Aquinas). Metaphysics is basically a huge let-down as far as accomplishing anything is concerned, and usually takes the form:

If God exists ... therefore, God exists.

Thanks, metaphysics, that was a real help.

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


Corporeal
Posts: 32
Joined: 2008-03-20
User is offlineOffline
zntneo wrote:So I was

zntneo wrote:

So I was reading my local newspaper today and there was an article from the Associated Press http://www.douglasdispatch.com/articles/2008/03/29/news/religion/doc47eea0fa38a8a497123803.txt about this website I doubt God.com where pastors respond to skeptical questions. The main pastor said that basically the biggest question they get from skeptics are about the problem of evil (he actually said that it was about suffering not mentioning that it that called the problem of evil) . I thought his response was interesting

 

Quote:
that unlike other religions, the Christian God has himself experienced human pain, but from that pain came greatest good(Resurrection). So maybe there is a meaning in our earthly suffering as well

 

It seems to me that this is, given the fact that Yahweh is omnipotent, undermines his omnipotence by saying that God couldn't make it so that we did the same meaning with out the suffering involved. (Nevermind the fact that if God is omnipotent he could just give us without the suffering part). I was wondering what others thought of this?

 

We also discussed the problem of evil in my intro to philosophy class, part of the way my professor, who I think is an open theist, defended my argument that I gave about God being able to make the universe without suffering, was that God can only do things that are logically possible, such as he can not create a married bachelor and he cannot create a rock that even he cannot lift, I've found this to be an ad hoc redefinition of God in order to save his God from reputation, he only redefined that way once the problem was brought up. He then went on to say that may be God cannot create the universe without allowing suffering because it is logically impossible to do so, ie causes logical contradictions.  So I was wondering what others thought of this too.

 

 

That's why omni-anything is a childish concept: it opens up hordes of logical problems. If God can do anything then he can do the impossible, otherwise he is not capable of everything. But this is more complicated of an answer than is necessary since the bible states that God did indeed make a world without evil in the form of the garden of eden. Problem is the results fly in the face of the qualities that God claims to have, namely omniscience and omnibenevolence. Considering that God purposefully created a realm that is nothing but suffering and evil I think we can safely say that he was lying about being all-loving. In which case God's actions (and lack thereof) are much more logical.

Oh, and what's with that bullshit that "[only] the Christian god has experienced pain"? Many religions have gods that have experienced pain. In Hinduism Shiva (at least I think it's Shiva) is said to have been killed by a hunter who shot her in the heart with an arrow. And in ancient Egyption mythology Osiris is not only killed but diced up into fourteen pieces and stays dead.


MattShizzle
Posts: 7966
Joined: 2006-03-31
User is offlineOffline
Some of the Norse gods too -

Some of the Norse gods too - one was hung from a hook by the eye. Not to mention all the

Pre-Christian gods that the Jesus myth was stolen from.

Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team


sandwiches
sandwiches's picture
Posts: 75
Joined: 2008-03-13
User is offlineOffline
I agree with you, partly

HisWillness wrote:

 The problem with "evil" and "God" is that you can get dragged into an unproductive dialogue about definitions. "Evil" is the kind of unwavering moral construct that is characteristic of a fundamentalist (or perfectionistic) mind. If you take out the supernatural, and view the world as humans exhibiting human behaviour, it becomes much clearer and easier to understand. With the "God" concept (which is always changed around since nobody knows what it really means), it's difficult to figure out the world.

Save yourself the trouble of trying to understand the supernatural - it's a massive relief when you can view people as a very intelligent and talented primates. All the pressure and bullshit tends to float away, and you're left with a more realistic picture of life.

Your philosophy professor is quoting some very old and tired metaphysics (Aquinas). Metaphysics is basically a huge let-down as far as accomplishing anything is concerned, and usually takes the form:

If God exists ... therefore, God exists.

Thanks, metaphysics, that was a real help.

You're right that arguing about God and evil is usually an exercise in semantic pain, but you can usually present essentially the same problem using pain, suffering, and displeasure. Why does God allow people to suffer. Forget evil. Evil is subjective but why does God allow people to have pain, sadness, fear, suffering, etc?


HisWillness
atheistRational VIP!
HisWillness's picture
Posts: 4100
Joined: 2008-02-21
User is offlineOffline
sandwiches wrote:You're

sandwiches wrote:

You're right that arguing about God and evil is usually an exercise in semantic pain, but you can usually present essentially the same problem using pain, suffering, and displeasure. Why does God allow people to suffer. Forget evil. Evil is subjective but why does God allow people to have pain, sadness, fear, suffering, etc?

That would be also more in line with the original post. But starting from God never makes sense. It's a terrible explanation for pain that God somehow "allows" it despite all the good things that God is supposed to be. It's nonsensical.

If, instead, you see pain, sadness, fear and suffering as variations on the theme of survival, then the picture becomes clearer. Suffering isn't practical, by any means, but we don't necessarily have to believe that every evolved trait is practical. Starting the conversation from the natural world results in less effort than trying to fit a square peg of God into the round hole of life.

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


daedalus
daedalus's picture
Posts: 260
Joined: 2007-05-22
User is offlineOffline
I can understand the

I can understand the position that no suffering could create a contradiction. I don't think I buy it, but its a decent rebuttal. Of course, the "possible worlds" argument wipes it out.

Plus, its not just that suffering exists, but so much needless suffering.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
Isaac Asimov


Archeopteryx
Superfan
Archeopteryx's picture
Posts: 1037
Joined: 2007-09-09
User is offlineOffline
zntneo wrote:So I was

zntneo wrote:

So I was reading my local newspaper today and there was an article from the Associated Press http://www.douglasdispatch.com/articles/2008/03/29/news/religion/doc47eea0fa38a8a497123803.txt about this website I doubt God.com where pastors respond to skeptical questions. The main pastor said that basically the biggest question they get from skeptics are about the problem of evil (he actually said that it was about suffering not mentioning that it that called the problem of evil) . I thought his response was interesting

 

Quote:
that unlike other religions, the Christian God has himself experienced human pain, but from that pain came greatest good(Resurrection). So maybe there is a meaning in our earthly suffering as well

 

Epicurus phrased the problem of Evil this way:

Epicurus wrote:

"Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? The whence comes evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

 

One cannot escape this philosophical quandary by asserting that one's god has experienced human suffering in a meaningful way.

The first problem is that he waves his magical theist wand and transforms the word "evil" into the words "human suffering" (and if you watched the RRS debate with Way of the Master, you can probably remember how Ray Comfort magically transformed the word "cancer" into the words "human suffering" ). It's possible that these terms overlap, but I don't think anyone would agree that they were synonyms. (Unless of course you were using them that way to escape a sticky philosophical quandary.)

 

The second problem I see with this strategy is that it plays off our fuzzy definitions of what good and evil actually are. For example, suppose I decided I wanted to kill some guy that picked on me once in high school, so I poisoned his sandwich. However, being a very wasteful person, he saw that one of the slices of bread had some mold along the edge, so he thew out the entire sandwich. A few days later, a homeless man fishes the sandwich out of a dumpster, eats it, and dies. Coincidentally, the homeless man had also been plotting to kill the old bully from high school. Therefore, I saved the bully's life. From evil came good.

But of course he wouldn't agree with this because I'm using a different definition of "evil", not his prepackaged "human suffering" version. He is probably thinking more along the lines of perceived injustices that don't involve premeditated acts of malice, such as cancer, tsunamis, AIDS, etc.

His "human suffering" response is still unsatisfactory, though, because it essentially boils down to the same apologetics we've heard millions of times before: "God has a plan" or "He works in mysterious ways". As always, the crux of the theist position hinges on mankind's being a bumbling ignoramus and God's knowing profound things that we never could.

 

Yet another problem with suggesting that God has experienced human suffering, though, is that it creates new questions. For example, does this indicate the suffering exists regardless of God and was therefore not created by God? If this other force is so eternal and powerful that it has a certain power over even a god, then how can we say that such a god is supreme? (This is starting to smell more like Zoroastrianism than Christianity.)

But if God did in fact create evil, it would make him some kind of a masochist, would it not?

Actually, I think that would explain quite a lot.

Maybe we should follow his masochistic example and accept an eternity in Hell. Who knows what good the incredible suffering might bring us!

 

In short, he's not answering the question. He's fudging the terms so that the problem is easier, and then he's answering the easier version with a modified version of the "he works in mysterious ways" bit.

 

 

Quote:
was that God can only do things that are logically possible

 

Except for that part where he was two places at once.

Or that idea where he is three beings at once.

Or that idea where three entities not only exist somehow as a single entity, but this 3-in-1 creature exists in all possible places at all possible times, simultaneously, forever.

Oh, and let's not forget that part where a woman was both pregnant and a virgin at the same time.

Oh, and that part where the whole fucking concept is pointless because it is unverifiable and only discussable in the sense that it is impossible to discuss---like the matrix. Or the assertion that this sentence doesn't exist when you're looking in the opposite direction.

 

And again, god is restrained by something more powerful than he?

 

Quote:

, such as he can not create a married bachelor

But a pregnant virgin is okay.

 

Quote:

and he cannot create a rock that even he cannot lift,

In other words, he cannot create a situation in which he is powerless.

(Ignore the reasons cited for the crucifiction.)

 

Quote:

I've found this to be an ad hoc redefinition of God in order to save his God from reputation,

Of course. It goes like this:

Do I want God to be able to do that? Then it's logical and he can.

Do I want God not to be able to do that (i.e. to be/create evil?)? Then it's not logical, and he can't.

 

Quote:

he only redefined that way once the problem was brought up. He then went on to say that may be God cannot create the universe without allowing suffering because it is logically impossible to do so,

Of course. Just ignore that Heaven place and it all makes sense.

 

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.