An argument for free will/suffering and evil.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
[b]No, loving God does not entail loving his creation, unless you take God to be identical to His creation. If so, then loving God entails loving everything about His creation.

No, I am not taking God to be identical to His Creation.

To love God is to love that being whose essence is Existence itself. All beings derive their existence by p ...[text shortened]...

Yes, he can - but he won't unless Man asks him to and it leads to a better state of affairs.[/b]

Since existence is not a property, as Kant showed, I fail to see how a being could have as an essential property existence. This is the folly of ontological “proofs” of the existence of God. If all things that exist reflect God’s essence, then pestilence and disease reflect God’s essence. Since these are part of Creation, and to love God is to love Creation, then to love God is to love pestilence and disease.

Starvation does have a being, just as pain has a being. It is a physical state of biological organisms, and the physical states of biological organisms have beings.

No, the ability to freely love God does not imply the ability to freely reject God. It merely entails the ability to freely choose to not love God (call this a privation, if you want). Since freely choosing to not love God does not entail any particular action at all other than not loving God, it doesn’t entail being able to freely choose to rape and murder.

I don’t know what to say about your rudimentary mistake in the other thread, except that I provided a proof of the consistency of my argument in that thread, and clearly pointed out which premise of yours was mistaken. Further, I have no idea why you think that states of affairs are functions. This is simply a category mistake on your part.

Your epistemological claims about knowing another’s character are not only wrong, but irrelevant to the point. We are able to make all sorts of reasonable determinations of character, and these determinations are accurate predictors of future behavior. I can predict accurately that friend X will pay you back on time if you loan him money, while friend Y will forget. I can predict that my sister will confront human suffering with more compassion than I will. If your skepticism concerning character evaluations was correct, then our success at predicting future behavior would be miraculous. Not only that, but you yourself engage in these sorts of judgments all the time, as when you think to yourself of a particular person that he is good, compassionate, generally virtuous, etc. Further, my claim above was about the possibility of God’s creating humans with characters slightly more prone to acting morally well than they do currently.

I’m fine with Eden being a state of the human soul. The question then becomes not one of collective punishment, but of why God would create humans such that both (1) they had characters such that they would be easily tempted to transgress, and (2) they were surrounded by enticements to transgress?

Both of these objections are really the same. Man's dominion over Nature cannot be said to exist unless Nature reflects what Man does to it and himself. Hence, the "natural law" mentioned above is nothing but existence itself applied to that dominion.

Huh? “Existence itself applied to that dominion?” What the hell does [I]that[/I] mean? Is that some secret Catholic code for “I am now obfuscating the debate”?

Anyway, first, not all natural evil results from human action. Second, humans hardly have dominion over nature, they merely are able to causally effect it. Third, if God did grant dominion over nature to man, and “left the scene” so to speak, then it is this leaving of the scene itself that is in need of justification, just as if I were to grant to my child dominion over the highway, and sent him out to play in the street.

Originally posted by Halitose
Okay Tel. I see that other thread, "The Lords Name" has been hijacked beyond repair, therefore I've opened a new thread.

In making my case, there are a few basic assumptions I want to address first.

1. Why did God create humans?
2. Why create a physical dimension? (nature)
3. How did God's objectives fit within this world?
4. What is evil?
...[text shortened]... --------

The assumptions for now.
Just my 2 cents, feel free to bash and rebut as you wish.

the problem with trying to absolve an omniscient, omnipotent (OO) God from moral responsibility is that you simply cannot do it. it doesn't matter what you appeal to (be it human free will or whatever). your argument is still going to end with a conclusion like "hence, OO God is not morally repugnant for allowing evil to exist."

but that is exactly the problem: if he exists, then he continuously allows evil and suffering to exist when he could effortlessly have prevented them. suppose you are fully aware that you have a working STOP RAPE button on your wristwatch. any time you see a rape in progress, you can swiftly and easily press the button and the rapist is immediately and magically apprehended or at least sufficiently deterred, and the victim's memory and body are immediately cleansed of the negative impacts of the horrific event (all this you know). so then suppose you actually do see a violent rape take place. but you willfully fail to hit your button, and you instead just stand there and watch the rape play out. sure, the rapist is directly responsible, but you would hate yourself at that moment. you would feel water-logged with guilt and disgust. your willful inaction was morally repugnant -- arguably, no less morally repugnant than the action of the rapist. do you really think you would be exonerated by saying "ah, but you know, the ability to act freely is necessary if that rapist and i are ever going to really love each other"? while it may or may not be true, i don't think this rationale even addresses the situation. free will concerns the agent's endorsement of the maxim of an undertaken action; it has nothing to do with the actual outcome of the undertaken action. if you would have hit your STOP RAPE button, how would that have infringed upon the rapist's endorsement of the undertaken rape? i don't think free will has anything to do with it. i am not even convinced that free will necessitates any evil or suffering at all, let alone logically necessary suffering. the only way you wouldn't feel morally repugnant is if you knew that the rape must necessarily occur for some greater good to obtain. that is, you need to show that ALL suffering that OO God does allow is logically necessary. otherwise, there is good reason to think no OOMP (OO with moral perfection as well) God exists.

i also find it ironic that "free choice" is necessary for a loving relationship with God. clearly, this freedom of choice does not extend to my choosing to decline any type of relationship with God without facing eternal punishment and torture. so by granting one this freedom of choice, God gives ten thousand spoons when all one may need (and want) is a knife.

of course, you have conveniently failed to address the problem of natural evils. for example, what reasons are there to think that the suffering resulting from Katrina (and now Rita) is logically necessary? many theists i talk to say something useless like "God works in mysterious ways." yes, that about sums it up: he is mysterious and a seemingly morally offensive monster at times. far from a suitable explanation, that is part of the problem.

i am a little tired of the theist's (at least those theists who believe in the existence of OOMP God) prescription: a couple of free wills and a tall glass of water will cure all their headaches. of course you are also defining evil to be whatever God deems unacceptable -- which leads me to wonder: is the rape described above unacceptable to God because the act of rape is evil, or is the act of rape evil because it is unacceptable to God? either horn will be sharp to your touch.

further if evil is whatever God deems "unacceptable," then surely he would not allow this evil to transpire. or by "unacceptable" did you mean "well, that's really not cool, but as long as it only negatively impacts my little insignificant minions, then what the hell..."

Originally posted by Halitose
Currently, FS, its the only way I can meld my believe in a Divine Being and the obvious existance of evil.

I'd be willing to lend a ear...er...or an eye to any other explanation you could offer.

I'm sure its that I.E. crash that is to blame. Where is Noel Godin when you need him?

You must be aware of how much the idea of a loving god clashes with the idea that the same god created and allows evil.

you are left with these options
1) there is no god
2) there is more then one god
3) god is evil
4) god is insane

Not exactly the options you want to have, are they?
so, look for another option.
5 )

well, that about sums if up.

BTW 5) is in the word. and is the word.

Originally posted by frogstomp
Might that be more of what your conception of a Devine Being is.
Just as a thought experiment, think of the Trinity and plan a 3D world involving all three. What would they look like? And which of the three images is the most difficult to instantiate.

Do the same with the Void and Chaos.

Once done are you really ready to ask your 4 questions?

I tried this, but my experiment aparatus kept crashing when I tried to envisage the shape of God.

Out of interest, how would you explain the existance of evil?

Originally posted by frogstomp
You must be aware of how much the idea of a loving god clashes with the idea that the same god created and allows evil.

you are left with these options
1) there is no god
2) there is more then one god
3) god is evil
4) god is insane

Not exactly the options you want to have, are they?
so, look for ...[text shortened]...
5 )

well, that about sums if up.

BTW 5) is in the word. and is the word.

You must be aware of how much the idea of a loving god clashes with the idea that the same god created and allows evil.

Therefore He couldn't possibly only be loving.

you are left with these options
1) there is no god
2) there is more then one god
3) god is evil
4) god is insane

Not exactly the options you want to have, are they?
so, look for another option.
5 )

well, that about sums if up.

No offence FS, but if God could be summed up in a one-liner then He doesn't deserve that title. Which I see could also be gathered from your post. No 5 is what I'm looking for.

BTW 5) is in the word. and is the word.

Which word?

Originally posted by Halitose
I tried this, but my experiment aparatus kept crashing when I tried to envisage the shape of God.

Out of interest, how would you explain the existance of evil?

Tough assignment , that!

Before you can explain evil, you first need to grasp what salvation is saving you from.

How far into the task did you get ? The best I ever got was 2/3 and then Zeus.

Originally posted by LemonJello
the problem with trying to absolve an omniscient, omnipotent (OO) God from moral responsibility is that you simply cannot do it. it doesn't matter what you appeal to (be it human free will or whatever). your argument is still going to end with a conclusion like "hence, OO God is not morally repugnant for allowing evil to exist."

but that is exactl ...[text shortened]... t as long as it only negatively impacts my little insignificant minions, then what the hell..."

the problem with trying to absolve an omniscient, omnipotent (OO) God from moral responsibility is that you simply cannot do it. it doesn't matter what you appeal to (be it human free will or whatever). your argument is still going to end with a conclusion like "hence, OO God is not morally repugnant for allowing evil to exist."

Precisely.

but that is exactly the problem: if he exists, then he continuously allows evil and suffering to exist when he could effortlessly have prevented them.

Okay. So lets see if I can sum up your logic here...

1. If God can prevent evil and suffering, He must preempt it, which we'll take to mean: before the act or motive becomes evil or causes suffering.
2. If God is morally perfect He would have preemted it.

I contend that evil and suffering is a necissary ingredient of free will; Freedom requires choice. How can you have choice without consequence?

My question is: why should He preempt it? If God is going to judge all evil, and if justice will be served, why preempt it. If God's preemptive strike on evil destroys free will, you have to decide which one takes preference. Freedom and Justice or limited life with limited consequences.

suppose you are fully aware that you have a working STOP RAPE button on your wristwatch. any time you see a rape in progress, you can swiftly and easily press the button and the rapist is immediately and magically apprehended or at least sufficiently deterred, and the victim's memory and body are immediately cleansed of the negative impacts of the horrific event (all this you know).

Your analogy is very limited in that it doesn't address the fact that I will need to have created both the rapist and the raped. I will not preside as judge over both of them at the end of their lives. Your analogy addresses the present, not the future and all that entails.

so then suppose you actually do see a violent rape take place. but you willfully fail to hit your button, and you instead just stand there and watch the rape play out. sure, the rapist is directly responsible, but you would hate yourself at that moment. you would feel water-logged with guilt and disgust. your willful inaction was morally repugnant -- arguably, no less morally repugnant than the action of the rapist.

FYI, there was somebody very dear to me who was raped, and trust me, I've wished many times that I could have been there to intervene; This is definitely the myopic human response; would we need to ascribe that response to God too?

do you really think you would be exonerated by saying "ah, but you know, the ability to act freely is necessary if that rapist and i are ever going to really love each other"?

"The ability to act freely is necessary if all humanity throughout time are ever going to love me." would be a statement closer to the truth in this here analogy.

while it may or may not be true, i don't think this rationale even addresses the situation. free will concerns the agent's endorsement of the maxim of an undertaken action; it has nothing to do with the actual outcome of the undertaken action.

If we knew there would be no outcome, would we even will it? Choice requires consequence.

i also find it ironic that "free choice" is necessary for a loving relationship with God. clearly, this freedom of choice does not extend to my choosing to decline any type of relationship with God without facing eternal punishment and torture.

If the purpose of you existance was ultimately a relationship with God, then your choice against God would also entail a choice against the essence of God. Therefore you are not being tortured by God, but the absence of God.

so by granting one this freedom of choice, God gives ten thousand spoons when all one may need (and want) is a knife.

This knife has ten thousand blades.

of course, you have conveniently failed to address the problem of natural evils. for example, what reasons are there to think that the suffering resulting from Katrina (and now Rita) is logically necessary? many theists i talk to say something useless like "God works in mysterious ways." yes, that about sums it up: he is mysterious and a seemingly morally offensive monster at times. far from a suitable explanation, that is part of the problem.

I'm still working on that part of my argument. As you should have read in my first post, those were the assumption. A little patience please.

i am a little tired of the theist's (at least those theists who believe in the existence of OOMP God) prescription: a couple of free wills and a tall glass of water will cure all their headaches.

Free will is one and only one of the factors involved here.

Of course you are also defining evil to be whatever God deems unacceptable -- which leads me to wonder: is the rape described above unacceptable to God because the act of rape is evil, or is the act of rape evil because it is unacceptable to God? either horn will be sharp to your touch.

Read my first post carefully.

further if evil is whatever God deems "unacceptable," then surely he would not allow this evil to transpire. or by "unacceptable" did you mean "well, that's really not cool, but as long as it only negatively impacts my little insignificant minions, then what the hell..."

No, if evil is whatever God deems unacceptable, He will make sure that Justice will eventually be served. You just have this fascination with immediate justice, while you don't notice that the postponement of justice is God's grace.

Originally posted by frogstomp
Tough assignment , that!

Before you can explain evil, you first need to grasp what salvation is saving you from.

How far into the task did you get ? The best I ever got was 2/3 and then Zeus.

LOL. I was just getting to the quarks, when my system fused.

Originally posted by Halitose
LOL. I was just getting to the quarks, when my system fused.

you dont really need to do the Spirit that's a given.
for Christ just look in a mirror.
then comes the hard part

Originally posted by frogstomp
you dont really need to do the Spirit that's a given.
for Christ just look in a mirror.
then comes the hard part

OK. What should I be looking for?

Originally posted by Halitose
OK. What should I be looking for?

what else do you need?
Coming to terms with that truely is the hard part.

Originally posted by frogstomp
what else do you need?
Coming to terms with that truely is the hard part.

I get your point.

Originally posted by Halitose
I get your point.

figured you would

Originally posted by bbarr
Since existence is not a property, as Kant showed, I fail to see how a being could have as an essential property existence. This is the folly of ontological “proofs” of the existence of God. If all things that exist reflect God’s essence, then pestilence and disease reflect God’s essence. Since these are part of Creation, and to love God is to love Creation were to grant to my child dominion over the highway, and sent him out to play in the street.

Since existence is not a property, as Kant showed, I fail to see how a being could have as an essential property existence.

Kant's argument does not apply to necessary beings (as God is to the theist) - though it still applies to the classical form of the Ontological Argument.

Starvation does have a being, just as pain has a being. It is a physical state of biological organisms, and the physical states of biological organisms have beings.

They have being in their own way, but their being is not similar to the being of the organisms themselves. The organisms are substantial beings in the sense of Aristotle's first category, physical states are not.

No, the ability to freely love God does not imply the ability to freely reject God. It merely entails the ability to freely choose to not love God

In other words you're free to pick any non-positive number as long as it is not negative. That's not freedom.

I don’t know what to say about your rudimentary mistake in the other thread, except that I provided a proof of the consistency of my argument in that thread, and clearly pointed out which premise of yours was mistaken.

There you go again. I can't believe you've never seen a diagonalization argument before.

Further, I have no idea why you think that states of affairs are functions. This is simply a category mistake on your part.

I never said states of affairs were functions.

Your epistemological claims about knowing another’s character are not only wrong, but irrelevant to the point. We are able to make all sorts of reasonable determinations of character, and these determinations are accurate predictors of future behavior... I can predict that my sister will confront human suffering with more compassion than I will... Further, my claim above was about the possibility of God’s creating humans with characters slightly more prone to acting morally well than they do currently.

You're making the same assumption again - that your sister confronts human suffering with more compassion does not mean that she is more 'prone' to compassion than you are. For all I know your sister could have the interior predisposition of a serial killer but overcompensates by being externally compassionate. This does not affect the predictability of her future actions - whatever factors led to her being compassionate in the past are likely to play a part in her future actions as well. The mistake is in assuming that factor is a 'proneness' to acting well.

Huh? “Existence itself applied to that dominion?” What the hell does [I]that[/I] mean? Is that some secret Catholic code for “I am now obfuscating the debate”?

No, it simply means that to say "Man has spiritual dominion over Nature" is the same as saying "Nature will reflect Man's spiritual state".

Anyway, first, not all natural evil results from human action.

I contend that it does - just not in a directly visible manner. Even a pantheistic view of the universe would not come to a radically different conclusion.

Second, humans hardly have dominion over nature, they merely are able to causally effect it.

In a visible manner. Not when you're talking about spiritual dominion.

Third, if God did grant dominion over nature to man, and “left the scene” so to speak, then it is this leaving of the scene itself that is in need of justification, just as if I were to grant to my child dominion over the highway, and sent him out to play in the street.

Your child does not have dominion over the highway simply because you say so. OTOH, if you were the King of England and your child were the Prince, you cannot say you've given the Prince dominion over (say) Essex, but interfere without cause in the way in which the Prince runs his dominion.

In other words, the statements "God gives Man dominion over Nature" and "God intervenes in Nature without Man asking" are incompatible.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Since existence is not a property, as Kant showed, I fail to see how a being could have as an essential property existence.

Kant's argument does not apply to necessary beings (as God is to the theist) - though it still applies to the classical form of the Ontological Argument.

Starvation does have a being, just as pain has a being. I Man dominion over Nature" and "God intervenes in Nature without Man asking" are incompatible.

First, Kant’s argument does apply to necessary beings. Necessary beings are not such that they have the property of existing. Rather, they are such that their conceptual descriptions are instantiated in any possible world. Similarly, some possible being does not have the property of possible existence. Rather, a possible being is a being the conceptual description of which is instantiated in some possible world. Similarly, some contingent being does not have the property of existence. Rather the conceptual description of that contingent being is instantiated in the actual world.
Second, If God is a necessary being, then the modal proposition “It is possible that God does not exist”, should lead to a logical contradiction. I eagerly await your forthcoming proof, and I hope for your sake that that proof does not presuppose the soundness of any ontological arguments, as it is the key ontological premise (of existence being a property or predicate) that is at issue.

I’m assuming you’re talking about Aristotle’s discussion of substance in the Categories, and not in Metaphysics Z. On the former, concrete individuals are said to be substantial. On the latter, forms as manifested in matter are substantial. Physical states would qualify as substantial according to this latter account. According to the former, when applied to your previous claims, loving God would entail only that one loves every concrete entity in Creation. It would not entail that one love any particular property (accident) of any particular entity. Now, the question would be whether there is a concrete entity such that it is consistent with loving God that one not love that entity. I can think of any number of examples: Viral strains, bacteria, guns, bombs, etc. All of these concrete entites, on your view, partake in God’s essence and, hence, require our love.

I’m not talking about numbers, I’m talking about actions. Now, the freedom to choose to do A entails only that one be free to choose not to do A (on a libertarian conception of freedom, which is the view I’m sure you advocate). You want to extend this notion. On your view, the freedom to choose to do A entails the freedom to choose from an unrestricted range of possible actions any of which qualifies as an instance of not A-ing. Now, what determines the extension of this range? If true freedom requires the ability to choose any logical possible action, then none of us are free, because there will be logically possible actions our natures prevent us from choosing. For instance, it is logically possible for the Pope to choose to start raping children. Of course, the Pope’s nature is such that he could not choose to do this. His character, in other words, constrains the choices available to him. So, your view only makes sense if the extension of the range is determined by nomological possibility. That is, we are only free if we can choose any action that is consistent with the laws of nature, including the psychological laws that, in fact, govern the choices we make. So, true freedom merely entails that one be free to choose amongst those actions that are live options, so to speak, given one’s character, powers of deliberation, rationality, etc. So, it is perfectly consistent with our being able to freely choose to love God that we be prevented by our respective characters from choosing the most hideous of moral evils. That is, it is perfectly consistent with our being free that we be imbued with characters such that it simply never occurs to us to rape or murder, or that if it occurs to us, we find the prospect so repellant that the choice to rape or murder is not a live option for us.

I’m resurrecting the GAAE thread, so that we can settle this dispute.

The assumption is overwhelmingly plausible, unless you think it is impossible to know about another person’s character. You are, in effect, merely harping on some absurd skeptical scenario without any motivation for it. For all you know, my sister is robot from Mars. So what? The claim here is merely that some people have characters such that they are more disposed to acting virtuously than others. I am not claiming that we are infallible in judging character, as you well know. If you want to argue against my claim, then you need to give me a reason for thinking that no person is such that their character disposes them to acting virtuously.

O.K., so your notion of dominion entails the following: If S has spiritual dominion over X, the X will reflect the state of S’s soul. So, we have earthquakes and famine and pestilence etc. because our soul has some property or other of which these instances of natural evil are reflections. Now, what is this property of our individual souls such that it brings about these instances of natural evil?