Caricature? Yes!

[Hee_Zen]

What is a caricature? It is a distortion of something, with the intent to enhance the most pertinent features, to make it more readily recognizable. One of the most frequent of such “rebuttals” happen when the problem of evil is discussed. “That is just a caricature” proclaim the believers, and they do not realize that this is the admission of the accuracy of what has been said. Read the Tale of the twelve officers.. It describes twelve of the most usual attempts to explain (away?) the “non-action” of God in the face of some heinous acts of some people.

The premise:

It was, of course, sad to hear that Ms. K had been slowly raped and murdered by a common thug over the course of one hour and fifty-five minutes; but when I found out that the ordeal had taken place in plain sight of twelve fully-armed off-duty police officers, who ignored her terrified cries for help, and instead just watched until the act was carried to its gruesome end, I found myself facing a personal crisis. You see, the officers had all been very close friends of mine, but now I found my trust in them shaken to its core. Fortunately, I was able to talk with them afterwards, and ask them how they could have stood by and done nothing when they could so easily have saved Ms. K.

The most frequent one is the so-called free-will defense, described by the author as:

“I thought about intervening,” said the first officer, “but it occurred to me that it was obviously better for the murderer to be able to exercise his free will than to have it restricted. I deeply regret the choices he made, but that’s the price of having a world with free agents. Would you rather everyone in the world were a robot? The attacker’s choices certainly weren’t in my control, so I can’t be held responsible for his actions.”

The other “defenses” are equally insufficient. Just go and read them. Are they “caricatures”? Yes, they are. Are they therefore incorrect? Nope, they are straight to the point.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

What is a caricature? It is a distortion of something, with the intent to enhance the most pertinent features, to make it more readily recognizable. One of the most frequent of such “rebuttals” happen when the problem of evil is discussed. “That is just a caricature” proclaim the believers, and they do not realize that this is the admission of the accuracy of what has been said. Read the Tale of the twelve officers.. It describes twelve of the most usual attempts to explain (away?) the “non-action” of God in the face of some heinous acts of some people.

The premise:

The most frequent one is the so-called free-will defense, described by the author as:

The other “defenses” are equally insufficient. Just go and read them. Are they “caricatures”? Yes, they are. Are they therefore incorrect? Nope, they are straight to the point.

The problem with this, and the other caricatures, is that they are based on the limited scope of human understanding. We can never see the full scope of what comes of an action, and are therefore unable to pronounce judgment on it. This is the problem of trying to use analogy in considering the reality of God, we simply cannot understand His full scope.

Furthermore, this analogy also assumes that the woman’s death is ultimately a negative outcome. This may or may not be true based on the state of her soul. Perhaps, though she suffered and died at this point, she was in a state of grace and therefore admitted into Heaven? Perhaps, had her death been prevented at that point, she would have later entered into unrepentant grave sin? If she died in that state she would ultimately be damned to Hell, and suffer far greater than the momentary sufferings that accosted her in at the hands of her killers. Given those two potentials, it was a kindness to her to allow her to die at that point.

The point is, our scope of understanding is limited, and we cannot fathom certain things. They may seem to be completely negative to us at that time, but that doesn’t mean that there would be no good to come from it.

This may not seem a satisfactory answer to you, but as you said, that doesn’t mean it’s not correct.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Sure, every defense is insufficent BECAUSE we don’t (neither you nor I nor any other human being) fully understand evil. That is precisely the point – it isn’t a phenomenon that can be understood; precisely the opposite, in fact.

When the Fall occurred it was because our progenitors turned a blind eye away from the absolute Knowledge of the Good to contriving our own experience of good by willing the complete knowledge of good AND evil. We are getting what we asked for. The full implications of evil are now part and parcel of our experience - unmitigated and to their fullest depth. The question, contrary to Vuletic’s premise, isn’t how God will respond to evil, the question is how we – each of us – finally and fully, will respond.

In fact, what Christianity states is that our willfulness is not only expressed by the acts that we do to each other, but even more determinably by the acts that we commit towards Goodness Itself – we have crucified it. Why would humans do such a thing?

God has left us fully to our own devices to experience completely what those devices entail. He has left himself out of the accounting BECAUSE human beings at the very ground of our being have willed him out and continue to will it to be so. We have showed that willfulness throughout history and determinably at the crucifixion of God, of Goodness, himself.

Mr. Vuletic’s “parable” is simply making a claim that the Good has determinably failed to be good, therefore the Good cannot be absolutely good.

His grounding assumption is that permitting any evil at all is a weakness of the Good and, therefore, the Good cannot be absolutely good if any evil is permitted.

It is not clear that such an assumption is true. Why would the Good not permit ANY evil except in the case that evil could get “out of hand,” become unrestrained and therefore threaten the Good? But then the Good, if potentially threatened in that way, could not be ABSOLUTELY GOOD.

It would seem that for Good to be absolute, any and all evil could become completely unrestrained and still be of NO threat to the GOOD.

In other words, the evil that we or any other being does is of NO threat to the absolute Good.

That leaves us as moral beings (threatened by the evil we bring about) in a rather precarious position; in particular when we concede, without warrant, that evil is in our eyes a determinable threat to the Good because we have allowed that the Good cannot, ultimately, properly deal with evil. That, however, is only our concession, not one made by the Good Itself. The Resurrection contradicts that capitulation even though we constantly attempt to insist that it is true.

Do we side with the Good, as absolute?
Are we taken in by evil as a threat looming large intimidated into abandoning loyalty to the Good by renditions such as Vuletic’s which attempt to divide or weaken our loyalty?
Or do we ply what appears to be a safe middle ground, siding with evil when we seem to be protected by it and good when that is to our favour?

In any case, we still MUST make a choice regarding our standing vis a vis evil and the Good. Do we choose the Good because it is absolute or vacillate depending upon our own notion of “the good” for ourselves?

 

[Gorgias]

The most frequent one is the so-called free-will defense, described by the author as:

This doesn’t describe freedom of will, but rather, freedom of act. Confusing one with the other leads to a whole range of ‘distortions’, none of which capture the truth of the free will argument…

Are they “caricatures”? Yes, they are.

Are they therefore “distortions”? Why yes… yes, they are.

 

[bisco]

what the question?

 

[Hee_Zen]

The problem with this, and the other caricatures, is that they are based on the limited scope of human understanding. We can never see the full scope of what comes of an action, and are therefore unable to pronounce judgment on it. This is the problem of trying to use analogy in considering the reality of God, we simply cannot understand His full scope.

There are two problems here. The believers assert that we have enough information to “praise” God, but not enough information to criticize him. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. The second problem is that we never have “full” information, and yet we dispense judgment based upon the “available” information - and there is nothing wrong with that. When we see a human father to abuse his child, we do not say: “well, we don’t have all the information, so maybe he is a perfectly loving father”… which is precisely the “defense offered by the fifth officer”.

Look, there’s really no point in my trying to explain the details to you," said the fifth officer, who we had nicknamed ‘Brainiac’ because he had an encyclopedic knowledge of literally everything and an IQ way off the charts. "There’s an excellent reason for why I did not intervene, but it’s just way too complicated for you to understand, so I’m not even going to bother trying. I mean, you admit you are nowhere near as knowledgeable as I am, so what right do you have to judge? Just so there’s no misunderstanding, though, let me point out that no one could care about Ms. K. more than I did, and that I am, in fact, a very good person. That settles that.

Furthermore, this analogy also assumes that the woman’s death is ultimately a negative outcome. This may or may not be true based on the state of her soul. Perhaps, though she suffered and died at this point, she was in a state of grace and therefore admitted into Heaven? Perhaps, had her death been prevented at that point, she would have later entered into unrepentant grave sin? If she died in that state she would ultimately be damned to Hell, and suffer far greater than the momentary sufferings that accosted her in at the hands of her killers. Given those two potentials, it was a kindness to her to allow her to die at that point.

Now you use the excuse of the ninth officer. There is nothing new under the Sun, is there?

I’ll let you in on a secret," said the ninth officer. "Moments after Ms. K. flatlined, I had her resuscitated, and flown to a tropical resort where she is now experiencing extraordinary bliss, and her ordeal is just a distant memory. I’m sure you would agree that that’s more than adequate compensation for her suffering, so the fact that I just stood there watching instead of intervening has no bearing at all on my goodness

The point is, our scope of understanding is limited, and we cannot fathom certain things. They may seem to be completely negative to us at that time, but that doesn’t mean that there would be no good to come from it.

This may not seem a satisfactory answer to you, but as you said, that doesn’t mean it’s not correct.

It is not a satisfactory answer to anyone. Especially for those who take Catholicism seriously, since “you cannot do evil so that good may come out of it” - as the official teaching goes. So the caricature works really well.

 

[Hee_Zen]

This doesn’t describe freedom of will, but rather, freedom of act. Confusing one with the other leads to a whole range of ‘distortions’, none of which capture the truth of the free will argument…

You missed the meat: “it was obviously better for the murderer to be able to exercise his free will”. And free will without the freedom to exercise that will… is like kissing your sister through the closed window. Meaningless and useless.

Are they therefore “distortions”? Why yes… yes, they are.

Intentionally and to highlight the absurdity of certain “excuses”.

 

[Hee_Zen]

Mr. Vuletic’s “parable” is simply making a claim that the Good has determinably failed to be good, therefore the Good cannot be absolutely good.

Nope, it shows how absurd and ridiculous are the attempts of the apologists, who try to “whitewash” God.

 

[Gorgias]

When we see a human father to abuse his child, we do not say: “well, we don’t have all the information, so maybe he is a perfectly loving father”… which is precisely the “defense offered by the fifth officer”.

Now you use the excuse of the ninth officer.

A police officer is sworn “to protect and serve.” For a police officer, to witness a crime and not intervene is a breach of the terms of his employment. So, any of these officers acts egregiously. Are you asserting that God is our employee? That He exists to serve us? Or, do you simply want (unfairly and emotionally) to transfer our outrage at the officers in the story to God?

This story ‘works’ only inasmuch as we presume that the officers were obligated to act. How do you assert this presumption with respect to God? (Or, isn’t it really the truth that you want to conclude that God should act, and you’re merely creating a circular argument?) It’s ok… we already know the answer; can you admit to it, too?

It is not a satisfactory answer to anyone. Especially for those who take Catholicism seriously, since “you cannot do evil so that good may come out of it” - as the official teaching goes. So the caricature works really well.

God does not “do evil”. So, the caricature only works if we don’t realize that it’s asking us to transfer our conclusion to a premise, and engages our emotions so that we don’t recognize the slight-of-hand in play…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

There are two problems here. The believers assert that we have enough information to “praise” God, but not enough information to criticize him. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

We praise God because we recognize that we created him, and that is His due. That is all the understanding we need to know that we should praise him, and so we do. in order to criticize him, we would need to understand his motive and the outcomes of his choices. We cannot know all of this, so we cannot legitimately criticize him. The two actions are not comparable, you’re comparing apples and oranges.

The second problem is that we never have “full” information, and yet we dispense judgment based upon the “available” information - and there is nothing wrong with that. When we see a human father to abuse his child, we do not say: “well, we don’t have all the information, so maybe he is a perfectly loving father”… which is precisely the “defense offered by the fifth officer”.

This gets back to the flaw in your analogy, you are equivocating a human, with limited knowledge and partial understanding, with God, who’s knowledge is unlimited and whos understanding is complete. Let me put it to you this way. This is like comparing a second grader with a medical doctor. The second grader may understand that if they cut their finger it bleeds and they should probably put a bandaid on it to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, the doctor understands that if you cut your finger, the cut should be allowed to breath in order to facilitate its healing. The second grader would put a bandaid on it, which would actually slow down the healing process in the long run, whereas the doctor would allow the blood to clot and dry, leaving it open to air so it will heal faster. Both actions are correct given the knowledge the individual had at the time, however, the second grader’s decision was ultimately more detrimental than good.

Now you use the excuse of the ninth officer. There is nothing new under the Sun, is there?

God is not withholding information from you, that is a gross mis-characterization of what I said (which is why caricature is never a valid method of getting your point across). The fact that you cannot understand the full ramifications of an event is distinctly different from withholding information. That’s basically faulting God for not making His creations omniscient.

It is not a satisfactory answer to anyone. Especially for those who take Catholicism seriously, since “you cannot do evil so that good may come out of it” - as the official teaching goes. So the caricature works really well.

No, it really doesn’t. God is not the one willing evil, we are. God simply works with what we give him. God is not doing evil so that good can happen, he is creating good in spite of the fact that we chose evil. The best phrase for it is that he’s making lemonade out of our lemons, or making the best of a bad situation.

You cannot use grossly-oversimplified characterizations like this as a basis for your belief structure, as they do not properly represent an argument, and rather seek to play off of emotional reactions to a negative stimulus in order to garner sympathy with the side writing the narrative. Even the way the cops talk is formed to create an instinctive dislike of them, which, given that they are intended to represent God in this instance, is meant to instill an instinctive dislike of God.

Also, as has been pointed out, you are operating under the faulty assumption that God owes us anything, let alone a simple, blissful life without difficulty or suffering. God owes us nothing, and we owe him everything. You have no basis for making your assertion that a good God would allow no suffering beyond your negative emotional reaction to suffering. It is not a rational position to hold, and instead has the quality of a child wining that he didn’t get his way. This is not intended as a personal slight, but is rather a generalize observation of the nature of arguments like this. I intend no offense with this statement.

You should pick up C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain”. I think you’d get a lot out of it.

 

[Gorgias]

You missed the meat

Nah… you just missed the point.

Let’s try again:

: “it was obviously better for the murderer to be able to exercise his free will”. And free will without the freedom to exercise that will… is like kissing your sister through the closed window. Meaningless and useless.

You do not have the right to drive the wrong way down a one-way street; you do not have the right to refuse to pay your taxes; you do not have the right to build a bonfire in a city backyard. Certainly, you can engage your free will and wish to do these things, but your government restricts your ability to exercise these free will decisions. Does that then mean that your life is “meaningless and useless”?

Of course not. Rather, free will speaks to willing, and cannot be impinged. Free act speaks to license, not freedom, and reasonably has bounds. You can’t assert “freedom of action” and expect to argue convincingly that it is what free will consists of (or that free will is meaningless in its absence)…!

 

[Hee_Zen]

A police officer is sworn “to protect and serve.” For a police officer, to witness a crime and not intervene is a breach of the terms of his employment. So, any of these officers acts egregiously. Are you asserting that God is our employee? That He exists to serve us? Or, do you simply want (unfairly and emotionally) to transfer our outrage at the officers in the story to God?

You missed the point. The officers are the stand-ins for apologists, who try to explain away the lack of actions of God. Those twelve different attempts are found in any thread which deals with the problem of “evil”. The author of course “distorted” the words to make the attempts even more visibly ridiculous.

This story ‘works’ only inasmuch as we presume that the officers were obligated to act. How do you assert this presumption with respect to God? (Or, isn’t it really the truth that you want to conclude that God should act, and you’re merely creating a circular argument?) It’s ok… we already know the answer; can you admit to it, too?

A good, loving (agape) person acts and helps even if it is not his prescribed duty.

God does not “do evil”. So, the caricature only works if we don’t realize that it’s asking us to transfer our conclusion to a premise, and engages our emotions so that we don’t recognize the slight-of-hand in play…

The truth of the story is highlighted by the fact that you are unable to refute any of its scenarios.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

You missed the point. The officers are the stand-ins for apologists, who try to explain away the lack of actions of God. Those twelve different attempts are found in any thread which deals with the problem of “evil”. The author of course “distorted” the words to make the attempts even more visibly ridiculous.

Then your argument is even farther off base then previously stated. In each of their descriptions they are placed in the role of the person failing to act. The entire point of the argument is that God doesn’t act which, in the mind of the arguer, disproves God. Based on your assertion, all the cops prove is that we humans sometimes don’t act based on our understanding of God’s providence. If this is the goal, then the argument is correct, and we humans sometimes wrongly fail to act even if our intention is to live in God’s will. In this scenario given, this would be wrong. If, on the other hand, the purpose of the argument is to prove that God doesn’t act and therefore is wrong or doesn’t exist, then the officers must be acting in the place of God in the narrative, at which point the analogy breaks down because, as previously stated, God does not have an obligation to act. God is not human, so any attempts to compare him to humans would be incomplete at best, and downright misleading at worst.

As you so eloquently put it, you can’t have your cake and eat it to. Either the officers are meant to represent faulty human reasoning, in which case there is validity to the point that we sometimes fail to act when we should; or they are intended to represent God, in which case they are invalid because God is not comparable to a human in any meaningful sense.

A good, loving (agape) person acts and helps even if it is not his prescribed duty.

This is based on your personal opinion of what is Good. Tell me, from what do you derive your definition of good?

The truth of the story is highlighted by the fact that you are unable to refute any of its scenarios.

Um… we have refuted them… both of us… you are simply failing to acknowledge the refutation. Just because the blind man doesn’t see the tree, doesn’t mean he won’t hurt himself when he walks into it.

 

[Gorgias]

You missed the point. The officers are the stand-ins for apologists, who try to explain away the lack of actions of God.

No, trust me… I get it.

The problem is in the analogy: the officers aren’t just apologists, as you claim, they’re the actual actors in the drama. As such, their actions stand for God’s actions. My claim that the analogy doesn’t work is the claim that we can’t look at a human police officer and assert that his job responsibilities are akin to God and His role vis-a-vis humans. (If you missed that point, the first time around, hopefully it’s clear to you now. )

A good, loving (agape) person acts and helps even if it is not his prescribed duty.

So, if I provide a counter-example, you’ll agree to abandon this ridiculous attempt?

The truth of the story is highlighted by the fact that you are unable to refute any of its scenarios.

The weakness of the story is highlighted by the fact that I am unmotivated to refute any of its (invalid) scenarios.

 

[Gorgias]

You missed the point.

Prodgl’s response suffices here.

A good, loving (agape) person acts and helps even if it is not his prescribed duty.

If I provide a counter-example that disproves your basis here, will you agree to abandon this ridiculous attempt?

The truth of the story is highlighted by the fact that you are unable to refute any of its scenarios.

Why should I address the individual scenarios if the entire project is logically flawed? That would be fruitless…

 

[Gorgias]

LOL! In general, yes, you have a point. But, I believe that it’s valuable for those who assert these things to hear that there are responses and to hear how their objections are met. Does this mean they’ll agree? Of course not. But one day, the Spirit might be working in them, and if they have these responses as memories, they’ll have a fighting chance of recognizing that their earlier opinions were in error.

Color me an optimist…

 

[Aloysium]

What is a caricature? It is a distortion of something, with the intent to enhance the most pertinent features, to make it more readily recognizable. One of the most frequent of such “rebuttals” happen when the problem of evil is discussed. “That is just a caricature” proclaim the believers, and they do not realize that this is the admission of the accuracy of what has been said. . .

It’s just a caricature you will say. But, your rebuttal is an admission of the acccuracy of what is being said about atheists:

View attachment 21248

 

[Peter_Plato]

Nope, it shows how absurd and ridiculous are the attempts of the apologists, who try to “whitewash” God.

Apologists cannot “whitewash” God. Either the Absolute Good (aka God) exists or he does not. The question remains as to what the nature of the Absolute Good is. The article makes claims about what the Absolute Good should do, but based upon what? Our expectations alone and no real or complete sense of what Absolute Goodness entails.

We are not the Absolute Good, nor do we comprehend what it means to be such because we do not have a complete idea what competencies that would involve.

It seems to me that it was you who claimed that the ability to resuscitate humans at will would radically change our idea of murder. I suspect that is true, but even more so, the capacity to create all that exists from nothing radically changes God’s moral standing vis a vis our death and suffering.

Yes, I know, you will claim this is special pleading. The problem, however, is that it can’t be special pleading unless God is in precisely the same moral position that we are. Yet, by claiming our moral standing towards murder would change if we could resuscitate others, that means you have undermined your own potential objection.

God’s standing does not, however, mitigate our culpability since we do not have any such grasp or competency with regard to what death or suffering is. In other words causing someone to suffer could very well be wrong for us because our intent by causing suffering is to bring about harm, but not necessarily wrong for God since he would determinably know all that suffering entails and may, therefore, have legitimate reasons for allowing suffering without intending harm.

 

[Hee_Zen]

You do not have the right to drive the wrong way down a one-way street; you do not have the right to refuse to pay your taxes; you do not have the right to build a bonfire in a city backyard.

I am able to do any of these things. The laws and ordinances do not prevent me from doing it.

Certainly, you can engage your free will and wish to do these things, but your government restricts your ability to exercise these free will decisions.

Not al all. Not the “ability”. It would simply punish me for acting unlawfully.

Of course not. Rather, free will speaks to willing, and cannot be impinged. Free act speaks to license, not freedom, and reasonably has bounds. You can’t assert “freedom of action” and expect to argue convincingly that it is what free will consists of (or that free will is meaningless in its absence)…!

Your argument is even more devastating to God. If the mere ability to “will” something is enough to have “free will” - regardless of the “ability” (which is NOT “license”) to carry it out, then God has no excuse to let this rape happen - IN THE NAME of free will. Maybe he can use some other excuse, but not the “free will”.

Now, since most believers equate free will with the ability to carry out the action of that will, I can only hope that the next time someone brings up the “free will defense”, you will get in and assert: “you poor nincompoop, God never infringes on your free will, even he would take the ability away to act on it!”. So God could simply prevent the execution of the will, without touching the “will” itself. And voila! No more rapes.

 

[Hee_Zen]

Then your argument is even farther off base then previously stated. In each of their descriptions they are placed in the role of the person failing to act. The entire point of the argument is that God doesn’t act which, in the mind of the arguer, disproves God.

Nope, it does not “disprove” anything. It shows, however, the discrepancy between God’s alleged “goodness” and the reality.

Either the officers are meant to represent faulty human reasoning, in which case there is validity to the point that we sometimes fail to act when we should; or they are intended to represent God, in which case they are invalid because God is not comparable to a human in any meaningful sense.

So we are NOT created in God’s image any more? But you are wrong. If it is “evil” for a human NOT to act in such a situation, then it is even worse for God not to act.

This is based on your personal opinion of what is Good. Tell me, from what do you derive your definition of good?

I am using the Christian / Catholic definition. Good or loving is “agape”, to act in the best interest of the loved one.