John wrote:
the question, though, is not just if it’s logically possible for free choice to be instaniated without suffering, but rather if the totality
of god’s design is logically possible without suffering. and we have no idea what the rest off that design is, so we can’t say.
my point is simply that it is
not possible to jump to conclusions about suffering and omnipotence based on our own limited understanding of the data.
If you just said “possible” as opposed to “logically possible”, we would have no quarrel. But logical possibility is a human concept with a definite meaning (And I
think I understand the generally accepted meaning). If we can conceive of something, it is logically possible, if it entails a contradiction, it isn’t logically possible. We may not know the entire set of logically possibilities and impossibilities, but if we can conceive of something, we know that it is logically possible. I can conceive of agents being happy without suffering (and in heaven they are
perfectly happy), so it is logically possible. (Perhaps it is inconsistent with something else that God values, but to trade off happiness-with-out-suffering for any other good is to be less than benevolent.) If you mean something else by the phrase, please explain it to me. If it is significantly different than my definition, perhaps we are only disputing over words.
exactly what a four year old would say…
What do good parents tell their children when they are asked why they have to do things they don’t want to do (when the parents want the children to understand, I mean)? They tell them it is for their own good; either in the short-run or in the long run (because they need to learn discipline, for instance; it comes in handy in life). If a parent is omnipotent, they don’t need to suffer to avoid rotten teeth or to learn discipline. Such things could be bestowed painlessly.
my point is that you have no idea
what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, eternal, just god would do. in order to do that, you would need to know what it’s **like **to have those characteristics. you would, for example, need to know all true propositions and no false ones; you would need to know what you are and are not capable of doing; you would need to know what the right thing is to do for a being such as yourself. and so on.
and i’m afraid that neither you nor anyone else can even so much as
begin to imagine any of those things.
Benevolence is a very simple, human concept. Perhaps it is inappropriate, somehow, for a deity. But if a deity were perfectly benevolent, then
by definition he would not permit suffering if agents could be perfectly happy without it (as they are in heaven).
If we can’t understand what these terms mean with our feeble human brains, why evoke them at all to describe God? Frankly, I’m inclined to agree with you. I have no idea what “omnipotence” really means, especially if there are logical impossibilities that I can’t fathom. I wish theists would stop evoking all the ‘omnis’; they really don’t stand up under analysis anyway.
cont…
He was no atheist, you know. He was a cafeteria catholic who believed that providence had intended him for his mission, and had saved him from assassination. And it doesn’t look as if he died for the sake of anyone else; his cause was lost, and he didn’t want to endure the indignity of capture.