This ignores the “in media res” nature of the Creation described in Catholicism. Evil in the world today does no require neutrality or evil on the part of God, who exists outside of time, and sees the full “coming around” of Creation due to the Incarnation.
What is “in media res”? Time and completed ellipticals are not relevant here. The nature of creation and by reflection that of God itself is what I was debating . God created all that exists, therefore evil was created by God. Check with a philosophy teacher, if you except the first half of this argument, the second half MUST be true. to believe anything else would be a fallacy. Even if you contend that Satan made evil (which would be a duelistic religion like zoroasterianism) God still made satan, and therefore still made evil, and the being who was obviously evil. Everything means just that …EVERYTHING.
Thanks, I get a lot of comments about it for some reason…don’t you people know that I am a sign of the end of days!!BTW, I like your screen name. I would have used it myself not to many years ago
This is actually one of my problems with modern philosophy teaching in schools, namely that it fails in logic a large portion of the time. In this case the mistake is actually not one of logic per se, but one of misdefining “evil”. The error in logic that most modern philosophies make is assuming causality, namely that since I made this, I’m responsible for what this does.
sure. but if among the propositions that god knows are propositions about free choices, then god’s knowing those propositions is not incompatible with those choices being free.
fair enough. but just stipulating it as “doublespeak” is not enough to make the point.
well, the obvious answer is that any choice that is “foreordained” to be free, will be freely made.
well, if that’s right, then everything is necessary, and it would make no sense at all to speak of any possible-but-not-actual states of affairs.
no. not at all. if omniscience is something like “knowing every true proposition and no false ones”, then, as long as there are true propositions about free choices, an omniscient being will know them.
i think that most of our problems here stem from this point…
First of all, “Propositions* about* free choices”? What does this mean? I’m going to ask this later.
It does impugn on your freedom, oh absolutely. I am just as surprised as you since you think it doesn’t. Say God knows that you will make some kind of a “free choice” to eat Wheaties at time T. But, say, at time T you felt like eating Cornflakes? What could you do? Another example: The Lord tells Peter he will deny Him three times (but actually he denied him more than three) before time T. But say at time T Peter didn’t want to deny the Lord three times. Perhaps only twice is what he wanted. Perhaps he would like to freely choose to not deny him at all. What could he do?
No. It cannot be both. Just like for a prime number to be a composite number, it needs to be a composite number and thus not be a prime number; for a “foreordained” being to be a free being, it needs to be a free being and thus not be a “foreordained” one. What more do these sentences tell us in terms of truth-value except something which we already logically understood: the law of identity, and excluded middle.
You aren’t very explanatory. When you say, “Then everything is necessary,” this is too vague for me to agree with you. If an omniscient being exists, then by virtue of this, the future already exists. Moreover, there is one future, not numerous “possible” futures. Every choice is already made—non-omniscient beings like you or I just don’t know what they are.
I don’t think any respected theologian would take that view seriously. It’s escapist and evasive, despite the fact that this implies that God is illogical.
you and i are done debating, of course, but i would recommend that you read Kant (read him again, since you say you’ve already read him before), specifically what he wrote about intentions and consequences. just a recommendation.This is actually one of my problems with modern philosophy teaching in schools, namely that it fails in logic a large portion of the time. In this case the mistake is actually not one of logic per se, but one of misdefining “evil”. The error in logic that most modern philosophies make is assuming causality, namely that since I made this, I’m responsible for what this does.
So by your reasoning, Hitler was just “less good” than Christ? You seem to understand philosophy. The true fallacy is that you are using a one sided continuum. Evil is in fact a tangible alignment, despite the semantics of half empty/half full. If a being is all knowing and all powerful then his creations can not create anything outside of his power. Where would the notion of evil (or less good) come from? A random occurance in the human mind? You can’t choose THIS as the time to believe in spontaneous creation
I could say the same for your logic. Causality is not a necessity, unless that is the ultimate goal of proof. You do not have to know WHY the sun sets to know that does indeed set.
It’s not a fallacy if it’s true. The belief that evil is simply a defect of good goes back all the way in the Judeo-Christian theology, to the very roots of the faith. There has never been a time in this theological tradition in which evil has been understood to be a tangible thing in and of itself. There have been certain demarkations of “less good” that are more forcefully referred to as evil, Hitler’s actions are a good example as you’ve shown, but it does not change the fact that evil is simply the absence of good.
I’m not sure if I follow you, but the notion of evil comes from the examination of turning against God, who is viewed as the eternal good. If you look in the Tanach, espescially Genesis, you will see this demonstrated. I’m not trying to say that you should take Genesis at face value in this debate, but it is worthwhile because it shows how the early Jews viewed evil in relation to good. As can be seen in the depiction of the Fall of Man, evil is perceived not as a tangible “other”, but rather disobedience towards God. You’ll notice in Genesis that Creation is described as “very good”, and then Adam and Eve Fall based on rejecting God’s plan. There is no depiction of evil as an opposing force, though the serpent is definately portrayed as also going against God’s plan.If a being is all knowing and all powerful then his creations can not create anything outside of his power. Where would the notion of evil (or less good) come from? A random occurance in the human mind? You can’t choose THIS as the time to believe in spontaneous creation
Again, that’s a materialist question, not a transcendental one. Regardless, that the sun sets can be deduced from the factors that cause it to set (i.e. rotation of the Earth), without actually having to observe the fact that the sun sets. In a philosophical sense, a deduction is a much stronger proposition than an induction because it doesn’t assume the result in order to ask the question (i.e. “The sun sets, therefore there must be factors that cause it to set”). When you build up from smaller facts, you have a better chance of not making assumptions to fit your conclusion, and the theory is far less likely to be denied out of hand.
Well what about the fallen prince of darkness? And like I said we are debating semantics here. Evil being an absence of good, could be restated as good being an absence of evil and be no less true. It is the classic optimist/pessimist view debate. Murder of innocents is evil, rape is evil, mindless selfishness and lying also evil. Granted there are varying degrees of (not so good) but it is still the opposite of good. If there was no evil, there would be no good. It is like having right without left. If there was no left, you wouldn’t need a word for right because there isn’t anything other than right to compare it to.
Are you refering to metaphysics?
But that is the exact opposite of my meaning…You stressed the importance of causality in importance of an argument…and I was stating that I disagreed on these grounds.
Ahem…this is just a dodge the question of creator of evil. To make this no longer a semantic misunderstanding, call it what you will. There are still thoughs and deeds that are “evil” for lack of a better word…and to be good or to be less good are all concepts originating in God, as everything must originate in an all powerful all knowing creator of all. Even if it was not manifest until through his creations, he still created them and whatever capacity they may have.When you build up from smaller facts, you have a better chance of not making assumptions to fit your conclusion, and the theory is far less likely to be denied out of hand.
i know that’s what i did - it was, in fact, the point of my original post…
exactly. which is what you’re doing, too: there is no free will because god knows everything you’re going to do, and god doesn’t know anything about free will.
atheos_sum said:
i don’t think that makes any sense: if you stipulate that i freely choose to eat wheaties at time t, then ***that’s ***what i wanted to do.
if peter did, in fact, freely choose to deny jesus three times, then that’s what he wanted to do.
why can’t a choice be foreordained to be free? why can’t god create john doran at time t in a set of circumstances in which it is necessary for me to make a free choice? while i agree that a choice can’t be free if the choice itself is determined - i.e. if i am determined to choose to eat wheaties instead of cornflakes - but that’s not the same thing as being unable to avoid having to choose wheaties or cornflakes and it being totally up to me.
what i meant by saying “everything is necessary” was simply that if you do not take the existence of possible worlds, or possible states of affairs, as sufficient to constitute the alternatives in any given situation of choice, then those same possible worlds cannot be sufficient to account for ***any ***kind of possible-but-not-actual states of affairs. which would mean that everything that occurs in the actual world occurs necessarily.
i’m saying that to say god is omniscient is to say that he knows every true proposition and no false ones.
not at all - my case is simply that you have not made yours: i am not attempting to present a demonstration of the existence of free choices.
i don’t understand what you are saying here.
Are you saying that since definitions do not include possible corollaries, then corollaries ought to be ruled out of the question? Definitions do not list corollaries, for very parsimonious reasons, since they might be innumerous and it also depends on what the defined-thing was in combination with.
saying that if X doesn’t exist, then Y wouldn’t exist isn’t the same thing as saying that if X didn’t exist, then there wouldn’t be a word for Y.
He’s precisely that: fallen. The whole term “fallen angel” points to the belief that he was initially good, and “fell away”. He is not the creator of evil, nor was he created evil. He chose evil.
Not in a Judeo-Christian worldview, it couldn’t. God is taken as existing outside of time, and as the Creator of All, and as Good. Evil, by definition, is a turning away from God. It is a viable position, and it’s the only position within the Judeo-Christian tradition. I don’t deny the existance of dualistic belief systems, or even evil-oriented ones, I’m just saying that there is no need for a dualistic explaination within the perfectly valid Judeo-Christian model.
In the Judeo-Christian model, there is no need for evil in order for there to be good. Linguistically they serve as contrasts, and neither word would likely be used if the other didn’t exist, but that doesn’t in any way indicate that their absolute existance necessarily depends on the other. If there was only good there would be no need to say “good apples” because you could just as well say “apples”; that wouldn’t make them less good just because there’s no need for a word to indicate it.
By transcendental I simply mean non-physical questions not dealing with experiential data per se. Metaphysics fits into this, but my understanding of metaphysics is that it is much more limited in scope than the word transcendental, dealing with the origin of things.
I think we’re just talking past eachother, then. Going back to my original point, and your statement about the sun, I see that you were addressing simple material observation, when I was actually discussing the fact that science must assume causality to be useful. We’re talking about two different things, I think. When I responded, I was still going along the lines of scientific observation and formulation, and indicating that deduction is a more solid premise, which isn’t at all what you were apparently getting at.
Not really, it was more of a simple tangent for the purpose of expounding on a common error of modern philosophy. I even stated in my post to you that the real issue at hand was a misdefining of evil. We can drop the tangent if you like, as I’m not sure it’s pertainant to the question of evil, properly defined in a Judeo-Christian context.
Agreed.
Not quite. God is, by definition in Judeo-Christian belief, good. Not just “He’s a good guy”, but “goodness”. Good is good insofar as it is Godly. That which is Godly is good, that which is unGodly is evil. Being unGodly can’t originate in God, because God can’t be contrary to Himself. God can’t “will” evil because evil, by definition, is that which is opposed to God’s will. Now God created seperate beings, but gave them their own wills. In doing so, however, He didn’t “create” evil, because He did not create their wills contrary to His own. He allows them to be contrary to His own, however, which is befitting the freedom of will and what I call “perfection in kind”.
