Problem of Evil [4]: The Greater Good(s)

[Neithan]

Uh? Who said good wasn’t used as a basis for morality? Very simply put, a moral act is an act that results in good and an immoral act is one that results in something bad. A vast oversimplification, but you can’t exclude what one considers to be good from any concept of morality.

The good does not exist as an ultimate reference. In your worldview, it’s an arbitrary opinion.

Whereas I have specific reasons as my prime reason.

If we both shared your worldview, we would each have our specific reasons as our “prime reason” and we ourselves would be the reference for good. This is the “law of penchants” (Rémi Brague for reference). You do what you want to do and can rationalize it however you want to. It’s all you.

And as to the evils that befall us, they’re either natural or man made. You need to either include or exclude God from them.

If we include God, we have possible explanations for all of these: nature, morality, good and evil, even if none of them feel right for some subjective reason. If we exclude God, we have no explanation for any of these and therefore no grounds for their relation to one another as real concepts; so claiming that excluding God is a better response to evil is incoherent.

And I’m not counting but I think we’ve had at least five different answers to it so far.

There are of course many responses because of interpretation and speculation. The logical problem is not strong because of the semantic issues - what is good and what is evil? - and hidden assumptions, as we saw in the first thread. The rest of these defenses are rhetorical, but persuasive challenges to any theist who believes that God cares about our pain and suffering.

Atheism doesn’t answer this, it evades it: excludes God and claims indifference, but then adds a fundamental problem of existence. A simplistic theistic answer is “God is indifferent” without adding another problem.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Uh? Who said good wasn’t used as a basis for morality? Very simply put, a moral act is an act that results in good and an immoral act is one that results in something bad. A vast oversimplification, but you can’t exclude what one considers to be good from any concept of morality.

The good does not exist as an ultimate reference. In your worldview, it’s an arbitrary opinion.

So you never have a personal opinion as to whether something is good or bad. Fair enough.

 

[Neithan]

Sure, but then my personal opinions are just what I want to do or be. Whether they are good or bad depends on some gradient with an ultimate reference: a supreme good i.e. God.

Without that, there is no good or bad other than “I want” and “I do not want.” Nevermind the issues with what “want” really means when there is no good. It’s just some kind of attraction towards or repulsion away from something, a mere movement.

 

[Freddy]

Sure, but then my personal opinions are just what I want to do or be. Whether they are good or bad depends on some gradient with an ultimate reference: a supreme good i.e. God.

Without that, there is no good or bad other than “I want” and “I do not want.” Nevermind the issues with what “want” really means when there is no good. It’s just some kind of attraction towards or repulsion away from something, a mere movement.

I mean do you make decisions on what is good or bad? Not just on personal preferences. And not necessarily about matters that concern you directly. Do you make them or are they made for you?

 

[Neithan]

I mean do you make decisions on what is good or bad? Not just on personal preferences. And not necessarily about matters that concern you directly. Do you make them or are they made for you?

Of course I make them. Unless forced, what do you mean “are they made for you?” The point is not whether we make decisions about what is good, but whether there is any ethical ground for claiming that our decisions are good. If there is no ultimate reference there is no coherent good.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I mean do you make decisions on what is good or bad? Not just on personal preferences. And not necessarily about matters that concern you directly. Do you make them or are they made for you?

Of course I make them. Unless forced, what do you mean “are they made for you?” The point is not whether we make decisions about what is good, but whether there is any ethical ground for claiming that our decisions are good. If there is no ultimate reference there is no coherent good.

Whether there is an ultimate reference or not, it’s you making the decision as to what is good or not. It’s your personal decision. And as of course you know, your decisions may well differ from other Catholics on the same questions of morality. How do I then decide who is right? Well, naturally I make my own decision on that. Based, as you say, on the ethical grounds for making the decision.

If I agree with your reasons then I’ll agree with your decision. This all sounds eminently reasonable to me.

 

[Roguish]

@Neithan What do you think Evil is? If you’ve explained this elsewhere, just link me to the post or thread – but please no 3rd-party text or webpage cause I’m interested to hear what you think Evil is.

 

[Neithan]

If I agree with your reasons then I’ll agree with your decision. This all sounds eminently reasonable to me.

That still leaves ethics as an arbitrary opinion unless we have a common good.

 

[Neithan]

I take a Neoplatonic view of evil. It’s not something that has independent existence, but is a lack of good, which is fulfillment of being or actualization. Choosing something that is less good therefore, is a moral evil, some of which is trivial, some serious. This does raise the question of what exactly “natural evil” is, since there is no moral choice involved. There is no “natural evil” as an existent but events with natural causes can have a relatively evil effect on us individually, such as causing bodily harm (a loss of a good).

What do you think Evil is?

 

[Neithan]

As a Catholic and Christian, I have faith in the answer given to us on the Cross. I don’t claim to know the answers; how could I? Do you know? Of course evil is and remains a mystery and I want to ask people what you think. Do you think there is any value in exploring the philosophical problem of evil?

 

[goout]

As a Catholic and Christian, I have faith in the answer given to us on the Cross. I don’t claim to know the answers; how could I? Do you know? Of course evil is and remains a mystery and I want to ask people what you think. Do you think there is any value in exploring the philosophical problem of evil?

I think I confused you with another poster my apologies.

 

[Neithan]

No problem. But still: do you think philosophy has a role to play for our understanding of evil or is it stumbling around in the darkness, so to speak?

 

[goout]

Absolutely it does.

We are not completely free: we cannot fly or travel faster than the speed of light. So why should we have the ability to harm other people? If the required choice is between worshipping God or rejecting him, we do not need that ability. An all-powerful and all-knowing God could have allowed us to harm only ourselves and did not need to allow us to harm others and cause the suffering of innocents.

IMO the first rebuttal to this is that it denies reality.
We do suffer. We do harm others. And at the same time we cannot fly. So? That’s reality.

To charge God with misuse of power is silly. In the first place Christians do not see God’s omnipotence as an absolute outside of love. Love conditions any attribute of God.

So the fact that God is capable of something doesn’t mean God must do it.
Violation of free will is the prime example.

The ideological colonization of third world countries with birth control demonstrates this flawed view of love.
The assertion is that human suffering can be diminished by having less humanity. Because we can do something draconian to prevent suffering, we should do it by eliminating it’s radical possibility.

 

[John_Martin]

The world goes on with no solution to evil, defect, pain, death, and no answer.
You (most of you) all know as Catholics that you were chosen out of this mess and became aliens where you live, citizens of a kingdom not of this world, so that you would be evidence of a new reality that does not exist here, you would be light for something that cannot be found here.
You will not find any answer to evil, pain, suffering. You will however see Catholics who are here like the needed 10 righteous for Sodom and Gomorrah - Catholics are in your midst so that God will not destroy but are the redemption of the creation - “The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God.” When you see us in your midst, Catholics, you are seeing the answer to death, despair, good and evil. You do not need a detailed “proof” in philosophy, but only to see the Church.

 

[Neithan]

The assertion is that human suffering can be diminished by having less humanity. Because we can do something draconian to prevent suffering, we should do it by eliminating it’s radical possibility.

It’s a good point: eliminating suffering and limiting human power is a reduction of human nature. That would be some different kind of creature.

The objection seems to be that any suffering caused by another is unacceptable if God loves us like children. We don’t allow our children to suffer if we can prevent it, for example. It’s not draconian to protect them, but overprotecting them can have harmful effects. Yet we see some examples of heinous evil that looks completely superfluous. Crimes committed against children for example. [Then some atheists extend that to animals and how suffering seems to be a design feature of nature; but that’s not a free will issue.]

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

If I agree with your reasons then I’ll agree with your decision. This all sounds eminently reasonable to me.

That still leaves ethics as an arbitrary opinion unless we have a common good.

It becomes a common good if we both agree. And again, it’s you that’s making the decision if something is good or not.

 

[Roguish]

I take a Neoplatonic view of evil. It’s not something that has independent existence, but is a lack of good, which is fulfillment of being or actualization. Choosing something that is less good therefore, is a moral evil, some of which is trivial, some serious. This does raise the question of what exactly “natural evil” is, since there is no moral choice involved. There is no “natural evil” as an existent but events with natural causes can have a relatively evil effect on us individually, such as causing bodily harm (a loss of a good). What do you think Evil is?

Evil is an other-worldly agent, with a very specific agenda. With all due respect for your philosophical inquiries, your definition of evil as an “absence of good” suggests to me that you’ve never been face-to-face with evil. It’s something far, far worse than how you conceive of it.

And that rather matters for the “problem of evil” that seems to occcupy you. If the PoE is “why does evil exist”, then there is a clear answer. But the nature of evil in its full, stomach-turning horror must be seen first before the answer (which is conceptually rather simple) can make sense.

 

[Neithan]

No, it’s still just an agreement and an arbitrary [shared] opinion. What’s the good?

Let me try to speed this along:

1. The good - what is it?
2. Our decisions about 1.

You’re saying that the above two things are the same thing. But that’s self-referential. And I’m saying that makes 1. incoherent because there are (potentially) several billions of 2.

 

[Neithan]

If evil is an independent power of being, then how does it exist in the first place? There is an ontological problem, because there cannot be multiple infinite existents.

 

[Freddy]

No, it’s still just an agreement and an arbitrary [shared] opinion. What’s the good?

Let me try to speed this along:

1. The good - what is it?
2. Our decisions about 1.

You’re saying that the above two things are the same thing. But that’s self-referential. And I’m saying that makes 1. incoherent because there are (potentially) several billions of 2.

I’d say that we’d agree on most things that we consider to be good. And there would obviously be things about which we’d disagree. But this is the most important point…we’d agree with the reasons why we class something as good.

If you simply said that X was good because the church says so or God says so and we disagreed then I’d need reasons as well as divine imprimatur. Just as if I were a Hindu and said that Shiva said X was wrong but Y was good. You’d need something more that ‘my religion says so’. It would be an impasse that could only be resolved by discussing the matter and agreeing on the 'reasons why it was good or not.

And I sincerely hope that you’d have reasons. I just might not happen to agree with them.