Problem of Evil (again): Logic [intro]

[Freddy]

It is hidden, since God’s ability to eliminate unnecessary suffering is not the same (semantically equivalent) as actually eliminating it. Neither is a desire to eliminate it the same with actually eliminatIng it.

I’m sorry, but I can make no sense of that.

You have three options.

God set things in motion and everything turned out the way it did naturally. That is, the suffering experienced by creatures in the world are a natural byproduct of the evolutionary process and God had no direct (name removed by moderator)ut. In which case we can argue that there are very many things He had no (name removed by moderator)ut on so I would assume you’d discount that.

Or God actually designed the system to operate as it does. So that the pain and suffering of all creatures are actually part of the design. It was meant to be. Which counteracts the idea of God being all loving. Deal with that as you must.

Or that God doesn’t exist, which was the conclusion in the op. Point number 8 I think.

 

[Neithan]

I guess we’ll call this, “Freddy’s trilemma”.

 

[FiveLinden]

you’re appealing to either an emotional feeling that it just doesn’t feel right, Charles Darwin, or that you just don’t understand it, so it can’t be true.

This sort of rhetoric is not helpful in a rational discussion.

 

[FiveLinden]

I guess we’ll call this, “Freddy’s trilemma”.

Or this…

 

[Neithan]

Sure it is. It’s clarifying the logical issues.

And @Freddy can handle a joke. But I don’t see why those are the only three options, or how that is deductively valid.

 

[Freddy]

Sure it is. It’s clarifying the logical issues.

And @Freddy can handle a joke. But I don’t see why those are the only three options, or how that is deductively valid.

I’m open to other options. Which must obviously include either God being responsible or Him not being responsible. You have the floor…

 

[Magnanimity]

Given the enormity of the pain and suffering we are talking about

Red in tooth and claw.

You solutions include the fact that animals being eaten alive don’t really suffer

My, my, given these claims above, one who wasn’t familiar with the natural world might be led to think that everyday life in nature was full of holocausts–excruciating pain and suffering abounding everywhere one might look!! To be sure, it makes for entertaining television (thank you National Geographic), as does the ridiculous drama of “real housewives” shows. But, are they accurate reflections of the everyday lives of animals? There is very little evidence to suggest that this is so. Rather, the everyday lives of animals are boring for us to watch and generally peaceful, interrupted by rare moments of predation. Or, do you disagree?

And I’ve nothing to refute. I’m an atheist. The question of evil is not a problem for me.

Come now, @Freddy. Let’s not pretend as if your atheist belief is a “get out of jail free” card. Of course, the problem of evil persists for you. How could it not? You, as everyone, are repulsed by examples of extreme/severe evils. What accounts for your existential reaction (repulsion) to intense evils? And please, no “survival” responses. Your reaction to the snake eating the rat has nothing obvious to do with your own survival, nor even of the survival of your species.

I knew exactly why there is pain and suffering in the world.

But, do you have an explanation for why you’re repulsed by it? Do you have any explanation at all for your sense of “this is not the way things ought to be?” If you were truly desensitized by all this violence you believe you perceive in nature, why would you suggest it’s a problem for theists? Why is the cheetah chasing down the antelope or gazelle a problem for theists, if it doesn’t in some way repulse you? If it doesn’t repulse you on some level, then presumably it’s not a problem for theists, right? Does predator hunting prey in some way strike you as “not the way things ought to be?”

That is, the suffering experienced by creatures in the world are a natural byproduct of the evolutionary process and God had no direct (name removed by moderator)ut.

Perhaps you should start imagining that you’re talking with pantheists here. Imagine that, the Catholic theist who accepts the metaphysics of Aquinas, understands that contingent being in no way explains or accounts for itself. So, statements like “God had no (name removed by moderator)ut” are nonsensical to such Catholics. As @Wesrock took pains to delineate above, God is the always-and-at-every-moment cause of all that is. You are arguing here against the deist, against the god-of-the-gaps deity of Modernity. But, it has no traction for Catholics. It’s a straw god. “Second cousin to Harvey the rabbit.”

 

[FiveLinden]

But, are they accurate reflections of the everyday lives of animals?

Yes. Virtually every wild creature dies in significant pain and/or terror from injury, attack, disease or starvation. Trillions of them. Every day. Do you have examples where this is not so?

 

[Magnanimity]

Yes. Virtually every wild creature dies in significant pain and/or terror from injury, attack, disease or starvation. Trillions of them.

These are your own claims…backed by who-knows-what? I invite you to support them. Typically, when folks are “on safari” or even just enjoying nature on their own lands, they do not observe incessant injury, attack, disease or starvation, do they?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Red in tooth and claw.

You solutions include the fact that animals being eaten alive don’t really suffer

My, my, given these claims above, one who wasn’t familiar with the natural world might be led to think that everyday life in nature was full of holocausts…"

No, Nat. Geo. or Attenborough shows you the family friendly version. The one where the antelope or elephant dies quickly (albeit in sheer pain and terror). Not where the lion starts eating the animal from the soft and easy to tear nether regions while it is still alive. Unless you eat carrion or are a herbivore, you need to kill something so that you can live.

And there is no question of evil for me. I know where evil and pain and suffering comes from. Unfortunately it’s the natural order of things. It hasn’t been ‘designed’ and no-one is allowing it to happen. And I’m rarely repulsed by it because I accept it as part of the natural world. There is no part of me that says: ‘this is not how it should be’. But you’d have to be pretty hard hearted not to feel some emotion in watching an animal being eaten alive. We don’t just empathise with members of our own species.

And the problem for theists is that they tend to accept that the world is exactly as God has planned it. For deists…not so much. But for Chrisitans it becomes a conundrum. Is God responsible? Is He not? Either way there’s a problem to be solved.

 

[FiveLinden]

Why is the cheetah chasing down the antelope or gazelle a problem for theists, if it doesn’t in some way repulse you? If it doesn’t repulse you on some level, then presumably it’s not a problem for theists, right? Does predator hunting prey in some way strike you as “not the way things ought to be?

Ummm - it’s a problem for the gazelle who suffers. The gazelle committed no sin and has no prospect of eternal life. How could an all-loving and all-powerful God create this situation?

These are your own claims…backed by who-knows-what? I invite you to support them. Typically, when folks are “on safari” or even just enjoying nature on their own lands, they do not observe incessant injury, attack, disease or starvation, do they?

I don’t know why you keep talking about megafauna. Just look at the lives of flies. Or fish.

 

[Neithan]

You have the floor…

I think this line of reasoning would fit under the “greater good” defenses, which I’ll post (from the same essay) after. So unnecessary suffering results in gratuitous good. The scholastic approach demonstrates how fulfilment of nature is good. Also, both of your first two options look deterministic so in what sense could “unnecessary” fit into them?

 

[o_mlly]

Virtually every wild creature dies …

Actually every wild or domestic creature dies.

… in significant pain and/or terror from injury, attack, disease or starvation.

Since every living creature does die, is your argument that any animal death (other than the painful systemic bodily failure caused by old age) evidences an unloving God? Do not vertebrates also feel pleasure? Are you arguing that it is better to not feel pain than to feel anything at all? Are invertebrate animals, therefore, evidence of a loving God? I think not.

Do animals have the capability to enter into moods of terror or ecstacy? It would seem that if an animal could feel terror then it could also feel ecstatic. We do not know. I don’t think so.

Are your animal sympathies limited to only herbivores? You’d be OK if all carnivores went extinct through painful starvation?

There is evidence that plants react to injury. The reaction is akin to the pain sentient animals feel that protects the injured part from further damage.

Your argument when extended to its logical implications would end all animal life on the planet.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

You have the floor…

The scholastic approach demonstrates how fulfilment of nature is good.

So it had to be designed so that animals were to be eaten alive. And that the process must therefore be described as good.

All you are saying is that whatever God decides to do must be good. And if I ask why an unfathonable number of creatures over millions of years dying by being torn apart by other animals is good, then I have an awful feeling you are going to give me a variation of ‘I don’t know’. Which is, quite honestly, where all these discussions end up.

 

[FiveLinden]

systemic bodily failure caused by old age) evidences an unloving God? Do not vertebrates also feel pleasure? Are you arguing that it is better to not feel pain than to feel anything at all? Are invertebrate animals, therefore, evidence of a loving God? I think not.

Do animals have the capability to enter into moods of terror or ecstacy? It would seem that if an animal could feel terror then it could also feel ecstatic. We do not know. I don’t think so.

Are your animal sympathies limited to only herbivores? You’d be OK if all carnivores went extinct through painful starvation?

There is evidence that plants react to injury. The reaction is akin to the pain sentient animals feel that protects the injured part from further damage.

Your argument when extended to its logical implications would end all animal life on the planet

No, I am not saying any of those things. I am simply asking how it is that an all-loving and all-powerful God could create trillions of creatures knowing they would, as you point out, die and experience pain and suffering.

Your novel suggestion that it could be a loving act if the pain was offset by pleasure doesn’t fit with any understanding of ‘loving’ I know.

And just to be clear: I am not making an argument. I am asking Catholics, who do make the argument that there is an all-loving and all-powerful God, how the pain experienced in the non-human world may be explained.

 

[FiveLinden]

All you are saying is that whatever God decides to do must be good. And if I ask why an unfathonable number of creatures over millions of years dying by being torn apart by other animals is good, then I have an awful feeling you are going to give me a variation of ‘I don’t know’. Which is, quite honestly, where all these discussions end up.

Yes this was where my discussion with @Wesrock ended earlier, although he did not think I had understood him correctly. I am hoping that discussion will continue.

 

[Wesrock]

This is the first time I’ve come into the topic since my last post. Sorry to ignore you all. Sometimes I just need to take time away from a discussion and focus on other real-life things, and the only way I manage to do that without having it stew in my mind is to just step away. I will catch up…

 

[o_mlly]

I am simply asking how it is that an all-loving and all-powerful God could create trillions of creatures knowing they would, as you point out, die and experience pain and suffering.

The play is not over yet. Stay tuned.

Before sin entered the world, God commanded the first humans (Genesis 2:15) to tend the garden and eat from the fruit of the trees, save one.

At the restoration of God’s plan, (Isaiah 11:6-8) the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion shall browse together, the cow and the bear shall graze, and the lion shall eat hay like the ox.

 

[Neithan]

All you are saying is that whatever God decides to do must be good.

Basically, yes. That’s the premise, and then we can challenge the logic (like Euthyphro did in Plato’s dialogue). That should not confuse “good” with “perfect.” Only God is perfect. What God creates, is not perfect, of necessity, because it is not God. Nature is good, but not perfect.

And if I ask why an unfathonable number of creatures over millions of years dying by being torn apart by other animals is good, then I have an awful feeling you are going to give me a variation of ‘I don’t know’.

Of course I don’t know, that’s the only honest answer. How could I possibly know that, without divine revelation? We’re exploring if there is a logical possibility. The atheist contends that the PoE makes a perfectly loving God impossible; a claim that requires a precise definition of “love” without resorting to the divine fallacy (appeal to common sense or incredulity).

 

[o_mlly]

The atheist contends that the PoE makes a perfectly loving God impossible …

The atheist’s argument depends upon the truth of their worldview. The radically different Catholic worldview cannot converse with the atheist worldview.

The atheist’s argument would have standing if they could show incoherence in Catholicism’s belief system and the Catholic worldview. They cannot. So, they argue that Catholic beliefs are incoherent with the atheist’s world view. I agree.