Problem of Evil (again): Logic [intro]

[Magnanimity]

Individual animals suffer. They have no eternal life. Therefore the new heaven and the new earth is completely irrelevant to them. They won’t be there. This is as I understand it the Catholic view.

Hmm, I suppose you’re understanding the church’s teaching of the restoration of the entire cosmos to be just a lot of new creatures? Perhaps it would be a better belief to think that all these creatures who have suffered terribly, as you’ve noted, will be brought back to this future cosmos. After all, just creating a bunch of new, unrelated creatures would not redeem the suffering of those who have died through suffering.

when will come the time of the renewal of all things. At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ [CCC 1042]

 

[MPat]

There’s still the hidden premise that @MPat pointed out, that God would have eliminated unnecessary suffering.

It’s not hidden. It’s your premise no. 4. So your conclusion would therefore be correct.

Is it? Let’s look at that “premise no. 4”:

Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.

Nope. Mere “would be able to” (or “is able to”) is not yet “actually would” (or “actually is”, or “actually would have”).

You need another premise to get to that point.

To illustrate, let’s take a fictional example. For starters, a clip from “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, episode “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”:

In the first of them we see one character (Fluttershy) being bullied, then being defended by another character etc. Presumably, you’ll agree that bullying counts as evil. So, let’s see the “Problem of Evil” on a lesser scale. Is it true that the creators of the show “would be aware of the existence of evil”? Well, yes. Is it true that the creators of the show “would be able to eliminate evil”? Well, yes. They could change the story. Is it true that they “would desire to eliminate evil”? Well, yes, in about the same sense. That is, as far, as we know, they do not want evil to happen to their characters.

So, given all that, how comes that evil actually happened? Maybe the show had no creators and just fell from the sky?

If it is not reasonable to become an “awriterist”, there has to be some part where the argument broke down. And it is easy to see: the writers did not desire evil as such, but they desired a story which was impossible without that evil.

It is similar with God.

The difference is that we do not see the whole story. And thus it is harder to see the explanation.

Yet we see it can exist, that its existence is not logically self-contradicting, and we trust it exists.

And, since solution has not been shown to be logically self-contradicting, the argument fails.

In fact, you also know it fails (although it might be that you do not know that you know).

For you are not using spelling mistakes in forum posts as examples of evil that are supposed to disprove God, although if the argument would work, they would be as sufficient, as any other evil.

No, you are using suffering of animals.

And you know that you haven’t shown that the proposed solutions are not logically self-contradicting. You only instinctively feel they are nonsensical, without being able to explain, why (“Philosophy” subforum might be able to help you with that, but you do not seem to be interested).

That’s the difference. We trust God (and logic). You trust your ability to instinctively recognise nonsense.

And I’m pretty sure that ability of yours is pretty untrustworthy, and you might even admit that under right conditions…

 

[Freddy]

Can you articulate the “problem” a little more? Or point me to a reply you’ve given within this thread where you’ve done so. I’m suggesting to you that it’s a problem for everyone. Our universal existential reactions to the world quite obviously being less-than-ideal is a problem. What accounts for it? Why would we all react this way?

Evil in the sense it’s being used here is not a problem for me because it’s a religious term. As opposed to one that you might find in a newspaper banner headline to express the extreme immorality of an act. If you find me using it, that’s the sense in which I’ll be using it. Certainly not to describe any event that is non human such as a lion killing or a tsunami.

And if I were a theist, I wouldn’t have a problem with a tsunami or an earthquake. I wouldn’t expect God to be some superhero saving me from falling off a cliff or getting hit by a rock fall. Bad things will happen to good people. And I would struggle with, but might be able to come to terms with, diseases that kill young children. I might just be able to include that in the bad luck column.

How do I cope with Man’s inhumanity to Man? As a theist I would say that it’s obviously wrong but we have been given the ability to rise above it. We have the solution within ourselves. If we fail, then on our heads be it. And as an atheist, I take exactly the same position. Except I know whence these problems arise - and let’s just say it wasn’t because of someone eating some fruit.

As to the rest of the life on the planet, they have no internal mechanism for righting wrongs. Which they don’t need in any case because what they do cannot be described as right or wrong in the sense that we are using it. So this nonsense about a lion being a ‘good’ lion if it fulfills it’s potential by killing (and presumably an antellope being a good antelope if it gets killed) is sheer nonsense. You cannot use ‘good’ when we are referring to us and then use the same word when describing nature by altering the definition. The very fact that we need to put ‘good’ in quotes indicates that we should be using a different term altogether.

But a lion tearing an antelope apart isn’t comparable to a rock fall or a tsunami or a deadly disease. We can file those under the bad luck column. But the tearing of living flesh, if you are a theist, has been designed thus. It was intended to be thus. It’s God’s will that the antelope is torn apart. As an atheist, I think it’s been ‘designed’ as well. But I can put ‘designed’ in quotes because there has been no intent. There has been no designer. It’s part of a natural process. No more and no less than a tsunami or an earthquake. What happens to the antelope is filed under the bad luck column. The tsunami doesn’t intend to do harm and neither does the lion.

(cont’d…)

 

[Freddy]

(cont’d…)

I’m not familiar with Tillich (something which I’ll have to correct), but he’s right up to a point. You have to know there’s a problem before you can solve it. And if you better understand the problem - where it originates, how and why it manifests itself, then you’re in a better position to solve it. But if you look in one direction, there is no problem. If God has designed it thus then it’s good! By definition! And if you point out it’s obviously bad to be eaten alive, then we’re brushed off with the claim that it’s ‘for the greater good’. And any idea what that ‘greater good’ might be? Well, no.

So yet one more time. The problem is no problem at all because it’s all for the good (because God has designed it and therefore it must be good). And what is this ultimate good? We don’t know, because who can know the mind of God.

And this passes for an argument. Colour me unimpressed.

In passing, I found this quote by Tillich. I’ll have to read more about him. Seems to be my sort of theis (my highlights):

"…(the God of theological theism) deprives me of my subjectivity because he is all-powerful and all-knowing. I revolt and make him into an object, but the revolt fails and becomes desperate. God appears as the invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. He is equated with the recent tyrants who with the help of terror try to transform everything into a mere object, a thing among things, a cog in a machine they control.

He becomes the model of everything against which Existentialism revolted. This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications".

 

[Freddy]

To illustrate, let’s take a fictional example. For starters, a clip from “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, episode “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”:…

Am I meant to take this seriously?

 

[AlNg]

After all, a nuclear strike would stop and prevent many evils: bullying, looting, police brutality etc.

A nuclear strike is quite evil in itself since you are killing a lot of innocent people and making many more sick for life. I am somewhat surprised that a Christian believer would advocate a nuclear strike to correct an evil.

 

[OneSheep]

What is it to be a human? It would take too long to lay it all out, but let’s state the obvious ones, like the Aristotelian insight that every human art, inquiry, act and pursuit is aimed at some good. Add to that the intrinsic (inalienable) dignity that humans bear ( imago dei ). God made us for himself (Augustine) and the beatific vision is the natural final end of man (Aquinas).

Yes, and even what animals do is aimed at some good. I don’t know how that’s being missed on this thread.
BTW: Imago dei is wnat we are finding in the Augustine thread, we are finding Augustine’s own roadblocks to seeing the image in himself; he was committed to the concept, but had his hang-ups.

So to say that it’s good that a wasp lays it’s eggs inside another living creature or a lion will tear apart an antelope is to say nothing more than ‘if this is the way that God designed it, it must therefore be good’. So why this flitting about the periphery when that’s all that needs to be said ?

Which leads on to the second point. Which is ‘How can something so terrible be described as good?’.

Because the alternative is worse, if you look at the microcosm. Predation is a net-positive when you look at things from an ecological standpoint. Take one part out of an ecosystem, and you have things out of balance and headed for a worse state, from an evolutionary standpoint.

Why did God, nature, evolution, what have you, create capacity for pain? Because it aids in survival. Why did G,n,e, etc. not train lions to kill mercifully? Well, such mercy comes from empathy, and if lions were empathetic towards prey they would starve. Am I missing something? How can I second-guess the functional beauty of it all?

Well, apart from the semantic nonsense that claims that something is good because it fulfills it’s function

hmmm. Is ecology “semantic nonsense”? Look, even disease is violent, but there are net positives. Much of our genetic makeup is brought to us by viruses. Try to think in terms of net-positive.

Creation is violent.

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?

Because if there are too many gazelles, then the whole of the herd suffers together from starvation, as well as many other species that depend on the same resources.
The capacity for pain I explained above.
The lack of empathy in the lion, see above.

You cannot use ‘good’ when we are referring to us and then use the same word when describing nature by altering the definition. The very fact that we need to put ‘good’ in quotes indicates that we should be using a different term altogether.

Okay, no quotes: All people are good. All creatures are good. All are beautiful.
It takes a bit of explaining.

 

[OneSheep]

It’s God’s will that the antelope is torn apart.

Well… It’s the lion’s will, but God did create the creature with the capacity. If the lion did not have the capacity, then we’d have too many antelopes around. Do you see what I mean? We have to find the net-positives. They’re always there.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

It’s God’s will that the antelope is torn apart.

Well… It’s the lion’s will, but God did create the creature with the capacity. If the lion did not have the capacity, then we’d have too many antelopes around. Do you see what I mean? We have to find the net-positives. They’re always there.

A net positive is a good thing? C’mon, you really don’t want to head down the utilarianism path, do you?

Notwithstanding that the negatives have been consciously designed into the system. And they are not necessary from an omniscient point of view. The only way the system can possibly be justified is if it was the result of a natural process. But that’s not an option.

It’s farcical to suggest that lions must tear antelopes apart otherwise there’d be too many antelopes, unless you purposely designed a system whereby that would be the result of the system. Why not decrease the lifespan of antelopes and make lions carrion eaters? Why not limit the reproductive cycle of antelopes when there is limited food? Why not increase the gestation period? Why not…well, gee - how many suggestions would an omniscient being need? I’m sure He’d know the best way to design a system when animals aren’t torn apart alive without any help from me.

That He hasn’t is the problem needs addressing.

 

[OneSheep]

A net positive is a good thing? C’mon, you really don’t want to head down the utilarianism path, do you?

If you would like to label it “utilitarian”, whatever that term means in your mind, then perhaps I do. There are many net positives in nature. The result is growth and development.

Notwithstanding that the negatives have been consciously designed into the system. And they are not necessary from an omniscient point of view.

Okay, you find an negative, and I will show you how it is part of a net positive.

It’s farcical to suggest that lions must tear antelopes apart otherwise there’d be too many antelopes, unless you purposely designed a system whereby that would be the result of the system. Why not decrease the lifespan of antelopes and make lions carrion eaters?

You seem to be second-guessing millions of years of evolutionary process and development.

I’m sure He’d know the best way to design a system when animals aren’t torn apart alive without any help from me.

Or design a system without natural disasters.

One of the tenets of faith is humility. We observers of nature are humbled every day by the incredible intricacy of how everything works. It’s all beautiful. Yes, sometimes it is terrible and cruel, and it conflicts with the idea, in the short sight, of a benevolent God.

Christians and those of other faiths don’t necessarily find the benevolence of God in nature. They find the benevolence through interior relationship and relationship with fellow humans. Then, once the interior is discovered, it becomes a foundation for understanding everything else. When something seems to conflict, I leave it as an unknown, but the foundation remains. It is through the foundation that I can see the beauty without condemning the process or the results.

 

[Freddy]

Yes, sometimes it is terrible and cruel, and it conflicts with the idea, in the short sight, of a benevolent God.

Glad we agree on that. Now maybe you can give us the long term benefits of being torn apart for food.

 

[goout]

OneSheep:

Yes, sometimes it is terrible and cruel, and it conflicts with the idea, in the short sight, of a benevolent God.

Glad we agree on that. Now maybe you can give us the long term benefits of being torn apart for food.

Why would being torn apart for food cause long term benefits?
Evil does not cause good.

 

[goout]

Trying to hold God accountable for evil while not holding God accountable for good is selective whining.

 

[OneSheep]

Glad we agree on that. Now maybe you can give us the long term benefits of being torn apart for food.

I pretty much already explained that on my first post. Lions do not have empathy for their food source, or they would starve. You are coming from a position of empathy, and then moving from there to a “should”, an ethical position. I agree with your ethical position, that it is not good to tear up a live animal, but the lion doesn’t seem to agree.

I think that it is always more fruitful to start with what “is” rather than what “ought”. The natural world is beautiful, awesome, and sometimes violent. It sounds like you don’t like the violence, and that is certainly a respectable position. I won’t be fretting much about what lions do, but I will continue to deal with the sources of violence among people. My faith plays an important role in that, and is a source of hope.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

OneSheep:

Yes, sometimes it is terrible and cruel, and it conflicts with the idea, in the short sight, of a benevolent God.

Glad we agree on that. Now maybe you can give us the long term benefits of being torn apart for food.

Why would being torn apart for food cause long term benefits?
Evil does not cause good.

As to the question, that’s something you’ll need to take up with Onesheep. He says there are net positives.

As to the statement, lions killing antelopes isn’t evil. There needs to be ‘evil intent’. That is, the lion must want the antelope to suffer. It obviously could care less.

 

[MPat]

Am I meant to take this seriously?

I’d say you should take yourself a bit less seriously.

Yes, I am using a cartoon marketed to little girls to illustrate a point. And…? Can you explain what exactly is supposed to be wrong with that?

To cite Plato’s “Gorgias” again: “Do you laugh, Polus? Well, this is a new kind of refutation-when any one says anything, instead of refuting him to laugh at him.”…

It is fine to laugh. And yes, I do like the idea that someone will laugh or smile reading my posts. But laughter is not a replacement for refutation, especially when you cannot even explain why you find something funny.

To cite Chesterton’s “Heretics” (Heretics -- On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity): “Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else. The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and restrained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and self-expression.”.

Also, you seem to be taking the argument cited in the original post rather seriously, when it is definitely far more ridiculous (and has been shown not to work in several ways). It is merely written in a style that does not strive to be funny.

I do think that some of the things you say (or agree with) are ridiculous nonsense, but I do try to give a response to them, showing what is wrong. And I think something like that is vital in order to benefit from the discussion to the full extent.

Not to mention that there were more points in that post. And you have ignored all of them.

A nuclear strike is quite evil in itself since you are killing a lot of innocent people and making many more sick for life. I am somewhat surprised that a Christian believer would advocate a nuclear strike to correct an evil.

Maybe you should read that post again.

You pretty much got everything backwards. In my argument I rely on assumption that everyone will agree such a nuclear strike would be a hopelessly bad idea. My argument is this:

1. It is a bad idea to destroy a city with nuclear weapons to prevent looting, police brutality and the like. (premise, supported by having everyone reject that “proposal”)
2. If there was an unlimited duty to prevent evil at any cost, then it would be a good idea to destroy a city with nuclear weapons to prevent looting, police brutality and the like. (premise)
3. There is no unlimited duty to prevent evil at any cost. (from 1, 2, “reductio ad absurdum”)

 

[Wesrock]

I am not saying that the wasp, or its actions, are ‘evil’ or that what happens to the caterpillar is ‘good’ or ‘not good’ measured against anything to do with God. I do not believe in God. I am saying that the caterpillar experiences pain and prolonged suffering.

Are you saying that the pain and suffering of the parasitised caterpillar is ‘good’ and could therefore be willed by an all-loving God?

I understand that philosophically you think it is ‘in its nature’ for the caterpillar to be parasitised and in the nature of the parasite to do so. I of course do not believe in ‘natural law’.

But if this is ‘natural law’ and ‘in the nature of these things’ how could it be willed, and still less created, by an all-loving God.

Snipped for space.

I am not saying that the evil that befalls the caterpillar is good, or it is good in itself that the caterpillar suffers. The wasp is good to the degree it actualizes it ends at various levels, insofar as it fulfills its various appetites (the tendencies of its nature). Let’s simplify the caterpillar example to simplify my point. Let’s say the caterpillar loses a leg. It has suffered a physical evil. Some aspect of its nature that should be actual in the thing if it’s healthy is now absent. Still, even with that privation the caterpillar is still actual, still accomplishing some of its tendencies natural to its type of being. In that respect, the way in which it is still actual and “obedient” to the nature of a caterpillar is still good. Now, not to make light of the parasite example, a caterpillar that’s been infested with a parasite has more defects than one that’s lost a single leg. But like with the previous example, insofar as the ways it still manifests its nature at all it is still good. The evils it suffer are a privation to the caterpillar that causes it to fail to instantiate as well as it has prior to the infestation, but it doesn’t fail to instantiate at all. It might not be as good as a healthy caterpillar, but it is still a good insofar as it manages to still has what “perfections” it does.

And it is not in the nature of a caterpillar to be parasited. I mean, such things happen out in the wild, but the parasites don’t fulfill or complete its nature, they deprive it of some of the “perfections” it should have.

Your last sentence I’m not sure what to do with, as I feel I’ve specifically spoken to that at least twice, and the question keeps getting asked without really addressing what I’ve said. I stripped the anthropomorphisms away and they keep getting added back in.

 

[Wesrock]

Goodness is obedience to nature? I think you’d be better off with ‘I don’t know’.

Come now, Freddy. First, for more detail, I did expand on the concept quite a bit more up in post# 72. But even still, this aptly summarizes pretty much any judgment we make on the concept of whether something is good. Some a bit more obvious than others, but whether we’re describing a moral act or making a judgment about a conventional or substantial thing, something is judged to be good the better it fits the definition (essential or nominal) of what it is.

Now it will be your contention that all creatures great and small are God’s work. As it says in the hymn, He made them all. But part of the design is that there is a food chain. And those further up feed on those further down. Lucky us, we’re generally at the top. And again I will emphasise that it is part of the design. It is God’s will that it is so.

So to say that it’s good that a wasp lays it’s eggs inside another living creature or a lion will tear apart an antelope is to say nothing more than ‘if this is the way that God designed it, it must therefore be good’. So why this flitting about the periphery when that’s all that needs to be said?

The way you speak of “design” is not how Aristotlean Thomists understand natures. Natures are not arbitrary or made up by God. Things are not good because God commands them to be good. This is not a horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma. Insofar as things are actual in any manner, they are good. Goodness is a universal property of being.

I noted much earlier that this theory of goodness also directly follows upon Thomist philosophy of being. I didn’t expand on that intentionally because I had already drafted up six posts of content. The system isn’t built upon a nominalist and reductive materialist worldview. Thomists approach reality as real essentialists. Insofar as the properties that naturally follow the essence aren’t actualized, there is a privation, an unactualized potency. Interfering causes can interfere with the manifestation of expected properties. I feel that the general gist of the theory of goodness I outlined is intelligible without delving into all of those specifics, but certainly understanding them would help. You are projecting things I’ve haven’t written and things I would deny onto my posts, though.

because we are mere mortals and cannot fathom the mind of God, even though it appears to any sane person to be a catastrophically bad idea, we don’t know.

You’re getting quite emotional, Freddy. Not once have I appealed to mystery or unknowability, and I feel this is perfectly graspable by the human mind. But good for is not the same thing as attributable goodness, and quite frankly I suspect you hold that there is no such thing as attributable goodness and that all goodness is what is good for things. And furthermore that it’s not just a matter of denying attributable goodness, but that you’re reading all of my posts through the interpretative lens that goodness is only what is “good for” things.

 

[AlNg]

Maybe you should read that post again.

Here is what i read:

After all, a nuclear strike would stop and prevent many evils: bullying, looting, police brutality etc.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Goodness is obedience to nature? I think you’d be better off with ‘I don’t know’.

Come now, Freddy…

I think we have a problem with definitions. The way that you are using the word ‘good’ is not an antonym of the word ‘bad’ as is being used in this thread. You are using it to describe something that is fit for purpose. That fullfills that which is required of it. In that sense, a lion that is useless in catching antelopes is a ‘bad’ lion. And one that is adept is a ‘good’ lion. FIne. All good. No-one would disagree.

Now we move on to the suffering caused when the lion tears apart the antelope. That is bad in the normal sense of the word. Something that is unpleasant. Something that anything would do to avoid. Something that’s really going to ruin your day. And again, no-one would disagree with that.

Now please contradict this directly if you think I am wrong. But the world could have been any way that God decided. And this is true whether you are a fundamentalist who thinks that God created everything directly or whether you understand evolution and accept that He uses natural processes to obtain that which He wants. Either way, the emergence of lions and antelopes didn’t come as a surprise to God.

If we accept that, then we are left with the question: Why is it designed thus?

Now you can replace the word ‘design’ by any word you think is suitable. I would use it in an evolutionary sense to describe canine teeth (‘designed’ for tearing flesh) when we’d both know that it’s not an accurate way to describe the process. So change it if you’d like. But as long as it doesn’t remove God’s intention from the concept. This is the way He wants things to be. The question is: Why?