The problem of evil

[tonyrey]

I don’t deny that evil exists but even if I denied it, it still would be a problem for those who don’t deny it.
The rest of your post is one huge misrepresentation of my position, so I’d rather not comment on it.

A facile evasion which cuts no ice whatsoever!

 

[tonyrey]

The “problem of evil” is an illusion. I believe - with St Augustine - that good and evil are simply the positive and negative aspects of existence. As St Thomas pointed out, nothing is intrinsically evil. In a physical universe there is bound to be interference and conflict which cause failure and frustration. Only God is perfect in every respect.

 

[belorg]

From my last post, it would seem clear why belorg must assume a more coherent definition of good (or evil) than his own in order to make a case.

The definition of good I would use to argue for the PoE is not more coherent, but it’s more in line with the theistic concept of good.

 

[belorg]

I am not clear that this can be demonstrated from any conception of evil, like yours, that is based upon subjective pain as the determiner of evil.

It seems to me that when you propose your concept of good as a premise to bolster a claim that a truly good being would not “tolerate” evil, you nullify your own argument.

Your definition is self-defeating regarding the problem of evil.

You defined “good” as what is pleasing but causes no inconvenience. Evil must then be what is displeasing or causes inconvenience.

This definition is problematic precisely because pleasing is subjective and varies widely among individuals.

A masochist is pleased paradoxically by their own displeasure. Some individuals are very tolerant of others and situations such that not much is displeasing to them, while others are very intolerant and are displeased by very slight perturbances around them.

How is your definition capable of adjudicating between different views of what is good and therefore moral? Moral becomes a meaningless concept because there is no possibility of using this definition to determine which of two parties has the morally correct position since they may be pleased or displeased by very different behaviours or outcomes.

This is problematic for your case against the PofE precisely because by grounding good as what is pleasing and does not inconvenience, the fact that pleasing and conveniencing are subjective, makes it entirely possible that a supreme being could be pleased by the general state of things and would be inconvenienced by having to “clean things up.” By your definition, the state of existence in the human world could very well be pleasing and convenient (and, therefore, good) for a supreme being who is, thereby, completely justified in tolerating things as they are because they are “good” as far as this being is concerned.

There would be no reason to make it incumbent upon this being to be responsible for any one else who might find the current situation displeasing or inconvenient since these are very relative views concerning the situation for which your very definition of “good” cannot resolve.

Since you provide no objective grounds for claiming otherwise, your own definition nullifies the problem of evil and absolves any deity of responsibility for what you or others might find displeasing and inconvenient since a moral agent could not be compelled to act contrary to its own state of pleasure or convenience.

If you wish to hold onto this conception of good and evil, you have nothing to complain to a supreme being about.

Since there is no supreme being, I won’t be complaining.

 

[belorg]

The “problem of evil” is an illusion. I believe - with St Augustine - that good and evil are simply the positive and negative aspects of existence. As St Thomas pointed out, nothing is intrinsically evil. In a physical universe there is bound to be interference and conflict which cause failure and frustration. Only God is perfect in every respect.

Since St Thomas also said that God IS existence , it follows from your reasoning that God has positive and negative aspects, so He is not prefect in every way.

 

[belorg]

I think belorg is being fairly consistent in acknowledging that the problem of evil requires him to assume the Catholic definition of evil for the sake of argument, which many atheists will not do.

However, here I don’t think he can use this claim in his argument from evil without qualification. It does not obviously follow from the the Thomistic conception of good, final causality, convertibility of the transcendentals, or doctrine of analogy. To reject those in an argument from evil would be begging the question (although he could try to do so in a separate, more philosophically basic argument, in which case it is not the existence of evil that is problematic but specific Catholic doctrines).

Of course I cannot use it without qualification. And I accept for the sake of the argument the Thomistic conception of good etc,

 

[Linusthe2nd]

There is no " problem of evil. " For Christians, the existence of evil is understood to be the price of free will and the possibility of salvation. They know that God will bring good out of evil - always. For non-believers, evil does not exist because there is no law giver to Whose laws all are obliged to conform. For these folks, the only rational response is Stocism. They may complain of course, but they have no one to complain to, nor can they logically complain that others are evil, or even that there is anything that can be regarded as evil. I guess they would just have to say that unpleasantness is a part of this life…

Linus2nd

 

[Brendan_64]

Without free-will there can be no salvation. Christ redeemed us, but without free-will we cannot choose to follow Christ to salvation. With this comes a choice, to do good or to do evil.

 

[polytropos]

Of course I cannot use it without qualification. And I accept for the sake of the argument the Thomistic conception of good etc,

My apologies. There seem to be two discussions here, one regarding the problem of evil and the other regarding how you define good/evil (which we agree has nothing to do with the problem of evil).

 

[Charlemagne_II]

belorg
**
Since St Thomas also said that God IS existence , it follows from your reasoning that God has positive and negative aspects, so He is not prefect in every way.**

You don’t understand. Clearly Aquinas did not say God is all existence. If he said that, he would have had to say we are also God.

What Aquinas clearly said is that God is the Esse from which all other existence that is not God flows. But evil is not an existence created by God. Evil is nothing more than the absence of good. God made all things good. It is we who created evil by disobeying his will.

 

[Peter_Plato]

My apologies. There seem to be two discussions here, one regarding the problem of evil and the other regarding how you define good/evil (which we agree has nothing to do with the problem of evil).

Your point here escapes me. How can the problem of evil have nothing to do with a properly conceived notion of good/evil from which any problem (if there is one) must derive?

There are actually three, possibly, diverse “problems” which could be formulated.

1. The problem of pain which includes all physical pain suffered by any biological creature capable of sensing pain.
2. The problem of suffering which would include negative emotional experiences, spiritual anguish, existential angst, etc.
3. The problem of evil which is more expansive and relies on a conception of good from which problematic evil arises. This rendition may include suffering and/or pain if these can be shown to be evils, properly considered.

I assumed, from the thread title that it was the third problem being discussed, which is the reason why I asked belorg for his definition of “good” to which he provided his definition - more suited to problems 1) or 2) - that the good is what is pleasant and does not inconvenience, to which I responded that this definition simply nullifies the problem of evil because God may find the current human situation pleasant and/or would be inconvenienced having to do something about it, the current situation may, under belorg’s definition be “good” for God and we would have no moral reason with which to dispute God’s inaction. Ergo, no problem of evil.

For there to be a “problem,” good and evil must be coherent concepts from which a problem arises. The concepts of good and evil would seem to be necessary conditions for the conceptual problem to exist.

 

[polytropos]

Your point here escapes me. How can the problem of evil have nothing to do with a properly conceived notion of good/evil from which any problem (if there is one) must derive?

There are actually three, possibly, diverse “problems” which could be formulated.

1. The problem of pain which includes all physical pain suffered by any biological creature capable of sensing pain.
2. The problem of suffering which would include negative emotional experiences, spiritual anguish, existential angst, etc.
3. The problem of evil which is more expansive and relies on a conception of good from which problematic evil arises. This rendition may include suffering and/or pain if these can be shown to be evils, properly considered.

I assumed, from the thread title that it was the third problem being discussed, which is the reason why I asked belorg for his definition of “good” to which he provided his definition - more suited to problems 1) or 2) - that the good is what is pleasant and does not inconvenience, to which I responded that this definition simply nullifies the problem of evil because God may find the current human situation pleasant and/or would be inconvenienced having to do something about it, the current situation may, under belorg’s definition be “good” for God and we would have no moral reason with which to dispute God’s inaction. Ergo, no problem of evil.

For there to be a “problem,” good and evil must be coherent concepts from which a problem arises. The concepts of good and evil would seem to be necessary conditions for the conceptual problem to exist.

I don’t think we are really in disagreement. What I’m saying is that the problem of evil is a charge of inconsistency of Christianity, so one must assume both that God exists and what Christians claim about evil.

What seems to be confusing people is that belorg has acknowledged this. As far as the argument from evil is concerned, what he thinks about evil doesn’t matter. He would have to show that God’s existence is incompatible with what Christians think about evil. (Or, more specifically, what classical theists think about evil.)

belorg has (I think separately) provided his own opinion about evil, which he seems to acknowledge does not bear on the problem of evil since it is not the Christian definition of evil. That is why in post #91 I said that his opinion that a good being could not tolerate evil does not follow necessarily from the Christian understanding of good and evil, to which he responded in post #106 that he knew he could not make such a statement without qualification and that the statement did not reflect the Christian understanding of good and evil.

However, it does not seem like he actually does apply the Christian definition of evil to his analysis, since in post #105 he demonstrates a misunderstanding of what it means that evil is the privation of good, which, together with the doctrine of convertibility of the transcendentals, would indicate that God as Pure Act would “have” no evil in him, contrary to his own conclusion.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Since St Thomas also said that God IS existence , it follows from your reasoning that God has positive and negative aspects, so He is not prefect in every way.

Thomas claims that God is the “fullness of being,” the opposite to which is nothing. God is Goodness Itself. Since the opposite of Being is nothing or nothingness, it follows that with God alone, evil is nothing or nothing is evil. You can choose which you prefer.

Evil is the negative “aspect” of God in the sense that nothingness is the negative aspect. Since God is the fullness of Being, evil is nothing to God or no “thing” is evil to God. No being is evil unless it becomes “less” than what it is. The evil is in the degeneration or deprivation of being, the lessening from what it is in the direction of nothingness.

For a being to be what it is is necessarily a limitation, but not evil. Becoming less than what it essentially is, is the evil.

In this sense, evil is not a subjectively determined quality it derives necessarily from the nature of each being. Physical or natural evils may or may not be morally important, but where moral agency is involved, the “lessening” of moral beings is morally important.

This is, I submit, the Catholic, or, at least, Thomistic view of evil. To contend with Catholics that a problem of evil exists for them means that the problem must be formulated within this contextual framework and not some other with a pretense that Catholics must respond to the problem even though some other (mis)understanding of good/evil is what creates the problem. If some other conception of good/evil creates a problem for that view, Catholics need not defend it, merely point out that it is not a problem for Catholics because good and evil are viewed differently by Catholics.

Your argument, as I understand it, is that suffering is evil. God should not tolerate the suffering of creatures, therefore God cannot be all good.

My reply would be that suffering, itself, is not evil but rather is incidental and a result of or “thrown up” from the degeneration or deprivation that a being undergoes. The evil is in the “lessening” of being which can be characterized as “harm” but not always properly identified. Suffering may be a “false flag” or could be remediated, remedied or even masked, so we cannot equate suffering to evil. There might be evil (both moral and natural) without suffering and suffering without evil (both moral and natural.) This entails that suffering cannot be taken as infallible evidence for evil, which, I think, your argument depends upon.

It cannot, also, be assumed that simply removing all suffering is the same as “fixing” the problem of evil. That notion arises from a false parallel with the practice of medicine that the aim of medical practice is to mask symptoms rather than actually heal disease.

 

[belorg]

I don’t think we are really in disagreement. What I’m saying is that the problem of evil is a charge of inconsistency of Christianity, so one must assume both that God exists and what Christians claim about evil.

What seems to be confusing people is that belorg has acknowledged this. As far as the argument from evil is concerned, what he thinks about evil doesn’t matter. He would have to show that God’s existence is incompatible with what Christians think about evil. (Or, more specifically, what classical theists think about evil.)

belorg has (I think separately) provided his own opinion about evil, which he seems to acknowledge does not bear on the problem of evil since it is not the Christian definition of evil. That is why in post #91 I said that his opinion that a good being could not tolerate evil does not follow necessarily from the Christian understanding of good and evil, to which he responded in post #106 that he knew he could not make such a statement without qualification and that the statement did not reflect the Christian understanding of good and evil.

However, it does not seem like he actually does apply the Christian definition of evil to his analysis, since in post #105 he demonstrates a misunderstanding of what it means that evil is the privation of good, which, together with the doctrine of convertibility of the transcendentals, would indicate that God as Pure Act would “have” no evil in him, contrary to his own conclusion.

I do not demonstrate a misunderstanding of what it means that evil is a privation. I was replying to Tony who claimed that good and evil are the positive and negative aspects of existence. If that’s the case, then everything that exists has positive and negative aspects.
As to this ‘privation’ thing, if God is truly absolutely good, then there cannot be a privation of good (whatever ‘good’ may mean).
There a very simple argument for this.

1. Distributing “the good” equally across the whole of creation is better than giving some parts of creation less of “the good”
2. God is responsible for at least one privation of good in creation.
3. Therefore God is not completely good

 

[belorg]

Your point here escapes me. How can the problem of evil have nothing to do with a properly conceived notion of good/evil from which any problem (if there is one) must derive?

There are actually three, possibly, diverse “problems” which could be formulated.

1. The problem of pain which includes all physical pain suffered by any biological creature capable of sensing pain.
2. The problem of suffering which would include negative emotional experiences, spiritual anguish, existential angst, etc.
3. The problem of evil which is more expansive and relies on a conception of good from which problematic evil arises. This rendition may include suffering and/or pain if these can be shown to be evils, properly considered.

I assumed, from the thread title that it was the third problem being discussed, which is the reason why I asked belorg for his definition of “good” to which he provided his definition - more suited to problems 1) or 2) - that the good is what is pleasant and does not inconvenience, to which I responded that this definition simply nullifies the problem of evil because God may find the current human situation pleasant and/or would be inconvenienced having to do something about it, the current situation may, under belorg’s definition be “good” for God and we would have no moral reason with which to dispute God’s inaction. Ergo, no problem of evil

Since the “current human situation” obviously causes inconvenience to some people, there is still a problem, even on my definition.

For there to be a “problem,” good and evil must be coherent concepts from which a problem arises. The concepts of good and evil would seem to be necessary conditions for the conceptual problem to exist.

And that’s why, for the sake of the argument, I am assuming that the Christian concepts of good and evil are coherent. Ployropos is correct about this.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Since the “current human situation” obviously causes inconvenience to some people, there is still a problem, even on my definition.

A problem of convenience is not necessarily a problem of evil unless you define inconvenience as evil, which I don’t think has merit, simply because inconvenience is a necessary aspect of what are understood to be morally “good” acts. Moral agents are almost always inconvenienced by moral demands to do good. A bank robber could be inconvenienced by the teller resisting his demand for money. The most “convenient” response would be to shoot and grab. It is not clear to me that convenience coheres to most common sense views of what it means to be moral.

 

[Portofino]

The “value” of existence is not subjective. The final cause of any living thing is to preserve its own life (and pathological cases, such as a person who is clinically depressed, are not counterexamples to this - they are just instances of less than perfect instantiation of the form of a human being, in the same way that any triangle you draw on a sheet of paper will be a less than perfect instantiation of triangularity).

I appreciate this difference in orientation. Where I think both sides can agree – the Thomist and the secular modern philosopher – is that it makes no sense for something to have “value” without a consciousness and intentionality that does the valuing. Money, for example, has no inherent value. Gold has no inherent value. A string of yarn that reminds one of one’s grandmother – who used to knit winter hats and scarves when one was a child – may have no value to others, but to oneself it could be among the most valuable things in one’s possession.

Money has value – and the words of our English language have the meanings they do – because of an inter-subjective consensus that, in a sense, become “objective.” It is an objective fact that $100 has more purchasing power than $1, precisely because the value one ascribes to each is not subjective but inter-subjective; there is consensus.

The desire for life (as opposed to death), for liberty (as opposed to enslavement), and for happiness (as opposed to misery) is indeed universal, in the sense that it is inter-subjective. In this limited sense, it is thus indeed objectively true that life, liberty, and happiness are inherent values.

The extra step that I think the Thomist needs to take – to get from subjective, to inter-subjective and universal, to truly objective (in other words, not dependent on human subjectivity) – is to say that the conscioussness of God values existence, which is why we cannot help but value existence as his creatures. God’s subjectivity, as it were, defines what is objectively true (as opposed to human subjectivity or even human inter-subjectivity).

If one is not convinced of God, saying that evolution – for instance – is the only reason why all creatures generally seek to preserve their existences and to avoid undue suffering, then there can be no objective value to existence (which theists themselves point out, when non-theists argue that an “evidential” objective morality still exists, in the absence of God, based on the universal preferences of humans and of other creatures). There needs to be a consciousness that does the valuing, and that consciousness would need to be God; otherwise, in a material world that is not conscious, there can be no such thing as inherent value (in this respect, I stand by my position that “value” is an intentionality-word, akin to saying, “I like this, I like this very, very much; this is important to me; I want this. This is good – not even in a moral sense, but in a pleasure sense. This is inherently pleasurable, worth striving for”).

 

[polytropos]

I do not demonstrate a misunderstanding of what it means that evil is a privation. I was replying to Tony who claimed that good and evil are the positive and negative aspects of existence. If that’s the case, then everything that exists has positive and negative aspects.

But to say that good and evil are the positive and negative aspects of existence is not to say that existence consists of good and evil - it is to say that existence is good and lack of existence is evil. God, as Pure Act, has no lack of existence.

As to this ‘privation’ thing, if God is truly absolutely good, then there cannot be a privation of good (whatever ‘good’ may mean).
There a very simple argument for this.

1. Distributing “the good” equally across the whole of creation is better than giving some parts of creation less of “the good”
2. God is responsible for at least one privation of good in creation.
3. Therefore God is not completely good

Privations of good are “nothing,” they are not things which God creates or gives. Evil does not ontologically exist (although we can speak of it as analogically “existing,” as a privation relative to good which does actually exist).

The other issue is that anything that is perfect would be Pure Goodness, ie. God. So it would be impossible for God to “create” something that is Pure Goodness - that would mean He is essentially creating Himself. But anything which is Pure Act or Pure Goodness could have no potentiality and couldn’t be distinguished.

So the act of creation does not involve the creation of evil (because ontologically that doesn’t make sense, evil being a privation of good, an “example” of nothing). But insofar that created things are not Pure Act, there is some potential for evil - a potential that they do not carry out the final causalities inherent in their forms.

 

[Portofino]

You have a marvelous gift for honing in on and asking the difficult questions.

Could it be that any, at least human, person who says, “I wish I were never born,” must, by default, be in a delimited state and is not, at that moment, clearly considering what “being born” or “existing” fully entails? Perhaps that is what is meant by privation? That the person in the state you depict is not fully aware of what it means to exist and therefore does not appreciate what they have in their grasp? It is, perhaps, this “foreshortening” of their own existence that is the result of evil - i.e., “privating” - choices and, perhaps even, evil itself; the state of privation of being that the person has ended themselves in.

The question to be asked, then, is: How should God “intervene” in that person’s consciousness to enlighten their darkness so they can regain the capacity to see beyond their current darkened state?

Perhaps the darkness itself is God’s presence demonstrably revealing the precarious state of that person’s existence in as clear a way as possible - they are fully aware of the darkness (evil) of their own state by contrast to the abiding presence of God. In Catholic tradition, I suppose, this would be considered the “dark night” of the soul. It would also place that person in a kind of lacuna from which they can choose to reach out beyond their own being and relinquish, finally, the delimiting prospects of sin by faith in God to see them through to fullness of being or relapse into ego and continue to search for limited and incomplete “fixes” for their existential dissatisfaction.

Thanks, Peter Plato, for that compliment

I think the Buddhists would agree with your argument; when they say, “no one desires to suffer, all desire happiness; it’s just that those who believe they derive happiness from suffering are more complicated about it.” This does not contradict the priorities of the saint who derives joy in suffering for God; the suffering in question is physical, while the joy resides in the mind and heart. Even Epicurus believed that mental pleasures were more acute than physical pleasures, and that mental pain was more acute than physical pain (thus, one could be the richest or most oversexed person in the world, yet still be miserable;
and one could experience an unreal sense of inner pain to which any physical pain one has ever felt would be preferable). Just so, the fear of death could involve more pain – and; thus, be a worser evil – than the death itself.

To say that existence is better than non-existence, for me, is to say that it is more pleasurable (more interesting, as well) to exist, than not to exist. This too reminds me of Epicurus, who would count as pleasurable things whose pleasure is so fundamental that we do not even perceive them as particularly pleasurable. For example, to have the sense of sight is a great pleasure and that’s proven insofar as the loss of one’s sight would be a great source of pain, a great privation, even if the pain would not be physical. To cope, one would have to find one’s pleasure elsewhere – in one’s ability to hear, for example.

 

[polytropos]

Money has value – and the words of our English language have the meanings they do – because of an inter-subjective consensus that, in a sense, become “objective.” It is an objective fact that $100 has more purchasing power than $1, precisely because the value one ascribes to each is not subjective but inter-subjective; there is consensus.

The desire for life (as opposed to death), for liberty (as opposed to enslavement), and for happiness (as opposed to misery) is indeed universal, in the sense that it is inter-subjective. In this limited sense, it is thus indeed objectively true that life, liberty, and happiness are inherent values.

The Thomist also draws a distinction between what is natural and what is artificial (artifacts, things created by man rather than by nature). So paper currency is an artifact which does have a contingent, culturally attributed value in a way that life and existence have objective value. I admittedly have not studied this distinction in a whole lot of detail, though.

The extra step that I think the Thomist needs to take – to get from subjective, to inter-subjective and universal, to truly objective (in other words, not dependent on human subjectivity) – is to say that the conscioussness of God values existence, which is why we cannot help but value existence as his creatures. God’s subjectivity, as it were, defines what is objectively true (as opposed to human subjectivity or even human inter-subjectivity).

I think you are partially right, but I would qualify significantly.

The Thomist does not really start from subjectivity and move towards universality. Subjectivity is just not part of realist metaphysics from the beginning, at least not in the sense that he would need to treat it as a starting point.

I think there can also be a bit of confusion over how God “defines” what is objectively true. Some conceptions of God (namely those which do not accept Thomistic proofs and what follows from them: God as Pure Act and the doctrine of simplicity) are more vulnerable to the Euthyphro dilemma: does God arbitrarily will what is good, or is there some standard of good above God? In Thomism, though, God’s Goodness is convertible with his Intellect (God is Pure Act, Pure Goodness, and Supreme Intellect at the same time - because such “characterizations” are ultimately equivalent), and Will follows from Intellect, so the structures of final causes inherent in the forms of things are good. (The forms of things “exist” in God’s Intellect prior to His instantiating them with existence.) So there is not really a notion of “divine fiat” - God could not have chosen alternatively, that, killing babies is a morally good action. Morality follows from the forms of things, the existence of which is what God wills.

The extent to which you can talk about subjectivity with regard to Thomism is that Thomas did believe that we will what we think is good, but can simply be mistaken about what is good.

There needs to be a consciousness that does the valuing, and that consciousness would need to be God; otherwise, in a material world that is not conscious, there can be no such thing as inherent value (in this respect, I stand by my position that “value” is an intentionality-word, akin to saying, “I like this, I like this very, very much; this is important to me; I want this. This is good – not even in a moral sense, but in a pleasure sense. This is inherently pleasurable, worth striving for”).

Yes, I agree. “Value” is intentionality-laden. What the Aristotelian means by “final causality” is really the intentionality latent in the natural world. (From this observation we have Aquinas’s Fifth Way.)