The "Problem of Good"

[Aaron_I]

Yes, the point of the thought experiment was to merely swap out “good” for “evil” to see what happens.

It seems the consensus here is that “good” is equivalent to “being” in a way that “evil” cannot be.

The problem here is that people don’t typically mean “being” when they say “good.” The statement “God is good” is rendered empty if we equate “being” with “good.” The statement doesn’t tell us anything at all, it’s just an assertion of existence.

Is that what people mean when they say “God is good?”

You’re missing the point. Consider the following:

Room A is brightly lit. Room B is dark. Light is something substantial whereas darkness is merely the absence of light. Does it follow that Room A exists whereas Room B does not exist? Does the presence of light (something that “exists” as opposed to darkness) mean Room A “exists” more than Room B? No.

Goodness “exists” whereas badness is simply the absence of Goodness. Does that change the meaning of goodness to existence? Not at all. No more than the fact that light existing means that light equals existence.

Do you agree you drew faulty conclusions?

 

[Wesrock]

So, a good cancer cell causes death more painfully and more quickly?
A good forest fire burns more animals and destroys larger areas?
A good hurricane drowns the maximum number of people and causes the most destruction?
A good nuclear bomb irradiates the widest area and maximizes casualties?
A good dictator suppresses dissent and murders his enemies most swiftly?

Am I doing this right?

No. Not everything has substantial form, which is where this primarily comes into play. Artifacts, or man made objects, for example, do have the purpose that we give them and can be judged in a similar way as to whether they meet those ends, but they really don’t have their own essence in the way an atom, molecule, or living being, do. They are not really their own, unified being, but a collection of parts. Is that iron atom a good iron atom? Is that uranium atom a good uranium atom? And in cases of non-living beings, it’s a far simpler, more straightforward analysis.

A cancerous cell has essentially been hijacked away from its actual purpose and no longer behaving as it should, so that seems easily disqualified.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, etc . . . also don’t have essences and ends in the way substantial forms do. The evil they cause are the deprivations they cause in us. We experience an evil, but a natural disaster is not an evil nor is it some distinctive whole, unified being in itself.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

When we say a person is good, it’s already implicitly qualified. He is good at doing this, or at being this. When food is good, it means that it creates pleasant senses.

When we say God is good, there isn’t a qualifier. It’s just “he is good,” full stop. Whereas in all finite things which have a mode of being any comment on goodness is ultimately related to that finite being. We participate in being, and that participation is qualified. Each finite thing has a participation in the goodness of Being in a certain way, depending on its mode if existence (what it is). It’s not so for God. He doesn’t participate in being or goodness. He is both being and good(ness), full stop. That is what good is, being, and God is simply unqualified Being, not a mode of being.

Is this difficult to wrap our minds around? Yes, of course. And probably much moreso if you’re not already familiar with this school of thought. But even so, it is quite comprehensive. There’s no special pleading or exemption.

Yes, it is an empty statement. The predicate doesn’t refer to anything! Can you see why I would consider the “problem of good” to be semantics rather than metaphysics?

Besides, I think the “problem of good” is unintelligible. It was brought up by another poster, and I just wanted to get some posts showing precisely why it is unintelligible. Good job everyone, thank you.

The problem of evil, on the other hand, is quite intelligible. We cannot peer into God and wonder about goodness, apparently. But, it is quite easy to look around and wonder about evil and its relation to good/God.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

You’re missing the point. Consider the following:

Room A is brightly lit. Room B is dark. Light is something substantial whereas darkness is merely the absence of light. Does it follow that Room A exists whereas Room B does not exist? Does the presence of light (something that “exists” as opposed to darkness) mean Room A “exists” more than Room B? No.

Goodness “exists” whereas badness is simply the absence of Goodness. Does that change the meaning of goodness to existence? Not at all. No more than the fact that light existing means that light equals existence.

Do you agree you drew faulty conclusions?

The problem here is that light is a thing that exists, but God is existence in itself. The analogy doesn’t work here because God is totally unique as the only thing which is its own principle of existence.

Besides that, several posters here have admitted that “existence” and “goodness” are convertible. Who is right, how should I know?

 

[Wesrock]

Yes, it is an empty statement. The predicate doesn’t refer to anything! Can you see why I would consider the “problem of good” to be semantics rather than metaphysics?

The predicate refers to his act of existence, to Being, to its existence. This is hardly semantics, and refers to the very nature of reality and what we can say about it. That something is hard to comprehend doesn’t make it nonsense, and it certainly at least makes more sense if you’re already familiar with the subject matter, such as act and potentiality and existence vs essence distinction. This principle filters down to ALL acts and instantiations of beings.

 

[goout]

Yes, it is an empty statement. The predicate doesn’t refer to anything! Can you see why I would consider the “problem of good” to be semantics rather than metaphysics?

Besides, I think the “problem of good” is unintelligible. It was brought up by another poster, and I just wanted to get some posts showing precisely why it is unintelligible. Good job everyone, thank you.

The problem of evil, on the other hand, is quite intelligible. We cannot peer into God and wonder about goodness, apparently. But, it is quite easy to look around and wonder about evil and its relation to good/God.

Since you are leaning on reason and observation, perhaps you can observe that life happens. We live, we die, and in between things happen that we can call “good” and “bad”.

Do you imagine that you will avoid what we call “good” and “bad”?
So then, life happens and we cannot simply accept half of it, right?

So the question might be bothersome, but it is relevant and it remains for you to answer, because you are the one who brings it up:
**why do you have a problem with “bad”, but not with “good”? **

If you only demand accounting for the “bad” and are willing to accept the “good” without accounting, then you come across as being inexperienced in life and unrealistic. Half of your life is chargeable to God’s account, and half is not.
Do you live half a life???

That is not philosophy. It is simply being juvenile.

 

[Gorgias]

So, a good cancer cell causes death more painfully and more quickly?
A good forest fire burns more animals and destroys larger areas?
A good hurricane drowns the maximum number of people and causes the most destruction?

No. These are ‘natural evils.’

A good nuclear bomb irradiates the widest area and maximizes casualties?
A good dictator suppresses dissent and murders his enemies most swiftly?

No. These are ‘moral evils.’ Note that these don’t meet the condition that Wesrock teed up for you: “the fullness of the human essence and its ends.” In your examples, you list things that are effective at something, but that thing is not ‘good’. You’re just demonstrating that things can be efficacious in their evilness – that is, they can be a deprivation of good to a very high degree…!

 

[Gorgias]

Yes, it is an empty statement. The predicate doesn’t refer to anything!

Huh? “God is good” doesn’t refer to anything? That doesn’t make sense.

I mean, if your complaint is that it’s a tautology, then say it. Otherwise, you seem to be complaining merely that ‘good’ doesn’t act as a partial descriptor, in the way that “sushi is tasty” does ('cause it’s not only tasty, but also healthy, and (sometimes) crunchy and (sometimes) creamy, etc, etc…)

Can you see why I would consider the “problem of good” to be semantics rather than metaphysics?

No. If the description of God is “goodness itself”, then we’ve precisely got a metaphysical statement here!

 

[Wesrock]

Real essences apply to unified whole beings acting as one. There is an objectivity about it. They do have real things that are essential to them and which make any being/deprivation in them also real. I might have an idea about what is essential to dogginess, but my definition is only an attempt to understand it. I may be wrong. It might be incomplete and possible to improve. The definition of what that essence is is essential to it and not simply human defined. A human definition of a real essence (or description of what is essential to this thing) is only a model, in a sense, but there is a real essence there we are attempting to understand.

Not so with houses, bombs, dictators, hurricanes. These, in a way, are defined by humans. In a sense, you could make a judgment call about whether someone is a good dictator based on a human definition, but dictator is not in itself an essence. The dictator’s essence is, as a human, to be a rational soul, and that’s the only way to make an objective statement about whether he is good or evil.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Since you are leaning on reason and observation, perhaps you can observe that life happens. We live, we die, and in between things happen that we can call “good” and “bad”.

Do you imagine that you will avoid what we call “good” and “bad”?
So then, life happens and we cannot simply accept half of it, right?

So the question might be bothersome, but it is relevant and it remains for you to answer, because you are the one who brings it up:
**why do you have a problem with “bad”, but not with “good”? **

If you only demand accounting for the “bad” and are willing to accept the “good” without accounting, then you come across as being inexperienced in life and unrealistic. Half of your life is chargeable to God’s account, and half is not.
Do you live half a life???

That is not philosophy. It is simply being juvenile.

I do not “have a problem” with either “bad” or “good.” The problem I have is with some explanations of why bad things happen in a universe being created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Many traditional theistic explanations are inadequate to account for both good and bad. They account for good, but do not sufficiently explain evil. It makes sense to accept goodness in the universe if it is claimed that the creator is all-good. However, the evil needs more explanation, because it doesn’t seem intuitive or an obvious consequence of a universe created by an all-powerful and all-good God. Consider:

‘Goodness exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Sounds good, right? OK! No hay problema.

‘Evil exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Um… Hay muchas problemas!

 

[Aaron_I]

I do not “have a problem” with either “bad” or “good.” The problem I have is with some explanations of why bad things happen in a universe being created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Many traditional theistic explanations are inadequate to account for both good and bad. They account for good, but do not sufficiently explain evil. It makes sense to accept goodness in the universe if it is claimed that the creator is all-good. However, the evil needs more explanation, because it doesn’t seem intuitive or an obvious consequence of a universe created by an all-powerful and all-good God. Consider:

‘Goodness exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Sounds good, right? OK! No hay problema.

‘Evil exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Um… Hay muchas problemas!

But again, we are not saying evil “exists” so much as that sometimes there is absence or deprivation of that which is good.

 

[Wesrock]

No. All being is good. Therefore, everything in existence is good. It’s only when there are deprivations, or “nothingness”, that you have evil. So God created only the good, but it was possible that deprivations could creep in. In so far as God creates and sustains all being, he is only creating and sustaining the good. The evil isn’t created or sustained, but is merely a deprivation in a being, which at most is not created or given, but is, in reality, perhaps, can be called a partial gift of being. Just because I give you 90 cents of a dollar does not mean I took the other ten cents away. Or, if I stop freely giving you new dollars each day it does not mean I took any dollars from you. All being is good, and all being is a freely given gift.

You avoid the Manichean explanation that required two, co-equal forces (one good, the other evil) while retaining that God is good, and all being is good. God created light, but with light comes the potential for shadows, if you will.

 

[goout]

I do not “have a problem” with either “bad” or “good.” The problem I have is with some explanations of why bad things happen in a universe being created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God. Many traditional theistic explanations are inadequate to account for both good and bad. They account for good, but do not sufficiently explain evil. It makes sense to accept goodness in the universe if it is claimed that the creator is all-good. However, the evil needs more explanation, because it doesn’t seem intuitive or an obvious consequence of a universe created by an all-powerful and all-good God. Consider:

‘Goodness exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Sounds good, right? OK! No hay problema.

‘Evil exists in the universe because it is a reflection of God’s nature, which is goodness.’ Um… Hay muchas problemas!

If you accept the existence of God, then you accept the existence of a person.
If God is a person, and you are a person, then you are in relationship to God.
If you are in relationship to God, you are by definition part of the experience of that relationship.
If God is all-good, and you are he-who-is-not-all-good, along with every other human being, then you are going to experience a lack in this relationship, because you are not all-good.
Does this make sense? If you were also All-good, then there would be no void in this relationship.

So this void is chargeable to your account, not to the All-good.

What you are doing is blaming a person for the lacking we all experience in human affairs, while at the same time taking what you experience as good for granted, in other words, as your own personal attribute that is not chargeable to anyone else but you.

It is not a consistent position.
In the first place, we should all know from experience that a relationship is not a thing of accounting, but rather a thing of being that transcends accounting.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

Huh? “God is good” doesn’t refer to anything? That doesn’t make sense.

I mean, if your complaint is that it’s a tautology, then say it. Otherwise, you seem to be complaining merely that ‘good’ doesn’t act as a partial descriptor, in the way that “sushi is tasty” does ('cause it’s not only tasty, but also healthy, and (sometimes) crunchy and (sometimes) creamy, etc, etc…)

No. If the description of God is “goodness itself”, then we’ve precisely got a metaphysical statement here!

The predicate “is good” doesn’t refer to anything outside of the subject. It is totally self-referential and therefore has no practical meaning. “Good” doesn’t “point” anywhere.

What is goodness itself? God.
What is God? Goodness itself.

LOL. Cancel out the like terms and nothing is left.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

But again, we are not saying evil “exists” so much as that sometimes there is absence or deprivation of that which is good.

Alright, that’s fine. Think of it this way: the universe isn’t perfectly good, or doesn’t seem to be as good as it could be. That’s why everyone is exercised about the “problem of evil,” and the “problem of good” isn’t discussed. One is relevant, cogent, and present. The other is semantics.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

No. All being is good. Therefore, everything in existence is good. It’s only when there are deprivations, or “nothingness”, that you have evil. So God created only the good, but it was possible that deprivations could creep in. In so far as God creates and sustains all being, he is only creating and sustaining the good. The evil isn’t created or sustained, but is merely a deprivation in a being, which at most is not created or given, but is, in reality, perhaps, can be called a partial gift of being. Just because I give you 90 cents of a dollar does not mean I took the other ten cents away. Or, if I stop freely giving you new dollars each day it does not mean I took any dollars from you. All being is good, and all being is a freely given gift.

You avoid the Manichean explanation that required two, co-equal forces (one good, the other evil) while retaining that God is good, and all being is good. God created light, but with light comes the potential for shadows, if you will.

Cancer cells exist, viruses exist, nuclear weapons exist, congenital illnesses are caused sometimes by extra chromosomes that have essence. Augustine had no understanding of germs, DNA, chemistry, atoms, or anything else that has helped us to know so much about our world. Further, the subject that shall not be named effectively dis-confirms Augustine’s explanation for “apparent” evil.

 

[Wesrock]

The predicate “is good” doesn’t refer to anything outside of the subject. It is totally self-referential and therefore has no practical meaning. “Good” doesn’t “point” anywhere.

What is goodness itself? God.
What is God? Goodness itself.

LOL. Cancel out the like terms and nothing is left.

What is a triangle? A closed shape with three straight sides.
What is a closed shape with three straight sides? A triangle.

Such statements are not meaningless. They are things known about a subject through itself, not through another or any external or middle term. Ultimately, some truths are known in this way, through the thing itself and not by another.

The terms do not cancel each other out. That God is good provides insight into the essence and, furthermore, into the nature of all being.

 

[Wesrock]

Cancer cells exist, viruses exist, nuclear weapons exist, congenital illnesses are caused sometimes by extra chromosomes that have essence.

How does this objection even respond to what we’ve all said previously on this? It doesn’t. And Augustine and Aquinas were well aware of natural disasters and man-made objects.

That a germ cell could be good in itself also does nothing to discount that the deprivation it causes in a human person is an evil. It’s just not a moral evil.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

If you accept the existence of God, then you accept the existence of a person.

I do not know whether God is personal or not, but your second statement is not necessarily implied by the first.

If God is a person, and you are a person, then you are in relationship to God.
If you are in relationship to God, you are by definition part of the experience of that relationship.
If God is all-good, and you are he-who-is-not-all-good, along with every other human being, then you are going to experience a lack in this relationship, because you are not all-good.
Does this make sense? If you were also All-good, then there would be no void in this relationship.

So this void is chargeable to your account, not to the All-good.

What you are doing is blaming a person for the lacking we all experience in human affairs, while at the same time taking what you experience as good for granted, in other words, as your own personal attribute that is not chargeable to anyone else but you.

It is not a consistent position.
In the first place, we should all know from experience that a relationship is not a thing of accounting, but rather a thing of being that transcends accounting.

I am grateful to God for existence, and I question some concepts of God who try to claim, inconsistently, that God is responsible for good but not evil.

I am consistent because I affirm that God is responsible for everything: both good and bad. I accept it all (mostly because I don’t have a choice LOL). What I don’t accept are insufficient explanations.

 

[Wesrock]

Alright, that’s fine. Think of it this way: the universe isn’t perfectly good, or doesn’t seem to be as good as it could be. That’s why everyone is exercised about the “problem of evil,” and the “problem of good” isn’t discussed. One is relevant, cogent, and present. The other is semantics.

Oh, please. These are obviously metaphysical statememts about the nature of reality. It can only be a semantics issue if you don’t believe in objective good and evil, in which case the problem of evil isn’t real (as there is no good or evil) and is itself just a semantics game.