Why don't the ends justify the means but God can permit evil to draw out a greater good?

[Memaw]

Isn’t sex (Eve’s original sin) in the Garden of Eden and doesn’t the Sacrament of Baptism cleanse it from us?

rex

Sex was NOT the Original sin!!! God Bless, memaw

 

[oldcelt]

Read the damn thing in context please.

‘It doesn’t matter to me in this regard whether God does or does not exist’.

‘In this regard’ refers to Man feeling that he is ‘such a piece of work’. We presumably all feel that we are something special, whether God exists or not (and here comes Tony’s bit about materialism and bags of chemicals yet again).

But if God exists, then I find the idea of me being part of some grand design somewhat depressing.

Don’t worry, I don’t see any evidence of a plan by a loving God.

 

[tonyrey]

Read the damn thing in context please.

Your irascility needs to be transformed into serenity unless you wish to bring atheists into disrepute.

‘It doesn’t matter to me in this regard whether God does or does not exist’.

‘In this regard’ refers to Man feeling that he is ‘such a piece of work’. We presumably all feel that we are something special, whether God exists or not (and here comes Tony’s bit about materialism and bags of chemicals yet again).

The failure of materialism to account for the power of reason is acknowledged by eminent atheists such as Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy at New York University. To belittle our intellectual faculty is to undermine our own conclusions. The bags of chemicals haven’t been very convincing so far…

But if God exists, then I find the idea of me being part of some grand design somewhat depressing.

You sound like an anarchist! You prefer to be a freak of nature in an amoral universe?
In that case the discussion of whether the ends justify the means is endless because it is meaningless, valueless and purposeless… and anything goes!

 

[tonyrey]

Don’t worry, I don’t see any evidence of a plan by a loving God.

In that case there is no reason to believe any form of plan exists. Or did they appear mysteriously out of chaos?

 

[Bradski]

In that case the discussion of whether the ends justify the means is endless because it is meaningless, valueless and purposeless… and anything goes!

I don’t know if you’re old enough to have used the old vinyl records. Sometimes, if you scratched them, the needle would stick in the same groove and it would endlessly repeat the same thing over and over again.

I’m not sure what made me think of that…

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t know if you’re old enough to have used the old vinyl records. Sometimes, if you scratched them, the needle would stick in the same groove and it would endlessly repeat the same thing over and over again.

I’m not sure what made me think of that…

I am sure you have evaded the issue - probably because it leads to an unpalatable result!

 

[Amandil]

But if God exists, then I find the idea of me being part of some grand design somewhat depressing.

That seems to say more about you than about God.

 

[oldcelt]

In that case there is no reason to believe any form of plan exists. Or did they appear mysteriously out of chaos?

I don’t see one at all. This universe and the life along for the ride seem to be on a day to day basis.

 

[Bradski]

That seems to say more about you than about God.

What do you mean more about me? That comment was all about me.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But if God exists, then I find the idea of me being part of some grand design somewhat depressing.

I could never understand this, from a logical point of view.

If God exists and is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent then any “design” we might have regarding our own lives is bound to be, well, depressing and woefully lacking in comparison.

Like I said, simply doesn’t compute, Spock.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
If you recall in my analogy to automobiles I was, in effect, arguing that the value of any entity or agent is determined by the capacities of that entity or agent, which is why I claimed a Rolls Royce is more valuable qua automobile than an AMC Gremlin.

Ah, but Bradski, you are precisely the one arguing here, you just don’t realize it. To wit:

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
My guess is that you confused “accomplishments” with capacities, as if they were identical. They aren’t.

Stop the reel!

Did you catch it, Bradski?

You see you agreed that Mengele, in assuming the moral right to determine who lived and who died in Auschwitz was assuming, precisely, the same kind of right to determine who would be jettisoned from the “lifeboat” in his command. He looked at the young father and decided he was of no determinable use and therefore, to use your words, “in he goes.” That presumption in terms of dealing with human life as a disposable commodity was what made him a gremlin as far as human beings go.

Kolbe would assume no such right and, rather, chose to be the one sacrificed, the one thrown overboard. This is the moral quality as a human being that made him, as you say, a “Roller.”

For some reason, you come across, in your willingness to assume a superiority of position and the implicit “right” to jettison human beings from the lifeboat, as taking more of a Mengelean than a Kolbean perspective. And yet you do not dispute that Kolbe was the better human being qua human being.

This, surely points out a contradiction in your underlying morality. It’s okay to portray oneself as a Kolbe but when push comes to shove in a thought experiment, better to act as a Mengele.

This brings to mind the parable of the two brothers. (Matt 21:28)

 

[Peter_Plato]

Let’s continue…

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
The problem with going with number 3, is that you are essentially, pegging value upon the accidental origin of characteristics.

There is something oddly, even eerily, jarring about this. Perhaps, Mengele may have even kept himself “warm at night” contemplating the “amazing sequence of accidents” that brought him to afford the “luxury” of being a physician with such open access to experimental human bodies, the privilege of being ordained the “chooser” in the lifeboat and, perhaps, he also didn’t “see it as a problem at all.”

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
“existence” is simply an illusory and short flicker of unstable and unknowable quality fated to be extinguished with no real lasting significance.

Now obviously, you don’t believe you are just a bag of chemicals, you believe you are a bag of chemicals with the inscrutable ability to jettison others from lifeboats (and I say this with a sad heart) because this statement sums up your position without you realizing it: “Everyone looks at the guy in the corner who says: ‘Hang on - I have the capacity to create wonderful music’. Splash. In he goes.”

You see, following the example of Bertrand Russell, the guy in the corner that you have just thrown into the water is God. And like Bertrand Russell your criteria for disposing of God is that he did not produce any evidence for his capacity to create wonderful music, so “Splash. In he goes.”

The problem, for both you and Russell is that your position was anticipated by the passersby, chief priests and Pharisees as Jesus died on the cross.

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross i.e., show us the evidence], and we will believe in him.

“Play a little Mozart and I’ll believe you”
“A little more evidence and I’ll believe you.”
“Come down from the cross and we’ll believe you.”

You see, it all amounts to the same thing, basically. Perform and you have worth. The value that I determine will be the price on your head. If you can’t pay the price, it’s into the gas chamber, out of the lifeboat or onto the cross. A distinctively Mengelean perspective.

Yet, that perspective is one you previously dismissed as “gremlin-like,” but it seems to have reared its ugly head without you being aware of it. Sneaky little gremlin.

Might I suggest that it will inevitably do so whenever we place ourselves on the high moral position, (whether in a death camp, a lifeboat or foot of a cross) of determining worth based upon our own criteria. This, in fact, was what made Kolbe a “Roller” and not a gremlin, he did not usurp to himself the authority to determine the intrinsic worth of others because he had not jettisoned God. Kolbe had not thrown God from his lifeboat because Kolbe knew the inherent worth of all that exists did not require his petty approval. He could safely act morally because his own skin was not all that counted. He held to an eternal perspective in the face of pressure to exchange eternal worth for temporal currency.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’ll leave you with another parable.

Luke 19:12-27
New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)
12 So he said, “A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. 13 He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds,[a] and said to them, ‘Do business with these until I come back.’ 14 But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, ‘We do not want this man to rule over us.’ 15 When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. 16 The first came forward and said, ‘Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.’ 17 He said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.’ 18 Then the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your pound has made five pounds.’ 19 He said to him, ‘And you, rule over five cities.’ 20 Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, 21 for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ 22 He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.’ 24 He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ 25 (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) 26 ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 27 But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.’”

 

[Bradski]

Good grief. That’s a lot of work knocking down something I hadn’t built.

It’s quite a simple proposition and you can argue against it if you like. If you have a Kolbe and a Mengele in a lifeboat, then Mengele gets fed to the sharks. Nobody, surely, would argue against that. Maybe you don’t like the idea of playing God, but it is just a hypothetical.

Defend the one against the other if you can. If you can’t then we have less value in one man than we do in another. We can move on from there.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Good grief. That’s a lot of work knocking down something I hadn’t built.

It’s quite a simple proposition and you can argue against it if you like. If you have a Kolbe and a Mengele in a lifeboat, then Mengele gets fed to the sharks. Nobody, surely, would argue against that.

Ah, yes. Just the point. Kolbe would argue against that, because he would put himself in place of Mengele, just as he did the father at Auschwitz.

Maybe you don’t like the idea of playing God, but it is just a hypothetical.

It is only in a Godless order, that “playing” God is an option. That is why the countervailing factor to your situation is called “faith.” Even when God appears to be absent, there is never a presumption that he actually is absent - recall that God is, properly understood, the necessity of Being and therefore the only one who can ever rightfully “play” God, since there is no logical situation where he is not God. There is no possible world where God is not God, therefore no possible world where some lesser being must pretend to “being God.”

You must have missed the last parable in my series of posts, because, you see, acting in God’s absence means nothing more than “doing precisely what God would allow in his presence.” The reason Kolbe is lauded is because he wouldn’t ever do what God wouldn’t allow: playing God and throwing someone else from the boat - he would sooner see himself in the water than excuse the killing of another human on the pretext that they have no talent.

Only where Godlessness presumes “no God” that such an inhumane and “God-less” act could ever be conceived to be permissible.

Defend the one against the other if you can. If you can’t then we have less value in one man than we do in another. We can move on from there.

Only under atheism would such a situation of finding a pretext for devaluing another human being be possible because only by presuming atheism would the eternal benevolence of God be supervened by a lesser conception of morality.

 

[St_Redemption]

I know that this will make very few happy here, but what living parent allows terrible things to happen to their children when they have the power to stop it? What loving parent would create a being to constantly tempt and harass their children, and then create a place to put the children for being bad…a place that they can never leave.

This concept of our condemning ourselves to hell is comparatively new. The first time I remember hearing that n******se was during the early Charismatic Renewal. Before that it was God sending you there, plain and simple. Come on, that is the purpose of a judgement isn’t it? Whoever came up with the idea I would bet is standing on thin ice theologically.

The Abrahamic/Christian model of God makes no sense when one looks at the whole sweep of what is attributed to that God.

That’s it. I don’t have much to add, so no sense in firing tons of questions at me…I won’t have the time to answer them as I am editing a thesis for a friend.

John

It makes sense when you realize that God Himself became man and He Himself underwent extreme physical and mental duress. So in a way that we cannot understand (its probably beyond our comprehension) suffering is part of the plan.

 

[oldcelt]

It makes sense when you realize that God Himself became man and He Himself underwent extreme physical and mental duress. So in a way that we cannot understand (its probably beyond our comprehension) suffering is part of the plan.

It makes complete sense to me if you take away the all-knowing, all-loving father figure. Add that, look at the world as it is, and life, for me, becomes a nonsensical place. That figure is inconsistent with what is written and what I can see…

 

[Bradski]

Only under atheism would such a situation of finding a pretext for devaluing another human being be possible because only by presuming atheism would the eternal benevolence of God be supervened by a lesser conception of morality.

I love hypotheticals. They can really get to the truth of a matter. There was a series called simply ‘Hypotheticals’ where Geoffrey Robertson, an Aussie barrister, asked questions of a dozen or so people in the public eye a rolling set of hypothetical questions to see where it would lead. It was shown on the ABC and, I think, on the BBC.

He has a brilliant mind and it was delightful to see the difficulty some people had in answering any given question because they knew where Robertson might take them if they answered honestly.

He didn’t allow for any equivocation and quite often his guests would find themselves in situations that they would not normally find themselves. There was none of the standard politicians rhetoric allowed. None of the: 'that’s a very good question, but just let me say…(insert politicians standard line on the topic de jour here).

I find it incredibly difficult using the method on Christian forums. Because there are generally two things that the Christian has to consider. The theological answer, the one that she might class as the ‘right answer’, such as ‘we are all equal in the eyes of The Lord’ and ‘it’s not for us to decide on the individual’s worth - we cannot play God’.

Then there’s the other answer. The one that deals with the practicalities of living in the here and now. Where things aren’t as black and white as we’d like them to be. Where things are messy and complicated and sometimes there really doesn’t seem to be a ‘right answer’. Or if there is, no-one can seem to agree just what it might be.

But answer them we must and answer them we do. Because we all have decisions to make in life that affect other people. Sometimes in very specific ways. Some of them are easy to articulate.

You may be a doctor who has to decide where best to spend the money that’s been allocated to your hospital, knowing that the decison will literally mean life or death for some people.

You may decide to buy that new car when it is undeniable that if you donated the money to charity then lives would undoubtedly be saved that will otherwise be lost (saving a life could be as low as $3 - $4).

Does the doctor make a valuation when he decides to give the life saving treatment to the thirty year old father with 3 kids or the 80 year old widower? No doubt about it. Easy to answer that one.

Do you value your pleasure in buying the new car over the life of many children in dire circumstances. Mmm. Bit tougher that one. Might prefer to pass. Maybe someone else will chip in instead. After all, does the money really get to the people who need it? But you choose the car anyway.

Then you’re in a lifeboat which is sinking. You’re not going to throw your kids overboard, so it’s either this guy who has already put his life on the line helping people escape the sinking ship or someone else who tells you he needs to get home so he can continue medical experimentation on Jews before having them shot.

It’s one or the other or your family is going to drown. They’re all looking at you to make the decision. Yes, you are playing God. Yes, it’s not a position that you would want to be in. Yes, in the eyes of The Lord we are all sinners equal in worth. Yes, you are never going to forgive yourself for making the choice. Yes, you can consider yourself as bad as Mengele himself in decifding who shall live and who shall die. No, you cannot sacrifice yourself or conjur up a scenario where you don’t have to choose.

Splash.

Oh look. Mengele is in the water. So how did you come to that decision? Was it a toss of a coin? Did they play paper-scissors-rock? Or was it that Kolbe was a man worth saving and Mengele was not?

 

[mrajax]

The reason fornication isn’t good in the eyes of Catholics is because to them it is a bastardization of everything that marriage is about; when someone really gets around and indulges in one night stands he is dishonoring himself, the one he is sleeping with and the child that ensues. Children with single parents live more difficult lives if they are raised in poverty.

And whilst I am an atheist, I do have a set of reasons why God is he does exist would allow evil. For starters, if God were to punish every single sin, every single bad thing because it is wrong we as humans wouldn’t take risks; we’d be too scared that hell will happen on earth because we merely stepped out of line. With constant fear, actual, scary fear you won’t advance much in the love of God or your fellow men lol.

Secondly, humanity is too complex; the idea that morality is something that is black and white is a myth and for your god to punish one crime but not another of the same magnitude sounds contradictory. People want God to punish the murder of a little girl but they wouldn’t want him to punish the murder of the American president. Innocent or not, murder is still murder and you’re still taking a life and its potential away.

Thirdly, the sun shines on both the good and the bad and according to the Bible God created this world for EVERYONE, not just the good. God created the world just as much for the innocent girls, the righteous husbands and wives, the gentle priests and scholars as for the rapists, murderers, gang members, corrupt leaders and people who call at meal times. Good people weren’t made to suffer by evil people, they were made to strive DESPITE evil people.

Fourthly and this is the most important bit, people need free choice and sometimes their terrible actions either have actually aided humans in doing a greater good or stem from their own past/character. War is bad but we need it for self defence. People are never born into this world as rapists, psychopaths, murderers, etc… their choices come both from their upbringing and their personal on the spot choices.

Essentially, people need free choice in order to be better people and ti would be unjust of God to force others into doing good or doing bad. And whilst the child brought about by fornication is a good thing, the way he is brought about is not. Children of rape are still people but you wouldn’t commit the atrocious act of rape out of a misguided/perverted sense of bringing life to the world. Converting to god is good for you guys but you wouldn’t FORCE conversion would you? If we can prevent committing evil actions from happening by our own will wouldn’t the world be a better place? But if we were to shoot every result of every bad action things wouldn’t be healthy.

 

[TruthSeeker92]

This.

Even if we have a pretty good understanding that something good might proceed from an evil action, we cannot commit that evil action. God does not commit evil actions.

Hi everyone! This discussion relates to the discussion we had in world philosophy today, so I wanted to join in. I have some questions and I do want genuine answers, I in no way ask these questions in defiance or in an argumentative way. I also realize that not everyone on the forum may not have theology or philosophy degrees (nor do I) so everyone may have a different answer.

Anyways, my philosophy professor was listing the theistic arguments for the existence of evil, basically the “How can an all-knowing, all good God permit evil?” question. She asked us to list the answers people gave us in our lives to the existence of evil and then she argued against each one, also with the intention of demonstrating how each theistic argument leads to the next during atheistic vs. theistic debate.

Her question was basically (paraphrasing here) “Why is it that when I do something it is wrong, but if God does it it’s OK?” She used Exodus 12 and God’s smiting of the Egyptian children as an example.

I personally love God and I am trying to trust in his decisions no matter what. I would like your thoughts/arguments especially from a Jewish perspective. Thank you!