The Free Will Defense is Immoral
Imagine parents who permit their kids to torture animals, terrorize neighborhood kids, steal and vandalize, etc. They do this because they value the free will of their children, which is considered a higher good and more loving than constraining their will.
What would we think of such parents? We would consider them immoral and delusional, and their kids would likely be removed (or sent to Juvenile Detention). What we wouldn't do is agree with the parents.
Yet the God of monotheistic religions is said to permit this sort of behavior from us because of free will. Slavery, genocide, war, child soldiers, rape, etc. is allowed to take place, even though God is good and able to prevent them.
There is another being who has been said to value free will to such an extent. In myth and fiction, Lucifer is often portrayed as the embodiment of free will, rebelling against God and promoting all that is opposite of the good.
** Edited to shorten up argument **
What would we think of such parents? We would consider them immoral and delusional, and their kids would likely be removed (or sent to Juvenile Detention). What we wouldn't do is agree with the parents.
Yet the God of monotheistic religions is said to permit this sort of behavior from us because of free will. Slavery, genocide, war, child soldiers, rape, etc. is allowed to take place, even though God is good and able to prevent them.
There is another being who has been said to value free will to such an extent. In myth and fiction, Lucifer is often portrayed as the embodiment of free will, rebelling against God and promoting all that is opposite of the good.
** Edited to shorten up argument **
Comments (245)
This is concretely how nature evolves. There is no reason to introduce God, Laws of Nature, Free Will, or any other notion. All we have to do is observe what is actually taking place. People are choosing what they would like to do, but it never happens in exactly the way that it is imagined. The future is unknown.
Your post is entirely anthropomorphic. First, even though, on the basis of what you post, you don't profess to have any actual belief in God, you think you understand what such a being, if such a being exists, must or must not do, on the basis of a comparison between that being, and what parents do.
According to the main Christian denominations, humans are autonomous agents who are able to behave as they wish. They might say that the superior way of life has been revealed through the Mosaic law and the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, and that if more people followed it then these atrocities would be less frequent.
But the idea that God is the kind of being who can appear on a hypothetical chariot - I suppose it would be a helicopter nowadays - and command malefactors to 'cease and desist' is a caricature of the idea. God is not a movie director, or a super-hero, or even a super-parent. I'm sure the allegory of 'father' is just that - an allegory.
So, again, you take it that the world is not actually like heaven, where nobody ever is hurt or dies, where there is no disease and everyone is always happy, as an indication that God is responsible.
I haven't read C S Lewis God in the Dock, but I have a feeling that this is what it is about.
I think you may be wilfully blurring the distinction between ability and permission.
Free will is necessary in order that we may be able to determine the truth, through choice of what to believe, instead of just believing what is told to you by your parents or other authorities. It is by questioning the authorities that we rid ourselves of falsity within our beliefs.
Quoting Marchesk
Free will is the good because it is what allows the truth to be known.
Quoting Marchesk
Lucifer is the exact opposite of the embodiment of free will. Lucifer is fated to eternal damnation, for clinging to false belief, and being the false authority, "promoting all that is bad", denying that the free will to choose for oneself what to believe, is the true good.
We don't give people permission to murder other people in society under normal circumstances (setting aside war, self-defense, death penalty, etc).
But we lack the ability to always prevent people from carrying out a murder, although the police will, if a planned murder is known in advance.
God lacks no such ability. I don't see where I've blurred the distinction.
The idea that God is good is an anthropomorphic idea, based on what human beings value as good. Get rid of the good, and the FWD is no longer problematic. It's not even needed.
The problem is that believers have defined God as being perfectly good and capable of preventing evil, this the reason the FWD exists. So it's not me that's being anthropomorphic, it's inherent to the FWD.
According to Christian denominations, heaven is an eternal place where humans (and angels) are not autonomous agents, free to do as they wish. Or better yet, no human or angel, post Lucifer, wishes to freely will evil in heaven, apparently. For eternity. Which raises the question of why Lucifer and the angels, and mankind, were able (or wanted) to freely wish evil at all.
But setting aside the afterlife, even though it's rather important to Christian theology, Christians don't behave as if being wholly autonomous in society is desireable. Notice how often they wish to constrain behavior via various policies, or endorsements of certain moral positions.
Why would God set things up so that we haven't question adults in order to learn the truth?
It has turned out that way, but it's not the intent. I think that is how it is understood in an unreligious age.
I found the quote I was thinking of:
Quoting Marchesk
But that's because they don't believe that freedom consists in pleasing yourself, or doing what you like. According to them, freedom is found in abandoning the self, not in fulfilling it. That is of course inconceivable for most of us, who believe nihil ultra ego.
Really, I have no intention of continuing this dialogue. I don't wish to defend the Christian religion against those whose only interest in it is why it ought to be abandoned.
Or the Christian conception of God is on trial. It is believers who put the notion out there that a perfect being permits such things to happen. What a surprise when some of us find that difficult to swallow.
Fine, but Christianity is broad, and not all Christians have had a belief in all-perfect God. There were some sects of early Christians who thought the world was created by an evil God, and Jesus came to give revelation of the higher God beyond creation. That makes a bit more sense than trying to square a perfect God with an imperfect creation.
But Christians tend to believe that God permits all abuse of free will, so that begs the question of why they don't endorse such a policy with regards to other human beings? It's fine if you think that abandoning the self is the path to true freedom, but trying to constrain other people's behavior would seem to mean you don't think that free will is worth allowing.
I think you will find that impossible to validate with respect to any textual sources.
The problem is that you (not just you) don't understand what is the problem that religions seek to solve. Modern cultures, generally, have lost all sense of what that might be, and so the religious ideas that are associated with the problem and its solution, don't make any sense in this context.
So theists didn't invent the FWD as apologetics?
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm fine with religion trying to address existential issues, and I'm fine with people thinking there is some transcendental reality. But when this gets turned into statements about what God is, then you're going to have those skeptical of such statements push back.
So at whatever point certain believers decided that God was perfectly good and omni-capable, is the point at which skeptics question the existence of such a being, given that the universe is not a perfectly good place to live in.
And I'm familiar with many of Lewis's arguments, having read several of his books. He was a Christian apologist. I do like some of his stuff to this day, but I think his strongest arguments are from joy and longing, and not intellectual defenses of problematic theological positions laid down by the Orthodoxy.
So, on those grounds, I really don't see any merit in the argument that deity is responsible for the obvious evils that you see in history. Looking at the most egregious evils of the 20th C, and surely the Holocaust must be one of them, how would deity supposedly go about interfering with that, or stopping it happening? I just think the idea that God 'permits' such things, as if he or she or it has some executive ability to legislate what ought or ought not to happen, is a misperception of what the meaning of God is in the first place.
I think a plausible conception of deity is 'transcendent yet immanent' - one who is both beyond the world, yet also within it, as intelligence and compassion. When beings manifest intelligence and compassion, then they are figuratively speaking acting in conformance with the divine will (logos or dharma or tao). When they act out of fear, hatred, jealousy, nationalism, and all of the other obstructions, then they're contravening that. And it is that contravention or 'privation of the good' which is the source of evil as far as I am concerned.
And that has even been done by those purportedly acting on behalf of religion itself, which is even more egregious. I would never deny that religions are responsible for evils, as they so clearly have been. But again I attribute that to human ignorance and hatred rather than anything supposedly done by deity.
The very big problem for Christianity and Judaism is that God is very much portrayed as interfering kind of deity in their sacred scriptures. Thus, a Jew can meaningfully agonize at the holocaust, and Christian parent can wonder why in the world God would let their child suffer from a terrible birth defect.
If God is not the sort of being who interferes - speaking from burning bushes, issuing out commandments, healing and striking people down, then you have a more reasonable way of reconciling God with the cosmos, although it still doesn't explain why the cosmos was created in the first place.
The majority of western monotheism involves an interfering God that people pray to to make stuff happen, and that kind of being is wholly incompatible with being omni-perfect and permitting evil.
Keep in mind that Yahweh flooded the Earth in Noah's time, because it was full of evil, but he didn't' see fit to prevent WW2.
That is very ironic. Lucifer is perfectly free.
Imagine the perfect police department, where perfect is defined as always upholding the law. Now also imagine that this department also knows everything about the area they patrol, and are able to do anything.
Now let's further say that all manner of crime exists in this precinct. Not just jaywalking and going 5 miles over the speed limit, but all manner of serious crimes such as murder, arson, theft, rape, etc.
What would be our conclusion? That the so called perfect police department is anything but. But we can imagine certain citizens within the precinct putting forward the FWD to defend the idea of a perfect police department. Despite wanting to uphold the law 100% of the time, the perfect police abstain from interfering many times to allow criminals to commit their crimes, because it's their free will to do so.
Would that definition be compatible with perfectly wishing to uphold the law? No, not in the least bit.
Let's give God a break. The problem is parents and their children. The parents exercise their free will by allowing their children to behave like monsters (which is an act of commission). Their monster-children have a vague but strong id which drives all kinds of behavior, some of it pleasant, some of it not. In the case of many younger people, I wouldn't even call it "will" yet. It's more like "urge".
Parents have the capacity, duty, and responsibility to curb the urges of their offspring. This is what parenting is all about: civilizing id-driven savages so that the are socially acceptable, socially useful, and capable of being happy without mayhem.
Having free will is no guarantee that things will work out well.
A better choice would be a Christian mystic - say somebody like Simone Weil.
I also think that Lewis is wrong to say that God is in the dock. What is in the dock is the anthropomorphic concept of God promoted by doctrinaire apologists like Lewis. If that concept were to be convicted and sent into exile (which, alas will not happen), everybody would be a winner, including Christians, who could then flourish with a more authentic religious form of devotion.
Of course, Yahweh didn't flood the earth in Noah's or anybody else's time. Are you trying to sound provocative?
God didn't make Adam and Eve, put them in a zoo, and tell them not to eat certain plant products, either. You know as well as I do that much of the Bible is a mythopoetic account of the alleged actions of an alleged god toward his alleged favorite group of people, who are apparently quite ungrateful for his alleged efforts on their behalf.
God neither started nor failed to prevent WW2. That was, as usual. human folly at work.
To be fair, you ought to mention the good actions of the alleged god of monotheistic religions (whom I doubt you believe in) allows or (allegedly) aids and abets. You should mention liberation movements, emancipations, wonderful life-enhancing inventions like Nintendo and vibrators, peace making, Straight Guys Against Rape, great art of all kinds, cancer cures, Ben and Jerry's great flavors of ice cream, high quality rapid transit systems, fine gin, whiskey, and bourbon, kind humble people (millions of them--count 'em!), smart, polite children and pets, and so on.
I don't see how any of that gets an omni-perfect being off the hook. In fact, most of that exists because of evil in the first place.
It was a metaphor, where God is the parent, and we are the children. One the theists have been happy to use from time to time, including in their sacred texts.
I doubt you're a proponent of the FWD in the first place.
Sure, but they can aid an argument. If parents allowing their kids to have free reign over the neighborhood is considered immoral, then God allowing us to have free reign over the Earth can't be good.
Indeed, it would not be good. Free will is no excuse for bad behavior, whether on the part of a deity or the brats next door who ought to be straightened out with a big stick.
Here, here. There are some good aspects of Christianity. Unfortunately, those are often tied up with some ridiculous elements.
The entire thread is directed against a very specific notion of God, which was inspired by another thread, parodying that notion with an all-evil God allowing good in the universe, because free will.
Well, I don't know. I don't think the traditional doctrine of 'imago dei' is anthropomorphic. What I think is anthropomorphic, is to regard God as if he were human - as I said, as if he were like the manager who is responsible for everything, so if there's a problem then God has 'executive responsibility' for whatever is it that's gone wrong.
Quoting Marchesk
It still depends on your interpretation. There is a discipline in continental philosophy - not so much in the Anglo-american tradition - called 'hermenuetics', which is concerned with the interpretation of texts such as the Bible.
I think, for instance, your very use of the word 'interferes with', would be considered an improper term from an hermeneutic perspective. And again, your total absence of sympathy with the subject at hand, virtually guarantees that whatever interpretation you come up with, will be negative.
Quoting Wosret
I think the missing factor in many of these discussions is the original notion of what 'freedom' means in (for example) the NT context. When Jesus says, 'the truth will set you free', what is he talking about? I think we've completely lost sight of that, if ever we had sight of it.
That's why I think the Hindu idea of mok?a is significant. Mok?a means 'liberation' or 'freedom' - but freedom from what? In the Hindu context, it is liberation from continual re-birth, which doesn't help much in the Christian context, as the idea of 'continual re-birth' is a Christian heresy. But the idea in a more general sense is liberation from earthly existence, or realisation of a higher identity (the subject of one of Alan Watts' best books, The Supreme Identity). I am one of those universalists who believes that religions generally are pointing at a reality behind or before all of them (again, an idea much more comfortable for Hindus than Christians). But the point is that this is about a state of freedom from any form of emotional turmoil, loss, separation, fear of death, and so on. It is freedom in the sense of not having a care in the world, being utterly untrammelled.
Why? Because the god who is all unknowable mystery can not be convicted of anything. He's the all-purpose cause, the all-purpose reason, the all-purpose excuse. Very useful, really, but bogus.
I just don't see how that God can be only good, when there is evil and suffering in existence. A God who was both good and evil makes a lot more sense. Or a god indifferent to morality. An amoral being. A being for whom empathy and justice is a foreign concept. My very limited understanding of Hinduism is that God is beyond good and evil.
But a perfectly good God with omni-powers is in direct contradiction with existence.
What would you call what Yahweh and Jesus do in the various books of the bible, if "interference" is objectionable to your continental sensibilities? And I'm very familiar with the overall material, so it's not like you can tell me they weren't actively involved with human events throughout the entire Bible (or predicted to be actively involved in future events).
Also, I think the book of Job does a better job with evil and suffering than C.S. Lewis, and it still leaves one deeply dissatisfied. Afterall, God let Job suffer just to prove a point to Satan, and never told Job why.
You know people who are really very fine people, but they can't solve their own difficult problems, or other people's difficult problems. That kind of god would have to put up with evil, just like we do. That kind of god would make better company for us.
That name 'Yahweh' - are you familiar with the etymology and the rationale behind the etymology?
Quoting Marchesk
As I say, I think it's because of a deficient characterisation.
God has interfered, intervened, got involved with, the affairs of this world much like the US got involved in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria: The intentions may have been good, but the results were not. For all the interventions of the triune god, the world is in pretty bad shape.
Perhaps there's method in god's madness.
Perhaps we mistake justice for evil.
As you can see, defending god means doing some nifty mental gymnastics and those who do it aren't showing any signs of fatigue.
I don't think that it's helpful to talk about morality abstractly, or divorced from demonstration, from a direct expression of your own life -- maybe even dangerous. Maybe somethings are profane.
God is said to have given us free will, unlike parents who do not give us free will. So there is a difference in the meaning of "permission" in the OP when you compare parents who permit their children to perform evil acts and God who ("permits") allows for the ability to choose to perform evil acts.
When you say that "the universe is not a perfectly good place to live in", how are your terms defined, so that you can truthfully say that? Do we not live in the universe? And is the universe not perfectly suited for our living in it? It seems to me like you must be defining "good" in some odd sort of way. Do you realize that if we took all the pain and suffering out of living, it would no longer be living according to "living" as we know it? What kind of life do you think is "the good life"?
Quoting Marchesk
As I told you, this is not the case, quite the contrary, Lucifer is fated to eternal damnation, and that is the very opposite of free. It is by the power of God that Lucifer is thus fated. You wish to remove God from this scene, and give Lucifer free reign, but this is impossible, because God created Lucifer in the first place. So if you remove God, there is no Lucifer.
All you have done is created your own personal concept of "Lucifer", as independent from God, and absolutely free. But this is exactly Lucifer's mistake, which you are now making, why Lucifer got condemned to eternal damnation. Lucifer believed himself to be absolutely free, independent from God, not created by God, and therefore absolutely free, exactly what you are now saying about Lucifer. But this is a falsity, and that belief, believing this falsity, is what condemns Lucifer to eternal damnation. So you are simply repeating the false belief which Lucifer held, as if it were the truth, and making the same mistake as Lucifer.
Quoting Marchesk
God does not give us "free reign". The laws of nature are highly restrictive. And so we have pain, suffering, and death, as a result of the restrictions placed upon us by God. You seem to be arguing two sides of the same argument. You seem to assume that the suffering and death which are directly related to the restrictions but upon us by God, are bad, yet you argue as if God has given us complete freedom as well. Clearly, we do not have complete freedom. So if you want to attribute the pain and suffering which human beings cause to each other, to God, then you must recognize that pain and suffering only occurs when we are forced outside the bounds of God's restrictions, which are the laws of nature.
As I said before, free will is essential to learning. By pushing against God's restrictions, we learn them, just like children pushing against the adults' restrictions learn them. But to arguing that we allow our children free reign, yet we also punish them for being bad, would be contradictory. And that's what you are saying about God, that God allows us free reign, yet God also punishes us with pain and suffering.
Quoting Marchesk
In Christian theology, "existence" is good, by definition. That's why God created, because He saw that existence is good. So your statement above, if taken under theological principles is complete nonsense. "Good" is defined by existence, so if God is what gives existence, then God is good.
The problem you are having, is that you want to define "good" in relation to something else, something other than existence. If you do this, then you will be able to say that the perfectly good God is in contradiction to existence. But you have not defined "good" at all. All you are doing is assuming that the concept of "good" can be based in something other than existence, and from this assumption you claim that the perfectly good God is in direct contradiction with existence.
Sure, but society takes over that role to an extent. We have various laws that are enforced, to an extent, which curb people's free will to do anything they might want.I could really hate my neighbor and wish them dead, but restrain from carrying it out because I don't want to go to prison.
I think this sort of thing demonstrates that human beings don't really believe in any sort of absolute free will as being a good thing.
All of that is fine, provided that God values free will over good, which means that God is something other than being perfectly good. It's certainly not something that human societies value in practice.
That's not necessarily true. If free will is itself a good then it's imprecise to say that God values free will over good; rather you'd have to say that God values free will over other types of good. As explained here, "the value of free will (and the goods it makes possible) is so great as to outweigh the risk that it may be misused in various ways".
So the problem is that you think the evils of "tortur[ing] animals, terroriz[ing] neighborhood kids, steal[ing] and vandaliz[ing], etc." are greater than the good of free will, whereas the free will theodicist thinks that the good of free will is greater than those evils.
Corrupting the youth.
If society was omnipotent to the extent that every crime was invariably punished, then indeed every arsehole would find it expedient to be compliant. There would be no virtue in good behaviour, any more than there is virtue in having regard to gravity. Such a world would be 'perfect' in the behaviour of its inhabitants without their being 'good' at all. In fact it would be a pretty hellish society to my mind.
That's an interesting justification. But what's really being argued is that God values free will at the cost of permitting various evils to exist. It's not a matter of weighing goods, it's a matter of weighing the good of free will over permitting evil.
And it's not a risk to God, because God already knows that various evils will happen as a result of free will.
So the question becomes whether any good justifies evil, and whether free will is such a good. It would be quite easy to turn the argument around and argue that free will is evil, because it allows for evil to exist. And God, being in favor of evil, created free will for that very reason.
It would be a hellish society where nobody had the free will to murder, rape, steal, commit genocide, or start wars?
I understand such an argument if that involves other unacceptable costs to being human, but not if it only limits our ability to do evil things. Because that is the sort of society we attempt to have much of the time, but fail to do so because we're imperfect, fallible humans with limited abilities.
Setting aside the plausibility of such a scenario, which is fodder for a different sort of discussion, what might such an AI do? Well, let's say it was designed initially with humanity's highest ideals as its guiding motivation. Then when it eats the internet and becomes all-knowing and powerful, relative to us, it could set about to prevent murder, rape, war, child abuse, etc.
It could do what God fails to do, which is prevent various evils. Would we consider such a constraint on human free will to be a good or bad thing?
A Clockwork Orange.
I've never actually seen it, so can you explain how not being able to commit terrible evils would be a hellish thing for society?
Quoting Marchesk
I'm all in favour of locking them up out of harm's way, but eliminating everyone's freedom is a very high price to pay.
But we are only talking about eliminating everyone's freedom to commit certain crimes. Now that can be abused, and accomplishing it might have unwanted consequences, so maybe we wouldn't find such a society acceptable.
But not because people were unable to rape, pillage, burn, etc. Most people would rather live in a world where war and child abuse was a thing of the past and what not.
My argument is that we don't really value the free will to commit certain evils, nor do we consider having such free will a good thing. What we value is the free will to do non-evil things, and we're worried that some people would like to constrain us from living how we like, when it doesn't involve committing those evils.
On that account it's not like they don't interfere.
Actually, some of the interference has been quite severe.
Well sure, that's why we have a justice system. But you really want an omnipotent dictator to make the decision about what you are allowed to be free to do ... if that's not already contradictory?
If it stops genocide without impinging on other freedoms, then absolutely.
Why would it need to be me? I'm guessing 99% of the world would rather genocide never occurred again.
In context of the FWD, that would be libertarian free will. Lucifer, Adam & Eve, Ted Bundy, etc could have done otherwise.
Because 99% would add in other things like tax dodging, queue-jumping, petty theft, flaming, driving without due care and attention, fracking, dropping litter, and so on.
Also, I think that 1% would have difficulty committing genocide; it generally takes a lot of people working together.
But presumably God or a super AI would be able to draw the line such that we meaningfully had free will while not permitting the worst evils?
That is what we wish the world could be like. We want to be free, but we don't want people to be free to kill or enslave us, nor do we expect ourselves to be free to do those things (hopefully).
Is love possible without free will? If not, could the possibility of love perhaps be a good that far outweighs the cost of permitting evil and suffering? Would not an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being know the true answers to these questions and act accordingly?
Is love a freely willed choice, though? Do you get to choose who you love, who you hate, and who you're indifferent too? I have my doubts.
Let's say it is necessitated by having free will. Does that mean free will to do anything, or just free will to love?
I certainly don't love everyone, but I also don't commit terrible crimes against anyone, although surely my character would be improved by having more empathy. I'm not seeing that my free will to love needs the ability to murder to exist.
Maybe She has. "Fuck yourselves up as much as you like, in your solar playpen, but the rest of the universe is on a high shelf 'til you grow up."
Perhaps a tangential issue, but assuming that one's character is not a choice (I can't choose to be the kind of person who desires to harm others), and assuming that this does not conflict with having free will, the question becomes "why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God create people of bad character?". The free will defence doesn't seem to work here.
How fortunate it is, (unless it is God's will), that we philosophers are all of good character and do not have murderous and violent desires.
Really? It seems obvious to me that love, hate, or indifference is always a choice that we make. Jesus taught that we should choose to love everyone - even our enemies. It is a mistake to treat love as merely an emotion that comes and goes; in fact, it is an explicit commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27)
Quoting Marchesk
How could someone have genuine free will to love, while having no genuine free will in any other respect?
Quoting Marchesk
Having free will to love entails having the ability to hate. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." (1 John 3:15)
It's not a choice I make.
Quoting aletheist
He did, and it's noble and all, but I don't see how it works in the real world. I'm very suspicious of anyone who claims to love everyone.
Quoting aletheist
I don't know how you can choose to love anyone. You either do your you don't. It can be a process, but it's not something you can force. Sure, I can act as if I love someone, out of duty, or because I think society requires it, or because my religion demands it, but that doesn't mean I actually love them.
I don't see how you can divorce love and hate from feeling. Imaging telling a loved one that you brought them a gift because it was your duty.
I didn't say we couldn't have free will in other aspects, just not free will to do terrible things like murder. But I don't think that love has much to do with free will.
However, that's a different discussion.
Yes, or even testosterone and so on.
I choose to love my wife, even in those moments when I do not like her very much, and she does the same. That is what keeps our marriage intact. Wrongly thinking that love is merely an emotion is one reason why there are so many divorces these days.
Quoting Marchesk
Right - you actually love someone only if you freely choose to do so. And obviously we are not talking about romantic love here (eros), but self-sacrificing love (agape) - putting the interests of others ahead of our own.
Quoting Marchesk
Why would you think that feeling and duty are the only possible motivations for bringing someone a gift?
Quoting Marchesk
That explains why you are having so much difficulty with the free will defense. The typical argument is not that free will itself is a good that outweighs the resulting evil, but that free will is a prerequisite for love, which is a good that outweighs the resulting evil.
I'm all in favor of free will, but I don't think we just freely choose to love anyone, whether that love be eros, agape, or philia. What we can will ourselves to do is remove inhibitions to agape, for instance, and we can will ourselves to act out agape until we feel agape. We can decide to seek out the teaching of agape, and so on. One use of the word 'grace' covers that inability to will unconditional love. Sometimes (through the good offices of our limbic system or grace) we do feel unconditional love for others, but we definitely didn't just decide to feel that way.
What prevents us from willing love? Love originates in the systems of the brain where will has little sway. The exercise of will can prevent us from acting on our feelings, but it is practically unable to prevent feelings (emotions) from arising.
It would be nice if we could will ourselves to love the people we don't love. But it seems the best we can do is choose to act humanely toward them, despite not loving them, because we want them to do the same to us.
Maybe the Buddhists have gone a bit farther here with cultivating empathy?
As I said before, love is not a matter of feelings (emotions). Otherwise, the exhortation to love our enemies would be absurd.
Quoting Michael
Love is not a matter of attraction, either.
Quoting Marchesk
Choosing to act humanely toward them is choosing to love them - especially if we do so not because we want them to do the same to us, but simply because they are our fellow human beings.
So I act well toward person A because I really like them and enjoy their company and value them as a person. But I act well toward person B (okay maybe just passably well) because they are human, and I wish them to do the same for me, but I can't stand them.
How is it that I love person B?
Precisely by choosing to act well toward that person, despite your negative feelings about him/her, rather than simply acting in accordance with the latter.
I don't consider that to be love, but it's a semantic disagreement. I don't think something can be love if it's absent the feeling. I understand that people don't always feel love toward each other, but can still act in a loving way. I would consider that faking it to keep the relationship going, because the bond exists from a feeling of love enough of the time.
Humans are imperfect lovers. We don't always love the people we're friends, family, lovers with.
I think Jesus had to command that because humans don't always love. Otherwise, it would just happen.
First, it rests on three key points:
1) Libertarian free will exists.
2) Libertarian free will is, in some way, a necessary condition for moral responsibility.
3) Libertarian free will and moral responsibility are always worthwhile and outweigh the negatives it produces.
All three are questionable, especially the first two points.
Second, there is always the possible world that J.L. Mackie describes: beings who, through their own free will, always choose to do good. If Mackie's world is possible and God can create this possible world, then the free will defense fails. I know the response is to say God cannot actually create this world and that it is up to the agents within the world to make it happen, but I do not see how, without claiming that God cannot have foreknowledge of the actions of free creatures, one can avoid God's ability to foresee which possible world contains no moral evil and create that world. There is an interesting discussion, one that I have never personally seen discussed, about God's responsibilities and morality if God cannot know the actions of free agents ahead of time, as God effectively would be creating the world blind.
Third, the free will defense, at best, can only explain evils caused by human agents. Free will might be able to work for the logical problem of evil in this regard, but unless you want to commit to a metaphysical reality in which every natural disaster is the result of decisions made by angelic beings, then natural evil and evils that are not the result of guilty agents creates problems.
Again, that explains why you are having so much difficulty with the free will defense.
Quoting Marchesk
I would never argue otherwise.
Which goes to the question of why God created Lucifer in the first place.
Quoting Chany
Is free will supposed to be something that God cannot know about in advance? That would seem to place a limit on omniscience, and God knowing or existing through all points in time. That God is subject to time like created beings are.
Quoting Chany
That is an interesting question. So God plays dice with free will?
I don't think free will justifies the existence of evil, regardless. Not for a perfectly good God. A different sort of God, sure.
Basically, you have to argue that a perfectly good being is willing to put up with evil to achieve higher goods, such as love. I'm not sure that works. The higher good is worth any evil that comes about as a result. Sounds like the ends justifies the means for God.
The courage and love of these individuals outweighs the evil of war.
Now, I don't think that works as a moral argument. I think the evil of war is what matters, not whether some individuals managed to be super good. So, a thousand people were incredibly brave, but 10 thousand died, including civilians, children, etc. What sort of moral calculus is that?
Obviously, given your posts.
Quoting Marchesk
If God is real, then whatever He is, is perfectly good. Who are we to judge otherwise?
Why suppose he is perfectly good, though?
If God is real, then who has the authority to define "perfectly good" as anything other than whatever God is?
I don't know. Did God say he was perfect, or did human beings come up with that?
The point is that if God is real, then "perfectly good" is whatever He is. If that turns out to be different than what we humans define as "perfectly good," then we are the ones who have it wrong, not God.
In that case, we wouldn't call God perfectly good, would we? God could be perfectly evil from our point of view, but perfectly good from God's. Maybe we have it all backwards?
This is actually an issue with your argument. The theist does not need to be committed to the existence of Lucifer or believe the common tales surrounding Lucifer. You are attacking a specific subset of theists only, but not the tri-omni god of classical theism.
Quoting Marchesk
There is the issue of divine foreknowledge: Before time starts (t0), God knows all things, per omniscience. At t0, God knows the following proposition: At t1, Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle using her free will. The proposition "At t1, Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle using her free will" must be true. t1 roles around and Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle using her free will. However, did Jane actually have free will? Jane, in order to have free will, must have the ability to do otherwise; in this case, Jane must have the ability to have bought a blue motorcycle instead of a red car. But how could she have done otherwise at t1 when, at t0, God knows the outcome? "At t1, Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle using her free will" must occur because if it does not, God would be wrong, an impossibility. Because Jane must buy a red car at t1, she cannot have free will, as she cannot do otherwise.
How we should respond to this issue is debatable. Some say that it shows an inherent problem of the concept of omniscience. Some say that this issue is resolvable such that both God's foreknowledge and human freedom can be preserved. Open theists solve the issue by saying that it is impossible for God to know these facts. In other words, God cannot know what free agents will do with their free will because it is impossible for God to do this, much like it is impossible for God to create a rock so heavy God cannot lift it.
Quoting Marchesk
Again, there is a lot to be discussed about this: how much God can know if God does not know free willed actions. For example, it would have to be the case that God cannot gain knowledge via deduction about free will decisions because it would result in the same issue as before. This, of course, assumes that there is not another way to resolve the problem of divine foreknowledge.
And if that were the case, whose point of view would be correct?
I am one who would say this. God's foreknowledge that Jane will buy the red car does not cause Jane to buy the red car, He simply knows beforehand that she will freely choose to do so. More accurately, God is outside of time - after all, He created time - so there is no "beforehand" from His point of view, He simply knows what she will/does/did choose.
Knowing a free choice is a contradiction in terms, as freedom implies the ability to do otherwise. If God knows the choices we make before we make them, then we could not have done otherwise, or else he would not know the choices he allegedly knows.
Quoting aletheist
The word "create" implies an act in time. To say that time did not always exist is to say that there was a time before time, which is absurd.
Normally, knowledge does not have any metaphysical import. However, with God, this would not apply. God's omniscience is always there. The propositions God knows are not gain reflexively via observation; God simply knows all true propositions. Anything below God must adhere to the truth value of these propositions, including God's creations. God's foreknowledge does not directly cause Jane's actions like the force of gravity does. However, when God knows "At t1, Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle," it is the same as saying "At t1, Jane buys a red car instead of a blue motorcycle using her free will" is true. Because it is true, this means that when t1 roles around, Jane must buy a red car. Jane cannot do otherwise because if Jane were to buy a blue motorcycle, she would violate known and established truth that God already knows. In other words, what propositions God knows to be true must come about because of the very absolute and definitive nature of omniscience.
Per the IEP article on "Foreknowledge and Free Will," "Ultimately the alleged incompatibility of foreknowledge and free will is shown to rest on a subtle logical error. When the error, a modal fallacy, is recognized and remedied, the problem evaporates."
Quoting Thorongil
Even Big Bang cosmology posits a "beginning of time." It is indeed problematic to talk about anything "before" time, but that is simply a limitation of human thought and language.
Thanks for the article. I've struggled to find a rigorous way to show that determinism isn't entailed by foreknowledge, so that's helpful.
Although I will add that one can avoid the modal fallacy by having as a premise that foreknowledge is only possible if determinism is true (else how can one actually come to know what will happen?). Of course, if you posit some supreme being who can simply have the knowledge without explanation then this premise can be denied.
No, it doesn't. Lots of science popularizers say this sort of thing, but it's not technically accurate. The Big Bang is a singularity and a singularity is just a word used to describe the breakdown of physics equations. Nothing much follows from it, other than our ignorance of it.
Quoting aletheist
Can you summarize the error?
Please explain, in your own words, the modal logic and how the problem of divine foreknowledge I presented is solved.
Keep in mind that the people who write these articles are philosophers and thinkers who already have opinions on the topic. Appealing to a IEP article, I guess I can show that the evidential problem of evil escapes criticism.
This is true, and (as you say) often overlooked or misunderstood. In fact, it is a rarely acknowledged assumption that the so-called "laws of nature" have operated throughout the past exactly as we observe them operating today, all the way back to that singularity or very shortly thereafter. Are you saying, then, that we can meaningfully talk about something that was before the Big Bang?
Quoting Thorongil
Quoting Chany
Basically, the mistake is thinking that the actuality of P entails the impossibility of not-P, or that God's (or anyone else's) knowledge that P entails that P is necessarily true; P remains contingent in both cases. It is not the case that Jane buys the red car because God knows that Jane will buy the red car; rather, God knows that Jane will buy the red car because Jane (freely) buys the red car.
Quoting Chany
The error is to go from ¬?(A ? ¬B) to A ? ?B.
A is "I know that you will turn left" and B is "You will turn left". Determinism requires ?B, but ?B isn't entailed by A.
Right, ¬?(A ? ¬B) entails ?(A ? B), not A ? ?B. Likewise, "if x knows that p, then p must be true" is properly formalized as ?(Kxp ? p), rather than Kxp ? ?p.
Do you think it would have been better to be an object without the capacity to choose, like a rock or something, than to be a human being with the capacity to choose, but with the possibility that the choice might be the wrong choice? Because that's what you're arguing, that God would have been a better God if He created us without the capacity to choose.
I'm saying we can't meaningfully talk about there being something or not something before the Big Bang. All such talk is by definition meaningless unless and until we know more about it. The proper response is agnosticism, especially as scientific theories can and do change. The philosopher is free to speculate, certainly, but the scientist in his capacity as a scientist is not.
Quoting aletheist
I think I knew this. My issue is with the parenthetical "freely" you included. What is that adding? What does it even mean?
I would say there is a third option that people in this debate rarely talk about: that it could be better had God not created us or anything at all. The framing of your question is such that it makes God create either way, it's just a matter of what he creates. Well, I don't think we can assume that. If God was free to create, why did he choose to do so?
People use the free will define as an explanation of how God is good and must remain hidden, but there is literally no difference in terms of causality. Whether God is hidden or not doesn’t change either God’s knowledge or God’s action in causing this particular world over another. For God to appear to us, for example, is no less “coercive” with respect to causality than getting some people to believe through a threat of eternal damnation.Either way, people are caused, and a present with a situation (scripture telling of God, God presenting in for to them) where they must make a choice with their free will.
In any case, God knowingly creates a system of forces which results in people who choose to follow or not. With respect to God’s causal and moral responsibility, it actually makes no difference whether God is hidden or not. Either way, God knowing creates people who will be damned for eternity rather than not (when God could have easily done otherwise).
The free will defence is a contradiction. It’s used to account for a situation free will makes impossible. Free will absolves causality from being responsible for the logical definition of of an act. An action is not the responsibility of that which caused the person who acts (e.g. God, a parent, etc.), but of the individual themselves. Within deterministic causality, they freely chose to act in this way. When will is free, causality no longer predetermines any act, no matter how it was caused. If there is free will, any causal act (including God’s) cannot violate it. God may know of and deliberately cause anything without violating free will (as God does in creating this particular world).
So the free will defence of God is actually based on denying free will. It desperately wants to put all the power in God’s hands, to make the casual acts of God logically necessary, as if they were predetermined and didn’t have to deal with other beings with their own being and agency. The move is a self-serving one, made to put God beyond other possibilities and moral responsibility for actions.
If what God does is logically necessary, God had no other ways of acting— it’s the only way to resolve the problem of omnipotence, omniscience and God’s nature of being necessarily good. All other (and possibility moral better!) courses of action must be logically incoherent, such that they don’t constitute a possibility that an omnipotent being could have easily performed instead.
Rather than being a defence against the argument God is evil, free will is really the killing blow. If there is free will, then what God knowingly causes does not take away the fact people choose. God may be resolved of the responsibility of defining the evil acts of humanity, but this also means how God acts does not violate free will. Being omnipotent and omniscience, God could have easily chosen to create only people who would choose to follow God’s authority. Or chosen not to burn people who did not follow God’s authority for eternity.
The freedom of will is what defines the moral abhorrence of this God.
God's knowledge that Jane will buy the red car does not entail that Jane will necessarily buy the red car, such that buying the blue motorcycle instead is impossible. The latter is thus still an alternate possibility, and Jane freely chooses to buy the red car (in the libertarian sense), rather than being (deterministically) compelled to do so.
The free will allows us to make the choice. Some can say that the free will lets us choose between defiance and cooperation with God.
I guess I can add that to the list of assumptions made by the free will defense.
Something seems off about this. Then again, most things regarding the existence of free will seem off to me, so what do I know.
Like Chany, there's still something fishy about this. For God to know her action before she chose it may not mean that God proximally caused the action, but it does mean her action isn't free, or else he couldn't know of it in advance. Perhaps you will say that God is not in time and so doesn't know anything in advance. He knows everything all at once. But the notion of "knowing everything at once" is completely beyond our kin, perhaps even incoherent. If so, then the free will defense isn't even necessary to make. The best response to the problem of evil is God's in the book of Job, as Marchesk pointed out, which is effectively, "I hear your complaint, but you can't know with much or indeed any clarity what I am, why I do the things I do in the ways I do them, and why I permit certain things you perceive as evil." This is not a satisfying response, because it's effectively a cop out, but it's better than concocting philosophically untenable theodicies.
In doing so we're forgetting a salient point - that the understanding is corrupted, we don't see the nature of the situation we're in, but instead hypothesise about something we could never know.
And this all came about because believers claimed that God was so and so. Atheists didn't invent omniscience or the perfectly good. The FWD exists because some believers wish to defend God's omnibenevolence.
I read an argument about G's supposed foreknowledge a while back. It went along the lines that God sees all of time: past, presence and future, but it is all past to him, and since he is perfect he can't change what he remembers, therefore we are free to act any way we want.
That is an interesting and a bit unusual argument.
I recall a Christian explaining to me in college how the Garden of Eden was a setup. God wanted Adam and Evil to fall, because that was the only way to work out the potential of evil in creation, and deal with it.
I thought that explanation was better than most Christian explanations regarding free will and evil, but it would probably be considered heretical by many denominations.
God created because He knew that it was good to do so.
Ignore my question if you are being ironic. But what guides or constrains the answer you give?
Free will can be argued as immoral only with the reference to morality. In that regard, all actions performed consciously with free will can only be considered immoral if they are done with no regard to morality. When regard to morality is given and yet an immoral outcome is observed, a penance of reorientation to morality must be made. This might sound familiar, but you can leave religion out of it completely and still find that this applies to any virtue hierarchies that have rules.
In the absence of such a hierarchy, you can have free will without morality. Unfortunately we don't have any evidence to indicate that we live in such a hierarchy, so we must presume that we do or we will face obvious consequences.
Free will is not exactly free, thanks to that. Will has consequence.
If you like, you can take the issue up with an archetypal deity, like you did with your first post. Unfortunately, no such deity will respond to you. You could conclude that the deity is amoral because of this, if you wish, but not immoral. You can't prove that it's possible for the moral to exist in the absence of the immoral. In the absence of both, free will would only exist for you and you would be a God with only yourself as a subject.
I'm inclined to ignore your question because I really don't know what you're asking. Anyway, here's the answer to the best of my knowledge, my answer was guided, or constrained by Thorongil's question.
To be clearer, why would your answer be preferable to something like
"God created because He knew that it was evil to do so."
In what way would this alternative answer be less guided or constrained by Thorongil's question?
So, assertions about God are based on conventions.
Eventually the rubber hits the road for some assertions. Like for example whether somebody is dead or alive. And then there are assertions of the sort made in mathematics.
What sort is
"God created because He knew that it was good to do so"?
The existence of Thor?
So if he knew it was good to create, why didn't he create before he did? If he always ever created, then, once again, in what sense is he free?
I might be assuming an incorrect theory of time, but time might be thought of as a measurement of causation and movement. If there is no movement or causation, time does not exist. Therefore, God's first act of creation would cause time to come into being. As such, there is no time before God moves and God's first "movement", so to speak, could easily have been creation or the causally and logically necessary steps in order to create our world.
Quoting Thorongil
I am a little confused by what you are saying here, but based on my understanding of the question:
We could always say that God does not have free will like we do. I believe Kant went down this line of thought. Because God is, by the very nature of God, perfectly good, he will always do the good option. Whether this means God is somehow logically compelled to do good or always just chooses to do good because of his nature is irrelevant.
The scare quotes are precisely the problem here. In what sense can an "act" or "movement" not be in time? Both words presuppose time.
Quoting Chany
If God has always been a creator, then there couldn't have been a time when he freely chose to create. Otherwise, how is it a choice? If you've always had brown hair, then you didn't freely choose to have brown hair.
Quoting Chany
Why is it irrelevant? If he cannot but do good, and it is good to create, then he cannot but create. That's fine, but then he isn't free and his creation must be co-eternal with him.
As Chany says, time comes into existence with God's creation.
Quoting Thorongil
As a dualist, I recognize two distinct forms of actuality. One is activity, movement, and that necessarily requires time. The other is the actuality of existence, being, and this is the form of any existing thing. Any existing thing must have a form, and this is what makes it an actual thing. The form is a describable state of existence, and is therefore not an activity, nor a movement. Since it is not an activity, nor a movement, it is not necessarily "in time". In fact, whenever there is activity or movement, there is necessarily something which is moving, and this moving thing has a describable form. Since it is necessary that there is a thing which moves, that describable form is prior to activity, or movement. So if time is associated with movement, then this thing, which exists as a describable form, is necessarily prior to time.
Quoting Thorongil
Human beings have not yet conceived of what it means to be prior to time, so speculations such as this are really irrelevant.
Quoting Thorongil
When God acts, he will do good, but he need not necessarily act, He acts by choice. To not choose to act, is not to do bad, because it isn't doing anything. Privation, which is a lack of good, is not the same thing as committing a bad act. So you need to consider three distinct things, a good act, a bad act, and no act at all. God will not make a bad act, but God has the capacity to refrain from acting. Isn't this how human beings obtain morality, by refraining from bad actions. God will always refrain from the bad action.
The actualization of existence doesn't take place in time? What does "actualization" mean, then?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a cop out. "We don't know what we're talking about, but please accept our propositions anyway." Why would I be convinced of that? It can't just be that the objections are irrelevant speculations. The propositions to which they are addressed must be irrelevant speculations, too.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You haven't addressed my objection at all. Choosing still takes place in and presupposes time. If God had to create because he is good and creating is good, then he had no choice. So too would his creation be co-eternal with him.
My exceedingly vague notion of this idea is that it can be argued that the fundamental constants - those very small number of constants which are such that the universe can form stars>matter>life - can be depicted as pre-existing constraints or conditions which determine the parameters of existence. So, even though time doesn't exist 'before' the Singularity (as there is no 'before' in the same sense as there being 'nowhere further north than the North Pole'), once the Big Bang occurs, then those constants ensure that the process gives rise to life and mind. That is the drift of the anthropic cosmological argument as I understand it.
It is relevant because there is point to be made about the difference between
1) "multiplication is commutative"
and
2) "There is only one God and he had a Son"
Civilizations thousands of miles apart independently have conventions that assert 1) but not 2)
A point I was trying to make in response to:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
and
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I didn't say "actualization", don't misquote me. I said "actuality". An actuality is something real, and it is quite possible that there is something real outside of time. You are simply trying to dismiss the dualist premise by saying that all actualities are necessarily activities, and therefore time dependent. The dualist doesn't believe that all actualities are time dependent, that's how we can talk about eternal things.
Quoting Thorongil
There is much that remains unknown to human beings, Why would you think that admitting so much is a "cop out"? Would you prefer to pretend that human beings know all there is to know? If logic indicates that it is possible that there is something outside of time, why not accept this as a real possibility, instead of closing your mind to what logic indicates?
Quoting Thorongil
You seem to be mixing future with past. Prior to creation, God did not have to create, God had a choice. But what God created is good. He would not have created it unless he saw it as good. This is how free choice works, when an individual sees X as good, one acts on that. It is only after the act occurs that we can say that the individual saw X as good. It is the "seeing X as good" which causes the act. So it is neither "X", nor 'good", which causes the act, it is the individual who sees X as good, which causes the act.
Concerning your objection then, we say that God is good, because God created. But this does not mean that God had to create. God had a choice. If God did not create, then we could consider that God was not good, but we wouldn't be here to do that. If you think that choosing presupposes time, then you do not understand the nature of immaterial existence. "Time" as we know it is a concept derived from material existence. And experience demonstrates to us that nothing other than choice can be the cause of material existence.
Quoting Frederick KOH
So you are saying that some conventions are more widely accepted than others. That might be relevant if we were basing our judgements on how widely accepted the conventions are. But I don't think that's a good way of basing your judgements. We should judge on whether or not we think the convention is true. I think the convention which says that God created because He saw that it was good, is true. I believe this because that's how I understand free will, when we see that something is good, we act on that. So it is completely consistent to say that God created because He saw that it was good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Actually I was providing data problematic for your claim that
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
in response to
iQuoting Frederick KOH
The words "widely accepted" are not in my comments.
Are there civilizations that assert statements that contradict the commutativity of multiplcation?
How would I know, what is your point?
Just to make sure, by "the commutativity of multiplcation"
I mean 3 times 7 is the same as 7 times 3 - the order doesn't matter.
Contradicting it means saying there are cases where changing the order
would result in different numbers.
I think this is a strong, and moral position. Nothing can justify evil, no amount of good. This is the death knell of utilitarianism, at least. Yet God permits evil even if he does not create it, and it certainly looks like he creates it.
Now if life were a game of space invaders, one could readily see that the game maker needed to create the invaders, to make the game worth playing, even though the player has at all times to seek to destroy them. It is invidious from the comfort of the philosopher's chair or the preacher's pulpit, though, to explain to life's losers that their suffering makes a better game of life. So one should perhaps keep such insights to oneself, and simply fight against evil in the game of life one is playing without either condemning or justifying God's game plan.
Citation needed.
True by definition. If it's justified, it's not evil.
Clearly this definition isn't agreed upon by everyone, given the free will defence and utilitarianism.
But even if we accept this definition as stipulated, the free will theodicist and utilitarian could simply argue that because certain harmful acts are justified for the greater good it then follows that these harmful acts aren't evil, and so the problem of evil is dismissed on the grounds that evil doesn't actually exist.
So in this case what needs to be argued is that certain acts are indeed evil (i.e. unjustified).
You really need me to argue that? I don't think I can. Take a look around.
I don't see how looking addresses the issue. Is justifiability a visual phenomenon?
Or maybe you just meant this metaphorically, and justifiability (or lack thereof) is something that is reasoned? In which case the free will theodicist (and utilitarian in related cases) has applied the reasoning given above; the existence of free will justifies the existence of harm, and if evil is unjustified then this harm isn't evil.
It seems to me that you're treading close to equivocation, where the so-called evil I see by looking around is evil in a sense in which "not justified" isn't part of the definition.
Couldn't this line of reasoning be used to justify any action? It's the ends justify the means sort of morality. Genocide isn't evil if it leads to something better.
And indeed, you do find it in the OT, where God is commanding Joshua to go slaughter a bunch of people.
All of this seems like rationalization to me.
If evil is defined (in part) as being unjustified. If it isn't defined in this way then genocide could still be evil even if justified by the greater good.
What I'm really trying to get at here is that it begs the question to say "this evil act isn't justified because evil is defined as being unjustified". If you define evil as being unjustified then you need to show that this so-called evil really is unjustified. And if you don't define evil as being unjustified then you need to defend the claim "nothing can justify evil, no amount of good.".
I don't think evil is defined as justifiable. We might agree that sometimes war is necessary and therefore justifiable, but it's still evil. It's just less evil than the alternative (or at least so we think, although not everyone will agree).
We're forced into those moral dilemmas at times because we're not God, and have serious constraints on what we can do or know.
Yes, so unenlightened needs to defend his claim "Nothing can justify evil, no amount of good." His attempt at doing so – "True by definition. If it's justified, it's not evil." – doesn't work (unless he can also show that this so-called evil really isn't justified).
When it comes to God, the question is why evil would ever need to be justifiable. The FWD is that the existence of free will does this, but God's omniscience should allow him to only create those who will choose not to do evil.
Otherwise, God's omniscience is in doubt. The theist will need to argue that God didn't know Lucifer would rebel, and somehow this lack of knowledge is not a limitation on knowing everything, because presumably free will prevents such knowledge.
So then the argument becomes about God being able to know everything to prevent evil.
The simple answer is that God has a good reason for creating things that choose to do evil, given that he is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent. That he has a good reason for doing so would follow from the premises, even if we don't know what that good reason is.
Or the concept is simply flawed, resulting in defenders of it claiming that we mere mortals can't know. It's really suspicious that the argument ends up with God's mysterious ways.
It's not that the concept (of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God) is flawed (notwithstanding any omnipotence/omniscience paradox), but that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God is supposedly inconsistent with the existence of evil. But the point of the free will defence (and others) is that this isn't inconsistent. There are good reasons for creating things that choose to do evil.
And what are those good reasons? You just stated that God must have a good reason, but it can't be known by us, which seems like a huge cop out.
We don't need to know what the good reasons are for "there are good reasons" to follow from the premises.
Just as we don't need to know what's in the box to infer from the evidence that something is in the box (e.g. it weighs more than it would if empty).
But if the argument can't show what the good reasons are, then why isn't the argument flawed? The argument is assuming there is one.
Quoting Michael
That's because we know the difference in weight between an empty box and one that has something in it. That analogy doesn't apply here.
The argument doesn't assume that there is a good reason. The argument concludes that there is a good reason. The argument doesn't need to explain what the good reasons are for "there are good reasons" to follow from the premises.
The principle is the same. We can infer that there is some X even if we can't infer what that X is.
I'm not treading close, I'm jumping in with both feet. But I'm not saying that free will is the justification of evil, nor that good is the justification of evil. There is no justification for evil, but only excuses. But here I am speaking as an evil-doer, a mere mortal.
But speaking as a philosopher, I am saying that there can be no evil and no good without free will, and that is what we generally mean by evil, when we are being careful about how we speak. If I couldn't help running you down by any sensible precaution, then I am not guilty of the misfortune you suffered. Likewise, the cruelty of a cat that plays with a mouse is not evil, because cats lack a moral sensibility.
And then speaking for God, I say I'm glad I don't have to make Her decisions. But I can vaguely see that the unfailing tolerance and equanimity of the good forum contributor may not be appropriate to the admin.
Then you haven't justified your claim that nothing can justify evil. You admit that your prior responses employed equivocation, and equivocation is a fallacy.
No. I'm defining evil as a voluntary unjustified act of harm. Harm that is involuntary or justified is not evil. Do you have a better conception?
Then we're back to what I said before: even if we accept this definition as stipulated, the free will theodicist and utilitarian could simply argue that because certain harmful acts are justified for the greater good it then follows that these harmful acts aren't evil, and so the problem of evil is dismissed on the grounds that evil doesn't actually exist (or, at the very least, that allowing evil isn't itself evil).
So in this case what needs to be argued is that certain acts are indeed unjustified (e.g. allowing people to murder).
The free will theodicist argues that the existence of free will justifies the existence of all harmful actions. If evil is defined in part as being unjustified then the existence of harmful actions isn't evil. So there is no problem of evil.
They're wrong then.
Or possibly they are attempting to speak for God, which I think is unwise. But they might be saying, I hope they are saying, that freewill necessitates, and thus justifies the possibility of evil rather than the actuality. I think I could live with that and still be friends.
Then to repeat: citation needed.
You seem to simply be asserting that certain voluntary and harmful actions cannot be justified, and so the free will defence doesn't solve the problem of evil. But you are yet to show that these actions cannot be justified. Your previous response "just look around" obviously doesn't work, for the reasons I gave earlier.
Yes. I'm not going to argue about that, or cite the bible; take it or leave it.
Then you don't have a reasoned argument against the free will defence. You're more than welcome to simply deny it, but then you're also more than welcome to simply deny the existence of God and not bother with using the problem of evil as an argument against theism in the first place.
What the definition does do though, is carve out a distinction between natural evil and human evil. I'm surprised you didn't pursue that line.
You can't simply define a term in such a way that your opponent's claim is false by definition. This is why I accused you of equivocating (which bizarrely you then admitted to).
You can't simply dismiss my definition without providing another one. Oh, wait you just have, damn. Then I have to admit I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm not dismissing your definition. I'm saying that you can't simply refute the free will defence by choosing to define "evil" in such a way that their claim is wrong by definition. You have to actually show that the things that the free will theodicist is referring to when he talks about evil (e.g. murder) actually are unjustifiable, and so actually are evil (and so that we have real examples of evil in the world). You've already admitted that you aren't willing to do this, and so you don't have a reasoned argument against the free will defence.
I don't think any freewill theodicist thinks murder is justifiable, or not evil. Perhaps you could cite one?
That the theist thinks that murder is evil and that you define "evil" as being unjustifiable is not that the theist thinks that murder is unjustifiable. This is where you equivocate. You have to ask what the theist means by "evil", and then replace the term "evil" in their claim "murder is evil" with their definition to actually understand what they're saying.
As for thinking murder justifiable or not, this is ambiguous. A better phrasing would be "the existence of murder is justifiable". And that's exactly what the free will defence claims; the existence of murder is justified (on the grounds that free will is a good).
If you want to draw a distinction between the existence of murder being justifiable and murder being justifiable then your original claim "nothing justifies evil [e.g. murder]" doesn't actually address the free will defence at all.
That's what you claim the freewill defence claims; I claim that this is either a misunderstanding, or the defence fails, because it relies on exactly the equivocation, nay contradiction, of saying that murder is unjustified, but its existence is justified. What I think it actually claims is that the possibility of murder is justified, but the existence of murder is not. But I already said that way back, so I'll stop here unless you actually have an alternative meaning for the term 'evil'.
The need to assume God, in the first place, is based in the fact that the universe is filled with "mysterious" things. So it should not be at all surprising to you, nor suspicious, that the question of why God does what God does, ends up with "God's mysterious ways". The whole belief in the existence of God is based in the assumption that the universe behaves in "mysterious ways". Nor should it appear as a cop out, because until human beings are omniscient, there will always be "mysterious" things out there.
The problem isn't assuming that God would do things we don't understand. The problem is when you combine an omni-good god with the existence of an imperfect creation, specifically evil.
It's a cop out to say that such a God must have a reason for allowing evil, but we can't state what it is. The reasonable conclusion is that such a being doesn't exist, and if there is a God, humans have incorrectly ascribed ridiculous attributes to such a being.
I don't think so. It doesn't make sense to say possibility is justified because it is not a truth which means anything in ethics. Anything is always possible. Even in the world where no evil is ever committed, it's still possible. At any point, someone could have chosen to behave in an evil way, only in this world they didn't. Possibility isn't created by action, so it's beyond question of whether it was just to make.
It's how free will is consistent with causality. Even if you a God who chooses to create everything as it is, you aren't responsible for defining the actions of your creations. Since they are not you, are not God's thoughts, demands or actions, they have freedom. In the world being something other than yourself, there is freedom and possibility. You did not create it and you do not have the power, even in your omnipotence or power as the act who creates the universe, to override it. No matter what you cause and know, possibility and free will are present.
Most of the time, arguments about the evil God and the responding free will defence do not actually respect free will at all. The former mistakenly think God must be able to, with his omnipotence, for a world which is necessarily perfect, as if God had the power to remove not just evil but also the possibility of evil. On the other hand, the latter just use free will as an apology for allowing evil to exist, as if knowingly creating someone who causes evil is morally pure simply because they made their own choices.
Both these arguments make errors, but it's actually the argument God is evil that gets closer to the truth in terms of ethics. Imagine you are the government and the wealthy, with excess resources and the power to direct them to create more resources and social well-being, yet when they question coms about what you should do you say: "Ehhhh, I'm just going to nothing. That riff raft just keeps making bad decisions. If only they would make the right choice, direct themselves properly, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, they could be prosperous like me." It's utter libertarian bullshit. Just because people have free choice and could harm themselves by making a bad choice, it doesn't somehow make it moral to allow suffering to occur, if you have means and ability to prevent it.
Free will is God's indictment. With possibility and free will, God's causality does not necessitate our actions. God can knowingly create whatever God wants without violating freedom. In Gods omnipotence and omniscience, God could cause whatever world God wanted, including word in which people only use free will to choose good. Or a world in which there are only people who freely choose to follow God. Or a world in which resources are more common, regenerate easily, limiting the destructive impact of competition on the life which uses them. Or a world in which people are not damned for choosing to follow God. None of these would violate possibly or free will, yet God knowing chose not to do them and calls it good. Evil.
Dude. Slow down a bit, use the quote facility, and write in English. I really have no idea what you're saying, let alone what of what I'm saying you disagree with.
There's no cop out, it's just that most human beings really don't understand "evil". Do you understand evil? If something doesn't go your way, is there evil involve?. The dog shits on the floor, is it evil? You leave your keys in the car when you run into the store and someone steals it, is that person evil? In general, what qualifies as "evil" to the average human being is probably not even similar to what qualifies as "evil" to God. That is because the average human being has no relationship with God, and therefore hasn't got a clue as to what qualifies as "evil" to God. So if you have no relationship with God, then what makes you think that the things which you call 'evil", God would call "evil"? And if God doesn't see them as evil, why should he prevent them?
All that's fine and dandy, but then why would the theist call God, "good", since being good is based on our conception of good and not God's.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either God is perfectly good in a meaningful sense to us, or we shouldn't use "good" as a description of God. So the price of using this line of argument for the FWD is God's goodness, so far as we understand the word.
The theologian has the very difficult task of determining our relationship with God, and "good" in relation to this. The importance of that task should not be underestimated. To simply reject the existence of God, in an atheist way, is not the solution, because to many theists, rejecting God is itself the greatest evil. Therefore to the person who has this type of relationship with God, atheism fulfills the definition of evil, hence the attitude of kill the infidels. The ethicist has no resolution to this problem, except to recognize "God" as a real motivating factor in human beings. If an ethicist must recognize God as real, then an atheist cannot be an ethicist.
Quoting Marchesk
My argument is that God is perfectly good in a meaningful sense to us, but it takes a highly skilled, and well-educated theologian to determine this meaning. Human beings do not naturally know what "good" is, therefore what "good" means has to be determined through much study, an this is the study of theology, the human being's relationship with God.
You can understand the word "good" in any way you please, that is the nature of free will. And you can insist that it is impossible that God is perfectly good, because that's the way that you understand the word "good". But ethics is not about stipulating what "good" means, and dictating that, it's about producing agreement on such terms. "Good", in ethics, generally refer to what motivates us to act, we seek the good. Therefore "good" refers to something different in each human act. Good is a particular, which is specific to each act, we can identify the good of the act, and therefore find the intention.
The theist calls God "good" because whatever God is, that is what is good. We do not define "good" and then ascertain whether God satisfies that definition, we ascertain what God is like and then define "good" accordingly. The assumption is thus that our human conception of good is imperfect, but ultimately grounded in God's very nature, which is the basis upon which we seek to correct it as we come to know Him better.
Maybe the problem is not with these religious notions about God, but rather involves our how our conception of what's good is possible. The term 'good' losses its meaning without the concept/experience of 'evil', they co-implicate each other. Imagine that you were in a world where only good could possibly happen, if so then what's good would be the way things are, it would have no differential
.
Sounds to me like:
So what is God? Well, for one he's omnipotent. Therefore we define "good" as "omnipotent"? Obviously that doesn't work.
The Euthyphro dilemma poses a false dichotomy by assuming that either (a) good is defined apart from God as an independent standard to which He conforms, or (b) good is defined as whatever God arbitrarily does. Instead, good is properly defined as whatever is consistent with God's eternal and immutable nature.
Quoting Michael
No, we characterize God's omnipotence as good. By analogy, our own abilities are also good - including free will, even though (unlike God) we exercise it in ways that are not good.
But you said that we define "good" according to the nature of God. If it's God's nature to be omnipotent then we define "good" as "omnipotent". So what's wrong here?
Not being able to name the good seems like a small price to pay for not having to suffer.
Perhaps formulating my previous response as a syllogism will help you see your mistake.
Evil is behaving selfishly, harming others, manipulating them, exploiting them, discriminating against them, causing them to suffer, etc.
Are you really suggesting that human beings can't tell good from bad, in general? Do we not grow up being told the difference, and enforcing the difference amongst ourselves, and teaching our kids likewise?
So you're not talking about the meaning/definition of "good"? Just about what things are good?
In which case I haven't made a mistake; the mistake was yours when you said "we ascertain what God is like and then define 'good' accordingly".
If the response is that suffering is necessary for pleasure, then Benatar's critique of existence surely applies. Why create a world where you have to suffer in order to feel good?
The conception of such world, a utopia, is dependent on our conception of our world as we experience it. It is an idealization we base on our experiences of good and evil in this world, along with love & hate, pleasure & suffering, life & death. A world where only good actions are possible is impossible in principle because if it were so, we would no longer be capable of making a mistake, we would no longer be human. Instead of free agency, we would be fully determined to act in a certain manner.
As should be clear by now, the meaning/definition of "good" is "whatever is consistent with God's nature," which accords with saying that "we ascertain what God is like and then define 'good' accordingly."
Because no one has ever postulated that, maybe, humans are not free in the traditional libertarian sense of freedom, or that this type of freedom is actually irrelevant to us.
How?
And what's wrong with that? Isn't that what it's like for God? A perfectly good God has no free will to do evil.
I don't see the inherent value in being able to choose evil actions.
Quoting unenlightened
That would be theology, rather than philosophy.
That is an odd conception of free will you have going there. I have coffee every morning because I like coffee in the morning, but I could have tea; I have the freedom to change, but I do not. If God is good then he chooses not to do evil, but that doesn't make him unfree.
You mean we make it up.
Then why couldn't humans be the same way? I'm not saying we shouldn't be free to choose coffee over tea, I'm saying we shouldn't be free to poison the coffee and give that to our neighbor. And society agrees, which is why there are laws against murder.
Only if God is not real.
They could. In fact, if you will excuse the boasting, I myself have never chosen to poison my neighbour.
Not so. God can be real but inaccessible.
Since you will not answer, I will suggest that experience is the only guide, and experience is only of creation. In which case one might well ascertain that God likes increasing chaos, beings that eat each other and widespread suffering. In which case that must be good. A conclusion that many a religious terrorist seems to have come to.
I almost included that caveat myself, but I share Peirce's view that there is no good reason to posit anything as real that is inaccessible or unknowable in principle. His definition of "real" at the third (pragmatic) grade of clarity is that which would come be known, if an infinite community of investigators were to carry out an indefinite inquiry.
Quoting unenlightened
That would be natural theology. Of course, many theists also subscribe to revealed theology, and thus contend that it is possible to experience God directly.
Quoting unenlightened
This would be the mistake of theological determinism, which assumes that everything that actually happens must be in accordance with the will of God. But if God granted libertarian free will to humans, then He enabled us to make choices that are not in accordance with His will; and He also allowed the consequences that followed from those choices - including chaos, carnivorism, and suffering, at least according to the traditional Christian doctrine of the Fall.
Indeed. But it is hard to tell the difference between God's revelation, and my intuition, either from my own point of view or from another's. In which case Peirce would presumably tell us that they are the same thing. Which suits me just fine because my intuition has fairly clear and conventional ideas about what is good, and if God has other ideas, then we are on opposing sides.
So when we say that omnipotence (or kindness, say) is good we're just saying that omnipotence (or kindness) is consistent with God's nature?
This doesn't make sense. If we've already defined "good" as "consistent with God's nature" then we don't need to ascertain what God is like before we "define 'good' accordingly". It's already been defined.
In the traditional Christian conception of good, such things are not evil. That's why forgiving is central to that religion. As I said in the other post, any freely willed human act, being intentional, is an act toward some good. Therefore good is of the essence of the human act, and no degree of mistakenness can remove this essence, these acts will all be defined by the good which is sought by them. You call these acts "evil", but it is simply the case that the people who carry out these acts are seeking a good which is not consistent with the good which you are seeking.
Quoting Marchesk
What I am suggesting is that most human beings do not know how "good" is defined in indifferent theologies. Sure, the average person may be taught by their parents to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, correct from incorrect, but these are principles based in human convention. We are taught what is correct and incorrect according to the various conventions. Christian theologians are not taught that there is a difference between good and bad, they are taught to understand a difference between the apparent good, and the real good. There is no "bad" here, because the apparent good is what appears good to the individual, and inspires the free act, while the real good is the good according to God. We cannot say, that because the good chosen by an individual, (the apparent good), is not exactly the same as the decision which God would make (the real good), that the apparent good is therefore bad. The individual may be striving to determine the real good, yet simply not act in the absolutely best way in the situation. Failing to act in the absolutely best way does not make an act bad.
Quoting Cavacava
In the Christian ethical principles, as I understand them, there is no opposite to 'good", such as "bad". Good is not defined by an opposing term. Good is defined by the concepts of intention and free will. The end of an intentional act is the good which is sought by the person acting. There is no opposite to this. One can choose not to act, or a different act, but these are just different choices, and therefore different goods, not an opposite. In theology they assume an objective good, the real good, which is roughly defined as what God would choose in that situation, the absolute best thing to do in any given situation. But the fact that an individual human being doesn't choose the best action in a given situation, doesn't remove "good" from the act, making it the opposite, not-good, it just makes it less than perfect.
Quoting aletheist
I don't think theologians define "good" as what's consistent with God's nature, rather it is defined as what's consistent with God's will. They assume that in each situation where a decision must be made, there is an absolute best decision, the one which God would make. As human beings, it is our duty to God, to attempt to the extent of our capacity, to determine this best decision. Failing to determine the best choice does not make one's choice evil, as Marchesk seems to be arguing.
Quoting unenlightened
I think it is a mistake to assume "opposing sides". This what creates the problem of evil, assuming that there is an opposite to good. Good is defined by what is intended, the end which is sought. There is no opposite to this "object", just different objects. So whatever appears good to me is not exactly the same as what appears good to you, and this is not exactly the same as the good according to God. These are all differences, but they are not really opposing differences, as they are all inherently goods. If we represent them as opposing, then we assume a certain separation which implies the impossibility of reconciliation. We deny ourselves the capacity for understanding the other's intent, by designating it as evil, because the intent to do evil is irrational and cannot be understood. So we must allow that the other's actions are guided by some good, it is just inconsistent with our good. There is a need for reconciliation, not a designation of opposing sides.
Which Christian tradition do you have in mind? On the contrary, I think that most Christians would characterize "behaving selfishly, harming others, manipulating them, exploiting them, discriminating against them, causing them to suffer, etc." as evil (i.e., sinful).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are painting with a very broad brush, treating "theologians" as a monolithic class. Some define good as what is consistent with God's nature, others as what is consistent with God's will (and others as something else). In my case, there is no distinction between the two, since God only wills that which is consistent with His nature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You seem to have a highly unusual understanding of Christian doctrine. Any action that is in any way inconsistent with God's nature - or God's will, if you prefer - is sin, and therefore evil.
I think you need to differentiate between sin and evil.
Quoting aletheist
I've studied some of the greatest Christian theologians, such as St Augustine, and St. Thomas, along with other material taught to me in moral philosophy in university. So I really do not think that my understanding is so "unusual". Were you taught that there is a difference between the real good, and the apparent good? This is fundamental to Aquinas, a principle which he draws from Aristotle.
If, what is consistent with God's will, or God's nature, is the real good, and what is consistent with an individual human being's will, or nature, is the apparent good, then how could a human being's apparent good be the same as God's real good, unless that human being knows what God knows? Just because we, as human beings do not know what God knows, and therefore we do not choose the very same actions as God would choose (the absolute best course of action), in any particular situation, this does not make us evil, or even necessarily sinful. But it does make our actions inconsistent with God's will. And you argue that to be inconsistent with God's will is necessarily sinful, and even evil. No human being can choose the absolute best action, and therefore no human being's actions are truly consistent with God's will, even though our actions are good. We do sin sometimes, but sinning is mistaken actions, and so long as we recognize our mistakes as mistakes, we may be forgiven.
All sin is evil. Do you disagree?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I argue that to be inconsistent with God's nature is necessarily sinful, and therefore evil; and again, God does not will anything contrary to His own nature.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is contradictory, in my view; any action that is inconsistent with God's will cannot be good. Indeed, no human being is capable of living 100% consistently with God's will: "The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one." (Psalm 14:2-3)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sinning is not just mistaken actions; often we sin quite deliberately, with full awareness that what we are doing is wrong. We are forgiven not because we recognize our mistakes as mistakes, but because we recognize our wickedness as wickedness, and throw ourselves upon the mercy of God: "... for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ..." (Romans 3:23-24)
Yes, I disagree, I think that "evil" is a stronger word than sin, signifying a greater transgression. I think if we ask many of the same questions of "evil', and of "sin", we will come up with different answers, signifying a difference between them. For example, if we ask of sin and of evil, are they forgivable, the answer is likely that sin is forgivable, but evil is not.
Quoting aletheist
But a human being cannot act like God, therefore a human being's actions are inconsistent with the nature of God. According to your argument then, a human being's actions are necessarily sinful and evil. What's the point in holding such a believe which makes all human beings necessarily evil, because it is impossible for a human being to be as God?
Quoting aletheist
See, you admit that no human being can be 100% consistent with God. Therefore all human beings are necessarily evil, according to your argument. What's the point in saying that human beings are necessarily evil? How can that be an acceptable moral principle? Why even try to be good if it's impossible for us, and we're necessarily going to be evil anyway?
Quoting aletheist
It doesn't matter that the sin is deliberate and intentional, it is still mistaken action. The sinful action is inspired by some perceived (apparent) good, which inclines the individual to act that way. The mistake is in the belief that it is worthwhile to sin for the sake of this other good, which isn't a real good. It's a mistaken good.
Are you not familiar with the traditional Christian doctrines of original sin and the Fall? God created the first humans in His own image, such that they were able to live in complete accordance with His nature and will. However, they freely chose to sin instead, and the inability of their descendants (including you and me) to live in complete accordance with God's nature and will is a consequence of that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
We certainly should not "try to be good" in a vain effort to satisfy God, since His standard is perfection, and we are incapable of achieving it. However, we should "try to be good" for the sake of our fellow humans. When we fall short, we should ask for forgiveness - both from God and from our fellow humans. In fact, the greatest single need of every single human is God's forgiveness of his/her sins.
I wonder if you might agree with Maurice Nicoll, that to sin is to miss the mark, whereas evil is not even to aim for the mark?
That could be it, but I think it depends on how we would define "the mark". What I have been arguing is that to have a mark, which is aimed for, is to have an intended good, so actions which aim for a mark are inherently good. Now we can identify two types of mistakes, one is to miss the mark which is aimed for, and the other is an artificial type of mistake which is created by the assumption that the mark itself may be judged as good or not good. In the latter case, one may aim for "a mark", and achieve the goal, but the conventions of society (religions, laws, mores, etc.) may dictate that the mark was not good. So the person is guilty. And because of the supposed malintent, the guilt is of a higher level than one who makes a mistake of the first sort, which is to miss a mark which has been designated as good.
The artificial type of mistake, in order that it's a real mistake, requires a judgement of the mark. So the mark must be held up to, compared, to some principles for such a judgement. Now we have choices in judging the mark, aletheist would say God, Marchesk would look for some other principles. They are all conventions, even though "God" directs us toward something beyond the conventions. Our choice in these conventions is supposed to be very important, because it is the judgement of the mark which produces the higher level of guilt. One with bad intent is often said to be evil. If there were no such judgement as to whether the chosen mark is good or bad, we would only need to worry ourselves with the lower level guilt, which is involved with not hitting the mark.
The fact that there are competing systems for judging the mark, different conventions, is evidence that such judgements are inherently artificial, and this indicates another option to us, which is to reject such judgement of the mark, as unnatural. Now we start with the assumption that there is no outside third party judgement on the mark, no judgement by God, no judgement by human laws or mores. This leaves only the individual who is making the choice of actions as the one to judge the mark. The individual can turn to whatever conventions or reasons, one wants for choosing the mark.
Now we have no objective good or bad which can be assigned to the mark, and from this perspective, the true nature of the mark begins to come to light. The mark itself is very rarely some definite goal, it's always some fleeting thing in the background. If you stop yourself for a minute and ask why am I doing this, there is very rarely a clear, obvious answer, just many odd goals in the background of your daily activities. This is why the mark is extremely difficult to actually hit. It's just some vague, ill-defined, moving, changing target.
So true, real mistakes, are mistakes in hitting the mark, but the issue is that the mark is not very evident to us. The norms of our society, and conventional wisdom has directed us toward thinking that our intentions, "the mark", can be judged as good or bad, according to some big principles, like God, or whatever ethical standards, and laws which are held, but really our intentions are just some vague forms lurking in the background, which we cannot even recognize, isolate, and identify.
And this is where I would probably be in agreement with Nicoll, what is needed is to focus our attention on the mark, identify it, and bring it into view, before we can even have a hope of hitting it. Without this, we are just aiming at shadows, something moves and we shoot at it. Others will judge us as having bad intentions, but what makes the intention "good" in the eyes of others, is that it is well defined and intelligible. So if "evil is not even to aim for the mark", this is because the mark has not been recognized, or identified. It is like shooting into the dark. To bring the mark into the light is to bring out the good.
Our position is a consequence of original sin, but it should not make us, ourselves, sinners. The original sin, and fall, are sins of others, and we may learn from their mistakes. Your position makes us all sinners because of the original sin. That's what I think is a mistake.
That is precisely what the doctrine of original sin teaches. We commit individual sins (our actions) because our human nature is corrupted by original sin (our condition).
The Christian principle which I draw on is the assumption that because we are less than perfect, this does not make us evil, or even bad. All existence is good, or else God would not have created it. But nothing except God himself is perfect. One need not be perfect to be good. Therefore we, as existing human beings are inherently good. Original sin is understood as a mistake which can be forgiven. Human beings are still inherently good despite the fact that we are not perfectly good.
Fair enough.
Christian theology teaches that sin does render us as evil. If we were not evil, then there would be no need for us to be forgiven - i.e., no need for Jesus to die on the cross in order to make our forgiveness possible.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not according to Jesus Himself.
I don't see the point in posting a bunch of out of context quotes.
Quoting aletheist
Here's a question for you then. If only God is good, as your quote from the Bible claims, and sin renders us evil, as you claim, where does forgiveness leave us? Are we still evil after being forgiven? If only God is good, then it must be the case that we are always evil, even after being forgiven. What's the point in forgiveness then, what does it do for us?
Quoting aletheist
According to your claims, there is no forgiveness. If we are still evil, in God's eyes, after being forgiven, then we aren't really forgiven, are we? You have no idea what forgive means, do you?
I think we are irrational. And this understanding allows me to understand evil intent. I agree with you in one sense, but it becomes an abuse of language; man with sword intends to kill, man with scalpel intends to preserve life. These cannot be reconciled. A man thinks it is good to kill random passers by with a vehicle to promote a cause and the right understanding of God - that man has it wrong. And so does the man who thinks it is good to do the same thing in a jet plane in a foreign land in the name of democracy. To fight a war against terror is about as rational as curing the fear of heights by throwing folks off a cliff.
I'd like to try and do that a little. The mark, the target of one's moral action is the beam in one's own eye, not the mote in another's. It is convenient to think that if the rest of the world was peaceful and loving, then I would follow them naturally, and so to try and reform the world. And so we have the endless cycle of violence to impose peace on each other. It is the other way round; if I could end the violence in myself, then there would be peace in the world.
This is what Aquinas would call the apparent good, the target of one's moral actions. He also assumes a real good, and the real good is often inconsistent with the apparent good, and so we sin. I cannot justify the claim that you are wrong in your action, simply by appealing to what appears good to me, because then we would just have inconsistent apparent goods. So I must turn to some conventions, mores, laws, or even the word of God, to argue that your action is not consistent with the real good.
Quoting unenlightened
I think, that what you call "irrational" here, is an inconsistency between different conceptions of the real good. The average sinner would think I know it is wrong what I am doing, but rationalize the situation in some way, to make the wrong act necessary. This sinner will recognize the conventional good, what I've called the real good, but still find reason to dismiss the real good in favour of the contrary apparent good, and therefore act in an immoral or illegal way. The terrorist, who claims to act by the word of God, appeals to a misconstrued real good. That person might believe oneself to be carrying out the true real good.
In that case, we have a rejection of most conventional interpretations of the real good, based in laws and fundamental moral principles, in favour of a direct communion with God. You could argue that this is irrational, to claim direct instructions from God, as inspiration for one's moral actions, but really it is no different from any other apparent good. The individual has a personal reason for dismissing the real good (good by convention), for a personal good. An atheist might assume the "real good" is to fight a war against religion inspired terror. In these cases though, the person is completely unaccepting of the real good (good by convention), not just dismissing it in this or that circumstance, but dismissing it in an absolute way. The person believes conventional good is incorrect, and must be dismissed. That person has come to conceive of a real good which is completely inconsistent with the accepted real good.
What we call "irrational" is those who don't think in the same way that we do. They don't follow the same principles of reason that we follow, so we designate them as irrational. But these principles are all conventions. If your society is filled with various conventions which are inconsistent with one another, where can you turn, other than your own mind, to find consistency? But once you turn to your own mind to find consistency in principles of reason, you've already dismissed the conventions, and your own mind can be a dark and scary place.
The point is that Jesus clearly taught that human beings since the Fall are not inherently good, contrary to your position. I did not think that it would be appropriate to post the entire context of each quote; I provided the citations so that you can look up the passages yourself if you are so inclined. I also stuck to statements of Jesus Himself; the list would be much longer if I had included the entire New Testament.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Forgiven, obviously - restored to a right relationship with God, despite our sin and evil. If we were inherently good, then we would not need forgiveness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is amazing how often you make comments like this that you really should be directing at yourself.
There is much wisdom in this.
This is why you should read some theology rather than just relying on some interpretations of what Jesus said. Thomas Aquinas clearly describes what moves the human will as "the good". Also, good is equated with being, so that the human being, since it is a being, is necessarily good. Summa Theologica Q.18 Art.1:
As for original sin, he describes it as an affliction of the soul itself, a deficiency within the soul. It appears to infect the will. It may be that original sin is the reason why the human soul is always united to a body, and does not exist as a separate substance. We can get redemption through Christ, and baptism removes the guilt through God's forgiveness.
You know, our argument here is not really an argument at all, because we are both correct. In as much as a human being is an existing being, one is inherently good, as I say, but to the extent that we are deficient we are all evil, as you say. We are both good and evil, good in respect to being, and evil in respect to deficiencies. I argue the glass is half full, you argue the glass is half empty.
That seems rather uncharitable on your part. I have read a fair amount of theology, but evidently from different traditions than what you have read. I am not a Thomist, or even a Roman Catholic.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why would you suggest that? The souls of the very first humans were united to their bodies, even though they did not have original sin.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, but that involves some equivocation on what we mean by "good" and "evil." We all bear the image of God, which makes us good; but that image is corrupted in all of us, which makes us evil.
It could be that because of original sin, we cannot have separate existence of the soul, separate from the body, and many believe that the separate existence of the soul is required for eternal life. Notice that we get redemption through Christ, and Christ has promised eternal life.
Quoting aletheist
So where's the equivocation? By the fact that we are beings which act of free will, means that we are good. By the fact that our decisions, and acts are somewhat deficient means that we are evil. As Aquinas explained in the quote, human beings exist as a multiplicity. In some aspects we are good, and in others we are bad. Likewise in our acts, they also have a multiplicity of elements, in some aspects they are good, in others they are bad.
I never intended to misquote you.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, I'm not. I'm talking about existing things. For them to exist, they have to become actualized, according to you, that is, they must become "informed," yes? If so, then how is that process not in time?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because you're still committed to the proposition in question, and would have me be as well. In the face of ignorance, explain to me why one ought not to withhold judgment entirely.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The irony is that this is what it seems you're doing: pretending that there is an answer to the contradiction I raised, even though you haven't provided one.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is a straw man. I'm talking about God's creating things. I am open to the possibility that something exists outside of time. I am skeptical of the idea that this something, if it is God, can create anything.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Oh, really? Then explain the following remarks you make:
"Prior to creation, God did not have to create."
"When an individual sees X as good, one acts on that."
"It is only after the act occurs that we can say that the individual saw X as good."
"It is the "seeing X as good" which causes the act."
I'm not following this at all what do you mean by "informed"? If you mean instilled with a form, then the form must exist prior to the act of informing. Don't you agree?
Quoting Thorongil
Again, I don't follow your point. Could you clarify, what are you asking for?
Absolutely. The less human God is, the more He is just some undiscovered aspect of nature. God is not only necessarily anthropomorphic but humanity's most flattering mirror. A non-human demiurge might as well be a black box. We'd have to analyze him like a newly discovered particle.
I wonder though if it's only a caricature in retrospect. Isn't water still blessed and aren't magic prayer handkerchief's still for sale out there? I would never deny the existence of a sophisticated religious tradition running parallel to the vividly supernatural, but I think magic/miracle/providence and personal immortality are what many want and understand themselves to get from religion. Of course there's also the cosmic justice of Heaven and Hell involved, so that no sinner goes unpunished and no hero unrewarded, which does very much feel like the last act appearance of the hero. When I was exposed to Catholicism as a child, no one said "but this is just an analogy." ("There's an invisible man who burns people in fire forever and ever...and he had a son...and we drink his bood...and we go in the box and the tell the old man through the screen how bad of a boy we've been...and there's Bingo in the basement on Saturday night...")