Thoughts on the Epicurean paradox
I believe that this paradox has the true meaning of false religion on it. I have always been a non believer growing up. But was forced in religion due to my family. This theory explains on how good is "all good" but lets innocent people die. And if he doesn't see it happen than he is not "all seeing" so on so forth.
Comments (77)
Why does evil exist? Well there is two kinds of evil: Evil done by humans happens because of free-will and there is justice in the afterlife. Evil done by nature happens because this is creation not heaven. Any physical creation is going to contain good and bad. Changing it will just create a new set of goods and bads.
And don't assume god does not feel every bit of pain we feel along with us. Life without pain does not work. Nobody would do anything.
Quoting 180 Proof
(Click on my handle for more.)
What would be in heaven then? That is, by definition, a life without pain. But such a life should not be possible => You have contradicted yourself.
"Heaven" is only as real as Narnia or Middle-Earth. So to answer: anything you can imagine whether or not it makes any sense. :sparkle:
Forcing anything on anyone tends not to endear them to it.
Quoting Miller
If creators do not bear responsibility for the harm caused by their creations then God's off the hook, granted, but so is all humanity.
From two years ago:
Quoting 180 Proof
Epicurus is not claiming "god doesn't exist", only calling into question that such a malignantly indifferent and/or impotent "god" is not worthy of being worshipped (or called "god"). So what is "not completely right" with this riddle?
The opposite of that would be a nosey parker. We might wanna use the expresssion "mind your own business".
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you wishing for a celestial dictator? Thanks Christopher Hitchens for coining that phrase.
Quoting 180 Proof
What's "not completely right"? Lemme see...that it's good that God leaves us alone and can't do jack shit about how we do things.
Hey 180 Proof, please bear with me if I make silly mistakes. You know me, I'm mad and I'm a fool.
You don't seem mad and you're definitely not a fool.
Heaven is just another utopic fantasy, like communism.
No matter what creation is created it will contain pain and "evil". You can change the position of it but not the fact of it.
And then, of course, there's the option that what some people believe is "evil", is actually good.
Indeed.
If we believe in an omniscient God (which I do not) would it not be the case that human understanding of good and evil is severely limited and that our attempt to pin what we think of as evil onto God's list of responsibilities is a fraught and shallow affair?
I hate my parents, because they made me eat vegetables.
For reference, it goes like this.
- Evil exists.
- Therefore...
and it ends with a statement that any God tolerates evil.
The solution is simple - it is a false premise.
Evil does not exist.
If we assume there is a God, then God decides what is good for God.
People have their own opinions about what is good and evil - for them. The Epicurean paradox, then, boils down to - "Daddy, why can't I just have everything I want, all the time?"
God, not you, would be the moral center of the universe. God, not you, would be good. You would, in fact, according to normal religious philosophy, be a sinner, or evil. So, any "evil" happening to you would just be Evil, happening to itself, which would be just, so it would be good.
If there is a moral center to the universe, God in that sense, all is good, there is no evil, and so these words don't mean much. If there isn't, then these words also don't mean much.
God is omnipotent
God is omnibenevolent
Evil exists
Mackie argued that these propositions were inconsistent, and thus, that at least one of these propositions must be false. Either:
God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and evil does not exist.God is omnipotent, but not omnibenevolent; thus, evil exists by God's will.God is omnibenevolent, but not omnipotent; thus, evil exists, but it is not within God's power to stop it (at least not instantaneously).[/quote]
It's a work in progress. Doesn't it look like one? The graph of morality shows a trend that could be described as improvement, no?
Quoting 180 Proof
(Link to old post for context.)
I want to ask you something. Taking a consequentialist point of view, given that consequences have consequences (chain of causation), how does a moral consequentialist know s/he's done good? Consider the hypothetical that I give a beggar some money. The beggar than buys some food with it from a eatery (good consequences). The owner of the eatery, who now has your money, goes on to hire a hitman to kill his estranged wife (bad). However, the hitman also kills a man who was with the wife who was planning a bomb attack at a busy city center (good), so on and so forth.
Could God be a consequentialist? Evil is part of the scheme but only in an instrumental way and not as an end in itself, something many courts around the world have excused as not an/a lesser offense.
If she is a negative consequentialist, she knows she's done good by mitigating or eliminating an injustice (without causing more injustice).
"God" could be anything you like because it's imaginary.
Perhaps relevant to the mind-body problem is ghosts. People who believe in these imaginary things report breaking into a cold sweat, hearts going thumpity-thump, and much more, basically adrenaline-induced physical responses. How does a nonphysical mind interact with a physical body? Ghost in the machine.
Maybe he sees evil as not evil, but just a lesser good? Then in His non-interference he would be considered omni-benevolent, because He would not suppress "good" actions.
Why don't you state what is the "Epicurean paradox"? For one thing, so that we can all understand and talk about the same thing ...
Anyway, Wikipedia describes it as follows:
"God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?"
I assume that you have the above or something similar in mind ...
Well, a lot more could be added to this "paradox" but it would still be baseless. It's like the "Omnipotence paradox" --"Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?"-- and other "God" pseudo-paradoxes.
What they all have in common is that they are not real paradoxes because they are based on arbitrary elements and facts: First you create a concept named "God", then you attribute imaginary features to it --"omnipotent", "omniscient", etc.-- and then you try to prove that these are impossible to exist or happen. What a stupidity!
Now, in the Epicurean pseudo-paradox, there are more concepts created, i.e. arbitrary elements, like "evil", which make it even more ridiculous.
Now, you might wonder, if I find this kind of "paradoxes" ridiculous, then why I get into trouble of talking about them? Well, I do it with the hope of preventing people taking them seriously, or at least thinking twice before doing that.
Mm, well in my belief these paradoxes aren't ridiculous. It helps flesh out His behaviour in a context that gives certain people hope and thats most definitely not bad.
Although I would agree with you that this isn't the best way to assess gods existence. The existence of God after all, is a choice. The main reason people are atheists is that they don't want the premise of heaven to influence their positive actions. They would rather enjoy life because life in their opinion is limited. In this case, they wouldn't be attacking whether god exists, but see no use.
You are right to the extent that I have overcritized them. See, I am a fan of paradoxes, I have a large collection of them, but none about God. According to my personal quality criteria, there are real paradoxes and pseudo-paradoxes. Most of the "paradoxes" that one can find around --Wikipedia alone you can find a lot of them-- are based on fallacies, which I can recognize, easily or after some analysis. That's why I call them "pseudo-paradoxes".
Quoting john27
OK, I respect this.
Quoting john27
Certainly!
Quoting john27
Of course.
Thank you for your response. I appreciated it. :smile:
:up:
How does a number interact with a thing? (It doesn't.) Rather ... minding : body :: digesting : gut.
Radio.
Well if He needed human validation to be worthy of worship, he wouldn't be much of a god anyways.
Edit: Also, isn't the Epicurean paradox based on what god thinks?
Quoting 180 Proof
As I've already pointed out here , Epicurus' Riddle does not concern whether or not "God exists".
No, that's not my reading. The Riddle is "based on what god" does not do, and addressed to us and not god, prompts us to "think" about what god does not do.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yeah that was my bad. I caught it with an edit but alas I was too late.
Quoting 180 Proof
Hm, well it seems a little complicated but i'll take your word for it, seeing as I have never read Epicurus before.
Power (potency) and knowledge (scientia) are clearly ambiguous with regard to godliness (tryant and evil genius respectively) but good (benevolence) is completely, unequivocally godly (no two ways about it). This fact, in my humble opinion, weakens Epicurus' argument.
That's why (vide/pace Nietzsche) God finds a place, paradoxical though it is, in the hearts of the weak (the poor & the sick) and not in the minds of geniuses, nor in the legions of despots.
It should be obvious to someone as smart as yourself. I'm serious, not kiddin' at all.
:smile: :heart:
Me: Wouldn't you agree that a world with 0 evil and [math]\infty[/math] good is an extreme?
Epicurus: Indeed it would be an extreme!
Me: As per the Golden Mean Rule (vide Buddha & Aristotle), an extreme is bad, no?
Epicurus: Yes.
Me: Then, surely, evil is a necessay part of a perfect/best world?
Epicurus: Yes.
Me: I rest my case, your honor!
:grin:
Nothing to do with the "Riddle" but your sockpuppet's got a memorable name, Mr. Smith.
:grin:
Jokes aside, what's wrong with my argument?
Isn't [math]0[/math] evil and [math]\infty[/math] good, to put it mildly, a "little" too much?
[i]Too much of a good thing (Google definitions)
Phrase of good
Used in reference to the fact that something that is generally desirable or beneficial can be detrimental or unpleasant if experienced excessively.
"An overabundance of any of the B vitamins can be too much of a good thing"[/i]
Ne quid nimis is Latin for "nothing in excess"
:chin:
C'mon!
Heaven: Too much happiness. (too cold)
Hell: Too much pain (too hot)
Earth: Just right! (pleasant)
Goldilocks zone?
Epicurus fails to notice this nugget of wisdom, no?
Quoting tim wood
Aristotle's theory of the Golden Mean speaks for itself. If all extremes aren't necessarily undesirable, the Golden Mean collapses as a viable formula for life & living.
Quoting tim wood
This is unnecessary obfuscation. Frankly, I can't make heads or tails of it.
It's one of the simplest ideas in circulation. Every culture/civilization has its own version of it. Why would you say I don't know what it says? How do you understand it?
Quoting tim wood
Because the two resemble each other, they're like identical twins as far as I'm concerned.
Assume I didn't understand it the way you want me to. Can you kindly expand & elaborate on it. Clarify & edify.
And all the more so due to humanity's lack of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence
:ok:
Quoting tim wood
I never said anything that would imply I was comparing apples to oranges.
The other, more pressing matter, is that you're under the impression that perfection and the golden mean are two different things for Aristotle. The Golden mean = Perfection! I think, you're getting mixed up with two very distinct ideas: perfection as is usually understood and The Golden Mean.
Quoting tim wood
What do you mean "good and evil, not commensurable"? They're both ethical concepts, in fact they are fundamental and describe two opposite poles of a moral spectrum, just the right setting for the principle of The Golden Mean.
You're conflating two distinct ideas: excess good and good. Understandable. I did too. I have more to say, if you're interested.
Please bear with me. I'm trying to figure something out.
Question:
1. Is the golden mean of morality (good & evil)
a) All good, no evil
or
b) Some good, some evil
?
Yes, I got to that part. For better or worse, from a secondary source.
Quoting tim wood
A little bit of both, I have to confess. Aristotle is the seed crystal in a manner of speaking and my own interpretation followed thereof.
Quoting tim wood
That's a nice way of putting it. I should've immediately realized the fact that, like all rules, Aristotle's Golden Mean too has exceptions. Nobody's perfect: that's another rule and one that weakens the Golden Rule's universality, in other words, it's perfection. I must've overlooked/neglected such niceties.
Quoting tim wood
Did he/do we have a choice? What's the alternative to being practical? Bury our heads in the sand/cloulds? Practical wisdom is how philosophy began to my reckoning (the good life or something like that). In this regar my experience has been that it all looks good on paper but the world out there is orders of magnitudes greater in complexity than such rules as the Golden Mean were designed to handle. Perhaps it's just me, hard to say.
Quoting tim wood
A gazillion thanks for your kind assistance.
Let's revisit The Golden Mean.
1. Yes, some things can't be, as you said, "meaned". One such thing is (probably) good. I can formulate the phrase excess good (in order to apply The Golden Mean Rule) but, if one really thinks about it, it's a meaningless expression. What is excess good? It's like Goldilocks complainging the baby bear's porridge was just right, yes, but that it was just [i]too right[/i].
The conclusion is obvious: The Golden Mean needs a whole lot of additional brainwork and one can't apply it blindly/unthinkingly like a mathematical formula. The question then is, how do we tell the difference between what can be "meaned" and what can't be? I don't think Aristotle left any clues in his writings on how to answer that question. This doesn't diminish the importance of The Golden Rule of course because Aristotle, if memory serves, does provide what to him is the full list of virtues (Golden Means) and makes it a point to clarify his rule has its limitations.
2. This may seem like I'm contradicting myself but that's part of philosophy. Here goes. You know that there's a place worse than earth (hell) and a place better (heaven). We're right smack in the middle. If thinking is a virtue, Aristotle seems to have said it is, earth is The Golden Mean. Hell is too painful and heaven is too pleasurable for any thinking to be possible. One is misery, one is ecstacy, two states of mind many have pointed out are not thinking-friendly so to speak.
Stop saying it has been defeated when it has not.
Quoting john27
Some of us atheists are atheist in belief for different reasons. But the reason we so viciously attack religion is because both religion and atheism are tribal beliefs and tribal ideologies. A tribe will only fully assimilate a member (inborn or incoming) if he or she fully accepts the tribe's ideology.
Thus: RCs require the spouse to agree to raise the children in RC religion; in North America RC and Protestant did not mix, it was a shame; RC went against Muslims; the genocide in America was considered not murder by the conquistadors because the Indians, as they were then called, were considered wild animals, soulless, since they were not Christians. In communism the clergy and the religious were persecuted. In Galicia they organized pogroms. Let it suffice to say that religion or ideology is the biggest divider between tribe and non-tribe.
Therefore atheists are proselytizers much like every other ideology's representatives. They are angry, because their LOGICAL arguments, which they find infallible, fall on deaf ears by the religious. If god can't be good and all seeing and all powerful, why do the religious insist god is, is what angers atheists. It is clear that the faith is incompatible with reality and with clear logic. So why are the religious so doggonedly sticking with their faith that's clearly illogical?
I agree with John27 that ideology is a... not quite a choice, but a given. Atheists tend to be much more intelligent than the religious, and the religious tend to be happier and more contented. I don't have statistics to support this, so don't ask for one, please. The reason people leave the fold of a congregation usually gets instigated by two causes: 1. The member sees how stupid the religion is. 2. The member is abused under the guise of religion. The first is caused by high intelligence (everyone knows or has stories about the smart alec kid who is silenced in Sunday school for his unanswerable questions of the Word); and the second, by abusive people, who happen to be religious.
The opposite trend, atheism to religion, happens hardly ever. Agnosticism to relgion, happens quite a bit, as the agnost does not deny god, he wants to believe, he just can't find the right god to believe.
Quoting god must be atheist
Which then falls full circle with the Epicurean Paradox. Huh. It seems we've been angered by our religious counterparts for quite some time now.
The Nazis had an ideology, the communists, the capitalists, the feudalists, the slave keepers, the Hindus, the American natives, and most likely a lot of African tribes. The only tribe that I know of where I sense no ideology (organized belief) is the Chinese. Sure, now they have communist rule, but prior to that, it was truly a free-for-all society. Grab what you can, observe morality, but if you can get away with something, do it; be diligent, work hard, be humble, but if you make it big, trample on others. A little bit like a cat society, if there were any: if you are an underling, be moral, be dutiful, and do your part. If you are a ruler, you can do anything you want. This is not a condemnation of their society, because believe me, in societies with ideologies, much worse things go on. This is instead a bemused observer's admiration that amongst all societies where there is one, this society has survived and thrived with no ideology. None that I know of, anyway. China: a place where human nature gets truly let free, that is, free from the bounds of organized dogma. A Randian Utopia.
I could be wrong with this opinion on the Chinese society, because I know it only from hearsay and from reading fiction. And from watching movies. So if you say I'm wrong, I shalt capitulate to your recounting a contrary view of China to mine.
Yes, this has been the status quo for millennia now.
Shouldn't it be the other way round? Our approximations imperfect (messy) and reality perfect. That's how it is in math: Making rough estimates are part of a mathematician's daily routine and the truth, the numerical answer, is precise.
We're derailing the thread by the way.
:up:
yes it has been defeated, as the reasons i stated.
and you offer no counter argument to those reasons
therefore you are ignorant of the fact that it is defeated
Sorry, I missed the counter arguments you say you'd stated. I'll revisit this tomorrow or later tonight. I'm really curious to see those arguments you say exist.
Why does evil exist? Well there is two kinds of evil: Evil done by humans happens because of free-will and there is justice in the afterlife. Evil done by nature happens because this is creation not heaven. Any physical creation is going to contain good and bad. Changing it will just create a new set of goods and bads.
And don't assume god does not feel every bit of pain we feel along with us. Life without pain does not work. Nobody would do anything.
Now please read my counter-arguments to your counter-arguments.
Quoting Miller
Not any. There could be conceivably a physical creation that is all good. Why would you say that that good and bad are necessary attributes to a creation? This is a declaration that is axiomatic, and it actually can't be supported by logic only by belief. So if you believe that, another person can VALIDLY believe that there are worlds, physical manifestations, where only good exist, and bad and evil do not.
And the reason creation contains bad... is whose fault? Who created creation according to you, and who is responsible ultimately for the bad in creation? If a creator who was INFINITELY good, created the world, there would be no bad things. After all, he is INFINITELY powerful so he could have created that world.
Quoting Miller
Free will can only choose evil if the evil choice is a valid option. If a creator who was INFINITELY good, created the world, there would be no such choices possible. After all, he is INFINITELY powerful so he could have created that world.
Quoting Miller
How do you know what your God feels? Is that not a bit presumptuous of you to claim you know your God's feelings? After all, he is INFINITELY complex, is he not? According to you, he is. Are YOU infinitely complex? No. So don't pretend to know what your god is like and what he feels. You are too small compared to him (in your own world view.)
impossble. and even if it was possible you wouldnt want it
dont assume he doenst
You state this as if it were proven. No, that is not proven. Much like the possibility of a physical world being all good is not proven.
but that is not the point whether you and/or I can imagine such a world. The problem is that GOD can imagine and create such a world. He is ALL POWERFUL, remember? So by not creating such a world, he failed to be not evil.
I am not assuming anything. But you claim to have knowledge of that. What gives? Can you read my reply with the eyes that God gave you? Can you comprehend what you read with the mind that God gave you? If you can't see or comprehend that, then god gave you false eyes and a false mind. Then you go and worship him. Again: What gives?
magical thinking
wordplay
creation is always relative and logical. god cant create a creation that defies that
i am like jesus
one with god
so i have access to his omniscience