Problem of Evil (Theodicy)
If God exists and He is all good and all powerful why does He allow evil? If there is no satisfactory answer to this question does it disprove God?
MountainDwarf raised this question and I thought it deserved its own thread.
I think my initial response that I can't answer is inadequate. We at least need to form one or more possible ways that God could allow evil in order to reasonably claim His existence. We don't know exactly why evil happens but we at least need to conceive of how it might while God exists.
One possible answer is expressed in Chapter 11 of the Baghavad Gita. Where Arjuna asks the God Vishnu why all these men in his army have to die.
Vishnu replies that it's just their bodies that die and if they weren't to die today then it would be another day. Their earthly suffering is inconsequential when compared to the spiritual gain. God is far more concerned about bringing us closer to him and less about our earthly comfort, even to the extreme that a violent and painful death isn't that big of a deal.
"All the sons of Dhrtarastra along with their allied kings, and Bhisma, Drona and Karna, and all our soldiers are rushing into Your mouths, their heads smashed by Your fearful teeth. I see that some are being crushed between Your teeth as well. As the rivers flow into the sea, so all these great warriors enter Your blazing mouths and perish. I see all people rushing with full speed into Your mouths as moths dash into a blazing fire. O Visnu, I see You devouring all people in Your flaming mouths and covering the universe with Your immeasurable rays. Scorching the worlds, You are manifest. O Lord of lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my obeisances unto You; please be gracious to me. I do not know what Your mission is, and I desire to hear of it.
The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you [the Pandavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain. Therefore get up and prepare to fight. After conquering your enemies you will enjoy a flourishing kingdom. They are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Savyasacin, can be but an instmment in the fight. The Blessed Lord said: All the great warriors-Drona, Bhisma, Jayadratha, Karna-are already destroyed. Simply fight, and you will vanquish your enemies."
MountainDwarf raised this question and I thought it deserved its own thread.
I think my initial response that I can't answer is inadequate. We at least need to form one or more possible ways that God could allow evil in order to reasonably claim His existence. We don't know exactly why evil happens but we at least need to conceive of how it might while God exists.
One possible answer is expressed in Chapter 11 of the Baghavad Gita. Where Arjuna asks the God Vishnu why all these men in his army have to die.
Vishnu replies that it's just their bodies that die and if they weren't to die today then it would be another day. Their earthly suffering is inconsequential when compared to the spiritual gain. God is far more concerned about bringing us closer to him and less about our earthly comfort, even to the extreme that a violent and painful death isn't that big of a deal.
"All the sons of Dhrtarastra along with their allied kings, and Bhisma, Drona and Karna, and all our soldiers are rushing into Your mouths, their heads smashed by Your fearful teeth. I see that some are being crushed between Your teeth as well. As the rivers flow into the sea, so all these great warriors enter Your blazing mouths and perish. I see all people rushing with full speed into Your mouths as moths dash into a blazing fire. O Visnu, I see You devouring all people in Your flaming mouths and covering the universe with Your immeasurable rays. Scorching the worlds, You are manifest. O Lord of lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my obeisances unto You; please be gracious to me. I do not know what Your mission is, and I desire to hear of it.
The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you [the Pandavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain. Therefore get up and prepare to fight. After conquering your enemies you will enjoy a flourishing kingdom. They are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Savyasacin, can be but an instmment in the fight. The Blessed Lord said: All the great warriors-Drona, Bhisma, Jayadratha, Karna-are already destroyed. Simply fight, and you will vanquish your enemies."
Comments (206)
This question needs to be addressed first, because if God does exist, then there must be an explanation for evil, whether we know what that is or not. Put another way, if God exists, then whatever arguments from evil that purport to show that God does not exist must necessarily be wrong. The way this debate is waged puts the cart before the horse.
You pointed out my obvious error. I'm really discussing the problem of suffering. Suffering is not necessarily evil. In fact I would say they aren't the same.
I am not a theist in any sense that would make explaining evil a problem. If I were, here is what I would say:
I remember my high school physics class. J.R. Starr was the teacher. 1969. Martinsville VA. We were studying light. We were talking about its dual nature. I was always good at physics, but I really didn't get it. I bashed my head against it over and over. Then - enlightenment - that's just the way it is.
I've thought about that realization many times since then. I've come to think that, in order to be taken seriously as a thinker, you have to be able to hold two seemingly incompatible ideas in your mind at the same time without conflict.
So to take your wording from your op, are you now asking "If God exists and He is all good and all powerful why does He allow suffering?"
To me, suffering is connected with free will. God being "all good" also necessarily requires freedom: goodness as it relates to our human sphere of existence is a property that's inseparable from divine freedom. To experience moral goodness in this life is predicated on a state of freedom; not that the individual who experiences goodness is necessarily in a state of freedom themselves, but when goodness manifests in the human world, it does so from a state of pure freedom, and that state of freedom is often glimpsed through the veil of the experience of that goodness. So that divine goodness is predicated on freedom, and they're experienced together as the same experience for us.
Human free will on the other hand, is an expression of that divine freedom on which goodness is predicated. But human free will is an upward movement from non-freedom to freedom, in contrast to the sort of primordial freedom of a good God. Human free will is a creative expression; the reaching up towards God's downward-stretched hand. That creative aspect of free will is the same creative will that's an aspect of the divine itself; the same creative will that brought about existence resides in us as well; creative free will is the divine element in humanity. Creative free will is essentially the mechanism of the deification of humanity; the human fulfilling its purpose through the spiritual evolution into participation with divinity. Not that man becomes God, but that man is fulfilled and perfected through creative free acts that pull him up into the divine life.
God requires creative free acts from man because God has need for man, just as man has need for God. A God who creates a universe, imbues it with conscious, feeling, reasoning humans who are imbued with divinity themselves, but has no need of this process and this creation, would not be a good God. Humanity is the vessel through which the divine creative will is moving.
Suffering, then, is also necessary within the context of free will. Suffering is a greater teacher than pleasure. Divine creative free will asks a lot from us; it's easier to shrink away from the call. The problem is that suffering is still truly senseless; it comes to whoever it will, regardless of whether someone is creatively striving with their free will. Suffering is ultimately predicated on the pure divine freedom, I think. Again, freedom and suffering are inseparable, even within the divine, if the gospels have any truth in them. A world in which freedom allows divine conscious choice, whether from the ultimate divine (God) or from his expression (us), is a world in which suffering is a natural outcome of conflicting choices. Suffering animates the world with life; a world without suffering would have no purpose, just as a world without freedom would have no meaning. So the question then becomes, what do we do with our suffering? Do we avoid it? Let it consume us? Or let it teach us?
True, He does. (I agree with you that it is probably Aquinas) I don't know we can know exactly why or how God permits suffering. However I think if we can think of no rational scheme in which he should it is a red flag that something is wrong in our conception of God or in suffering or somewhere else.
Quoting Thorongil
I'd love to do another thread on this but I've made several threads already. I'll have to wait a few days. The short answer is I see it as an existential choice or even wager. I can't be certain either way as to if there is God. To me, it makes the most sense out of my experience and is the best objective wager (kind of like Pascal) to have faith. I completely get if someone never really has much in the way of religious experiences they have little incentive to believe.
If we can, then "mysterious ways" is fucked up. :) It can even be a contradiction.
This theme is found in other world mythologies too. It is a justification for violence, and makes it seem like peace requires the use of violence.
This was a fantastic response. Very well written. There's a lot there to ponder.
I especially liked "world without suffering would have no purpose"
They way you describe human freedom sounds familiar, what theologian or philosopher is that?
"what do we do with our suffering? Do we avoid it? Let it consume us? Or let it teach us?"
You've argued very persuasively that we should allow suffering to teach us virtue and lead us closer to God. I think the Gita is also right though. The response of the mystic to suffering should thus be two fold. It is not to be shunned or ignored but is an invitation to greater self-renouncation (letting go of the desire for the lacking thing) and to be light or to reflect God's light in the darkness of that situation.
From our human perspective, there is definitely varying degrees of suffering. I wonder which way God sees it. Does He see all human suffering as petty almost foolish worry like the Gita quote in my first post, since everything from the stress of loosing my car keys to a lethal pandemic is insignificant from a eternal perspective? Or is it the opposite that as the Torah says and as Jesus shows in the gospel narrative that He cares for each one of us, knowing us by name, and sees the subjective suffering in our hearts even over small things?
One more question about suffering and this my greatest beef with God. Why are we created so psychologically biased towards suffering? It's human nature that if everything is going well and there is one small problem or even potential problem, the mind fixates on that one thing. Obviously it's a survival trait, gratitude and contentment don't keep us alive to have more babies over being paranoid and lustful. Yet it is the greatest source of misery, I feel we are wired to be unhappy.
But does peace require suffering?
No, that's an underhanded way to say that peace requires violence, for suffering implies violence. That which causes suffering is violent. So peace doesn't require suffering in an absolute sense. In some circumstances suffering may be unavoidable though.
The Christian revelation speaks against this mythological sacralization of violence.
Thanks; probably Nikolai Berdyaev.
Quoting MysticMonist
I haven't finished the Gita and have read through the major Upunishads once. I need to study both more to have a better response. Self-renounciation has never sat well with me, though, at least in the sense of full absorption into Brahman. But I do I appreciate the idea of seeing how you're connected with the rest of the universe; "you are the universe", that sort of concept. But I want to hold both ideas together; I'm connected to the world; the world is one organism of which I'm a member (as in arm, for instance), and yet I'm a conscious free agent moving towards divinity. The self needs to participate in that process, in my view, rather than become fully absorbed in The One, or the pleroma, or whatever.
Quoting MysticMonist
Again, I think both views can be held together. Both have truth to them. Actually, Christianity does hold both; "these present afflictions pale in comparison to the all-surpassing coming joy", and "God knows the number of hairs on your head."
Quoting MysticMonist
It doesn't seem to the case to me that everyone is like that. I don't think everyone fixates on suffering.
Yes the way the phrase "mysterious ways" is used commonly is complete BS. God doesn't use one earthly misfortune to bring about an earthly blessing later on in order to balance the books. The longer I practice as a mystic, the more I'm convinced that God doesn't care about our earthly success or worldly happiness with things such as promotions, healings, or martial happiness. At least praying to Him about such things has yielded me little results. Thank goodness too, if God were just a personal wish granter than it would fuel my already unbearable ego and self centeredness! Already religion tends to lead into being all about me, even with no statistically significant evidence for answering of prayers.
Yet understood in the proper context, the Catholics are right. God and the ways He interacts with us is mysterious. It is beyond our full understanding. Paul says we go from understanding to understanding. I think Bahá'u'llá (Baha'i founder) put that even better. He says we journey from astonishment to astonishment. Either way it is, at some point, partially comprehendable.
But peace almost always is a result of prior violence, politically speaking. Inner peace is a product of personal spiritual practice, which always involves suffering. Regardless of your interpretation of the book of Revelation, teleological peace requires some sort of spiritual and/or physical suffering, apparently.
Hmmm... maybe you're right. I do remember thinking I was more or less happy until Buddhism taught me how much I was suffering. :)
I don't know about how much I agree with the Gita or Hinduism apart from the piece I quoted. The same idea crops up other places but I remembered the Gita putting it most clearly. In Kabbalah, they teach the soul descends from perfection into suffering on purpose in order to reascend later in order to be united closer to God that pre-fall. You appreciate something more when it's gone sort of idea. Kabbalah is a lot harder to quote (or read).
About self-renunciation: I had an insight today from Plato's Republic where he says the virtue/justice is the path to happiness. If I lived extremely simply eating cheaply and never indulging in luxury and spent the money instead on charity, in theory I'd be much happier. First, the joy from helping others would be deeper and longer lasting than sensual pleasure. Second, if I could live off a very austere lifestyle then I would become immune to the desire or worry of wealth. The only thing that would change if I lost my job or went bankrupt would be how much I could give to charity. Want to never have to worry about money again? Learn to live on $500/month, haha. Of course I couldn't persuade my wife to join me on this experiment, but I can realize my happiness lies in virtue and nothing else so I can let go of the fear of poverty. Because even in the deepest poverty, I still have the chance for virtue.
Interesting, that's similar to what I'm trying to get at here. I haven't studied Kabbalah at all, but I've always found it intriguing.
Quoting MysticMonist
Yes, I agree. I haven't successfully achieved much along those lines personally, but it's something I want to pursue. This inner virtue seems totally lacking in culture at large right now; there's a poverty of the spirit that manifests in how people's happiness and sense of well being are predicated purely on the external state of affairs; politically, technologically...
That is the way of this world (of Satan). René Girard describes this as the victimage mechanism which resolves the conflictual crisis that arises in the community due to mimetic rivalry, and would otherwise lead to mutual destruction, by the unanimous and collective murder of a victim. The transference of collective violence on the victim is responsible for the unity and peace of the community. Both ritual and prohibitions - and hence the sacred - emerge out of this murder, which is at the foundation of society. And all of mythology is the work of Satan - a lie that covers the founding mechanism as necessary for order. The sacrifice is seen as necessary for peace, and hence the victim is seen as guilty and responsible for the chaos of the community.
"For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings" Hosea 6:6
"Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed. So you are witnesses and consent to the deeds of your fathers; for they killed them, and you build their tombs" Luke 11:47-48
"Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies" John 8:43-44
"Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdererd between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all this will come upon this generation" Matthew 23:34-46
Jesus replaces this with forgiveness and shows that the victim is innocent, and sacrifice unnecessary. God does not require sacrifice - it is man that wants it (and through myth and religion transfers this desire to God in order to justify himself).
Why not?
Could you explain that, all mythology is the work of satan?
Humans see it is necessary for a scapegoat. Historically, true.
Under the assumption "God doesn't want us to sacrifice scapegoats"
Why then does the human, the perfect creation of God, sacrifice the scapegoat?
You haven't addressed the question of whether suffering is necessary for peace. But I do agree with Girand; I got at some of that in my first op on the forum. But you lost me with the appeal to Satan.
If u had soccer balls on a hill, you'd find the soccer balls would clump together at the bottom of the hill.
Imagine being the soccer ball.
That hill was God.
So,
Can we call the infinitely many small random occurrences of the laws of nature that produced us, God?
Or rather should we? Or even, perceive it as an old man?
This topic deserves its own thread. I'm new here so I'm not sure of group norms. I've made four threads in five days. Too many or go ahead a post another one?
I'll try to answer this too in the new thread, it's a good question l.
I think it depends on which God-concept we're discussing.
However you want to define it, evil/suffering exists. If someone hits you in the bridge of your nose on purpose then you know suffering/evil exists. To say otherwise is to not have lived or to be stubborn.
Quoting Pacem
Then Aquinas was wrong. And actually I'd love to know where he wrote/said such a thing.
This could be much ado about nothing—and it’s not directly oriented toward your post. Still—as a tangential to the thread—I wanted to express that although sensual pleasure all too often gets a very bad rap, imo it shouldn’t. I say this without yet knowing what position you yourself take on this topic.
I’m thinking of everything on a spectrum from John Lennon’s song, “Love” (e.g., love is touch) to sexual practices, including those of Tantric sex. In many—though not all—religions, a divinity aligned sex (which in ancient Hindu practices could get very raunchy by today’s standards, for example) serves as a vehicle for attaining closer proximity to God. This “divinity alignment” could well be interpreted as the presence and pursuit of sensuality (as compared with things like sex devoid of any sensed intimacy). I’m aware that in today’s culture such attitude—to not even say spiritual truth / reality—is most often deemed contradictory to what in fact is … this regardless if one is spiritual or atheistic. Nevertheless, to me there’s something worthwhile about sensuality as one more facet of closer proximity to divinity … be this sensuality of a sexual nature or not: like in the sensual (sense-ual; as contrasted to percept-ual) pleasures of deep understandings that have at times been termed ecstasies. I’d even uphold that experienced love—from eros to agape—can itself only be an experience of the sensual.
To be clear, while I don’t disagree with the notion that one can live well even when devoid of most carnal forms of sensuality (such as what can result from out of physical touch), I do maintain that an ideal, fully balanced life (which no one can be in perpetual possession of) would include a wide range of sensual experiences as means of closer proximity to God.
I’ve brought this up because there’s a historical precedent in modern western culture that sensuality if of the Devil’s—from Savonarola to more modern notions of it being the Devil tempting one away from salvation. (no dancing in the streets, kind of thing) Then there’s a self-renunciation in Eastern spiritualties that seem to me to have almost taken over other paths after the West’s colonization of (parts of) the East. Yet, from Shinto to ancient Hindu to other ancient Eastern paths—as well as many ancient western paths—the being-at-home with sensuality as a means of closer proximity to divinity was once relatively widespread … again, be it expressed sexually or not, the focus was on new understandings of the divine gained through sense-experience (rather than percept-experience or reasoning).
Thought it worthwhile to bring this perspective on sensuality into view.
Hello, btw. So you know, I don’t personally subscribe to any notion of God as deity, though I do hold a belief in divinity, with what I here term God essentially being divinity’s pinnacle. The Neo-Platonist “the One” works for me, for example, as well as other notions of what is to me the same referent.
Look at De Malo. You can also find some english translations of it.
No, you're just redefining God to what it hasn't and doesn't normatively refer to.
Spinoza would disagree. At least I think he would. I would definitely disagree. I'm not entirely consistent in what I mean by God. For me, God is a range of possible realities.
I'll start a seperate thread tommorow.
It doesn't necessarily need it's own thread; as mentioned, the question is fundamental to your question about suffering.
Javra,
Hello! Thanks for the welcome.
I'm using the title of Platonist myself but the forum has helped me realize I don't exactly fit in that category. I don't "neo"Platonism because Plotinus would have said he was a Platonist and I'm mainly studying Plato and Plotinus.
I agree completely on the erotic aspect to mysticism. I write Rumi style poems about God that aren't PG. I also think there's a place for sensuality in spiritual practice. Enjoying a cup of tea, fully enjoying it mindfully, can be a way of showing gratitude for the many gifts from God. Romantic love with a spouse too.
I'll flush out more of a thought experiment. As I said before you live off $10,000/year or less to include rent and utilities but perhaps not health insurance (it's very expensive). That's less than minimum wage full time earnings. Try to live a cheaply as possible and have no luxuries, use all excess income to donate to worthy charities sectetly and don't brag about your austerity. Would the happiness of knowing your helping others outweigh the loss of desired luxuries? If you had a starving child in front of you and choose between a DVD for yourself and a bowl of rice to give, it would be a no brainer and would be rewarding to give. Would your worry about finances or status or promotions disappear? Obviously monks already do this but they require on the charity of others to sustain them and also devote their time to prayer or charitable work and have other vows beyond poverty. What if you worked a normal career but knew a good portion of your salary went to others and not yourself? Again my wife would probably veto this idea, so it's just a thought experiment.
I’m on board with your general thought experiment; its good intending. As to your wife’s veto, I believe it may have something to do with a commonsensical approach to life and our relations to others. We have to be living in order to help out others we hold agape for. Like what they tell us about oxygen masks when we’re aboard airplanes, we have to take care of ourselves before we can successfully take care of others. Imo, finding the right balance between maintaining one’s self and giving to others is the trick, though, especially since contexts change all the time. And we can’t all be monks: even if it where what everyone wanted to be, there’s be no one left to sustain us with the occasional charity. For what it’s worth, if you don't mind me saying: sounds like you’ve got a wife with sound judgment, one that's also good intending.
So? Citing one exception merely proves the rule.
Quoting MysticMonist
What you think is irrelevant. Your feelings aren't the standard by which words are defined.
Quoting MysticMonist
No, this will not do. Whatever it is you're talking about, it isn't God as traditionally and normatively understood. Make up another word to describe your idea or cease appropriating the word God. If you continue to appropriate it, you're just contributing to making it utterly meaningless.
Maybe cause it's not obvious?
I'll grant that you can't talk about why does God allow suffering without addressing does God exist. So let's switch topics within this thread.
Why I have faith in God:
I'm sure you are familiar with Pascal's wager. As a mystic, I have a modified version of it.
Possible outcomes:
1. God exists and has given a "special" revelation (Aquanis) to one particular faith. For the sake of argument, we'll say the Mormons are right (South Park reference)
2. God exists but only reveals himself in "natural" revelation (Aquanis again) but doesn't have a favorite religion
3. God doesn't exist as a diety of any kind, but there some non-sentient source of goodness or virtue or universal conciousness or spiritual reality or objective purpose. In short, maybe not God but something.
4. No God, no somehting. Pure nihilism.
Any other possibilities?
I have not be convinced with certainty that any one of the above realities is true enough to remove all reasonable doubt. I have a lot of doubt actually.
So in lack of clear evidence, I make a existential choice or a leap of faith (which I frequently second guess and re-evaluate). Personally I use two criteria: what makes the most sense out of my experience and then look at what's at stake.
Experience: I have frequent religious experiences, perhaps I have an active temporal lobe. I fully admit that not all these experiences are genuine not easily interpreted. I definitely acknowledge the possibility of religious delusion both in theory and in my own life. But so accept nihilism, I would have to say I'm 100% delusional. That would be pretty difficult to do.
What's at stake;
If 1 is true, the mormons are right and I didn't become Mormon. I've said before that there is a lack of clear evidence in order to make an informed choice. How would I know they are right other than to take their word for it, especially since there are competing revelations? There is the taste and see approach but I've done that with 7 religions and never heard God lay it out for me yet. Did I stop just a few religions short? I can't see being morally responsible for believing something without good evidence.
If 2 is true, this is what I most closely believe, is true I'm good. As a mystic I try to draw closer to God and develop virtue. Now believing alone gets me nowhere, it's all in the actual practice
If 3 is true, then hopefully my path of spirituality and virtue gets me closer to whatever reality there is or in accordance with whatever source of meaning or goodness exists.
If 4 is true, which I think is very unlikely, then it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. My subjective definition of meaning is as good as any other subjective meaning. I think that my path brings me peace and fulfillment so by that sense it's great.
My biggest problem is the haunting feeling that an exclusivist view of Christianity or Islam is right and I'll end up in hell for lack of intellectual belief. This is completely illogical and makes no philosophical or scriptural sense, yet large numbers of people have thus view and I have been told this many times by people worried about my salvation. It's unsettling.
Maybe. But then you'd need an argument to show that, which I don't see here.
Okay, assuming we're talking about the God of the Bible. God is invisible and God is immaterial. Therefore if he exists he exists incognito. No one can prove that there is or is not a Christian God.
What term should I use? I hate the overuse of the word too. How about Monad (that's one my favorite? I'll try that out on here and see how it goes.
It may be the exception that proves the rule, but Spinoza and Plato and Descartes and Tillich and Richard Rohr all mean this wider sense of God to jystva nane a few. But your point is still valid, I don't mean the God that the baptist church is taking about.
I don't know. It's not really my problem.
Quoting MysticMonist
Really? All of those figures use the particular word "God" to refer to "a range of possible realities?" I don't think you know what you're talking about.
A non-sequitur. God being invisible or immaterial doesn't entail that he cannot be proven to exist.
Well then, if it is obvious, tell me what proof you have.
Fair enough, but there is a range of all of them what they mean. I fall somewhere in that range and I don't feel the need to spell out exactly where I fall because I'm not sure. I could make up a position.
Tillich says God is ground of all being, he rejects theism
Rohr is a via negativa mystic, who doesn't strictly define God. He talks about God as consciousness sometimes.
Descartes has a pretty philosophical view of God from first principles
Spinoza's God is more complex that one line to explain
And so on...
There is a big difference between this philosophy forum and various faith forums. I'm learning to be more exact with my wording. They are much less critical there. I welcome the corrections!
Why do you assume that I have one? I'm not a theist at present, but I don't have to be to identify bad arguments against God's existence.
How is what I said a non-sequitur? I had just started an argument.
I largely agree with you. Glad to see another proponent of the all or nothing approach to nihilism/meaning.
Yeah part of my argument is that if there some sort of meaning then it's unlikely that this meaning to be the biggest jerk you can be. Cultivating virtue and treating others well and seeking solace in prayer/study would suit one well regardless.
No he doesn't. He rejects only a certain type of theism, in contradistinction to the one he advocates, which is remarkably akin to classical conceptions of God found in Aquinas and others.
Quoting MysticMonist
Rohr is a New Age writer whose views on God have little to do with actual apophatic theology.
Quoting MysticMonist
Descartes expresses standard theism.
Quoting MysticMonist
Spinoza disagrees: "By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality."
Because you're missing a premise (or more than one) that links God's immateriality with an inability on our part to prove his existence.
We are using theism in different senses. Tillich blatantly rejects "theism". Yes in a sense is still s theist but that's not exactly fair.
I'm sorry you don't like Rohr, but you can't discount him out of hand. He hasn't been kicked out of the Catholic Church yet.
I'll admit I'm not an expert on Descartes nor spinoza.
I forgot what we are originally arguing. The meaning of God and theism right? You win, I'll try not to use those terms.
No. He distinguishes between two different kinds of theism, rejecting one and arguing for the other. Have you read him yet?
Quoting MysticMonist
So you do know what I mean! ;)
Quoting MysticMonist
I appreciate it.
Okay, you might be right on Tillich too. I've read several of his books and sermons. Honestly I don't know why he's still Christian. Especially with a sermon like Shaking the Foundation. He sets up a wonderful view of God seperate from the church (this isnt exactly the right way to put it, forgive me) but then tacks on Jesus as God almost artificialy. I get equally frustrated with Maimonides who is brilliant and I don't understand why he then accepts Rabbinical Judaism and all 613 mitzvot wholesale. I'll fully admit I have an anti-church bais when reading them.
I'm not a liberal Christian, though my priests are at my family's espicopal church. So I'm well acquainted. Bishop John Spong used to a be rector there long ago.
I would agree, liberal Christianity everything becomes a metaphore, not sure of what exactly maybe God's love.
I'm totally on board with the mere metaphor. For me it's metaphor of the one Absolute, the Monad.
What then is God, if not the thing that produced us, the cause to our own effect. Humans inherently seek to understand this, none more greatly wanted to appropriate the relationship of cause and effect than Hume.
For B to have occurred you needed an A.
And our whole lives we associate things like this, food-mom and so on.
I could go a little further here on Hume to illustrate that we have an already understood notion that humans create cities. They do. It's not too far a creative leap then to suppose that a human-like something created the world, and wow you have God in the biblical fashion.
'Causes' act with reason (obviously not always the case, or even unintended reason is possible) so when we ponder a cause, so too do we think of the reason for why it did so.
Spending our whole lives causing things, we eventually wonder what caused us.
And this is the the way in which God is
Quoting Thorongil
Tell me how the hill was not the cause for the ball's effect
Or like I said, how the random set of natural phenomena that Caused us isn't God.
Please. And chill man, we all want more knowledge
Quoting Thorongil
this isn't necessary. Lots of people don't know what they talk about. That's why they keep talking. Or is Socratic dialogue too simple of an idea for you to have fully digested it.
1. Fatalism, as in the OP.
2. Making suffering itself a good.
Neither are convincing.
Since this comment was towards me, I'd like to say I took no offense. I was factually wrong and Thorongil corrected me. We could all try to be more civil, of course but it's fine.
I'm going to cut down on the cross faith references outside of scripture, the more name dropping I do the more messy it makes my argument. I'll also try to put in the extra time and use more direct quotations. It will teach me to be more careful in my references and I may learn more by looking up all my sources.
Do we have a perfect understanding of good and evil, such that we are justified in saying that the existence of evil is incompatible with perfect goodness? In other words is it not a problem due to our imperfect understanding of perfection; our projections of human conceptions of value onto the absolute?
Isn't "the absolute" also a projection? I realize I've made similar arguments before, but ultimately arguments against projection break down unless we delineate what is reasonable projection and what is not. It also brings up a basic epistemic problem of whether we have knowledge of something like the absolute, or evil, or whatever, outside of experience, which includes projection. What's a different sort of epistemic tool other than experience? Divine revelation?
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hick/#SH3a
If we are going to be consistent in our projection of an absolute then we are projecting it as that which is beyond our understanding. It would seem absurd to then turn around and criticize our projection because a problem whuch is beyond our understanding (the existence of evil) presents itself to us.
I'm having trouble parsing through this sentence; can you rephrase?
Quoting Janus
Aside from your response to my above request, are you saying that evil is beyond our understanding? Maybe your enumeration of your point will help with this.
Another way to view that would be that the concept of "jerk" only obtains within a moral environment where being mean to other people is not good. So, the very concept of "jerk" only obtains within a broader moral concept where kindness (for instance) is an important moral concept ("jerk" being averse to kindness, generally).
Quoting MysticMonist
Ah...if only this wisdom was proclaimed from the rooftops of The Philosophy Forum Dot Com...
We think of the absolute as being that which is 'in itself' or beyond our experience and understanding. So absolute goodness would be pure goodness in itself; we can think of that only as something beyond our ken. The same goes for absolute beauty, the infinite, the eternal, and so on.
Quoting Noble Dust
No, I'm saying that the problem of evil, or the fact that evil exists in a world created out of love, is beyond our understanding. If the world is not created out of love then of course there is no problem of evil. The existence of evil cannot show that the world is not created out of love, though; because this would only follow if our imperfect understanding of the relationship between evil and love were instead perfect; which is a contradiction.
Ok, thanks. But I don't think that those absolutes are beyond our ken; rather, they poke through the fog of our perception as moments of clarity.
Yes, I agree. We have an intuitive feel for them, but no comprehensive discursive understanding. The Christian idea of the "Cloud of Unknowing"; the unknowing that knows. The problems start when we demand: "either/or". We are better to think "both/ and".
If the world were not created out of love, what would it be created out of? Evil? Indifference? But I see what you mean, and it looks similar to some of my arguments here: the so called "problem of evil" only exists within a context where the opposite: a world predicated on love, for instance, is the reality. Yes/no?
Did you read that book? I bought it on a whim in a state of severe depression, and then left it on the park bench where I began reading it after it's purchase. Clearly just a result of my mental state, but...if you read it, it was worthwhile for you?
But yes, I agree here; both/and is better than either/or. But not by the metrics of modern Western culture.
Well it could be, as according to science, created out of nothing. And I agree that the problem of evil would in that case be a pseudo-problem. So. it's either a pseudo-problem, or a problem that originates due to a our limited understanding of good and evil, creation and love.
Quoting Noble Dust
It's on my shelf, and I have taken several quick glances at it.
Quoting Noble Dust
So much the worse for the "metrics of Western Culture", then!
But I don't understand your reasoning here; why would a "real" (assuming it's not a psuedo) problem of evil be simply because of our limited understanding? Perhaps because of my own limited understanding? :-O But really, for my views on suffering (which relates to evil), see my first post in this thread in response to the OP. EDIT: I mention it because I feel like I would be repeating myself to go into more detail here.
Quoting Janus
Indeed.
Also, the problem of evil being a psuedo-problem might obtain within a scientistic view of the world, but it doesn't obtain within actual experience. I may be preaching to the choir here, but it's at least worth it to put the thought out into this thread.
Depends at what level of inquiry you are asking that. If you are asking at the level of metaphysics/religion, then it is because of the Fall - humans have rejected God's love and are thus left with Satan's violence.
If you are asking at an anthropological / evolutionary level it is because human beings are mimetic animals who imitate each other's desires. When this imitation moves to acquisitive behaviors, conflict ensues because both cannot possess the same object. As this mimesis spreads through the community there is a dissolution of the entire community in unanimous violence of all against all. This is resolved only when this unanimous violence of the community is arbitrarily projected unto a single victim, and the whole community unites in order to kill the scapegoat, which becomes both the guilty victim responsible for the mimetic crisis AND the solution to the crisis itself. That is why the sacred is born, because the victim is seen as responsible for the peace of the community that ensues after its immolation. Out of this founding murder are born both rituals (which are meant to be a partial reproduction of the mimetic crisis for the sake of its positive resolution) and prohibitions, which are meant to prevent the propagation of mimesis that leads to the crisis. Myth is the remembrance of the mimetic crisis that arises, and it is written from the perspective of the murderers - that's why the victim or the scapegoat always appears as guilty and deserving of death - and very frequently the request for the murder of the victim is attributed to the sacred, and thus responsibility is removed or hidden from humans - it is projected unto the gods.
Did you find any books helpful in your depression?
At that period of my life, no, as far as I can remember. But I'm still in the relative depression now that I was in then. So as far as books that have been helpful during times of depression...I've yet to discover something revelational. I remember reading Tillich's The Courage To Be, and feeling a sense of unexpected peace. I remember reading through the book, feeling this heavy load, brought on solely by the context of the text, and then suddenly feeling this unexpected release of the heavy load during literally the last two pages of the entire book. Maybe that's his style? Idk. I also distinctly remember reading through Teilhard's "The Divine Milieu", and sitting in Union Square. There's a moment where he says that, essentially, there are "reasons for structured belief", or something along those lines. That's a terrible paraphrase. But, I was crying in the park, in front of strangers, to give you a sense of the impact. >:O
Yes, when I was depressed I didn't find much help in books either. However, things like prayer, sports, and having a few close friends were all helpful to a certain extent - and just getting adjusted to feeling the emotions. You know there is a point when you have emotions but you realize they can't hurt you and you don't have to react to them - that moment was quite revelatory for me. It is much like how you feel the need to give up when you're running and you keep feeling it but don't give up. It's a strange thing because to a certain extent you escape your biological programming - but it's like a muscle, it must be trained.
Quoting Noble Dust
I read that when depressed too >:O - but I don't remember much now. I think I liked it at first, and then didn't like it anymore lol.
Quoting Noble Dust
Haha! Why were you reading the books in the park and not at home? And did the strangers approach you and start talking to you? :P I assume if they saw you crying they must have!
Prayer was actually an additional determinant to my emotional health at that time; it was the time at which I "fell away". I came to the realization that prayer, clearly through my own unhealthy mode, was actually not only unhealthy, but directly affecting my spiritual health; the manner in which I was approaching prayer was simply a reification of the emotional issues I was dealing with. I still haven't been able to return to prayer as a healthy discipline because of those issues.
Quoting Agustino
- No, I don't know anything about that. :P
Quoting Agustino
I guarantee you it's all in the title. A fucking misleading title, at that. >:O
Quoting Agustino
Because reading books in the park can be profound. And no, its NYC, no one approached me. And I'm a white American young male; of course I did my best to hide my emotions. :P but even if I hadn't, no one would've offered a second glance. >:O
>:O I have literarily almost zero memory about what the contents of the book are anymore. I somehow remember Kierkegaard is mentioned and there's lots of talk about the ground of being?
Quoting Noble Dust
I never tried that. I prefer to run in parks, or watch people :-O lol
Quoting Noble Dust
Hmmm so is NYC the type of place where if you lie on the ground on the street nobody stops by to see what's happening with you?
The ground of being is the main gist; God is above God; beyond God. The ground of being.
Quoting Agustino
I do that on the regular as well. I don't run though, I'm too lazy, and I'm already too skinny. >:O
Quoting Agustino
It's the definition of that place.
Ah, at least I remembered that... >:O
Quoting Noble Dust
LOL, that must be quite a depressing place to live then, no wonder you were depressed!
I should have said that if the world is created out of nothing then there simply is no problem of evil, rather than saying it would then be a "pseudo-problem". Otherwise, in a world created out of love it is a real problem for us due to our limited understanding. This qualification is because it's impossible to imagine how it could be a real problem in itself. Could it be a real problem for God? Certainly not according to traditional theology.
Actually, come to think of it, it was a useful concept. The idea of our conception of God being just a representation of the real God; the "God above God". That's how he phrases it; in other words, more accurately, it would be the "God above god".
Quoting Agustino
You mean are depressed, right? I still live here :P
To a certain extent, but it's not that ground breaking :P
Quoting Noble Dust
lol! See, that's why you should move to a chill, non-competitive place :P
No? How so? It was groundbreaking within my own experience, regardless of the historical context of the concept.
Quoting Agustino
Yeah, like where? Can I find cheap audio gear and rent, and somehow find a way to make a living while having time to write/record music? :s
I mean the idea itself is very old, and Tillich doesn't even express it in the best way. Also the idea itself, without the necessary experiences, isn't of much help either.
By the way, I remember this being much like Tillich's book, but much better. Significantly better ;)
Quoting Noble Dust
Are you kidding? You're living in probably one of the most expensive cities in the whole world! You can find much cheaper rent anywhere else, especially in third world countries where prices and rents are much cheaper for everything. That is provided you can sustain a similarly high income, which wouldn't necessarily be impossible - for example I know that if you worked online you could do it. If you were a web developer, say, you could continue the work you used to do in NYC from anywhere around the world, and earn about the same while living at a cheaper cost. If you are a musician you could probably do it if you're already somewhat established online and get funding/sales through things like Patreon.
Compost.
Or, if you are an embryologist, selective cell death is the process whereby fingers and toes are differentiated. But suffering and death are not the same thing; to die is not to suffer.
God is like an angry ex-gf that slashes your tires after you told her you were gonna go hang with that other smexy bihh?
So all people who believe in Christianity readily admit we are all evil, will continue to be evil since we have fallen, but will be forgiven, its all ok, keep doing evil?
All mythology being Satan's work, does this mean Satan works through us to produce evil work? Could you elaborate on that a little?
Quoting Agustino
This is telling, does this mean God is just an idea to make us feel better about our actions and actions done to us?
No, that's ironically the mythical image of God that Christianity exposes. Violence belongs to man, not to God. So the one who slashed the tires is man.
Quoting Frank Barroso
Nope.
Quoting Frank Barroso
Yes, what's the problem with that? All the works of evil are man's (and Satan's) not God's. That's what the Bible shows.
Quoting Frank Barroso
That is a mythological hypothesis, because God doesn't make us feel better about our actions or what is done to us, but quite the opposite - God puts all the blame on us - it is revealed that we are behind the evil that is around us. That is precisely what makes the Biblical God different from the gods shown by mythology.
So eating the fruit of knowledge is equivalent to man doing violence? Disobedience perhaps, but violence I think not.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
I don't see how all of man's works may be evil but he himself is not.
Quoting Agustino
I don't see this.
Analogy is best.
If you walked into your family house as a child.
There was a hot piece of s*** in the middle of the room.
There's no one in the house, and so sadly it is your job to clean the poop.
Later, your father comes home and tells you yes I left that poop for you to clean.
You ask him why and he says because you grew up and now you know.
Now, who is at fault?
The child who had no decision behind his action, certainly there was action for him, tho involuntarily (knowledge).
or
The father who certainly decided 1. To have the arbitrary rule for the the ascertainment of knowledge and 2. To give you punishment for betraying rule 1.
I can make another analogy about my friend having a curfew and who really is to blame when the friend is punished.
What if the story is told from the perspective of man, and thus from the perspective of the criminal? What if man expelled God but transfers this expulsion onto God? The Prologue to John's Gospel does reveal that the Logos was expelled by man - that He was rejected and refused, and it asks us to read the OT in light of the NT.
Morality must be seen from the Source of virtue, being and existence must been seen from their Source. My very life derives meaning not from me but from my Source, my Creator.
This creates not only stronger explanations (though admittedly circlular ones), but it keeps the focus on my mysticism and my development of virtue on the Absolute. This of course is the reason to be a mystic in the first place.
The phrase "The exception proves the rule" means that the exception tests the rule, not that it supports or justifies it. It's like in "proving ground" where weapons are tested.
Hmm... I never knew that.
Though it doesn't take away from Thorongil's point about using the term God or Theism in other than typically used ways. There is clearly no hard rule about this and philosophy does it all the time, just look at Kant's footnotes and his love of redefining words all the time.
However, in this particular case while I could redefine "God" it's best if I don't. At least not to redefine Him as my Absolute Source of being, meaning, and virtue. It's important for me to differentiate the two concepts. That way I can that say the religious God (a deific figure prayed to and intellectualy believed in and experienced thru a religious tradition) is a real expression of the Absolute. Thereby contrasting the two related concepts.
He's wrong.
Theists do actually minimally conceive of God as the absolute source of being.
Let me see if I understand you correctly. You objected to me using the word God to describe a range of possible meanings (because I lack certainty on exactly what/who God is), but you don't object if it use it to describe a First Cause or Source of being?
Just because there is a First Cause doesn't mean it's a diety. I do agree theists hold that God is the first cause, but the terms are not synonymous.
I'd like to suggest that Kabbalah is closest in this explanation of divinity. Ein Sof is the Absolute Source, but is itself unknowable. We don't know if it is a God or a passive force or what. It's just an unknowable Absolute. From this Absolute emanate things like virtue, goodness, existence which owe their being to the Absolute and in some way reflect, though imperfectly the nature of the Source.
I just realized the best solution to your objection of an imprecise definition of "God" is to refuse to speak of the nature of the Absolute and to only say it is unknowable in and of itself, yet it is the Source of all good things (which is redundant since evil things have no real existence).
Correct.
Quoting MysticMonist
Well, yes, there is a difference between deism and theism. But deists and theists do still believe in God, they just differ about whether God has revealed itself in history, can be prayed to, has a plan for the world, etc. Deists say no, theists say yes.
If we're solely responsible for evil, how does that even affect God? Why does God have such a stake in the whole thing? Why would he create this soap opera where we're responsible for everything wrong that happened, and yet he throws us this bone to save us, if we retain the correct set of beliefs for our 70 year lifespans? That sounds like a human projection unto the concept of God; it represents a power-play, a form of abuse, essentially. In a world where we are solely responsible for all evil, the offer of forgiveness becomes not an act of love, but a show of power. In that scenario, our accepting God's offer becomes a fear-based action; power intimidates us, and when this power-based forgiveness is offered, we accept out of fear of the alternative; the abuser sucks the abused back into the cycle of abuse with a soft kiss to the forehead. Indeed, it's not a fear of Hell that inspires the acceptance on our part, it's a fear of an abusive God-figure. If God exists, he's not an abuser. If you're God is an abuser, he's a false God.
What do you mean created out of love? Literally made of the stuff of love, or inspired by a metaphysical love of some sort? Or something else?
>:O
I work in the wine industry, so I have a few recs: possibly a 2010 Barolo; Conterno or DeForville are a few good producers. Or, if you're more on the esoteric side, a Jura Chard; Overnoy, or if you can find a back vintage of the now retired Jaques Puffeney...anyways, carry on...
There is a wine industry in NYC? :-O Where's them vineyards?
Are you kidding? :-O NYC is literally the wine capital of the world. In terms of imports to shops/restraunts, anyway. It's an objective fact, as stuck up as it may sound. As far as NY state wine, the Finger Lakes upstate make some solid cold climate wines, and Long Island has a booming winemaking industry, but stick to the upstate wines for quality.
Now, are you going to respond to my response to you that was on topic?
No. Because your response ignored my basic premise and argued as if it was false. God's love is perceived to be the greatest threat by those who are unloving and violent - just like it was by the Pharisees. This doesn't mean they are correct though, they just have a distorted perception and they input their own violence to God.
Can you restate the premise, then? I looked back through some posts, but I'm not clear what you mean by your basic premise.
Ok. I can agree with the basic premise, at least in principle; at least for the sake of discussion. So how does my response to you saying that God lays all the blame on us ignore that premise? There's a difference between men "expelling God", and God "putting the blame on us". The one is an action of man, the other an action of God, and they aren't interchangeable. I still stand by my initial response and would welcome your comments.
No. Blame cannot be put - that is merely an expression of speech. Blame always exists on the guilty party - the guilty party places it themselves through their actions. God merely reveals it to us, because we cover our eyes and ears not to see it.
Quoting Agustino
What? I quoted a post from a day ago. Specifically, the quote upon which my response to you was based. Now you quote something you said a few minutes ago. Which is it?
Creation as an act of love.
Both are it. I've clarified what I meant by explaining that blame cannot be laid on someone, it is an objective fact, at most it can be revealed. To lay it on someone would be to lie presumably.
So God doesn't "put the blame on us"?
Can you elaborate?
That's a figure of speech meant to show that he reveals that the blame is on us. So no, God doesn't take this thing called blame that isn't already on us and puts it there.
Figures of speech communicate just as powerfully as logic, so you need to enunciate just exactly what you mean here. How exactly are God and blame connected in your view?
They are not, blame belongs to man, not to God. Man is the author of his acts, which, being sinful, carry blame with them like a shadow.
Surely your familiar with the idea of God as Love? When you create a piece of music; is that an act of love?
Creation as an act of love vs. God as love seem different to me, which is why I asked for clarification. I guess you can make the argument for God being "one who creates", and thus, naturally creating out of love, as love is also a way to express who/what God is? Is that what you're getting at?
Quoting Janus
A pure creative act is a free act; love, however, is expressed between beings. So if a song is an act of love, then the song would have to have being. Does it?
That would depend on the music, obviously :P - it could be a work of violence too.
So who "puts" the blame here?
Man through his actions. Vice and sin are their own punishments.
Ok, I'm on board. But where does sin stem from? (I'm only on board, by the way, because you appear to have rescinded your claim that "God puts the blame on us"; is that true?)
No. I've clarified that that claim means that God reveals that blame is on us.
Quoting Noble Dust
Man's actions.
So man is purely and solely to blame?
But man puts that blame, not God?
There is no putting of blame, blame exists according to actions. Sinful actions entail blame, the same way you entail your shadow.
But you just said:
Quoting Agustino
Yep, what I said above doesn't contradict that. Except that I'm guarding against a possible misunderstanding that I sense in you, namely that there is a separation between sin and blame, and there is not. So who puts the blame? Man through his actions. But this isn't to say that the blame is something in addition to the sinful actions that is actually put on top of everything else. It's already included in the package.
No, it does. It's not only simple grammar, but simple use of language and sentence structure. You can't say "puts blame" when it suits you, and then deny me when I point out your inconsistency. You need to either say "hey, I messed up with my language", or acknowledge that you do want to use "put" as an action that someone performs here.
Quoting Agustino
You're creating that on you're own; my initial critique was based off of the sentence where you said "God puts the blame solely on us". That and nothing more. Whatever you might be sensing is not what I'm trying to communicate here.
Quoting Agustino
This doesn't make sense.
If God is Love, then an act of God is an act of Love, no?
Could the creation of violent music be an act of love (in any sense) as opposed to the music itself being an embodiment of love?
To add what I view to be an added metaphysical dimension to this conversation in terms of causality:
At the very least technically, blame is (one type of) responsibility *, and responsibility pertains to that (he / she / it (angels, for example, are all gender-neutral “its” last I checked)) which creates: i.e., that which causally brings about effects via its own being and impetus.
Then, responsibility in general (and blame in particular) is that obtained through the free-willed act of choice between different alternatives (the choice being the effect one causally brings about).
To clarify that I here personally intend a non-deity/psyche God, I’ll refer to this referent as “G-d”.
G-d is then the a priori reason—or source—for all free-willed action. Yet G-d is absolute, unconditional love. Hence, all free-willed action that is not oriented toward the alternative of closer proximity to an absolute, unconditional love (maybe also here expressible as an absolute harmony of being) is not itself caused by G-d but by the humans in question: choosing alternatives which go in any number of other directions but that of closer proximity to G-d.
Here probably putting words into Agostino’s mouth (may he correct me to the extent that he see fit): it is therefore, and thereby, us humans which expel the love which is G-d via our own freewill, this then being our responsibility and, thus, our blame … these being effects resultant of our own causation and, hence, creation (and not that of G-d’s).
* Its odd to me how we don’t have a succinct word in our lexicon for praiseworthy responsibility, one that rivals that of “blame” for sinful responsibility. To get a bit esoteric in hypotheticals, it could be due to an interpretation that when we act via freewill in favor of alternatives that lead us closer to G-d, we then act as an instrument, or as a vessel, of G-d—that G-d then act through us, so to speak. But I can’t say that I’m certain about this hypothetical interpretation. Still, why “I am to blame” but not “I am causally responsible for that freely willed act of virtue which I chose”? Strange to me.
If one presumes something along the lines that love is ontic Truth and that ontic Truth is always expressed through some form of love, then: the creation of violent music can be an expression of love when it seeks to express some truth of the human condition, this for the sake of the truth’s expression, imo.
You're right. My interpretation was given as an alternate one, but it was not the original meaning. But then, Thorongil didn't use it correctly, did he?
That explanation of "Ein Sof" makes it sound a lot like the Tao. If that were the case, it wouldn't be God. It would come before God. It would be the source of God. Yes, I know. All of my posts seem to end up back at the Tao Te Ching. I can't help it.
All my posts come back to Judaism somehow, so it's fine to keep bring up Toaism. Yes I would agree that the Tao is also a good explanation.
I do not believe in God, but I believe in good and evil - evil tends to arise when risks are taken, or trust is expected.
"God" - according to this philosophy - is just what we might call the highest order of the *Chain of Being*, the lower orders are all necessary manifestations of Being, and what we call "evil" is a necessary feature of the lowest order ( i.e. "matter")
Therefore, what we call "good" and "evil" are just necessary (!) features of the lower levels of Being / Reality itself, no God could abolish evil, because God does not "exist" outside Reality but is "part" of it. The problem of "theodicy" only exists if people treat God as an independent actor outside of Being, like a man building a model railroad in his basement.
See also : "Philosophia perennis" or "Perennial philosophy" in Wikipedia
I do not see a conflict between god and nature for evil, --- not that god exists, --- and see human to human evil as a small part of the greater good of man's ongoing evolution.
I wrote the following more for religionists so excuse the language.
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.
Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.
Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.
Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
This link speak to theistic evolution.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pope-would-you-accept-evolution-and-big-bang-180953166/?no-ist
If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.
Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Regards
DL
I understand and agree with you except for your " or trust is expected".
Are you just talking of a breach of trust?
If so, + 1.
Regards
DL
Scriptures say that god created all things for his pleasure. Both the good and the evil.
What pleasure do you think god would get from creating evil?
If you do not see god as creating evil, then who is his co-creator that did?
Regards
DL
What is good? Good is what is aligned with the reality.
God is the reality, or the existence. Everything God does is aligned with the existence, since God is the existence and is not constrained by some outside independent force, as such force doesn't exist, which makes every God's action good.
We are a creation of the existence. The existence can create an entity that does things contrary to the existence, and that entity would be doing bad.
We don't have free will, unlike what some other Christians say (no human is perfect). We are not judged based on our will being free or not. We are judged because we are doing things contrary to the existence. Even more so, we are created to do things contrary to the existence and we have no say in the matter, because it's impossible for us to have such say in the matter.
As God can only do good things, since everything He does is aligned with the existence, which is Himself, creating a creation that acts contrary to the existence, and is doing bad, is also a good act by God.
Imagine, if you will, a lab scientist who creates toxic powder in his lab. He has his own purposes to do so, let's say. This powder had no say in whether it wanted to be created and with what characteristics. After the lab scientist got what he wanted from the powder, it is good for lab scientist to destroy that powder since it's toxic. It doesn't matter whether powder had free will or not. Lab scientist had good reason to create it, for his own purpose, and then to destroy it when the purpose is fulfilled. Powder is toxic, but actions of lab scientist in creating and destroying the powder are good.
In some Gnostic cosmology Yaldabaoth, a lesser demiurge associated with Yahweh of the Torah and not with the highest God, is the self-deluded (in believing that he is the highest God) creator of this flawed world, with all its good and evil.
You sure like to restrict your god.
I wrote this on hell and the same logic applies here on our issue of evil.
If god did not create it, then who are you naming as his co-creator?
The bottom line on the existence of hell would be the moral implications.
God killing instead of curing is evil.
God curing instead of killing is good.
If gods do the good, then there is no hell.
Such logic trails are how god’s attributes are found in many areas of thought.
Regards
DL
You don't get what good means.
Correct.
That is when people are discussing our myths and not our beliefs, which do not include any supernatural belief. Gnostic Christians are not foolish enough to read myth literally. We leave that for fools.
I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.
https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2
Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html
Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."
Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D
Regards
DL
Thanks for the great description.
Dumb is as dumb writes.
Regards
DL
Yes, insults prove smarts.
God exists, but She is the God of all things, not just human beings. To you puny humans, "evil" means only 'something we humans don't like'. Grow up! We all share the same world, and we all have the right to live there.
There is no 'Problem of evil'.
["Puny humans", etc, is just me being theatrical, not directing insults at anyone. :up: ]
I think if we include non-human beings in the equation, the problem becomes bigger, not smaller, since most creature's lifes are even worse than ours. If god is supposed to care about pigs and cows, she has a lot to answer for.
Cancer has right too. God loves cancer.
It's a pity they do exist, but I suppose a lot of them are beneficent.
Anyway, to the point, diseases likely are or aren't part of the plan. They may be liked or just sin spawn off such a big event as is this universe. I can't tell.
Evil and diseases may or may not be synonymous, but evil tends to act like a harmful disease, yes.
Not part of the Plan??
What plan?
Whose Plan?
"They do lots of work, good they will be rewarded, they put on a robe, turban, and cite religion, surely a stupidity that will be punished."
The good and the evil suffer just the same. Had you not noticed yet??
So, the the more fundamental quesiton that requires answering before the question of the existence of Evil existing can be answered is does Free will exist. If it does, then both Evil and Good can exist. If it does not, then neither Evil nor good can exist.
Really? I thought that one fell squarely on humans, not God. Or must She bear the responsibility for everything, regardless of who does it? :chin:
She does. That's at the heart of the theodicy issue. If you are all-knowing and all-powerful, it follows that you are also all-responsible.
Is it God we're discussing, or just a scapegoat?
In a universe run along classical principles, it's all just billiard balls. If one had a God's eye view and knew the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in the universe's past, one would be able to predict, precisely, the position, velocity and direction of travel of all of the billiard balls at any arbitrary point in its future. Such a universe is both deterministic and predictable, at least in principle.
All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.
In a universe run along quantum principles, it's still billiard balls. But, their existence now becomes probabilistic as opposed to absolute. In other words, at any arbitrary point in time, a billiard ball can wink into existence or wink out of existence. So, unlike a classical universe, although still fully deterministic, prediction become impossible in principle as well as in practice in such a universe. Even for God.
All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.
Since we are a part of this material universe, we too are made of billiard balls. Therefore, the only way for Free Will to exist is for it to exist outside the time and space constraints of a material universe.
And if free will cannot exist, then neither can good nor evil.
Objective, in the case of Earth. There's a right way to take care of a plant, and to the Earthbound objective, this may be beneficent.(good).
Subjective, in the case of myself getting food would be good for me, but there's no middle ground.
We all follow the state's morality, meaning that our objective is someone's subjective morality, which is ok, if that leader is wise (which it isn't).
Image of: man with burden climbing hill.
The man is climbing the hill and carrying its burden for:
A) Objective
B) Subjective
C) The States Subjective
It's good for the planet if we produce more green energy and reduce other energy to nil.
Whether this is ultimately good is beyond the question, it's just good for the planet and it's an objective we, as Earth inhabitants, effect.
Omnipotence is a defining characteristic of God in the context of this problem.
Quoting Stephen Cook
Which means that God isn't really a god after all, since she's neither omniscient nor omnipotent.
Quoting Stephen Cook
Or perhaps the material universe is the illusion and the free will we experience is actually the deeper truth. Your approach ignores metaphysics and directly jumps to physicalism.
Quoting Echarmion
How does knowing everything (omniscience) and having unlimited power (omnipotence) make God responsible for Everything?
I don't ignore metaphysics. I deny it.
To accept the premise that good and evil exists, we must accept that free will exists and in order to accept that free will exists we must assume it operates outside of the constraints of causality.
In our material universe, we understand that all physical states arise as a consequence of previous physical states. That is to say, they are caused by those previous states. Thus, all physical states are determined by previous physical states.
Therefore, there can be no such thing as free will so long as human cognition is a physical manifestation of brain functioning inside a physical universe.
Denial is neither rational nor healthy though.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Responsibility flows from the ability to act and the duty to do so. An omniscient and omnipotent God has an unlimited ability to act. The duty is self-imposed by the third attribute - benevolence. The combination of all three is incompatible with suffering in a universe created by that God, hence the theodicy problem.
So omnipotence and omniscience have nothing to do with responsibility or duty: that comes from benevolence, from God being 'good'. Hmm, OK. So if God eliminates the tuberculosis bacteria, has She done good to humans, evil to bacteria, or both? Or neither, as would be my view. Good and evil are relative. No, I don't mean that as an open-ended assertion, I mean that good to one species (humans) can be evil to another (bacteria), so it's relative in that sense. It's all down to context. Is God, omnipotent as She is (apparently), expected to act so that Her actions are 'good' for all living things, or She is branded 'evil'? That makes no sense to me.
And there's another way they're relative, equally specific. Good requires the existence of evil for its very meaning. You can't have yin alone; it is only meaningful in contrast and comparison to yang. So it is with good and evil too.
Therefore a 'good' God would necessarily have to create evil, if only to give that goodness some meaning. That rather puts paid to the idea of a 'good' God, doesn't it? And remember, you're considering God as a creator-God (as I do not, but that's OK), so it's God who creates evil, if it is created, as there is no other creator to do it, is there? This seems to lead to the conclusion that a 'good' God would have to create evil in order to be a 'good' God. :chin:
So there is no Problem of Evil. It's just a mistake; a misunderstanding.
Why would God need to either eliminate the tuberculosis bacteria or allow humans to suffer? An omnipotent being could just create a world were all beings can exist in harmony.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
There may not be good without evil, but there would still be an absence of evil. There can be an absence of pain and suffering, and that absence would be meaningful even though the beings inhabiting that world would have no terms for that absence. Is a God that creates pain and suffering for the sake of distinguishing it from joy and happyness good?
And if this unlikely scenario actually took place, would these beings exist in harmony, or might they behave in a less than harmonious manner, at least once in a while? Let's remember: God is responsible, not these beings.... :chin: This being the case, is your comment (above) still valid? The OP asks this:
Quoting MysticMonist
And the answer, in the context of the comments I am posting, is that She doesn't allow it; it is necessary if good is also to exist.
But that raises another issue: If evil is necessary for good to exist, and God created evil, then she cannot have been good. So, the God that created the universe was not, after all, good.
For if God is good, is She good to herself, good to you, good to humans, good to philosophers, good to the world, good to the universe, good to fascists, and so on ad infinitum? For many of these goodnesses are mutually exclusive, rendering the whole question rather pointless. :chin:
However I look at this, I seem to end up with the conclusion that there is no Problem of Evil. It's just a big misunderstanding (of good, God, and so on).
All you have done there is move the goalposts.
But, it's the same goal
Moral discrimination of the kind you are referring to requires choice to be made independent of causes. That is to say, they are required to not be the consequence of predetermined responses. Which, in turn, requires free will. Free will requires non causality.
Causality, in a universe that runs on either classical or quantum lines, is inescapable. Free will is therefore impossible in such a universe since, for that will to be free, it would need to occur independently of causes. In other words, it is impossible in all circumstances of reality as we know it.
If a billiard ball rolls down a hill, do we ascribe "free will" to that billiard ball to decide to roll down the hill?
We are made of billiard balls. The fact that they are incredibly tiny and we are made of a very large amount of them and they interact with each other in unfathomably complex ways does not change the fact of what they are or change the implications for us in terms of the possibility of ascribing free will to us any more than we can ascribe it to that billiard ball rolling down that hill.
So, in short, I am not suggesting one cannot believe in free will. But, in order to do so, one must reject the laws of physics as currently understood.
You give Satan her role, just as god did.
You cheer Satan on just as Christians do when they sing of Adam's sin being a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.
Go Satan go. Pull up your skirts and go baby. Women truly are the root of all evil, in a good kind of way.
Regards
DL
Christians see Yahweh as good while Gnostic Christians see all gods who can cure as easily as kill, --- like Yahweh can, --- yet chooses to kill, --- as Yahweh does, --- as a genocidal son murdering prick of a god and evil as hell.
Who do you think has it right?
Regards
DL
There is a problem with evil, but I see Yin and Yang as compliments and not in opposition to each other.
Evil is just a small part of a greater good as it melds with it complimentary opposite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3LJ5HNfNEY
Regards
DL
??
Our freedom to do our will is governed and cannot surpass the laws of physics and nature, but anything within that limit shows how we do have a degree of free will.
If we did not have it, we could not give it up. We can give it up by choice.
That is the conclusion of a little test that has a poster give up his free will to reply within a simple set of limit. It demonstrates how we all can give up our free will.
Regards
DL
No, please don't overlay your religious beliefs onto mine. I worship God by the name Gaia. She is not a creator-God, and I do not acknowledge the Christian concept of the Devil.
I simply observe that yin has no meaning if yang doesn't exist. The same with good and evil.
Regards
DL
How could you infer such a sense from what I wrote?
According to you, then, If evil is a no-thing(ontologically), if it is only a plain term, we should not punish a killer because of his/her abominable act? Do you really think that I thought in this way? Don't you think that maybe you may have confused about what ground (ontological or judicial) we discussed?
Under the Christian belief system there is the spectre of Hell which seems to undermine the free will argument against the problem of evil. Excepting idiots, there is no difference between removing someone's ability to do evil and allowing them to do evil but telling them they will face eternal damnation if they do.
This would stand, if the Bible of the Christians specifically said that sinners go to Hell for eternal damnation of eternal suffering. But the Bible does not say that anywhere. There are two concepts of Hell in the bible: 1. Death; eternal nothingness; and 2. In the Gyehennah, the souls perishing like a moth in a candle flame, in an instant, over the eternal fire of the Gyehennah.
So the misconception started by some stupid Christian misreading the verse, and interpreting that the eternal fire means eternal suffering. But it does not. The fire is eternal; however, the soul is snuffed out in a flash, and it is no more.
There are many more references to death in the Bible. One says that people when they go into their graves, they lose their consciousness; they feel nothing, they remember nothing. Another one says that on the day of resurrection, the bodies will rise from the grave, but their souls will not be the same as the first time around that occupied them. Or something to this effect.
I get all my information on the Christian dogma from street preachers. Some are Baptists, some are Yehova's Witnesses, some are just independents. They all say different things, and generally the Yehova's witnesses are the most precise, they refer to actual verses in the bible when they make a claim. The Independents are the worst, they just say whatever comes to them, and call it the word of god.
There is also a gender devide. The independents are all male; two of them in my town are gay, and they shout things against homosexuality. The Yehova's witnesses always come in twos, or in even numbers. (2, 6, 8, etc.) If one or more of them are women, then they are in their early sixties, and delectably sexy.
I know that the Jewish god says of himself, in the preamble of the ten commandments, "I be a bad-ass mean and jealous god." The actual verse says, "I'm a mean and jealous God." That does not sound like a declaration of being all good and loving and stuff. This has come from His mouth, directly. I would not argue with a big guy like that, telling Him that he is a liar, telling him I don't beleive he is not mean and jealous, but goody-goody-good. He might smite me on the spot for crossing him.
You have a different version of the bible to the one I'm familiar with:
"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." - Revelation 21:8
This site also quotes many more biblical references to Hell:
https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/hell-bible-verses/
No, Devans99, the bible versions you and I read are not widely different. We just read them differently. Your quote does not claim any length of time to be spent in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. You assume they stay there burning to all eternity; but that is not asserted there. At best this is up for interpretation. Or fantasizing, or plain wishfully claiming what one wants to claim, regardless of the words of the Bible.
On the other hand, I thank you, and this is not a joke or a come-on, for the link that takes me to bible quotes on hell. Thank you.
Not one of the quotes said anything at all of staying in hell forever.
Two of the quotes said "hell fire is forever" or that "the fire of hell burns forever" but they stayed clear of saying that souls stay there forever in pain.
I welcome you, nay, challenge you to take an exact quote from that list, not alter it, and present it here, and show with clear logic and unambiguous wording that that quote means eternal suffering for the sinners. I call you out; I claim that you can't even show ONE such quote here.
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” - Matthew 25:46
I cannot personally believe that any entity would consign another to eternal hell fire, but it seems to be what the Bible indicates. Maybe your street preachers can't quite believe it either.
Eternal punishment is death. The Bible says that many times. Even the quote by Matthew here juxtaposes "eternal punishment" not with "eternal joy" or "eternal happiness" but with "eternal life". So the juxtaposing means that the punishment is death, which is eternal.
If the punishement was was suffering, it does not say that. It says "eternal punishment." Death is forever. Death is a punishment. There is no inference implied or expressed that the eternal punishment is suffering forever in Hell.
"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" - 2 Thessalonians 1:9
I'd interpret this as the punishment will be everlasting - whereas death is a process that last for a short amount of time - once it is over there is no more punishment.
My interpretation is this: the destruction will be everlasting.
Carthago was destroyed. Its desctruction has been (for all intents and purposes) everlasting.
Destruction is a process, as well as an end state. The interpretation can't be made one way or another. Your belief against mine, there is no deciding factor either way.
However, if you ask a linguist, he or she may say that destruction is an end state. The destroying is the process.
Had better look up the meaning in a dictionary.
Wow. Death lasts forever. The process is called dying, not death. Look it up in any dictionary. Death comes after dying. Death lasts forever. Dying lasts for a short time (relatively speaking.)
the action or process of killing or being killed
These two definitions (taken at random) do not allow destruction to last forever.
In the case of the first one, the destruction must END in not existing. This is a requirement of an action to be desctructive. If the process of destruction lasts forever, then the thing will exist forever. - Hence, the desctruction is not forever, because if it were forever, it would be called something other than destruction.
In the second example, if the process is destruction, then it must end in death. If it does not end in death, it is not destruction. Therefore the destruction ends in death, which in turn lasts forever.
I absolutely agree with you here. I am claiming that my interpretation is right, and everyone else's who believes in eternal suffering in hellfire is wrong. This is a strong claim, I stand by it, and the bible verses prove me right.
The interpretation I hold true is not up for debate... the bible verses all of them either allow death to be the eternal punishment, or they specifically say it is death. Therefore it must be death, and not eternal punishment by way of eternal suffering. No bible verse mentions eternal suffering as such as the punishment for sinning.