This then would make it sound like the amount of undeserved please (the pleasure not accounted for by undeserved suffering) is dependent on a person's behaviour. Behave well and you will unlikely put yourself in a position of not deserving your pleasures because any suffering you undergo will be undeserved (and therefore continue to yield a debt of deserved pleasure to make up for it). — Isaac

The better you behave the more undeserved the suffering you undergo becomes and the more deserving of pleasure you become. There's the desert of pleasure generated - at least typically - by one's undergoing undeserved suffering, and then there's the desert of pleasure generated by the fact one has behaved well. So, someone who leads a very saintly life may well deserve much, much more pleasure than they received in their life - which is terrible, of course, for it is a great injustice if a person does not get the pleasure they deserve. And any suffering they endure will be, from a moral perspective, much much worse than it would be if they hadn't behaved so well.

The rest of what you wrote was just silly. But to reply in kind, I assume you've done extensive research into the nature of desert and the nature of morality and haven't just posted on a public forum from a position of philosophical ignorance?

Er, that's what I'm doing. Arguments 'are' justifications. But thanks. Oh, and you don't have to convince people - something doesn't become true just because people are convinced that it is.

That doesn't respond to my argument. All you've done is insist that omnipotence involves being bound by the laws of logic.

No it doesn't, as logic itself will tell you. Again, a being who is not bound by the laws of logic has more power than one who is, yes? How can that not be the case?

To put it another way, if God is the author of the laws of logic - and he must be, both because he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise and also because if he wasn't then there would be something that exists, namely logic, that doesn't depend on God for its existence - then God is not bound by them. He, and he alone, can do what is logically impossible.

So you haven't addressed the argument. Which is understandable, as it is decisive. God authors the laws of logic and thus is not bound by it, and thus is omnipotent. If he were anything less than the author of the laws of logic, he wouldn't be omnipotent.

But even if - even if - God were bound by the laws of logic, he would not be omnipotent if he existed of necessity. For if God exists of necessity, then - again - he can't not exist. And that means he can't take himself out of existence. Which is something even I can do. Now, surely it is manifestly absurd to maintain that God is omnipotent yet lacks the ability to do something that even I can do? To find oneself having to say such things only underscores that you have a faulty concept of omnipotence. Which you demonstrably do.

Just to underline this, let's imagine that I am necessarily in Australia. That is, by some strange working, it is a necessary truth that I exist in Australia. Well, then I can't not be in Australia. The laws of logic prevent me from leaving. And that, surely, is a major restriction on my power? You can travel anywhere, but I can't. Now, how would it be to respond 'ah, but being restricted by the laws of logic is no restriction at all - I am every bit as powerful as you, for though I can't travel outside Australia, that's a necessary truth about me and so doesn't translate into a lack of power". Absurd, of course. Yet that's how you're reasoning about God.

Because I'm right, yes, and thus deserve a good time? Thank you, I agree entirely and to that end I am off to a bar to drink beer, which I have found pretty much guarantees - though does not necessitate - a good time if drunk in sufficient quantities. Goodbye sir!

Yes, via my faculty of reason. As I explained above.

No, it's a conceptual truth that God is omnipotent.

Omnipotence means all powerful, yes?

How is a god who is bound by laws more powerful than one who is not?

I hope you can see that logic itself tells you loud and clear that a god who is not bound by logic is more powerful than one who is bound by logic, yes?

And I hope you can see that it is a truth of logic that no god can be more powerful than an omnipotent being.

Thus, if you listen to reason - reason, that is, not scholars and traditions - then you will see that God is not bound by reason. Reason herself tells you this if you will but listen.

If you think I am wrong, where is the error in my reasoning?

Well "God is all possibility, even the possibility to not exist" sounds incoherent. What does it mean to say God 'is' all possibility? It's a category error. Anything is possible with an omnipotent being - that's true. But that's not the same as saying that an omnipotent being 'is' all possibility. So I don't think he's being helpful - either he's saying very gnomically what I'm saying, which is that an omnipotent being can do anything, including destroying himself and including divesting itself of omnipotence (from which it follows that there are no necessary existences), or he's saying something I know-not-what.

What do you say to my claim that if a necessary existent exists, then God doesn't?

If a necessary existent exists and is God, then God can't not exist, in which case he is not omnipotent and thus not God.

And if a necessary existent exists and is not God, then God can't destroy that thing, in which case God is not omnipotent and is thus not God.

So, if Avicenna's argument goes through - and it doesn't, for not all contingent things need causes - then Avicenna has disproved God, not proved him.

Yes, that isn't a definition of time.

Time consists of the properties of pastness, presentness and futurity. Some would add that it must also include the relations of 'earlier than' 'later than' and 'simultaneous with'. Indeed, some would say that those relations are the more fundamental, with others saying the reverse.

There's a question, of course, about exactly 'what' those properties might be more fundamentally. The tendency today - and it is quite confused - is to think of time as being a kind of soup in which events are suspended, with the properties of 'earlier than', 'later than' and 'simultaneous with' then denoting relations one event stands in to others in the soup. A major problem with that analysis is that it seems unable to make sense of the properties of pastness, presentness and futurity, which is quite serious given that they're the more fundamental properties.

There's also a tendency for people with no philosophy training confusedly to think that this is a topic in physics, rather than philosophy, even though it is squarely philosophical and has nothing to do with physics whatsoever. These same people will start saying ridiculous things about time being relative and tell you about how one twin will age faster or slower or something than another if they set off in a spaceship that is traveling incredibly fast (which isn't evidence that time is relative, whatever that would mean). All very confused.

Thank you for suggesting I read Meister Eckhart and that his ideas are similar to mine. I have had a cursory look at Eckhart's views - I must say that I do not see any strong similarity between his views and mine.

I don't think you know what an argument is or what poetry is. You're correct, though, that I have not made an argument for God's existence as this thread is about Avicenna's argument.

I don't understand what you mean when you say this:

Saying the universe doesnt have the reason for its existence in itself is sheer poetry — Gregory

Not really. I just see people introducing necessity where there is none.

Let's say that John is a bachelor. Does that mean that John is incapable of having a wife? No, of course not. It just means that he doesn't actually have one. John's being a bachelor does not operate as some kind of a constraint on him. Of course, if he acquires a wife, then he will no longer qualify as a bachelor - that is, he will no longer answer to the concept. But the fact that, if he acquires a wife he will no longer be a bachelor does not mean that his being a bachelor is stopping him from acquiring a wife.

Yet when it comes to thinking about God and God's attributes there is tendency to think otherwise. So, for a person to be God, that person has to have certain attributes, namely omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence (just as, to be a bachelor, one has to be male and lack a wife). But that doesn't mean that the person of God is constrained - that would be akin to thinking that 'John-the-bachelor' is incapable of having a wife.

So, God is omnipotent, meaning that he can do anything. That includes, of course, destroying everything including himself (thus if God exists, nothing is necessary). And it includes creating stones he can't lift and doing evil. He - the person of God - can do those things. If he were to do them, then it would seem he would no longer answer to the concept of God, just as John would not answer to the concept of a bachelor if he acquired a wife(though this is not strictly true, as if God can do anything he can also do things that we think impossible, such as doing things inconsistent with being God and still answering to the concept of God - but let's put that aside). But he can do them.

So God's attributes are properties he has, but they don't bind him - that is, they do not operate to constrain him in any way. That applies as much to omnibenevolence as anything else. God is perfectly good. But that doesn't mean he 'has' to do what's right and good, it just means he 'does' do what's right and good.

As for what the quality of goodness itself is, well as God is omnipotent it must be down to God whether or not somethin is good, for if it were not then God wouldn't be omnipotent. The laws of Reason are God's to determine and the moral laws are among them, and so moral goodness is constitutively determined by God's will. That is, 'to be good' is to be being approved of by God, or something like that.

What does God's moral perfection consist in, then? Well, it consists in God fully approving of himself. That doesn't mean he 'has' to approve of himself - that somehow there is some cosmic law or force impelling him to do so. No, it just means he does, in fact, fully approve of himself.

Does this mean he's incapable of disapproving of himself? No, he can disapprove of himself, he just doesn't.

So I do not yet see any hint of tension between omnipotence and moral perfection. I just see people mistakenly thinking there is a strange force called 'necessity' at work in the world and thinking that somehow God could be subject to it - which is, of course, demonstrably confused.

There seems to me to be nothing inconsistent in the idea of a being who is all powerful and also perfectly good. For being perfectly good does not mean being incapable of doing bad. A perfectly good being would, after all, be fully praiseworthy for being good, yes? Otherwise she'd not be as good as she could be, for it is better to be praiseworthy for being good than not to be. If she was not capable of being bad, then she wouldn't be praiseworthy for being good - or at least, that's what my reason tells me about the matter.

So there's not even the beginning of a tension between the idea of a being who is omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

All of whom have been born, presumably. Or are you including Jesus - yes, I didn't think of the immaculate conception of the spirit of the son of god. My mistake. Oh, and there's androids too. I see I've just not thought this through properly... — Isaac

Yes, all of whom have been born.

So now some people who are born do not deserve pleasure as a result of their being made to suffer. Poor sods. What did they do have such a reward taken away, was it something in a past life? — Isaac

Yes, not everyone who suffers comes thereby to deserve pleasure. This is because some of the suffering we undergo we deserve to undergo by dint of our behaviour. Suffering that you deserve to undergo doesn't, at least not typically, make one deserving of pleasure.

So how much? You've not answered my question about your deserve-o-meter. How much is one entitled to in compensation for being born, and how much does one actually get (and is there somewhere I can make a claim if I feel I've been short-changed)? Presumably you've done the maths, let's have it laid out for us — Isaac

Well, I haven't been talking about what we deserve in terms of compensation for the injustice our parents did to us - for that presupposes that procreative acts are wrong and yet whether they are is what I am interested in finding out and what my argument is supposed to provide some insight into. So your question puts the cart before the horse. But anyway, I'd say that parents owe their children a decent living for having, of their own free will, subjected them to a life in a world in which having a decent living is needed if one is to have a reasonable prospect of happiness.

Why is it 'bad'? Your whole argument for it being 'bad' is that it causes undeserved suffering, but only undeserved pleasure in balance. If it actually delivers deserved pleasure in balance, then there's nothing left making it 'bad' is there. So this counter doesn't work. — Isaac

What I've assumed is that most of the suffering procreative acts create is of the undeserved kind. Some of the suffering contained in our own lives (though not all, of course) is undeserved, especially virtually all of the suffering that befalls us when we are children (for we are not responsible agents at that point). And the suffering - which is magnitudes greater - we visit on others, including other animals. The vast bulk of it all is going to be undeserved (I mean, animals lack agency, so all suffering that they undergo is undeserved).

It's also worth noting, I think, that there's a 'direction' to desert. Past undeserved sufferings can't become deserved by dint of one's future actions. So, let's say you suffer a lot as a child, but then you go on to do terrible things in the rest of your life. Well, that suffering was still undeserved, and all your subsequent career has done is make your subsequent sufferings deserved and your subsequent pleasures undeserved.

As for pleasures - well, most of suffering we create is, I think, suffering visited upon other animals, whereas most of the pleasure we create is pleasure that we ourselves enjoy. And I think that, in general, our own lives contain more pleasure than pain - thankfully quite a lot more. So, that's why I think most of the pleasures in our lives are non-deserved, other things being equal.

The more I think about it, however, the more doubtful I become about that. For it occurs to me that most people do something terribly wrong in their lives, namely they procreate. And it seems to me, that once a person does that - once a person freely decides to subject someone else to the same risks of unjust harm that they themselves were exposed to - they come to deserve everything they get in the way of suffering. That is, to procreate is to make oneself deserving of all the injustices that subsequently befall you. And all the pleasures that befall you subsequent to that act - well, they seem undeserved now. So, procreate and everything switches, at least in the context of your own life. Procreate, and the pleasures that would otherwise have been non-deserved become undeserved, and the pains that would otherwise have been undeserved, become deserved. Perhaps that's too harsh though. Not sure at the moment.

That makes no sense.

I don't follow you. You're not engaging with the argument, it seems to me. You're just expressing a confused view.

For example, who here is 'taking an empirical object, abstracting it from time'? Nobody. So who are you addressing with that comment?

Then you say it is pointless to ask of something "it is necessary or contingent?" Well, that's obviously question begging. Avicenna thought that by asking this question we could learn something of staggering importance, namely that God exists. If you think he's mistaken, then you need to engage with his argument and say where the mistake occurs. He wasn't a fool. Why is Avicenna's argument debated to this day? Is it because it is a) rubbish, b) profound?

Then you say "it is subjective deception" What do you mean? I have no idea. And then it just disintegrates into nonsensical pseudo profundities ("Even Satanism is just an aesthetic"- what does that mean? And where's your argument?)

God does exist, but he'll only tell you he does if you listen to him. That is, you have first to undertake to listen to reason, and then and only then will you be told that reason is God.

But anyway, this thread is about Avicenna's argument for God, an argument that - it seems to me - falsely assumes that if something exists contingently, then it must have a cause of its existence. An argument that then leads him to posit a necessary existent.

The irony is that this would disprove God. For if God existed of necessity, then he wouldn't be God, as he wouldn't be able not to exist (which is incompatible with being omnipotent).

So the argument does not work, not in that form anyway. It does not follow from something existing contingently that it must have a cause of its existence. Contingent things can exist uncaused. One example of this is God himself: God exists uncaused, yet God exists contingently.

Nevertheless, we can conclude on the basis of a very similar argument that everything that exists has either been caused to exist or exists uncaused. And furthermore, all those things that have been caused to exist, must ultimately have been caused to exist by something that was not caused to exist.

I am denying that you contradicted me

No, what possible world semantics gives us is another way to say the same thing. So not 'no', but 'here's another way to express the same concept'.

And yes, if something can exist of necessity, then it can exist of necessity and have been caused or it can exist of necessity and not have been caused.

That's my point: thus, establishing that a thing exists uncaused is not to have established that it exists of necessity.

Exists contingently means 'exists but did not have to exist' and exists necessarily means 'exists and cannot not exist'. (I think that's how Avicenna himself defined the terms, though I am not sure).

I think God exists contingently. So, he exists, but he doesn't have to. Why? Because he's omnipotent and so he has the power to cease existing.

I also think God has no cause of his existence.

I have explained why. We know from reasoned reflection that at least one thing must exist uncaused. And you agreed.

So, we agree that something exists uncaused.

So, I think God exists uncaused and that God exists contingently.

You think God exists of necessity, yes?

As well as being contradictory (for if God exists of necessity then he is not omnipotent and so not God) there is no reason to think that God exists of necessity.

The arguments that attempt to show that God exists of necessity show only that God exists uncaused.

And I have shown you why 'exists uncaused' and 'exists of necessity' are not the same.

No, explain. At the moment it sounds like a distinction without a difference (or, perhaps, the difference will simply be 'exists of necessity and hasn't been caused to exist' and 'exists of necessity and has been caused to exist').

Note, if they were the same, then God wouldn't exist - for reasons already given.
For if God exists of necessity, then he can't not exist. And that's not compatible with being omnipotent. I mean, even I can not exist - so even I would turn out to have a power that God lacked, which is absurd.

Now I don't know what you mean.

To exist of necessity is for it to be impossible for it not to exist, yes?

Well, if God exists of necessity and God - of necessity - creates the universe, then it is impossible for hte universe not to exist. So it will exist of necessity. Yet it will be caused.

What you're doing is using 'exists of necessity' and 'exists uncaused' interchangeably. The whole point is they're not the same.

I'll go through the example again.

Let's assume that God exists of necessity.
Let's assume that God necessarily creates the universe.

Now, the universe will exist of necessity, won't it?

Yet it will also have a cause.

So, 'exists of necessity' is not equivalent to 'exists without a cause'

The argument I gave establishes that there exists something that lacks a cause.

That thing is God.

But it doesn't follow from the fact God lacks a cause of his existence that God therefore exists of necessity.

You think it does, yes? That's just mistaken.

No, it doesn't mean that.

I just showed you how something might exist of necessity, yet have a cause.

And we both agreed that something exists uncaused.

So, something exists uncaused. We know that by the light of reason.

And we know, again by the light of reason, that the fact something exists uncaused does not entail that it exists of necessity.

God is such a thing. Does that mean God exists of necessity? I don't see why it does. To get to that conclusion one would have to stipulate that if something exists without a cause, then it exists of necessity. But that claim is precisely what I dispute - I see no reason to think that the absence of a cause makes something exist of necessity, rather than contingently.

For instance, let's imagine that God does exist of necessity. And now let's imagine that God necessarily causes the universe to exist. Well, now the universe exists of necessity. Yet the universe would be caused.

Clearly, then, 'existing of necessity' does not mean the same as 'existing without a cause'

To follow on, we know that not everything that exists has a cause of its existence, for otherwise we would have to posit infinite causes.

So we know by the light of reason that if anything has a cause of its existence, at least one thing has no cause of its existence - yes?

Yes, I agree - because it is self-evident to reason - that any existing thing has either to exist contingently or necessarily.
But no, God exists contingently but does not have a cause of his existence.

I'm a rationalist. I follow reason ruthlessly, and reason tells me that she is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being - that is, God. So I believe in God, but on the basis of a beautiful argument, which it turns out is to believe in God by listening to God.

Yes, and I have argued that the argument is a good one, except that it mistakenly invokes the concepts of contingency and necessity, whereas the argument will only work if we talk about existences that need explanation and existences that do not.

I then explained why. The contingent does not need explaining by the necessary. The 'not self-explanatory' need explaining by the 'self explanatory'.

I noted too that if God is a necessary existent, then God does not exist. That is, the idea of God as a necessary existent contains a contradiction. For if God exists of necessity, then he is not omnipotent, in which csae he is not God.

So what I am doing is criticising Avicenna's argument - I am accepting that there is something to it, but then explaining why I think it needs amending. That's just what philosophy is about, is it not? We don't just report arguments, we assess them.

Everyone approves of themselves at times. Why does this make God special? Maybe yesterday he committed his mortal sin and is now Satan. Are you still going to follow him tomorrow? — Gregory

I'm not God. I know, hard to believe - but I'm not. So I am not the author of the laws of Reason. Not, then, the author of the laws of logic, and not the author of the moral laws. Not, then, the author of the laws that constitutively determine what is, and is not good or bad, right or wrong.

And that's why, if I fully approve of myself, I do not thereby make myself great. Whether I am great or not is determined by attitudes other than my own - whether I am great or not, whether anyone is, is constitutively determined by what attitude God is adopting towards me, you, everyone.

God, however, is God. He 'is' the author of the moral laws. And God is omnipotent. And as God is omnipotent he can reasonably be expected fully to approve of himself. And as he fully approves of himself, and 'being approved of by God' is just what greatness consists in, he is therefore great.

For an analogy: if the chair of a committee says 'meeting adjourned' then the meeting is adjourned. Saying it makes it so. But if you say "meeting adjourned' that does not adjourn the meeting. Why? Because you're not its chair.

You're just appealing to scholars and not addressing anything I argued.

I genuinely couldn't care less what the Koran or the Bible or Jesus says about anything, I was simply noting that they agree with me (and Descartes).

I care only about understanding God and God's omnipotence and to do that I am using the tool God gave me - gave all of us - to do it with, namely our reason.

God can do anything at all. And thus God can destroy anything and everything. Thus anything and everything exists contingently.

I know that Avicenna was trying to prove God, and like I say, I think his proof works. But it does not depend upon God being necessary, rather it depends on God's existence being self explanatory.

I believe God can do anything and that God does not exist of necessity, but I'm not Greek and I did not arrive at this belief via reading Greek philosophy.

If something exists of necessity, it cannot not exist, yes? But God is omnipotent and so he can destroy anything, including himself. Thus, neither he nor anything else exists of necessity.

As to your other questions, they are all easily answered. Does God freely choose the good? Not entirely sure what you mean, but assuming you mean 'does God freely decide to do good?' then the answer is just 'yes' (why would it be no? You say 'because then he can sin' - yes, what's the problem with that? Remember: we've just dispensed with necessity. So, he is not 'necessarily good', he's just 'good'. That's entirely consistent with being capable of doing wrong. God is entirely capable of doing wrong, it's just that he wouldn't be God if he did. But he's free to stop being God anytime he wants - he wouldn't be God unless that were so.

Does God strive or work? Not sure, but he certainly could if he wanted. Again, what's the problem?

You ask 'how is he great?' He fully approves of himself, that's how.

And this is what the Koran says:

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Allah! There is no God but He,
the Living, the Self-subsisting, the Eternal.
No slumber can seize Him, nor sleep.
All things in heaven and earth are His.
Who could intercede in His presence without His permission?
He knows what appears in front of and behind His creatures.
Nor can they encompass any knowledge of Him except what he wills.
His throne extends over the heavens and the earth,
and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them,
for He is the Highest and Most Exalted.

I'm not a muslim and nor am I familiar with the Koran, but a quick search revealed that passage. And it accurately characterises omnipotence. The scholars do not (at least not if they say that God is subject to the laws of logic - as most do, though with some notable exceptions). God is "self-subsisting". But that is not - not - the same as existing with necessity. And nowhere in that passage do we find any suggestion that God is subject to the laws of logic. His will is clearly unconstrained.

And here's Jesus on God's omnipotence:

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Quite!

I suppose I should add that I am not questioning God's existence in denying that he exists of necessity. I think God demonstrably exists and there's no room for any reasonable doubt on the matter after it is suitably considered. Something doesn't exist 'more' if it is exists of necessity (though I think some people confusedly think that it does, and so insist God exists of 'necessity' as a way of expressing the strength of their belief in his actual existence).

That's true of most contemporary theists - they believe omnipotence involves being able to do all things logically possible or some suitably qualified variation.

But that's not true omnipotence (as Descartes recognised). Such a god is constrained. But an omnipotent being cannot be constrained, for what, exactly, could constrain such a being? And a being who was not so constrained would be more powerful than one who was - yet to be more powerful than an omnipotent being is a contradiction in terms. So the idea that God's power is constrained by logic is thoroughly confused and modern theists should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting such things.

So, God is the author of the laws of logic. He must be. The author of the laws of logic has more power than a god who is constrained by those laws. Thus any god constrained by those laws is not omnipotent - for they have less power than the god whose laws they are.

Thus, God, being omnipotent, must be the author of the laws of logic. And, as such, God can do absolutely anything, including contradictory things, for their inconceivability is a function of no more than God's decreeing them so, a decree that he is not constrained by. Those who think otherwise are just confused.

That's the problem with introducing the notion of necessity. If God exists, nothing exists 'of necessity', for nothing constrains God and thus God can do anything, including destroying anything.

To believe in necessity is to believe that there exists a universe independent of God that has laws that constrain God. And again, that is confused - it reflects a failure to understand what true omnipotence involves.

God, then, being omnipotent, does not exist of necessity. He doesn't 'have' to exist and could choose not to if he so wished. That is clearly a being with greater power than one that had to exist, is it not?

God, then, exists contingently, as do all things given that there's nothing an omnipotent being cannot destroy if he so wishes.

This is entirely consistent with Avicenna's argument, or at least the spirit of it. For what's crucial to Avicenna's argument is the idea of things whose existence is explained by their natures, rather than things that require explanation by something else.

These are not objections to anything I've argued. You're just telling me you don't find the argument compelling - well, no, I'm sure you don't given the implausible moral beliefs that you have. But that's really neither here nor there. It's no objection to a view to point out that it is inconsistent with a grossly implausible view.

Pretty relevant for me because I don't think the amount of pain and pleasure is created provides a basis for a moral obligation as long as it's not my responsibility. — khaled

Again, you're once more appealing to your belief in a prima facie implausible moral theory (we obviously do sometimes have moral obligations to do alleviate suffering that we played no part in creating - that's why I ought to reach down and save the child who accidentally fell in the pond and is now drowning).
And again, it's beside the point anyway, as I am talking about the relative moral weights of the suffering and pleasures that procreative acts create.

Why do you think it's implausible? — khaled

Intuitively one of the considerations that informs the morality of our actions is how much pain or pleasure they produce. Not the only consideration, obviously, but one of them.

If a child is drowning in a pond, and all you have to do to save it is reach down and pull it out, you ought to do so, yes? I think the intuitions of virtually everyone will concur. Yet on your view there is no such obligation. Your view is prima facie implausible - grotesquely so.

Yes. But not procreating brings about arguably worse suffering (if you only look at human suffering). — khaled

That's a different point, though equally implausible. And you keep saying 'if you only look at human suffering" - that's like saying "yes, but if we ignore most of the suffering this act causes, then it doesn't cause much suffering".

So you believe we are obligated to reduce world suffering everywhere all the time? That all undeserved suffering everywhere should be treated equal? Caused or uncaused by us? — khaled

Er, no, and that in no way followed from anything I said. If i reject as implausible the view that we are in no way obligated to promote pleasure, that doesn't mean that I think we are always obligated to promote pleasure. Likewise, if I reject as implausible the view that we are in no way obligated to prevent suffering that we're not the agents of, that does not imply that I think we are always obligated to prevent all suffering.

I’m of the mind that we have no moral obligation to create pleasure. Period. Furthermore that we’re not even obligated to alleviate all suffering, only that which we are responsible for. So I don’t find your distinctions very impactful. — khaled

Well, all you're doing there is expressing a belief in a prima facie implausible view.

Even if your view is correct - and I see no evidence that it is - one would be responsible for the suffering that one's procreative acts create, wouldn't one?

It's irrelevant too, because what I'm talking about is the moral value of the pains and pleasures such acts create, not the responsibility of the procreator.

I think it is a very good argument. Indeed, I think it is sound so long as we clarify that by 'necessary' what's really meant is 'self-explanatory'. (Existing 'necessarily' and existing in a self-explanatory way - that is, with 'aseity' - are subtly different, for something can, I htink, exist with aseity, yet also exist contingently.....God being one such thing.....for God exists with aseity, yet God can destroy himself if he so chooses and thus his existence is contingent).

So, everything that exists either has a nature that explains its existence (in which case it is self-explanatory), or it does not.

Those things whose existence is not self-explanatory obviously stand in need of explanation. And we cannot explain their existence by endlessly citing other things whose existence is not self-explanatory, as that simply delays the explanation.

Thus, all existing things that are not self-explanatory must have been caused to be by a thing or things that are self-explanatory.