• Michael Lee
    52
    I am in love with Parmenides' thoughts. That we cannot think of nothing because "nothing does not exist." Only Being is. In fact, existence is not a true predicate at all as Kant argued and I think he is right. Imagine how stupid our prose would be with: "John, who exists, went to the store, that exists, to buy some milk, that exists, for his kids, that exist." As if to clarify what things do and do not have that attribute.

    If that is the case, I would need to know what kinds of things do not exist. The usual response I get from others are examples like unicorns, centaurs, mermaids, ghosts, etc. and sometimes even God. If I say to them to prove they do not exist, they always argue that I have the burden of proof. That's not my point, I reply, you cannot prove that something does not exist. That's contradictory!

    Now why do things like centaurs, mermaids, ghosts, etc. not exist? They, especially the scientists, say they cannot be easily instantiated. They say if you provide them with evidence of centaurs, mermaids, ghosts, etc., then they will consider it. But what if I told them such things are products of the human imagination or thoughts about real things and that what they are really complaining about is what we say such things are or their predicates. For example, if I told you there are such things as ghosts. And they are explanations people make up to understand their fear or they are a hoax, but they are not once living beings that die and come back from death to bother us like zombies. And so it is their description of things (that exist) that is the problem.

    I was an atheist for many, many years until I finally read Spinoza's Ethics and after doing so, I began to embrace his imperfect ideas of what God is, but he isn't anything like the one found in sacred texts. The one in sacred texts were obviously written by stupid people. God is Being without any qualification. That means miracles never happen as God never changes the laws of the Universe to our advantage and eternal life is mumbo jumbo and we should be glad about that. No matter how wonderful or terrible an afterlife might be, the fact that it is eternal actually describes a hellish existence with no escape. God is not cruel in that sense.

    Since God is Being and the Universe and everything else is in God, then it would be absurd to believe that God is concerned about us at all especially our suffering and evil deeds. We matter as much to God as much as harmless bacteria matter to us.

    Schopenhauer argued that every life is a history of suffering. That life has no intrinsic worth and your happiness is irrelevant. God could not care less about our well being. If we destroy ourselves as a human race, and I think we will with pollution and when we run out of resources or deploy atom bombs, God could not care less, especially because it would be ridiculous to argue other life does not exist in the Universe and and thus we are just one living planet among many others.

    Here is the kernel of my reasoning, by saying "God must be good and cannot be evil." Then you are complaining about how the Universe works the way it does: nasty and nice. Instead of protesting against this and say the nasty stuff shouldn't happen, we should try to understand its nature and try to "deal with it ourselves" because God is not going to change things for us.
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    I assume you're referring to the Problem of Evil here.

    That argument purports to show that specifically an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God is incompatible with the existence of evil.

    Possible ways to avoid it include saying that nothing in reality is actually evil, or that God isn't all-good. Those usually aren't acceptable to most people, but if you're fine with one or both of them, then the Problem of Evil is a non-problem to you. But that doesn't actually contradict it, that just bites the bullet.
  • Artemis
    1.9k
    But that doesn't actually contradict it, that just bites the bullet.Pfhorrest

    Oh, oh, oh! Don't forget "God works in mysterious ways."!
  • Michael Lee
    52
    But that doesn't actually contradict it, that just bites the bullet.
    . Yes, I agree with you and of course I haven't proven anything and I'm not trying to. I just think what most people believe "God is" is incorrect and thus cannot be instantiated. A God that is completely uninterested in our well being is much more reasonable. Also, I believe even the "hard core" atheists like Richard Dawkins, would be much happier if people adopted that kind of theism that denies the "power of prayer," an afterlife, miracles and one that judges us by punishing the evil and helping the good. For they will only to be disappointed when they discover the evil usually fare better than the good. Look at what Donald J. Trump is getting away with.
  • Arne
    815
    John, who exists, went to the store, that exists, to buy some milk, that exists, for his kids, that exist." As if to clarify what things do and do not have that attribute.Michael Lee

    Why would existence have to be added to everything in order for it to be a proper predicate? we are not required to say:

    "John, a man, went to the store, a building, to buy some milk, that is white, for his kids, who are not of school age."

    For something to be a proper predicate of an entity does not require that it be used every time the entity is referred to.

    And I agree with Kant insofar as the manner in which he was using the term "existence". But I suspect he was not using it in the manner you suggest. Instead, he meant it in terms of it not being a necessary quality of an entity. For example, if everyone agreed to a list of qualities essential for something to be considered a triangle, the existence of a triangle would not be on the list. For Kant, existence simply referred to a location of an entity and a triangle is a triangle and where it exists (if it exists) neither adds nor detracts from the triangle as a triangle.
  • Michael Lee
    52
    Something just struck me profoundly. When I was a young child, I did indeed believe in ghosts and they were not like Casper the Friendly ghost, but rather from watching the Night Stalker because my father did not have enough sense to put me to bed at a reasonable hour. :wink:

    As a result, I had problems getting to sleep for understandable reasons and my fear was genuine; it's the same fear I have today but the latter is justifiable. When I complained to my mother about the ghosts, she tersely said to me "there are no such things as ghosts!" To my disappointment I did not find that convincing.

    Suppose some adult complains he fears ghosts are haunting him, I'd say to him that if a horrible and effective assassin was trying to kill you, and then convince him the assassin is now dead, would that person fear his ghost is going to be a problem?
  • IvoryBlackBishop
    299
    The problem with these arguments is that presume a "good" to begin with.

    Such as that if a God exists, it would be "better" for him to care than to not, or that a lack of suffering would be "better" than suffering.

    So whether or not one wants to mention a "God", these arguments are appealing to some type of higher source of morality or truth than the ways of the world as it is.

    If one is a nihilist, one can't say that "suffering" is even bad to begin with; as far as my take on it, all suffering is "loss" of some sort (death is loss of one's physical body and mental attributions), however if one concludes that life isn't 'worth' living to begin with, they could easily rationalize nihilism, suicide, and things of that nature, which would mean that 'death' or suffering isn't bad to begin with, and something akin to the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" would be a more consistent view, in which death should not only be embraced, but expediated as much as humanly possible.

    ---

    As an analogy, I'll use a chess match or a video game; if one is playing it "losing" the game is perceived as bad, but that's entirely dependent on there being a way to "win" to begin with.

    If there is no way to "win", then there is no way to "lose" either, it's not even a "game" and "loss" is entirely meaningless.
  • Echarmion
    2.6k
    The problem with these arguments is that presume a "good" to begin with.IvoryBlackBishop

    The problem of evil has to be seen in the context of Christian theology. It doesn't apply to gods in general.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    i come back to something to show that you can think of something that does not exist.

    Peter is a man. Peter is not Peter.

    Therefore Peter does not exist. (Because the only way for Peter to be not Peter is for him to not exist.**)

    But you can easily envision Peter. He is a man, with human manly attributes. It is not impossible to imagine what Peter looks like.

    ----------------

    ** I had a long and drawn-out argument against @PFHorrest who insisted that this argument is valid. @Banno joined that argument and asked @PFHorrest to abandon the educating me as I was too stupid to learn. Finally I came to the same realization as what PFH was trying to prove to me, and I got to the same result via going down a different avenue of thinking.
  • IvoryBlackBishop
    299

    Not solely "Christian" theology.
  • Invisibilis
    29
    Evil is a phantom generated from those who fear (False Evidence Appearing Real). Their fear wastes their own life energy on what is not real, yet the energy invested into it makes it seem real. Evil people feed of others to gain energy towards their unreal fantasies, which seems real to them.

    Most people practice evil by exploiting others to exploit themselves. We can see this in the many forms of dishonesty, revenge, shaming, bullying, co-dependency, and so on.

    Most humans live a life based on fear. Fear feeds what we call evil.
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