Sure. But pain =/= evil. That's the distinction I was pointing out. — khaled

The distinction is as pointless as trying to talk to Abby in private. :point: Abby & Britanny.

There are plenty of things that are neither good nor bad that we can do and others we can't do. — khaled

I'm beginning to doubt this claim.

I'm beginning to doubt this claim. — TheMadFool

Is running good or bad?

Is raising my arm good or bad?

Is running good or bad? — khaled

I dunno!

But you think it's either good or bad correct?

But you think it's either good or bad correct? — khaled

:chin:

There are plenty of things that are neither good nor bad that we can do and others we can't do.
— khaled

I'm beginning to doubt this claim. — TheMadFool

I took this to mean that everything we can do, is either good or bad. So running has a moral value, either good or bad. You just don't know which. Is that what you mean?

Is running good or bad? — khaled

This question depends on context.

It's good to run away from a wild animal if you have any chance to escape.
Otherwise it's better not to run and just stay calm and hope the animal won't recognize your fear.

good and bad therefore depends on context.

Example 2:
You are forced to choose between 2 evils, one grater than the other, which one do you choose?
The lesser evil here becomes good, but that evil is not good by definition in every context.

I know, I'm asking @TheMadFool because he seems to think it has some sort of static moral value.

I know, I'm asking TheMadFool because he seems to think it has some sort of static moral value. — khaled

I have a feeling you're confusing epistemology with ontology. Try not to confuse knowledge with fact. :joke:

Great OP.

What about revelation? According to the holy texts supplied by the Christian god, for example, one could indeed be demonstrated to be totally innocent in the presence of a supposedly omnibenevolent god. And if one is innocent why would they potentially suffer more than someone who isn't innocent? This disjunction seems to indicate very little thought on the part of an omniscient, omnipotent person. And surely determining one's guilt against a set of interpretable but still infallible laws is a function of reason?

Furthermore, I don't see why guilt would necessarily require punishment in the mind of an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent being. You must have received a specific piece of revelation supplied by god to come to the conclusion that guilt => punishment. And if you have that my other post applies - people who are innocent according to god might be being punished or punished more than those who are more guilty.

And even if you have that specific piece of revelation, what makes it okay for god to mete out the punishments and not humans (or a chimp for that matter)? Guilt is guilt, and your comeuppance could reasonably come from anyone it seems to me - unless god stipulates that it is only he who can punish certain acts in certain ways. And if god doesn't make that stipulation, then, according to his own laws, he might be rendered not so omnibenevolent, and thus not exist. Or be evil. .

1. If God (an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person) exists, then he would not suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world — Bartricks

If God exists why he should be "good"?
And I think you built your case based on that false premise. Imo, existence or not of God says nothing about good or evil. Good and evil are just what religions added to " God's concept".

:up:

I suppose one take might be that salvation is sort of like anesthesia. Since we don't know how conciousness works, we can't really say how anesthesia works. Normally it is a cocktail of drugs that reduce pain, prevent mobility, cause sleep, and cause anterograde amnesia. It's actually possible a good number of people experience pain during surgery, but aren't able to build memories of it.

As someone who woke up in the middle of the one surgery I've had, and definetly remember it as extremely, extremely unpleasant, I'm open to the possibility that it might not be putting people out as much as making memory formation difficult. After all, it takes a pretty deep sleep to not experience someone burning a wound in your throat closed (what I woke up to). I'm also a bit weird in that I tend to remember deep sleep dreams, which is less common, but not totally unheard of, as a sort of disjointed conciousness. This makes sense from my understanding of neuroscience. The systems that make up conciousness don't shut down during unconsciousness, else we would die, they just desynchronize and act at different levels (frequencies of brain waves).

Whole point of this tangent being, suffering in this form of life might be akin to anesthesia. Yes, you experience it in the moment, but the memory will fade. And as with surgery, the process might be to help one.

Why do we need suffering? Perhaps it has something to do with a sort of ontological semiotics. No pleasure without pain. In Dostoevsky, suffering is a part of the process through which the soul can come to know God. It's the sort of question it isn't easy to answer. However, I'm not sure if "imagine being, that is being and contains the things we think are good, without anything negative coming into being," makes sense as a supposition. How do I know something without the negativity (in the definitional sense of negativity, not the good/bad sense). Meaning is essentially differentiation, and the power of differentiation is the negative.

The whole doctrinal elements of salvation are, in my opinion, a red herring because sects vary quite a bit in how they define it. For Christians at least, it is worth noting that Jesus didn't come to Earth to write a theology book, but spoke in parables open to interpretation on many levels.

I always find myself a bit lost in the doctrine debated vis-a-vis salvation because Revelations specifically has the revival of the dead before their judgement. So the focus on actions before the "hard deadline" of death in many doctrines never made sense to me. For that matter, Hell as it appears in the Bible, is a lot different from Hell as generally understood in culture, which takes more from Dante's fan fiction (admittedly one of my favorite works of fiction) than anything else.

1. If God exists, then he would not suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world — Bartricks

Valid but unsound I reckon. At least #1 is false, to my mind. Omnibenevolence only entails that from God's POV everything is good. That's perfectly consistent with human suffering. I'm a meta-ethical relativist. So you always have to specify a POV from which something is good or evil to avoid gibbering.

You must have received a specific piece of revelation supplied by god to come to the conclusion that guilt => punishment. — ToothyMaw

Guilt is guilt, and your comeuppance could reasonably come from anyone it seems to me - unless god stipulates that it is only he who can punish certain acts in certain ways. And if god doesn't make that stipulation, then, according to his own laws, he might be rendered not so omnibenevolent, and thus not exist. Or be evil. . — ToothyMaw

Please enlighten me and tell what is the difference between an evil God and a God that is good if neither of them punish in any way?

My apologies Bartricks, I had logged in this forum a couple of days ago under the wrong email, and did not realize I had an old account I had forgotten about until I saw the name on my post. My original post was on the first page from Wirius. I did not receive your reply notice on this account of course, and I just realized you had responded to the other account.

We seemed to be in agreement until here:

You have just begged the whole question by assuming that we are innocent! It's absurd. Look, if God exists, you're in a prison. That's the point I was making. It follows logically. Here: — Bartricks

While you understood omnipotence, I think omnibenevolence was neglected. An omnibenevolent being would do that which is perfectly good. Now if that being is already omnipotent, it can even do things that are contradictions, why would it need to jail anyone?

Guilty beings could simply be reformed, or even changed on God's whim. Lessons could be imparted without any suffering or punishment. If God requires that the guilty must be punished, then God simply wants to watch guilty beings suffer for its own sake. There is no lesson that could not be learned without suffering, and yet this God inflicts suffering on its guilty victims. You have assumed an omnibenevolent, omnipotent being would only avoid inflicting suffering on the innocent. But that's not the case. They would also avoid inflicting suffering on the guilty.

To inflict suffering on the guilty, when you could reform them with your omnipotence is not omnibenevolent. That's a being with a less than perfect morality. So you haven't solved the problem of evil, you've only confirmed it.

I don't know. An evil god might allow innocents to suffer in ignorance, as the premise goes. Whether or not it qualifies as punishment requires motive. And if god breaks his own laws, even not via punishing people, then he could be considered evil. The point of my post is that while Bartricks' argument is sound academically, it requires some very specific revelation to make sense.



You might not have noticed, but Bartricks' argument gels a little too well with the idea of original sin; we are each given a static "guilty" value, equally weighed so that whatever suffering comes our way is well-deserved. He might keep his arguments vague, but they are almost always in service of Christianity.

Makes me wonder if he knows something we don't. Or, then again, maybe not.

What about revelation? According to the holy texts supplied by the Christian god, for example, one could indeed be demonstrated to be totally innocent in the presence of a supposedly omnibenevolent god. And if one is innocent why would they potentially suffer more than someone who isn't innocent? This disjunction seems to indicate very little thought on the part of an omniscient, omnipotent person. And surely determining one's guilt against a set of interpretable but still infallible laws is a function of reason? — ToothyMaw

Reason trumps revelation, for either you have a reason to believe you have experienced a revelation, or you do not. And in the latter case you have no reason to think in the truth of the supposed revelation. And in the former case, Reason is acknowledged to have the greater authority.

And it is by following Reason that we can come to understand that if there is any evidence for God, that evidence is evidence of our guilt, and thus there is no problem of evil.

The problem of evil is actually better described as a 'presumption' of evil that follows from a 'presumption' of innocence. We 'presume' we are innocent creatures facing risks of harm in a dangerous world.

That presumption is justified, other things being equal. But a presumption is not evidence. And so if evidence of God comes alone, then the presumption of innocence does not constitute countervailing evidence. That's my point.

Furthermore, I don't see why guilt would necessarily require punishment in the mind of an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent being. You must have received a specific piece of revelation supplied by god to come to the conclusion that guilt => punishment. And if you have that my other post applies - people who are innocent according to god might be being punished or punished more than those who are more guilty. — ToothyMaw

If one freely does wrong, one thereby comes to deserve harm. That does not, of course, entail that others are obliged to give one the harm in question. It does, however, mean that it is not unjust for you to receive it. And though an omnipotent and morally good person may not give a wrongdoer all that they deserve, I think it is reasonable enough to suppose that they would not go out of their way to prevent a wrongdoer receiving, by other means, their just deserts.

And that is what this world does.

If a criminal I know to be guilty of horrendous deeds comes to my house seeking sanctuary, I am not a bad person if I turn him away and let the authorities catch him, am I?

God is not a bad person for letting those who have freely attempted to do horrendous things to innocent people languish in one another's company for a while. And God is not a bad person for denying those people the knowledge that would otherwise make this world a safe place for them, is he? To think he is, is a bit like thinking I am a bad person for denying the criminal sanctuary.

And even if you have that specific piece of revelation, what makes it okay for god to mete out the punishments and not humans (or a chimp for that matter)? Guilt is guilt, and your comeuppance could reasonably come from anyone it seems to me - unless god stipulates that it is only he who can punish certain acts in certain ways. And if god doesn't make that stipulation, then, according to his own laws, he might be rendered not so omnibenevolent, and thus not exist. Or be evil. . — ToothyMaw

Where have I said anything to imply otherwise? We are living in ignorance in a dangerous world. We deserve that. And what form to those dangers take? Well, there are the natural ones, due to our ignorance of when earthquakes will occur and ignorance of how to prevent ourselves catching this or that disease. And then there are those that we pose to one another. And there is no injustice in what happens to them. They made someone else run the gauntlet; they deserve to run it themselves another time (for this time it is for some other crime, of course).

What we deserve, it seems to me, is to run the gauntlet. God made us run the gauntlet, and from there on in it's down to luck precisely what happens to us.

It's what parents do, though with an important difference. Parents have a god-like power to subject others to life here. And parents know enough about the world to know that it is a place that is full of dangers to the ignorant, and know that we are born ignorant and remain largely so for the rest of our lives here. Yet they voluntarily decide to subject someone to it. And thereby they come to deserve, well - what? They deserve to be running the gauntlet themselves. They are being done to as they have done to others.

So if you want an example of how someone can come to deserve to run the gauntlet, look to human parents. They make what they take to be innocent others run the gauntlet.

And if you want confirmation that we are living in a prison, just look around you at others, or look inside yourself. Notice that pretty much everyone you meet has some vice or other. And notice that you do too.

An omnibenevolent being would do that which is perfectly good. — Philosophim

You're putting the cart before the horse. An omnipotent being determines what is right and good, for otherwise they would not be omnipotent. So it is not that there is 'what's good' and an omnipotent being then has to obey. That is to make morality into a god, a god who bosses God about! No, an omnipotent being makes a good thing good and a right thing right.

That is by the by, really. Because our source of insight into what is good and right is our reason and it is from that information that we can glean something about God's character. My point is just that if you think you understand omnipotence, then you do not if you think morality binds an omnipotent being: morality, no less than anything else, is under God's control.

Now if that being is already omnipotent, it can even do things that are contradictions, why would it need to jail anyone? — Philosophim

He does not 'need' to. He 'wants' to. A good person wants to keep evil people from innocent people. A good person doesn't care unduly about what evil people do to one another; doesn't give them the same attention they give to the innocent, and so on.

Guilty beings could simply be reformed, or even changed on God's whim. Lessons could be imparted without any suffering or punishment. If God requires that the guilty must be punished, then God simply wants to watch guilty beings suffer for its own sake. — Philosophim

Indeed. If you want an evil person to be happy, are you good or bad? Bad, right? A good person does not indiscriminately want others to be happy - not if you consult your reason. Think of Dr Mengele, the Nazi doctor who tortured thousands with his horrific experiments. He lived out the rest of his days as a wealthy and happy farmer in Argentina or some such place. Now, does a good person think of that as a silver lining to an otherwise awful story? No, it makes a bad story worse. Good people do not want anyone and everyone to be happy.

Our own reason tells us about moral desert. It tells us that if you do wrong freely, then you deserve to come to harm. Not because it will reform you - that would be an added bonus if it occurred, but it is not 'why' you deserve to come to harm, for clearly you deserve to come to harm even if harming you would not reform you - but for its own sake. That is precisely what 'deservingness' expresses. It is no more than God communicating to us that He wants some to come to harm for harm's sake. And that does not imply God is bad, for the people in question are gits.

You're putting the cart before the horse. An omnipotent being determines what is right and good, for otherwise they would not be omnipotent. — Bartricks

But an omnibenevolent being would never choose to do wrong, even if they could. That's part of the contradiction of the problem of evil. if God chooses to do evil, then they aren't omnibenevolent, period. Omnibenevolent is not talking humanity level good. We're talking about perfection level good.

Because our source of insight into what is good and right is our reason and it is from that information that we can glean something about God's character. — Bartricks

Are we omnibenevolent? No. We are imperfect beings that do a lot of immorality for our personal self satisfaction. Revenge for example.

A good person doesn't care unduly about what evil people do to one another; doesn't give them the same attention they give to the innocent, and so on. — Bartricks

No, you're wrong here. Sometimes evil people need special attention from good people. Sometimes good people can help a person who is being selfish, or angry at the world for nothing, come around to understanding they don't have to be that way.

A good person does not indiscriminately want others to be happy - not if you consult your reason. — Bartricks

No. I don't want them being happy off of doing the wrong thing. I don't want them profiting off of doing the wrong thing. What I want is for them to turn their life around, and do the right thing. If you have any knowledge of Christianity, God essentially dies for all of humanities sins. Not for all the good people, but for the bad people too. So we have examples of Gods doing great things for bad men. There are also examples of people helping to reform people with an evil streak in their heart in life. I'm sure an omnibenevolent God would want the same.

It is no more than God communicating to us that He wants some to come to harm for harm's sake. And that does not imply God is bad, for the people in question are gits. — Bartricks

No, that is revenge for personal satisfaction. Why would an all powerful omnibenevolent being want revenge. More to the point, far more important than this conversation, is your desire that hurting people for revenge is somehow right. Before you think I don't understand, I do. A part of me absolutely despises my own mother. She betrayed me when I was younger for nothing more than spite. Every so often, I think about what she did to me, and the long term ramifications of that stupid spite, and I can't help but feel hate and wish ill on her. And no, its not some teenage angst. I have permanent scars on my body that I will never be rid of.

She's an alcoholic. I had the desire to never see her again. But I decided to reach out anyway. We talk every few weeks, and I see her every few months. We've talked about the past. I help her with little things. She's learned, and grown a little. In some ways she may never, as long as she stays on that bottle. There is still a part of me that will always hate her. But I choose not to. And am I a better person for it? Yes. And is she a better person for it? Yes. Surely an omnibenevolent God would do greater than both of us.

1. If God exists, then he would not suffer innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocents to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
— Bartricks

Valid but unsound I reckon. At least #1 is false, to my mind. Omnibenevolence only entails that from God's POV everything is good. That's perfectly consistent with human suffering. I'm a meta-ethical relativist. So you always have to specify a POV from which something is good or evil to avoid gibbering. — bert1

Well, that's a bit confused. Premise 1 is not necessarily true - I don't think any proposition is necessarily true, precisely because God exists and so can make any proposition false if He so wishes - but it is true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Your doubt, for instance, is not at all reasonable. God is all powerful - so he can do anything. God is also all good. Our reason - which is our source of insight into reality - tells us that being all good means not being a sadist. It means not exposing innocents to suffering if one does not have to. And God, being all powerful, did not have to expose innocents to any suffering. Hence the prima facie plausiblity of 1. Denying 1 involves, in one way or another, showing either ignorance of what goodness plausibly involves, or ignorance of what omnipotence involves.

But an omnibenevolent being would never choose to do wrong, even if they could. — Philosophim

I never said otherwise. My point is that an omnipotent being determines what's right and good. My point wasn't that they will sometimes do what is wrong and bad.

Are we omnibenevolent? No. We are imperfect beings that do a lot of immorality for our personal self satisfaction. Revenge for example. — Philosophim

I don't understand your point. At no point have I assumed we're omnibenevolent. Indeed, I have and am arguing that we're quite bad people!

Tell me, was it a silver lining that Dr Mengele lived out the rest of his life happily in Argentina?

No. I don't want them being happy off of doing the wrong thing. I don't want them profiting off of doing the wrong thing. — Philosophim

So you understand why an omnibenevolent being doesn't want that either?

Look, prisons don't serve one purpose. They serve three. First, to protect others from the wrongdoers - prevention. That's primarily why we are here. Not for our sakes, but for the sake of others.
Second, retribution. It is good when bad people get their just deserts.
Third, reform. That's why we have a moral sense.

I don't see how the example of your mother constitutes a counterexample. The hatred does not seem unjustified and time has passed. There are some injuries that only time and a great deal of suffering can heal. And here we are, doing that time and facing the risk of suffering. And hatred of others, when it is based on what they have freely done, is not morally bad, even if it is unpleasant. We can relieve ourselves by forgiving, but there is no requirement.
There is hatred that is just. Lots of it. And it is far from always bad. Consider: if your mother hates herself for what she did, that would be good, not bad, would it not?

But an omnibenevolent being would never choose to do wrong, even if they could.
— Philosophim

I never said otherwise. My point is that an omnipotent being determines what's right and good. My point wasn't that they will sometimes do what is wrong and bad. — Bartricks

If you are claiming that what is good is what a powerful being decides, then you are not using the word omnibenevolent to describe that being. At that point, you are removing the idea of good and evil entirely, and simply stating that a being's judgement of what is just goes because they have the power to do so. This does not solve the problem of evil. The problem of evil assumes God is also omnibenevolent, meaning while God could change what is good and evil, God does not.

If you're not including the 3 omni's, you're not talking about the problem of evil. At that point you're simply proposing another type of God. In your case, its simply a powerful God that decides what is right and wrong through its might. I find there are other problems with this, but again, its not the problem of evil. To confront the problem of evil, you need to explain why all 3 omnis, which are defined as having zero limits, can coexist in a God of creation while there still being evil in the world they created.

Consider: if your mother hates herself for what she did, that would be good, not bad, would it not? — Bartricks

No. I don't want her to hate herself. I want her to learn and be a person that would never do that again. Emotions themselves are not moral or immoral. It is the actions we do despite those emotions that make it moral or immoral.

You seem just to be ignoring the case I have made. What I have said about the relationship between morality and God was not to address the problem of evil, but to correct the idea that morality operates as some kind of external constraint.

When it comes to the problem of evil, I have shown that it involves a presumption of innocence. Presumptions, even when justified, are not evidence. And thus if evidence of God exists, that evidence is evidence of our guilt. And evidence trumps presumptions.

Now, our guilt solves the problem as there is no risk of harm that a person cannot in principle come to be deserving of. Your response is to just insist that being morally good involves indiscriminately preventing harms, regardless of what the person has done. Yet a cursory inspection of the nature of morality - which is our source of insight into God's nature - tells us that it is good when people get what they deserve, not bad. It is good to hate evil; good to want harm to befall an evil person. And when or if it does, we have justice, not injustice.

We ourselves build prisons and do not thereby show ourselves to be unjust. We build them to try and make the world more just. And we see them as morally justified by the three purposes they serve- to protect the innocent; to give the wrongdoer their just deserts; and to reform the wrongdoer. And that, then, is the purpose this world itself serves and it no more implies a lack of omnibenevolence on the part of its creator than our prisons do on the part of theirs.

An omnipotent being could, of course, just reform a wrongdoer at will. But that's the wrongdoer's job, not God's. So he clearly prefers to let wrongdoers fix themselves - ir not, as they choose - than to intervene and fix them himself. For that would be to impose himself on them. Whereas clearly God values free will and letting people make their own choices about the kinds of people they want to be.