I'm not entirely sure why van Inwagen thinks such a minimum line does not exist. — darthbarracuda
If God simply “canceled” all the horrors of this world by an endless series of miracles, he would thereby frustrate his own plan of reconciliation.
But Ingwagen is already accepting that God wants there to be freewill at that point. That must be some ultimate good. And so the price you pay for that is having humans making bad or mad choices. — apokrisis
van Inwagen suggests that an explanation for why human-oriented horrors exist is because there is no "cut-off" line to be drawn that isn't arbitrary. The atheist may reply that there is a minimum level of horrors that God could have chosen to exist for his plan to work. I'm not entirely sure why van Inwagen thinks such a minimum line does not exist. He equates it to asking how many raindrops needed to fall on England in 1941 for it to be fertile, or a prisoner asking to get released a day early, which at least for me is confusing, because obviously you can't fertilize England with one rain drop. — darthbarracuda
Discuss — darthbarracuda
Right, that's what I thought he meant, as I said in the beginning. That human free will is good, and God's reconciliation plan requires that this free will be maintained. — darthbarracuda
I'm not entirely sure why van Inwagen thinks such a minimum line does not exist. — darthbarracuda
I might be wrong here but is his point that the Problem of Evil is essentially a necessary component of God's plan? The point being that there has to be an arbitrary line drawn in order for us to think about the Problem of Evil which in turn is necessary for God's plan to work? — darthbarracuda
Strange as it sounds, although Man thought himself hardly treated in respect to freedom, yet, if freedom meant superiority, Man was in action much the superior of God, whose freedom suffered, from Saint Thomas, under restraints that Man never would have tolerated. Saint Thomas did not allow God even an undetermined will; he was pure Act, and as such he could not change. Man alone was, in act, allowed to change direction. What was more curious still, Man might absolutely prove his freedom by refusing to move at all; if he did not like his life, he could stop it, and habitually did so, or acquiesced in its being done for him; while God could not commit suicide or even cease for a single instant his continuous action. If Man had the singular fancy of making himself absurd,— a taste confined to himself but attested by evidence exceedingly strong, — he could be as absurd as he liked; but God could not be absurd. Saint Thomas did not allow the Deity the right to contradict himself, which is one of Man's chief pleasures. While Man enjoyed what was, for his purposes, an unlimited freedom to be wicked,— a privilege which, as both Church and State bitterly complained and still complain, he has outrageously abused,— God was Goodness and could be nothing else. [...] In one respect, at least, Man's freedom seemed to be not relative but absolute, for his thought was an energy paying no regard to space or time or order or object or sense; but God's thought was his act and will at once; speaking correctly, God could not think, he is. Saint Thomas would not, or could not, admit that God was Necessity, as Abélard seems to have held, but he refused to tolerate the idea of a divine maniac, free from moral obligation to himself
Discuss. — darthbarracuda
It isn't one. Evolution lumbered along for hundreds of millions of years, not in spite of, but because of predation, disease, suffering, natural disasters, and death. And God is said to have "guided" this process? Please. — Thorongil
So, how do we know what X level of evil is? How does the person proposing the Problem of Evil as an argument against God know we have reached X level of evil without arbitrarily deciding it to be so? In other words, how does the atheist know that the X level of evil is reached and actually exists? How would we identify the X level of evil and differentiate it from levels of evil below X? How much evil is too much and how do we know that it is too much? Is a single death justifiable? How about five? Ten? Thousands? What is the support for this conclusion? Anyway we support our conclusion appears arbitrary. Thus, the Problem of Evil is not a charge against the existence of God. — Chany
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