— The Violence of Oneness, Norman Fischer (On the Motivation for the 9/11 Terror Attacks — Wayfarer

Interesting.

I'm trying to stay true to the classic framing of a theodicy in the West, which conceives of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent. — J

But regardless, one being amongst others - apparently with extraordinary powers and longevity but a being nonetheless. This is why Paul Tillich says that to conceive of God as a being is to deny Him. (And I'm not saying this from the viewpoint having it all worked out, either - more like a historical forensic pathologist, trying to reconstruct what happened on the basis of scattered remains. It ties into the loss of the heirarchical understanding of Being, and its replacement with univocity, 'all being(s) are of the same kind'. That, in turn, leads to the loss of a 'dimension of value' - values are subjective, or intersubjective, or social, there being no value in so-called objective reality (ref)).

It (theodicy) does disappear if your version of god is less benevolent sky wizard and more ground of being. Mind you, the Bible deosn't help as it depicts a pretty nasty deity who has no issues with slavery and genocide and behaves like a mafia boss, demanding deference and worship to sooth his seemingly fragile ego, so there is that. — Tom Storm

Specifically, the Old Testament. And bearing in mind, the OT texts preserved in the Bible originated in the late Bronze age, amongst agrarian tribes, for whom the subtleties of the much later theologians would presumably mean nothing. Ergo the voice that is presented speaks in the terms appropriate to the society in which it was heard (although I don't know if genocide was part of the narrative. That doesn't enter the language until WWII, and not through any act of God.) But it raises the question of what is being debated.

Perhaps it's this confusion about the nature of the 'supreme identity' that is behind the belief that He operates as a kind of supreme agent — a being with immense power, knowledge, and will, who chooses outcomes in the world much like we do, only on a grander scale. It’s from this anthropomorphic projection that the impulse to assign blame arises: if God could have prevented this or that disaster, and didn’t, then He must be responsible, perhaps even malicious.

But this view mistakes what kind of causality is at issue. In the classical world — particularly in Aquinas and the Neoplatonic tradition — God is not a proximate cause operating within the causal order. He is not a being in the world, but the ground of all being, the cause of causes. His causality is not like ours — it is ontological, not mechanical or voluntaristic.

The “Hotel Manager” model of theodicy arises precisely from this misplaced attribution of agency: it treats God as if He were running the world like a human administrator, and then judges Him by those standards. But this picture, intuitive though it may be to us, is metaphysically confused. It domesticates divinity into a kind of super-personality — and then is shocked when the universe doesn’t live up to the standards we come to expect.

Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe – even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound. — Lunging, Flailing, Mispunchiing, Terry Eagleton (review of The God Delusion)

God as omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent — J

@J is not altogether wrong here, @Wayfarer. First, it's very confusing that the word "theodicy" is being used in this thread to mean "anti-theodicy" or "anti-theism." For that reason I will avoid the word altogether.

Here is a standard argument against theism which utilizes the problem of evil:

1. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent, then there would be no evil
2. But there is evil
3. Therefore, there is no existing God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent {modus tollens}

Part of your argument is something like this:

4. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent, then there would be no head colds
5. But there are head colds
6. Therefore, there is no existing God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent {modus tollens}
7. Therefore, head colds disprove the existence of God {reductio ad absurdum}

(Note how similar this is to <my argument against anti-natalism>.)

(7) represents Hotel Manager Anti-theism, and the response is to say that (4) is rather dubious.

For me, the point is that there is a real and live problem with Hotel Manager Anti-theism, and yet at the same time it is true that at some point Hotel Manager Anti-theism ends and more legitimate reasons for Anti-theism begin. So there is a possible danger of over-emphasizing the critique contained in the OP, namely by overemphasizing the question, "Where exactly should the line be drawn?"

(See also my response to Tom Storm. The trick here is that not all anti-theistic arguments are created equal.)

The Hotel Manager refutation hinges on gods being omnipotent. But there is no evidence that if there are gods, that they are necessarily omnipotent. In fact there are several logical problems with the concept of omnipotent gods, only one of which is the presence of evil. But even if one concludes that omnipotent gods are illogical, that does nothing to lower the possibility of nonomnipotent gods, thus does not further the cause of atheism.

First, it's very confusing that the word "theodicy" is being used in this thread to mean "anti-theodicy" or "anti-theism." For that reason I will avoid the word altogether. — Leontiskos

Acknowledged. I had associated the word with general discussion of the problem of evil not realising that it was usually intended as a apologetic in the religious context. So it is misleading, and I have changed the thread title to reflect that.

Part of your argument is something like this:

4. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent, then there would be no head colds
5. But there are head colds
6. Therefore, there is no existing God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent {modus tollens}
7. Therefore, head colds disprove the existence of God {reductio ad absurdum} — Leontiskos

That is not the argument at all. The argument is, if the existence of suffering is supposed to be an indictment against God, then where do you draw the line between what you would deem a reasonable and an unnacceptabe degree of suffering? That colds and influenza would be 'allowed' by a merciful God, but not cancer? That earthquakes would be reasonable, but mass casualties would not be?

The more general argument is that a world without suffering is inconceivable, (although I might add that this is actually what Heaven is supposed to mean.) So it's not as if suffering is inflicted on the world, either by design or intention, but that physical existence must be susceptible to suffering, pain and imperfections of many kinds. Hence the Thomist view of natural evils:

“God does not will evil to be done, but He permits it to be done; and thus He brings good out of evil.” — ST I, q.19, a.9

As facing and rising above evil is an essential aspect of existence.

Further, that the most conspicuous forms of intentional evil have been committed by man against man - even in the name of religion itself, which is particularly egregious, but again, not an indictment against God.

Again, the essay 'is not an attempt to justify suffering, nor to offer spiritual guidance. It aims only to point out the mistake of that common assumption in modern discourse — the idea that if God exists, He must operate like a benevolent manager of human well-being. It’s a superficial way of seeing it. Recovering some understanding of the metaphysical and theological contexts against which the problem of evil has traditionally been resolved, allows us to reframe the question in a larger context — one in which suffering still has to be reckoned with, but not on account of a malicious God.'

And I stand by that argument.

(although I don't know if genocide was part of the narrative. That doesn't enter the language until WWII, and not through any act of God.) — Wayfarer

Mass extermination of a people is still mass extermination of a people, regardless of the word used. Deuteronomy 20:16–17: 'In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.'

Samuel 15:2–3: "This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel... Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’

Curiously, Jesus never apologizes for the genocidal actions of the God he is said to incarnate. Nor does he acknowledge that the Old Testament was wrong for not speaking out against slavery, but instead being complicit with it, which suggests that JC's ethics are incomplete.

Of course, they are just stories and if god is a cunt in the books it's because we are and he is made in our image.

God is not a proximate cause operating within the causal order. He is not a being in the world, but the ground of all being, the cause of causes. His causality is not like ours — it is ontological, not mechanical or voluntaristic. — Wayfarer

And I suppose one would also want to argue that God didn’t deliberately design and create a world where countless insects and animals hunt, mutilate, and tear each other apart alive just to survive.

But this picture, intuitive though it may be to us, is metaphysically confused. It domesticates divinity into a kind of super-personality — and then is shocked when the universe doesn’t live up to the standards we come to expect. — Wayfarer

I don't know if it's metaphysically confused or not, but it is the picture given us by the Abrahamic tradition. "God is love" - "God loves us like a parent loves their children" -- aren't these statements meant to be true? Perhaps they do represent a domestication of divinity. The question is, is such a picture consistent with the state of this world? Most other spiritual traditions don't see it that way, as you point out -- not the Greeks, not the Buddhists, not the Taoists. Nor do many Christian theologians like Tillich, from what I can gather (I haven't read him firsthand). Standard Christian theology, to its credit, recognized that an afterlife is essential in order to make sense of this picture. If you want philosophical reasons for that, Kant offers some excellent ones in CPR.

But this view mistakes what kind of causality is at issue. In the classical world — particularly in Aquinas and the Neoplatonic tradition — God is not a proximate cause operating within the causal order. He is not a being in the world, but the ground of all being, the cause of causes. His causality is not like ours — it is ontological, not mechanical or voluntaristic. — Wayfarer

Here, again, I have no argument with this. I merely ask, does such a God love us?

The argument is, if the existence of suffering is supposed to be an indictment against God, then where do you draw the line between what you would deem a reasonable and an unnacceptabe degree of suffering? — Wayfarer

Sorry for the second post, but I just saw this.

I can reinforce the point I was making above by changing this to:

"If the existence of suffering is supposed to be an indictment against a loving God who is like a parent to us, then where do you draw the line between what you would deem a reasonable and an unnacceptable degree of suffering?"

So this gives us some choices. We can say that God is like a loving parent, but our human idea of a "loving parent" is hopelessly wrong, that true parental love is much more like super-super-super-tough love, necessitating every bit of the (natural) suffering that occurs in the world.

Or we can say that God is not like a loving parent -- their "ontological causality" rains equally on the just and the unjust -- in which case the question of suffering is moot.

Or we can agree that to imagine God as a loving parent is to imagine them more or less like our human idea of such a love, in which case the question of "where to draw the line" is, to me, obvious. We could debate the specifics, I suppose, but if any human parent created an environment for their child that even approached the horrors of what humans experience from nature, that parent would be monstrous. So rather than draw a line and say "right here is where God should have stopped," let's just say, "take your pick, but it should have been drawn WAY closer to compassion and mercy."

Not to be repetitive, but this doesn't represent me trying to tell God how to run the hotel. It's me trying to find some consistency in the way Abrahamic faiths claim God does run the hotel, versus what we actually see. The "should" translates to "should, if these other claims about God's love are true." The problem is not with God, but with the consistency of human descriptions of God.

"God loves us like a parent loves their children" — J

Yes, the image of God as a loving parent is a recurring motif in Christian scripture. But it’s meant analogically, not literally. Divine love isn’t the same as human affection — it’s not sentimental or reactive, nor a description of a mortal parent with moral obligations. And it also depends on what we take “Father” to mean. Interpreted archetypally, Father is a symbol of creative origination — the generative, principle. Think of the Father as the seed or zygote, the initiator of form; the Mother as Earth, the bearer of substance. So the religions speak of “Father" it has many layers of meaning.

Something else is nagging me as well. Jesus, after all, was a pretty demanding teacher. 'He who saves his life will lose it, while he who loses his life for my sake will be saved.' There's a moral demand in that, isn't there? It isn't 'do what you like, it will turn OK'. And isn't the final end of suffering the 'salvation' or the 'life eternal' that the faithful are said to inherit? I'm not trying to preach (although I admit it sounds like it!) but to interpret.

Or we can agree that to imagine God as a loving parent is to imagine them more or less like our human idea of such a love...The problem is not with God, but with the consistency of human descriptions of God. — J

Right! Especially when abstracted and disconnected from the sacerdotal and liturgical context in which it was originally meaningful and interpolated into modern idioms.

And it also depends on what we take “Father” to mean. Interpreted archetypally, Father is a symbol of creative origination — the generative, principle. — Wayfarer

But read the Gospels. Do you really imagine this is what Jesus meant? He called God Daddy, and begged him not to make him suffer! And when Christians gather every Sunday to proclaim that God is love, do you think they mean this analogically? Or only that they ought to?

But it’s meant analogically, not literally. — Wayfarer

Do you say this because a literal meaning doesn't seem sensible to you? You may be right. But I truly believe that Christian doctrine (and, in large part, Jewish and Islamic doctrine as well) finds it not only sensible but essential. Unless you want to picture a huge divide between "theological Christianity" or "Christology" or whatever, and the plain tradition of Christian teaching, for "unsophisticated" people.

Jesus, after all, was a pretty demanding teacher. 'He who saves his life will lose it, while he who loses his life for my sake will be saved.' There's a moral demand in that, isn't there? It isn't 'do what you like, it will turn OK' — Wayfarer

Oh, definitely. There's nothing there that contradicts my idea of a loving parent. It's the dying-of-loathsome-diseases part that bothers me -- if God loves us.

sorry, I still don't think that is a fair assessment. It's a very Dawkins style depiction, God as a kind of cosmic film director, staging all of the action. I think it betrays a misunderstanding of the God that Dawkins doesn't believe in. A straw God, so to speak. — Wayfarer

I know I jump in and out of this thread, so I might have missed something, but I do agree with this statement, and it forms the bulk of the problems with theistic debates we have here.

The atheists surely have an argument to make, but they focus way too heavily on attacking its least sophisticated form, the caricature religion one imagines of simple literalism screamed from the pulpits throughout the South. Despite it being a fairly recent phenomenon, it's the only theology attacked, and none here find it worth defending.

Even in this thread I hear of the ridiculousness of the Bible, yet no one is actually interested in hearing how it is interpreted by those who use it, as if the meaning of the words is entirely detached from the actual use of the words.

the caricature religion one imagines of simple literalism screamed from the pulpits throughout the South. — Hanover

Is "God is love" or "God loves you" simple literalism?

All meaning stands within some context. As a stark comment, devoid of any context, it's not real possible to interpret.

If you asked for a specific interpretation of those sentences within the context of a particular denomination, you'd get varying answers. "My dog loves me," "My wife loves me," "My co-workers love me," and "God loves me," all constitute differing ways "love" is used.

We love our brother, our nation, or child, and meatloaf in different ways. The Greeks pointed this out as well.

If you asked for a specific interpretation of those sentences within the context of a particular denomination, you'd get varying answers. — Hanover

Certainly. But I'm asking for your answer, in the context of saying that "simple literalisms" should be avoided when trying to understand religious doctrine. Is this an example of such a literalism? If further context is needed, I can find some Gospel passages, I suppose, but I doubt whether you really need them.

Certainly. But I'm asking for your answer, in the context of saying that "simple literalisms" should be avoided when trying to understand religious doctrine. Is this an example of such a literalism? If further context is needed, I can find some Gospel passages, I suppose, but I doubt whether you really need them. — J

What I mean by context isn't just providing me a few more lines of text. Just from what you've provided, you're assuming a particular context, specifically a New Testament version of "God" which arguably differs substantially from the OT (as you refernced "Gospel). That places you into a Christian context. You then ask me to interpret it along with you, which assumes a certain perspicuity of Scripture, which is an interpretive ideology consistent with 19th century fundamentalism that proposes that Scripture is written in a plain and direct way that is subject to interpretation without special knowlege.

This also assumes a priority and almost exclusivity of NT Gospels in interpreting, omitting not just non-canonical literature, but also historical literature and practices developed within and outside the tradition over time.

To give a secular example, if I were to ask what a particular provision of the US Constitution means, I can't just read it along with the rest of the document to have a full understanding its meaning. Not only are there hundreds of thousands of pages of past interpretation that binds its meaning, but there is an entire context of American society that must be understood (and its historical placement) to fully appreciate how that document is used and how that meaning is derived from its use. The suggestion that it is readable and understandable by just a casual reading without special expertise is a construction ideology unto itself.

With the Bible, regardless of whether you think it has a shred of divinity within it, has been used as a basis to run civilizations for thousands of years, and just coming along and saying "the Bible promotes dashing children's heads into rocks" because it says so, doesn't mean it means that.

I get that to break a leg means to fracture a femur, but that doesn't mean "break a leg" means that. But if you stand in shock that theater goers desire the actors to break their legs and you can't get past that, then that is an adherence to an interpretive scheme the other users don't use.

And this was my point to @Wayfarer (and his point as well), which is that the attack on biblical meaning by using the most unsophisticated exegesis method available is a strawman.

If further context is needed, I can find some Gospel passages, I suppose, but I doubt whether you really need them. — J

I think you definitely need them, given that people use "love" to justify anything and everything. For example, I know Christian consequentialists who say that in the Trolley scenario, or in a scenario where a tyrant applies consequentialist pressure so that you might murder someone, the loving thing to do is to go ahead and murder for the greater good. You might even be one of these consequentialists who would say that if you can murder someone so that ten other people do not die, the loving thing to do is to murder them.

Without some context, "Love" is an incredibly ambiguous and increasingly meaningless term.

Acknowledged. I had associated the word with general discussion of the problem of evil not realising that it was usually intended as a apologetic in the religious context. So it is misleading, and I have changed the thread title to reflect that. — Wayfarer

Thanks. I think that's helpful, even though I realize there isn't a great rhetorical substitute for the word "theodicy." Nevertheless, "Indictment" is a good one.

That is not the argument at all. The argument is, if the existence of suffering is supposed to be an indictment against God, then where do you draw the line between what you would deem a reasonable and an unnacceptabe degree of suffering? That colds and influenza would be 'allowed' by a merciful God, but not cancer? That earthquakes would be reasonable, but mass casualties would not be? — Wayfarer

That's basically the argument I gave. I'm not sure if you're familiar with reductio ad absurdum arguments? The implication is that either (4) or (5) must be false.

That colds and influenza would be 'allowed' by a merciful God, but not cancer? — Wayfarer

Again:

So there is a possible danger of over-emphasizing the critique contained in the OP, namely by overemphasizing the question, "Where exactly should the line be drawn?" — Leontiskos

So for example, does your "Where exactly should the line be drawn" argument imply that not only colds, and not only cancer, but also genocide is permissible? The danger here is the idea that there is no line and nothing is off limits. Even if (7) is absurd, there still seems to be a line somewhere.

The more general argument is that a world without suffering is inconceivable, (although I might add that this is actually what Heaven is supposed to mean.) — Wayfarer

Right, but if heaven exists then it's not clear that, "facing and rising above evil is an essential aspect of existence." Specifically, I think Buddhism takes evil/suffering as a brute fact in a way that Christianity does not. For Christianity evil possesses a contingency at a level which is not true for Buddhism. The difference is that Christians believe in a God who allows evil that he was at least somehow capable of preventing—even in the extreme case where he decides not to create at all. That's presumably why Dawkins does not levy the Problem of Evil against Buddhism.

Again, the essay 'is not an attempt to justify suffering, nor to offer spiritual guidance. It aims only to point out the mistake of that common assumption in modern discourse — the idea that if God exists, He must operate like a benevolent manager of human well-being. It’s a superficial way of seeing it. Recovering some understanding of the metaphysical and theological contexts against which the problem of evil has traditionally been resolved, allows us to reframe the question in a larger context — one in which suffering still has to be reckoned with, but not on account of a malicious God.'

And I stand by that argument. — Wayfarer

Yes, and I think it is a salient point. :up:
Contemporary atheists definitely take the argument too far and make God into a Hotel Manager.

One of the most frequently raised objections to religious belief in the modern world is the Problem of Evil. The argument is simple and emotionally powerful: if God is all-powerful and all-good, then why does He allow terrible suffering? — Wayfarer

This definition of deity may be peculiar to the Catholic rendition of Judaism. The God of the Hebrews was indeed all-powerful, by contrast to pagan idols, but his goodness was conditional : if you don't Love & Fear & Obey God, you will suffer. The Creation was described as Good, but its imperfections were blamed on the species of sentient-yet-gullible creatures that were supposed to “manage” the Garden. Ironically, the Hebrews, as the Chosen People, accepted that blame, on behalf of all humanity, as inscrutable divine Justice.

Catholics inherited the Good God as a given, then spawned a corps of Scholars charged with finding reasons to reconcile Omnibenevolence with both natural and cultural Evil. As usual, the blame is placed on the creatures, not the creator. Except that the machinations of a subordinate Evil God were postulated as a way to test human faithfulness & love for the Good God, which presumably makes up for their innate credulity. Yet, if God is indeed Omnipotent, then the "buck" of suffering stops at the top. Not the desk clerk, but the CEO. :smile:

The moment there is matter, there is entropy. — Wayfarer

Contrary to Catholicism, my philosophical god-concept is closer to that of Spinoza and Whitehead*1. Whitehead defined his God, not as an ideal of perfection, but as the potential for creation and change. Specifically, his god functions as a “principle of concrescence” : the act or process of coming or growing together; coalescence . And that is one way of describing Natural Evolution : incremental & progressive occasions of form change.

The Big Bang was a cosmic explosion of Energy, followed by ongoing expansion & Entropy. If that was all there was, then eventual Heat Death would result in the snuffing-out of the Cosmic flame. But mutual gravity causes concretion, as Energy becomes Mass, and Mass becomes stars & planets. Evolution is an elaboration and extension of the process of coalescence. And, historically, it has a direction : from the simplicity of a Singularity, to Darwin's "endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful"*2.

Philosophically, we can think of Energy as positive, and Entropy as negative. Then, in terms of human emotions, Positive change is Good, while Negative change is Evil. For sentient creatures, Evil results in suffering. But, as far as we know, natural Energy has no agenda for the survival or thrival of humans. Yet, if Evolution --- as exemplified on Earth --- is indeed moving inexorably toward complexity, then the human brain may be the current apex of material concrescence.

The physical brain's non-physical (immaterial) function, Consciousness, may also be the emergence of a novel form of causal Energy. The homo sapiens brain produces something undreamed of 14B years ago : knowledge and self-awareness. So, Whitehead's impersonal Principle seems to have set our universe on a course that we humans are unable to predict. But some of us may look upon the process of Evolution, and say that it is both Good and Bad, depending on your viewpoint. One way to look at it is to admit that the Cosmos is improving*2 but not yet perfect. :wink:


*1. PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15833/process-cosmology-a-worldview-for-our-time/p1

*2. Misconceptions about evolution :
Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu › teach-evolution › misco...
Note --- Adaptation means improve or die

I guess what I don't understand about all this is: What would then allow you to interpret the "Southern preacher" as speaking in simple literalisms? Aren't you supplying a context for them, then saying you can't supply one for yourself?

Just from what you've provided, you're assuming a particular context, specifically a New Testament version of "God" which arguably differs substantially from the OT (as you refernced "Gospel). That places you into a Christian context. — Hanover

Yes. Sorry, I thought that was the context from which you spoke as well. Perhaps I got that wrong.

To give a secular example, if I were to ask what a particular provision of the US Constitution means . . . — Hanover

But a little perspective, please? :wink: This isn't a judicially ambiguous, much-contested provision of a legal document. It's a simple phrase: "God loves you." Definitely some possible divergent ways of understanding this, but is it really capable of the same kind of multiplicity of interpretations, arguing the same case-specific technicalities? Is that what you think Christians would say about it? (I'm trying to picture the disciples scratching their heads and saying, "Now when he said 'love,' do you think he really meant 'love' like my Daddy loves me? Maybe he meant the way I 'love' catching a fish? That could have been it!"). And of particular significance for this thread about theodicy, is it capable of an interpretation that is consistent with our brutal circumstances here on Earth? As I've said earlier in the thread, I think we require the possibility of an afterlife to make sense of that.

And this was my point to Wayfarer (and his point as well), which is that the attack on biblical meaning by using the most unsophisticated exegesis method available is a strawman. — Hanover

I quite agree. I don't agree that asking what "God is love" might mean, in a Christian context, is asking for an unsophisticated exegesis. And you've misunderstood me if you think I'm trying to cast doubt on this picture of God. Just the opposite.

God is loving and good, and yet the world is filled with devastating suffering — especially natural suffering that doesn’t seem to arise from human choices. — Wayfarer

Far more damning is the design and creation of a world that uses death and pain as the engine of survival. That’s pretty twisted. — Tom Storm

That is the irony of the problem of evil. The argument assumes the existence of God, assumes moral objectivity and normativity (suffering is evil), judges God as immoral because we suffer, all in order to support the conclusion that God must not even exist. God's definition, plus my suffering, proves God's non-existence. We need a certain and specific God in the argument to prove the conclusion that such God must not exist.

But if we take God out of the mix, we still have nature; what does that make of the use of death and pain as the engine of survival in nature (the physics of it)? The world is still as it is, with it's pain and death.

We can't call death and pain "twisted" as natural processes without a creator God behind them.

In a world without God, don't we have to jettison "evil" when we jettison "God" and say that pain, like pleasure, is just another sensation, and that death, like birth, is just another moment in a biological entity's life? Shouldn't we move beyond good and evil too?

So now, with no one to complain to (no God to appeal our case of suffering to), why even call suffering, pain and death, evil or bad? There's nothing twisted about pain and death so long as God does not cause them. It's still the same world, same pain and death, just now, because there is no intention behind them, we are without any need to judge or justify pain or pleasure as bad or good.

But in the case that pain and suffering are no longer adjudged evil or bad, why did we think God wouldn't want us to suffer in the first place? Now the premise about what God would want (God would want to prevent pain and death) in the problem of evil argument seems ridiculous. Why would God want to prevent suffering and pain if these are not evil?

But the real irony is, without God, for some reason, this same life is now seen as the triumph of nature, with life finding a way despite calamity after insufferable calamity. If we take God out of the equation, we see those beings that bear suffering and overcome pain as heroic and good. Suffering almost becomes justified by all of the lives that follow it. Suffering adds to the good of living once it is overcome.

Yet though we can, in a secular way, save our triumph and heroism, we haven't found a way to save our God (at least not in the minds of modern geniuses and academics).

the Bible deosn't help as it depicts a pretty nasty deity who has no issues with slavery and genocide and behaves like a mafia boss, demanding deference and worship to sooth his seemingly fragile ego, so there is that. — Tom Storm

You sound like a hotel guest who doesn't have enough towels (or who can't read his Gideons Bible).

Bottom line to me is, the only way for me to be me, for me to become free one day, for me to participate in the structure of my own character, for me to be able to love, for me to recognize something as good and to choose that good - the world has to be as it is. And this is for each of us. for me to be different than Tom, and for Tom to be different than all others, the world can only be as the world is.

Individuated entities, like Tom, or the moon, don't get to sit in existence, for however long they might exist, without breaking free, which causes suffering.

I suffer so that I can be me. Suffering has to be, for something precisely like me to come into existence.

Its not a 'best of all possible worlds' argument; its a 'there is only one world anyway' argument. I think God does not have the power to create me as me in any other setting besides the world as it is, with pain, and earthquakes and suffering and death of babies and extinction of species, etc.. I don't know what an "omnipotent" being actually means or is. There is no other possible world, if I am to be in it, as me. Maybe it means, God has the power to do anything, but in order to do me, as I am, the world I live in could be no different than it is. This is the same for all beings that exist.

The only position against God, then, to me, is, God should not have created anything. We should never have been given the opportunity to weigh in on our own lives or God's creation. Fine, if you are antinatalist or a miserable solipsist, or just contrarian. But the position that God must not exist because pain exists? Seems ultimately like a complaint to the hotel manager.

The instant you think there is something that exists that should be or could be improved upon, some pain that should be relieved, you now subject yourself to all of the forces that brought you to have that opinion in the first place. And those forces include the ability to suffer, and the suffering itself; you would not imagine the improvement otherwise.

:100:

This isn't a judicially ambiguous, much-contested provision of a legal document. It's a simple phrase: "God loves you." Definitely some possible divergent ways of understanding this, but is it really capable of the same kind of multiplicity of interpretations, arguing the same case-specific technicalities? Is that what you think Christians would say about it? (I'm trying to picture the disciples scratching their heads and saying, "Now when he said 'love,' do you think he really meant 'love' like my Daddy loves me? Maybe he mea — J

It's actually more ambiguous by virtue of its antiquity and the multiplicity of traditions offering opinions on what God's love is. A Catholic response to your question of what God's love is, for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_caritas_est

If you want to know another tradition's view, you can look that up as well.

I'll assure you there are important differences among them, pointing to differing contexts and hermeneutical approaches.

But the real irony is, without God, for some reason, this same life is now seen as the triumph of nature, with life finding a way despite calamity after insufferable calamity. If we take God out of the equation, we see those beings that bear suffering and overcome pain as heroic and good. Suffering almost becomes justified by all of the lives that follow it. Suffering adds to the good of living once it is overcome. — Fire Ologist

I don’t understand this argument at all. Much life is suffering and gloomy regardless of theism or atheism. The experience doesn’t change with or without a deity.

The only position against God, then, to me, is, God should not have created anything. We should never have been given the opportunity to weigh in on our own lives or God's creation. Fine, if you are antinatalist or a miserable solipsist, or just contrarian. But the position that God must not exist because pain exists? Seems ultimately like a complaint to the hotel manager. — Fire Ologist

Lots of ideas here. Yes, perhaps God should not have created the world. I can see this as a legitimate response. I am not arguing that god does not exist because of pain. I am saying that there’s a design argument for pain and suffering being intentional to God’s plan. The hotel analogy isn’t terrible. You know what happens to dysfunctional hotels? They are shut down and the owners are prosecuted.

OK, thanks.

But if we take God out of the mix, we still have nature; what does that make of the use of death and pain as the engine of survival in nature (the physics of it)? The world is still as it is, with it's pain and death. — Fire Ologist

Exactly! Arguing about the goodness or badness of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God does not solve the humanistic problem of Evil & Suffering. It merely assigns blame to the mythical Manager, who is ironically assumed to be absent from his post. A more philosophical position would be to recognize that the world (i.e. Nature) "uses" pain & death (sentience & senescence) as integral components in the constructive process of Evolution, from a mathematical quantum-scale Singularity to a near-infinite & ever-expanding Cosmos of Consciousness. On one Pale Blue Dot, we humans somehow became sentient, and invented the categories of Good & Evil, so we'll have something to philosophize about.

Non-theistic pre-Christian philosophies --- Brahmanism, Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism --- accepted the world "as it is", and charged humans with the responsibility for adapting to that reality. The various gods of Theism serve mainly as someone to complain to (e.g. the management). But secular history records no instances of divine interventions into the course of Nature, on behalf of whining humans. Yet, we have myths saying that the gods fixed the problem by evicting the troublesome tenants with floods & massacres. Obviously, the goal of evolution is not you or me. So we are merely means to some other end. Meanwhile, we philosophize.

That's why I prefer A.N. Whitehead's notion of God (Nature) as the inexorable Process of Evolution. The Darwinian Procedure works like a program*1, via And/Or/Not (selection & combination & elimination), to improve the current stock for the next generation. Like Spinoza, Whitehead uses the term "god" in a technical, not religious, sense to designate the implicit Programmer of this ongoing process of cosmic Creation. So, God is still in "the mix", not as the intervening manager, but as the program and/or programmer of the creative system we call "Evolution" or "Nature". The manager is not at the front desk, but at the cosmic computer console. :smile:


*1. Evolutionary programming (EP) is an approach to simulated evolution that iteratively generates increasingly appropriate solutions in the light of a stationary or nonstationary environment and desired fitness function.
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-540-92910-9_23

The experience [of suffering] doesn’t change with or without a deity. — Tom Storm

But using all of the same terms from the flip side, the problem of evil says our experience of God changes with or without suffering.

The argument says suffering can’t coexist with an all-good/powerful/knowing God. We suffer. Therefore, we either do not experience God at all (because God doesn’t exist), or our experience is of a God who isn’t all-good or all-powerful.

You said “the experience of suffering doesn’t change with or without a deity.” I’m saying that may be true, but my point is “the experience of a deity changes with or without suffering” and that changed experience is supposed to be of the deity’s non-existence.

The experience of our pain co-existing with God re-characterizes the pain as something God controls, and this creates a new problem for us that isn’t a problem without the presence God - how can Good God leave us to suffer so much pain? This is a new experience of suffering. It is suffering inflicted by God, and not simply the suffering that happens in nature.

When I eliminate God from the landscape, my suffering remains, only now I can accept or judge it differently; I can’t judge anyone or any deity or other personal force for inflicting it upon me, and I can’t expect any such outside force could eliminate the suffering. Life has pain in it. No reason to seek blame or harbor resentment anymore. And in fact, I have to start taking responsibility for my own suffering, embrace it, and see what it is telling me, especially if I want to alleviate it or change, or grow from or overcome or prevent it.

Without God or anything behind it, pain is just another experience, justifiable and justified as any experience might be justified. It is what it is; that’s how evolution works. Pleasure draws things toward each other, pain repels things apart; the living grow and take over, the dying diminish and are consumed. Suffering is no longer something to be eliminated or something that can even be imagined as eliminated. Pain is now a badge of honor to those for whom that which does not destroy us makes us stronger.

So my point is, why should I think my own experience of suffering where there is NO deity, takes on a new character of “preventable bad/evil” where there IS a powerful, good, deity in the mix? Basically, why is God held accountable for making me suffer unjustly if I can be made to suffer justly by nature without God anyway?

We have to assume an all-good God who was all-powerful would use that power to eliminate all of our suffering. That’s not a necessary, logical assumption.

So the problem of evil tells me I have no idea of the significance of “suffering” or “all-goodness” or “all-power” or “all-knowing.” Or no understanding of all of the above. The presence of suffering doesn’t mean that “God” doesn’t exist, any more than the presence of suffering means that pleasure doesn’t exist.

If you want to be able to feel hardness, with that ability, you will be able to feel softness. If you want to know pleasure, you will learn of pain.

We have to be without, in order to receive.

So unless the argument is against the universe for being the universe, and you wish you were never born, I see no reason to conclude Good God and evil pain cannot coexist.

But using all of the same terms from the flip side, the problem of evil says our experience of God changes with or without suffering. — Fire Ologist

I am saying that this comment from you:

But the real irony is, without God, for some reason, this same life is now seen as the triumph of nature, with life finding a way despite calamity after insufferable calamity. If we take God out of the equation, we see those beings that bear suffering and overcome pain as heroic and good. Suffering almost becomes justified by all of the lives that follow it. Suffering adds to the good of living once it is overcome. — Fire Ologist

Seems mistaken.

As an atheist who doesn't beleive that there are gods, reality does not become a triumph of nature just because there's no 'magic sky wizard' or ground of being, call the thing whatever you want.

We have to assume an all-good God who was all-powerful would use that power to eliminate all of our suffering. That’s not a necessary, logical assumption. — Fire Ologist

Not all atheists accept this argument.

Suffering aside, I think it is certainly worth remarking upon that predation and cruelty are built into the engine of survival for most creatures, but this is not a disproof of god. The problem of suffering does not lead you automatically anywhere, whether you are a theist or an atheist.

Without God or anything behind it, pain is just another experience, justifiable and justified as any experience might be justified. It is what it is; that’s how evolution works. Pleasure draws things toward each other, pain repels things apart; the living grow and take over, the dying diminish and are consumed. Suffering is no longer something to be eliminated or something that can even be imagined as eliminated. Pain is now a badge of honor to those for whom that which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Fire Ologist

I don't recognise this way of thinking. It reads like bad Nietzsche to me. No doubt atheists hold diverse views on suffering. Trying to avoid it is my path. Suffering holds no intrinsic meaning.

Suffering holds no intrinsic meaning. — Tom Storm

That’s kind of my whole point. Someone who uses suffering to prove God doesn’t exist is putting some intrinsic meaning into the suffering. Suffering = evil doer doing evil.

But since you said suffering holds no intrinsic meaning, it makes sense that:

predation and cruelty … is not a disproof of god. — Tom Storm

Which is my whole point.

So it sounds like you might be agreeing with me even though you are saying you don’t.

The point of this quote:

Without God or anything behind it, pain is just another experience, justifiable and justified as any experience might be justified. It is what it is; that’s how evolution works. Pleasure draws things toward each other, pain repels things apart; the living grow and take over, the dying diminish and are consumed. Suffering is no longer something to be eliminated or something that can even be imagined as eliminated. Pain is now a badge of honor to those for whom that which does not destroy us makes us stronger. — Fire Ologist

is this: the existence of suffering, which in nature has no intrinsic meaning, can be taken to mean nothing, or can be taken to mean there must be no good God, or can be taken to mean that I am a hero who overcame suffering. And my point in saying that is irony is that, we can give ourselves a break and turn suffering into heroism (if we want to insert meaning into it), but for the God who created us and is supposedly all-good, it seems easier to only see God as an evil-doer, or just non-existent, despite using the same formerly meaningless suffering as the evidence.

Basically, why is God held accountable for making me suffer unjustly if I can be made to suffer justly by nature without God anyway? — Fire Ologist

Without God you are not suffering justly or unjustly. To apply the notion of justice to your suffering in the absence of the presumption of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God would be a category error.

Trying to avoid it is my path. — Tom Storm

Yes, there certainly seems to be no point seeking it...there is plenty to go around.