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If I understand correctly, Tom is using the word omnipotent to mean that 'can do anything and everything.'
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posted
Tom, I mean that, for both sides of the argument, that it might be helpful to consider abandoning those two assumptions. By helpful, I mean that it might open up some other ways to think about this. You don't have to accept them to consider how they might alter the agrument.
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quote:Tom is using the word omnipotent to mean that 'can do anything and everything.'
Well, fairly, I don't mean "can do contradictory things" by it; that whole "create a rock He can't lift" bit, for example, is right out. But I do mean "can ignore laws of the universe." A God who has no choice but to permit pain to obtain His desired outcome is not an omnipotent God.
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posted
One of the wonderful things about an athiestic, evolution-driven view of life on earth is that all these issues make perfect sense.
It boggles the mind to imagine a god who sees some need for the death and suffering of innocents, but pain is a natural part of an evolution-produced world.
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posted
MightyCow: I'm not sure what you are talking about. It makes perfect sense to me that the universe is populated by those who choose good and evil, with folks all along the spectrum.
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posted
I'd also like to point out that by the "we can't know joy without knowing suffering" argument, one cannot fully appreciate God without there being no god. So I guess only people on hell really appreciate God.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: I'd also like to point out that by the "we can't know joy without knowing suffering" argument, one cannot fully appreciate God without there being no god. So I guess only people on hell really appreciate God.
You are correct, which is precisely why we all live on this planet and experience what it feels like to be cut off from God.
If you ever reconnect with God I think you will find the difference will be all the more stark because of it.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: MightyCow: I'm not sure what you are talking about. It makes perfect sense to me that the universe is populated by those who choose good and evil, with folks all along the spectrum.
Sigh.
Did the sons of the prisoner and the son of the slave in Exodus choose evil?
Do the children who die of measles as infants choose evil?
Basic fairness demand that innocent people not suffer for the bad choices of strangers. Has your God set up the world such that it works that way?
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quote:I'd also like to point out that by the "we can't know joy without knowing suffering" argument, one cannot fully appreciate God without there being no god.
In Mormonism, that's part of why we were sent to Earth.
Not necessarily to better appreciate God, but to better enable us to choose freely. How will we act when there's no apparent teacher standing over us? A physical separation from God allows us to make the decisions we want to make. If we were in His presence all the time, our ability to choose the right of our own agency would be curtailed.
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quote:It makes perfect sense to me that the universe is populated by those who choose good and evil, with folks all along the spectrum.
Perhaps, but I think malaria, dysentery, HIV, tuberculosis, etc. are harder to explain. No one *has* to get a horrible disease based primarily on accidents of geography and birth, but it happens. And the fact that as our knowledge progresses we are able to mitigate the effects of these diseases, though disproportionately for the wealthiest of the world, also seems to contradict a divine purpose to creating or allowing them unless the purpose was for rich people to be able to learn to protect themselves.
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Perhaps, but I think malaria, dysentery, HIV, tuberculosis, etc. are harder to explain. No one *has* to get a horrible disease based primarily on accidents of geography and birth, but it happens. And the fact that as our knowledge progresses we are able to mitigate the effects of these diseases, though disproportionately for the wealthiest of the world, also seems to contradict a divine purpose to creating or allowing them unless the purpose was for rich people to be able to learn to protect themselves.
Isn't the standard Christian view that diseases and other natural causes of death were necessary consequences of Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit? So God would not have prevented their release any more than he would prevent one person from killing another.
I don't know what the standard answer is for why God created the universe so that sinning would result in diseases.
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quote:Well, fairly, I don't mean "can do contradictory things" by it; that whole "create a rock He can't lift" bit, for example, is right out. But I do mean "can ignore laws of the universe." A God who has no choice but to permit pain to obtain His desired outcome is not an omnipotent God.
Unless the best outcome logically requires pain; then it would be a logical contradiction if He pursued the best outcome yet also created a universe without pain.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: Here's what I am saying: I'm saying that it's good that life has suffering and unfairness as well as joy and fairness. That it's a balance.
Saying that you are saying something, when you've changed your argument by dropping the very points I'm critizing simply isn't helpful.
The idea that anyone has suggested doing away with all suffering is a strawman. But doing away with some subset of the most pointless and unfair suffering, like saving children from diesase is a different thing. A God who dropped manna in the desert for months at a time could have dropped childhood vaccines instead.
Your sense of the "balance" is deeply skewed. You probably don't know more than two families who have lost a child, which historically, is an incredible anomoly. Would you rather live in a world where the balance was closer the average across the last several thousand years? Think of all the moral learning you are losing out on by living a life relatively free of child death.
quote:Yes, there are sometimes painful, unfair things that happen to decent people (I'm not going to say "innocent people" because I don't think there's such a thing; everyone's good and bad in some proportion).
Really? In infants?
But okay, so there's a proportion. Wouldn't it still be unfair to punish a person out of proportion to the amount of bad in them?
quote:
quote:I’ll believe that this argument is made in sincerity when someone volunteers their life to enhance the emotional richness of their family’s lives.
But that's ridiculous. Just because I acknowledge that suffering is a necessary part of life doesn't mean I'm going to actively seek it out. That kind of goes against the definition of suffering, no?
But that's not all you were arguing. You argued that the suffering of some was necessary for the moral education of others. So you are choosing to deny your family the moral edification that they would gain by your death. How can they appreciate how great it is having a whole family without your death to show them how rotten family tragedy is?
quote:But if I could choose a world where no suffering happened, to me or to anyone, I wouldn't choose it. I like this world better.
Do you think that the guy who watches his family hacked apart by machetes in Rwanda shares your conclusion?
If not, why not?
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quote:But that's ridiculous. Just because I acknowledge that suffering is a necessary part of life doesn't mean I'm going to actively seek it out. That kind of goes against the definition of suffering, no?
Ah! So it's other people's suffering that is necessary, while our own suffering is to be avoided.
I guess God wants us to be sadists.
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quote:I appreciate gravity. And air. Don't you? Another question, of course, also arises: why is appreciation necessary? What is the virtue of appreciating painlessness when there is no possibility of pain?
I appreciate air in part because I know what it is like to not have air, for example after playing football and being out of breath. The worst example was being sucked under by a riptide at the beach. But when I don't remember those things? No, I really don't appreciate air. I don't even think about it.
As for your question of virtue, now you're changing the question. If there were no pain, there would be no virtue in appreciating painlessness, that's true. There wouldn't be anything in regards to understanding, appreciating, disliking, or being neutral on the state of painlessness.
quote: The Worthing Saga is a pretty good analogy, sure, but it fails to make its case persusasively; it simply asserts that suffering produces goodness, and then proceeds from that point as if that were the established case. I note, of course, that the case has not actually been established.
Actually, what it does is take a person who lived in painlessness, and then subject them to the pained world, and ask them to decide. And they did. That's a pretty persuasive case, from a storytelling perspective, at least.
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quote:It boggles the mind to imagine a god who sees some need for the death and suffering of innocents, but pain is a natural part of an evolution-produced world.
It depends on how you frame the question. If the question is, "Why does God see the need for innocents to suffer?" Well, that's a good question. It's also loaded. If you ask instead, "Why does God see a need for a reality which permits the suffering of innocents?" Well, things change. Even if you don't agree, they're still not as black-and-white as you indicate if you ask the latter question instead of the former.
quote:But that could only be the case, granted an omnipotent God, if He wanted it to be the case.
Now, this I agree with. That's a fundamental reason I wasn't able to be a Christian growing up, until I was exposed to outlooks that didn't demand an omnipotent God.
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Earth as it exists now is changed from the way God originally created it. It is unfair and illogical to think to judge God by the sin and death He did not create. God created a perfect world, with animals, people, and trees that would never die. Without death, there could be no evolution.
God is the Source of Life, and God placed mankind in charge of earth. When mankind doubted God's goodness and rebelled against Him, this produced a separation from the Source of Life that has resulted in what the Bible calls "curses" on the ground, for our sake. This serves to demonstrate to us the true nature of separation from God, what results from following the course of self-seeking instead of the agapé (unselfish) love that God ordained should govern the universe. Do you think that sin is a minor matter? Look at nature "red and tooth and claw," and see where sin's selfish striving leads.
God's purpose is to restore the perfection that has been lost because of sin. To do this, the sin problem must be finally and completely remedied. God Himself stepped in and Personally assumed Headship of the Human Race, making Himself the New Adam. In Himself, as Humanity incarnate, He paid the full penalty for our sin. Sinful humanity was executed on Calvary's Cross. And when Jesus rose from the dead, mankind rose from the dead, given a new sinless heritage that is at peace with God. We still each as individuals need to learn the lesson that sin must be rejected, and that our only hope is to trust in the goodness of God, that is made available to us in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man. When our faith is whole-hearted, and everyone on earth has made their final choice for or against trusting in the goodness of God, then all sin will be ended, and this world will be remade before the eyes of those who have chosen to trust God.
Thus God will ensure that sin will never arise again. Pain and death will never again occur.
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posted
Why can't an omnipotent God transfer perfect faith to my brain, without me having to go through life, Ron?
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quote:what it does is take a person who lived in painlessness, and then subject them to the pained world, and ask them to decide
Except that we don't see that person's painless life. Nor are we given anything but the author's word that the person would "really" have chosen that way. It's not an argument for anything; it's just an analogy to reframe an old rationale.
quote:To do this, the sin problem must be finally and completely remedied.
And why can't God just do this?
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posted
Some ask, Why can't God just make us think what He wants us to? He could. But then we would just be robots, with no volition of our own. I don't like it when government tries to do that to me (especially the Democrats, who think they know better than everyone else how they should live their lives and spend their money). I surely wouldn't want God to do that.
Without true freedom of choice, there can be no real love. Without real love, existence is a waste of time.
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That would be a much more compelling statement if it didn't come from - correct me if I'm wrong - legislate who can sleep with who, and who the government will legitimize with full financial and political equality amongst consenting adults.
You like it fine when the government does it to you, mostly because historically the government has done it to you in ways you've approved of.
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posted
Ron: How do you reconcile the belief that God should not impose his will on us but at the same time believe that a natural disaster is God's way of punishing us for sin?
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Gnosticism is a cool religion.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Some ask, Why can't God just make us think what He wants us to? He could. But then we would just be robots, with no volition of our own.
Wait, you mean we aren't robots now? Who, exactly (in your theology), created me with the precise genetic makeup and personality I have? If it was God, then don't my choices reflect the inborn inclinations He gave me? After all, God gave me this brain capable of critical thought, and a personality that finds faith-based answers fundamentally unsatisfying. It's not really something I have control over (and believe me, I've spent years trying). If God is real, and God made me this way, and if God created a world in which evidence points unanimously towards evolution, then isn't it God's own darn fault if I decide to accept the theory of evolution? And if that's enough to damn me to Hell, doesn't that make God, well, kind of a bastard?
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Gnosticism is a cool religion.
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: God is the Source of Life, and God placed mankind in charge of earth. When mankind doubted God's goodness and rebelled against Him, this produced a separation from the Source of Life that has resulted in what the Bible calls "curses" on the ground, for our sake.
And this is why I don't let my infant play in a pile of knives next to a fireplace. I know perfectly well that he'll hurt himself, so I don't put him in a situation where his nature is going to cause him to do so. I'm not taking away his free will, I'm just protecting him from dangers that I am fully aware of, and he does not yet understand.
I find it sad that I'm a better parent than God.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: God is the Source of Life, and God placed mankind in charge of earth. When mankind doubted God's goodness and rebelled against Him, this produced a separation from the Source of Life that has resulted in what the Bible calls "curses" on the ground, for our sake.
And this is why I don't let my infant play in a pile of knives next to a fireplace. I know perfectly well that he'll hurt himself, so I don't put him in a situation where his nature is going to cause him to do so. I'm not taking away his free will, I'm just protecting him from dangers that I am fully aware of, and he does not yet understand.
I find it sad that I'm a better parent than God.
MC, that was kind of a bad example.
Let's assume your child grows up and moves out of the house. He goes out on his own in a different part of the country. Your child begins to drink heavily and drive. He ends up causing an accident and getting thrown in jail. You have done pretty well in your life and have the money to bail him out.
What do you do?
Do you let him learn from his mistakes the hard way or do you just bail him out? If you do not bail him out does it mean you do not love him? Or do you NOT bail him out because you love him and want him to (hopefully) learn from the experience so he can be a better man?
In the LDS religion at least, WE chose to move out and come to earth, knowing full well what we would go through. The reason we don't remember is because if we had a perfect knowledge of God, our freedom of choice would be impeded and faith would not be needed. We came here because we had reached a point in our existence where we could not learn anymore in our current state.
That is the LDS perspective, take it however you want. I understand it gets more into questions of the soul than evolution, but I think it applied concerning MC's post.
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I don't make him spend his whole life in jail for misbehaving, and also have all his children do the same. Eating a fruit is hardly the same as drunk driving, and God put the tree there, seemingly for the sole purpose of hosing up Adam and Eve.
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quote:Your child begins to drink heavily and drive. He ends up causing an accident and getting thrown in jail. You have done pretty well in your life and have the money to bail him out.
What do you do?
I magically arrange the universe so that alcohol does not exist and accidents cannot happen, because I'm God.
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quote:But that's not all you were arguing. You argued that the suffering of some was necessary for the moral education of others. So you are choosing to deny your family the moral edification that they would gain by your death. How can they appreciate how great it is having a whole family without your death to show them how rotten family tragedy is?
Because I'm not selfless, that's why, and I never claimed to be. I don't see why you are so insistent on this point. I am a selfish human being. Happy? (Btw, you're the one tossing out a straw man here. I'm not saying that all suffering is good, just that there's the potential for good arising from all specific incidents of suffering, and that's a totally different thing altogether.)
Anyway, my unwillingness to kill myself right now doesn't negate my point, because I AM willing to live in a world where there's sorrow and suffering, and I DON'T want to be exempt from that rule. I WANT to live in a world where things aren't always "fair," and I always run the risk of suffering as well as having the opportunity for joy.
And I will die eventually. I wouldn't want to live forever either-- I think the limited time we have to live is what makes life precious, and that's why the idea of an afterlife isn't comforting to me. The idea of a limited lifespan, on the other hand, and nothing good lasting forever, is what makes me so keenly appreciative of everything I have. And so, when I do die, eventually, I would be glad if it happened to make my family appreciate the brevity and value of life more.
And no, my original argument wasn't that "the suffering of some was necessary for the moral education of others". I assume you're referring to my first post, which was a response to the challenge of "well what good comes out of innocent children dying?" I was trying to show that there is the potential for good from any situation. And I think that in order for there to BE a world where things are unfair and there isn't a higher power making everything fair-- in order for there to BE a world where terrible suffering is possible-- then sometimes those situations in which some people suffer and don't gain anything from it personally will occur. It's a necessary byproduct of the system. I don't celebrate those situations. For example, given the choice, I wouldn't choose for those babies to die just so people can learn something from it. But I wouldn't change the system of the world so that such unfair things were impossible either.
quote:But I wouldn't change the system of the world so that such unfair things were impossible either. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why not?
Well, for one thing, who am I judge what's fair? There's no objective thing called fairness. In this world, there's the possibility for events to occur that I consider unfair, but they may be events that someone else considers fair. And vice versa. I love the complexity and inexplicableness of the world, and reducing it to somebody's conception of "fair" would destroy most of that complexity.
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posted
It would certainly be a better world if children didn't need to die for others to feel joy or learn lessons.
Seems like the kind of thing a sufficiently intelligent (even if not omniscient) God should have anticipated, before putting a suicide-tree next to his kids and then letting them hang out with the worst criminal in the universe, completely unsupervised.
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quote: Seems like the kind of thing a sufficiently intelligent (even if not omniscient) God should have anticipated, before putting a suicide-tree next to his kids and then letting them hang out with the worst criminal in the universe, completely unsupervised.
Nobody said God was nice. Maybe he was just feeling capricious that day.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Seems like the kind of thing a sufficiently intelligent (even if not omniscient) God should have anticipated...
This has always been one of my hanging points on any sort of belief in God. I do not claim to even have a partial understanding for the operation of the universe, but there seems to be a lot of innocent suffering and unneeded ambiguity, which has lead to even more suffering. I have trouble believing in a God that could remove the ambiguity and prevent the suffering, or stop or alleviate the suffering experienced by innocent people with bad luck (e.g. terminal children with cancer). If this God did exist and could hear me, I would angrily demand an explanation for this type of completely pointless pain. To try and spin this type of suffering as useful or character building, or meaningful in any way is, IMO, twisted and disturbing.
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quote:Originally posted by sinflower: Nobody said God was nice. Maybe he was just feeling capricious that day.
That's fine. I'm willing to accept that an evil God would intentionally tempt Adam and Eve, then plunge the world into 6000 years of suffering for a single mistake.
In fact, if one is willing to postulate an evil, capricious, intentionally deceptive God, that works just as well as an atheistic stand, because it also takes care of any of the logical problems posed by the God of the Bible, and of Christian teaching.
An evil, omnipotent, deceitful God could and would certainly make the world much like it is today.
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quote:Unless the best outcome logically requires pain...
But that could only be the case, granted an omnipotent God, if He wanted it to be the case.
Does omnipotence include the ability to decide what is logically possible and what isn't? If one could not make 3 into an even number, would that make one not omnipotent?
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quote:That's fine. I'm willing to accept that an evil God would intentionally tempt Adam and Eve, then plunge the world into 6000 years of suffering for a single mistake.
An evil, omnipotent, deceitful God could and would certainly make the world much like it is today.
Boarding now for the Hyperbole Train to Exaggeration Town! Whoo whoo!
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