[INFJ] Atheism

[Ren]

I guess the simplest way that it can effect your life. . if you are at 30000 feet and the plane is going down, you have nothing to pray to. . you're just fucked

Always here to raise our spirits, Aneirin!

 

[Ren]

The all-good part faces the problem of evil, which I haven't seen any good answers to personally, but perhaps there's something I'm missing.

Well, a world without evil is also a world without freedom. Evil is only possible on the condition that free will is granted.

What grounds do you have for considering a world without evil 'better' than a world without freedom? I'm not at all certain that this is an obvious case.

Note also that 'good' and 'evil' are values we wouldn't even compute if we weren't (at least in some sense) free agents. So in a way, we are capable of having this discussion precisely because of the way the world is.

Personally, I think a stronger argument against the all-good God could be made by pointing out cases where evil does not come into play (and therefore freedom doesn't come into play either) but which nevertheless speak for themselves. Think of any child born with a severe disability and the idea of an all-good God will weaken drastically. Because it is easy to imagine a world which is just like ours, but where no child suffers from disability, and that would arguably be a better world than ours. Hence if God were all-good, why did he not create that world, etc. etc.

 

[larcipelago]

How can Atheism affect one's life?

It does and doesn't. I used to think Atheists think of nothing but their self interests, as they know life is too precious to waste (they dont believe in the afterlife, nor Karma).

But as I digged further, the civilized society today is govern by the laws and concensus among people.

There is no more need for frightening jargons of you will go to hell if you harm others. I believe today many people afraid the jail more than the bibble, Koran, Veda book etc.

Later, I read about the Sapiens, which helped me to understand what was claimed as our anchestors the Homo Sapiens (from the science version).

From my free thinker point of view, I think religion did play a great role in unifying our species from a small village to become a city and a city becomes a nation. With the help of languages and our ability to imagine something we cannot see (it is the abstract idea) mindkind can get unified.

In the dark era, the history says many religions are politicized, but even so, they still served as perfect tools to maintain order. I do see this remain intact in many parts of the world as of today. Some nations developed a greater liberty of your rights and give a bigger tolerance about what you believe and what you can practice.

I think It is the law that puts everything in order as of today, so my prejudice about atheits will just go killing people is flawed.

Furthermore, many atheists do have high moral standard as they do learn more about our species, our culture, norm and ask about causalities more than the religious people (no mean to disrespect).

I dont know about the future, may be AI will govern us in the future to keep the balance in the world? Nobody knows.

Anyway, until today I see people with strong religious believe as good, as in theory the religion teaches about good things.

Unless some dirty hands people manipulate the originality of the religion for political interests, this is where it can be dangerous.

As for me, I am comfortable in the state of I dont know. Science today cannot answer so many mysteries, leaving me with hanging answers for the questions of why.

I often imagine myself as a todler, whi were being explained about how a television works. Only when I grow up and with the right knowledge I can fully understand how it works.

May be it was the religion that was right? May be it was the science? I dont know. I am just a todler, I dont want to be naive in the way I see the world.

Yes agnostic remains the best option for me.

As for the devoutful religious people or free thinker atheists, I respect their choices. Nobody knows the answer anyway, nobody has ever been scientifically proven he/she comeback from the death to tell the after life story. So, why bother fighting?

I just realize how insignificant we are, our age, our size, compared to the universe.

Like an ants looking at my entire home as a big world and they dont know the world is far greater than what they know. They will also never reach the other end of the world by their lifetime.

So why bother overthinking about it?

Ironicaly, I do overthink about this sometime.

(End)

 

[charlatan]

Well, a world without evil is also a world without freedom. Evil is only possible on the condition that free will is granted.

Ah, I wasn't using the terminology 'evil' in the narrower sense you took it to be, I think. You seem to only include things like intentional wrongdoings, not things like natural disasters/disease. I was including natural disasters very much in the mix.
So at least ignoring the issue of terminology, I don't think our views differ in the way you apparently thought they might. Sometimes what you're talking of is called Natural Evil. You're of course free to use 'Evil' in the more traditional sense attached to Intentional Agents, just a matter of book-keeping.

But, I do think in the newer post, there's a point I don't find obvious. I follow this:

Evil is only possible on the condition that free will is granted.

since you are probably using 'evil' to mean intentional wrongdoing.

But not the first line

world without evil is also a world without freedom.


In particular, as generally defined, the all-good GOD has free will, and a world with only God is a world without evil but with freedom. Free will doesn't mean anything is within our capacity to choose, only things consistent with our nature.

More generally, I don't see why someone can't make choices within an all-good nature (whether the someone is God or just another good being).
Surely an all-good being can freely choose whether to eat vanilla ice cream or strawberry, even if they can't choose to do evil as it's inconsistent with their nature.

So even in the case of intentional beings, it is not clear to me that God creating human beings with the capacity for evil is itself consistent with his all-good nature. I would actually lean against.
I think it's already pretty shaky a case to say it's consistent with an all-good being to create someone like Hitler with whose nature it is consistent to do the things he did -- even if Hitler had to choose to do them ultimately.

Beyond that, it is further not obvious that even if creating Hitler was consistent with God's nature (if one accepts that ultimately he made the choices), it's not clear that allowing the laws of nature to be such that Hitler can inflict torture on innocent people is consistent with God's nature. It's one thing to create a being capable of intending evil which is already problematic, but it's another to make it consistent with the laws of nature that the intentions would ever actually lead to the terrible consequences they do in the actual world (death, torture, etc).
The laws of nature already prohibit me from jumping off a cliff and flying!! I may fully intend to fly when I jump off a tower and flap flap flap flap as hard as I can, but that's not possible. It's not clear why, when someone intends to kill me, the someone has a fair shot at doing that.

I personally think the only real way I'm aware of defend theism against the the problems of 'Natural' and 'Intentional' Evil is to say there's no way beings such as us would understand why these things happen/we shouldn't expect to. This is to say that it is possible for the terrible things like disease and childhood cancer to have an adequate moral purpose.
I guess the reason I find this so inadequate is that I don't think this sort of thing is a matter of complexity/pointing to our vastly lesser intelligence than god's own seems of questionable relevance. If a math problem is so complex that it would take tons more complicated a brain than I have to figure it out, that certainly puts some limits on me, but if I see a giant argument that says 2+2 = 5, I can immediately rule it out. The very idea that the childhood cancer has a moral purpose seems precisely this way -- if that shouldn't intrinsically not exist, I end up failing to see what one can say about morality (basically, it seems like we might as well accept our intuitions are totally useless in determining morality and at that point, I'd say is a good time to question if the concept of morality is itself useful given how empty it is).... why would seemingly obvious things like helping someone out of obvious agony be more moral than not?

That or to argue evil/good is an illusion that we can escape. E.g. maybe just as illusionists about consciousness argue we misrepresent our inner states on introspection, perhaps we can argue pain is an illusion (some esoteric Hinduisms or Buddhisms may do this).
But this last option may prohibit characterizing God as all-good if 'good' is an illusion.

 

[Ren]

Ah, I wasn't using the terminology 'evil' in the narrower sense you took it to be, I think. You seem to only include things like intentional wrongdoings, not things like natural disasters/disease. I was including natural disasters very much in the mix.
So at least ignoring the issue of terminology, I don't think our views differ in the way you apparently thought they might. Sometimes what you're talking of is called Natural Evil. You're of course free to use 'Evil' in the more traditional sense attached to Intentional Agents, just a matter of book-keeping.

But, I do think in the newer post, there's a point I don't find obvious. I follow this:

Evil is only possible on the condition that free will is granted.

since you are probably using 'evil' to mean intentional wrongdoing.

But not the first line

world without evil is also a world without freedom.


In particular, as generally defined, the all-good GOD has free will, and a world with only God is a world without evil but with freedom. Free will doesn't mean anything is within our capacity to choose, only things consistent with our nature.

More generally, I don't see why someone can't make choices within an all-good nature (whether the someone is God or just another good being).
Surely an all-good being can freely choose whether to eat vanilla ice cream or strawberry, even if they can't choose to do evil as it's inconsistent with their nature.

So even in the case of intentional beings, it is not clear to me that God creating human beings with the capacity for evil is itself consistent with his all-good nature. I would actually lean against.
I think it's already pretty shaky a case to say it's consistent with an all-good being to create someone like Hitler with whose nature it is consistent to do the things he did -- even if Hitler had to choose to do them ultimately.

Beyond that, it is further not obvious that even if creating Hitler was consistent with God's nature (if one accepts that ultimately he made the choices), it's not clear that allowing the laws of nature to be such that Hitler can inflict torture on innocent people is consistent with God's nature. It's one thing to create a being capable of intending evil which is already problematic, but it's another to make it consistent with the laws of nature that the intentions would ever actually lead to the terrible consequences they do in the actual world (death, torture, etc).
The laws of nature already prohibit me from jumping off a cliff and flying!! I may fully intend to fly when I jump off a tower and flap flap flap flap as hard as I can, but that's not possible. It's not clear why, when someone intends to kill me, the someone has a fair shot at doing that.

I personally think the only real way I'm aware of defend theism against the the problems of 'Natural' and 'Intentional' Evil is to say there's no way beings such as us would understand why these things happen/we shouldn't expect to. This is to say that it is possible for the terrible things like disease and childhood cancer to have an adequate moral purpose.
I guess the reason I find this so inadequate is that I don't think this sort of thing is a matter of complexity/pointing to our vastly lesser intelligence than god's own seems of questionable relevance. If a math problem is so complex that it would take tons more complicated a brain than I have to figure it out, that certainly puts some limits on me, but if I see a giant argument that says 2+2 = 5, I can immediately rule it out. The very idea that the childhood cancer has a moral purpose seems precisely this way -- if that shouldn't intrinsically not exist, I end up failing to see what one can say about morality.... why would helping someone out of obvious agony be more moral than not?

That or to argue evil/good is an illusion that we can escape. E.g. maybe just as illusionists about consciousness argue we misrepresent our inner states on introspection, perhaps we can argue pain is an illusion (some esoteric Hinduisms or Buddhisms may do this).
But this last option may prohibit characterizing God as all-good if 'good' is an illusion.

Good stuff, Charlie. I’ll get back to you when I get home.

Translation: don’t Ne flood me in the mean time!!!

 

[Cornerstone]

I joined here roughly around the time when I changed from an ardent atheist and antitheist into a nutcase.

It turns out I was angry at my dad and took it out on God. Well, I tried to take it out on society generally but I was pretty sure that that was real (and complicated) and that there might be consequences.

So, to cut a long story short, I pissed on a church and, somewhere around that time it became clear to me that God was definitely more real (and complicated) than society and even more powerful than my dad who, upon reflection, I realised was actually quite complicated.

At some point though I went from a relatively happy and positive, albeit slightly zealous, certainty that God existed and could be approached in all manner of ways (aliens, angels, and angelic aliens) back to a dogmatic way of thinking only without the ability to actually believe in any established dogma.

I definitely was at my happiest when I felt as though I had had some contact with the divine but before I felt burdened and trapped by my refusal to accept the call, so to speak.

However, my 'religious experience' was apparently a direct consequence of my belief that I was an atheist. In many ways atheism benefited me but in others it hasn't. I'm in a position where I feel like I would be an atheist again, or at least I would like to live as though I were one and not feel shitty about it, but I don't think I can ever do that now. I still often live in defiance of what I 'know', I just can't blame it on anyone else anymore.

Well, I can (and do) but only for a couple of hours tops.

 

[larcipelago]

I guess the simplest way that it can effect your life. . if you are at 30000 feet and the plane is going down, you have nothing to pray to. . you're just fucked

I had this similar experience (not in a plane, but I thought I was gonna die in an accident), I just said "if this is my time so be it."
#no mean to disrespect

 

[Ren]

But, I do think in the newer post, there's a point I don't find obvious. I follow this:

Evil is only possible on the condition that free will is granted.

since you are probably using 'evil' to mean intentional wrongdoing.

But not the first line

world without evil is also a world without freedom.

You're right, it doesn't follow from (intentional) evil being impossible without freedom that freedom is impossible without evil. My logic was a little shaky there.

That being said, here's another challenge: A) Without the possibility of evil, isn't the very notion of good meaningless?
And another (related) one: B) Is it really consistent to imagine that God would have endowed us with properties (i.e. free will into the domain of evil) that he himself doesn't have?

I'm going to skip on the larger technical demonstration (assuming I would be able to unpack it!) but I think if the answer to A) is yes and the answer to B) is no, then we have to imagine that God does have the ability to do evil, except he never actually chooses to. In that way the meaningfulness of the good is preserved (condition A) and we humans don't find ourselves endowed with properties God doesn't have (condition B).

The problem is that otherwise, you're judging God according to criteria of goodness that he can't technically be judged by, since he is neither good nor evil. If God is not free not to do good, then he is compelled to do good, and that shields him from our judgement. So in a weird way, that situation perhaps reinforces the alternative defense you considered in your post, i.e. to argue that we essentially can't fully understand the goodness of God from our extremely local, contextual human viewpoint. Roughly speaking this is the view embraced by Spinoza.

I don't think all of the above makes perfect sense, but I just wanted to try to spice things up a bit and keep the debate going. Also, just by way of clarifying things that maybe should have been clarified before: how do you define good?

Edit: I seem to recall that you defined the good negatively, i.e. as the absence of suffering.

 

[charlatan]

That being said, here's another challenge: A) Without the possibility of evil, isn't the very notion of good meaningless?

So the main thing is I'm not discounting the possibility of evil, so much as the actuality of it in a world with an all-good God. In other words, there can be many possible worlds with evil, it's just I would lean that those are not worlds with an all-good God (aka at minimum, a being with whose nature it is inconsistent to do evil).

Basically, what's needed to make sens of the concept of good might at most be that there's an antithetical concept of evil. Whether that concept ever describes something in our actual world should be independent.

If God is not free not to do good, then he is compelled to do good,

I guess I'd accept he's compelled to do good (but with the important caveat that he is compelled by his nature, not an external force), but basically, the only way something can have complete freedom in the sense of it being possible to do anything so to speak is to have no nature (this is getting more into a Buddhist notion than a Christian moral God notion) in some sense, and it's questionable what it is for such a thing to exist at all (essence is the thing that would be shared by all identical notions, identity being something that carries over across all possible worlds...without any essence it seems we cannot establish an identity criterion for a thing, which is something you've mentioned before you'd also require)! I always think of freedom as applying to that part of a being that is not essential to the being. Essential features exist in every possible world (for instance, a part of a traditional physicalist view of consciousness is that in every possible world, neuronal firings involve consciousness, whereas a property dualist would say this isn't so, and in some possible worlds, the neuronal firings happen without consciousness, meaning the consciousness is in addition to the firings).

So I don't view the fact God is all-good as anything but the fact that well, he has to have a nature, and it so happens one thing about that nature is goodness....it's no stranger than that a human being has a certain nature too, e.g. perhaps some human beings are more talented at science than others and that constrains what they can do -- they still have free will within the scope of their nature, such as being able to choose what school to go to, whom to befriend, where to travel, etc.



Basically in possible-worlds terms, you're saying God contingently does good, whereas I think often (eg on a Christian view of God), God necessarily does good.
That is, it's a random accident that he does good --- kind of like on a Humean thought experiment view of physics, it's an accident that the regularities/laws hold, not compelled by the very nature of the particles.


I think a contingent-good God is coherent, it's just probably not the one dealt with in some of the major religions.
If this helps, I do not think a contingent-good God faces the problem of evil of our world, I'd just say that this isn't one of the worlds in which God actually did only good

 

[Ren]

So the main thing is I'm not discounting the possibility of evil, so much as the actuality of it in a world with an all-good God. In other words, there can be many possible worlds with evil, it's just I would lean that those are not worlds with an all-good God (aka at minimum, a being with whose nature it is inconsistent to do evil).

Basically, what's needed to make sense of the concept of good might at most be that there's an antithetical concept of evil. Whether that concept ever describes something in our actual world should be independent.

Okay. So the crux of your position is: possible worlds without evil are the only worlds one can associate with an all-good God. And since our world is not without evil, it can only be associated with a not all-good God, which contradicts the traditional religious understanding of God.

Now, let's imagine one of those worlds—a world without evil. What does such a world look like? Let's say I am at home cooking for a bunch of guests and there is one person I really hate because I suspect him of having slept with my wife. I stare at the large knife in my hands and experience the temptation to slit the man's throat with it after all the others have gone home (I would find a way of detaining him for whatever reason).

Is any of the above incoherent with regard to the nature of the possible world as being 'without evil'? Let's imagine that I act according to plan and attack the man from behind in the corridor as he's about to leave. But there, something happens: I realise that I cannot produce the next move, the killing move. Something stops me that I cannot explain; or else I just completely forget about my prior intentions. Would that qualify as a world in which evil is possible but not actual? A little bit like as far as our world is concerned, I may very much desire to fly, but it just so happens I can't because of the laws of physics?

The reason why I'm asking this is that the alternative seems to land us in strange territory. This alternative seems to be: not only am I unable to experience the temptation to kill that man, but I would also be unable to even contemplate the possibility of his having slept with my wife. In other words I would be unable to think about 'evil' things at all. How, in this context would anyone be able to come up with the concept of evil, i.e. intentional wrongdoing? In order to have a concept of intentional wrongdoing I would need to have an intuitive grasp of what 'wrong' means—and not just 'wrong' in a generic sense, but morally wrong.

This is why I don't think your analogy works here:

So I don't view the fact God is all-good as anything but the fact that well, he has to have a nature, and it so happens one thing about that nature is goodness....it's no stranger than that a human being has a certain nature too, e.g. perhaps some human beings are more talented at science than others and that constrains what they can do -- they still have free will within the scope of their nature, such as being able to choose what school to go to, whom to befriend, where to travel, etc.

You're drawing an analogy between moral goodness and goodness as ability/talent (at doing science, sports, etc.) But I'm not sure this analogy can be extended that far. In the possible world I described above, I can think: "I am a good cook" if I'm told by my guests that the meal is tasty, but I cannot think: "I am a good man". And I think this is potentially problematic for our possible worlds theorising, unless we make it so that doing evil is never actualised despite the actuality of 'evil' thoughts, temptations etc.

 

[Rit4lin]

Is any of the above incoherent with regard to the nature of the possible world as being 'without evil'? Let's imagine that I act according to plan and attack the man from behind in the corridor as he's about to leave. But there, something happens: I realise that I cannot produce the next move, the killing move. Something stops me that I cannot explain; or else I just completely forget about my prior intentions. Would that qualify as a world in which evil is possible but not actual? A little bit like as far as our world is concerned, I may very much desire to fly, but it just so happens I can't because of the laws of physics?

To my own perspective, such a world where you cannot act on your whim is evil Maybe in such a world you wouldn't even see the act of him sleeping with your wife as evil. You may just pat him on the back, wish him a good night and tell him what time you're at work the next day. But then would he even be able to sleep with your wife, would not this force stop him as it stopped you killing her? Arguably for him sleeping with her may be justified, where for you it is immoral. He might love Mrs.Ren! (You poor sod Ren, it's okay)
Where is my free will in this world, #MakeEarthGreatAgain, also lovely point heheh

The reason why I'm asking this is that the alternative seems to land us in strange territory. This alternative seems to be: not only am I unable to experience the temptation to kill that man, but I would also be unable to even contemplate the possibility of his having slept with my wife. In other words I would be unable to think about 'evil' things at all. How, in this context would anyone be able to come up with the concept of evil, i.e. intentional wrongdoing? In order to have a concept of intentional wrongdoing I would need to have an intuitive grasp of what 'wrong' means—and not just 'wrong' in a generic sense, but morally wrong.

I've always leaned to the St Augustine view of evil myself when explaining this theological problem. For many of my friends it gives them a bit of ease about the religion they hold in such a regard, because in my opinion it does a decent job at offering an explanation.

Spoiler: What is Augustines view for those asking?

In a nutshell, St Augustine battled with this very issue of 'evil' within a world created by an all-good God; coming to the conclusion that evil was just a corruption of the act. His understanding of it was that whilst the action itself was not evil, the evil is in deciding to do such an act.. Of your will being 'corrupted' to a lesser state. So for Ren's example, it was not him shanking the man that was the evil, but him changing his mind and deciding to do so, turning away from the moral perfection of God.
In terms of things people see as undoubtedly evil, Augustine's argument was that it's both a lack of context and understanding it that leads to such a view - as well as the fact that the greater good of this world is its moral freedom, but that with such freedom comes tragedies

It does a pretty good job of defending God's omnibenevolence, as well as the ideal that humanity was created in his image. To me it doesn't explain stillbirths, miscarriages, pestilence, disasters and the like. But hence, moi atheism.

 

[charlatan]

@Ren -- I hesitate to introduce this nitpick, because it's not necessarily the main issue you're discussing, but I think a world that is all-good wouldn't involve my fearing people betraying me, because not only would all people be good-intentioned in such a world, but I'd know they're good -intentioned --- clearly a world where I'm tricked into fearing everyone being Hitler when they're angels ain't great. Even if my dagger turns to feathers, or whatever, due to funny laws of nature preventing my harmful act, the very fact I was in terror and distress does not represent an all-good world. I should not have reason to fear in an all-good world, and I should be rational and KNOW there is no reason to fear -- i.e. not have an irrational pathology.


But I think the bigger issue you're asking about is whether we can have a concept of evil, and of evil intentions, and just shouldn't instantiate evil situations/people with evil intentions. And I say sure -- I'm precisely saying it's OK if I have the concept of evil (for which what's required is not that I'm involved in your horrible betrayal situation in the actual world but can coherently logically describe SOMEONE being involved in such a situation in a possible world), in order to affirm statements like "I am not evil" and "I am good."


I think what you were getting at here is that you don't want someone to be constrained to do only good IN THE FOLLOWING SENSE (and you'll find out soon I think that I already agree with that): you don't want them to be unable to understand that there are 2 concepts: good and evil that one might theoretically be tempted in favor of. You want them to rationally select good -- knowing what good is, and knowing it's opposed to evil. And in fact knowing "I am good, not evil."

In that sense, I'm with you---God does decide between good and evil/in favor of good -- decide is a better word than choose, because it's not a RANDOM decision like picking a number between 1 and 6 where there's probably a possible world where one selects 4 and one where one selects 2... but rather a reasoned decision where one considers the alternatives in one's mind. An ideally rational decision-maker will NEVER select the irrational option in any possible world, but that doesn't mean they aren't capable of deciding among the alternatives. Basically, what's not required is that there is a possible world in which God selects evil or feels tempted to do so (I do not have to be tempted in favor of vomit-flavor ice cream to understand rationally what it is).
God may be 'compelled' to do only good and intend only good in the sense that it is his nature to do those things. But he can understand the concept of a being capable of intending evil, and rationally know that he is not such a being, thus knowing he is all-good.
God is NOT compelled to never even contemplate the concept of what it would be for someone to do evil.

Hope that helps.

In the possible world I described above, I can think: "I am a good cook" if I'm told by my guests that the meal is tasty, but I cannot think: "I am a good man".

So the short answer is this isn't the theory I'm proposing -- you CAN think "I am a good man." I also think when we step back, a lot of your discussion has nothing to do with good and evil but just the difference between grasping a concept and actualizing that concept. It seems like grasping the concept means knowing what would have to happen to actualize a state of affairs, not really actualizing it.

 

[Ren]

@Ren -- I hesitate to introduce this nitpick, because it's not necessarily the main issue you're discussing, but I think a world that is all-good wouldn't involve my fearing people betraying me, because not only would all people be good-intentioned in such a world, but I'd know they're good -intentioned --- clearly a world where I'm tricked into fearing everyone being Hitler when they're angels ain't great. Even if my dagger turns to feathers, or whatever, due to funny laws of nature preventing my harmful act, the very fact I was in terror and distress does not represent an all-good world. I should not have reason to fear in an all-good world, and I should be rational and KNOW there is no reason to fear -- i.e. not have an irrational pathology.

I agree with you now, but not actually on the basis of what you say here. (I'll come to why I agree later in the post.*) Thus far my idea was that in such an 'all-good' world, I wouldn't know people are good-intentioned so much as I would know they are predictably intentioned. I wouldn't call their intentions 'good' because those are the only intentions I'd be familiar with. Would I be able to conceptualise the idea of my fellow humans stabbing me from behind in such a world? Yes, I'm inclined to think so. But until very recently I was much more reticent to accept that I would conceive of this action (the stabbing) as evil.

What I was getting at in my previous post is that the concepts of good and evil are quite peculiar concepts, in that they are heavily valued. The value comes 'on top' of the brute fact of the action and is assigned by human beings themselves. Thus for example, in our world, I would see my wife's cheating on me not just as something that emotionally upsets me, not just as disregarding the legal binding of marriage, but as evil because I know my wife made that choice freely. If my wife didn't make that choice freely then I would still see the act as emotionally upsetting and as disrespecting the legal binding of marriage, but I couldn't see it as evil.

If this is true, then in order for me—in my possible world—to conceive of evil, I would have to imagine beings of a different nature than mine, beings whose free will is 'more expansive' than mine and who can intentionally choose to e.g. hurt others where the decision not to hurt them was equally available. Is this possible? Actually yes, it is possible to conceive of evil in these conditions. But note that this is also where the concept of good is made possible by opposition. I would conceive of the good in relation to those beings, not in relation to me. And so I wouldn't think of myself as a good man; nor as a bad man. It just so happens that my actions align with those of the 'good' creatures with free will, who are legitimately good because they freely choose to perform good actions.

This leads me to argue that the concept of 'necessary goodness' is not a concept available to me in that possible world without evil. Further, this is not a sign that that possible world is deficient in any way. On the contrary, I think it casts light on the broader fact that 'necessary goodness' is inconsistent in general for finite beings. Those that legitimately qualify as good can and do commit evil acts, whereas those who can't commit evil acts don't qualify as good. Only an infinite and perfect being who is capable of envisioning evil without selecting it nor being tempted by it could be necessarily good, but even so he would be necessarily good according to us who worry about such things as good and evil because we are finite. Good and evil, in other words, are inherently tied to finitude. This is at least what I contend, on the basis of good and evil being axiological concepts.

Outside of the human viewpoint, then, I don't think necessary goodness is consistent. I think this is why the ontological arguments for the existence of God consistently define God as a 'supreme' or 'perfect' being, not an 'all-good' being. They do that because perfection allows itself to be defined in non-valued terms. Similarly the cosmological arguments for the existence of God, of the 'God is the uncaused cause' kind, are agnostic with regard to value. Of course these arguments would prove unsatisfactory from the perspective of Church teachings, but the issue here lies with the Church teachings being inconsistent.

Long story short, I don't think God is an incoherent concept, but if that concept were defined as 'necessarily good being' then that would make me an Ignostic!

*Now, here's a possible counter to what I talked about earlier. Perhaps the concept of good is available on its own, without the need for it to be opposed to evil. Suppose I walk through an alley and come across a homeless person. If I give them nothing I am neither evil nor good; if I give them something, say 5 dollars, I am good; but if I give them more than 5 dollars, I am better. And this can obviously go on indefinitely. In other words, if we dismiss the purely dichotomous evil/good scheme in favor or gradations of good, then free will is preserved for those gradations, and it becomes possible for a 'necessarily not evil' being to conceive of itself as 'necessarily good'. On that view, what remains subject to contingency is just how good they are.

By extension this works also for God. If God's free will ranges across different levels of goodness then he can conceive himself as necessarily good on his own terms and not just from a human viewpoint. Perhaps the fundamental problem would remain, however: is a being who is 'merely' necessarily good, but not necessarily the best, sufficient to qualify as God? I'm not sure this is satisfactory, but to me this is the only way to preserve the valuation of goodness within the definition of God. That said, it might be more expedient to remove goodness from the definition altogether.

 

[charlatan]

This leads me to argue that the concept of 'necessary goodness' is not a concept available to me in that possible world without evil.

OK, I am trying to follow your train here/got confused. If you are saying this independent of the idea that 'goodness' is not available to me in a world without evil, then I don't follow and I'd probably be inclined to say that's a dangerous route for metaphysical theorizing. (But I get the sense you aren't saying it independently, so I think I get what you're getting at.)

Very, very generally, given a concept, we can ask if it applies essentially to something or only accidentally. This is akin to asking do electrons always repel in any possible world, or only repel in our world -- in other words, is it of the essence of an electron that it repels or is it accidental to our world.

So basically, it's not that you have the concept of necessary goodness in any way over and above the concept of goodness, you have the concept of GOOD and EVIL, and then you ask (as with any concept) if they apply necessarily (ie does a being do good in every possible world / necessarily, or only accidentally, i.e. just happens to in this world).



But more generally, you seem to be saying 'good' and 'evil' themselves are not concepts a truly perfect being (as would exist in an evil-less world) would use -- and the only sense in which you seem to bring in the critique of 'necessarily good' is just that you think that's how we would think of a better-termed-as-perfect (which isn't defined relative to 'evil') being, given we think in terms of good and evil.
You want to say 'good'-'evil' is intrinsically tied to temptation, and doesn't apply to the intentions of a being not experiencing such temptations, I think.



I think my main reaction is to wonder a bit how much the issue goes much beyond mere terminology. Which is to say I'm not trivializing the distinction you want to make so much as wondering if it much changes how we ultimately question the existence of God based on all we see in our world, which is what I was addressing in the first place. As with the start of the discussion, when you took the term 'evil' to be defined differently than I, for e.g. you interpreted it to exclude what some call 'natural evil,' I wonder if similarly you're hardly differing from anything I believe but just attach a particular meaning to some of these terms.

It seems instead of the problem of evil, we have the problem of a world with imperfect beings (beings subject to good-evil dichotomies) and negative states of affair (torture, cancers, tsunamis) and this rules out that a perfect God (which we imperfect beings conceptualize as 'necesarily good God' if you want to make this deal about good being a valued concept) exists in our world.

As long as you accept there are negative states of affair, I think modulo terminology,we can always rule out the perfect God by saying the perfect God wouldn't will there to be negative states of affair.
God can still contemplate what we'd call 'doing evil,' i.e. he can contemplate what it would be like if he did bring forth tsunamis and cancer, but it would be inconsistent with his nature to bring forth such states of affair. Maybe you don't want to call that because he's all-good, but rather because he is perfect.

If you claim there is no positive-negative distinction even for states of affair (not just no distinction between good and evil intentions), then of course God can create the current world. That effectively eliminates the problem of Natural Evil as well, which is about states of affair, not intention.
But there you're likely embracing the 'pain/etc are an illusion' option I mentioned earlier.

 

[Ren]

I think my main reaction is to wonder a bit how much the issue goes much beyond mere terminology. Which is to say I'm not trivializing the distinction you want to make so much as wondering if it much changes how we ultimately question the existence of God based on all we see in our world, which is what I was addressing in the first place. As with the start of the discussion, when you took the term 'evil' to be defined differently than I, for e.g. you interpreted it to exclude what some call 'natural evil,' I wonder if similarly you're hardly differing from anything I believe but just attach a particular meaning to some of these terms.

It seems instead of the problem of evil, we have the problem of a world with imperfect beings (beings subject to good-evil dichotomies) and negative states of affair (torture, cancers, tsunamis) and this rules out that a perfect God (which we imperfect beings conceptualize as 'necessarily good God' if you want to make this deal about good being a valued concept) exists in our world.

As long as you accept there are negative states of affair, I think modulo terminology,we can always rule out the perfect God by saying the perfect God wouldn't will there to be negative states of affair.
God can still contemplate what we'd call 'doing evil,' i.e. he can contemplate what it would be like if he did bring forth tsunamis and cancer, but it would be inconsistent with his nature to bring forth such states of affair. Maybe you don't want to call that because he's all-good, but rather because he is perfect.

You're right to emphasise we fundamentally agree, though I don't think the terminological issue is trivial. In a sense my position is that the best counter-arguments to the existence of God are those that literally don't refer to the valuation of good and evil. The examples of tsunamis and cancer are good examples precisely because from my perspective these are purely examples of what you call 'natural evil', not evil in the sense in which I understand it more discriminately (intentional, free willed, etc.)

However, ultimately the result is the same. God's imperfection follows and by reductio the conclusion is that he doesn't exist.

If you claim there is no positive-negative distinction even for states of affair (not just no distinction between good and evil intentions), then of course God can create the current world. That effectively eliminates the problem of Natural Evil as well, which is about states of affair, not intention.
But there you're likely embracing the 'pain/etc are an illusion' option I mentioned earlier.

Yes, in these conditions God can create the current world but I wonder if his existence wouldn't become trivial as a result. In any case, this is not what I claim. I do subscribe to a distinction between positive and negative states of affairs. Nietzsche would call this distinction 'good versus bad' as opposed to 'good versus evil'.

 

[Ren]

In a nutshell, St Augustine battled with this very issue of 'evil' within a world created by an all-good God; coming to the conclusion that evil was just a corruption of the act. His understanding of it was that whilst the action itself was not evil, the evil is in deciding to do such an act.. Of your will being 'corrupted' to a lesser state. So for Ren's example, it was not him shanking the man that was the evil, but him changing his mind and deciding to do so, turning away from the moral perfection of God.
In terms of things people see as undoubtedly evil, Augustine's argument was that it's both a lack of context and understanding it that leads to such a view - as well as the fact that the greater good of this world is its moral freedom, but that with such freedom comes tragedies

Thanks for sharing this. I agree with Augustine, though I also agree with you that this still doesn't explain stillbirths, miscarriages, etc.

 

[charlatan]

In a sense my position is that the best counter-arguments to the existence of God are those that literally don't refer to the valuation of good and evil.

OK, so that, I definitely agree with. As I said, when I first referenced the problem of evil, I was not making the distinction between the natural kind and the intentional kind. (Although, aside, on physicalism, perhaps the intentional kind is nothing over and above the natural kind i.e. Hitler IS basically a tsunami waiting to hit some people... but I'm assuming for sake of discussion that they're truly separate things, i.e. there's some sense in which the causal powers of human beings is over and above the causal powers of physical things via FREE WILL.)

Probably the only question is to what extent the creation of, say, Hitler (rather than the creation of cancer) seems to you (vs me) inconsistent with God's existence. There, I at least distinguished one point, which is the one where when an axe murderer tries to murder me, the blade turns to feathers or whatever. It seems totally unnecessary that the negative outcomes actually occur from so-called 'evil intentions'. This is the part I think you seem to be happy with most of all.

But the second point was where I note that even creating a being who intends to do what Hitler did seems inconsistent with (let's now use your terminology -- a perfect, rather than all-good) God.
I certainly proceeded cautiously with this in the sense that I rank

natural evil > negative consequences of intentional evil actually manifesting > intentional evil's existence at all

in order of most obviously to least obviously problematic to me. However, the last one still strikes me as more problematic than not problematic.


To clarify, then, your point is a perfect God may not conceptualize what we think of as an evil Hitler..... as evil, because a perfect God does not even use the concept of good and evil.
What I am wondering is whether you think God would still not create Hitler, because God would not create what he'd think of as an imperfect being, even if he wouldn't think of that imperfect being as whatever you want to distinguish as EVIL, rather than imperfect.
Note that you could say, by your own version of things, a being who thinks in terms of the good-evil dichotomy at all is imperfect (by definition, such a being is tempted in the direction of what-we-see-as-evil). Would God create such a being if God is perfect?


Basically, from what you say here

In a sense my position is that the best counter-arguments to the existence of God are those that literally don't refer to the valuation of good and evil.

technically, that also includes as a possible reason that God wouldn't create imperfect beings. That formulation doesn't use good/evil.