Turning the Problem of Evil On Its Head

[redhen]

It's only unnecessary to you. You are not God. You could not possibly comprehend his/her thinking or why we're here.

The OP is not about existence but the problem of evil. Anyways, we're already seen the answer Job received, "it's a mystery", Your ways are so much higher than human ways. But saying "it's a mystery" is not an answer.

True, I'm not God, neither are you. Still, if you believe that all the pain, suffering and death inherent in nature as evidenced in the last several million years is necessary, why do you think so?

You've given several of the stock answers that theologians have given throughout the millenia. but why do you think it was all necessary?

[Grandpa Greenman]

According to the OT God created evil.

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Case closed your God created evil. He said it himself. Then he want on to prove it my doing all kinds of mayhem in the Bible.

[redhen]

According to the OT God created evil.

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Case closed your God created evil. He said it himself. Then he want on to prove it my doing all kinds of mayhem in the Bible.

Yes, that's one accepted answer. But again the unstated question is why? Why random, gratuitous pain, suffering and death?

The first apologetics page that came up from my search I just did reveals that this text;

"It is not a moral evil that God brings, but calamity and distress upon people.

Of course, this raises other questions of why God would do such a thing, which I won't cover here. But, we can trust that whatever God does is just and is used for teaching, guiding, and disciplining His people."

"which I won't cover here" ....... right.... but whatever the reason it must be just .... because ....

[Grandpa Greenman]

If you look at history gods don't really appear all that trustworthy. They really create a lot of war and suffering. He says, I give you is land now go kill and enslave everything on it. If I was standing on the hill I might just kind of think that might not turn out so well. Really, can't we just trade them some goats or something like this ark we been carring around.

[Beany]

The definition of evil is something immoral and malevolent, so I don't see how that would apply to natural disasters. See the world "natural" in there? A tectonic plate slips, a tsunami is created, tornadoes are spawned, typhoons are borne, and all of it can be explained by geologists, meteorologists, scientists, etc. It's how the earth works. Why would that be evil in any way? What's disastrous is that homes are being built on flood plains, or with cheap construction that won't withstand hurricanes or typhoons, no basements in tornado country, too many people living on the shore line, or living in a forest that's prone to wild fires and not clearing a defensible space.

Most often "evil" is used as a religious term, and then God is referenced. It's my feeling that mostly God has little to do with all the ways humanity has found to inflict pain & suffering. We do it to ourselves, mostly, though our actions or inaction. I think the world might be a better place if we appropriately assigned blame and held people accountable, let them experience the consequences of their actions.

[redhen]

The definition of evil is something immoral and malevolent, so I don't see how that would apply to natural disasters.

"Natural evil" in the philosophic sense is harm, or something to be avoided, that is not caused by man. It is not moral evil.

What's disastrous is that homes are being built on flood plains, or with cheap construction that won't withstand hurricanes or typhoons, no basements in tornado country, too many people living on the shore line, or living in a forest that's prone to wild fires and not clearing a defensible space.

So if people die in earthquakes, that's just too bad. If they move to California in a greedy desire for gold, and die in an earthquake, so much the better. I understand now. Sarcasm aside, this does not address unavoidable pain and suffering such as cancer, birth defects, random asteroids, the list is endless.

Most often "evil" is used as a religious term, and then God is referenced.

Correct, which is why this is not a problem for atheists, only for those who hold to an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God.

It's my feeling that mostly God has little to do with all the ways humanity has found to inflict pain & suffering. We do it to ourselves, mostly, though our actions or inaction. I think the world might be a better place if we appropriately assigned blame and held people accountable, let them experience the consequences of their actions.

Yes, that's the free will defense and I accept it. But again, this only explains moral evil, not natural evil.

[Almagest]

All of this is based on the very shaky foundation that evil actually exists. The problem of good and evil is unsolvable and irrelevant. Instead we have sick, thoughtless and selfish people who cause harm, deliberately or unintentionally, and we call it evil.

I'd hate to Godwin this thread, but I noticed the Nazi's were already mentioned, so I'd just add this; Given different circumstances in terms of alliances between the European powers and the leadership of those powers, we could have quite easily had an alliance of Germany and Britain against Soviet Russia. Britain and France didn't choose war against Germany, they were bound by a pact with Poland. And it certainly had nothing to do with opposition to Fascism. Remember Fascist states were still capitalist, and that was seen as better than communism. You could say that the alliance with the Soviet Union was a matter of the lesser of two evils, but that is wrong. Stalin was responsible for far more deaths than Hitler. WW2 is painted as a battle of good versus evil, but it was a battle of opposing selfish interests within nations who managed to paint that picture because they survived in order to do so. Let's not forget that the side of Good in that war was not entirely good. Britain and France turned their back on Czechoslovakia and signed away the Sudetenland because they didn't want to get involved in another Great War. DeGaulle essentially named himself dictator after the liberation of France. The United States interred Japanese American citizens and committed war crimes with the atomic and incendiary bombings of Japan.

[redhen]

All of this is based on the very shaky foundation that evil actually exists. The problem of good and evil is unsolvable and irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant to theists who believe in an all-loving God.

Instead we have sick, thoughtless and selfish people who cause harm, deliberately or unintentionally, and we call it evil.

Right, and the easy answer is free will. But the evidential problem of natural evil is much harder to solve..

I'd hate to Godwin this thread, but I noticed the Nazi's were already mentioned, so I'd just add this; Given different circumstances in terms of alliances between the European powers and the leadership of those powers, we could have quite easily had an alliance of Germany and Britain against Soviet Russia.

Absolutely correct. That's the focus of the original post on this thread. The poster claims that if objective moral values (God) don't exists, then the Nazis could reasonably argue that what they did was ethically right. The expected response is "No, what the Nazis did was objectively unethical and evil and cannot be justified in any manner!"

But that's an unsupported proposition. Where is this so called objective moral court? Objective meaning not subject to human values, biases and norms?

If you can find one, I'm sure the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would like to file a criminal claim there against the U.S. government.

[Frank Merton]

I conclude from much of what has been posted above that what we see as good and evil largely depends on accidents of history.

[redhen]

I conclude from much of what has been posted above that what we see as good and evil largely depends on accidents of history.

When it comes to moral evil, yes. What say you? Is there an absolute, universal arbiter of morality, independent of human bias and subjective feelings?

[Almagest]

It's not irrelevant to theists who believe in an all-loving God.

I can't wrap my head around how people can do that. The Abrahamic God is not all-loving according to any mildly critical reading of scripture. A bigger problem is why Christ and Muhammed, who were supposed to usher in reigns of peace, instead filled the world with more war and suffering than there was before them.

Right, and the easy answer is free will. But the evidential problem of natural evil is much harder to solve..

There's another problem. There are no easy answers to life's questions, and to attribute the question of evil to free will does not answer the question at all. What about all the murderers who they discover posthumously were suffering from some kind of brain damage? Charles Whitman comes to mind, I forget the name of another who was discovered to have late stage syphilis when he committed his crimes. Where does free will enter into that equation? The question of whether we actually have free will belongs in another thread, but I don't believe that we do.

Absolutely correct. That's the focus of the original post on this thread. The poster claims that if objective moral values (God) don't exists, then the Nazis could reasonably argue that what they did was ethically right. The expected response is "No, what the Nazis did was objectively unethical and evil and cannot be justified in any manner!"

But that's an unsupported proposition. Where is this so called objective moral court? Objective meaning not subject to human values, biases and norms?

That's something I don't get about the religious crowd. Why is objective morality better than subjective morality? All of our morality is subjective, and just because you point to scripture to claim otherwise doesn't make it true. If there is objective morality, then only God knows it, and if there is such a court we face it once we die.

[Beany]

"Natural evil" in the philosophic sense is harm, or something to be avoided, that is not caused by man. It is not moral evil.

So if people die in earthquakes, that's just too bad. If they move to California in a greedy desire for gold, and die in an earthquake, so much the better. I understand now. Sarcasm aside, this does not address unavoidable pain and suffering such as cancer, birth defects, random asteroids, the list is endless.

Correct, which is why this is not a problem for atheists, only for those who hold to an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God.

Yes, that's the free will defense and I accept it. But again, this only explains moral evil, not natural evil.

Thank you for putting your sarcasm aside. I value life, so I was not casually blowing off the loss of it due to an earth cataclysm. You went there, not me. Life ultimately ends in death, doesn't it? And suffering seems to be an integral part of life. Why that is, I don't know. Natural evil, maybe, I'm disinclined to use the word evil in any context when it comes to Mother Earth. Natural evil seems to me to be an artificial construct imposed by humans to explain the natural workings of our planet that sometimes affect us disastrously. Are there ways to minimize the impact of these disasters? Probably. We can't eliminate them, but we can figure out how to best live with them.

[Frank Merton]

When it comes to moral evil, yes. What say you? Is there an absolute, universal arbiter of morality, independent of human bias and subjective feelings?

I tend to hold for there being a thing like objective, absolute right and wrong, but it is a lot like there being such a things as objective truth. We have to assume this is the case but we can remain skeptical of any assertion that we have access to it, even remotely.

[Frank Merton]

The Buddha identified the mess we are in, but refused (wisely) to speculate on how we got into it. Now I think we can say it is basically because natural processes function amorally and without concern about us. One of those processes is natural selection, which tends to be brutal in how it operates and tends to load us with instincts and desires and revulsions over which we have little operating control.

The Buddha saw no option but to opt out -- to escape existence. Maybe we do have other options as we progress and slowly overcome the horrors of nature with technology. Nature does not oppose our doing this -- it doesn't care.

[Amalthe]

Problem of natural evil is very hard to solve without knowledge of historical events that shaped the planet in the form that it is now. It is evident from recent history that humans have power to change environment for the worse, by pollution, overusing the natural resources, etc. It is possible to assume that such events also happened in ancient history, where ancient scientists mettled with laws of physic and nature and such actions caused the Great flood, which in consequence resulted in tectonic shifts and all sorts of calamities that today we witness. It remains on fringes of our memory that great civilizations were destroyed in cataclismical event, but no evidence remained to prove it.

Such claim would be completely theoretical, since someone or something decided to perform lobotomy on our humanity collective memory. There is no wonder that through surgically precise moves great works of our history were mostly destroyed in library of Alexandria, library of Baghdad, Pergamum and so on. This is far reaching shot, with no evidence to support it, but it could explain natural evil.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Amalthe

[Almagest]

The Buddha identified the mess we are in, but refused (wisely) to speculate on how we got into it. Now I think we can say it is basically because natural processes function amorally and without concern about us. One of those processes is natural selection, which tends to be brutal in how it operates and tends to load us with instincts and desires and revulsions over which we have little operating control.

The Buddha saw no option but to opt out -- to escape existence. Maybe we do have other options as we progress and slowly overcome the horrors of nature with technology. Nature does not oppose our doing this -- it doesn't care.

Personally, I see the Buddhist approach as selfish and fatalistic. That isn't to say that I don't sympathise, I think Buddha was spot on about the source of suffering. But how does one remove themselves from the world and continue to watch people suffer around them? To me Buddhism suggests that we can't change the world for the better and we shouldn't try. Of course, it isn't very common here in Australia, and my knowledge of the religion stems from readings almost a decade ago, so I might be wrong. But I do admire that it highlights suffering as the main problem facing humanity, and not something as nebulous as evil.

[redhen]

Personally, I see the Buddhist approach as selfish and fatalistic.

It can seem that way when you look at certain schools of Buddhism, especially in the West where enlightenment is the sole goal.

I think Buddha was spot on about the source of suffering. But how does one remove themselves from the world and continue to watch people suffer around them?

By vowing to save all sentient beings, without being attached to such a thing as a being. That's what I understand about the Bodhisattva idea. It sounds pretty tricky.

To me Buddhism suggests that we can't change the world for the better and we shouldn't try.

There are some schools of Buddhism that do try to create a Pure Land on earth and respond to human suffering in the present.

http://www.us.tzuchi.org/us/en/

Of course, it isn't very common here in Australia,

Australia seems closer to the source, and there are plenty of large temple/monastery complexes there now.

http://www.fgs.org.au/

[Frank Merton]

I don't know that I would say the approach is fatalistic and selfish, just that it is not naive or sentimental but realistic.

The "saving grace" if I were to defend Buddhist thinking is that it emphases compassion intelligently and mindfully applied as the foundation of all we do. In the end, however, we can do little about the suffering of others beyond amelioration and can only deal with the suffering of ourselves.

[Frank Merton]

Yes, there are many types of Buddhism. My tradition is much into the Bodhisattva idea, of individuals not working to escape existence but returning in life after life to help others.

I perceive all this as mythical. It is a good philosophy but not very good as a religion, at least in my view. What I tend to push is the idealism and concern for all sentient life, and the idea that we can work to make a world with less suffering a reality.

[Almagest]

@redhen: I remember seeing somewhere recently the idea of detached compassion, I wasn't aware that it originated from Buddhism but it makes sense. We have a tendency to focus our concern on things close to us, for example parents with autistic children will put their energy towards promoting and supporting that cause. If we act as though all people were worthy of the same level of compassion that we give our children I think the world would be a much better place.

@Frank Merton: That is a more selfless ideal. Basically it is saying that I will give up my chance at enlightenment in this life in order to help people. I don't think you'd find many Christians willing to give up salvation in order to help others, but then again, they only get one crack at this life.

[Quaentum]

Turning the Problem of Evil On Its Head

Many atheists are fond of using the argument from evil to debunk the notion of God. It goes something like this:

1. If God is all-powerful (omnipotent), He could stop evil.
   
2. If God is all-loving (omnibenevolent), He would stop evil if He could.
   
3. Therefore, if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God existed, evil would not.
   
4. Evil exists; therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God does not.
   

Another variation of the argument was put forward by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, centuries before the time of Christ:

Against Catholics, this argument is stronger rhetorically than logically. But against atheists, it's ironically quite devastating. Let me explain what I mean.

I. The Problem of Evil for Catholics

Continue: http://www.strangeno...g-problem-evil/

The view that there is no morality without God is easily refuted since if it were true there would be no moral Atheists or immoral Theists and we can see that just isn't the case.