Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 2)

[Koldo]

That is EXACTLY what I mean. God should not have prevented all the suffering caused by this disease.

You answer me and tell me why think God should do it?
And please do not say "because God is omnipotent" again because I will respond to no more of those posts, since we already covered this.

Because he is benevolent and that is what a benevolent being would do.
Now, you tell me: Why shouldn't God have prevented all the suffering caused by that disease?

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

Let no man say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God," for God can't be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
James 1:13-14

Whoops.

God tempts Abraham: Genesis 22:1
God can be tempted, and you shouldn't do it: Deuteronomy 6:16
People who do wicked things tempt god: Malachi 3:15
Jesus told Satan not to tempt god: Matthew 4:7, Luke 4:12
Peter accuses people of tempting god: Acts 15:10
Judith warns against tempting god: Judith 8:11

 

[Clara Tea]

During the other thread, @F1fan brought up a good point I'd like to expound on here.

First, we must play some catch-up for the point presented here to make sense.

The Problem of Evil, as most know, is an argument that points out it is inconsistent for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity to create a world in which preventable suffering exists. In a couple of other posts, I have already gone over just how physical suffering is in fact logically preventable by such a being, so I shall not do that here (I will send links to those posts in the comments if asked).

However, one theodicy that is sometimes given as a response to this observation is that perhaps suffering exists for some benevolent reason that is just unknowable to humans. This was one of the arguments examined in the first Special Pleading and the Problem of Evil post I made: if this reasoning is accepted, it can lead to a trap in which the theodicist can never escape the reasoning, and the deity could literally do any wicked thing and the theodicist would still be able to explain it away: it is a position that's impossible to be evidenced out of, in other words; and in this instance, is a form of fallacious special pleading.

There is another objection to this theodicy that I think deserves attention: the "reasoning" works both ways.

For instance, if it's a fair theodicy to say that any suffering that exists is not evidence against benevolence because it could actually be benevolent in some unknowable way, then (if such reasoning is allowed) it would also be a fair theodicy to say that any good that exists is not evidence for benevolence because it could actually be malevolent in some unknowable way: after all, in neither case is any justification actually offered by anybody since the burden of evidence is shunted into the nebulous realm of agnosticism ("we can't know how this is actually benevolent despite appearances to the contrary").

The person that accepts one but not the other is trying to have their cake and eat it, too: they both have the exact same lack of justification, they're both the same exact kind of special pleading. If a person doesn't accept the latter then they must be able to explain why they reject it, but not the former.

(I submit that we simply shouldn't allow special pleading in the first place and avoid such problems. If something has the appearance of malevolence, it is reasonable to accept it as exactly that [evidence of malevolence], until some justification is explicit and forthcoming for how it actually isn't).

Playing catsup is fine as long as we don't spread ourselves thin on french fries (or other foods).

The butterfly effect means that if we prevent suffering, that might have further ramifications. The total amount of suffering might be a result of over-population.

A population could be limited by predation or competition for resources. Rare resources mean starvation is omnipresent and miserable. Predation means that we have to be ever-vigilant that some creature is stalking us and will eventually kill us (likely painful, but brief). It might be better to have predators kill us suddenly while we have plentiful food.

A stable world (one not changing) exists in balance. A white crane could use its lanky legs to repel a powerful tiger, so it could exist in a world that includes tigers. Increase the number of rabbits would cause coyotes to over-populate, then kill rabbits. The balance is broken if one species dies out.

 

[Trailblazer]

Yet Reason would hold your father accountable.

To compare God with a man is the fallacy of false equivalence because God is not equivalent to a man.
Reason would tell any logical person that an omnipotent/omniscient God is not accountable to anyone.

False equivalence is a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency.[1] A colloquial expression of false equivalency is "comparing apples and oranges".

Characteristics

This fallacy is committed when one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude, when equivalence is not necessarily the logical result.[2] False equivalence is a common result when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as equal, but the claim of equivalence doesn't bear scrutiny because the similarity is based on oversimplification or ignorance of additional factors. The pattern of the fallacy is often as such: "If A is the set of c and d, and B is the set of d and e, then since they both contain d, A and B are equal". d is not required to exist in both sets; only a passing similarity is required to cause this fallacy to be used.

False equivalence arguments are often used in journalism[3][4] and in politics, where flaws of one politician may be compared to flaws of a wholly different nature of another.[5]

False equivalence - Wikipedia

 

[Trailblazer]

Why do you think that this ended up not as God intended, then? Was God incapable of translating his cancer-free design into reality?

God did not choose to have a cancer-free design and God only does what He chooses:

“Say: O people! Let not this life and its deceits deceive you, for the world and all that is therein is held firmly in the grasp of His Will. He bestoweth His favor on whom He willeth, and from whom He willeth He taketh it away. He doth whatsoever He chooseth.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 209

“Say: He ordaineth as He pleaseth, by virtue of His sovereignty, and doeth whatsoever He willeth at His own behest.He shall not be asked of the things it pleaseth Him to ordain. He, in truth, is the Unrestrained, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.” Gleanings, p, 284

But out of all the factors you could imagine might play a role in cancer, which of them do you think are beyond God's control?

None of them.

 

[F1fan]

Sorry, I am not going down the road called "God can do anything because God is omnipotent."
Just because God can do anything that does not mean God will or should do anything humans want Him to do...
God is not a short order cook.

Good point. Perhaps humans aren't any more important to God than bacteria. No wonder humans didn't evolve until after 13.7 billion years. We weren't a priority.

After all we've been thinking that God's benevolence is about humans. Maybe God sees humans as bad and cancers are good because god owes humans nothing. This means we humans have assigned way too much significant to ourselves.

 

[F1fan]

Atheists love to say that God is omnipotent but they omit that He is also omniscient.

Not true. It's been the cornerstone of my opposition to your beliefs/claims. As I note if God knew cancers would eventually evolve in the human genetic process, and it approved this plan, then it intended cancers.

What that means is that God knows more than any human, so God knows the best course of action under any circumstance.
God is also infallible so God is INCAPABLE of making mistakes.

So perhaps God is good and humans are bad, and cancers are a way to get rid of many humans. That way your argument can work. No wonder God was killing humans left and right in the Old testament.

God does not need to make excuses to humans for what He doesn't do because God is not accountable to any human.
Everything that humans get from God is only by the grace and mercy and bounty of God.

Almost like God thinks we're pets, and not very fond of us. When my Cat Chester got cancer I spent a lot of money for his treatments. God just sits there and watches the child die despite the hard efforts of doctors to save the child.

Any god that would come swooping down and fix everything in the world that atheists don't like is not existing.
Grow up and accept reality. God is not Superman.

Nor benevolent. Assuming humans are special, that is.

 

[F1fan]

God did not deliberately create a world with the intention for cancers to develop. That cancers developed has no bearing on whether God is kind or unkind. Cancers developed as the result of many factors and I am not a cancer researcher so I don't know what those are.

Did God create the world deliberately?

If so, is God omniscient and knew that cancers would develop and affect many humans including children in the creation it was making?

If yes, then isn't God going forward with that creation a deliberate decision that humans will have to deal with cancers when they eventually evolve, and this decision will cause suffering to these humans since God could have created evolution without cancers?

How can God not be responsible for cancers developing when god could have created the world without cancers?

That cancers is something we have to deal with today is directly tied to God allowing them rather than God not allowing them as part of creation.

 

[Trailblazer]

What distinction would there be, in the way that God acts, if he was omnibenevolent?
I am trying to understand if you see any distinction.

I removed the omni part because it is not in my scriptures but now that I have looked at the definitions I have to say that God is benevolent, so in my scriptures where it says God is benevolent it is a given it means omnibenevolent.

Here is the difference:

Benevolent
well meaning and kindly.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=benevolent+means

Definition of benevolent
1a : marked by or disposed to doing good 2: marked by or suggestive of goodwill
Definition of BENEVOLENT

Omnibenevolent
(of a deity) possessing perfect or unlimited goodness.
https://www.google.com/search?q=omnibenevolent+means

What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent?

The word omnibenevolent comes from the Latin word omni, meaning “all,” and the word benevolent, meaning “good” or “charitable.” When we say that God is omnibenevolent, we are saying that God is absolutely good and that no action or motive or thought or feeling or anything else about Him is not purely good. He is “all-good.” The Bible provides many testimonies of God’s goodness, including Jesus’ own, when He asserted that no one is truly good except God Himself (Mark 10:18). This can only mean that, although human beings can do good things, only God is omnibenevolent, or wholly good.

To believe in a perfect being, one must accept that God can be omnibenevolent. If God is completely self-sustaining, independent of need, the “un-caused cause” and “un-moved mover,” He must also be perfectly good. If God were simply a good and powerful being, but not perfectly good, there would be an element of contingency. That is, we could conceive of a being of potentially greater benevolence—and someone with greater goodness would be greater than God. Since the goodness of anything is measured by its perfection, God must be perfectly good in order to also be omniscient and omnipotent. All three aspects of His person must be in place for us to conceive of any one of the three.

What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent? | GotQuestions.org

I was only mentioning that point because of something else you said in a former post.
If we agree on what omnipotence means, then nevermind. I would only say then that any omnipotent and benevolent god would help people in need in the best way he could, because that is what it means to be truly benevolent.

Yes, that is what the omnibenevolent God does.

 

[Koldo]

Playing catsup is fine as long as we don't spread ourselves thin on french fries (or other foods).

The butterfly effect means that if we prevent suffering, that might have further ramifications. The total amount of suffering might be a result of over-population.

A population could be limited by predation or competition for resources. Rare resources mean starvation is omnipresent and miserable. Predation means that we have to be ever-vigilant that some creature is stalking us and will eventually kill us (likely painful, but brief). It might be better to have predators kill us suddenly while we have plentiful food.

A stable world (one not changing) exists in balance. A white crane could use its lanky legs to repel a powerful tiger, so it could exist in a world that includes tigers. Increase the number of rabbits would cause coyotes to over-populate, then kill rabbits. The balance is broken if one species dies out.

We could simply reproduce at a slower rate, or live in a bigger planet, or eventually live in other planets...

I can keep mentioning solutions all day long.

 

[Koldo]

I removed the omni part because it is not in my scriptures but now that I have looked at the definitions I have to say that God is benevolent, so in my scriptures where it says God is benevolent it is a given it means omnibenevolent.

Here is the difference:

Benevolent
well meaning and kindly.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=benevolent+means

Definition of benevolent
1a : marked by or disposed to doing good 2: marked by or suggestive of goodwill
Definition of BENEVOLENT

Omnibenevolent
(of a deity) possessing perfect or unlimited goodness.
https://www.google.com/search?q=omnibenevolent+means

What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent?

The word omnibenevolent comes from the Latin word omni, meaning “all,” and the word benevolent, meaning “good” or “charitable.” When we say that God is omnibenevolent, we are saying that God is absolutely good and that no action or motive or thought or feeling or anything else about Him is not purely good. He is “all-good.” The Bible provides many testimonies of God’s goodness, including Jesus’ own, when He asserted that no one is truly good except God Himself (Mark 10:18). This can only mean that, although human beings can do good things, only God is omnibenevolent, or wholly good.

To believe in a perfect being, one must accept that God can be omnibenevolent. If God is completely self-sustaining, independent of need, the “un-caused cause” and “un-moved mover,” He must also be perfectly good. If God were simply a good and powerful being, but not perfectly good, there would be an element of contingency. That is, we could conceive of a being of potentially greater benevolence—and someone with greater goodness would be greater than God. Since the goodness of anything is measured by its perfection, God must be perfectly good in order to also be omniscient and omnipotent. All three aspects of His person must be in place for us to conceive of any one of the three.

What does it mean that God is omnibenevolent? | GotQuestions.org

Yes, that is what the omnibenevolent God does.

Then it follows that such a god doesn't exist, because there is nothing an omnipotent god can't do to help people in need.

 

[Trailblazer]

The argument has multiple layers.
One of them is about whether God could have prevented evil. I took it that you meant that God could not. But since you are not saying that, we can go past this point.

God could have prevented anything He might have chosen to prevent so the fact that God did not prevent certain things is proof that God did not choose to prevent those things.

For example, God could have prevented physical suffering by creating humans with a kind of body that could never feel pain or get diseases or get hurt in an accident.
God could have prevented people from making immoral choices by not giving humans free will and making them into robots who can only do good.

 

[Trailblazer]

Because he is benevolent and that is what a benevolent being would do.

Only in your opinion would a benevolent being do that.
Do you know more than an omniscient God regarding what is benevolent?

Now, you tell me: Why shouldn't God have prevented all the suffering caused by that disease?

Because that was not the best course of action, and an omniscient being always knows the best course of action from all the available options.

 

[F1fan]

As I said in the previous post, I do not base my opinion as to whether God is benevolent it not on what I see in this world. God did not decide to allow them to develop, they simply developed and God did not intervene to stop them. I can claim confidence that God is benevolent because that is what Baha'u'llah wrote.

You keep making excuses. Now you won't even consider what we experience in our lives as relevant to whether God is benevolent. So humans seem to be trash in your opinion, and therefore also God's opinion since you are speaking for this absent God.

So why should humans bother with being moral in your religious system?

They don't justify that for you because you do not believe in Baha'u'llah, but rather you make your own assessments and come to your own conclusions.

Yes, I use my intellectual freedom and don't blindly follow an irrational dogma. For someone who keep harping on free will you've given yours up to Baha’u’llah.

I do not slap the label infallible on God. Messengers of God including Baha'u'llah say that God is infallible that is the only way to know anything about God. If God is not infallible God is not God and there would be no reason to even believe in God or do anything He commands us to do.

You work very hard to manipulate scenarios to make the label of benevolent apply to your God. After the last few posts of yours you've thrown humans under the bus because you like your God better than humanity.

It is not a new claim, I have been saying it all along. The only way we have to know it is true is by what Messengers reveal in scriptures.

You've never offered a test that demonstrates a Messenger is authentic versus a fraud.

I never said that a child is accountable to God, because humans cannot be accountable to God until they reach the age of reason so that they can understand what God revealed.

Oh boy, well that makes God allowing cancer to develop in nature and kill children even WORSE. I'd be somewhat impressed if no children ever suffer diseases until the reach the age of reason. But I have a first hand experience of a client's 3 year old daughter being diagnosed with Luekemia and then after almost 2 years of treatment she died soon after she turned 5.

According to your posts you don't think a God should care, but me as an atheist sure as hell did.

Just because God has the power to create a world without cancers that does not mean that God deliberately caused cancers to develop, but we have already covered this so there is no need to beat a dead horse.

Since God had the choice to create a world without cancers, but it decided to allow it, then we have to conclude your God did it deliberately. Or it was a mistake on God's part. Which was it?

Logic does not determine the attributes of God because God is unknowable and God transcends logic.

Right, it's human imagination.

You can believe whatever you want to and I will believe what I want to believe. The difference is that what I believe comes from God and what you believe comes from your own subjective determinations. In other words, it is based upon what you consider benevolent.

LOL, wow. You might as well claim to be God yourself. You are getting desperate.

We mortals can't know what God does and that means we can't say God is malevolent, just because you imagine God is doing something you consider malevolent. My personal belief and opinion is irrelevant to you but it is not irrelevant to me. I am not trying to convince anyone that God is benevolent by my texts. I just cite tem in order to explain why I believe God is benevolent.

Honest mortals acknowledge we have no idea if any gods exist.

I would never expect anyone to take my texts at face value or agree with me. Only Baha'is are going to believe those texts represent God's Word.

Untrue, you just wrote this "The difference is that what I believe comes from God"
So how could your beliefs be wrong? If your beliefs are from God we SHOULD be taking them at face value.

Could you be mistaken in your beliefs?

I would have no reason to put my faith n a man. Baha'u'llah was a Manifestation of God so He was both divine and human, since He had a two-fold nature. Whatever Baha’u’llah wrote and did represents the Will of God and as such Bahaullah was also infallible. That is explained in the following passage.

Well you've set up your beliefs to allow yourself no room to think twice and consider you may be mistaken. And that is a mistake.

That is a gross generalization. Just because I am a believer that does not mean I am emotional. It is the fallacy of hasty generalization to say all believers are emotional. I am biased towards my beliefs but everyone has a bias towards what they believe or disbelieve.

Religious belief is rooted in emotion, not reason. People are religious because they derive emotional reward from the various behaviors. It can actually become an addiction because the reward centers of the brain release hormones into the blood. This is euphoric, and like Pavlov's Dog it reinforces the behavior. It becomes habitual if a person does not become aware of the cycle.

 

[Trailblazer]

Then it follows that such a god doesn't exist, because there is nothing an omnipotent god can't do to help people in need.

There is nothing an omnipotent God can't do to help people in need but there is plenty that an omnipotent God won't do to help people in need, because God wants humans to help themselves and other humans in need.

Why is that so hard to understand?

God is spirit, not not a human being who can come swooping down from heaven to help people, but that does not mean God is not omnipotent. God resides in His own high place. God does not descend to earth on rescue missions. We have rescue workers for that.

 

[The Kilted Heathen]

To compare God with a man is the fallacy of false equivalence

Wow, tell me you completely missed the point. No, blazer, it's not. Sorry it wounds your ego, but it's not.

If you can't take in the metaphor and really think on it, there's still a whole other post (and a couple after that) for you to address. Or deflect; I can't dictate your actions.

 

[thomas loebel]

Evil is so that finds good. Devil is de evil with lived in reverse and blessed is be less of that as we change time periods.

 

[Trailblazer]

Good point. Perhaps humans aren't any more important to God than bacteria. No wonder humans didn't evolve until after 13.7 billion years. We weren't a priority.

After all we've been thinking that God's benevolence is about humans. Maybe God sees humans as bad and cancers are good because god owes humans nothing. This means we humans have assigned way too much significant to ourselves.

What you responded with was a deflection from what I said.
I said: Just because God can do anything that does not mean God will or should do anything humans want Him to do...
Can you tell me why God should do anything humans want Him to do?

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But you are correct in saying that 'some humans' have assigned way too much significance to themselves.
Although God owes humans nothing God sends Messengers, not because He has to but because He wants to because He loves humans.

God sends Messengers who act as Manifestations of God who transmit the Grace of God. According to the passage below God sends a Messenger in every age, which we refer to as a religious dispensation. The passage goes on to say that if for one moment God’s mercy and grace were to be withheld from the world, it would completely perish.

That mercy and grace is bestowed upon mankind by means of the Messengers that God who bring the Holy Spirit and a “message” mankind needs for its present-day situation in order to survive and thrive. Whether everyone believes in them or not, no one has ever escaped these Messengers and they have never been hindered from achieving their purpose. They have been sent from eternity, and they will continue to succeed each other for eternity. The Grace of God can never cease from flowing.

“From the foregoing passages and allusions it hath been made indubitably clear that in the kingdoms of earth and heaven there must needs be manifested a Being, an Essence Who shall act as a Manifestation and Vehicle for the transmission of the grace of the Divinity Itself, the Sovereign Lord of all. Through the Teachings of this Day Star of Truth every man will advance and develop until he attaineth the station at which he can manifest all the potential forces with which his inmost true self hath been endowed. It is for this very purpose that in every age and dispensation the Prophets of God and His chosen Ones have appeared amongst men, and have evinced such power as is born of God and such might as only the Eternal can reveal.

Can one of sane mind ever seriously imagine that, in view of certain words the meaning of which he cannot comprehend, the portal of God’s infinite guidance can ever be closed in the face of men? Can he ever conceive for these Divine Luminaries, these resplendent Lights either a beginning or an end? What outpouring flood can compare with the stream of His all-embracing grace, and what blessing can excel the evidences of so great and pervasive a mercy? There can be no doubt whatever that if for one moment the tide of His mercy and grace were to be withheld from the world, it would completely perish. For this reason, from the beginning that hath no beginning the portals of Divine mercy have been flung open to the face of all created things, and the clouds of Truth will continue to the end that hath no end to rain on the soil of human capacity, reality and personality their favors and bounties. Such hath been God’s method continued from everlasting to everlasting.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 67-69

 

[F1fan]

Playing catsup is fine as long as we don't spread ourselves thin on french fries (or other foods).

The butterfly effect means that if we prevent suffering, that might have further ramifications. The total amount of suffering might be a result of over-population.

A population could be limited by predation or competition for resources. Rare resources mean starvation is omnipresent and miserable. Predation means that we have to be ever-vigilant that some creature is stalking us and will eventually kill us (likely painful, but brief). It might be better to have predators kill us suddenly while we have plentiful food.

A stable world (one not changing) exists in balance. A white crane could use its lanky legs to repel a powerful tiger, so it could exist in a world that includes tigers. Increase the number of rabbits would cause coyotes to over-populate, then kill rabbits. The balance is broken if one species dies out.

Ah yes, humans breeding like sewer rats. We used to have world wars to cut our population down but it's a whole new world where most don't want to die for flag or country. Now we're waiting for the next pandemic that is even more deadly.

 

[F1fan]

There is nothing an omnipotent God can't do to help people in need but there is plenty that an omnipotent God won't do to help people in need, because God wants humans to help themselves and other humans in need.

Why is that so hard to understand?

It's easy if you admit God is malevolent.

God is spirit, not not a human being who can come swooping down from heaven to help people, but that does not mean God is not omnipotent. God resides in His own high place. God does not descend to earth on rescue missions. We have rescue workers for that.

So God created us and just doesn't care. Why would any human with dignity want to worship this jerk?