Special Pleading and the PoE (Part 3)

[F1fan]

As far as I aware, we function like this: "It's evil and bad unless there is an explanation".

Which goes with a fallen world perspective of Abrahamic faiths.

That's why the Abrahamic faiths don't work in a rational understanding of how things are, and are a trap that many children get indoctrinated into before they have any reasoning skill. To my mind THAT is evil.

 

[Link]

That's why the Abrahamic faiths don't work in a rational understanding of how things are, and are a trap that many children get indoctrinated into before they have any reasoning skill. To my mind THAT is evil.

Care to explain? I don't understand the point you are trying to make.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

This is why I've said argument from divine hiddenness is stronger as well as why God does not talk to us is a stronger argument from the general PoE.

"Argument from divine hiddenness"?

Please, not this nonsense. I have no interest in watching you do mental gymnastics to argue that a lack of evidence for God is somehow evidence for God.

 

[Link]

"Argument from divine hiddenness"?

Please, not this nonsense. I have no interest in watching you do mental gymnastics to argue that a lack of evidence for God is somehow evidence for God.

The argument is an argument against God's existence.

 

[Link]

I'm saying it's a stronger argument against God's existence then the general PoE.

 

[dybmh]

There is none

Why so close minded?

Adam (a) doubted the veils of light,

Adam listened to Eve. But we don't know what she said. I think she told the truth: "Adam I ate the fruit now I'm going to die" Then Adam chose to die and ate the fruit rather than live without her. It's a classic love story.

we became too volatile and not everyone repented with Adam (a). The world had to fall, because, very little would have not sided with Iblis if it remained in it's state.

I tend to think the fall was required to prevent over population. IOW, introducing death was part of the plan. And speaking of Iblis ( the serpent ? ), we don't know what agreement was made or commandment was given to it. There's a lot in the story which is unknown.

And what is sad, is despite God going out of his way to humble us, we've become arrogant despite all that and rejected his guidance.

It's not all bad. There's a fine line between healthy pride and unhealthy arrogance, imo.

 

[Link]

Why so close minded?

If there was a way to avoid this world, God would've had it avoided. I myself see it as an error handling world that became inevitable because of free-will gone bad.

The one way was described by Imam Ali (a), as make it virtually impossible for Angels (a) to rebel against Adam (a) including Iblis who was once upon an Angel but that would result in a world that is full of arrogance and that is a worse world.

You can call it narrow minded but it's the only way I can live in this world with the degree of sufferings and evil it has.

The nature of veils of light and us being limited, is that we can always doubt as Iblis disbelieved in the veils of light and their Lord. God can force faith upon us, but it would be worthless, same way it would be worthless when people believe on the day of judgment.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Bingo. We see many theist debate themselves into a corner and often retreat to their final redoubt of an afterlife as God's pure place for humans, and this show justifies a fallen and savage (real) world experience. Of course this is completely irrational and devoid of any fact.

Many theists adopt a framework of belief that just can't stand up to scrutiny in open debate. The rational thing to do would be to abandon these religious beliefs.

What we see on here (and it's an almost daily occurrence), are endless circuitous debates, in which two parties resolutely refuse to even acknowledge the paradigm shift needed to comprehend the other's position. Each then claims victory, based on parameters not accepted by the other side.

So, by all means, claim your victory and enjoy it. It seems very important to you.

 

[blü 2]

What alternative is there to reason and logic? Logic is about self-consistency, and reason is about careful thinking with understanding of what follows from what. I don't see how you could do something besides that without it being nonsense in a very literal way.

Edit: Unless we're talking about art, feelings, the realm of aesthetic and things like that.

As I've mentioned in various previous threads, our morality has two sources ─ the evolved part and the acquired part.

We've evolved to have these moral tendencies ─ why? Because they're good for promoting tribal solidarity and cooperation, which have brought humans enormous benefits:

child nurture and protection
dislike of the one who harms
like of fairness and reciprocity
respect for authority
loyalty to the group
a sense of self-worth through self-denial

To which we can add our evolved conscience and our evolved capacity for empathy.

The rest of our morality is acquired from our upbringing, culture, education and experience. It deals very largely with how we should interact with others ─ older or younger, same or opposite sex, family or stranger, socially inferior or superior, and such things as dining together, observances like birth, coming of age, marriage and death, the rules of excretion and so on.

My point is that this system isn't the product of reason but of the evolutionary imperatives of surviving and breeding.

Reason only comes into it when we explore, describe and seek to explain our moral equipment, or how the rules should be applied in certain cases.

This is the background to the observation that "good" is what benefits or pleases me and mine and the causes I support; and "bad" is what is detrimental or displeasing to them ─ the 'me' here comes with the moral set-up above.

Of course our morality is only part of us. In the other corner are appetite, necessity, desire, ambition, competitiveness, obligation, social pressure, and other factors that demand our attention and need to be kept in balance.

 

[AlexanderG]

Lets say this God is someone who creates all the babies magically like a stork who brings babies. Hypothetically. Would you then ask "why did he create them to understand right and wrong. He should have created babies innocent and given us the right to nurture them the way we want"?

I don't think that's relevant. We don't need to talk about rearing children or even the form of original sin. The generalized form of my question is:

Why would a "good" god create people who lack the capacity to understand why they should do "X," and also create them knowing in advance that they will do "X" due to their nature he created them with, and then when they do "X," he holds them morally responsible and chooses to punish them in a way that corrupts his entire "perfect" creation?

Oh, and his punishment ultimately results in infinite suffering for nearly everyone.

This seems more like what an evil god would do, who actively intends misery for its own sake. Not only physical but also psychological suffering. Namely, he would create a corrupt world full of pain and suffering, and do it in such a way that he could gaslight all the little creatures he made, to avoid his own accountability, make them feel blameworthy instead and then punish them infinitely, with the only faint hope of escape being an eternity of servile worship of this god. I'm trying to imagine something more evil and I can't.

 

[AlexanderG]

Did you know that the word "evil" is not used in psychology? To my mind it is a very casual and imprecise word.

I think it's easier for atheists to acknowledge that nature works without any moral goodness. We don't like the savage nature of survival of the fittest when we witness it, whether antelopes being killed by a lion or a child dying from Leukemia. But we have the advantage of not having to reconcile these things with a God that is supposed to value humans as special, especially the young.

So evil is a human thing. And it's a religious thing. We all have adopted a certain framework and belief about evil even if we are atheists.

Right. I think evil is a subjective term. It means "Behaviors or events that most go against my goals and the things that I value."

This is what most people seem to mean by evil, even if they think their version is the "objective truth." All we have to do is observe that every single person is claiming a different "objective true evil" to see that it's actually subjective.

Still, there is a small set of things that goes against nearly everyone's shared values, and we almost universally agree that such things are "evil". Gratuitously harming children, for example. Most of these "universal" morals can be traced to evolution and can be observed in all the other social species, too.

 

[AlexanderG]

It's about humbling humans. It's the only way we can make it back to God and begin to see his veils of light and take guidance from them again. A little technology and medicine, and look how many atheists exist now. It would not be the case without medicine.

I think it's more that we can demonstrate that medicine cures disease, but when we study prayer it always has an effect identical to the control group, namely no effect at all.

There are now a lot of things that we can observe, confirm, and predict about reality. We can't observe, confirm, or predict anything about gods, and so atheists don't believe they are a part of reality. In point of fact, gods appear to be imaginary. We see no reason to "submit" to ignorance or needless suffering, when we can get off our knees and stand up, get to work, and cure both of these problems with science.

 

[We Never Know]

Did you know that the word "evil" is not used in psychology? To my mind it is a very casual and imprecise word.

I think it's easier for atheists to acknowledge that nature works without any moral goodness. We don't like the savage nature of survival of the fittest when we witness it, whether antelopes being killed by a lion or a child dying from Leukemia. But we have the advantage of not having to reconcile these things with a God that is supposed to value humans as special, especially the young.

So evil is a human thing. And it's a religious thing. We all have adopted a certain framework and belief about evil even if we are atheists.

Yep.
If a human is born with disease its evil.
If a dog is born with disease its not.

If a human kills another its evil.
If a lion kills an antelope its not.

I'm not up on the bible(as reading it) and if I remember didn't man have a life free of disease, sorrow, worry, would live for ever, etc until the fruit from a certain tree was eaten and then all that was voided?(something like that). So man basically brought evil upon himself.

 

[firedragon]

I don't think that's relevant. We don't need to talk about rearing children or even the form of original sin. The generalized form of my question is:

Why would a "good" god create people who lack the capacity to understand why they should do "X," and also create them knowing in advance that they will not do "X" due to their nature he created them with, and then when they do "X," he holds them morally responsible and chooses to punish them in a way that corrupts his entire "perfect" creation?

Oh, and his punishment ultimately results in infinite suffering for nearly everyone.

This seems more like what an evil god would do, who actively intends misery for its own sake. Not only physical but also psychological suffering. Namely, he would create a corrupt world full of pain and suffering, and do it in such a way that he could gaslight all the little creatures he made, to avoid his own accountability, make them feel blameworthy instead and then punish them infinitely, with the only faint hope of escape being an eternity of servile worship of this god. I'm trying to imagine something more evil and I can't.

I was addressing your particular question. Not you kind of changed it completely.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

............Today I'd like to talk about this little issue: ostensibly, given the premises that God exists, that God is omnipotent, that God is omniscient, and that God created humans deliberately, then it is reasonable to conclude that God is responsible for our moral compasses: that evaluation that we perform when we feel something has morally good or morally bad implications..................................

I find in the Bible 'our moral compass' is our: inborn conscience.
Because of conscience we can all act responsibly toward God.
So, unless it's damaged a well-trained conscience can be a good moral guide.
Because of conscience is why even the nations think of murder, stealing as wrong, etc.
Sure God is powerful, but that does Not mean He uses His power for bad.
For example: The God of the Bible can Not lie according to Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18.
So, yes God is responsible for our conscience (compass) but we are responsible if we ignore it.
One's conscience can become so calloused to the point of being so hard it No longer has feelings.

 

[1213]

....
If it is actually good, but registers on our moral compasses as bad, why did God give us malfunctioning moral cognitive faculties? Wouldn't that be an entirely new problem unto itself?

I think this requires the knowledge of why the moral compass says it is wrong or bad. After that I think it could be solved is the problem in the user or in the hardware.

 

[URAVIP2ME]

...............I'm not up on the bible(as reading it) and if I remember didn't man have a life free of disease, sorrow, worry, would live for ever, etc until the fruit from a certain tree was eaten and then all that was voided?(something like that). So man basically brought evil upon himself.

For someone who is Not up on Bible reading, seems to me you might be doing better than many.
Because Adam deliberately broke God's Law is why you can say man basically brought evil upon himself.
( Because we are innocent of what father Adam did is why God sent His Son to Earth for us )
After the Flood, as for animal life, man could eat meat but animals would have 'fear', so speak, of man.
After the coming time of Jesus' coming 'Glory Time' as found at Matthew 25:31-33 Jesus will reverse that 'fear'.
Man and animal will live in peaceful harmony - Isaiah 65:25; Isaiah 11:6-9; Isaiah 35th chapter.
If you want, you'll be able to sleep safely in the woods, the forest, according to Ezekiel 34:25

 

[URAVIP2ME]

I think this requires the knowledge of why the moral compass says it is wrong or bad. After that I think it could be solved is the problem in the user or in the hardware.

Unless damaged, mankind comes with an inborn conscience.
Because of conscience is why even the nations think of sealing,murder, etc. as wrong.
So, if the user of one's moral compass (conscience) ignores it then the conscience can become so hardened like calloused flesh seared by a hot branding iron.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The argument is an argument against God's existence.

Ah - my mistake. Sorry about the bad assumption.

 

[Link]

Ah - my mistake. Sorry about the bad assumption.

I struggled a lot with PoE, I use to make so many threads about it on atheistforums.org with different versions of PoE. Stronger versions such as:

If God wants humans to help alleviate or stop suffering, he would want to do so as well.
If God wants to stop suffering he can.
God would want humans to stop sufferings and alleviate it as much as possible.
God has not stopped suffering (should left this out as implicit, but just so no one nags).
Therefore God doesn't exist.

So many other versions I presented and tried to solve in my Deist/LP days. So I know it doesn't look good, but the argument from God's hiddenness and "why God does not speak to us?" objection are actually stronger versions of PoE or if not a version of PoE, they are individually stronger.

Here is one thread which I didn't argue for it, just my conclusions on PoE: Logic tells me God doesn't exist but my heart says otherwise. (atheistforums.org)

"I came to the realization that the problem of evil is most likely unsolvable. I struggle with it a lot. Moreover there is no logical argument or scientific evidence that leads to conclusion of a Creator that stands to reason.

But for some reason I find myself believing in God still. I feel connected to God.

Logic tells me God doesn't exist and my heart tells me God does exist."