The Problem of Evil, Messiah, and Wrath.

[muhammad_isa]

Ok. Imagine yourself being an omnipotent father, what outcome for your children would be better for them if they suffered?

There you go again.
You want to exploit the concept of God being "able to do all things".

You want it to mean that God can create any type of universe, where illogical absurdities exist.
Pointless conversation.

..Can we just deal with the universe that exists, please?
We often have to learn by our own mistakes. We suffer in the process.

 

[Koldo]

In this hypothethical, yes, diversty of challenges is valued along with improvement. But including all the permutations available in fantasy has unintended negative consequences interfering with improvement. The scientific method would be compromised; people would be limited to random, trial-and-error attempts to solve problems.

The current reality has a lot of diversity in challenges. Everyone has their own struggles.

What I'm arguing is that fantasy world challenges cannot be included in the perfect creation where the creator values improvement.

You say that but I don't quite get how you are reaching those conclusions. For instance, studying beasts and learning how to cast spells new spells, as in Harry Potter, involves the scientific method. If I understood you correctly you think that a fantasy world would be chaotic, but I don't see the rationale behind it.

An evaluation of extreme suffering is subjective. The intensity of the experience is greaty influenced by prior suffering and trauma. This means that there are many possible hell-like scenarios in the past and present. I'm not sure how you can confidently exclude these possibilities.

If the definition of hell-like is rigid, everyone experiences extreme suffering per your standards, then in my mind, that renders identical challenges. This would violate the parameter. But you disagree. I'm guessing we will need to skip over this point since we both are speculating on the experience of past generations and there's no way to really come to a reliable conclusion.

Speculation.

The experience of suffering is subjective and the intensity is greatly influenced by past suffering. For all we know, the intensity of suffering experienced by a fortunate family who at some point is deprived of food for a long time due to a drought, is approx the same as a less fortunate family who has lost many children and recently lost another. This is because the less fortunate family has adjusted to their reality where children often do not survive, but the more fortunate family has not adjusted to famine. I propose that if the intensity of the suffering is approx. the same then challenge is essentially the same eventhough the details of each experience is vastly different.
I think I am gonna have to illustrate what I am talking about rather than resorting to pure abstract thinking.

Have you ever heard of someone being raped for days with a steel pole, just after their eye balls were poked out of their face, while they hear the screams of their family, being only able to imagine what they are going through (is it something even worse?) and then not knowing whether to feel relief or despair once you can no longer hear their voices?

This is what I am calling extreme suffering. Do you mean to tell me such kind of experience was the norm in the past? Or even worse, that it is comparable to the suffering experienced by a rich kid that happens to be deprived of food at some point in their life?

I don't know how to tell you this any other way, but you are coming across as someone that lives in an ivory tower if you think people adjust to the reality that their children simply die...

The individual sacrifice which benefits many is an improvement. If the individual prospers and the collective degrades, that's not improvement. Therefore improvement of the collective is prioritized.

Ok, but why would the degradation of the individual justify the collective being improved when the individual didn't agree to it, nor is responsible for anything bad in particular?

Yes, but when isolated to the individual, the ends do not justify the means. The only way to reconcile an individual innocent tortured with a perfect creator is to consider the effect on the collective. If that is not rational/acceptable to you, I cannot fault your reasoning. If I was tortured and permanently disfigured and disabled I may not be able to rise above it. My family may not be able to rise above it. But that doesn't mean that no one, no family could improve as a result of it. When confronted with extreme hardship, it's natural ( at the very least ) to reassess priorities. That is ( at least ) a small improvement.

So it is alright to torture innocent people because someone might benefit from it? Don't you see the problem with what you are defending?

Until the guilt settles in. And the guilt lasts longer than the good feeling from over-eating.

Presuming they feel guilty, right?
Which can not be taken for granted.

No, I disagree. The 'high' from cheating on a test, in real time, would be diminshed when a person considers "what if i get caught". The same would be true in anticipation of cheating.

Actually, doing something risky, being aware of the risk, causes the 'high'.

 

[Koldo]

There you go again.
You want to exploit the concept of God being "able to do all things".

You want it to mean that God can create any type of universe, where illogical absurdities exist.
Pointless conversation.

1) You didn't answer the question.
2) You didn't show any logical absurdity.

..Can we just deal with the universe that exists, please?
We often have to learn by our own mistakes. We suffer in the process.

Very much in line with what I have told you before:
If we were to talk about the universe that exists we would be unable to talk about God. God is nowhere to be detected. It is as if he didn't exist, and therefore talking about God is just like talking about what doesn't exist.

Do you want to talk about God or do you want to talk about what is known to exist? You can't have it both ways.

 

[muhammad_isa]

1) You didn't answer the question.
2) You didn't show any logical absurdity.

That's right .. because you brought "omnipotent" into it..
What is your definition of omnipotent?
Does it include being able to create illogical fantasy worlds?

 

[Koldo]

That's right .. because you brought "omnipotent" into it..
What is your definition of omnipotent?
Does it include being able to create illogical fantasy worlds?

Omnipotence is unlimited power. I can further elaborate.... but... Didn't you say that you only want to talk about the universe that exist? Because honestly it is a waste of time to elaborate about God's purported powers if you are going to keep saying you only want to talk about things that exist.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Omnipotence is unlimited power. I can further elaborate.... but... Didn't you say that you only want to talk about the universe that exist? Because honestly it is a waste of time to elaborate about God's purported powers if you are going to keep saying you only want to talk about things that exist.

You mean that you consider it a waste of time..
It suggests to me that you would rather talk about hypothetical things that don't exist, rather than reality.
Each to their own.

Why not elaborate, in any case?
Does omnipotent include the logically impossible, or not?

 

[Koldo]

You mean that you consider it a waste of time..
It suggests to me that you would rather talk about hypothetical things that don't exist, rather than reality.

When I look at reality I see no God.
So yeah, I would say I am fairly entertained by talking about things don't exist.

Each to their own.

Why not elaborate, in any case?
Does omnipotent include the logically impossible, or not?

Why are you asking about that which doesn't exist?
Unlimited power doesn't exist in the universe, no matter how much I elaborate about it. Whether it includes the logically impossible or not.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Why are you asking about that which doesn't exist?
Unlimited power doesn't exist in the universe, no matter how much I elaborate about it. Whether it includes the logically impossible or not.

..so why ask "Imagine yourself being an omnipotent father, what outcome for your children would be better for them if they suffered?"

If I imagine that I'm an "omnipotent father", I don't imagine that I can do something illogical..
..such as create a square circle.
It is not coherent. If we think that omnipotent includes the incoherent, then language becomes meaningless.
Gobldibab di gobldigook?

 

[Koldo]

..so why ask "Imagine yourself being an omnipotent father, what outcome for your children would be better for them if they suffered?"

If I imagine that I'm an "omnipotent father", I don't imagine that I can do something illogical..
..such as create a square circle.
It is not coherent. If we think that omnipotent includes the incoherent, then language becomes meaningless.
Gobldibab di gobldigook?

I will happily give a proper reply to your post, and keep going with this conversation, if you agree to no longer use the 'I am not gonna talk about hyphotetical things that don't exist' card. Do you agree?

 

[muhammad_isa]

I will happily give a proper reply to your post, and keep going with this conversation, if you agree to no longer use the 'I am not gonna talk about hyphotetical things that don't exist' card. Do you agree?

I'll agree for this thread only..

 

[Koldo]

I'll agree for this thread only..

Ok then.
There are multiple different understandings of omnipotence, one of which allows for God doing even the logically contradictory. I don't stand by this definition though. The definition I use is 'the ability to do everything except for what is logically contradictory'.

So, for example: Being able to teleport to Mars and make Saturn disappear is within omnipotence's realm. Creating a married bachelor is not.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So, for example: Being able to teleport to Mars and make Saturn disappear is within omnipotence's realm. Creating a married bachelor is not.

OK.

..so back to your question as to why G-d doesn't stop people committing evil acts against others..
I said "G-d presumably thinks that overall, it is better for mankind as a whole to give US the responsibity, rather than mollycoddling us."
If we were unable to commit evil, because G-d prevented it each and every time, then why would He give us free-will in the first place?
What is the purpose of giving us a free-will, only to be prevented from choosing?
Makes little sense to me.

 

[Koldo]

OK.

..so back to your question as to why G-d doesn't stop people committing evil acts against others..
I said "G-d presumably thinks that overall, it is better for mankind as a whole to give US the responsibity, rather than mollycoddling us."
If we were unable to commit evil, because G-d prevented it each and every time, then why would He give us free-will in the first place?
What is the purpose of giving us a free-will, only to be prevented from choosing?
Makes little sense to me.

What do you understand as free will? Elaborate on the concept.

 

[dybmh]

You say that but I don't quite get how you are reaching those conclusions. For instance, studying beasts and learning how to cast spells new spells, as in Harry Potter, involves the scientific method. If I understood you correctly you think that a fantasy world would be chaotic, but I don't see the rationale behind it.

OK. Harry Potter, studying beasts and discovering new spells... On what does Harry base his hypothesis? If Harry has a problem, a challenge that he needs to over come ( if he needs to improve ) how does he come up with the magical solution to the problem? He couldn't use intuition or pattern recognition to narrow the possibilities like we can in a world that is governed by natural laws. The possibilities are endless, it would take virtually forever ( barring luck ) to come up with the solution.

So, let's pretend that Harry needs to cure sleep walking. How does he begin to find a solution. He would ponder:

If pheonix tears cures blindness, then maybe rhino's toe nail cures sleep walking?
Or maybe rhino's toe nail cures insomnia, and it's 4 baby newts that cure sleep walking?
Or maybe that's bed wetting,
Or maybe
Or maybe
etc.​

There's no end in sight for Harry's cure to sleep walking. Including even one fantasy world challenge ( like curing sleep walking with magic ) compromises the ability to improve because there are no longer reliable predictable phenomena to inform the direction of the problem solving process.

It's not that the world would be chaotic if a few fantasy world scenarios existed, increasing the diversity of the challenges in creation. It's that problem solving would essentially take forever. No one would ever improve.

I don't know how to tell you this any other way, but you are coming across as someone that lives in an ivory tower if you think people adjust to the reality that their children simply die...

Please be fair, the details of what I said matter. The people in my example have lost many children, and they continue to try to have more. Imagine a primitive family where the children, for whatever reason, often do not survive. After the 10th child dies, the family that continues to try, yes, I think it's possible they would have adjusted in some way.

Have you ever heard of someone being raped for days with a steel pole, just after their eye balls were poked out of their face, while they hear the screams of their family, being only able to imagine what they are going through (is it something even worse?) and then not knowing whether to feel relief or despair once you can no longer hear their voices?

This is what I am calling extreme suffering. Do you mean to tell me such kind of experience was the norm in the past? Or even worse, that it is comparable to the suffering experienced by a rich kid that happens to be deprived of food at some point in their life?

What I'm saying is anytime anywhere someone is tortured like that, it is hell-like even if it only happens to one person. When it's happening and probably long after it is 'hell'. I thought I made that clear earlier, but maybe not.

What I'm also saying is that yes, the rich kid who goes without food for an extended period of time also goes through their own version of hell. Having never gone long without food, they would be intensly affected by slowly starving to death.

You're welcome to disagree. Unless I missed it, I notice you haven't responded to my repeated assertion that 'hell-like' is subjective. Can we at least agree to this?

Ok, but why would the degradation of the individual justify the collective being improved when the individual didn't agree to it, nor is responsible for anything bad in particular?

Aaaah. Why is it 'justified'? I didn't say it was justified. It's completely unfair. But fairness is not on the list of values in this hypothetical. I think we have 3 values at this point: improvement, freedom, and diversity of challenges.

Now, please look back to what I said. I said {paraphrasing} "if the individual sacrifices and the collective benefits that's improvement." "If the collective sacrifices and the individual benefits that's not improvement." So the rule is, improvement is based on the collective not the individual. Why? Look at it from the creator's perspective, they would naturally be more concerned with the collective. I hope we don't need too go to deep into this. To me it seems obvious.

So it is alright to torture innocent people because someone might benefit from it? Don't you see the problem with what you are defending?

No. This is my position from several posts back: "when torture is improper, it exists as challenge to be eliminated at some time in the future". You then asked about the individual whether they are granted an opportunity to improve by being tortured. I answered, "Yes, but the ends don't justify the means." Torture is not something that is valued in this hypothetical. Yes, hardship enables a lot of opportunity for improvment. As I said, the least of which is a re-evaluation of what's truly important in a person's life.

If anything, yes, I am defending hardship, it has a silver lining.

Presuming they feel guilty, right?

Please, what's the purpose in pushing back on "feeling guilty"? What's the point?

Actually, doing something risky, being aware of the risk, causes the 'high'.

All I was saying is that a person can intellectually reduce pleasure associated with cheating on an exam. They have the means to improve on this flaw that some people have. A risk-taker would also have the means to overcome this flaw, but it would happen in another way. Perhaps it wouldn't be through intellectually focusing on the consequences, perhaps it would be focusing on their family, "what would my mother think of me?" "what happens to my family if i go to jail?" Etc.

 

[muhammad_isa]

What do you understand as free will? Elaborate on the concept.

It's not difficult.
You just said "I will happily give a proper reply to your post, and keep going with this conversation, if you agree to no longer use the 'I am not gonna talk about hyphotetical things that don't exist' card. Do you agree?"

..and I said "OK, I agree".
Is that some random decision or me exercising my free-will to choose?

 

[Koldo]

OK. Harry Potter, studying beasts and discovering new spells... On what does Harry base his hypothesis? If Harry has a problem, a challenge that he needs to over come ( if he needs to improve ) how does he come up with the magical solution to the problem? He couldn't use intuition or pattern recognition to narrow the possibilities like we can in a world that is governed by natural laws. The possibilities are endless, it would take virtually forever ( barring luck ) to come up with the solution.

So, let's pretend that Harry needs to cure sleep walking. How does he begin to find a solution. He would ponder:

If pheonix tears cures blindness, then maybe rhino's toe nail cures sleep walking?
Or maybe rhino's toe nail cures insomnia, and it's 4 baby newts that cure sleep walking?
Or maybe that's bed wetting,
Or maybe
Or maybe
etc.​

There's no end in sight for Harry's cure to sleep walking. Including even one fantasy world challenge ( like curing sleep walking with magic ) compromises the ability to improve because there are no longer reliable predictable phenomena to inform the direction of the problem solving process.

It's not that the world would be chaotic if a few fantasy world scenarios existed, increasing the diversity of the challenges in creation. It's that problem solving would essentially take forever. No one would ever improve.

I still don't quite get what you are getting into since I see no distinction between your example and what happens in our world already.

If phoenix tears cure blindness, it cures blindness. That's an improvement. Trial and error just like our world?

Please be fair, the details of what I said matter. The people in my example have lost many children, and they continue to try to have more. Imagine a primitive family where the children, for whatever reason, often do not survive. After the 10th child dies, the family that continues to try, yes, I think it's possible they would have adjusted in some way.

They don't "adjust" though. They still suffer a lot.

What I'm saying is anytime anywhere someone is tortured like that, it is hell-like even if it only happens to one person. When it's happening and probably long after it is 'hell'. I thought I made that clear earlier, but maybe not.

What I'm also saying is that yes, the rich kid who goes without food for an extended period of time also goes through their own version of hell. Having never gone long without food, they would be intensly affected by slowly starving to death.

You're welcome to disagree. Unless I missed it, I notice you haven't responded to my repeated assertion that 'hell-like' is subjective. Can we at least agree to this?

No, we don't agree. To say that any suffering could possibly be hell-like is to dimish the suffering of the ones that actually went through extreme suffering.

Also, I disagree that a world with one instance of extreme case could called a hell-like world. The distinguishing feature of an hyphotetical hell is that everyone suffers a lot, not just a single individual or a small group of them. An ordinary world might have hell-like individual experiences though and yet not be hell-like.

Aaaah. Why is it 'justified'? I didn't say it was justified. It's completely unfair. But fairness is not on the list of values in this hypothetical. I think we have 3 values at this point: improvement, freedom, and diversity of challenges.

Now, please look back to what I said. I said {paraphrasing} "if the individual sacrifices and the collective benefits that's improvement." "If the collective sacrifices and the individual benefits that's not improvement." So the rule is, improvement is based on the collective not the individual. Why? Look at it from the creator's perspective, they would naturally be more concerned with the collective. I hope we don't need too go to deep into this. To me it seems obvious.

I am going to disagree on part. Not with the statement that collective improvement is unimportant, but rather than it is more important than individual improvement to the point individual improvement doesn't really matter in face of collective improvement. Why sacrifice individual improvement at all?

No. This is my position from several posts back: "when torture is improper, it exists as challenge to be eliminated at some time in the future". You then asked about the individual whether they are granted an opportunity to improve by being tortured. I answered, "Yes, but the ends don't justify the means." Torture is not something that is valued in this hypothetical. Yes, hardship enables a lot of opportunity for improvment. As I said, the least of which is a re-evaluation of what's truly important in a person's life.

If anything, yes, I am defending hardship, it has a silver lining.

Either torture provides room for individual improvement or it doesn't. If it provides room for individual improvement, as you have said it does, it must therefore be desirable by the Creator.

Please, what's the purpose in pushing back on "feeling guilty"? What's the point?

Not everyone feels guilty.

All I was saying is that a person can intellectually reduce pleasure associated with cheating on an exam. They have the means to improve on this flaw that some people have. A risk-taker would also have the means to overcome this flaw, but it would happen in another way. Perhaps it wouldn't be through intellectually focusing on the consequences, perhaps it would be focusing on their family, "what would my mother think of me?" "what happens to my family if i go to jail?" Etc.

None of that takes away from the pleasure, it takes away from the likelihood of doing something though. Except perhaps from long term pleasure when people could be bragging about that?

 

[Koldo]

It's not difficult.
You just said "I will happily give a proper reply to your post, and keep going with this conversation, if you agree to no longer use the 'I am not gonna talk about hyphotetical things that don't exist' card. Do you agree?"

..and I said "OK, I agree".
Is that some random decision or me exercising my free-will to choose?

Would you say that having the choice to reply a post is sufficient to qualify as free will?
Or do you also need to be able to kill people? Does that involve killing people in any specific way? Must you be able to kill them in every single imaginable way? Does a quadriplegic person have free will even they can't directly kill pretty much anyone? There's a lot of details involved when you resort to talking about free will.

 

[dybmh]

I still don't quite get what you are getting into since I see no distinction between your example and what happens in our world already.

If phoenix tears cure blindness, it cures blindness. That's an improvement. Trial and error just like our world?

The distinction is, in a world governed by natural laws, each discovery informs the next discovery making each subsequent discovery quicker. Knowledge compounds over time making improvement easier. One has the advantage of deductive reasoning and intuition. Do we agree to this point?

In a hypothetical fantasy world, there are no natural laws, no underlying principles to discover, no axioms to go by. It's all limitless, unbounded possibility. One discovery does not inform future discoveries. Knowledge does not compound. There is no deduction and intuition. All of these tools are unavailable in a fantasy world for solving fantasy problems. Because of this, solving a fantasy problem **in a systemic process** becomes very difficult. The only option is to guess&try, random trial and error. This would hamper improvement. So it's invalid.

The example I gave about the phoenix tears is: one cannot deduce or intuit what could possibly cure sleep walking simly by knowing that phoenix tears cure blindness. In a fantasy world in order to discover a magical cure for sleep walking, the only available approach is trial and error.

They don't "adjust" though. They still suffer a lot.

They probably adjust a little. Have you ever heard of the 5 stages of grief? It's a process each person goes through with the loss of a loved one. I don't think this excludes parents who lose a child. The last stage is acceptance.

No, we don't agree. To say that any suffering could possibly be hell-like is to dimish the suffering of the ones that actually went through extreme suffering.

Also, I disagree that a world with one instance of extreme case could called a hell-like world. The distinguishing feature of an hyphotetical hell is that everyone suffers a lot, not just a single individual or a small group of them. An ordinary world might have hell-like individual experiences though and yet not be hell-like.

OK. But before I respond, is "hell-like" objective or subjective?

I am going to disagree on part. Not with the statement that collective improvement is unimportant, but rather than it is more important than individual improvement to the point individual improvement doesn't really matter in face of collective improvement. Why sacrifice individual improvement at all?

Try to imagine a general sacrificing 200 soldiers to rescue 1 soldier. Did the general make the right decision? If a general makes that decision repeatedly, the army is decimated. It makes no sense from the perspective of the creator to favor the individual in spite of the collective.

Either torture provides room for individual improvement or it doesn't. If it provides room for individual improvement, as you have said it does, it must therefore be desirable by the Creator.

Nope, can't be. Torture cannot be valued if the purpose is to reduce and eliminate it. The fact that it has a potential benefit is irrelevent.

Not everyone feels guilty.

So what?

None of that takes away from the pleasure, it takes away from the likelihood of doing something though. Except perhaps from long term pleasure when people could be bragging about that?

Sure it does, you can't enjoy being sneaky if you're worried about getting caught. The pleasure from being sneaky is from being far from being caught. Maybe the pleasure for a risk taker increases with the likelyhood of getting caught. Like an exhibitionist? But that's simply another case. Each situation is different, you can't claim there is no possible way to mitigate this pleasure without some evidence.

Here's some advice I found online regading how to quit stealing. Notice the intellectual and emotional approach.

Thinking about the consequences of your behaviors can help to reduce impulsivity. If you have been nearly caught, or have been caught (or caught several times), write all of this down. Also write down your own subsequent feelings, such as shame and guilt, and the actions you use to try to cope with these feelings or remorse or disgust.

6 Ways to Stop Your Addiction to Stealing - wikiHow​

 

[muhammad_isa]

Would you say that having the choice to reply a post is sufficient to qualify as free will?
Or do you also need to be able to kill people?

I don't see that whether it is possible for a person to be killed or not is relevant to the discussion.
Are you suggesting that we should not be able to die, and live forever?

 

[Koldo]

I don't see that whether it is possible for a person to be killed or not is relevant to the discussion.
Are you suggesting that we should not be able to die, and live forever?

I am asking what you understand as qualifying as free will. Do you have to be able to kill people to have free will?