Remember the words of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) in Mel Brooks’: Young Frankenstein (1974):
“Please! Remain in your seats, I beg you! We are not children here…we are scientists! I assure you, there is nothing to fear!”
[size=150]INTRODUCTION[/size]
David Hume (following Epicurus), in one fell stroke, posits a no-nonsense conclusion to The Problem of Evil. In the philosophy of religion and theology, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of God, a force for infinite good:
God’s power we allow is infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy. Therefore he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose. Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these. In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men?
-David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
Hume’s query is an expansion of the “riddle” of Epicurus:
[b]In the philosophy of religion and theology, the problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of God, a force for infinite good. The problem is most often discussed in the context of the personal god of the Abrahamic religions, but is also relevant to polytheistic traditions involving many gods. A proposed solution to this dilemma is called a theodicy.
Epicurus is generally credited with first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called “the Epicurean paradox” or “the riddle of Epicurus.” In this form, the argument is not really a paradox or a riddle, but is considered by some critics as being a[/b] reductio ad absurdum of the premises.
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?” — Epicurus, as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
Atheist classicalist James H. Dee examines the problem in detail:
[b]"In it’s most simplified form, the problem arises when one makes three simultaneous assertions in a firmly monotheistic context: ‘God is all-knowing’, ‘God is all-powerful’, and ‘God is absolutely good.’ But the world we see around us, both now and in the past, does not conform to the expectations that might be created by those three statements.
Instead, we find horrors and miseries at all times and places, some caused by blind natural forces, but many inflicted deliberately by humans upon each other, often with a staggering level of violence and cruelty.
It is simply self-contradictory to contemplate the horrifying spectacle of human misery, especially the first 95,000 years of our species, and then use the word “good” in it’s[/b] ordinary-language meaning to describe an entity which, by definition, must have the power to eliminate evil totally and forever."
(Dee, James H.: Good God" Is A Virtual Contradiction In Terms, Editorial, Austin-American Statesman June 23, 2001)
NEWS REPORT: PARIS — [b]A train slammed into a bus carrying schoolchildren at a railroad crossing in the French Alps on Monday, killing seven children and injuring 24 people, regional officials said.
The bus was carrying 50 middle-school students, five adults and a driver on a field trip to a historic village on the shores of Lake Geneva, according to the gendarmes service in the Haute-Savoie region. The collision ripped off part of the bus’ rear and caused its roof to cave in.
The seven dead were all children on the bus, according to the regional administration. Three of the injured bus passengers were in serious condition. Several passengers on the train, on a route between Evian in France and Geneva, Switzerland, also had light injuries. Authorities had originally said 30 people were injured.[/b]
(FoxNews.com: Seven Children Dead When Train Crashes Into School Bus in Eastern France, Monday, June 02, 2008)
[size=140][b]• Can God be trusted to protect YOU and the people you love?
• Does God adhere to the Golden Rule, or does he rule in a “Do as I say and not as I do” manner?
• Does “goodness” to God even remotely resemble “goodness” as understood by human beings?[/b][/size]
[b]An analysis of the moral nature of God (is God good or evil?) must face the fact that negative experience need not exist in the first place. There is no defensible or ethical reason for the existence of negative experience if one has the power to prevent it from the very start.
The true nature of God, it is submitted,[/b] is revealed in analysis of the Problem of Evil. Dare to look at the evidence without turning away. God could have prevented the existence of negative experience from the beginning, but did not: Why?
“Forrest…why’d this happen?”
[size=90]The dying words of Forrest’s (Tom Hanks) best friend, Benjamin Buford “Bubba” Blue (Mykelti Williamson) in the film: Forrest Gump (1994)[/size]
Are YOU getting any of this? Who or what’s running the world? Why is [b]this happening? Who WANTS this to happen? Remember, everything that happens occurs because something or Someone causes or allows it to happen. This is a certainty. The answer to the riddle of the Sphinx lies in the nature of a God that permits the weaknesses, temptations, and suffering of man.
Are we dealing with a God that will compensate humans for their suffering in the end, or are we faced with an evil Mr. Mxyzptlk of a God who has never cared and perceives humans as playthings whose sole purpose is to “give glory to God" as punching bags for his malevolent will?[/b]
[size=90](Moore, Alan and Swan, Curt: Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? (featuring the final appearance of the Silver Age Superman), DC Comics, 1986)[/size]
[b]Understanding God’s motivation for the allowance evil is difficult, as it is obscured by logical inconsistency. For example, Fundamentalist Christian theology is deeply mysterious, and so much of it is taken for granted. For those of us with Christian backgrounds, the mythology, if you will, is simply thrown into our laps and we are asked to swallow it without question. But thousands of questions beg: If God hates sin and has the power to remove sin through Christ (and to lobotomize the inhabitants of heavenly in order to prevent the re-emergence of sin in the afterlife), then why the problematic “in-between”?
Surely God knew what he was getting into before he created Adam. Why place the “Tree Of Knowledge Of Good And Evil” (given its ability to bring sin and death) in the garden of Eden in the first place? When it comes to the question of the limit of God’s influence over man, is God responsible[/b] only for creating the physical nature of human beings? If so, then who or what is responsible for human consciousness, volition, and human nature? Why the Big Guilt Trip over sin, guilt, and punishment, particularly when one considers the pre-damned [b](those who God created despite the fact that they were predestined to reject him and be condemned to hell)?
Judeo-Christian theology is a mystery, and there’s so much we don’t understand. But Fundamentalists stick to their guns nevertheless.[/b]
[size=150]No “Problem Of Evil” For Atheists[/size]
[b]If God does not exist, there’s no need to bang one’s head against the wall. Human evil is only an unfortunate side-effect of natural laws and processes. According to Bertrand Russell, all human evil, goodness, and endeavor are nothing but “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms”.
For those who do not accept the premise of a benevolent god, no problem of evil exists.[/b]
Epicurus drew the conclusion that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of the gods, who care about the matters of mankind, assuming absolute concepts of benevolence, knowledge, and power. More generally, no paradox or problem exists for those who do not accept the premises, in particular the existence of a benevolent god or gods.
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
Evidential problem of evil
As argued by Paul Draper in a seminal article of the magazine Nous (1989), the evidential problem of evil is as follows:
(1) Gratuitous evils exist.
(2) The Hypothesis of Indifference (i.e. that if there are supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils) is a better explanation for (1) than theism.
(3)Therefore, evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists, exists.
Argument from evil natural laws and processes
(1) A god is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent.
(2) If a god exists, then there exist no instances of ultimately evil natural laws or processes.
(3) The laws of predation are ultimately evil.
(4) There are instances of the laws of predation.
(5) Therefore, no god exists.
The “argument from evil natural laws and processes” is expressed in fiction. It is vehemently proposed during a tense, dramatic exchange between Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) and his rescuer and companion, Anna Montez (Alice Braga) in the 2007 film adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel: I Am Legend:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2nyNomnAL8[/youtube]
Inductive argument from evil
(1) All evil in the kinds of created entities are the result of the fallibility of one or more of its creators. (Premise)
(2) The universe is a created entity. (Premise)
(3) The universe contains evil. (Premise)
(4) Evil is the result of the actions of a fallible creator(s) or is not the result of any creator(s). (From 1, 2 and 3 by predictive inference)
(5) If god created the universe, then he is fallible. (From 4)
(6) Therefore, god did not create the universe, is imperfect, or does not exist. (From 5)
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
[Note: The terms: “fallible” and “imperfect” make sense if they refer to “imperfect goodness”. Anything beyond this is nebulous and meaningless (e.g. what does it mean for God to be “perfect” if one is not referring to perfect goodness[b]?).
Imperfect goodness is the failure to treat everyone good all the time. If one states that God is fallible and imperfect, then one states that God is incapable (or unwilling) to treat everyone with favor.][/b]
[size=150]Making The Problem Of Evil As Simple As Possible: A Disambiguation Of Terms (Part One)[/size]
[size=130]To understand what’s going on[/size], the “Problem of Evil” should be described in a way that (hopefully) leaves little room for meaningless semantic argument over the terms. For example, one can disambiguate omnibenevolence in order to ensure unanimous agreement over the meaning of the word whenever it appears. It helps to also disambiguate the term omnipotence.
[size=150]A Disambiguation Of “Omnibenevolence”[/size]
[b]“Benevolence” is behavior that consistently provides the well-being of others without expectation of reward. This is the typical meaning of the term.
“OMNI-benevolence", then, can be defined as “the favorable treatment of all without exception”.
However, “benevolence” (a behavior) is typically confused with “inner goodness” (the inability to experience or perceive malice). This article will take advantage of the confusion (and half-heartedly agree with dictionary and layman argument that benevolence is inner goodness to a degree) in order to decompose “omnibenevolence” into three types (depicting a pattern of behavior, a psychological state, or a combination of the two).
Thus, when one states that God is “omnibenevolent” one implies that God is either:[/b]
-
Psychologically omnibenevolent (having mental “all-goodness” without the demonstration of “good” behavior)
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Behaviorally omnibenevolent (behaving in an externally “all-good” manner regardless of true moral nature or motive)
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Psycho-behaviorally omnibenevolent (having mental “all-goodness” that consistently expresses itself in constant demonstration of “good” behavior).
Thus God is “all-good” if he possesses:
(1) Blind Omnibenevolence (psychological) aka Type-1 Omnibenevolence or 1-Omnibenevolence
(2) Knowing-But-Tolerant (of Evil) Omnibenevolence (behavioral/psycho-behavioral) aka Type-2 Omnibenevolence or 2-Omnibenevolence
(3) Knowing-But-Intolerant (of Evil) Omnibenevolence (psycho-behavioral) aka Type-3 Omnibenevolence or 3-Omnibenevolence
- BLIND OMNIBENEVOLENCE (Type-1 Omnibenevolence)
Blind Omnibenevolence is the inability to perceive or conceive of evil. This perceptual blindness absolves one from blame for the deliberate [b]creation or allowance of evil.
A blindly omnibenevolent God is lost in a world deep within the mind, unable to possess even a rudimentary concept of the external world. The God is thus blind to human existence, which in the absence of his interference arises from natural laws and processes. A blindly omnibenevolent God is “all-good” due to the inability to perceive evil; the God cannot prevent evil or divinely interfere to protect the innocent while locked away in eternal catatonia.[/b]
[size=90](Moore, Alan and Gibbons, Dave: For The Man Who Has Everything, Superman Annual #11, DC Comics 1985)[/size]
- KNOWING-BUT-TOLERANT (OF EVIL) OMNIBENEVOLENCE (Type-2 Omnibenevolence)
This type of psycho-behavioral [b]omnibenevolence is characterized (psychologically) by an absence of malice (save toward the wicked), and an absence of human failing and weakness.
Proponents of free will, when faced with the problem of God’s co-existence with evil, will typically ‘solve’ the problem of evil and free will by invoking a God with Type 2-Omnibenevolence. A 2-Omnibenevolent God is absolved of evil through an inscrutable law that makes it OK to allow “bad things to happen to good people”. The God is “right” no matter what he does, as he freely utilizes or permits suffering for the sake of:[/b]
(a) The development of moral character from suffering (the learning of patience, courage, insight, etc.)
(b) The ‘greater good’ of free will, allowing subjects the freedom to be good or bad in order to be a ‘good God’ by allowing man to be truly free, despite the collateral damage resulting from freedom to commit evil
Despite the allowance and use of evil for positive ends, it is believed that a 2-Omnibenevolent God will compensate non-sociopaths (or at least Christian non-sociopaths) for earthly suffering in the afterlife.
QUESTIONING TYPE-2 OMNIBENEVOLENCE IN THE GRANTING OF FREE WILL
It is believed that there is an inherent goodness or morality in the granting of free will:
St. Irenaeus (circa 130 - 202AD) argued that God had to give us free will in order to become moral, but the side-effect of that necessary endowment was evil, both moral and natural.
•God’s aim when he created the world was to make humans flawless, in his likeness (as in Genesis)
•Genuine human perfection cannot be ready-made but must develop through free choice.
•Since God had to give us free choice, he had to give us the potential to disobey him.
•There would be no such potential if there were never any possibility of evil. If humans were made ready- perfected, and if God policed his world continually, there would be no free will.
•Therefore, the natural order had to be designed with the possibility of causing harm (natural evil), humans had to be imperfect (moral evil), and God had to stand back from his creation (not police it). Otherwise humans could not develop.
•Humans use their freedom to disobey God, causing suffering.
•God cannot compromise our freedom by removing evil.
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
[b]However, one can argue that St. Irenaeus makes ad hoc assumptions about the nature of the world in order to save belief in free will. For example, why cannot human perfection be ready-made? Isn’t it possible for humans to develop without free will? Does free will require the existence of evil (it is not clear why evil must exist in order for there to be free will)? Irenaeus (and others) seem to dream up ad hoc limitations to the nature of existence (and God) that may in reality be false.
Free will, in contemporary theology, is taken for granted as a necessary good, but one can argue that there is no good reason to believe it. Ad hoc characterizations of the nature of the world are typically posited with unthinking confidence in order to make a theory or concept more iron-clad and fundamental than it truly is.[/b]
Richard Swinburne maintains that it does not make sense to assume there are such greater goods (such as the ‘greater good’ of free will), unless we know what they are, i.e., we have a successful theodicy.
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
[b]Finally, if God cannot be moral unless he grants free will, in what sense is this freedom ‘moral’ to innocent victims receiving the ‘short end of the stick’ in the freedom to commit evil?
One should remind proponents of free will that if one believes that God is right to allow subjects the freedom to choose evil, then one believes that God’s allowance of free will has greater significance than the feelings, rights, and lives of innocent victims of evil.[/b]
Sorry lady! No use asking God for help! The “greater good” of allowing this guy the free will to suffocate you is more important to God than YOU are!
QUESTIONING TYPE-2 OMNIBENEVOLENCE AND ITS USE OF EVIL FOR CHARACTER-BUILDING
[size=90]“An angel killed my mom
so I would be nicer
to people at work.”[/size]
[size=90]-Joke by female comedianne on the morning talk-radio program: The Dudley And Bob Show, KLBJ-FM Austin, Texas[/size]
A 2-Omnibenevolent God utilizes evil for character-building, allowing misfortunes to function as evolutionary pressures that instill positive qualities such as bravery, patience, kindness and wisdom.
Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft provides several answers to the problem of evil and suffering, including that:
a) God may use short-term evils for long-range goods
b) God created the possibility of evil, but not the evil itself
c) God uses suffering to bring about moral character, quoting apostle Paul in Romans 5
d) Suffering can bring people closer to God
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
[b]But is there an inextricable and ad hoc “eye of newt, wing of bat” connection between suffering and goodness? Is suffering a necessary ingredient in a cosmic “magic spell” that guarantees moral character? Might the qualities learned from suffering exist in a form as valid as adaptive morality?
Combined with the idea that there is ethical preference for free will over universal safety and happiness, one can argue that ethical preference for positive moral/psychological development from suffering is a matter, again, of an alien moral perception of God that views suffering as a necessary aspect of existence. But why is suffering a necessity, save by ad hoc assertion? What magical law necessitates that man must suffer and that this is somehow the ‘correct’ nature of things?
Why must some beings suffer while others remain untouched by human woe and weakness? Is the difference between those who suffer and those who do not a matter of cosmic luck-of-the-draw?
In the end, if the “benevolence and mercy of God resembles the benevolence and mercy of men” (Hume), God would be opposed to all evil and suffering. Being omniscient, God would devise positive psychological and moral qualities for his subjects that are just as valid and meaningful as those derived from suffering.[/b]
- KNOWING-BUT-INTOLERANT (OF EVIL) OMNIBENEVOLENCE (Type-3 Omnibenevolence)
A God possessing Type-3 Omnibenevolence (aka God The Moral Policeman or God The Moral Tyrant[b]) prevents the existence of evil by forcing his subjects to be good all the time.
In his role as the[/b] Moral Tyrant, God comprehends evil but hates the phenomenon enough to ensure that knowledge of evil exists only in his [b]mind—sparing others this knowledge by imposing an all-good world inhabited only by all-good subjects.
While an all-good world infallibly operates under his inexorable power, the Type-3 Omnibenevolent God imposes self-lobotomy in order to rid himself of the knowledge of evil. The lobotomy achieves psychological-omnibenevolence without Type-1 catatonia (God suffers no post-lobotomy psychosis).
A Type-3 Omnibenevolent God is (or Type-3 Omnibenevolent beings are) schematically described below:[/b]
-
A Type-3 Omnibenevolent God is omnipotent and omniscient.
-
All Type-3 Omnibenevolent beings are immediately opposed to evil and cannot tolerate it for a millisecond. Type-3 Omnibenevolent beings who can eliminate evil will do so immediately when they become aware of it.
-
A Type-3 Omnibenevolent God has no reason not to eliminate evil.
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A Type-3 Omnibenevolent God has no reason not to act immediately.
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Whatever the positive end result of suffering is, A Type-3 Omnibenevolent God can bring it about in ways that do not include suffering.
[size=150] MAKING THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE (PART TWO): A DISAMBIGUATION OF THE TERM: “OMNIPOTENCE” [/size]
“Omnipotence” in this article is relevant only in its influence over the existence of evil. It is defined here as: the ability to immediately remove evil from the universe at a whim.
[size=150]Approaching The Truth! Which Type Of “Omnibenevolence” Is Implied In The Reductio Ad Absurdum Of Hume And Epicurus?[/size]
[b]Out of the three types of “Omnibenevolence” described above (Type-1, Type-2, or Type-3), which type is implied in the reductio ad absurdum of Hume and Epicurus?
Blind omnibenevolence (Type-1 Omnibenevolence) is ruled out. God is absolved from responsibility for evil if he is catatonic.
Knowing-But-Tolerant Omnibenevolence (Type-2 Omnibenevolence) is ruled out, as a Type-2 Omnibenevolent God, while not maliciously evil, nevertheless tolerates and allows evil and[/b] is evil b in his use of misery and suffering to develop moral character.
If Type-1 and Type-2 Omnibenevolence are ruled out, which type of “Omnibenevolence” contradicts the evidence of natural and deliberate evil?[/b]
Type-3 Omnibenevolence [b]is the undisputed winner, and it is the existence of THIS type of omnibenevolence that Hume and Epicurus questions. The Problem of Evil, according to Epicurus and Hume, is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil and suffering in the world with a Type-3 Omnibenevolent God.
This happens to be HUGELY important—as the existence or nonexistence of a 3-Omnibenevolent God reveals the truth about the type of world[/b] YOU [b]happen to inhabit (if God exists)!
If one accepts the premise of the problem of evil, one will conclude that the existence of evil PROVES that a God with Type-3 Omnibenevolence[/b] DOES NOT EXIST!
As stated by Paul Draper:
“Therefore, evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists (if God is commonly understood to possess 3-Omnibenevolence), exists.”
Or, if a God with Type-3 Omnibenevolence existed , evil would not exist.
[size=150]The Aftermath: Alternative Gods [/size]
Does the finding above prove once and for all that God does not exist? Of course not. The existence of evil proves only that a God with Type-3 Omnibenevolence does not exist. This is not to say that a 3-Omnibenevolent God cannot exist in the future, or that a God that is less than 3-Omnibenevolent now cannot evolve into Type-3 Omnibenevolence, removing evil from the universe upon transformation.
If one continues to believe in the existence of God, one can still choose between four versions of God. Each version is less than 3-Omnibenevolent, each differs in intention and behavior toward subordinate creatures, and each continues to possess omnipotence that could immediately remove evil from the universe at a whim. But in the absence of Type-3 Omnibenevolence, one is forced to logically conclude that any God that is not 3-Omnibenevolent is necessarily an evil God.
Marcion, the 2nd century sect leader, is presented by Tertullian in his Adversus Marcionem as presenting this puzzle: “Why does God, who is all powerful and has foreknowledge of the future, allow evil?” Marcion’s answer is that god is in part evil himself.
(Wikipedia: The Problem of Evil, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil)
[b]If any God that is not 3-Omnibenevolent God is necessarily evil, then one can categorize the remaining Gods according to the level and extent of their evil. It is assumed that out of the four evil Gods below, there is one whose evil is virtually nonexistent compared to that of the other three.
Given this, if the Judeo-Christian God is an evil God (inferred from the lack of 3-Omnibenevolence), then God is either:[/b]
- A Blindly-Omnibenevolent God (Type-1 Omnibenevolence)
[Note: I am reluctant to call a God with Type-1 Omnibenevolence an “evil” God. This seems a bit harsh, considering that it is not the God’s fault that he/she/it is catatonic or psychotic. For the purpose of this article, however, we will “play hardball” and state that a Type-1 Omnibenevolent God is harmful (“evil”) due to his/her/its inability to prevent or remove evil because of its mental illness or distance]
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A Knowing-But-Tolerant (Of Evil) Omnibenevolent God (Type-2 Omnibenevolence)
-
An Omni-Malevolent God (A malevolent God that, given the existence of goodness in the world, pretends to be or likes to think of itself as good but is ultimately malicious toward its creations)
-
A Quasi-2-Omnibenevolent/Quasi-Malevolent/Partially-3-Omnibenevolent God
Evil Gods having Type-1 and Type-2 Omnibenevolence are described above. The two remaining Gods that may, for all we know, control human destiny are described below.
An Omni-Malevolent God is maliciously harmful, all the time, to everyone. The malice is either savored (in which God “sets-up” his victims, allowing positive experiences that are suddenly undercut by frustration, heartbreak, and trauma) or orgasmic (relentlessly expressed without relief).
[size=95]Figure 1. The fictional Earth of George Romero’s: Dawn of the Dead (1978) is a token of the type of world we would expect from an Omni-Malevolent God (expressing orgasmic malice).[/size]
The existence of goodness in the world, if this type of God is running the show, is the product of a malevolent deus deceptor [b]or “deceiving God” who invents “goodness” in order to deceive victims into belief in just and fair world that punishes evil and rewards morality.
The[/b] deus deceptor, however, viciously tears the blindfold from the eyes of the deceived in the afterlife, imposing upon it’s victims a fate far worse than the trials of the previous life. If the world is controlled by an Omni-Malevolent God, those who profit from this God’s existence are those who do not exist in the first place.
[size=90](Sinner: Scream For Your God! (Jack Chick parody), weirdcrap.com/chick/archive.html)[/size]
[size=150]And Now—The Final Contestant[/size]
Last (but by no means least), there is the final evil God that may exist in the absence of a God with Type-3 Omnibenevolence:
“It is, after all, the best of all possible worlds…”
-Bart Dawes, suicidal protagonist of Richard Bachman (Stephen King)'s short story: Roadwork
The Best Of All Evil Gods
[b]A Quasi-2-Omnibenevolent/Quasi-Malevolent/Partially-3-Omnibenevolent God omits most of the subjective content in external replication of his foreknowledge of evil. The God creates an external replica of the evil in his pre-universe calculation of possible worlds, but ingeniously omits the conscious experience of victims of violent death, thus cheating evil beings of the rationale behind their sense of power over helpless victims.
The best of all evil Gods mitigates the emotional and physical pain of non-sociopathic humans (while refusing to do the same for sociopaths), and abducts the consciousness of non-sociopaths destined to suffer extreme physical pain and violent, painful death. The God substitutes philosopher’s zombies or “bots” for the (previously) conscious victims; the zombies fool their evil tormentors into belief that they are having traumatic experiences.
This view, called the[/b] Heroic Override, holds that God “heroically overrides” the suffering of non-sociopathic humans destined for the worse of fates by creating a partial zombie world, populated by conscious human beings and human bodies with functioning brains that lack conscious experience. The zombies appear and behave in such a manner that they fool their conscious siblings into strong belief that they (the zombies) are conscious.
[b]It is conceivable that there be a system that is physically identical to a conscious being, but that lacks at least some of that being’s conscious states. Such a system might be a zombie: a system that is physically identical to a conscious being but that lacks consciousness entirely. It might also be an invert, with some of the original being’s experiences replaced by different experiences, or a partial zombie, with some experiences absent, or a combination thereof.
These systems will look identical to a normal conscious being from the third-person perspective: in particular, their brain processes will be molecule-for-molecule identical with the original, and their behavior will be indistinguishable. But things will be different from what it is like to be the original being. And there is nothing it is like to be a zombie.
There is little reason to believe that zombies exist in the actual world. But many hold that they are at least conceivable: we can coherently imagine zombies, and there is no contradiction in the idea that reveals itself even on reflection. As an extension of the idea, many hold that the same goes for a[/b] zombie world: a universe physically identical to ours, but in which there is no consciousness.
(Chalmers, David J.: Consciousness And It’s Place In Nature, consc.net/consc-papers.html)
The Heroic Override[b], if true, justifies the Bible’s praise of God’s goodness toward the non-sociopathic (God’s wrath or aggressive hostility toward the sociopath is, according to the bible, a form of “goodness” for the sake of “karma” or vengeful justice). There are numerous biblical verses praising the goodness and trustworthiness of God in his concern for the “poor and needy”. These verses are objectively verified if the Heroic Override is true.
However, an ethical problem exists: can a believer in HO approach the rape victim, or the parents of a murdered child, and state that the rape victim and the child were only zombies or “bots”? Not only would the explanation raise serious doubts about one’s sanity, but it belittles the emotional reality of the pain of the bereaved and the living victim itself. Given this, a belief in the Heroic Override is best kept to oneself in traumatic situations.
A believer in HO can defend the Heroic Override by the observation that it cannot be ruled out, given the nature of consciousness. Despite the impassioned pleas and rebukes of a battery, rape, or burn victim, a zombie can, in principle, produce the same complaints.[/b]
The Evil Of The Best Of All Evil Gods
The evil of the Quasi-2-Omnibenevolent/Quasi-Malevolent/Partially-3-Omnibenevolent God (henceforth shortened to the: Q2MP3O God when necessary) lies in the deliberate intention of the God to re-enact the evil in the God’s prevision of possible worlds, when he could have ignored the contents of foreknowledge to create an all-good world. Why go through the zombie deception of the Heroic Override when one could create a world entirely absent of physical and emotional pain?
EXPLAINING THE EVIL OF THE BEST OF ALL EVIL GODS
[b]At the end of the day, the conclusion is inescapable: the Q2MP3O God is evil. Fortunately, this God is evil only to the extent that he chose not to forego replication of the negative aspect of his omniscience, given the freedom to create a painless world from the start.
Remember, Jesus said:[/b]
“With God, all things are possible……” (Matthew 19:26)
[b]Thus an all-good world is not beyond the power of God.
To avoid confusion, let’s be clear about the[/b] evil [b]of the Q2MP3O God. The Q2MP30 God causes his subjects to experience harm, but the harm does not arise from malice. When one refers to this type of God as “evil”, one is simply stating (in a theatrical or “poetic” way) that God is harmful. The same thing can be said of a God who, while taking no action to deliberately create evil, nevertheless allows it to exist. Such passive non-interference is harmful (“evil”) in that it does nothing to prevent or remove the existence of negative experience.
However, if the Heroic Override is true and the Q2MP3O God is aiming toward a universal psycho-moral evolution (accompanied by the eternal removal of natural and deliberate evil), then the Q2MP3O God is not “into” human suffering.
The best of all evil Gods is in the business of turning junk cars or ‘lemons’ into rulers of the road. The God is a master “car makeover” artist—choosing an evil world to chisel into a good one. Despite the collateral damage, he sets upon a gutted hulk of scrap metal (rather than a new car fresh off the lot) in the creation of a beautiful, fully-loaded jalopy ready to win the next show.[/b]
[size=150] WHY THE BEST OF ALL EVIL GODS IS TRULY THE BEST: [/size] [size=150] THE CAPACITY TO EVOLVE [/size]
Why would an evil [b]God want, of all things, to transform an evil world into an all-good world?
Aside from playful indulgence or malevolent deceit, it is quite possible that the Q2MP3O God, as opposed to the other aforementioned Gods—[/b]is evolving into 3-Omnibenevolence[b].
This possibility is a variant of the Evolving God Theory put forward by late philosopher Charles Hartshorne:[/b]
Hartshorne was one of the first philosophers to speculate that God is morally evolving due to the fact that God’s hatred of evil happens to be greater than his motivation for allowing its temporary existence. The disparity between moral hatred and practical motivation eventually unbalances, tipping the scales in favor of God’s resolute determination to abolish evil from the universe in the future.
The Best Of All Evil Gods And Natural Selection: The Final Solution
In the end, it may be that the “best of all evil Gods” is a subject of cosmic natural selection[b], in which God happens to possess a core moral conscience modulating his propensity for evil.
The existence of moral conscience in God explains the mitigation of emotional and physical suffering in non-sociopathic subjects (with absence of mitigation in sociopaths imposed for long-term evolution of the sociopath by instruction in empathy and expression of the concept of justice).
The God carries a ghost of Type-2 Omnibenevolence, instituting an evil world that produces evolutionary pressures yielding positive character, with the positive character derived ultimately from the psychology of a[/b] special being [b]connected to the Q2MP30 God from the very beginning.
The Q2MP3O God, moreover, is absolved from the deliberate invention of evil: the evil in the world is a replication of uncontrollable mental calculations in the mind of God (one can argue that an aspect of God’s omniscience involves the emergence of[/b] unbidden knowledge unexpectedly arising from God’s subconscious mind).
(Note: This gives rise to a limited omniscience that fails to know the contents of one’s mind before the fact. This limitation is just the kind we would expect from a being with logically possible omniscience. As noted by economist Frederick Hayek:
We cannot self-consciously know the evolutionary activity to which all our conscious thoughts necessarily refer. In order to describe such knowledge, we would need to know how it is conditioned and determined. But in order to describe this knowledge, we would need to possess additional knowledge on how it is conditioned and determined, and so on ad infinitum. Such a mind would soon find itself locked in a perpetual cycle of introspective analysis analogous to what computer scientists call an ‘infinite loop’ error. The whole idea of the mind explaining itself is a logical contradiction (1952, p192).)
(Dempsey, Gary T: Hayek’s Evolutionary Epistemology, Artificial Intelligence, and the Question of Free Will cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/hayekee.html).
The inherent goodness of the Q2MP3O God, then, lies in his lack of interest and desire for evil to forever exist. If this type of God is running the show, the current evil world only exists to demonstrate the God’s power to transform any world into an all-good world.
God And The Mechanism Of Existence
In the end, a good defense lawyer for the Q2MP3O God will argue that there lies ipso facto [b]absolution (for God’s role in the existence of evil) in the knowledge that even God is a subject of the “just-so” nature of Existence itself. The mind of God contains content that exists for no other reason than that the content exists. This is the bottom line, the essence of Absurdism. It is the “just-so” nature of the Existence itself, manifest in the mind of God, that is ultimately responsible for God’s choice to use an evil world as the subject of transformation.
(This line of reasoning applies to human evil itself, in terms of the “just-so” manner in which the universe affects the brain function of an evil person. If one accepts psychophysicalism, the brain is ultimately at fault for the nature of our world (in terms of evil perception and evil will). The universe might, after all, have produced brains with neurons firing in a way that creates heaven-on-earth.)
If theological natural selection occurs, sufficient mutation in the mind of an evil God may produce Type-3 Omnibenevolence. The newly awakened[/b] Moral Policeman (or Moral Tyrant) will remove all evil from the universe at once, before performing self-lobotomy to rid every mind of the propensity for evil.
[size=150] Conclusion [/size]
[b]The problem of evil, as James H. Dee put it, “has bedeviled sensitive minds for centuries". The existence of human suffering and misery, particularly that suffered by the non-sociopath, is difficult to reconcile with an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God who claims to care for the “poor and needy”.
Careful weighing of the evidence (of natural and deliberate evil) against a proposed omnibenevolence that cannot tolerate evil even for a millisecond (Type-3 Omnibenevolence), and an omnipotence that enables a God to immediately remove evil from the universe “with the snap of the fingers”—yields the logical conclusion that a God with Type-3 Omnibenevolence does not exist. Logic also demands that any God that is not 3-Omnibenevolent is necessarily an evil God.
It is important not to turn away from or to willfully deny this conclusion. If one is not an atheist, and if one believes that God created evil OR is powerful enough to remove it at once or prevent its existence in the first place, then the only logical conclusion is that God is evil.
However, a God can be maliciously evil or a God can be “evil” in the sense that the God is inadvertently harmful or harms for good intention. Though absent of malice, this second “evil” is indefensible due to its unfairness, for a God probably would not wish to wear the shoes of the subjects he forces to suffer “for their own good”.
The best of all evil Gods, out of the bumper crop of evil Gods that may control our reality, is evil only in choosing THIS world as the subject for transformation into an all-good world. In choosing THIS world, God seems not to have taken into account the conceivable feelings of those forced to participate in the transformation.
This is indefensible, but it pales in comparison to the behavior we would expect from the other Gods, by reason of:[/b]
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The intention of the Q2MP3O God to create an all-good world from an evil world.
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The prediction that the Q2MP3O God will perform a lobotomy upon himself to ensure that any all-good world remains free of future tampering or ruination.
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The proposition that the evil in the world is not deliberately and maliciously imagined by the Q2MP3O God, but is a replication of unbidden and unexpected knowledge arising within the mind of the God.
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The notion that higher laws of existence governing even the mind of God naturally selected THIS pathway to an all-good world.
Given these factors, one can defend the “best of all evil Gods” by the argument that the “just-so” nature and flow of Existence itself bears ultimate responsibility for the presence of natural and deliberate evil—but if the Q2MP3O God exists, we are in a fortuitous predicament: Existence happened to naturally select a God resolved to bring about a happy ending after all, even if the happy ending must arrive by way of a watered-down hell.
[size=200] END [/size]
Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
Austin, Texas