I would like to talk about one famous argument to disprove the existence of the current idea of God. Here it is:
There is Evil in the World
God is pure Good, and Good’s purpose is to kill evil
God is all powerfull, so he/she can do as he/she wishes
These three conditions cannot coexist because if God was all Good and all Powerfull, then he could remove evil from the world. Since we cannot deny that evil exists, we have to believe that either God is not all Good or not all Powerfull
Here is my defence to this argument. First, yes Good does destroy evil, but your assumption is that in this case, we would want this. Let us consider for example a classroom. If the world were like an exam, and the students writing the exam were like the people in the world. The exam has questions, and it is up to the student to put in the right or wrong answers. A student would never say: Well, if people put the wrong answer down, and the teacher’s purpose is to remove ignorance, and he is all powerfull as to make us all get a perfect mark, then there is a mistake. Either the teacher isn’t powerfull enough to give us all perfect, or he doesn’t know all (about the subject). This would be absurd! So this world could be this exam, and he is testing us. Evil is the wrong answer and good is the right.
take a look at Alvin Plantinga’s “Free Will Defense” Some have gone so far as to say that this definitively answers your issue…that is probably going too far, but it is really well thought out.
The basic gist is that a good God (if he is in a Creating mood) will want to create creatures with Free Will, else moral good cannot exist in said world. Free will leads to both moral good and evil. Thus an omnipotent, omniscient, and all good God is logically consistent with evil in the world… it is a bit more complicated, but that is the main idea
I have never bought the Free Will defense.
First, one would have to prove that reality is not deterministic. Any lines in the bible affording future acts as occuring cannot logically coexist with our concept of free will. Either that mentioned in the bible is not true, or God can determine the course of events and allow us free will. If he has the power to overcome this contradiction, then why doesn’t God have the power to allow us Free Will while removing suffering from the world?
Also,
A loving father may permit his child to run around in a park and do all sorts of things, but once the kid runs into the lake a loving father will not wait until the kid drowns before he pulls him out of the water.
Perhap’s God’s love appears detached because, as mortals, we have no way to conceive of absolute, infinite love. We do, however, have a concept of a being who could sit and do nothing while those he “loves” suffer endlessly while crying out in the night for his help… it is called sadism.
I don’t think you need to prove indeterminism - that’s the sort of question that will never be settled in philosophy. One of the other big questions in this area is the difference between compatibilism and incompatibilism, which you indirectly mention. Compatibilism suggests that free will is compatible with determinism, and that our responsibility for actions just is in them having causes within us, regardless of whether they were determined. Incompatibilism suggests the view that free will and determinism are incompatible, which has either the consequence that there is no free will or that there is something rather strange going on in the nature of how a free act comes about. Nonetheless, compatibilism accepts that there are freedom-cancelling conditions, and it is generally supposed that God’s causing our good actions would be freedom-cancelling in the kind of way that would remove the moral worth of such actions on all readings.
The world we live in is constructed on duality . There can be no light without darkness, no positive without negative, no male without female and no good without evil. God is the source of all duality, not a fragment of it. God is beyond good and evil.
Permit me to ramble a bit, I am trying to fit this into some kind of schema.
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That doesn’t answer whether or not our actions are “truly” our own. More like it seeks to avoid the answer. For example, what we assume to be a choice might already be decided by various biological imperatives. Or what we might think is choice between two different ends is decided before the act of choosing because any choice might very well lead, invariably, to the same conclusion. Thus we think we have free will and maintain some control over our lives, but this is because our perception of life is limited. Ergo what is compatible and incompatible to what we think is limited by our perception, which, as a result of our nature, if we were created we were created thusly.
If the Creationist Free Will theory is correct, then Man has no innate nature, as we should be free to choose that nature (from which it follows that that nature cannot be innate). While this might be compatible with how humans view free will or not, it shows God as being capable of contradicting himself, which would, I believe, indicate a God capable of allowing free will while removing suffering from the world. As then God is beyond Human reason to comprehend, we defend him with human reason, which must fail to encompass God. Thus any defense must fail.
If we follow the assumption that causes originate from us, it could be argued that there is no God, or that he is a result of our will ( negating the Absoulte aspects of God). Or, to put it bluntly, if there is an Absolute Being who’s power is limited(he cannot allow for complete free will and remove suffering at the same time) then that Being is not Absolute. If he is not Absolute, he is not God. Thus, it follows, there is no God.
That sound about right? Perhaps I am being to picky about the term Absolute?
however for the sake of the arguement i will go with he is not all good.
i am taking polytheistic approach to this just as in many old religions; Zarathustrainism, Vedism, Modern Hinduism, watever egyptians believed and etc. According to zarathustrianism there are two forces Good and Evil they are at a struggle and at the apocolypse we will see who shall win this eternal fight. (my interpretation)
GateControlTheory, I was aiming more at setting the scene of the question. The definition of what free will is, or would be, is far from clear, and I was responding to the fact that it seems you are assuming a certain conception of free will to begin with. The issue here is that the problem of evil turns largely on how one conceives of free will. Plantinga takes it as a given that we are not free unless possessed of libertarian free will - that is, incompatibilism such that an agent, S, is free at t with respect to an action, A, iff S is able to do A or not-A, the antecedent conditions to t being identical. But I’m not sure it is as obvious as this, even if there is an intuitive pull from the libertarian direction. Part of this is in the unusual sort of causation that would be needed to explain how we do things at all, and if we assume they are not caused, there’s the problem in seeing how they can be said to be willed.
In any case, what I was getting at was that we can somewhat sidestep these issues altogether if we approach the problem from the angle that even in a compatibilist scenario, God’s determining that our actions go right would be freedom-cancelling, anulling the moral goods that freedom makes possible. The best God can do is make it possible that we might always go right; he cannot make it actual.
I’m not sure what you mean by the Creationist Free Will thing; if we have no nature to begin with, in what way are we “choosing” one subsequently? Perhaps that’s what you’re getting at, but then if you accept that God is beyond our understanding, then I don’t think you can validly make comments about what he should or should not do. I nonetheless think it makes little sense, and is against what theism needs, to suggest this.
On your last point, I think you are looking at limitation in the wrong way. The point of the FWD is that it shows that there’s at least a possibility of evil and God co-existing, and this arises for logical reasons. It is clear that God cannot do the logically impossible, and if it is impossible for God to actualise a world in which we always freely go right (as opposed to a world in which it is possible that we might), as I have attempted to show, then there is a logical restriction on his being able to end all suffering (and still be attempting to bring about the best situation). As such, the existence of suffering is not a limitation on God, as it rests on the laws of logic.
SideShowBob, I disagree that evil is necessary for good. Could not different degrees of good be adequate for the distinction, or even the existence of something that is not good, but not evil, (ie neutral) accomplish this? Really, it seems that evil need only be possible, but not actual, in order for good to exist.
I think that what I was arguing was…
God is an Absolute being
Human suffering and misery exists
God can grant us free will to act according to our nature and remove suffering and misery.
I do not accept any view of Morality that claims that pain and suffering is necessary to arrive at what is Good/Right/Ethical etc. That is, it is not necessary for people to die or suffer to realize the consequences of an Immoral act.
To put it bluntly, if there is a God, and that God is an Absolute Being, he could have created us with the inability to suffer and this, in itself, would not negate Free Will.
A is free to bash B about the head and face, B, however, does not suffer for it. It could be that A is acting Immorally, is still free to choose to act in such a way, and B does not suffer. This, in itself, is not a contradiction.
Again, perhaps I am putting too much stress on the idea of Absolute.
But then, what would be wrong about bashing someone over the head? The moral weight attached to it comes from the fact that there is something unpleasant attached to the act. Suffering in some form would have to be possible at least in order for a moral act to have worth. It must be borne in mind that it’s not just the freedom to do different acts that is important here, but the freedom to act in a morally significant way. It is this that maximises the good and is the justification for the potential evils that arise from significant moral freedom.
It would entail a change in how we perceive morality.
What we think of as consisting of moral weight would have to change.
Because we can feel pain it is wrong to inflict pain on others.
But
Because we cannot feel pain it may be wrong to invade their space. Because, knowing that we can no longer feel pain, even the intent to do so loses it’s moral weight. But stopping someone from pursuing what their free will desires is wrong, and in this hypothetical world, it is more wrong than attempting to inflict pain.
Or perhaps I can modify my point to say, violence may result in death (murder is still bad even if the victim dies without suffering) but there is no pain. Thus, in addition to invading someone’s private space, it is still wrong to do murder, even murder by violence, as that can be viewed as the ultimate kind of invasion. You deny choice as the result of life by causing death.
Man Hath Imagnined It, God Could Do It, If God Cared.
Ultimately I think that it will just have to be taken as a given that either God is not All Powerful, or he is not All Loving. Or maybe he tried this before and it failed miserably…
Just a point on that…say your are a fortune teller, a very good one in fact, so good that you can tell on what side a coin will land every time it is thrown. just because you have fore-knowledge that the coin will land on heads this time and tails the next does not mean that you have made it happen, you just know that it will.
as for the issue of free will without suffering…one could argue that suffering is a natural result of evil and so is impossible to eliminate in a world with natural good (these are referred to as moral evils)…a bigger problem occurs with natural evils (earthquakes, diseases and such which cause suffering)…honestly I can’t remember at this point how those problems are dealt with…need to look back to my notes…
really though, just to add another random point, the Atheist who does not believe in God because of the evil in hte world is Dostoevsky’s favorite kind…why? because this is the person who believes in God and is angry at Him for the evil in the world (See the Grand Inquisitor story in Brothers Karamazov):
“Please understand, it is not God I do not accept, but the world he has created.”
I don’t necessarily buy this in all cases, but it is an interesting psychological proposition