It seems taking the English translation of the Bible at face value, particularly the Old Testament, provides logic problems equating the Gods of the Old and New Testament. Thus the creation of the “Demiurge” by Gnostics to explain the God of the Old Testament as opposed to God the Father and Christ in the New. I think the answer might lie in a denial of the inerrancy of the Old Testament and the New in terms of the discrepancy between human-powered meritocracy in the earning of Heaven and Christ-replication in the Christianity of Paul.
As it is, I’m finding it exceedingly difficult to deny iambiguous’ observations.
Student Zone
Philosophy of religion » The problem of evil
at The Tablet website
Again, that’s the beauty of believing in God based on more or less blind faith. Or based on one or another Scripture. He can become whatever you need Him to be. He can be twisted into any spiritual shape you need Him to be twisted into in order to make sense of the world that you live in…the world as you understand it to be. As though God is a character in a novel that you are writing. Or reading.
Of course some Jewish scholars are going to go down this path given the Holocaust. It may not be the perfect explanation but surely it is better than having to believe that there is no ultimate meaning beyond the genocide of your own people. That the Holocaust in a No God world is just another manifestation of the “brute facticity” rooted in an essentially meaningless world.
In other words, theodicy, not unlike God Himself, works in mysterious ways.
Student Zone
Philosophy of religion » The problem of evil
at The Tablet website
Beautiful! You can’t actually produce this God of yours in order that He might explain all of the terrible pain and suffering that is deeply embedded throughout the whole of nature, so you redefine Him conceptually in order that nature itself is subsumed in the definition.
Just as the No God Humanists among us will encompass the meaning of such things as Freedom and Justice by subsuming that meaning into their own assumptions regarding conflicting goods.
Got that? Another bunch of words totally divorced from a context that can come to mean anything that you “think up”. Like your own conceptual understanding of “moral choice” itself.
How about this, then: “For God, Aquinas…”
What follows then predicated solely on God’s own definition and meaning. And, sure, why not “define evil as a lack”.
Anyone here willing to go there?
We focus in on things like “natural disasters” or “''congenital birth defects” or all the ghastly pain and suffering endured by the truly innocent children around the globe and explain it all away “negatively” as Aquinas would define a God able to explain it all away Himself.
For example, as a manifestation of His now rather infamous “mysterious ways”.
Some might argue this has nothing to do with God since it happened as a result of human error in the construction of the building. Right, like an omnipotent God was absolutely powerless in keeping the building from toppling. But in the churches that the families and friends who lost loved ones here will attend it will almost certainly revolve instead around God’s mysterious ways.
In any event, those in the collapsed building who worshipped and adored the one true God are now in Heaven with him. And isn’t that what counts even if we can’t explain why a loving, just and merciful God would allow such things to happen.
So, those who lived in the building and died as a result of the collapse chose of their own free will to live there?
How on earth can those who died in the collapsed building learn and grow if they are no longer around to learn and grow? Or has God decided their fate in order that their loved ones can learn and grow from an experience that right now they view only as ghastly and unbearable?
From my frame of mind, once you attempt to explain the sheer enormity of human pain and suffering by anything other than merely resigning yourself to accepting God’s mysterious Will, you are forced to think yourself into accepting any number of. what to many, are simply unbelievable [even ridiculous] rationalizations.
Student Zone
Philosophy of religion » The problem of evil
at The Tablet website
Pointing to things like this will have almost no effect on those able to simply fall back on a God, the God, my God’s mysterious ways. The only question begged for some is why others can’t just accept that themselves. He’s God for Christ’s sake! What on earth can mere mortals actually know about His motivation and intention.
Besides, they can come back at you with, “what’s the alternative?” In other words, if there is no ultimately loving, just and merciful God, then all of those terrible things [and tons beside] happen in an essentially meaningless world.
Look at all of the people here at ILP who are able to rationalze the existence of their own God given the at times truly ghastly world that we live in. They might fall back on all the reasons broached in articles like this, but the “mysterious ways” explanation is always there to fall back on in the end.
So, atheists who take it all public and protest against religion? Making it all a political issue?
And, again, what can it possibly mean for a mere mortal to call those who rationalize God’s reasons for allowing a world like this one “tasteless”? On the other hand, for many of them the argument is that much of the suffering that does go on is as a result not only of religious fanatics going after the infidels but because millions upon millions of the faithful make no effort to organize politically and change the systemic nature of their own exploitation.
Okay, noted. Now, in terms of immortality, salvation and paradise, what did these authors suggest to replace Him?
Student Zone
Philosophy of religion » The problem of evil
at The Tablet website
Conclusion:
My advice: stick with that.
You can come up with all manner of “explanations” as to why a loving, just and merciful God would steer clear of intervening during the Holocaust or why He world create a planet bursting at the seams with all manner of natural disaster and pandemics.
If they work for you, fine, that’s all that really matters. But you can always fall back on His “mysterious ways”, right? Why this or why that? Because, that’s why.
Is there anyone here willing to argue that individual reactions like this are not rooted subjectively in the lives that we live? And that had our own lives been very, very different we might have come to think about theodicy otherwise? How is this not basically just common sense? And, from my frame of mind, the only way to upend it is to come up with an argument that simply cannot be refuted. An assessment that pins down once and for all why the world is what it is given a God that does in fact exist.
Or course faith itself is like God’s mysterious ways: beyond the reasoning mind. Therefore any attempt to bring it within the confines of actual demonstrable proof completely misses the point. It’s faith that comforts and consoles you. And nothing that the self-professed rational atheists argue is going to give you either objective morality or immortality.
Sure, if, for whatever reason [rooted in dasein], you are able to convince yourself that this is not only possible or probable or likely but in fact actually true then the belief in itself can comfort and console you. Suffering becomes just a part of the collective mind that is a part of whatever brought it into existence. Better that than an essentially meaningless and purposeless life rooted in the brute facticity of existence itself.
And then the [perhaps] even spookier speculation about the collective mind being but a manifestation of the only possible reality in a wholly determined universe in which this thread is in itself the embodiment of human brains able to create the psychological illusion of having created it freely.
But that still leaves the millions upon millions of a God, the God, my God folks able to subsume all the terrible suffering that suffuses nature on all levels here on planet Earth, in this God’s “mysterious ways”.
The collective mind folks then still being but a teeny tiny percentage of us.
Perhaps you could find the patience to watch something from Bernado Kastrup, or better read some of his books. He lays down the basis for such a hypothesis in a very intelligent way. It isn’t new, of course, and the eastern traditions hint at such a possibility, which is something that Alan Watts picked up in the sixties and seventies. He told a humorous version of it, but it was very similar.
Cite an example of him addressing the points I raise above in his books. Given a particular set of circumstances in which some might question the love and the mercy and the justice of a God that created a planet bursting at the seams with all manner of “natural disasters”. Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of ghastly medical afflictions that can beset us. And the bacteria and viruses He created that destroy the lives of millions and millions.
Bernardo Kastrup
“…if we could escape the hysterical cacophony of culture so to develop a more authentic and unbiased worldview…”
An authentic and unbiased worldview in regard to what specific moral and political conflagration?
"The ability to turn conscious apprehension itself into an object of conscious apprehension is what fundamentally characterizes our ordinary state of consciousness.”
How might this relate specifically to theodicy?
"Particular experiences – that is, particular contents of mind – are just mind in movement.”
What particular content did he have in mind? The mind moving in what direction given a situation where these moving minds come into fierce conflict?
"There is nothing illogical, inconsistent, incoherent, or absurd about the idea that the medium of reality is mind itself.”
Look, with any luck you will be able to take your own comforting spiritual consolations with you to the grave.
I wish I were able to myself.
But, if not, given the amount of time over the years I have devoted to exploring questions such as this, it won’t be because I’m lazy. It’s because for the life of me I can no longer come up with a way to reconcile the world as I know it to be with a God, the God other than one who is nothing less than a sadist monster.
Although, sure, admittedly, He may well have “mysterious ways” that I am not privy to. I might die and, because He recognized the sincerity embedded in my struggle to understand all this with the free will He provided, He might grant me access to Heaven and once there I finally will be privy to why the world as I know it is what it is.
Maybe you and I and Ierrellus will get together from time to time up there and think back bemused at all this squabbling we had.
Your problem is holding on to the concepts of God that you can’t reconcile. My suggestion to read Kastrup was an attempt to get you away from those ideas and look at a different take on reality. If you keep staring at an imagined monster, it won’t go away. What if reality is far different from the assumed materialistic vision that not only science, but very many Christians adhere to, is wrong? After all, our brains interpret what our senses give it, and when that process is slowed or impaired, it reveals a different reality, so what if our interpretation is wrong?
What if the myths of the Bible are just a “finger pointing to the moon”, and that the cultural symbols it uses are dated, and restricted to the time it was written, but still useful as an indicator of transcendence? There is so much we don’t know, so many other possibilities, and you are sat staring at a nightmare, refusing to get up and leave it behind you.
…for the life of me I can no longer come up with a way to reconcile the world as I know it to be with a God, the God other than one who is nothing less than a sadist monster.
And I will read Kastrup when you can note specific examples from his books that address the points I raise on this thread. Examples able to convince me that he is worth pursuing further. Otherwise you are just another Ierrellus or Felix insisting that I should read the authors that they believe will change my mind about how a God, the God that creates natural disasters and ghastly medical afflictions and virulent viruses and does nothing to end the staggering pain and suffering that has ever inundated the human species — especially among the truly innocent children – is not a sadistic monster.
Or look at the brutal savagery that encompasses all the other creatures in nature. What on earth was God thinking?!
After all, there’s nothing at all imaginary about the gruesome pain and suffering.
Note to others:
How on Earth is this relevant to the points I make regarding theodicy? How does this make any God, given human history and planet Earth to date, any less a very unloving unmerciful and unjust sadistic monster?
I know it sounds simplistic, but just don’t. What is causing you to bring the hypothesis God into the discussion at all? Is it that you want to protest at people who don’t have the problems with God that you have? Are you angry that people can have some faith in a transcendent power, and you can’t?
The problem is that you are not going to be helped unless you come away from the poison that ails you. It is a never-ending circle in which you move. If you can only ask one question, and not change to move out of the recurring frustrations, you will remain in your vortex, swirling about yourself in angry vigour, unable to look outside.
God was thinking? Like you or I?
Savagery means “an uncivilized or barbaric state or condition; barbarity.” The creatures in nature are uncivilised, nature is like that. But it was on Christian ethics, regardless of what some people made out of them, that western civilisation was built. Some prophet sat down and said, this world is as it is, but we have the inspiration to change it, at least where we are. What has arisen since then, isn’t perfect, but it is a whole lot better than it was. There is a lot to do.
Problem of Evil (Responses)
From the lumen website
On the other hand, with me, if you are ever intent on pinning this down please move on to others. I’m willing to accept that you have thought through your own definition of theodicy and are prepared to explore it given the way we both connect the dots between our understanding of God and the human condition.
Here though it would seem a distinction must be made between a theological assessment of theodicy and a philosophical assessment. After all, given the role that faith plays in most religious denominations, how far can logic go in broaching, assessing, evaluating and then judging God given the world as it is with all of the things that might be described as evil. Once one points in the general direction of God’s mysterious ways, what then of logic?
Though of course that won’t stop some from going there:
Though of course all of this starts with the mere assumption that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist. Think about it. You are asked to defend this God against the charge of being unloving, unmerciful and unjust – for some in being a sadistic monster – given all the terrible pain and suffering inflicted on humankind that is completely beyond their control. Meanwhile you are not even able to provide solid evidence that He exists in the first place.
Like many of us, I follow the news. And in those headlines are any number of ghastly reminders of all the terrible pain and suffering that is afflicted on men, women and children. Sometimes as a result of the choices we make.
Note to God:
Though not by the innocent children, right?
Sometimes as a result of one or another earthquake, flood, tsunami, volcanic eruption, tornado, etc.
Now, did or did not God create a universe that resulted in planet Earth being able to pummel us with these things over and over and over and over and over again. Including from time to time actual “extinction events” in which most of life – virtually all life – around the globe is wiped out.
And sometimes as a result all those terrible medical afflictions or microscopic bacteria and viruses that God created.
Now, two of the reasons some focus on God in regard to the pain and suffering we bring about by ourselves are that…
1] religious fanatics in and of themselves can cause this pain and suffering with regard to the “infidels”…either other religious denominations or those within their own flock who don’t behave exactly as they are told to. They can be dealt with from “shunning” all the way up to being beheaded.
2] to the extent that the millions around the globe flock to God for the answer, they are not out in the street protesting political policies sustained by governments that result in the pain and the suffering in the first place. Those, for example, that own and operate the very, very materialist/amoral “show me the money” global economy. Religion seen here from the “opiate of the masses” frame of mind.
Again, making me the problem. That way [as with Ierrellus] you can avoid altogether actually responding to the points I [and others] make about grappling to understand the world as it is and a God said by many to be loving, just and merciful.
How then are you and others not [eventually] back to this:
Are you kidding me? This general description intellectual/spiritual contraption is the example you give me of Kastrup confronting head on the points I make on this thread?!
Exercising what choice given what set of circumstances out in what particular world understood from what particular point of view in regard to God and theodicy?
Exactly my point! In nature, the main function of most new born life is to become the food for other creatures. All those cute little turtles scrambling for the sea and only about 1% of them will actually make it back to the island to lay their own eggs. Sometimes God deems it necessary for some creatures to consume their own babies. Or their own mates.
But: What can we possibly know of God’s will here? That or Kushner, right?
Though here is the explanation that you have come up with:
Unbelievable.
You know, from my point of view.
But you have managed to either think this up yourself or someone else planted it in your head as a child. And, again, it may comfort and console you all the way to the grave. And it puts all the terrible pain and suffering this Christian God has inflicted on humankind over the centuries in just the right perspective.
Problem of Evil (Responses)
From the lumen website
A lesser evil than raping or murdering an innocent child? Like raping or murdering two innocent children? A greater good that might be derived from it? Like the person who rapes or murders an innocent child, comes to see how terrible it is and then dedicates his or her life to doing only good deeds for innocent children?
Something like that?
Yes, if you can bring yourself to feel less outraged about the rape or murder of an innocent child by thinking like this then it worked for you. Whereas most are still more inclined to chalk it up to God’s mysterious ways.
All I think to say here is, “tell that to the innocent child who has been raped” or “tell that to the parents of the innocent child who has been murdered”. Though, again, admittedly, what would I tell them? That the rape or the murder is no less a component of an inherently meaningless and purposeless world? Or that in the absence of God even behaviors such as this can be rationalized by the sociopaths?
Of course even scholars derive their conclusions about things like this given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein. It’s not like in being scholars this enables them to think out the problem of theodicy in the most rational manner. After all, where is the evidence and the logic that would allow them to accomplish this? Especially if they themselves have a child that has been raped or murdered. Or raped and murdered.
This has always seemed to me to be the most reasonable [and reassuring] path to take. Here you can embrace a loving just and merciful God, and argue that for reasons well beyond the capacity of mere mortals to Grasp, He is not all-powerful. He set in motion a creation that somehow got beyond His control. And, thus, He is as distraught by the carnage brought on by Earth’s “natural disasters” – the latest in Haiti – as we are. I once even had a friend in the Unitarian Church who seriously believed that one day God would once again regain full control of things. Just not so far.
“In theory”, this can seem reasonable to some, but when you bring it down to Earth and note particular contexts in which this might play out, the waters inevitably get muddier.
Anyone here care to take a crack at it. “Goods of great value which God cannot actualize without also permitting evil, and thus that there are evils he cannot be expected to prevent despite being omnipotent”?
Either in terms of the large events where there are conflicting assessments of good and evil…or smaller events that played out in your own day to day interactions with others in which convictions revolving around good and evil cropped up.
Again, forget all the other explanations. This is really the only one you need. There’s our “greater good” and God’s Greater Good. Simply have faith that however fucked your own life becomes [in Haiti and Afghanistan for example] as long as you worship and adore God and avoid committing too many sins you are all but guaranteed both immortality and salvation.
Problem of Evil (Responses)
From the lumen website
Of course this immediately introduces the problem [for some] in trying to reconcile an omniscient God with free will. Whether in the direction of good or evil [whatever that means], if what you choose is already known in advance by this omnipresent, all-knowing God, how can it really be a free choice at all?
But let’s just assume that an omnipotent God manages to reconcile it as only He can.
Sure, when it comes to the terrible pain and suffering that men and women inflict on each other the free will argument is reasonable enough. God gives us the capacity to choose the good things or the bad things. So don’t blame Him if some of are selfish assholes concerned only with themselves.
Still, as an omnipotent God, doesn’t He have the capacity Himself to prevent this terrible pain and suffering. Of course: Cue His mysterious ways.
And yet that is not where I focus the beam here myself. It’s theodicy and natural disasters – what lawyers literally call “acts of God” – that most perplexes me. For example, a 150 mph sustained winds category 4 hurricane is now bearing down on Louisiana. Any number of men, women and children will find their lives uprooted. Some will die truly ghastly deaths. So, no matter how far God’s mysterious ways are stretched to explain things like this, I am unable myself to accept them as other than proof that an existing God is either not omnipotent or He is a sadistic monster.
This part:
Further, if God does exist and allowed for free will on my part, how can He then insist that the thoughts I think now about the possibility of Him being a sadistic monster are grounds for eternal damnation? It’s not like I can just flick a switch in my head and – presto! – think righteous thoughts instead.