theodicy

A viable theodicy (I think) which is a crucial part of my Pantheopsychic Theology is that Evil exists and is created by God (who literally created everything) while God is in a state of non-lucid dreaming, which precludes deliberation and intention and thus preserves God’s goodness.

PG

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Really, try to imagine any parent you know allowing the terrible pain and suffering that we know is afflicted upon millions of children around the globe day after day after day. And then justifying it as an exercise in “soul-making”.

For example: worldvision.org/sponsorship … erty-facts

The fate of children in this grim pile of statistics.

[b]"A child dies from hunger every 10 seconds

Poor nutrition and hunger is responsible for the death of 3.1 million children a year. That’s nearly half of all deaths in children under the age of 5. The children die because their bodies lack basic nutrients." from the world counts web site.[/b]

No, instead, this sort of thing always strikes me as an example of parents trying to deal with statistics like the ones above and recognizing [consciously or not] that the only possible consolation that is available to them is to take a leap of faith to God.

So, the children suffer terribly from any number of ghastly afflictions. But not because they chose evil, but because their parents did? And even if their parents chose good, there’s still The Fall?

How can reasonable people not come to accept just how bizarre that is given the assumption that their God is loving, just and merciful? I can only go back to the bottom line [mine]: that God is chosen because the alternative is a world of terrible pain and suffering that is essentially meaningless…and then ends in oblivion.

edit

Just a reminder that I am not arguing that this is how it is, only that this is what I have thought myself into believing makes the most sense here and now. If it doesn’t make sense to you and you have a more optimistic point of view, let’s hear it.

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Okay, but how is that then reconciled with those who claim that their own God is omniscient? It would seem [to me] to be the theological equivalent of peacegirl’s free will/no free will frame of mind on her determinism thread.

Better or worse than what? We’ll need a context of course. And God knows what that might be.

You know, whatever that means given a particular set of circumstances. Unless, of course, we really do live in a wholly determined universe. Then all of this terrible pain and suffering derived from a loving, just and merciful God is merely a manifestation of whatever nature compels me, you, all of us to think it is.

Here of course we are in sim world, dream world, Matrix world territory. Anything able to be “thought up” in our heads is possible to explain “evil”/evil merely by claiming something – anything – explains it. And not just the fantastic claims above. Here at ILP we’ve had any number members over the years who have offered us their own fantastic theological/philosophical assumptions/theories about every possible thing under the sun.

Right, Fixed Jacob? :wink:

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Where to even begin…

Suppose we can all agree that there is a rational manner in which to reconcile an all-knowing Creator – another assumption? – with human autonomy. Okay, how then do we go about pinning down which human behaviors are, in fact, objectively good and evil? Do or do not all of the multitude of religious denominations down through the ages agree on some things but disagree on others? And that’s before we get to all of the vast and varied contexts in which all of the variables are never exactly the same. Though shalt not kill? When and where given what exact set of circumstances? It’s okay in a religious crusade? Or to bring down the infidels? Or to stop a doctor who performs abortions?

Ah, but here we are ever and always talking about a God that has been “thought up” by mere mortals themselves. At least to the best of my own current knowledge. Unless, unbeknown to me, an actual God has in fact been demonstrated to exist. When God is the stuff of Scriptures, and Scriptures are the stuff of mere mortals, He can accomplish anything at all. For all we know, God has dumped us all into his very own Matrix or sim world contraption. Just to entertain Himself perhaps.

Am I understanding this correctly? God is all powerful, allows mere mortals to freely choose their behaviors, but then prevents them from acting on what, of their own volition, they want to do?

Instead, more likely to be this:

I am not personally aware of any prominent proponent of the partly bad [or indifferent] God, but Harold Kushner is well known for embracing a God that set into existence a world that has somehow gotten beyond His control. But, again, this would appear to be just more of the same: a God that is defined or thought into existence. With no way to actually establish which it is. Or if any God at all does exist.

Once it comes down to a thought up God, the sky’s the limits as to what one proposes that He is:

This world? The best of all possible worlds? In that case this all powerful and all good God is clearly not all knowing. Starting with the Holocaust itself, which must have gotten by him somehow.

I wrote that evil comes about via primordial fear.
It would require that God protect infants from all forms of trauma and abuse.
Killing all the “bad people” is typical of the Jew-god solution.
But at that point, it is too late.
Bad people are usually wrecked.
Prevention is the real answer to the problem of evil.

God obviously doesn’t manifest worth beans in the big picture.

We need the real deal.

We’ll need a real deal context of course.

Why do you always ask for a context?

Primordial fear is a fear that babies and adults can both feel.
Someone pulls a gun on you, boom, fear.
That can be a context.
Fear of strangers with weapons.

If God doesn’t want evil,
he shouldn’t let it germinate.
Example of a disease.
Tumors start small, then they get bigger and bigger.
There is another context. Cancer.

Your daughter gets hit by a car.
God wasn’t there to prevent that event from happening.
There is a context.
The real deal would be a God that literally
manifests and talks to people.
Instead of sending prophets and sock puppets.
Context would be the history of prophets
being killed for what they said.
Obviously, the 1 prophet method doesn’t work.

Theodicy is better called Theidiocy is the bleating of fools you cannot understand why an all powerful god is utterly in capable of designing a decent world to live in ; as if god is restrained by some sort of “as good as it gets” crapola.

First, of course, this thread revolves around a God, the God, my God creating a world in which such fear is grimly common. Given the fact that so many of the faithful insist that God is loving, just and merciful. And then the terror that is inflicted upon millions around the globe as a result of this God creating a planet rife with any number of “natural disasters”. A God creating, in turn, such critters as HIV and covid19 and malaria and Bubonic plague.

Harold Kushner’s God excepted of course.

And then what if the context revolves around, say, the right to bear arms? The fear of those compelled to arm themselves to the teeth. And then the fear of others afraid of those folks.

You generally post what I call “general description intellectual/spiritual contraptions”. Fine, that’s your prerogative. But they are only of interest to me given the arguments I make here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=186929

A thread those like you here tend to steer clear of.

Yeah, that’s my point. God clearly appears to want what most mere mortals would call evil…if one of us brought it into existence. So, folks like those above on this thread try to think up ways to explain that. Given their own understanding of God.

Note to others:

You tell me where he is going with this.

THE PROBLEM OF THEODICY.
BY EZRA KLEIN
at The American Prospect

First of all, Christians need to explain how Yahweh of the Old Testament and Jesus Christ of the New Testament are one and the same God. What difference does it make to make the comparison in regard to human pain and suffering, if they are both the same Dude? It is like some Christians way back then, after seeing just how horrific God actually could be in the Old Testament, figured it was time to show the world another side of Him.

As for, “How can a God who loves mankind enough to die for us allow us to suffer as much as we do?”, is there really anything other than either 1] Kushner’s less than omnipotent God 2] an omniscient and omnipotent God who works in “mysterious ways”.

There it is in a nutshell. Most progressive Christians bring us around time and again to Jesus Christ…the socialist? Whereas Jews have Yahweh. And how difficult, with a God like Him, is it to rationalize, among other things, the historical plight of the Palestinians given the creation of Israel?

You get the God you need it seems. So, who do you need God to be?

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.

Pantheopsychic theology is the best way to go.

PG

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”.

Student Zone
Philosophy of religion » The problem of evil
at The Tablet website

Let that sink in for a moment. Not only is evil necessary, it’s also a good thing.

So, we can go to a newspaper and read about this: nytimes.com/live/2021/06/28 … iami-beach

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.

“Protest atheists”? Google it and you get this: google.com/search?q=protest … JEQ4dUDCBE

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.

So, sure, if you can, stick with it.

Perhaps it is pertinent to point out that we don’t even understand our own consciousness, so how are we going to understand the mind of God?

What if we and all life were all part of a collective mind which, as a whole we called God. That way, it would be God suffering as much as we do …

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.

What can I say…

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.”

And he demonstrates this how?