If Evils Lead to Greater Goods, Why Even Stop Evil?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ส.ค. 2024
- In this video, I use Molinism to distinguish two ways of assessing probabilities. With this distinction, I then sketch a way of developing decision theory wherein allowing evils to produce associated greater goods is not advised.
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This reminds me of Newcomb's Problem. Basing your decisions on natural probability makes sense of you are a one-boxer, but basing your decisions on derived probability makes sense of you are a two-boxer
Isn't it the other way around?
oh shoot thank you that's a really helpful example for me understanding this video
Apologetics Squared, I loved this video so much, I had to hit the like button!
Appreciated! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared 🔥⚖️🐐 READ ⬇️: I want to talk to you about why lucifer became Satan.
A lot of people think that God made the devil evil on purpose to be evil - but if that were the case he would have made him evil from the very beginning. God made the devil in his likeness, perfect in every way & the devil formed creational greed (called pride) in his heart & become ‘like God’ like an evil version of Him (so choose God or the devil & go to hell, it’s your choice).
Lucifer was created by God, as were all the other angels (Ephesians 3:9). Lucifer was a “covering” cherub, or angel. One covering angel stands on the left side of God’s throne and another on the right (Psalm 99:1). Lucifer was one of these highly exalted angels and was a leader. Lucifer’s beauty was flawless & breathtaking. His wisdom was perfect. His brightness was awe-inspiring. Ezekiel 28:13 seems to indicate that he was specially created to be an outstanding musician. Some scholars believe he led the angelic choir.
So if only the devil was evil, then why did the angels where were not evil also join him & fall from God? It’s because all life was given free will by God - if God made everything a slave he would not be perfect - he’d be a controlling God.
The devil was made perfect, in God’s image - almost a copy of God, but not Him. The devil saw himself & got this evil idea that he could be God, or wanted to be one to make his own universe.
But that’s not possible, because God is forever - & anyone or anything which stems from God’s eternal source cannot nor will they ever be able to snuff him out, they’d literally disintegrate without their perfect originator.
(Like trying to stop breathing because you decided you didn’t want to live on air anymore - or ripping out your life support machine from your body, if you got into an accident or were sick & dependent on it - because you wanted to live on your own.)
So the devil decided to use his free-will to trick others into worshipping him, deceiving them into being like God to shape their own reality. His end goal is to try and make everyone worship him, then try to usurp God - which will never happen.
The devil thus dependent on his existence by God - is trying to make a world within a world, or some kind of sick & demented time loop like a paradox. The thing is, even if there’s an electronic reality - or matrix which is made, the All High God has control and dominion over that existence (even though there isn’t one, the Matrix lie).
Even if we make the most advanced quantum computer, God would still control the switches, the electrodes & paradigms, etc.
God could even communicate with that creation & free them, if they were part of some digital world or matrix.
Even if satan were to succeed in making a time loop, God has dominion over that as well - God would provide a way out; he would control the beginning and end of it, as well as all that fits in between. God declared the beginning from the end, not some being with evil and the forefront of their desires of consciousness & mind.
A ‘kid’ means ‘baby goat’ in old English (not God’s children).
The enemy convinced women to eat their own placenta by causing ‘postpartum depression’ - because the placenta is full of the life blood of their own baby, like being a cannibal: like the dust bowl & depression in the USA.
This mock’s Deuteronomy 28:57 “She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.”
#YHWH #Christ #Bible #Truth #Pride #Wicked #Motivation #Tempt #Sin #Lies #Creation #Destruction #Gospel #Christian #Faith #Revelation #Good #Bad #Evil #Atheist #Garden #Eden #Acting #Like #God #Devil #Goat #Kids #Rapture #Tribulation #Repent
You're better than I; I have a full-time job and I'm merely a part time grad student, and you're _still_ better than I at producing videos!
Love you Squared, I logged into TH-cam just to like this!
Thanks Dylan! :)
Does war lead to a greater good? If your answer is yes, then by not going to war we are preventing a great good from coming about and that would not be good. Just admit that saying evil is for the greater good is basically saying evil IS good.
It’s like you didn’t even watch the video lmao
@@doggoslayer5679 its like your a politician who cant answer questions.
I have a better idea: "Let us do good so that good may come of it."
If all evil leads to some greater good, then what makes that a "better" idea than "let us do bad things so that good may come of it"?
Some times you do good you get betray and use like a resource! Some does evil and get away with so that ideas is not apply to everyone!
Doesn't matter what you do God will get exactly the amount of evil he wanted from it.
@@ericm9495 If all good leads to some greater good, and God commands us to do good, and he calls us to account for our actions, and he rewards good actions, then these are reasons to do good and not evil.
@@MatthewFearnley "All goods lead to some greater good" I agree that is a good _pro tanto_ reason to do good. But "All evil leads to some greater good", is also true by stipulation, so it isn't a reason to _prefer_ doing good to doing evil. "God commands us to do good". Interesting thought. But what _reason_ does God have to command us to do good? Why should I believe that he commands us to do good at all, if you can't cite a _reason_ he would have for doing so? "He calls us to account for our actions" But if I believe that my evil actions will result in greater goods, then can't I just cite that as the reason I committed my evil actions, when he calls me to account? Why would that not be a good rationale? "He rewards good actions then these are reason to do good and not evil" Not really. Theses are only "reasons" if I'm being selfish. If I have a choice between evil action A or good action B, and I end up doing A, then by stipulation, A had better overall consequences than choosing B. The calculation that A has overall better consequences than B _includes_ the suffering that I would take on from god punishing me. But If I said "I wish I had chosen option B, because God will punish me for choosing A" That would be really selfish, because that would mean the universe would miss out on all the good consequences of A. If I preferred A to B retrospectively, I could only do that if I was being selfish (and not just in the sense of benignly self-interested. It would mean prefering my own self interest _at the expense of others_ ). But suppose I'm selfless and I just want the world to be the best it can possibly be. Suppose I'm willing to endure divine punishment to make the world a better place. Then it seems I should prefer A to B, despite the fact that I will be punished for it, and despite the fact that A has been labeled the "evil" option.
Please illuminate the gap in my misunderstanding. You say that agents basing their reasoning on derived probabilities engage in needlessly risky behavior, making it unlikely that their feasible world is actualized; sure thing, this makes perfect sense. But how is this fact relevant if the world we inhabit is in fact an actualized one? The argument would seem consistent if we would say something like "we don't know if we are in a feasible or actualized world, so reason with natural probability". But if we are indeed already in an actualized world, then probability is already derived...
Here's the way I see it:
We want to optimize the actual world.
Since God chooses the actual world from the feasible worlds, we can optimize the actual world by optimizing the feasible worlds.
To optimize the feasible worlds, we want to maximize the number of agents in the feasible worlds reasoning with natural probabilities.
Therefore, to optimize our feasible world, we want to maximize the number of agents in our feasible world reasoning with natural probabilities.
But the actions that occur in our feasible world are identical to the actions that occur in the actual world.
So, we want agents in the actual world to be reasoning with natural probabilities.
This is the exact same question I had after watching the video. I think Squared's answer to it is pretty good actually
Best of success for you and your loved ones!
Thank you for sharing your wisdom and making those cool videos 😃👍🏻
Evil will do what evil does. Resisting it is what brings the greater good from it.
According to Squared "greater good" comes from anything, so it doesn't matter if there is more or the most evil.
Glad you were able to publish!! God bless
I have a different answer to this question (although i think yours has merit as well). I would argue that only natural evil always leads to a greater good. In contrast, the greater good of moral evil is that it entails free will. So if our actual world is the best feasible world God could have created (which i believe it is), then we ought to optimise it by refraining from moral evil. Moreover, with regard to whether we should prevent natural evils, I think God has already taken this into account by virtue of his foreknowledge. In other words, if God knows that there will not be any greater good from a certain natural evil, then He would not allow it to occur. God prompts and convicts us to prevent natural evil through our conscience. Perhaps if we completely stop trying to prevent natural evils, God will chasten us back to doing so
The conclusion of this video show perfectly the cognitive dissonance of this belief, and illustrate that it is not based in rationality.
The beliefs exposed in this video is that God does not allow unnecessary evil to occur.
What logically follows is that all evil happening in the world is something god needs to occur (A tremendously stupid thing to believe, but it logically follows).
And yet for some reason, you advocate that humans must try to stop something your God needs to happen for some reason??? And that, despite the fact that the outcomes of this evil happening Is greater good. Therefore stopping it leads to LESS good happening in the world.
How did none of your follower catch that. Even if this mindset encourages god's creation to have risky behavior, why does it matter, the risk DOES NOT EXIST because God won't allow something bad to happen that does not lead to a better world.
I think athiests can agreed with your conclusion that we should follow evidence based outcomes and assume God doesn't intervene.
We could also just deny consequentialism. We stop evil because it’s the virtuous thing to do and a reflection of God’s character. We shouldn’t just base our actions on blindly trusting that God will ensure greater outcomes because that’s lazy and doesn’t lead to soul building. So we should base our moral actions on our own knowledge of how evils can/will lead to greater goods apart from God’s intervention. For example, we know that doing surgery on children, despite it just being cutting and mangling of a child’s body, leads to a greater good, so we incorporate that fact in our assessment of which action is most virtuous for the situation. We don’t do this with us deciding not to save kids from a burning building because we know God will ensure that it is for the greater good. We shouldn’t just pass the responsibility to God because he doesn’t. We should be mature and take responsibility for our own actions.
6:47 how is this not inconsistent? Or at least deeply implausible. You believe
1) If I do X, Y will happen
2) Y is good
3) I shouldn't do X
and you justify believing in 3) by appealing to outcomes of X that you believe won't happen!
It seems that Jim is only engaging in risky behavior if his world is not the actual world. So, you're suggesting that we should use natural probabilities in our decision making... out of fear that we might not live in the actual world?
I think one way of elucidating what's going on here is distinguishing between "policies" and individual decisions. Take the classic thought experiment used in discussions about utilitarianism: a doctor has the option to kill one person and harvest their organs to save five people. We have two available actions:
Action 1) Kill the one and save the five.
Action 2) Spare the one and let the five die.
However, we also have two available policies:
Policy 1) Whenever one person can be killed to save the lives of multiple people, kill the one person.
Policy 2) Whenever one person can be killed to save the lives of multiple people, spare the one person.
Even though Action 1 has a higher expected utility than Action 2, utilitarians argue that we still shouldn't perform Action 1 (in most cases) in virtue of the fact that adopting Policy 2 has a higher expected utility than Policy 1. Utilitarians point to a laundry list of problems caused by Policy 1 (e.g., widespread distrust towards medical institutions, general devaluing of human life, etc.) and conclude that doctors should adopt Policy 2. Whether or not you agree with the utilitarians' reasoning, hopefully the general point serves as a helpful analogy. Even if individual evils result in greater goods, this video argues that adopting a policy of allowing evils to promote these greater goods would lead to a worse world on average.
Basically: believe in theism but not really. Believe God would do something, but not really because we know he won't. Squared has to cope with the actuality problem here. Either God will make the die roll muffin or not, and if he doesn't then God wants the worse outcome imaginable.
@@ApologeticsSquared But utilitarians actually believe that, if policy 2 were to be enacted, *our* world would end up being worse. You *don't* believe that throwing the magic dice would make our world worse (indeed, you believe it would make it better). Utilitarians oppose policy 2 because of the consequences it would have, you oppose throwing the magic dice because of the consequences it *won't* have. Surely you see the absurdity of this!
@@ApologeticsSquared That rationale is why I am not a utilitarian. I figure if there was some formula or objective criteria for morality, then our feelings towards an action are irrelevant or at least already accounted for when considering moral facts. Rather I think the source of morality is our feelings conjoined with a desire for consistency.
@Nickesponja // You don't believe that throwing the magic dice would make our world worse. //
This isn't true. If God foresaw that in our world the magic dice was thrown, then there is a 5/6 chance that God would not actualize our world at all. Instead, he would have actualized some inferior world. So, throwing the magic dice indeed makes reality worse.
Opponents of Molinism charge that Molinists believe in backwards causation. I don't agree with this objection, because God's knowledge doesn't involve causation. However, I understand the intuition behind these objections. A consequence of Molinism is that if some true CCF about what I do in the future was instead false, then the past would have been different. This isn't to say that changing the future causes the past to change, but merely the subjunctive conditional that "If these CCFs were different, the actual world would have been different." For example, say God providentially guides me to be in the right place and the right time to share the Gospel with a stranger. If He knew beforehand that I would never have shared the Gospel with the stranger in those circumstances, He would have instead providentially guided me differently. Or when Jesus tells Peter "You will deny me three times," if the CCFs instead entailed Peter would deny Jesus four times, then the past would have been different, because He would have instead said, "You will deny me four times." Likewise, I oppose throwing the dice not because of the future consequences it will or won't have, but because throwing the dice increases the probability that the past would have always been worse. (Note: I am not saying that if I throw the dice in circumstances C1, the past _will_ be worse. That doesn't make sense, because changing the past isn't possible. I'm saying that if I threw the dice in C1, the past _would_ be worse. The first is incoherent, the second is benign.)
It's good to hear from you again, Squared!
I will pray for you as you work out how best to steward your time.
I have a prayer card for you in PrayerMate, and I've added these things on it.
Also... have you thought about trying to get an infinitely large mob of hammer-wielding people to build your house for you?
If evil leads to greater good because it is necessarily always resolved or prevented, then you can't say that we shouldn't act upon this because then evil won't be resolved or prevented, since you have just asserted that it always will be. You're essentially claiming that in the grand scheme of things, it's determined that all evil will lead to greater good. If that's true, rolling the dice is determined to turn out to be good and actually doing it is rational. There's no way to reasonably claim that the probability of something is equally both one and also one-sixth. If you're using natural probability while derived probability is true, then you are ignoring some data, namely, the fact that a good God exists and ensures certain outcomes. That's some pretty important data. If that data exists, why would you ignore it? I don't know what you were talking about when you discussed John's feasible world, but we live in an actual one and God is supposed to have foreknowledge. Possible worlds are all logical worlds and those may not have God's approval. The actualized world is actual and, if you are right, derived probability applies. If we live in an actual world and evil leads to greater good in an actual world, then we clearly shouldn't stop it. If you say that evil only leads to greater good when prevented or resolved by agents, then you can't say that it must lead to greater good even when they don't resolve it or that even if the resolution is determined, they shouldn't do certain things because they won't resolve it. In summary, if you say that something is determined, that means it's going to happen no matter what you do and you can't say that everything is determined to turn out well unless we change that.
You should have ended the video with a joke, and said something like you married an axe murderer, and after her third attempt fo kill you, you had to go through radical counseling to help her repent.
I don't think that that would be nearly as time-consuming as my schoolwork. :P
Omg you are alive!
And I will be for the rest of my life! :D
Or you could abandon consequentialism but nice argument, it's really well constructed
Always glad to hear from you and watch your videos. I this topic is similar to when people try to figure out God’s plan for their life while neglecting the things God has revealed about His will, such as virtues, values, and moral commands.
But what's wrong with Jim's reasoning? If he's right about God, then the die will indeed land on a six and he'll get his cake. What's the problem?
Because he's wrong about God, because "natural probabilty" comes from the world we're in not the multi verse of possibilities. If God ever acts in the world, the natural probabilities would align to God's will.
@@goldenalt3166 Jim thinks that God exists and that this God wants the Worst Thing Ever not to happen. Since God is omnipotent, it follows that the Worst Thing Ever cannot happen. No action of Jim could ever overpower God and cause the Worst Thing Ever to happen. So the true probability of the Worst Thing Ever is zero. There might be some other kinds of probabilty, but the true probability is the one that matters. However, in our world, many people are not fully certain that God exists and thus would evaluate the probability of the Worst Thing Ever as greater and would not want to take such a risk.
What if "greater good" just means people becoming better at fighting evil?
Would this also serve to solve the problem?
While God has actualized a feasible world which is very good overall, for all you know it may not be a good world for you individually. So, while there's no question about the world overall being good, your life might be a good one, a bad one, or something in-between.
Also, it's generally a good thing *for you* if you prevent evils. It's good in itself, builds virtue, etc. Therefore whether your individual life is bad/good/better usually genuinely hangs in the balance when you decide whether or not to prevent evil. Egoistic considerations such as this should motivate you to prevent evil.
Nice to see you again even if I find your arguments problematic.
So your foundational argument is that we should act on natural probabilities over divine probabilities. Immediately this fails as you're presuming that this god exists and has put its stamp of approval on our world in the formulation. If you thought we weren't an actual world, then divine probabilities would be at most equal natural probabilities. As divine probabilities only apply to possible worlds that have that stamp of approval and the stamp of approval can only go out to worlds where that roll is a 6.
But as you think that divine probabilities apply in this world then it must be that rolling that die is going to yield a six every time it is rolled. To not roll the die is to believe that your god is ok with the worst possible thing happening or to believe this isn't an actual world.
We wouldnt have gone to the moon as early as we did if there hadnt been a war
Should we make more wars then as greater good come of them?
Nice video. I might watch more even though i'm a staunch atheist and have a lot of problems with this argument lol. I did enjoy listening, and you explained it well.
You said at 5:21 :
"Thus, the best way to reason about our situation, the best way to improve our feasible world, is to reason with natural probabilities instead."
The problem is, we aren't in a feasible world, we are in an actualized world. God did put his stamp of approval on our world. We can't improve our feasible world anymore, since we exist, and so we are, in fact, in the actualized world.
You are basically saying 'we need to reason with natural probabilities, otherwise God won't choose us' after God has already chosen us.
God has chosen this world knowing we would engage in risky behavior and that the end result would be better than in all other worlds. We can roll the dice.
I don't think your reasoning works. You would have to show that we aren't actualized for it to work.
If one should base their decision making on natural probabilities, then what is the utility of derived probabilities?
The paradox is that while actions based on natural probabilities end up being better, beliefs based on derived probabilities end up being more accurate.
@@ApologeticsSquaredWhat would be an example of this improvement of accuracy?
Take an evil that occurred in the past. Since it happened in the actual world, it will result in a greater good (assuming a greater goods theodicy). If we base our credences on natural probabilities, we would assign a low credence to the proposition that this evil will result in a greater good. If we base our credence on derived probabilities, we would assign a credence of 1.0 to the proposition that this evil will result in a greater good. Since all evils do result in greater goods, the latter individual has more accurate credences.
@@ApologeticsSquared So derived probabilities are more accurate if one assumes that they are more accurate?
Personally, that doesn't sit right with me. I figure that there is an element of risk involved when using probabilities.
@@mesplin3No you are mistaken, derived probabilities are better assuming the world is the way derived probability is.
Squared said "assuming the theodicy" meaning in a hypothetical the derived is correct.
(He argued in circles).
Without even watching the video: not all evil can be prevented, and the evil that can be stopped is because of the greater goods.
This feels like another video where you avoid the core problen.
"Greater good comes from evil" wasn't even addressed, its trying to defend Calvinism, where god wanted that evil because theist have no choice but to admit this in causality/deterministic events.
You still have the problem of evil, youve just danced around the problem with "god caused it so it must ultimately be good."
How is this not a presuppositional argument and belief?
You can't posssibly justify a "greater good comes out of it" without diverting it into "this atrocity resulted in fertalized soil so i think thats a greater good" subjective coping.
To me, it feels like there is a very considerable effort to avoid the topics you make videos on. Which i find interesting but also a bit boring because i know you wont come into the actual discussion.
I dont get this solve anything? Im going to watch again
Congrats on getting married! 🎉
Consider buddha and quantum physics and the property of observation and awareness. You'll find your answer there. Simply put. Preventative measure only seem to be that. You might just be performing a causal task unknowingly.
Hmm... I wasn't sold on the argument for using natural probabilities...
I don't think this is very convincing. The crux of the argument seems to happen around 4:40, where you have all the worlds layed out and you talk about people in those worlds using Pd instead of Pn, but what exactly your saying here I think could be clearer. I think I see the point that there are more feasible worlds where people use Pd and bad things happen compared to if they use Pn. But why should I care? Why does the fact that there are 5 (nearly) identical copies of me in nearby possible worlds that throw the die and make bad things happen (or engaging in "risky behavior" as you put it) mean I shouldn't throw the die to make good things happen in _this_ world? If I know about divine providence, then I know none of those worlds are going to be actualized. They are metaphysically possible, but they aren't epistemically possible to me, if I know about god's worst thing prevention policy. If I'm trying to decide to throw the cupcake die, it still seems like you are just saying "use Pn just because" and not giving us a clear _reason_ to use Pn or prefer it to Pd.
Wait God the result of rolling the dice is 2 possible worlds. God wouldn't actualize the worst one, so the second one would be actualized. If I live in the actual world, as I do, I don't see the risk. This is the best possible world, whatever I do, is going to lead to goodness. I think thinking about what people in possible worlds *should* do is misleading, because we live with certainty of being in the best possible world.
CONGRATULATIONS 🎉
You seem to assume realism about possible worlds, which seems questionable. If we take the feasible worlds, among which god has to chose, to be merely ideas/conceptual -- that is, if we take the fact "god actualized this world" to be a property only of a single world -- then Jim, who lives in the actual world, can argue based on derived probability that he actually has a free cupcake machine. And, in principle, it does not seem incoherent to say that, while i am currently drining tea, there is a feasible-but-not-actualized world, in which i am drinking coffee.
I don't buy it. I see no difference between derived and natural probability. You're just adding information about the system. Ie a dice, all else being equal, roles 6 a sixth of the time. But all else isn't equal. You know that if it is rolled then it will be six. What you've learned is that your assumption that the dice is fair must be false. Why would you knowingly act on incomplete information when you know the information that changes the probilities? That makes no sense. It's like saying if chosen at random most things will hurt me when consumed so I guess I'll just starve to death even though it's been shown to me that my sandwich is fine.
I never liked this kind of reasoning. Where you recur to a hermetic hipotetical to argue for or against something deliberately leaving out variables that makes your argument nonsensical. It's disingenuous, manupulative and fake.
Could you explain to me what variable might make this argument nonsensical, disingenuous, manipulative and fake?
@@doggoslayer5679Just give another value or "event" to one of the other four sides of the dice that isn't "cupcake" or "worst thing possible". And I said "...makes the argument nonsensical". What's disingenuous, manipulative and fake is the porpouse behind the action of using such arguments.
If you actually believe evil results in a greater good then is it really "evil"? If it was better to have occurred than not then wouldn't that make it a "good" thing?
This is weird and faulty logic. This video seems to attempt to be a justification for simple cognitive dissonance.
If we know for a fact that this is the world God instantiated, then we know it's not a hypothetical world were we shouldn't be "risky."
Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too with doublespeak. No, that's not convincing.
Pretty good, but sadly a circular argument based on an unproved statement, that actually ends up on attacking omnipotence: even if all evil results in greater good, God is not able to create that greater good without evil, hence he needs evil to actualize greater goods. Not a great bible argument, but a good argument for a benevolent good nonetheless. Still sadly not an argument for leading a christian life
Good and bad are RELATIVE. ;)
Incidentally, are you VEGAN?
They are relative but that doesn't mean they can't be measured....
@@ShouVertica, strawman.
@@FilipinaVegana Is it? Do you believe we can measure them?
@@ShouVertica No, I don't believe goodness or badness can be measured. We can observe behavior, but not what behavior ought to be.
@@mesplin3 Well I was asking him, but I can respond to you:
If you don't believe they can be measured, do you believe that we can measure results and actions taken towards a goal?
It seems to me that people who try to invoke relativism to discourage discussion generally will concede every point that matters and still believe in some pragmatic good/bad system of measurement.