*_List of Mistakes (for Part 5)_* _Problem of Evil_ 0:49 Mistake 126: Understanding and assessing theodicies 8:57 Mistake 127: Auxiliary hypotheses 19:05 Mistake 128: “The problem of evil proves God” 21:51 Mistake 129: Merely assuming incompatibilism 24:28 Mistake 130: “Animal suffering is morally irrelevant” 25:08 Mistake 131: “Animals can’t suffer” 26:39 Mistake 132: “The problem of evil cannot touch classical theism” 30:03 Mistake 133: Conflating _God having adequate reason for permitting suffering_ & _God permitting suffering for a greater good_ 34:33 Mistake 134: Overlooking other important distinctions 36:28 Mistake 135: “Suffering requires fine-tuning, so it can’t be evidence against God” 38:45 Mistake 136: Picking atheism as the competing hypothesis 39:34 Mistake 137: Ignoring whether evils are _required_ for and _outweighed by_ goods 44:14 Mistake 138: “The logical PoE is dead” _Divine Hiddenness_ 55:18 Mistake 139: Denying non-resistant non-belief 1:09:35 Mistake 140: “If God weren’t hidden, he would violate our free will!” 1:12:01 Mistake 141: Merely _assuming_ that explicit belief in God is required for a relationship with God
Theology has no place in the reality of the scientific method, It should remain in the realm of philosophy which has no peer review and thus has no accountability to reality.
Regarding mistake # 139. If I recall, of the four that clearly articulated their views in Debating Christian Religious Epistemology volume, all four rejected the idea that God is hidden or that there are reasonable nonbelievers. As a Christian, there are few times I've been so ashamed, especially since there appeared to be little to no connection between the authors' stated epistemology and their claims about the hidden ill motives of nonbelievers.
I love the defense of "if god weren't hidden, he would violate our free will" bruh. It is the typical argument from a christian who doesn't read the Bible
Right, God acts pretty observably in Joshua 10 (throws down stones from heaven to kill the enemy and stops the sun in the sky). But divine hiddenness is not a criticism of theism; rather it is a problem with Judeao-Christian auxiliary doctrines that many theists hold to.
Remember the Christian when he puts on the philosopher hat as a dishonest tatic or just due to the nature of public debate, will ignore all Christian theology even needed to save theism.
23:49 *People will often say, like, "if God's going to create free creatures then he's going to have to risk them choosing evil," and so on, or that, you know, "God can't ensure that creatures always freely do what's good," and so on. Those sorts of claims will, at least typically, assume the truth of incompatibilism.* Err, don't they assume some sort of compatibilism or free will, able to act _in contradiction to_ prior conditions and/or divine will? The determinist says you're destined to act how you do, whether that's because the output of your brain is deterministic or because it's simply not possible for an omniscient, omnipotent being to not get what they want. 🤷♂
56:24 Regarding diving hiddenness, I see a lot online folks bring up a survey the Atheist Experience did that allegedly resulted in 83% of respondents saying even if they knew God exists, they wouldn’t worship him. Does anyone know if this is real and where to find it? (Or similar surveys?) I haven’t had any luck turning it up.
I also wouldn’t put much trust in that number, since the people polled probably understood the question to be asking not about a truly perfect being but rather the abusive, fundamentalist God they were brought up to believe in.
It was specifically in reference to the God of the Bible, which is an inherently limited and impossibly evil being as described in the bible. It has nothing to do with any other form of theism. Almost every atheist would be okay with theism if they had conditional evidence (the condition being that they could verify it in some way). But worship is contingent on the character of that God because as humans, we tend to have an innate moral understanding. We want things to be fair, right. We are physically harmed by anti-social behavior, for example. The view of a Deity that's anti-social would be negative. A deity that's above reproach because it's DONE nothing that one could rebuke them for is far easier to stomach for an atheist.
@@MajestyofReason oh wow, senpai noticed me 😊. You're prob right; I'd like to see the methodology but, it seems more like an urban legend than an actual poll.
Maybe someone can set me straight, but the second point in #134 is super counter intuitive to me. To use Joe's example of civillian death in war, so called collateral damage: It seems incredibly conceptually dissonant to say that "Despite knowing that there were children in the building I blew up, I did not intend to kill the children. I only intended to kill the militants next to them." Or another way: How is a consequence unintended if I know for a fact that it is a necessary feature of the total netowork of consequences of my behavior? It just reads like that most self serving framing of a situation possible. "I can only be said to have intended those consequences that I wanted to follow from my actions and not the ones that I knew would necessarily follow, but don't like." If I tried this with my girlfriend she'd say something like, "How is all that philosophy making you dumber?"
Yeah, there's a massive gap between accidentally harming a bystander and consciously sacrificing them to the cause. That's the same reason we don't part out the homeless guy in the ER. 🤷♂
Whether liking vs. not liking a consequence of your action is a satisfactory determinant of intention is a semantic question, I think. But the distinction Joe was hinting at is more subtle (given how I interpret what he wrote in the document): it's a question of causal direction. Did I inflict suffering because that suffering would prevent some amount of suffering which would justify it? Or did my action prevent some amount of suffering that justifies the suffering the action also caused? I think a better analogy would be the trolley problem: is there a difference between switching the track from 5 people to 1 person vs. throwing one person in front of the trolley to prevent it from killing 5 people? To me they seem ethically equivalent, but this doesn't appear to be the case for everyone.
@@silberwolfSR71 1. So Joe says that just because you foresee does not mean you intend. If that were true a military unit would not have to justify use of force. Collateral damage would not be morally relevant to their decision. It seems like the only reason to make reference to some greater good would be because the evils that result from your actions were actually part of your intention. It seems like Joe would be saying here that after diverting the trolly toward 1 rather than 5, I can simply say that I intended to save 5 people and that the 1 death that resulted was not part of my intention. I don't think my problem has anything to do with liking. I think there's a badly motivated bifurcation being made between what an actor knows about the consequences of their actions and what they intend. I mention preferences as an example of a bad motivation for such a bifurcation. 2. Say more about the equivalence between killing 5 versus 1. I'm curious.
@@23Hiya 1. I still think a big chunk of the "intention" discussion is semantic in nature. I don't know if this is exactly the meaning Joe has in mind in the video, but to me the set of intended consequences of your action is the intersection between the set of those consequences that you thought would happen and the set of those consequences that you wanted to happen. Just because you think something bad will accompany an otherwise good action doesn't mean you intend the bad consequence. The dentist doesn't _intend_ to cause you pain, they intend to reduce your pain going forward. That they think doing a particular intervention will cause pain doesn't imply (at least to me) that they intend for that to happen. As a corollary of my definition of "intend", simply granting that someone did not intend for a negative consequence of their action to occur, does not, by itself, absolve them of ethical responsibility for said negative consequence. The military unit still has to justify use of force, but there's a meaningful distinction between the collateral damage being (from the POV of the unit) desired, undesired, or neutral. "It seems like Joe would be saying here that after diverting the trolly toward 1 rather than 5, I can simply say that I intended to save 5 people and that the 1 death that resulted was not part of my intention." I'm not sure what Joe would say, but that is what I would say, yes (minus the "simply" part - this seems to imply I'm now ethically innocent with regards to the killed person, which I don't think is the case). Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to disagree with this, and further, you take "intend" to cover all those consequences that I expect to follow my action. I don't think this is an unreasonable definition, quite the opposite, but to me it seems my definition is closer to something that makes sense in the context of the distinction mentioned in the video. "I don't think my problem has anything to do with liking. I think there's a badly motivated bifurcation being made between what an actor knows about the consequences of their actions and what they intend. I mention preferences as an example of a bad motivation for such a bifurcation." This is where we disagree and I contend that it is a semantic disagreement. To you the bifurcation doesn't makes sense. To me it does. I don't consider it to be badly motivated, as it is simply motivated by my understanding of the word "intend". 2. I may have communicated poorly here. I definitely don't think killing 5 is equivalent to killing 1. What I think is that [kill 1 to save 5 by pushing a lever] is equivalent to [kill 1 to save 5 by directly killing the 1].
@@silberwolfSR71 Thanks for this. I see more clearly what you were pointing to by saying it's a semantic problem. I don't know that there's a whole more to do in terms of persuasion. I'm hearing you say that to intend is a very narrow and particular sort of thing by definition. I think that may be a socially necessary way of behaving, but my dentist has absolutely warned me that, "This is going to be uncomfortable." He knows the pain is entailed by his intention and so warns me. Saying he did not intend to bring me discomfort in addition to a healthier smile seems shady to me. Anywho, thanks for engaging. Appreciate your time. ☺️
True. Usually just process theologians go for it. There are ones who basically say it (God cant do it, prevented by some metaphysical laws), but dont want to explicitly reject omnipotence, like Greg Boyd, DBH, and van Inwagen. Which is kinda weird, in the Biblical texts God is not omnipotent, and there are notable historic philosophers thet could be used as references for this kind of view, like Platonists (classic, middle, and neo), Stoics, and Philo.
@@zelenisokI just usually say God cannot create an existing contradiction because of the very definition of a contradiction. This is not the fault of God's omnipotence. This is the fault of the definition of a contradiction. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything. Contradictions are simultaneously true and false statements that cannot actually exist within consistency and nothing actually inconsistent exists as a thing.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 Everyone is ok with omnipotence excluding logically impossible things. The problem is the additional restrictions, like Gods moral nature (God cannot lie, etc), his basic nature (God cannot die, cannot move, etc), Gods classical-theism nature (God cannot change, cannot be affected, etc), and especially these external restrictions, ie God cant do something due to some metaphysical laws preventing him. At that point it should be clear that omnipotence has been rejected. I would say it was rejected even before, I dont think its even a coherent concept almost ever, its like God can do anything doable, except all these things we can list. Theologian Thomas Jay Oord writes about this as omnipotence's death by thousand qualifications, like if basically everyone is gonna put various exceptions (beyond logical impossibility), why do we still call God omnipotent, lets just drop that claim, its not the end of the world if we drop it. In fact, now we have a simple solution to PoE and PoHiddenness, and can coherently believe in an actually good God.
Omnipotence doesn't justify free use of power. It's why we refer to God as the Father. Our parents, could essentially brainwash us, use their power in any way they felt, and manipulate our free will for their own purposes. But a good parent sacrifices their full authority to ethically allow the free will of the children even if some things the children does may end up harmful. Theologians can easily argue God places these constraints out of Love in order to not violate the free will of His Creation. When you evolve with the understanding that God views ALL creation equally, it makes rational sense why God wouldn't even stop a murderer from killing another human. Or a storm from killing a human. Or a human from destroying the environment. Then it gets even more complicated when you can imagine God like an entity that exists outside of time with a quantum understanding of the entire universe that sees the outcome of every single event.
The Thomas Aquinas LARPing joke killed me. 🤣 I went to one of those ultra conservative Thomistic schools - great place in many ways, but lots of Aquinas regurgitation occurred.
Mistake 139: Justin’s probabilistic reasoning is wrong or at least controversial The is no such thing as antecedent probability of atleast one non resistant non believer (NRNB) P(NRNB) is P(theism) *P(NRNB/theism) + P(Naturalism) *P(NRNB/Naturalism) In order to show P(NRNB) is low one has to show both addends are true ,but naturalist agree P(NRNB/theism) is high ,so the only way to show P(NRNB) is low is by showing P(theism) is low by other evidence In that case Divine hiddenness loses all it’s force Justin’s mistake is that he is thinking basic probabilities are unconditional Alex malpass made a similar mistake regarding fine tuning (He retracted it )
To see where Justin went wrong more clearly see Alex’s article against fine tuning The very first premise is wrong for the same reason why Justin’s is wrong useofreason.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/the-god-can-do-anything-objection/
In other words the antecedent probability he calculated is the probability given naturalism and of course it’s gonna favour naturalism (Begs the question)
8:22 unless you know spending your time on something else would be more effective at doing it for more people (effective altruism I am guessing it’s called)
First, a great video as always. Thanks for the effort you put into them. I believe it is indeed mistaken to announce that the Logical Problem of Evil (Logical PoE) is dead in its entirety. However, I don't consider it false to declare that the specific formulation of the Logical PoE as envisioned by "Epicurus," Hume, and Mackie is dead, indicating it has been successfully rebutted. As stated in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP): "Since the logical problem of evil claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to coexist, all that Plantinga (or any other theist) needs to do to combat this claim is to describe a possible situation in which God and evil coexist. That situation doesn’t need to be actual or even realistic. Plantinga doesn’t need to have a single shred of evidence supporting the truth of his suggestion. All he needs to do is give a logically consistent description of a way that God and evil can coexist. Plantinga claims God and evil could coexist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God’s morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible."-iep.utm.edu/evil-log/ While the FWD has indeed received many criticisms, I think it at least achived its goal in the "simple and old" cases of the Logical PoE. I also disagree with Mooney and your suggestion that no one defends the simple, old Logical PoE that only shows the incompatibility of evil and God. The prevalence of "Epicurean paradox" gotcha memes and the like I have encountered is too high for me to find such a notion plausible. Unfortunately, many militant atheists are relentless in spreading precisely this version of the PoE, prematurely declaring victory and dismissing every rebuttal without second thoughts. I wish they were cognizant of the fact that the Logical PoE has newer, better versions which do, in fact, pose a challenge, unlike the old ones that I view as obsolete, as apparently Mooney does based on what I can gather from this clip.
30:00 I dunno what is going on man. Does LARPer mean extreme poser, yet people love fandom nowadays? I dunno what is going on are fandoms like tribalistic sports people or something?
I don't understand mistake 132. If moral laws are real, they would either be identical to God or subservient to Him. So God would either be beyond moral laws, or morality would be identical to any action He does because He is the only arbitrer and sustainer of all that exists and all morality, and thus, it is impossible for Him to do evil because He is tautologically/self-referentially good (or in the other case, subservient and hence, inapplicable to Him). And when we say something is evil, we mean that it is deviating from the set laws of what is good. But since goodness here would be identical to God, then anything He does is automatically good and He cannot deviate from His own actions? If God is the ultimate arbitrer, then He determines what is good, and hence, any deviation from His will = evil. But He can't deviate from His own will, so He can't be evil. Now, does that align with what WE consider good? That's an entirely separate question. But this renders imo the problem of evil non-existent, and it is up to us to change our mindset then.
I think the entire idea is very misunderstood in Classical Theism, but I wish Mr. Schmid would reply to me, maybe its me who is misunderstanding something
This would fail due to Euthyphro-style concerns. I personally think that the Euthyphro dilemma and its implications make objective moral standards beyond God the most plausible conception of morality, if it is to be at all objective.
"Another way to evaluate the first probability is to argue that elements of the theodicy are implausible whether or not theism is true." Whoa. Someone really, really needs to review their probability 101 (ik, way less fun than analytic theology bro metaphysics). Having said that, your English pronunciation is great! I'm finally starting to hear the difference between voiced th and d. 👌👌👌
"The existence of an ice wall would pose major problems to the flat earth hypothesis" "Ha! This argument only PROVES the flat earth because you HAVE to believe in the existence of an ice wall to run it!"
@@CoranceLChandler Not really. You might defend your claim with something like "what you describe isn't evil" or "the evil you describe doesn't exist", but if your claim defines evil, and is incompatibility with evil existing, and another party points out that that evil exist, then your claim, by your own definition, can't be true. If you had defined "evil" to include gravity, and I then point to gravity, then your claim must be false. It doesn't matter if I believe gravity is evil, and it doesn't matter if gravity is actually evil. What matters is, that your claim is incompatible with observed reality. If it turns out that gravity isn't actually evil, or if you change your claim to allow for evil, then we can of course start a new discussion about that claim. Again, it doesn't matter if I believe in evil - it matters that whether your claim is incompatible with observed reality.
@@CoranceLChandlerno, it’s just wrong on so many levels. The POE is an internal critique, of course it’s gonna talk about things within the theistic worldview. That doesn’t mean evil actually exists in reality. Also, even if evil actually does exist in reality, and someone running the POE is referring to these kinds of evils, it doesn’t entail theism, it could entail one of any objective moral view such as platonism.
In a theodicy, one ends up dealing with the topic of evil forced by the obvious contradiction of assuming that God is perfectly good in conjunction with his omnipotent and all-miscient characteristics and After such statements, try to reconcile those attributes with reality. If evil is that which causes unnecessary suffering. A Christian God is evil without any type of circumstance that gives him a margin of doubt. He is evil because he causes suffering unnecessarily. God creates human souls knowing in advance what the destiny of those souls will be. God knows that a certain number of souls will end up either being eternally tortured in hell or being annihilated or in paradise regardless of what their moral choices were (depending on the flavor of Christianity you like best). He knows it even before creating them. However, he creates all souls and makes them experience the valley of tears. All the suffering endured by the sensitive souls that God creates has no use in the first destiny. It was obvious to God that they were not going to accept it and that turns out that he creates them only so that they suffer eternally. In the second destiny, annihilation, God creates something, subjects it to suffering, and then destroys it, in complete awareness of what he is doing. In the third destiny, the need to make humanity suffer shows its futility when it turns out that human suffering is not a factor in the destiny of souls. I have seen that there are those who argue that lost souls are useful as a moral tool useful to saved souls. But that empties of all morality a god who strips some of the souls he creates of dignity and uses them only as a kind of prop for the benefit of a group of souls he prefers.
You're ignorance is that God created the world Good and another lesser supernatural being caused human beings to disobey the only restriction that God placed on them. So who really created suffering? The humans could have rejected the temptation of this lesser supernatural being and continued in the Garden of Eden. As they were not corrupted in anyway at that time: humanity is corrupted now and why evil is more of a problem just from human beings having a fallen sin nature. That in itself points to the Bible as a truthful text about God. BTW evil is the absence of Good : how do we have Good without a God: Both Goodness and evil point to God: nonintelligence creating the Universe points to nothing Good or evil ; a world that doesn't exist!
@@davidjanbaz7728 I was specific. It is indisputable that God causes unnecessary suffering when he creates sentient souls that he knows (before creating them) have no chance of being saved. God knows that those souls will be tortured eternally and that is their only possible destiny and he creates them anyway. That creation only adds suffering to the universe and God does it with full knowledge of the situation. That god is evil. Assuming that good and bad are only distinguishable by the presence of God is only logical within the Christian cultural bubble. I, who am an atheist, can clearly distinguish that creating something sensitive with the sole purpose of making it suffer is something evil. I imagine that interpretation is something we both share.
I am sure there are gods, even your particular god. But none of this has any relevance to the Buddhist tradition - and certainly not OUR Buddhist tradition. Your God (their god, those gods, every god) is caught in the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, life, death. Gods take billions of more years to die sure (thus their delusion that they are immortal) but all gods end. The goal of being human is to escape samsara completely. This includes discarding your delusion that you are the product of an eternal god (whatever god you have chosen or were born into).
@@wordscapes5690 What led you to be sure that there are gods? I am an atheist. I do not have the illusion of having been created by a god. I do not think that life extends beyond what everyone assumes is the natural extension of life in humans. Even Christians are sure that their ancestors have died and that they will die too. Religion is a consolation, regarding death. But it is not a very effective consolation. Everyone is afraid that their loved ones will die.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd In Buddhism, we do not believe in the existence of the self (the personality constructed from your brain and sensory experiences). Some Buddhists believe there exist gods. Some believe there is a Creator God. Others are completely atheist. Most are agnostic. I am willing to concede every religious claim regarding any and all gods, because it simply makes zero difference to Buddha Dhamma. When you die, you die. You are gone - everything that was you is erased. However, we do not believe that the “self” with which you so desperately identify is the fulcrum of existence. In the deep meditative state, when the brain is silenced, the clarity of what you are comes to the fore - and it is neither flesh, nor soul, nor spirit, nor anything tangible or intangible. Only through the very subjective practices of meditation can you achieve “awareness” of non-self. Even a glimpse of the emptiness at the core of existence and self is enough to convince the meditator of this basic truth. Atheism is correct - but it is correct in ways far deeper than mere a-deism.
I haven't seen the video yet, but I will when I'm able to for now I'm going to copy paste my counter argument for the problem of evil and see how it fairs against the video. Evil and suffering in nature such as natural disasters, sickness, and death are products of sin. Sin is existence apart from God. Sin causes natural disasters, sickness, and death because God is perfection, and apart from God is imperfection which comes with imperfect products. God may allow sin in nature for three reasons independent wills, comprehension of wills, and good wills that come from sin. Independent wills should exist so we can choose to be with God instead existing as purely subordinate creatures with God. In other words we would be essentially robots following a code without the ability to follow our own code. In addition, if our moral code aligns with God's moral code by are own accord we would be choosing God even though we didn't have to. This kind of independency is fundamentally good because if we were dependent on God's will we'll be imprisoned which is undesirable by nature. Comprehension of wills should exist because light can't be known without dark and vice versa. We can't see how good God is without seeing how bad the absence of God would be. If God created us with the knowledge of sin, but without experiencing sin it would be a contradiction. You can't explain how something is bad without knowing that bad is something to avoid through experience, for example if I told you that touching your hand on something that is hot is bad because it is painful you wouldn't know that pain is something to avoid without experiencing it. Moreover, God cannot have a certain type of meaningfull relationship with perfect creatures. Solely existing perfect creatures cannot experience, free will, empathy, forgiveness, humility, humor, and wisdom due to the very nature of their being. Being created as perfect creatures isn't a bad thing, but it ironically lacks certain qualitys that beings may want to have. Therefore, there are goods that can come from sin. That's why I think God created us in an imperfect world, and will have us be reborn into a perfect one. With Earth and the possibility of heaven we can have our cake and eat it too. As to why God would allow so much confusion with divine hiddeness and so much evil in nature I really don't know. However, I do know that we only see a narrow slice of God's eternal righteous plan. If God is truly good then everything wicked will one day be justified, and infinitely redeem so beyond the necessary point of redemption that we would count all sorrows as blessings. Which includes everyone honestly being brought to the wrong conclusions and respect to their faith. The best thing we can do in the meantime is be Faithful in God, and strive for following Christ's teachings which entails being the best we can be. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4
Note the argument assumes that God can't achieve these goods any other way without contradictions. God cannot create an existing contradiction because of the very definition of a contradiction. This is not the fault of God's omnipotence. Omipotence is the ability to do anything. This is the fault of the definition of a contradiction. Contradictions are simultaneously true and false statements that cannot actually exist within consistency and nothing actually inconsistent exists as a thing.
Isn't that not unlike what theists say? That of course you can't have a relationship with God if you don't think It is there? But yeah, I agree with what you are implying: if something like God exists, my doxastic beliefs regarding It should be irrelevant, and It should be able to be discovered, or derived, regardless of and independent from these beliefs.
The other day, i thought about an "argument from disorder" against christianity. It is similar to the problem of evil, but without the moral conundrums. It goes more or less like: 1) At some point in the past, God was everything that existed. 2) The christian god is defined by a set a characteristics, such as (but not limited to): omniscience, omnipotence, perfection, and order. 3) There is disorder in the world. 4) But, as God is omniscient and perfect, any action of his authority would be orderly. 5) Therefore, the existente of disorder cannot be explained by christianity.
it's so simple : if there is a creator, they don't care about the suffering of others and they don't care about communicating anything. You don't need a phd.
Theodicies are very boring and quite frankly, pointless/useless, and dare I say, nonsense. Divine Foreknowledge & Free Will is a much more important 'problem' in my view.
But even this is largely meaningless speculation, since you can never know God's mind. If you prove the scriptures, you can say that Divine Foreknowledge & Free Will are compatible because God confirms it via scripture, but you just wouldn't know the mechanism, and likely can't truly know the mechanism. You might be able to propose an internally consistent explanation, but should new external facts appear, you would have to reconsider everything again, etc. Its just pointless word games and speculation, nothing more (for both of those 'problems') since you fundamentally have no access to God's mind and the total world.
@@geovanni1470 What is it that you want me to explain? My view on Divine foreknowledge and free will? I thought I already explained it in that paragraph?
@@bonbon__candy__1 Yes, about free will, I thought that you had more about foreknowledge and free will, it's difficult to find something interesting about this topic, almost all the content are things that I already know and your paragraph was refreshing..
Some Thomists like Brian Davies argue that God is amoral (so the concepts of good and evil in the way we conceive of them don't apply to him), that suffering (the worst migraine of your life) is just 'privation of goodness'. POE solved, right?
Genesis first pages tells us how this falls upon our human dashboard lol It also strengthens the importance on why God incarnated man to help fix our corrupt programing and to unify the tripartite nature of man past present and future. Salvation takes on a strong theology. It also enhances why God keeps separating himself from nature to show Abraham, moses and then some how he acts upon and through his creation but is not in a rock or some.pagan god that he constantly unveils himself to them
I don't understand point 128. The problem of Evil doesn't PROVE the existence of God, but isn't it true that the PoE requires the existence of God? If God doesn't exist, then there is no "problem" of Evil. I also don't get how you can have the PoE without Evil? If you are conceding that something eg., suffering, is not objectively Evil, or gratuitously Evil, or whatever, than aren't you resolving the whole problem?
The "problem" isn't that sucky stuff sucks. The "problem" is that given the characteristics being ascribed to God,-all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful-you wouldn't expect any suckiness to exist. 🤔 Mistake 128 is arguing that without God to decide that it sucks to suck, there's no basis for declaring that it actually does. It's a logical error because it doesn't address the inconsistency that comprises the PoE itself. It sort of embraces and ignores it, all at once, in an effort to change the subject. 🤷♂
@christaylor6574 I think it relies on too many assumptions and it's not really a very good argument. It's mainly effective as a rhetorical strategy for people who haven't really considered the basis of thier faith and morality to come to that realization, and so to doubt thier beliefs. It doesn't work for the reasons you explained to people who want to actually justify God because they can just make up stuff. God can just do the impossible, or God works in mysterious ways, etc. The real challenge, Imo, is to justify why exactly God has the properties that are ascribed to him. But they'll probably just say "For the Bible tells me so."
I rewatched the mistake 132 again, and I still don't think it works. I also think that you're sort of missing the point of what not being a moral agent is and how Classical Theists retain explanatory power through grounding their ideas in different concepts. Also, you really CAN'T tease out predictions from the Perfect Being theology (perfectly loving, just, and good being) would or wouldn't do (I know this is peaking from a Classical Theist view, but not all theologians, and arguably the scripture itself, doesn't actually push the view of there being a Perfect Being - that's actually an import from Greek philosophy) because you can't even approximate the meaning of those attributes. Remember that e.g. Thomists view these as analogical. No one has all the knowledge of the world, morality is often not universal and too shaky to make any grounding on it, etc. its impossible to extrapolate from this when even the definitional terms are STRONGLY debatable (also see my previous comment on this). You using an example detached from reality (extreme agony of every being, etc.) isn't exactly the best reasoning either. You're also mistaking the different views of causation here. Many Classical Theists would reject that it is the Perfect Being which is DIRECTLY CAUSING these to happen. Remember that many like Ismaili Neoplatonists would say that the Perfect Being directly causes only one single action (eternal creation/sustinence of the First Intellect). Perfect Being being defined as a moral agent by you says nothing about the substance and content of these morals and thus, says nothing of the obligations. I think I addressed everything here, but I really do think that Classical Theists are right: under their view, the very idea of the problem of evil simply wouldn't apply and have an effect. You are saying that this would be extremely unexpected, but its only unexpected based on YOUR moral norms, you're just trying to ignore this. So all in all, I think you're not right regarding mistake 132. Please reconsider your idea!
@christaylor6574 I am no longer a theist, but I would say that what I'm saying is that any morality would be contingent, and thus subservient to God OR it would be on the same level of God, and thus equivalent to Him, so whatever action He performs is automatically "good" because it aligns perfectly with the only valid moral code, which is identical to Himself. So either morality is subservient to Him, which would mean that its a category error for Him to be expected to act based on it, or its identical to Him as per classical theism, and thus, anything He does is automatically moral. Does that make sense?
*_List of Mistakes (for Part 5)_*
_Problem of Evil_
0:49 Mistake 126: Understanding and assessing theodicies
8:57 Mistake 127: Auxiliary hypotheses
19:05 Mistake 128: “The problem of evil proves God”
21:51 Mistake 129: Merely assuming incompatibilism
24:28 Mistake 130: “Animal suffering is morally irrelevant”
25:08 Mistake 131: “Animals can’t suffer”
26:39 Mistake 132: “The problem of evil cannot touch classical theism”
30:03 Mistake 133: Conflating _God having adequate reason for permitting suffering_ & _God permitting suffering for a greater good_
34:33 Mistake 134: Overlooking other important distinctions
36:28 Mistake 135: “Suffering requires fine-tuning, so it can’t be evidence against God”
38:45 Mistake 136: Picking atheism as the competing hypothesis
39:34 Mistake 137: Ignoring whether evils are _required_ for and _outweighed by_ goods
44:14 Mistake 138: “The logical PoE is dead”
_Divine Hiddenness_
55:18 Mistake 139: Denying non-resistant non-belief
1:09:35 Mistake 140: “If God weren’t hidden, he would violate our free will!”
1:12:01 Mistake 141: Merely _assuming_ that explicit belief in God is required for a relationship with God
Theology has no place in the reality of the scientific method, It should remain in the realm of philosophy which has no peer review and thus has no accountability to reality.
Please never stop making these videos. Life-fuel.
Regarding mistake # 139. If I recall, of the four that clearly articulated their views in Debating Christian Religious Epistemology volume, all four rejected the idea that God is hidden or that there are reasonable nonbelievers. As a Christian, there are few times I've been so ashamed, especially since there appeared to be little to no connection between the authors' stated epistemology and their claims about the hidden ill motives of nonbelievers.
'the case for God is just so strong, just look at the Kalam'💀
Great video as always and I appreciate the shout-out re: Bayesian problems of evil :)
You could always pull the "Welcome to the Majesty of Reason, Lairds, Lads, and Lasses, today we will..."
Very informative view by the way!! You are one of the most intelligent people in the field right now!!!!
Strangely relevant to the latest LowFruit video. I guess it is literally because we are creating user flows for our community
"Ask not what your auxillary hypothesis can do for your data, but ask what your data can do for your auxillary hypothesis."
- Bayes F. Kennedy
I love the defense of "if god weren't hidden, he would violate our free will" bruh. It is the typical argument from a christian who doesn't read the Bible
Right, God acts pretty observably in Joshua 10 (throws down stones from heaven to kill the enemy and stops the sun in the sky). But divine hiddenness is not a criticism of theism; rather it is a problem with Judeao-Christian auxiliary doctrines that many theists hold to.
@@AndrewofVirginia exactly
Remember the Christian when he puts on the philosopher hat as a dishonest tatic or just due to the nature of public debate, will ignore all Christian theology even needed to save theism.
Appreciate the “hidden” 😉Christian Universalism reference. It is the only view that makes sense of everything, including the problem of evil
yeah universalism can save theism
23:49 *People will often say, like, "if God's going to create free creatures then he's going to have to risk them choosing evil," and so on, or that, you know, "God can't ensure that creatures always freely do what's good," and so on. Those sorts of claims will, at least typically, assume the truth of incompatibilism.*
Err, don't they assume some sort of compatibilism or free will, able to act _in contradiction to_ prior conditions and/or divine will? The determinist says you're destined to act how you do, whether that's because the output of your brain is deterministic or because it's simply not possible for an omniscient, omnipotent being to not get what they want. 🤷♂
56:24 Regarding diving hiddenness, I see a lot online folks bring up a survey the Atheist Experience did that allegedly resulted in 83% of respondents saying even if they knew God exists, they wouldn’t worship him.
Does anyone know if this is real and where to find it? (Or similar surveys?) I haven’t had any luck turning it up.
I also wouldn’t put much trust in that number, since the people polled probably understood the question to be asking not about a truly perfect being but rather the abusive, fundamentalist God they were brought up to believe in.
God didn't give me any circuitry for worship. Perhaps he forgot. 🤷♂
It was specifically in reference to the God of the Bible, which is an inherently limited and impossibly evil being as described in the bible.
It has nothing to do with any other form of theism. Almost every atheist would be okay with theism if they had conditional evidence (the condition being that they could verify it in some way). But worship is contingent on the character of that God because as humans, we tend to have an innate moral understanding. We want things to be fair, right. We are physically harmed by anti-social behavior, for example. The view of a Deity that's anti-social would be negative. A deity that's above reproach because it's DONE nothing that one could rebuke them for is far easier to stomach for an atheist.
@@MajestyofReason oh wow, senpai noticed me 😊. You're prob right; I'd like to see the methodology but, it seems more like an urban legend than an actual poll.
Maybe someone can set me straight, but the second point in #134 is super counter intuitive to me. To use Joe's example of civillian death in war, so called collateral damage: It seems incredibly conceptually dissonant to say that "Despite knowing that there were children in the building I blew up, I did not intend to kill the children. I only intended to kill the militants next to them." Or another way: How is a consequence unintended if I know for a fact that it is a necessary feature of the total netowork of consequences of my behavior? It just reads like that most self serving framing of a situation possible. "I can only be said to have intended those consequences that I wanted to follow from my actions and not the ones that I knew would necessarily follow, but don't like." If I tried this with my girlfriend she'd say something like, "How is all that philosophy making you dumber?"
Yeah, there's a massive gap between accidentally harming a bystander and consciously sacrificing them to the cause. That's the same reason we don't part out the homeless guy in the ER. 🤷♂
Whether liking vs. not liking a consequence of your action is a satisfactory determinant of intention is a semantic question, I think.
But the distinction Joe was hinting at is more subtle (given how I interpret what he wrote in the document): it's a question of causal direction.
Did I inflict suffering because that suffering would prevent some amount of suffering which would justify it? Or did my action prevent some amount of suffering that justifies the suffering the action also caused?
I think a better analogy would be the trolley problem: is there a difference between switching the track from 5 people to 1 person vs. throwing one person in front of the trolley to prevent it from killing 5 people?
To me they seem ethically equivalent, but this doesn't appear to be the case for everyone.
@@silberwolfSR71 1. So Joe says that just because you foresee does not mean you intend. If that were true a military unit would not have to justify use of force. Collateral damage would not be morally relevant to their decision. It seems like the only reason to make reference to some greater good would be because the evils that result from your actions were actually part of your intention. It seems like Joe would be saying here that after diverting the trolly toward 1 rather than 5, I can simply say that I intended to save 5 people and that the 1 death that resulted was not part of my intention. I don't think my problem has anything to do with liking. I think there's a badly motivated bifurcation being made between what an actor knows about the consequences of their actions and what they intend. I mention preferences as an example of a bad motivation for such a bifurcation.
2. Say more about the equivalence between killing 5 versus 1. I'm curious.
@@23Hiya
1. I still think a big chunk of the "intention" discussion is semantic in nature. I don't know if this is exactly the meaning Joe has in mind in the video, but to me the set of intended consequences of your action is the intersection between the set of those consequences that you thought would happen and the set of those consequences that you wanted to happen. Just because you think something bad will accompany an otherwise good action doesn't mean you intend the bad consequence.
The dentist doesn't _intend_ to cause you pain, they intend to reduce your pain going forward. That they think doing a particular intervention will cause pain doesn't imply (at least to me) that they intend for that to happen.
As a corollary of my definition of "intend", simply granting that someone did not intend for a negative consequence of their action to occur, does not, by itself, absolve them of ethical responsibility for said negative consequence. The military unit still has to justify use of force, but there's a meaningful distinction between the collateral damage being (from the POV of the unit) desired, undesired, or neutral.
"It seems like Joe would be saying here that after diverting the trolly toward 1 rather than 5, I can simply say that I intended to save 5 people and that the 1 death that resulted was not part of my intention."
I'm not sure what Joe would say, but that is what I would say, yes (minus the "simply" part - this seems to imply I'm now ethically innocent with regards to the killed person, which I don't think is the case). Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to disagree with this, and further, you take "intend" to cover all those consequences that I expect to follow my action. I don't think this is an unreasonable definition, quite the opposite, but to me it seems my definition is closer to something that makes sense in the context of the distinction mentioned in the video.
"I don't think my problem has anything to do with liking. I think there's a badly motivated bifurcation being made between what an actor knows about the consequences of their actions and what they intend. I mention preferences as an example of a bad motivation for such a bifurcation."
This is where we disagree and I contend that it is a semantic disagreement. To you the bifurcation doesn't makes sense. To me it does. I don't consider it to be badly motivated, as it is simply motivated by my understanding of the word "intend".
2. I may have communicated poorly here. I definitely don't think killing 5 is equivalent to killing 1. What I think is that [kill 1 to save 5 by pushing a lever] is equivalent to [kill 1 to save 5 by directly killing the 1].
@@silberwolfSR71 Thanks for this. I see more clearly what you were pointing to by saying it's a semantic problem. I don't know that there's a whole more to do in terms of persuasion. I'm hearing you say that to intend is a very narrow and particular sort of thing by definition. I think that may be a socially necessary way of behaving, but my dentist has absolutely warned me that, "This is going to be uncomfortable." He knows the pain is entailed by his intention and so warns me. Saying he did not intend to bring me discomfort in addition to a healthier smile seems shady to me.
Anywho, thanks for engaging. Appreciate your time. ☺️
Awesome video. Very helpful!
❤️❤️❤️
Good show 😊👍
Mistake 135 sounds like theistic version of ‘Draper’s fallacy of understated evidence’
Both of these problems are easily solved by rejecting omnipotence.
Yup, but most theists won’t do that.
True. Usually just process theologians go for it. There are ones who basically say it (God cant do it, prevented by some metaphysical laws), but dont want to explicitly reject omnipotence, like Greg Boyd, DBH, and van Inwagen.
Which is kinda weird, in the Biblical texts God is not omnipotent, and there are notable historic philosophers thet could be used as references for this kind of view, like Platonists (classic, middle, and neo), Stoics, and Philo.
@@zelenisokI just usually say God cannot create an existing contradiction because of the very definition of a contradiction. This is not the fault of God's omnipotence. This is the fault of the definition of a contradiction. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything. Contradictions are simultaneously true and false statements that cannot actually exist within consistency and nothing actually inconsistent exists as a thing.
@@theintelligentmilkjug944 Everyone is ok with omnipotence excluding logically impossible things. The problem is the additional restrictions, like Gods moral nature (God cannot lie, etc), his basic nature (God cannot die, cannot move, etc), Gods classical-theism nature (God cannot change, cannot be affected, etc), and especially these external restrictions, ie God cant do something due to some metaphysical laws preventing him. At that point it should be clear that omnipotence has been rejected. I would say it was rejected even before, I dont think its even a coherent concept almost ever, its like God can do anything doable, except all these things we can list. Theologian Thomas Jay Oord writes about this as omnipotence's death by thousand qualifications, like if basically everyone is gonna put various exceptions (beyond logical impossibility), why do we still call God omnipotent, lets just drop that claim, its not the end of the world if we drop it. In fact, now we have a simple solution to PoE and PoHiddenness, and can coherently believe in an actually good God.
Omnipotence doesn't justify free use of power. It's why we refer to God as the Father. Our parents, could essentially brainwash us, use their power in any way they felt, and manipulate our free will for their own purposes. But a good parent sacrifices their full authority to ethically allow the free will of the children even if some things the children does may end up harmful. Theologians can easily argue God places these constraints out of Love in order to not violate the free will of His Creation. When you evolve with the understanding that God views ALL creation equally, it makes rational sense why God wouldn't even stop a murderer from killing another human. Or a storm from killing a human. Or a human from destroying the environment. Then it gets even more complicated when you can imagine God like an entity that exists outside of time with a quantum understanding of the entire universe that sees the outcome of every single event.
Is Only Fans a debate platform now? 😅
"The society that separates its scholars from its hotties will have its thinking done by uglies and its strip teases done by fools"
Nonono you dont have to _debate_ the women, but as a gentleman you ought to politely correct them when they do logical fallacies
@@Greyz174And when exactly would there be a stopping point to that exercise?
@@Greyz174 So we are assuming radical life extension technologies?
The only benefit of suffering is the acquisition of the ability to withstand further suffering.
If you're lucky… 😒
@@serversurfer6169
now that would be an interesting tactic - argument from divine luckiness.
@@bengreen171 I think they call that Prosperity Gospel. 😜
@@serversurfer6169
haha - yeah.
I am more likely to believe what is in this video because I respect the picture of the bicep that is definitely yours
Too much mental masturbation will ruin your philosophy gains. You heard it here first!
The Thomas Aquinas LARPing joke killed me. 🤣 I went to one of those ultra conservative Thomistic schools - great place in many ways, but lots of Aquinas regurgitation occurred.
Mistake 139: Justin’s probabilistic reasoning is wrong or at least controversial
The is no such thing as antecedent probability of atleast one non resistant non believer (NRNB)
P(NRNB) is P(theism) *P(NRNB/theism) + P(Naturalism) *P(NRNB/Naturalism)
In order to show P(NRNB) is low one has to show both addends are true ,but naturalist agree P(NRNB/theism) is high ,so the only way to show P(NRNB) is low is by showing P(theism) is low by other evidence
In that case Divine hiddenness loses all it’s force
Justin’s mistake is that he is thinking basic probabilities are unconditional
Alex malpass made a similar mistake regarding fine tuning (He retracted it )
To see where Justin went wrong more clearly see Alex’s article against fine tuning
The very first premise is wrong for the same reason why Justin’s is wrong
useofreason.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/the-god-can-do-anything-objection/
In other words the antecedent probability he calculated is the probability given naturalism and of course it’s gonna favour naturalism (Begs the question)
8:22 unless you know spending your time on something else would be more effective at doing it for more people (effective altruism I am guessing it’s called)
I've always remembered that quote from the Last Battle; it was a great help in overcoming fear of god and setting me down the road to atheism.
A great book as well!
I enjoy CS Lewis still
If God doesn't want you to believe, how are you to persuade him to change his mind? 🤷♂
First, a great video as always. Thanks for the effort you put into them.
I believe it is indeed mistaken to announce that the Logical Problem of Evil (Logical PoE) is dead in its entirety. However, I don't consider it false to declare that the specific formulation of the Logical PoE as envisioned by "Epicurus," Hume, and Mackie is dead, indicating it has been successfully rebutted. As stated in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP):
"Since the logical problem of evil claims that it is logically impossible for God and evil to coexist, all that Plantinga (or any other theist) needs to do to combat this claim is to describe a possible situation in which God and evil coexist. That situation doesn’t need to be actual or even realistic. Plantinga doesn’t need to have a single shred of evidence supporting the truth of his suggestion. All he needs to do is give a logically consistent description of a way that God and evil can coexist. Plantinga claims God and evil could coexist if God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. He suggests that God’s morally sufficient reason might have something to do with humans being granted morally significant free will and with the greater goods this freedom makes possible."-iep.utm.edu/evil-log/
While the FWD has indeed received many criticisms, I think it at least achived its goal in the "simple and old" cases of the Logical PoE. I also disagree with Mooney and your suggestion that no one defends the simple, old Logical PoE that only shows the incompatibility of evil and God. The prevalence of "Epicurean paradox" gotcha memes and the like I have encountered is too high for me to find such a notion plausible. Unfortunately, many militant atheists are relentless in spreading precisely this version of the PoE, prematurely declaring victory and dismissing every rebuttal without second thoughts. I wish they were cognizant of the fact that the Logical PoE has newer, better versions which do, in fact, pose a challenge, unlike the old ones that I view as obsolete, as apparently Mooney does based on what I can gather from this clip.
30:00 I dunno what is going on man. Does LARPer mean extreme poser, yet people love fandom nowadays? I dunno what is going on are fandoms like tribalistic sports people or something?
Lol the onlyfans reference in the beginning
What do you think about transcendental argument? Are you familiar with Jay Dyer?
Wait, theists don't think God has free will? Then what would be the source of ours, if you can't give what you ain't got? 🤔
Imagining Joe as a gym rat but with philosophy instead of weights made me lol.
I don't understand mistake 132.
If moral laws are real, they would either be identical to God or subservient to Him. So God would either be beyond moral laws, or morality would be identical to any action He does because He is the only arbitrer and sustainer of all that exists and all morality, and thus, it is impossible for Him to do evil because He is tautologically/self-referentially good (or in the other case, subservient and hence, inapplicable to Him).
And when we say something is evil, we mean that it is deviating from the set laws of what is good. But since goodness here would be identical to God, then anything He does is automatically good and He cannot deviate from His own actions?
If God is the ultimate arbitrer, then He determines what is good, and hence, any deviation from His will = evil. But He can't deviate from His own will, so He can't be evil.
Now, does that align with what WE consider good? That's an entirely separate question. But this renders imo the problem of evil non-existent, and it is up to us to change our mindset then.
I think the entire idea is very misunderstood in Classical Theism, but I wish Mr. Schmid would reply to me, maybe its me who is misunderstanding something
I'm not a Classical Theist btw, but I think their idea can also work in Neo-Classical and even Open Theism?
This would fail due to Euthyphro-style concerns. I personally think that the Euthyphro dilemma and its implications make objective moral standards beyond God the most plausible conception of morality, if it is to be at all objective.
@@Nitroade24 Yup, that's literally what objective means. ✊
"Another way to evaluate the first probability is to argue that elements of the theodicy are implausible whether or not theism is true." Whoa. Someone really, really needs to review their probability 101 (ik, way less fun than analytic theology bro metaphysics). Having said that, your English pronunciation is great! I'm finally starting to hear the difference between voiced th and d. 👌👌👌
bUt ThE pRoblEM oF eViL pROveS gOd!
Doesn't it though? Unless one gerrymanders The definition of evil beyond all relevance, I don't see how it doesn't do precisely that 🤔
"The existence of an ice wall would pose major problems to the flat earth hypothesis"
"Ha! This argument only PROVES the flat earth because you HAVE to believe in the existence of an ice wall to run it!"
It kinda does, Thomas Aquinas believed it does and that means Ed Feser also thinks so, which means it's true
Internet Christian logic 😂
@@CoranceLChandler Not really. You might defend your claim with something like "what you describe isn't evil" or "the evil you describe doesn't exist", but if your claim defines evil, and is incompatibility with evil existing, and another party points out that that evil exist, then your claim, by your own definition, can't be true.
If you had defined "evil" to include gravity, and I then point to gravity, then your claim must be false.
It doesn't matter if I believe gravity is evil, and it doesn't matter if gravity is actually evil. What matters is, that your claim is incompatible with observed reality.
If it turns out that gravity isn't actually evil, or if you change your claim to allow for evil, then we can of course start a new discussion about that claim.
Again, it doesn't matter if I believe in evil - it matters that whether your claim is incompatible with observed reality.
@@CoranceLChandlerno, it’s just wrong on so many levels. The POE is an internal critique, of course it’s gonna talk about things within the theistic worldview. That doesn’t mean evil actually exists in reality. Also, even if evil actually does exist in reality, and someone running the POE is referring to these kinds of evils, it doesn’t entail theism, it could entail one of any objective moral view such as platonism.
In a theodicy, one ends up dealing with the topic of evil forced by the obvious contradiction of assuming that God is perfectly good in conjunction with his omnipotent and all-miscient characteristics and
After such statements, try to reconcile those attributes with reality.
If evil is that which causes unnecessary suffering. A Christian God is evil without any type of circumstance that gives him a margin of doubt. He is evil because he causes suffering unnecessarily.
God creates human souls knowing in advance what the destiny of those souls will be. God knows that a certain number of souls will end up either being eternally tortured in hell or being annihilated or in paradise regardless of what their moral choices were (depending on the flavor of Christianity you like best). He knows it even before creating them.
However, he creates all souls and makes them experience the valley of tears.
All the suffering endured by the sensitive souls that God creates has no use in the first destiny. It was obvious to God that they were not going to accept it and that turns out that he creates them only so that they suffer eternally.
In the second destiny, annihilation, God creates something, subjects it to suffering, and then destroys it, in complete awareness of what he is doing.
In the third destiny, the need to make humanity suffer shows its futility when it turns out that human suffering is not a factor in the destiny of souls.
I have seen that there are those who argue that lost souls are useful as a moral tool useful to saved souls. But that empties of all morality a god who strips some of the souls he creates of dignity and uses them only as a kind of prop for the benefit of a group of souls he prefers.
You're ignorance is that God created the world Good and another lesser supernatural being caused human beings to disobey the only restriction that God placed on them.
So who really created suffering?
The humans could have rejected the temptation of this lesser supernatural being and continued in the Garden of Eden.
As they were not corrupted in anyway at that time: humanity is corrupted now and why evil is more of a problem just from human beings having a fallen sin nature.
That in itself points to the Bible as a truthful text about God.
BTW evil is the absence of Good : how do we have Good without a God: Both Goodness and evil point to God: nonintelligence creating the Universe points to nothing Good or evil ; a world that doesn't exist!
@@davidjanbaz7728 I was specific. It is indisputable that God causes unnecessary suffering when he creates sentient souls that he knows (before creating them) have no chance of being saved. God knows that those souls will be tortured eternally and that is their only possible destiny and he creates them anyway. That creation only adds suffering to the universe and God does it with full knowledge of the situation. That god is evil.
Assuming that good and bad are only distinguishable by the presence of God is only logical within the Christian cultural bubble.
I, who am an atheist, can clearly distinguish that creating something sensitive with the sole purpose of making it suffer is something evil. I imagine that interpretation is something we both share.
I am sure there are gods, even your particular god. But none of this has any relevance to the Buddhist tradition - and certainly not OUR Buddhist tradition. Your God (their god, those gods, every god) is caught in the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, life, death. Gods take billions of more years to die sure (thus their delusion that they are immortal) but all gods end. The goal of being human is to escape samsara completely. This includes discarding your delusion that you are the product of an eternal god (whatever god you have chosen or were born into).
@@wordscapes5690 What led you to be sure that there are gods? I am an atheist.
I do not have the illusion of having been created by a god.
I do not think that life extends beyond what everyone assumes is the natural extension of life in humans. Even Christians are sure that their ancestors have died and that they will die too. Religion is a consolation, regarding death. But it is not a very effective consolation. Everyone is afraid that their loved ones will die.
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd In Buddhism, we do not believe in the existence of the self (the personality constructed from your brain and sensory experiences). Some Buddhists believe there exist gods. Some believe there is a Creator God. Others are completely atheist. Most are agnostic. I am willing to concede every religious claim regarding any and all gods, because it simply makes zero difference to Buddha Dhamma. When you die, you die. You are gone - everything that was you is erased. However, we do not believe that the “self” with which you so desperately identify is the fulcrum of existence. In the deep meditative state, when the brain is silenced, the clarity of what you are comes to the fore - and it is neither flesh, nor soul, nor spirit, nor anything tangible or intangible. Only through the very subjective practices of meditation can you achieve “awareness” of non-self. Even a glimpse of the emptiness at the core of existence and self is enough to convince the meditator of this basic truth. Atheism is correct - but it is correct in ways far deeper than mere a-deism.
Ft. Jeff Cavalier from Athlean X?
I haven't seen the video yet, but I will when I'm able to for now I'm going to copy paste my counter argument for the problem of evil and see how it fairs against the video.
Evil and suffering in nature such as natural disasters, sickness, and death are products of sin. Sin is existence apart from God. Sin causes natural disasters, sickness, and death because God is perfection, and apart from God is imperfection which comes with imperfect products. God may allow sin in nature for three reasons independent wills, comprehension of wills, and good wills that come from sin.
Independent wills should exist so we can choose to be with God instead existing as purely subordinate creatures with God. In other words we would be essentially robots following a code without the ability to follow our own code. In addition, if our moral code aligns with God's moral code by are own accord we would be choosing God even though we didn't have to. This kind of independency is fundamentally good because if we were dependent on God's will we'll be imprisoned which is undesirable by nature.
Comprehension of wills should exist because light can't be known without dark and vice versa. We can't see how good God is without seeing how bad the absence of God would be. If God created us with the knowledge of sin, but without experiencing sin it would be a contradiction. You can't explain how something is bad without knowing that bad is something to avoid through experience, for example if I told you that touching your hand on something that is hot is bad because it is painful you wouldn't know that pain is something to avoid without experiencing it.
Moreover, God cannot have a certain type of meaningfull relationship with perfect creatures. Solely existing perfect creatures cannot experience, free will, empathy, forgiveness, humility, humor, and wisdom due to the very nature of their being. Being created as perfect creatures isn't a bad thing, but it ironically lacks certain qualitys that beings may want to have. Therefore, there are goods that can come from sin. That's why I think God created us in an imperfect world, and will have us be reborn into a perfect one. With Earth and the possibility of heaven we can have our cake and eat it too.
As to why God would allow so much confusion with divine hiddeness and so much evil in nature I really don't know. However, I do know that we only see a narrow slice of God's eternal righteous plan. If God is truly good then everything wicked will one day be justified, and infinitely redeem so beyond the necessary point of redemption that we would count all sorrows as blessings. Which includes everyone honestly being brought to the wrong conclusions and respect to their faith. The best thing we can do in the meantime is be Faithful in God, and strive for following Christ's teachings which entails being the best we can be.
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:4
Note the argument assumes that God can't achieve these goods any other way without contradictions. God cannot create an existing contradiction because of the very definition of a contradiction. This is not the fault of God's omnipotence. Omipotence is the ability to do anything. This is the fault of the definition of a contradiction. Contradictions are simultaneously true and false statements that cannot actually exist within consistency and nothing actually inconsistent exists as a thing.
You help me .
"Frank Turek should go in the mistake Hall of Fame" 😂
Epic
The biggest assumption behind J.L. Schellenberg’s DH is that you need to have a doxastic belief in God to have a relationship with Him.
Isn't that not unlike what theists say? That of course you can't have a relationship with God if you don't think It is there? But yeah, I agree with what you are implying: if something like God exists, my doxastic beliefs regarding It should be irrelevant, and It should be able to be discovered, or derived, regardless of and independent from these beliefs.
People can serve God even unknowingly like when you donate to charity. You unknowingly help people.
“But don't you know silly atheist that evil is the absence of good!?” *Chest beating, random Latin phrases *
55:42 Ugh it's Matt Fradd the radtrad. 🤮
The other day, i thought about an "argument from disorder" against christianity. It is similar to the problem of evil, but without the moral conundrums. It goes more or less like:
1) At some point in the past, God was everything that existed.
2) The christian god is defined by a set a characteristics, such as (but not limited to): omniscience, omnipotence, perfection, and order.
3) There is disorder in the world.
4) But, as God is omniscient and perfect, any action of his authority would be orderly.
5) Therefore, the existente of disorder cannot be explained by christianity.
Yeah, I've been wondering about this as well. How did God give us the desire to disobey, and why? 🤔
Ok but when will you become a philosophy teacher as a career
it's so simple : if there is a creator, they don't care about the suffering of others and they don't care about communicating anything. You don't need a phd.
it is, as a matter of fact, not that simple
"Frank turrek should go in the mistake hall of fame" LMFAO i would not recover if someone said that abt me
Thanks. But, could you please read more peacefully? It would be easier to understand. It's not an easy text to grasp.
Theodicies are very boring and quite frankly, pointless/useless, and dare I say, nonsense. Divine Foreknowledge & Free Will is a much more important 'problem' in my view.
But even this is largely meaningless speculation, since you can never know God's mind. If you prove the scriptures, you can say that Divine Foreknowledge & Free Will are compatible because God confirms it via scripture, but you just wouldn't know the mechanism, and likely can't truly know the mechanism. You might be able to propose an internally consistent explanation, but should new external facts appear, you would have to reconsider everything again, etc. Its just pointless word games and speculation, nothing more (for both of those 'problems') since you fundamentally have no access to God's mind and the total world.
@@bonbon__candy__1 can you explain a little bit more about your paragraph? Please, it was interesting to me
@@bonbon__candy__1what's your opinion about foreknowledge and free will?
@@geovanni1470 What is it that you want me to explain? My view on Divine foreknowledge and free will? I thought I already explained it in that paragraph?
@@bonbon__candy__1 Yes, about free will, I thought that you had more about foreknowledge and free will, it's difficult to find something interesting about this topic, almost all the content are things that I already know and your paragraph was refreshing..
😂 like the title
Some Thomists like Brian Davies argue that God is amoral (so the concepts of good and evil in the way we conceive of them don't apply to him), that suffering (the worst migraine of your life) is just 'privation of goodness'. POE solved, right?
He explicitly covered this. 🤷♂
@@serversurfer6169 Thanks, can you tell me the timestamp?
Genesis first pages tells us how this falls upon our human dashboard lol
It also strengthens the importance on why God incarnated man to help fix our corrupt programing and to unify the tripartite nature of man past present and future.
Salvation takes on a strong theology.
It also enhances why God keeps separating himself from nature to show Abraham, moses and then some how he acts upon and through his creation but is not in a rock or some.pagan god that he constantly unveils himself to them
God's free will is mirrored in Man, therefore Fallen-ness is possible. Problem of evil solved
So it is possible for God to fall? Thanks for clearing that one up.
in the created creatures yes, in the Uncreated, no @@ianchisholm5756
The world was already full of suffering before humans evolved.
lets goo
Where do you know that these falllacies exist on onlyfans my dude 😂😂😂
“Your”? There is no you. You are a construct of your sensory experiences (including your mind).
cringe
@@bonbon__candy__1 It is the basic teachings of the Buddha. That’s a pretty historical cringe you’re making there.
@@wordscapes5690 So, what is important?
@@EduardoRodriguez-du2vd So many things. God (or gods) is not one of those things.
@@wordscapes5690 Could you give an example of an important thing in this universe?
I don't understand point 128. The problem of Evil doesn't PROVE the existence of God, but isn't it true that the PoE requires the existence of God? If God doesn't exist, then there is no "problem" of Evil. I also don't get how you can have the PoE without Evil? If you are conceding that something eg., suffering, is not objectively Evil, or gratuitously Evil, or whatever, than aren't you resolving the whole problem?
The "problem" isn't that sucky stuff sucks. The "problem" is that given the characteristics being ascribed to God,-all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful-you wouldn't expect any suckiness to exist. 🤔
Mistake 128 is arguing that without God to decide that it sucks to suck, there's no basis for declaring that it actually does. It's a logical error because it doesn't address the inconsistency that comprises the PoE itself. It sort of embraces and ignores it, all at once, in an effort to change the subject. 🤷♂
@christaylor6574 I think it relies on too many assumptions and it's not really a very good argument. It's mainly effective as a rhetorical strategy for people who haven't really considered the basis of thier faith and morality to come to that realization, and so to doubt thier beliefs. It doesn't work for the reasons you explained to people who want to actually justify God because they can just make up stuff. God can just do the impossible, or God works in mysterious ways, etc. The real challenge, Imo, is to justify why exactly God has the properties that are ascribed to him. But they'll probably just say "For the Bible tells me so."
first again
I rewatched the mistake 132 again, and I still don't think it works. I also think that you're sort of missing the point of what not being a moral agent is and how Classical Theists retain explanatory power through grounding their ideas in different concepts. Also, you really CAN'T tease out predictions from the Perfect Being theology (perfectly loving, just, and good being) would or wouldn't do (I know this is peaking from a Classical Theist view, but not all theologians, and arguably the scripture itself, doesn't actually push the view of there being a Perfect Being - that's actually an import from Greek philosophy) because you can't even approximate the meaning of those attributes. Remember that e.g. Thomists view these as analogical. No one has all the knowledge of the world, morality is often not universal and too shaky to make any grounding on it, etc. its impossible to extrapolate from this when even the definitional terms are STRONGLY debatable (also see my previous comment on this). You using an example detached from reality (extreme agony of every being, etc.) isn't exactly the best reasoning either. You're also mistaking the different views of causation here. Many Classical Theists would reject that it is the Perfect Being which is DIRECTLY CAUSING these to happen. Remember that many like Ismaili Neoplatonists would say that the Perfect Being directly causes only one single action (eternal creation/sustinence of the First Intellect). Perfect Being being defined as a moral agent by you says nothing about the substance and content of these morals and thus, says nothing of the obligations. I think I addressed everything here, but I really do think that Classical Theists are right: under their view, the very idea of the problem of evil simply wouldn't apply and have an effect. You are saying that this would be extremely unexpected, but its only unexpected based on YOUR moral norms, you're just trying to ignore this. So all in all, I think you're not right regarding mistake 132. Please reconsider your idea!
@christaylor6574 I am no longer a theist, but I would say that what I'm saying is that any morality would be contingent, and thus subservient to God OR it would be on the same level of God, and thus equivalent to Him, so whatever action He performs is automatically "good" because it aligns perfectly with the only valid moral code, which is identical to Himself. So either morality is subservient to Him, which would mean that its a category error for Him to be expected to act based on it, or its identical to Him as per classical theism, and thus, anything He does is automatically moral. Does that make sense?
@christaylor6574 Nevermind, yeah you're right, God is a moral agent.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_free_will#:~:text=The%20argument%20from%20free%20will,both%20properties%20is%20therefore%20inconceivable.
?