Argument from the POSSIBILITY of Evil Against God
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- In this video, we tackle a version of the Problem of Evil that is not focused on evil that actually occurs, but evil that occurs in some possible world.
Btw, the new jingle was made by a subscriber, Jonatan Djurachkovitch. Thanks! :)
Also, it's spelled "Azrael."
It was fun to collaborate with you!
:)
I hope you get 100 thousand subscribers! You are great!
First comment. I think a video you should make is answering Jewish objections to Jesus or the origins of the Hebrew God.Open like that would be really cool and interesting
Great. You explained it on point. Perfect!
Excellent and fun video to watch :)
Nice. I've thought about making a video on this problem. I would take the approach that God only exists with every broadly possible world, but not every strictly possible world. So, a world with gratuitous evil is strictly possible, but not broadly possible since God would never actualize it. So, closer to the second approach.
I think that's a good approach. The motivation behind my version is that the stronger the modal status we can give to the ultra-evil world, the more tightly we can cling to our original modal intuitions.
Have a nice day! :)
Very very interesting... However, I have some objections.
Denying intuitions is problematic as most theistic arguments justify at least one of their premises with intuition, specially modal arguments. This argument doesn't need to be used to debunk God, as it can simply be used to invalidate the MOA or similar arguments. It can be used as a symetric counter-argument.
A world in wich the angel creates the universe that has a lot of evil in it isn't possible. If God created the angel only because he knew that he would create the good universe, then any world in wich the angel creates the bad world is a world in wich the angel doesn't exist. The only reason why the angel exists is because he will create the good universe. Therefore, if the angel creates the bad universe, then he doesn't exist to create the bad universe in the first place. Therefore, evil doesn't exist in any possible world in wich God exists.
Denying that God knew what the angel would do doesn't solve the problem either. If God didn't know whether or not the angel would create the bad universe or the good universe then taking that risk would be inmoral, as he could simply create the good universe directly. This way, he would make sure the universe is good. Making sure the universe is good and not unneccesarly taking a risk to make a bad universe possible is better than taking that unneccesary risk. Given that God is maximally perfect, He neccesarly takes the best course of action. Always. This means that in every possible world in wich He exists, He takes the best course of action and therefore doesn't take the risk of a bad universe existing.
Our modal intuitions tell us that our modal intuitions are about actually possible worlds, not merely causally possible worlds that aren't actualized in any possible world. So, one does need to deny that modal intuition. Recombination principles also seem intuitive, tho I think they're generally flawed. I'm not too informed about them tho, but from what I know, they seem pretty flawed.
Can you do a video on Cosmic Skeptic/Dillahunty's definition of agnostic atheism? I feel like I haven't seen a proper response
I think the whole thing is kinda silly. I may or may not make a joke video on that topic. :)
What's wrong with their definition?
The thought experiment falls apart with an all knowing god or that god could interveen when they make the evil universe in ways that wouldn't interfere with free will. Not to mention that an all knowing god and free will would be two mutually exclusive things.
I would have addressed this in a completely different way simply by pointing out that evil is the *deprivation of pre-existing good*, so evil can only ever equal, never surpass, the amount of good that was placed in a world at it's beginning, because once evil equals the pre-existing good, the word ceases to exist. This also means that the most evil world that could exist is the world with the most pre-existing good possible (and a maximally good world is impossible), that ceases to exist due to the evil of the world coming to equal the gold that was placed there. The evil in a world can never surpass the pre-existing good it corrupts.
However, there is a cleverer way to say "there is more evil than good" even with this theory of evil by saying "if more than half of the good in the world was destroyed by evil, evil is greater than the remainder of good in the world, therefore there is more evil than good and it was immoral for God to create that world". If such a world is immoral, there is still the case that good can grow independently of evil and evil cannot grow independently of good, so when we reach the point where the majority of the possible worlds pre-existing good has been destroyed, it is still possible to add more good to the world to make it more good than evil no matter how evil the world gets, therefore if God is not immoral, though he may allow the free choice of creatures to make a possible world more evil than good for any given finite period of it's history, he will intervene to overcome the evil in the world and make the good greater than it, restoring everything robbed from the world and then some. Because God always retains the ability to restore and replace lost goods, there is never a possible world where God does not have the ability to make it more good than evil, and because God is perfectly moral, he will always make a world more good than evil eventually.
"An argument from evil that is completely independent of there being any evil in the world"
It seems like the people who would want to use this argument are also the people who would immediately dismiss it when hearing that first sentence.
But also, if you give up our modal intuitions, doesn't that weaken a lot of arguments for God? Like the argument from contingency. Or any other that is based on possible worlds really.
Yeah, that would seem to be a worry. How can I justify ‘God exists in some possible world’ without modal intuition?
I’m less worried about the fate of Contingency Arguments. They’re pretty tough. But some would definitely be damaged.
Fortunately, we don’t need to give up our modal intuitions.
Have a nice day! :)
These don't seem like defeating the argument more than getting around the argument so that you don't have to address the argument.
Hey dude I just wanted to tell you DONT YOU DARE GIVE UP you have an amazing channel here, I'm discovering it and it's like a treasure trove? Are you possibly active on Discord?
Thanks! I want to get a discord account because I’ve been asked a few times, but I don’t have an account yet.
Have a nice day! :)
@@ApologeticsSquared ahhh dang it, if you ever do make it I would really love to have you on my friends server bc we discuss theism daily. Have nice day too dear gentlemen
How would you measure whether there is more bad than good? Would the universe with more bad be one where 90% is extinct? Or where large numbers of humans don't reach adulthood due to illness, famine, cancer, being born with an disability, etc? A world where the life develops on survival of the fittest and where millions of animals die painfully due to being poisoned, ripped apart, digested alive, possessed, have eggs hatch inside them, starve to death, die slowly due to an injury, etc? Where hundreds to thousands of people die by nature from floods, hurricanes, landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, tornadoes, blizzards, etc? Cause all that and more happens in our universe. So is our universe more bad than good?
Also the reasoning for why this can't be more bad than good relies on the huge assumption that god isn't capable of acting immoral, which really is against all the evidence.
When you talk about possible worlds are you assuming that these possible worlds actually exist? If they don’t then it seems the argument could be irrelevant if for example God chose to create free will beings that had the character to always seek the good and therefore there would generally be a higher level of good in this single actual world.
I think the real tipping point in an argument against God is that if He is Good then creating the possibility of ANY evil at all would negate His goodness…? Unless of course He has a good reason that we don’t understand (and perhaps couldn’t comprehend) for allowing evil to gain a greater good.
BTW thanks for the explanation!
We have Apologetics Squared, but what about Apologetics Triangled????
Apologetics Triangled isn’t half the man that I am!
@@ApologeticsSquared ok, but what about Apologetics Circled? 😳
@@otiswong2091 you're just cutting corners now
Does the second option work without a mediator figure such as azreal?
He is a stand in for connecting the ultra-evil world with indeterminism. It seems you need some sort of mediator, but which isn’t super important.
Love the video but I think there is an even simpler answer that you are missing. Imagine a universe where everything that exists in our universe exists however it all came from nothing and God created none of it. this universe is “possible” in the sense that we can imagine it but as you know something coming from nothing is impossible making this universe logically impossible but the universe you proposed has the same problem just less obviously. If you already except that the universe needs a maximally great and necessary mind (God) to exist then that means that any universe without God couldn’t exist in a purely evil universe then that universe couldn’t exist either Let me formalize this argument
1:For any universe to exist God must create it
2: Meaning any universe without God cannot be actually real
3: A universe with more evil than good is a universe without God
Conclusion: A universe with more evil than good cannot actually exist logically
This argument is simple because if you already except that the universe needs God to exist then that means you except that any universe without God is not logically possible. then you just need to except that logically impossible worlds are well impossible!!! This argument wouldn’t be effective against people who believe that you can have a universe without God. but that would just mean that your beliefs about God would shape your beliefs about the argument in the video rather than the other way around
I'm imaging that universe and it looks identical to this universe.
Why does the universe need something that is maximally great to be its cause? Why not anything else? Why does the outside cause need to be a god? This seems like a fairly big assumption. Also this raises that obvious question that ends with an answer that says that god is exempt from the very rule that makes their existence a requirement, which is a terrible position.
Also the universe coming from nothing isn't what anyone outside of religion believes. Saying that the existence of viral particles suggests that with quantum mechanics a pair of opposite particles can came from nothing, it's just that unless they're next to a black hole they immediately destroy each other. Even the idea that the universe had a beginning is itself unknown, it's entirely possible that the state of the universe before the big bang was a singularity, which wouldn't have time due to relativity.
Your first point has the same problem. Why can't a universe exist without a god?
Point two falls apart because point one is an assumption.
Point three is very debatable, how do you know that we don't live in a universe where there is more evil than good? Also this reasoning relies on another assumption, that god is good.
The conclusion is incorrect because the logic is faulty because it relies on at least two assumptions.
It's only logically impossible if you make several assumptions, you even admit that yourself. That's not a logical argument, if you want to make a logical argument look up logical fallacies and how to avoid them.
True this argument wouldn't work on people who haven't made the assumption that the universe requires a god.
And that's not a great way to make a convincing argument for anyone who doesn't already hold the same position as you do. This is a good reinforcment argument but that's really it.
3:55 - 4:29
Now comes the point about God’s omniscience.
Would God actually be able to know those events would happen? How could he? Time travel is, at least, unlikely to be possible by God since time likely requires some sort of way to speed up the universes processes to go really fast to the future playing all the moves. However, if things are really indeterminate (random or unpredictable), then God would never be able to ever actually know what will happen because he’d only see one possible future. Things would still be able to change. In an indeterministic world, nothing is guaranteed since randomness occurs. There would be no way for God to know the future of indeterministic creatures or things.
A possible way out of this would be to say that there is are times when things aren’t indeterminate and are able to be exploited by this time travel. However, now we just have a determined that’s made sure by God. We no longer have an indeterminate world since God is controlling it in such a way that it is determined.
Even if this were wrong and it could still be considered an indeterminate world, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for such a thing to happen in an indeterministic world.
The next possible option is to say that God exists in all of time. The problem that is, that would suggest that all of time already exists which also means that everything is already set and stone. Which means it’s not an indeterministic world since everything has already happened, we’re just experiencing things in order.
Given this, it, at least, seems impossible to ever know anything that the future will hold. God would know every possible outcome and what happen as a result of each outcome, but he’ll never know which one is actually going to happen.
There’s only two ways someone could time travel. Traveling through time (as I stated earlier in this comment), or by going outside of time. However, going outside of time is a problem. It could never happen because time is the thing that allows for change. Trying to travel outside of time would therefore not be possible since time travel requires a change in temporal coordinates.
By temporal coordinates, I mean the points or moments in time. Changing temporal coordinates is changing what point in time you are currently in.
Hence, in an indeterministic world, God could never truly know the future.
U ever heard of foresight. There are many ways to explain how God can know the future is because he’s smart enough to know who we are as many examples to give but this should not be a block to God omniscience
@@webslinger527 But God doesn't just know what we'll do with our free will. He also knows which random number will come out of a quantum computer. Which means the number isn't really random. There's a conflict there: if God can know its outcome, then it wasn't indeterminate to begin with
@@Nickesponja People say that, but you can't conclude deductively from, "the outcome can be known" to "the outcome was indeterminate." I think such arguments rely too much on intuition.
Have a nice day! :)
@@Nickesponja not really. Because God has foresight and because he's so much more intelligent than us he can see our future, but we still have the free will it do it. Here's an example if you put a baby on a table and it starts to crawl and you can see it's going to fall off the table but the baby does not know it's going to fall the table. So how do you know that you know that cuz you're more intelligent you can see its future but the baby is still choosing to crawl off the table with this in mind this is called foresight and intelligence because you're so much more intelligent you can see the future but it's not being impacting it's free will and just as how you're so intelligent you can also see it's choice but not impact its choice. That's why it's called foresight.
@@webslinger527 The problem with that is you’re talking about free will. Which I’m guessing we’re talking about libertarian free will. Regardless, yes, I agree. However, in the case of free will, the person determines the outcome. That’s not the same as saying something is indeterminate. Yes, god could know us so well that he can predict exactly what we’re going to do, but that’s because there is a determinable outcome. He knows us well enough to judge.
However, if our actions were random (which, tbh, seems to follow from libtertarian free will), then God couldn’t know our actions because anything that is actually random has no cause. At least no functional cause. That is, a cause that only triggers one possible outcome. For that reason, God could not know we would do. That was my point.
He set it up like the act of having a good world by creating azrael and having a world full of evil in the world by creating azrael, were two options that we’re going to be randomly chosen. Maybe misunderstood but that’s how I interpreted it while I was watching.