The existence of evil

[thesometimesaint]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

That's not universally true.  In some cases we do get to choose what others do to us.  And at times we don't get to choose how we respond. 

Like any truism, it is at least mostly true. That being said we are fated to choose. If someone is being a jerk, we are under no obligation to be also be a jerk.

[thesometimesaint]

In the LDS " pantheon" God always votes for you, and the Devil always votes against you. You break the tie.

[Gray]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure that's true. Part of the problem is of course our ignorance over the nature of a spirit and what it's limits are. Further we're also ignorant of how we'd view our traumas after death. Psychologically the reason traumas have the effect they due is very much a product of the particular organization of our brain.

If one uses the problem of evil to become skeptical of God, then that immediately moves one into looking at trauma from a more secular perspective tied to cognitive science. In that sense humans aren't that far removed from animals. Trauma and the effects of trauma either are due to an evolutionary advantage or a side effect of some system with adaptive value. Once you already have to accept such a conception of the brain from a view where God isn't involved, it's worth return to ones original premises. That is given such a conception of brain, what implications does this have if we don't have our brain?

Put an other way the secular critique presupposes that trauma is the same for spirits and resurrected beings as it is for us. That almost certainly isn't the case. It seems to me there are big implications of that view.

Trauma happens whether or not it carries on in a spiritual realm or not. Healing wounds in the afterlife doesn't address suffering in this life.

 

Quote

There are a wide variety of pantheistic views. Spinoza's or the Stoic's pantheism are of course the most famous but not the only ones. (Process theology has a view close to pantheism although the differences are enough that some call it panentheism since God is the universe but also transcends the universe.

To the wikipedia article, with all due respect this is a good reason to be careful using it. It's certainly true that such terms become problematic. Whether the universe is "conscious" becomes question begging I think. It's not conscious the way we are. But if consciousness is an element of the universe then by definitely pantheism entails consciousness as part of God. I'd also dispute the idea of intervention. I'd say that again by definition a pantheistic god is nothing but intervention.

Yes, I'm not talking about panentheism. For the sake of this discussion I'm referring to pantheism in the sense that God = the universe and has no power to intervene and is not at all a personal/concious God.

 

Quote

In any case it's not at all clear the problem of evil doesn't apply. Part of it depends upon what one means by evil. But the traditional pantheistic views in late antiquity still saw the problem of evil as a big problem. The neoplatonists saw evil as privation from good famously. This in turn had a huge effect on early through medieval Christianity. However these questions can't be raised independent of the theoretic scaffolding these movements were part of. Typical in Greek philosophy was the idea that to know something is to do it. Thus ignorance was usually the reason we couldn't do something. This seems alien to us today since we assume we can know and want something yet competing desires or weakness keep us from it. (Say a smoker who knows smoking is bad - for the greeks as soon as they knew it was bad they'd stop. If they don't stop they don't really know it.) This obviously has huge implications for the problem of evil since the Greeks simply see evil as ignorance. It's much later developments - arguably starting with the rise of Christianity as the main Roman religion that changes things. So the neoplatonic conception of evil as privation is really the notion of evil as ignorance. Ditto for the Stoics.

I bring this up because when discussing the problem of evil relative to pantheism one can't help but deal with these issues. If only because in the western tradition you can't separate out pantheism from neoplatonism or stoicism. (That's just as true in Spinoza or the more theistic Leibniz) Even if you read Hegel ontologically as espousing a kind of pantheism then similar issues pop up. This is why Leibniz says this is the best of all possible worlds. The typical pantheistic view tends to see evil as apparent due to our finitism. If we could see things from a global perspective we'd see it all as good. But this is precisely where the problem of evil remains a problem for pantheists. There's an assumption (explicit in the greeks and romans) that God is good. Thus there's a certain circularity to the argument. It's quite possible to look at things globally, reject the knowledge/finitism idea of evil as privation, and then have the problem of evil.

Put an other way, if you your reject the idea that pantheism entails this is the best of all possible worlds, then pantheism does't resolve the problem of evil at all.

Again, when I say pantheism  I'm referring to pantheism in the sense that God = the universe and has no power to intervene and is not at all a personal/conscious God. The universe just is. There is no agency to the universe, and whether or not this is the best or worst or something in between of all possible worlds, it has no effect on this issue, because no one used agency to set up the universe the way it is. The universe/God just IS. Human beings have agency, the universe gave rise to us, not out of conscious choice, but blindly. God doesn't speak, but we hear - and we have the capacity to hear important spiritual principles. The meaning of all this is interpreted by us, not by God.

God is not good in the sense that an agent is good. God is good in the sense that creation is good. As in, "God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good." Except in this case humans looked over all that exists, we we saw that it was very good.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Gray

[Gray]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

So, in the pantheism you are speaking of, God is evil and that's why evil isn't a problem?

No, God isn't an agent at all. God can't make choices, so God isn't responsible for the evil that happens. A God who can intervene but does not bears some responsibility.

[smac97]

17 minutes ago, Gray said:

The problem of evil is unsolvable while maintaining an interventionist and benevolent God.

I disagree.  "The Problem of Evil," broadly stated, is

Quote

the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God.

...

The problem of evil is often formulated in two forms: the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. The logical form of the argument tries to show a logical impossibility in the coexistence of God and evil, 

{Originating with Greek philosopher Epicurus, the logical argument from evil is as follows:

1. If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god does not exist.}

I reject Premise #1.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

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while the evidential form tries to show that given the evil in the world, it is improbable that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God. 

{A version of the evidential form theorized by William L. Rowe:

1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. }

I reject premise #2.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

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Responses to various versions of the problem of evil, meanwhile, come in three forms: refutations, defenses, and theodicies. A wide range of responses have been made against these arguments.

I think this summary of the LDS position on this issue is interesting, and this one even more so.

Quote

If you think you've solved it, you more than likely haven't taken the problem seriously enough.

I don't claim to have solved anything.  I find the LDS paradigm to be sufficient.

Also, I tend to think of the response to the "Problem of Evil" as a remedy, not a solution.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited October 30, 2017 by smac97

[Gray]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think Gray is speaking of a philosophy in which there is no such thing as "good" and "evil."  Those categories only make sense if there is an arbiter and lawgiver to do the categorizing.  As Korihor put it:

If the God of Pantheism has no role to play, no law to give and no judgment to mete out, then we're left with . . . moral anarchy.  No good.  No evil.  "{E}very man fare{s} in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prosper{s} according to his genius, and {} every man conquer{s} according to his strength; and whatsoever a man {does is} no crime."

Scary, IMO.  Give me the Judeo-Christian ethic any day of the week (or even its watered down form found in Pascal's Wager).  At least these philosophies allow for some self-imposed constraint on behavior.

Thanks,

-Smac

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Please don't substitute my arguments with your own.

[Gray]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

In Buddhism, desire is the beginning of sorrows, just as you seem to be saying that existence is he beginning of sorrows.

Maybe God is the umpire, and all this is just a game -- the game of life.

In Mormon theology there can be no "Ur-God," since there was no beginning (Abraham 3:18).  Infinity is like that, you know.

 

Existence is the beginning of everything, sorrow and joy.

The Ur-God is the God that gives rise to everything, including other Gods. That would be existence. Existence is God before all other Gods were Gods.

[Gray]

4 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I disagree.  "The Problem of Evil," broadly stated, is

I reject Premise #1.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

I reject premise #2.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

You're not engaging in the issue, you're just rejecting the premises. You're not taking it seriously.

 

 

4 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I think this summary of the LDS position on this issue is interesting, and this one even more so.

I don't claim to have solved anything.  I find the LDS paradigm to be sufficient.

Also, I tend to think of the response to the "Problem of Evil" as a remedy, not a solution.

Thanks,

-Smac

You're not taking this seriously enough. Essentially your solution amounts to a flat negation. Centuries and centuries of discussion solved I guess?

[thesometimesaint]

11 minutes ago, Gray said:

No, God isn't an agent at all. God can't make choices, so God isn't responsible for the evil that happens. A God who can intervene but does not bears some responsibility.

God can and does make choices. He consistently choose to good.

[smac97]

8 minutes ago, Gray said:

Quote

I disagree.  "The Problem of Evil," broadly stated, is

I reject Premise #1.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

I reject premise #2.  It is not self-evidently true, and is also not provable.

You're not engaging in the issue, you're just rejecting the premises.

I am engaging the issue by rejecting the premises.  They are not self-evidently true.  

If you think otherwise, then have at it.  I'm willing to listen.

8 minutes ago, Gray said:

You're not taking it seriously.

Yes, I am.  I am rejecting the premises you are relying on.  Moreover, you didn't even both to present those premises, so I did.

Broad, unexplained references to "pantheism" do not give us much to go on.  I have sought to augment the substantive issues by presenting - for the first time - the premises of your position (since, again, you haven't done so).  I have explained my reasoning (the premises are not self-evidently true), and also provided references to more details treatments of the "Problem of Evil" in an LDS context.

So yes, I am taking it seriously.

8 minutes ago, Gray said:

You're not taking this seriously enough. Essentially your solution amounts to a flat negation. Centuries and centuries of discussion solved I guess?

Then let's get the ball rolling.  You are not presenting anything substantive to address.  

And, again, my preference is that the proper response to the "Problem of Evil" is not a solution, but a remedy.

Why aren't you asking me about that?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Bernard Gui]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

In pantheism, God is not omnibenevolent, omniscient, or omnipotent, or even conscious. So the problem of evil doesn't apply.

Are you saying that evil doesn’t exist in the pantheistic system, or that it just isn’t a problem? How is it not a problem? Regardless the belief system, bad stuff still happens to all of us. How is that better with pantheism?

[bluebell]

31 minutes ago, Gray said:

No, God isn't an agent at all. God can't make choices, so God isn't responsible for the evil that happens. A God who can intervene but does not bears some responsibility.

So God isn't an agent to act for himself, but is only acted upon?  

[nuclearfuels]

Excellent question, my friend.

Here's my best guess:

1. Why are some people tested more than others?  Because some people are stronger, spiritually, than others.
2. Why are some people tested beyond their limits of endurance?  The Savior's capacity to increase your endurance is limitless.  Psychiatrists and prescription medication also help.  Affirmations are also incredibly powerful when repeated in front of a mirror once or twice each day for 30 days straight.
3. Why are some people sent to outer darkness by their tests, while others are given easy tests which allow them to enter the celestial kingdom?    Because some people are stronger, spiritually, than others - and some people are more spiritually advanced than others - some will make it to different parts of heaven after mortality.  Every trial you face is nothing more than God telling you that His faith and love in you are greater than your trial.  He knew you could handle the trial; perhaps so that the icebergs you have run into may be lighthouses to others who will come to you asking for help with a much smaller/simpler trial.  It's also important to remember that God saved His strongest players for the final inning, before the Savior's return. So when the trials would be the hardest, the confusion the greatest, the time the shortest, He sent those who were prepared premortally and eternally to overcome all of it, just like the Savior did.

[smac97]

49 minutes ago, Gray said:

Quote

I think Gray is speaking of a philosophy in which there is no such thing as "good" and "evil."  Those categories only make sense if there is an arbiter and lawgiver to do the categorizing.  As Korihor put it:

If the God of Pantheism has no role to play, no law to give and no judgment to mete out, then we're left with . . . moral anarchy.  No good.  No evil.  "{E}very man fare{s} in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prosper{s} according to his genius, and {} every man conquer{s} according to his strength; and whatsoever a man {does is} no crime."

Scary, IMO.  Give me the Judeo-Christian ethic any day of the week (or even its watered down form found in Pascal's Wager).  At least these philosophies allow for some self-imposed constraint on behavior.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Please don't substitute my arguments with your own.

Well, then lay it already.  Don't be coy.  

In your pantheistic worldview, do "good" and "evil" exist?  If so, what are they?  Who defines them?  Who arbitrates the designation of something as "good" or "evil?" 

Thanks,

-Smac

[clarkgoble]

22 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Are you saying that evil doesn’t exist in the pantheistic system, or that it just isn’t a problem? How is it not a problem? Regardless the belief system, bad stuff still happens to all of us. How is that better with pantheism?

I can't speak for Gray, but the typical view is that evil is just privation. i.e. it's somewhat of an illusion due to our nature as finite beings who can't see the whole. If we could see the whole we'd see it all as good. However this is precisely the view that the universe is the best it could be. If you don't buy the universe is the best it could be (which is pretty common once you throw out determinism and necessity) then the problem of evil looms very large indeed for pantheists.

I didn't make clear earlier why that is beyond bringing up Leibniz' "this is the best of all possible worlds" claim. However basically pantheism is a theory about God not a theory about the universe. However the view of what's necessary for God to be God still holds. You see this especially in both neoplatonism and stoicism, which is why I brought it up. If you reject those qualities about God as really applying to the universe then it's hard to really be a pantheist. I suspect most people are fairly skeptical of applying such views to the universe precisely because of the problem of evil.

[changed]

3 hours ago, pogi said:

Perhaps you are misusing the term "free will".  Free will is not the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want, free of restriction.  It does not mean that we can choose to avoid natural disaster or harm from others.  Free will in LDS theology is perhaps better termed "moral agency".  That is what it is called in the scriptures anyway.  

The phrase “free agency” does not appear in the scriptures? Instead, the scriptures teach “that every man may act in doctrine and principle … according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins” (D&C 101:78; emphasis added).

 

"every man may be accountable for his own sins"?? except in the case of Laman's sons, in this case, the parents became accountable for the sins of their children.

 if ye are cursed, behold, I leave my blessing upon you, that the cursing may be taken from you and be answered upon the heads of your parents. - 2 Nephi 4

Correct use of moral agency requires correct education, and yet only a "little flock" are allowed to understand even the smallest part of anything.  It's just a bunch of un-needful pain down here, pain that teaches nothing, that helps no one, that is completely pointless.

[pogi]

35 minutes ago, Gray said:

No, God isn't an agent at all. God can't make choices, so God isn't responsible for the evil that happens. A God who can intervene but does not bears some responsibility.

Yes, God allows for evil.  I don't see that as a "problem" though.  The alternative is Lucifer's plan.  Opposition is essential to the plan of happiness.  I don't see suffering as a problem in the grand scheme of the plan of happiness either; sin on the other hand, is a problem.  

The problem only arises when people equate suffering with evil.  They are not the same.  Suffering is not a problem in the sense of morality, righteousness, eternal happiness, redemption, glory, etc.  As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 4:17, our current afflictions are momentary, but are preparing for us an eternal glory that far outweighs our troubles.

 

[changed]

17 minutes ago, nuclearfuels said:

Excellent question, my friend.

Here's my best guess:

1. Why are some people tested more than others?  Because some people are stronger, spiritually, than others.
2. Why are some people tested beyond their limits of endurance?  The Savior's capacity to increase your endurance is limitless.  Psychiatrists and prescription medication also help.  Affirmations are also incredibly powerful when repeated in front of a mirror once or twice each day for 30 days straight.
3. Why are some people sent to outer darkness by their tests, while others are given easy tests which allow them to enter the celestial kingdom?    Because some people are stronger, spiritually, than others - and some people are more spiritually advanced than others - some will make it to different parts of heaven after mortality.  Every trial you face is nothing more than God telling you that His faith and love in you are greater than your trial.  He knew you could handle the trial; perhaps so that the icebergs you have run into may be lighthouses to others who will come to you asking for help with a much smaller/simpler trial.  It's also important to remember that God saved His strongest players for the final inning, before the Savior's return. So when the trials would be the hardest, the confusion the greatest, the time the shortest, He sent those who were prepared premortally and eternally to overcome all of it, just like the Savior did.

If the savior's capacity was limitless, there would be no outer darkness, there would be only one degree of glory, there would be no 1/3 who had fallen from heaven.

My trial was given to show me that I am not good enough for the celestial kingdom, so I know without a doubt I am not strong enough, so that I no longer desire to live with god, because god does not want me around and now the feeling is mutual.  if heaven involves sitting around watching people kill and torture one another then count me out.  

[pogi]

3 minutes ago, changed said:

Correct use of moral agency requires correct education, and yet only a "little flock" are allowed to understand even the smallest part of anything.  It's just a bunch of un-needful pain down here, pain that teaches nothing, that helps no one, that is completely pointless.

Don't forget about the light of Christ. 

Speak for yourself about suffering being pointless and teaching us nothing.  I have learned a lot from the personal suffering in my life.

[Gray]

54 minutes ago, thesometimesaint said:

God can and does make choices. He consistently choose to good.

I'm not talking about that model for God.

[Gray]

47 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I am engaging the issue by rejecting the premises.  They are not self-evidently true.  

If you think otherwise, then have at it.  I'm willing to listen.

Yes, I am.  I am rejecting the premises you are relying on.  Moreover, you didn't even both to present those premises, so I did.

Broad, unexplained references to "pantheism" do not give us much to go on.  I have sought to augment the substantive issues by presenting - for the first time - the premises of your position (since, again, you haven't done so).  I have explained my reasoning (the premises are not self-evidently true), and also provided references to more details treatments of the "Problem of Evil" in an LDS context.

So yes, I am taking it seriously.

Then let's get the ball rolling.  You are not presenting anything substantive to address.  

And, again, my preference is that the proper response to the "Problem of Evil" is not a solution, but a remedy.

Why aren't you asking me about that?

Thanks,

-Smac

That's okay, I'm not convinced that you get this issue and are taking it seriously enough. You can discuss with someone else - I don't have the time to work from the ground up here.

[Gray]

37 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

Are you saying that evil doesn’t exist in the pantheistic system, or that it just isn’t a problem? How is it not a problem? Regardless the belief system, bad stuff still happens to all of us. How is that better with pantheism?

Neither. Evil exists, and it's a problem, but "The Problem of Evil" is not an issue under the form of Pantheism I'm talking about.

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

Trauma happens whether or not it carries on in a spiritual realm or not. Healing wounds in the afterlife doesn't address suffering in this life.

Certainly, which is why this theodicy sees them as useful for our development once healed. It's just in the short term they are suffering. We can reject that of course, but I think the claim that everyone would be healed enables this theory to work.

Quote

Yes, I'm not talking about panentheism. For the sake of this discussion I'm referring to pantheism in the sense that God = the universe and has no power to intervene and is not at all a personal/concious God.

We should probably distinguish between conscious and personal. But for the sake of discussion I'm not sure it matters. I think most discussions of pantheism really are just using the logic of stoicism and neoplatonism (much as Spinoza did).

1 hour ago, Gray said:

There is no agency to the universe, and whether or not this is the best or worst or something in between of all possible worlds, it has no effect on this issue, because no one used agency to set up the universe the way it is. The universe/God just IS. Human beings have agency, the universe gave rise to us, not out of conscious choice, but blindly. God doesn't speak, but we hear - and we have the capacity to hear important spiritual principles. The meaning of all this is interpreted by us, not by God.

Well here I start to take exception, if only because there's a history to the use of the term. So Spinoza is the classic pantheist of the modern era. Now famously Spinoza doesn't have individualist or personal agency either. Indeed the question of agency is a big issue for Spinoza and his large influence. Yet Spinoza calls his major work Ethics and his overall concern is moral agency. Without going into the minutiae of Spinoza's thought I think we have to be careful. 

I'd add that unless we're clear about what we mean by agency, it's hard to really discuss the issue. After all the stoics are famously determinists and thus to a certain view opposed to there being agency. Yet the stoics were very concerned with agency. But in their sense God is very much an agent since he always does what he rationally should. Indeed it is God that is fully rational. (Which is why this is the best of all possible worlds again - that must be true precisely because of how they conceive of agency)

As I said, it's very hard to say something is true of humans ontologically without also giving it to God in pantheism. This is precisely why agency is so controversial within Spinoza and his particular Ethics.

My sense is (perhaps wrong) that you're reading all this through a more Nietzschean lens rather than a properly stoic, neoplatonic, or Spinozist lens. Heaven knows Nietzsche made extensive use of the stoics. But one should be careful pushing this more existential kind of pantheism.

 

Edited October 30, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Gray]

38 minutes ago, bluebell said:

So God isn't an agent to act for himself, but is only acted upon?  

Not quite. God doesn't have agency, but the universe acts upon everything. If a meteor hits you in the head that's a piece of the universe acting upon you. That doesn't mean someone intentionally sent it your way.

[changed]

4 minutes ago, pogi said:

Don't forget about the light of Christ. 

Speak for yourself about suffering being pointless and teaching us nothing.  I have learned a lot from the personal suffering in my life.

I used to think that there was a point, it took experiencing something more extreme to drag me over the edge, and open my eyes to the suffering of others.  There is a limit.