The Problem of Evil (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#61

Post by pmoriarty » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #52

tovej wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we limit god to any god worth worshiping, i.e. one that prescribes a set of morals on their followers and answers the prayers of those who follow the god's morals, you would expect that the god has the same set of morals as their followers. Unless the god is playing games with their creation, maybe studying them to see how they would respond. But even then, this would tell us something about the nature of a god. T…

If we limit god to any god worth worshiping Which is the underlying problem here. That article is about the Abrahamic model of a god, even though it doesn't say so. Omnipotent and perfect - that's the Abrahamic model, underlying Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. The Graeco-Roman pantheon was a better fit with reality - a group of morally mediocre gods with their own agendas, mostly indifferent to what the mor…

"The Graeco-Roman pantheon was a better fit with reality - a group of morally mediocre gods with their own agendas, mostly indifferent to what the mortals were up to."

It is a better fit in terms of The Problem of Evil, but it raises a different problem: What happened to them?

They seem to have been conquered by the other major religions and pretty much disappeared.

So the world's not really a good fit for them either.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#62

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

smeej wrote: post #44

paulryanrogers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m actually open to a creator of our simulation or our reality simply because it’s the best explanation we have right now. This was my position as I was leaving Christianity. Now though I think it's more likely that matter and the laws of physics have just always existed, possibly an infinite amount or to an infinitely small scale. While that may seem difficult to comprehend I think it's much simpler than omnipote…

It is omnipotent turtles all the way down, though. "Matter and the laws of physics" is "turtles" just as much as "God" is "turtles." Choosing to believe the turtles are impersonal doesn't alleviate the problem of the turtles.

Except the turtle of matter and physics aren't creators and don't need themselves to be created if they always existed.

Mass and physics aren't sentient or acting with purpose.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#63

Post by heythereguy » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #59

heythereguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me a "being" with power able to create reality is different than physical matter just always existing. I'm not saying it's right, it's just more convincing than saying that matter has always been here that doesn't make any sense at all. Example: Something coming from nothing. Everything has a primary mover. The only way to reconcile it to me is there is some supreme thing that can transcend our time and physics an…

"To me a "being" with power able to create reality is different than physical matter just always existing. I'm not saying it's right, it's just more convincing than saying that matter has always been here.." Why is it more convincing to you? They seem equally preposterous to me. What difference does it make if one is physical and the other not? Saying that one or the other of them always existed seems equivalent to m…

Because every physical thing has a start.

Some time-bending supreme being that creates time and existence itself can overcome that "start" because of it's super powers.

That sounds dumb but it's more convincing than saying yeah it's just always been here. How has it? I'm too dumb to wrap my head around that. Everything has a primary mover unless it has the super power to transcend that.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#64

Post by emerged » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

alex_young wrote: post #3

If you can get to the understanding that all of the outcomes in human thought and behavior are based on inputs of some level, be they genetic, or nurture, or through interaction with others or impacts from the natural environment, then it seem truly odd to believe in a concept like evil.

That line of thinking is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, although I think at its root it is purely semantic.

If you understand the physics of a ball rolling down a hill, the concept of motion doesn’t become truly odd to believe. The concept is still there and still matters, you just understand it in more detail.

Evil is another such emergent abstraction. The meaning is there regardless of the details of what lower level details it emerges from.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#65

Post by pmoriarty » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

heythereguy wrote: post #63

pmoriarty wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To me a "being" with power able to create reality is different than physical matter just always existing. I'm not saying it's right, it's just more convincing than saying that matter has always been here.." Why is it more convincing to you? They seem equally preposterous to me. What difference does it make if one is physical and the other not? Saying that one or the other of them always existed seems equivalent to m…

Because every physical thing has a start. Some time-bending supreme being that creates time and existence itself can overcome that "start" because of it's super powers. That sounds dumb but it's more convincing than saying yeah it's just always been here. How has it? I'm too dumb to wrap my head around that. Everything has a primary mover unless it has the super power to transcend that.

"Because every physical thing has a start."

Does it?

Everything we know about the world is either due to observations or inferences from our observations. We have not observed what was at the start of the Big Bang, nor prior to it, so for all we know whatever that was was qualitatively different than what came after, and really did have no beginning.

"Some time-bending supreme being that creates time and existence itself can overcome that "start" because of it's super powers."

That's the claim.. but that claim seems to me to be no more convincing than saying "because magic" or "just because".. might as well say that about the "physical thing" at the start of the universe.

A being that creates time has its own additional problems besides.. such as how could there be anything before time? What does that even mean?

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#66

Post by smeej » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #62

smeej wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is omnipotent turtles all the way down, though. "Matter and the laws of physics" is "turtles" just as much as "God" is "turtles." Choosing to believe the turtles are impersonal doesn't alleviate the problem of the turtles.

Except the turtle of matter and physics aren't creators and don't need themselves to be created if they always existed. Mass and physics aren't sentient or acting with purpose.

Everything that exists comes [X]. [X] causes all that happens. Nothing happens apart from [X].

It doesn't matter whether [X] stands for "matter and the laws of physics" or "God."

All you've done is make the turtles impersonal. The stack is still there, and it's every bit as inexplicable as it was before.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#67

Post by tovej » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #52

tovej wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we limit god to any god worth worshiping, i.e. one that prescribes a set of morals on their followers and answers the prayers of those who follow the god's morals, you would expect that the god has the same set of morals as their followers. Unless the god is playing games with their creation, maybe studying them to see how they would respond. But even then, this would tell us something about the nature of a god. T…

If we limit god to any god worth worshiping Which is the underlying problem here. That article is about the Abrahamic model of a god, even though it doesn't say so. Omnipotent and perfect - that's the Abrahamic model, underlying Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. The Graeco-Roman pantheon was a better fit with reality - a group of morally mediocre gods with their own agendas, mostly indifferent to what the mor…

Yeah, a sort of bargaining form of religion does impose fewer moral conditions on the gods. Things like the Graeco-Roman gods, old folk religion, Norse mythology, Egyptian mythology, etc. seem more like rationalizations of nature and the struggles of the human condition.

Much better model. Gods don't care about your mortal life, gods are just selfish powers that you can cajole into helping you.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#68

Post by smeej » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #46

smeej wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw here isn't in God's omnipotence. It's in the nonsensical question formulation. I can make up whatever words I want and put them in a syntactically correct structure, but that doesn't mean the sentence means anything. "Can God tell a true lie?" No, of course not, not because God isn't omnipotent, but because it's a nonsense question. There can no more be true lies than four-sided triangles or objects that are…

Claiming that a question is nonsensical doesn't make it so. Such questions are meaningful to the people that ask them. Someone who asks "can God make a square circle?" is unlikely to consider it to be equivalent to asking "gjqrio jtioajfs dklfjl?" (ie. a sentence made of words which really are meaningless) You can claim that these questions are meaningless, but then you have to prove why.. and there's been no such pr…

Setting aside that I've never once actually heard those questions asked in good faith, if someone were to ask them in good faith, pointing out that they themselves have created an unanswerable question by placing words together that don't make sense is easy.

What makes a lie a lie? Its untrueness. So if you replace the untrueness with trueness, do you still have a lie? No. Your own usage of those words is incompatible.

What makes a triangle a triangle? Having exactly 3 angles in an enclosed figure, and, therefore, three sides. So if you added a fourth angle, would you still have a triangle? No. Your own usage of those words is incompatible.

The law of noncontradiction does not restrict God. It comes from God. It is a characteristic of God.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#69

Post by throwaway210222 » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

smeej wrote: post #68

pmoriarty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming that a question is nonsensical doesn't make it so. Such questions are meaningful to the people that ask them. Someone who asks "can God make a square circle?" is unlikely to consider it to be equivalent to asking "gjqrio jtioajfs dklfjl?" (ie. a sentence made of words which really are meaningless) You can claim that these questions are meaningless, but then you have to prove why.. and there's been no such pr…

Setting aside that I've never once actually heard those questions asked in good faith, if someone were to ask them in good faith, pointing out that they themselves have created an unanswerable question by placing words together that don't make sense is easy. What makes a lie a lie? Its untrueness. So if you replace the untrueness with trueness, do you still have a lie? No. Your own usage of those words is incompatibl…

> The law of noncontradiction does not restrict God. It comes from God. It is a characteristic of God.

And that sentence works equally well with two gods, nine gods, and even 400 million gods, of which 200 million have since died.

Stop making up stuff.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#70

Post by exo-pla-net » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

emerged wrote: post #64

alex_young wrote: post #3

If you can get to the understanding that all of the outcomes in human thought and behavior are based on inputs of some level, be they genetic, or nurture, or through interaction with others or impacts from the natural environment, then it seem truly odd to believe in a concept like evil.

That line of thinking is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, although I think at its root it is purely semantic. If you understand the physics of a ball rolling down a hill, the concept of motion doesn’t become truly odd to believe. The concept is still there and still matters, you just understand it in more detail. Evil is another such emergent abstraction. The meaning is there regardless of the details of what lower leve…

A closer analogy is continuing to believe that motion is caused by invisible angels pushing on objects, after you understand physics.

You could argue that the laws of physics are the tools that the angels use to do their pushing, but you'd then be entering the realm of absurdity. Angels are unnecessary to understand motion.

Same goes for evil. After you understand the basics of human psychology, and you accept the largely deterministic nature of everything, insisting that evil is the driver for certain acts is as absurd as a belief in physics angels.

Evil is not an emergent abstraction. It's a fiction and a religiously-tied social tool used to demonize opposing tribes, justifying destroying them, as well as to control a group's behavior/identity (it's evil to worship false idols, etc.).