The Problem of Evil (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#81

Post by AnimalMuppet » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

exo-pla-net wrote: post #51

deertick1 wrote: post #45

Just wanted to chime in here with a book suggestion : "The Problem if Pain" by C.S. Lewis. Tackles this problem from a christian apologista perspective. Its about as intellectual an analysis as you are going to get on this subject matter. I personally don't agree with 100% of it, but Lewis always presents arguments I never would have considered otherwise. Worth a read. Also, listening to scientists and engineers disc…

The linked article presents the theistic counterarguments to The Problem of Evil, such as those espoused by C.S. Lewis. Here is an example of what C.S. Lewis has to say in his book: "If the universe is so bad… how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps, but hardly so foolish as that." Perhaps I am a small-minded engineer, but that seems l…

That's taking one sentence from one argument from the book, and finding it weak. You should compare the strongest arguments from the article to the strongest arguments from the book, not to the weakest.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#82

Post by sdht0 » Sun, Jul 11, 2021, 11:28 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #74

smeej wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." Does it come from God and is it a characteristic of God? I'd be curious to hear how you know this. I would agree, however, that an omnipotent god (if one existed) would not be restricted by anything, including any human conceptions such as logic.

> an omnipotent god (if one existed) would not be restricted by anything, including any human conceptions such as logic.

Logic is not constrained to human conceptions but is objectively valid. One has to keep in mind that logic is based on premises and inferences. Given the premises and inference rules, the conclusion automatically follow.

So a four sided circle cannot exist because we have defined circle to be a particular shape. A valid four sided circle would need a change in the definition of circle itself. But then we're not talking about the same thing anymore. Similarly, the same universe cannot contain both an irresistible force and an immovable object, because of the conflicting definitions of those terms.

Even an omnipotent God is constrained by logic. In a reality without logic, it'd meaningless to try to understand any aspect of reality. God can both exist and not exist at the same time. He can be both Good and Evil. Conscious beings can be both alive and dead. It is hard to see how a illogical universe can retain any meaning that we attribute to God and Creation.

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#83

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 1:09 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #29

breuleux wrote: post #5

It seems kind of presumptuous to think that God's conception of morality would bear any similarity with ours. Presumably God created what It considers to be the perfect world and therefore everything that happens in it is good according to God's own definition of goodness, including torturing babies (if and when it happens -- and when it doesn't happen, then it is good that it doesn't). Perhaps God never had any inte…

"It seems kind of presumptuous to think that God's conception of morality would bear any similarity with ours." If God's conception of morality is not equivalent to the human conception of morality, then what does it mean to claim that God is good? The fact is that a lot of people worship God in great part because they do think that God is good in the ordinary human sense: that he loves humanity, cares for them, want…

The Christian position is that humans are morally flawed. "Flawed" is too weak - they are morally twisted.

Having twisted people judge whether God is morally straight is... problematic. Instead, humans insist that we are straight, and therefore that God must be twisted.

Have you ever heard an amoral or immoral person insist that everyone else is just as dishonest (e.g.) as they are? That's what humans do with God.

(I am aware that Christianity is not the only monotheistic belief system. I don't know enough about the others to speak to them.)

Re: The Problem of Evil (2015)

#84

Post by andrei_says_ » Mon, Jul 12, 2021, 1:44 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #48

andrei_says_ wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a beautiful way to put it. Contemporary Advaita provides many pointers, one of which is to observe your choices and try to find a force independent of observable causality chains. Unpacking what we call “free will” in this way is a really sobering experience, leading to automatic compassion for everyone.

"Contemporary Advaita provides many pointers, one of which is to observe your choices and try to find a force independent of observable causality chains." How can we observe causality? We can observe a sequence of events, but that one event causes another is not something we can observe. See Hume's critique of causality for more on this.

If this was a non-rhetorical question - the way I use this pointer is to focus on an action I feel tension about, usually detectable as guilt.

“I shouldn’t have rushed my nephew in the store.”

The inquiry goes something like this: what emotions did I have at the moment? Did I choose those or were they caused by something? What thoughts did I have? Did I choose them or did they spontaneously appear or were they caused by something like conditioning, habits, traumatic patterns? Were we on our way to a concert? Is my nature patient or not so patient and chill and when did I get a say in my preference in how my neuropathways will get organized? Was my nephew fascinated by those books? Did I choose him to be? Did he choose to have interest in some things and not others? Did he choose to have a bit of difficulty when transitioning away from interesting activities? Did I choose how I was treated when I was a child in his situation?

Given all of these, including feeling overwhelmed and out of options, and having only the tools I had at the moment, my existing genetic makeup, thoughts, beliefs and environment, can I find a force independent of all of these that made me raise my voice at the child?

No, I cannot. It happened and I kind of witnessed it but that’s it. What I call a choice or a free will, when unpacked, is a combination of infinite causality chains which happen to express themselves through me in this moment.