Omniscience and omnibenevolence

[Age]

Omniscience and omnibenevolence! Two of the most empty-headed concepts ever imagined.

Is that 'your' concept of those two words?

Are you aware that "others" have, and/or hold, very DIFFERENT 'concepts', when they read or hear those two words?

[Astro Cat]

Good heavens.

You're no better at "trimming" than I am at "being parsimonious." We both write a ton, even when we try to cut things down.

I knowwwww! I'm trying XD

The item was: 1. The issue of the need for an objective moral standard to judge "benevolence."

The response was:

The answer to all of this is that suffering doesn't have to be objectively wrong to be incongruous with benevolence (which doesn't have to be objectively right to be incongruous with causing suffering).

Hmmm.

Here's the problem I see. "Incongruous" requires the detection of what "congruity" would consist in. And here, we're clearly talking about "moral congruity," are we not?

No, I don't mean "morally incongruous," I just mean regular logical congruity. If we imagine "benevolence" to mean something like striving never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, we aren't making a moral judgment if we say "there shouldn't be any gratuitous suffering, then, if the creator is omnipotent and omniscient and strives never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering."

Again, we do not have to judge suffering as "bad" or benevolence (as defined) as "good" for these two things to be incongruous. Asking "is there suffering?" isn't the same thing as asking "is suffering bad?"

We define "gratuitous suffering" as suffering that doesn't serve a purpose that's beneficial to the sufferer (a strong form of this definition), or we can use a weaker definition that "gratuitous suffering" is suffering that doesn't serve a beneficial purpose in general (in a utilitarian sense; the sufferer may not reap the benefits of their own suffering under this weaker definition and it may not be gratuitous).

I feel like I need to parse that out a little better with examples, so of course this is going to get real long in this section again. *cartwheel*

If we define gratuitousness the strong way, then any suffering which doesn't serve some greater benefit to the sufferer is gratuitous. This circumvents weird utilitarian scenarios where one person suffers, yet their suffering never benefits themselves any even if it does benefit others. Consider for instance a scenario where someone with a rare blood type is forced to give blood against their will to save or improve many lives: under the strong definition of gratuitousness, this would still be gratuitous because this person didn't reap any benefits from their own suffering even if others did (let us assume that they don't count it as a benefit that's "worth it" that their blood helped others).

If we define gratuitousness the weak way, then any suffering which doesn't serve some greater utilitarian benefit is gratuitous. So for instance, in the trolley problem, if the lever is pulled one dies so that five may live; under the weak definition the one that died hasn't suffered gratuitously (whereas under the strong definition, assuming they didn't think it "worth it" to die for the five, this would be gratuitous suffering).

Now, I make this demarcation between strong and weak forms of gratuitousness because it may matter down the road. For instance, I'm ultimately going to ask questions like "well what good does a child born with a debilitating birth defect such that they only know suffering and then they die young before they can even learn anything from it do?" That's when this will matter. Because I have seen theists say, "well, it doesn't help the child, but it helps the family grow stronger together as they grieve" and stuff like that. So, on the strong definition of gratuitousness, the child's suffering and death is gratuitous suffering (unless the child benefits from this horrible fate in some way); on the weak definition of gratuitousness, an argument could maybe be made that it isn't gratuitous.

In any case, benevolence is going to be defined for the sake of this argument as simply the state of striving never to instantiate or allow gratuitous suffering. We might ask "ok, strong or weak gratuitousness?" and the answer is "well we have to decide which one we care about," but either way, there is a logical, not necessarily moral, incongruity between an omnipotent/omniscient creator with benevolence as defined and the appearance of gratuitous suffering (of whichever type we chose) in the world. A moral judgment is never involved; it works because benevolence is defined in such a way that there's a logical incongruity if there is gratuitous suffering.

It would be as if benevolence were to mean "striving never to create or allow red objects," and then we saw apparently red objects in the world. There's no judgments there. Just a logical incongruity.

Let us shift to the second item: 2. Whether or not we can make God out to be the only effective moral will in the universe.

The reply to this was:

I'm not saying that God is the only culpable person for an act of gratuitous physical suffering (let's say stabbing as an example). The stabber is still fully culpable for their act. God has special culpability for the simple reason that He is responsible for the very environment and rules that make the stabbing possible.

This is an elaborate way of conceding exactly the point I was making, when I said that the price of making God ultimately responsible for evil is that you have to make everybody else not ultimately responsible.

But can we do that? Can we assert, with confidence an authority, that all of what we perceive as evil is done by God? I don't think we can even safely say that ANY of it is. Our assumption that God was the only effective moral will in the universe could be dead wrong: as "omnipotent" (to use the term of art, there) God could create free-will having beings who would be quite capable of performing things contrary to His preferences, and things for which He bears no responsibility at all. It might well be an analytic impossibility to speak of "free will having" creatures that CANNOT choose to perform such acts: and the creation of free-will-having eternal beings being such an overwhelming good, that any entailed suffering was trivial by comparison.

So even if we concede that God has allowed such a state to pertain, we're very far from showing it indicates, even provisionally, that He's being "malevolent" or "negligent" in so doing. And we cannot deduce from the fact that men do evil that God does. The very definition of "free" being means that they can, and that they alone are responsible IF they choose to.

(I enjoyed the Star Trek analogy, by the way; but I don't find it telling. To use "holodeck" as a metaphor there merely concedes the wrong point assumptively, rather than demonstrating the argument. A "holodeck" is something which is presumed already to be under "control" of one "controller," so it represents a universe with only one agent in it that can actually do or permit the harm. And my point is that we have no reason to suppose that's the right kind of scenario, and very good, ostensible reasons to think it's not.)

I don't understand your objection, I guess. I said that the stabber is "fully culpable," but you responded "...you have to make everybody else not ultimately responsible." What do you mean? I said the stabber is culpable, but your response reads as though the stabber is not culpable.

As for the holodeck example, you said that a holodeck is something "which is presumed already to be under 'control' of one 'controller,' so it represents a universe with only one agent in it that can actually do or permit the harm." But that's not true. One person is in charge of what rules the holodeck allows, but there are other agents in the holodeck that can attempt to do harm or not.

If I'm in charge of the holodeck's rules, I'm culpable for deciding to turn off the safety mode. If anyone hurts each other while safety mode is off, they are fully culpable for their actions -- it's just that I'm culpable too. I don't understand your objection about there being "only one" agent. I have clearly stated multiple agents would have culpability, and that their culpability is different. If I turn off the holodeck safety, my culpability for a violent attack is different from the person that actually pulls the trigger; but my culpability for their ability to pull the trigger still exists if I'm the one in charge of turning off the safety.

Let's leap to item the third: 3. How do we know that "non-benevolence" and "gratuitious" are warranted assessments?

To this, the reply goes:

How do we know gratuitousness when we see it? Well, the answer is that we aren't omniscient, so there's no way to absolutely know suffering is gratuitous. However, like anything else we don't absolutely know, we are still within reasonable and rational bounds to make observations and assign epistemic probabilities based on what we do observe and cognize.

Well, I want to be fair here: I think that although you and I are talking in philosophical terms, this is probably the pith of most people's problems with theodicy. And it comes not so much from philosophy as from painful, real-life experience. I want to respect that.

They see things that seem to them not to be explicable, not to have a purpose, or to entail unpleasantness of various kinds that they believe to be extreme, and they just trust that intuition. And it's not surprising we do that: we do it all the time, in normal life. When I think I see danger, I feel panic. When I think I see ice cream, I feel justified to feel a sweet tooth. All else being equal, we all take our first impressions for the right ones, and we tend to live based on them.

I will go beyond that: I will say, even, that in the case of real suffering, we sense (and I think rightly sense) that something terribly grievous and unjust is afoot. We are often at a loss to account for it; and if we rack our brains we find that we cannot come up with any sort of countervailing good we could think of that might relativize or excuse what is happening...whether to us or to others. That's a common experience.

All that makes the doubt and the question very natural. But does that justify us in having confidence that our intuition is possessed of all the relevant information and is accurately feeding us everything we need to know about what is involved?

Well, no. For a start, we know we are incarnated, local, transient, limited creatures. We not only don't know everything, taken by ourselves, we hardly have time in life to know anything. The vast amount of things we don't know dwarfs the teaspoonful of things any one of us ever gets to know in life...and as an academic yourself, you'll no doubt be immediately aware of how much information is out there in your own field, let alone in all the fields that you have never studied, and all the things worth knowing for which there is no field at all. So that's a big thing: if there's a plan in all that's going on, it's certainly bound to be bigger than the tiny vessel, or brain, that any one of us has.

...

P.S. -- The Martian analogy.

If Martians arrive to Earth and begin blowing up cities and running through the streets with ray guns blasting people, suppose that they play over an intercom, "do not run, we are your friends." Now, of course, it's possible they are our friends. It's possible they have some inscrutable but benevolent reason for this wanton violence: we mere humans may just not be able to understand. But wouldn't you say -- asking you personally, IC -- that there is a threshold where it's more reasonable, more rational to believe they are not your friends no matter what they're saying over the intercom?

Again, I don't think the analogy works, and for a similar reason. It assumes the aimed-adt conclusion, rather than demonstrating it. It does this because it presumes the existence of only one agency of suffering.

I don't understand this "only one agency of suffering" argument. The question seems like a rather clear yes or no question: is there, or is there not a point based on observations and evidences where it is more reasonable than not to think the alien isn't our friend despite playing over a loudspeaker, "do not run, I am your friend?"

I think the answer is that yes, there is a threshold of observation and evidence somewhere that makes it more reasonable than not to doubt the alien is your friend: even if it's possible the alien is actually your friend due to esoteric reasons beyond your understanding. You would be reasonable to operate under the assumption that the alien is not your friend at a certain point, even while admitting that can't be known absolutely. Right?

So we would have to patch up the analogy by saying there were many such aliens, or many people running through the streets blasting people with ray guns, and an alien who may or may not have a raygun was yelling "I am your friend." In such a case, all we'd know is that he was saying he was our friend. We wouldn't know if he was responsible for the damage, or others were. Moreover, we'd have to include in the scenario the possibility of him having a "free will" ray, which produced immediate pain but made the "victim" suddenly much wiser, healthier and more moral than he or she ever could have possibly otherwise been, and caused him or her to live forever.

This severely jumbles up the point, though. It's not an analogy for God, it's just a thought experiment to make a comment on whether we can, in general, say there is a point where it's more reasonable than not to operate on non-omniscient knowledge.

So without talking about God at all for right now, do you agree that even though we don't truly know the alien's motivations that there is some threshold of observation and evidence, somewhere, where we would be more reasonable than not to just simply conclude the alien isn't our friend (even though they say they are)?

I think "yes, there is such a threshold" is the only reasonable answer here, and that's the point: to get around the objection that we aren't omniscient, I can make the point that we have to make decisions all the time without omniscience, and doing so is often completely reasonable.

I haven't yet made a concerted effort at laying out an argument for this threshold when it comes to God, benevolence, malevolence, and grauitous suffering yet. But you can probably see how such an argument would be made. And that's the point in making the Mars Attacks argument first: it's not meant to be an analogy for God, it's only meant to show that arguments can be made for thresholds of reasonability on matters for which we aren't omniscient.

Okay, now to item four: 4. The problem of what is required for "significant freedom": just thoughts, or actions too, how much knowlege, victims/no victims, etc.?

...a point that I feel like gets skipped over is that even in a world without physical suffering, beings would be significantly free even by Plantinga's definition: if S can't stab P, S can still make morally significant choices regarding P (does S lie to P? Does S break a promise to P? Does S say cruel things to P?).

I'm arguing that that is not correct, in my estimation. I think that "significant freedom" necessarily entails both the ability to have cognitive moral options and actual ones...ones one can "act" upon.

I was suggesting that that is manifest even in cases like you suggest...such as "promising," because a "promise" is generally a mental undertaking to perform a physical action. One cannot "promise" what one is powerless to deliver. There's no value in the promise-mental-state without the possibility of the promise-actual-delivery. In fact, in a world where there were only very "promisings" and no actual fulfilling of promises, every promise would be a lie.

So it is not sufficient for the act of "promising" for a person to say and not do. That's just a broken promise.

I don't think this objection works because I don't think something is a "promise" that isn't possible to do in the first place. I can't promise to you that I'll make a Euclidean square-circle, for instance. In a Toy World, someone couldn't promise to stab the neighbor any more than they could promise to become a married bachelor. However, they could promise to meet you at 5 tomorrow to see Lord of the Rings (extended edition, of course). And, even in a Toy World, it's morally significant because if they don't even try to fulfill their promise, then they broke their promise; possibly even lied when making the promise. So, there is significant freedom in a Toy World even if there isn't physical suffering.

What is a "threat" with no possibility of follow-through? Another lie. But since we are positing a world with no possibility of violence in it, who even takes the threat seriously? Every threat would also be an obvious lie. So there's not even such a thing as a "threat" in that world.

No physical threats, anyway, and so what? In any case, I suppose you could threaten someone's reputation for instance, or threaten to expose a secret you know.

What about a world where there was only love, but no possibility of unrequited love? What would the meaning of "I love you," be? What would make the statement special, exclusive, or even descriptive of anything, since it would be a ubiquitous, undifferentiated property?

I don't see how it would be possible to have free will but not have the potential for unrequited love. And that is the point: many of these forms of mental and emotional sufferings are directly necessary for free will to be free. You can't freely love without the possibility of not loving someone that loves you romantically. Unrequited love must necessarily exist if free will exists. However, stubbed toes and gun violence and leukemia do not have to exist in order for free will to exist.

As for your idyllic scenario, why should it retain either mental or physical misdeeds? If having the freedom of those things once, not forever, is sufficient to produce genuine volitional freedom, then why retain either? I can't see why that would be wanted.

Again, and I'm reiterating because this is so important: you can't have free will at all unless unrequited love is a potentiality; but you can have all kinds of free will without leukemia.

Mental and emotional suffering is necessary to be able to accomplish things like freely exchange ideas, freely form friendships, freely form romantic relationships.

Physical suffering is not necessary for any of those things.

For every mental/emotional suffering that's possible, there is some freedom that is crucial to our understanding of what free will even means: unrequited friendship has to exist if we want to say that our friendships are formed freely with one another. Lies have to exist if we want to say we're able to use our imaginations and share things from our mind to another mind.

Leukemia though? It isn't required for freedom. We can still freely form friendships and relationships and share our minds with one another and choose what to do with our time without leukemia. So why does it exist? Leukemia doesn't seem like it's necessary for free will to exist.

Violence might be tied to a type of free will, but there is plenty of free will without violence. The only kind of free will violence enables is the ability to be violent, and that's circular: why is it good to be able to do violence when it's only ever ostensibly bad if we actually do it?

It's like the Big Red Button that explodes kittens and puppies. Introducing that to the world technically introduces a new aspect of free will. But is the world with the Big Red Button really a better world than the one that simply doesn't have the Big Red Button? People are still free without the Big Red Button, and if the Big Red Button exists, all it causes is misery. So why would having it exist be a good thing?

Cancer isn't necessary for your free beings to freely share their minds and bond with one another, nor is being able to be stabbed. So why did you include it in your universe recipe? What was the point? They're already free and already capable of freely forming relationships.

Do we know what is required in order for all people to have the significant freedom they need to be full, complete, volitional individuals? I don't think we do.

So how do we know that the balance of goods and bads in this present world is not ideal? I'm not saying I know it is. I'm not saying you should believe it is. I'm not saying you can't question the balance. I'm asking how you know it isn't exactly what it needs to be?

Are you punting to mystery, IC?

If you're going to maintain that you're not punting to mystery as you initially said, the onus is on you to show how cancer is necessary for free beings to freely share their minds and bond with one another, e.g. for free will. How a world without cancer is a world without free and happy beings. That's on you, unless you punt to mystery.

[Agent Smith]

God can come simultaneously also in different human forms at the same time.

That would be a really cool ability to have at an orgy.

Today it did dawn on me. I am perplexed, puzzled, bemused, baffled...totally something that requires a thesauras (Harbal, that's not a dinosaur - I looked it up last week)...THAT, out of all that waffle from dattawotsit...you managed to stumble upon that little gem.

It's a bloody miracle is wot it is.

[Agent Smith]

It's true, omniscience and omnibenevolence don't make any sense at all. How can one be omniscient and omnibebevolent when the great deceiver, the devil, Satan, exists. How?

[Belinda]

It's true, omniscience and omnibenevolence don't make any sense at all. How can one be omniscient and omnibebevolent when the great deceiver, the devil, Satan, exists. How?

Nobody is either of those omnis. Those omnis are aspirational only.

Omnibenevolence and omniscience fit together in the sense of he who knows all forgives all. Therefore both of these omnis together as one compound value are good to aspire towards.
Satan is a good egg because he is the one who told Eve to rely on her own judgement and not that of authorities.

[Immanuel Can]

Good heavens.

You're no better at "trimming" than I am at "being parsimonious." We both write a ton, even when we try to cut things down.

I knowwwww! I'm trying XD

I'm in no position to "throw stones."

...we're clearly talking about "moral congruity," are we not?

No, I don't mean "morally incongruous," I just mean regular logical congruity. If we imagine "benevolence" to mean something like striving never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, we aren't making a moral judgment if we say "there shouldn't be any gratuitous suffering, then, if the creator is omnipotent and omniscient and strives never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering."[/quote]
I see what you're aiming for, but I don't think it can quite be had.

There is no "logical" incongruity between something happening and something else happening. (We can't use the terms "good" and "bad," or "benvolent" or "gratuitous," because all are morally-freighted terms. And we certainly can't says "there shouldn't be," and mean thereby "there ought not to be," because those are also definitely moral terms.

Again, we do not have to judge suffering as "bad" or benevolence (as defined) as "good" for these two things to be incongruous. Asking "is there suffering?" isn't the same thing as asking "is suffering bad?"

That latter sentence is true: one is an "is" and the other is an "ought," because it implicates "badness," a definitely moral term. But the first sentence, I think, isn't at all obvious. There's nothing "illogical" about any state of affairs that causally can have a result, resulting in any other state of affairs that can causally follow from it. Without the moral dimension, we've lost all grounds for objection.

So if the earthquake in Turkey can causally kill people, and it does, then nothing "illogical" has happened. Earthquakes are logically sufficient cause of deaths. Has something "immoral" happened? Only then have we grounds for objection. Otherwise, not.

We define "gratuitous suffering" as suffering that doesn't serve a purpose that's beneficial to the sufferer (a strong form of this definition), or we can use a weaker definition that "gratuitous suffering" is suffering that doesn't serve a beneficial purpose in general (in a utilitarian sense; the sufferer may not reap the benefits of their own suffering under this weaker definition and it may not be gratuitous).

Okay. We're going to have to use an example here, I think. It's a real-life one.

I have a little dog. I sent my dog to the groomers. He came back not happy at all. I believe she had actually injured him, doing something rather nasty to his back end. I sent him a happy, shaggy dog; he came home a miserable, sick puppy. He spent a whole night crying in pain.

So naturally, I took him to the vet immediately. But he was terrified. After all his pain, I betrayed him by taking him to "that man" he has to see once a year. He shook, he whined, he begged to go home. He was already suffering; why did I take him to a place where more fear, discomfort and misery awaited him? I was "gratuitiously" punishing the poor little guy...

Or was I? Was the additional suffering to which I was putting him "gratuitous" or not? If you had asked him, it was totally "gratuitous," I'm sure. But it was not. It was simply part of a plan for his ultimate healing that he was not capable of understanding. And had I not done what was necesssary, if I had not made him "suffer gratuitiously" in this way, I would have been a very bad dog owner. But I cannot expect him ever to make sense of what was really going on. It involved things dogs just don't understand, like how pain and healing are actually related, or what the true intentions of the vet were, or even what was the fastest route to delivering him from his misery. All that was simply beyond him.

And this is the problem with the "doesn't serve a purpose" definition of "gratuitious." It's tempting to think there's some easy relationship between "what we like" and what is "deserved." It's easy to assume that things we "don't like" are also "gratuitous," especially if we don't know the purpose of them, if they have any. It's easy to suppose that "the sufferer" is the best one to judge the warrant for "the suffering." Or at least to assume that we should be able to see a "beneficial purpose in general" to others, plausibly, as to why we have to experience things we don't like.

As natural as such a supposition is, it's not reasonable. My dog didn't get what I was doing. To him, it was "gratuitious" and "non-beneficent." But what I was doing was the right thing, in both the strong sense (beneficial to him) and the weak sense (generally beneficial).

Something, I think, is also going to compound this problem. How do we evaluate the "benevolence" of an action, or its "gratutiousness" if we don't confine our attention to our own perspective and to this present world? Only if this life is all there is, can you and I know what we need to know in order to claim that "suffering" is "gratuitous" or "warranted." But if the answer to why things happen as they do is forestalled until the day of Judgment, then we're out-of-position to be able to say what's "gratuitious" or "benevolent" or not. For then, the judgment has to wait upon the completion of the relevant narrative, and that narrative is incomplete in this life, and incomplete if viewed only from my personal perspective.

The Christian narrative is full of claims that much suffering can be warranted by the beneficence of the outcome. Christians revere a Man who suffered an excruciating, unjust death, in order to obtain an overwhelming good on behalf of others. Their history is full of men and women who decided to forego present-day pleasures and satisfactions in order to have faith in the prospect of much better things to come, when the full explanation for the 'why' of things comes in. (If you needed to see this, I would point you to Hebrews chapter 11...that's practically all it talks about.)

I have seen theists say, "well, it doesn't help the child, but it helps the family grow stronger together as they grieve" and stuff like that.

What I would say about that is this: that if it is hasty for secular persons to jump to the conclusion that suffering is "gratuitious" simply because it seems so to them, then it is equally hasty for a Theist to propose to know what a given case of suffering means. Both are taking into account only the "seemings" or "possible explanations" that can occur to them in this life, and from their own limited perspective. So just as I would call into question the secularist's confidence to be able to say "gratuitious suffering happens," so to I would call into question the Theist's right to make facile guesses as to what the real justification for the suffering (assuming such is possible) might be.

Interestingly, the Book of Job contains a narrative about Theists who try to speak too soon, and based on too little knowlege, about why another Theist is suffering. They don't come off well, in that narrative. They nearly end up under the judgment of God for their temerity in daring to pass off Job's suffering by way of their own facile and incorrect explanations.

However, maybe coming up with trite explanations to slough off suffering may not be what the Theists you mentioned had in view. Perhaps they were only attempting to suggest that there could be a way in which a better explanation than "it was gratuitious" could be conceived. That is, maybe they were only trying to point out that there are ways in which it's possible to think suffering can be justified, other than the obvious. Still, even with that modest goal, I think they should be cautious.

In any case, benevolence is going to be defined for the sake of this argument as simply the state of striving never to instantiate or allow gratuitous suffering.

As a definition, it works: but only so far as the definition of "unicorn" also works. That is, it works as a description of a thing we still do not yet have good reason to suppose actually exists.

So we arrive at this question: Do we have adequate reason to know that "gratutious" suffering exists? And I think the answer, for everybody, has to be "No."

Let us shift to the second item: 2. Whether or not we can make God out to be the only effective moral will in the universe.

The reply to this was:

I'm not saying that God is the only culpable person for an act of gratuitous physical suffering (let's say stabbing as an example). The stabber is still fully culpable for their act.

Hold. We have to become very precise here.

To whatever extent we say, "the stabber is fully culpable," then God is not. For it's not merely that God is under no obligation to prevent a "stabber" from "stabbing," although that would be true, too; it's that the "stabber" is possessed of free will and volition, and so does not have to "stab," and bears his own "full culpability" for it.

Moreover, if God prevents the "stabber" from "stabbing," then he's never able to be a "stabber" at all. That choice is simply prevented. He maybe can want to stab. But he cannot do it.

But you say:

God has special culpability for the simple reason that He is responsible for the very environment and rules that make the stabbing possible.

What evidence have you that the "enviroment" and "rules that make stabbing possible" are according to the will of God? Are there not states of affairs that are contrary to the will of God? A Determinist would have to say "No," but a free-willian (which I think both you and I are) would say, "Certainly, there are."

I don't understand your objection, I guess. I said that the stabber is "fully culpable," but you responded "...you have to make everybody else not ultimately responsible." What do you mean? I said the stabber is culpable, but your response reads as though the stabber is not culpable.

The word "ultimately" is the important one.

If we say the stabber was responsible for a proportion of what happened, then that's the proportion we can't blame God for. If we say God was responsible for it, then that's the proportion to which we cannot blame the stabber. It's always a zero-sum calculation, because suffering is limited. It comes in different intensities, seriousnesses, durations, and so forth, but each case of suffering has only a limited quantity and quality. It is not infinite. Whatever blame we assign, it has to be proportioned off between what we blame on men and what we blame on God.

Maybe we could dodge this by saying that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the stabber, for his desire to stab, and for his opportunity to stab. But if we go this route, we might well wonder, where is the culpability of the stabber? Are we now positing a world wherein free will is merely a seeming, a false appearance, and ultimate responsibility for everything always goes back to God? Or are we leaving a place for human volition?

The question seems like a rather clear yes or no question: is there, or is there not a point based on observations and evidences where it is more reasonable than not to think the alien isn't our friend despite playing over a loudspeaker, "do not run, I am your friend?"...

This severely jumbles up the point, though.

The "jumbling" is actually cause by the many inapt elements of the analogy, I would say.

Your scenario supposes a clear connection between the harm and the agent: it's the raygun, and it's the alien. That is not our situation in the case of God: we do not know He's the agency of our suffering (remember the "stabber"?), nor do we know that the suffering is "gratuitious." So any fair analogy has to leave open the question of who is doing the harm, and whether or not it's harm at all. If we invent a scenario that artificially forecloses on these questions, then it's an inapt analogy: it fails to reflect the truth of the actual situation we are aiming to analogize. And we can either fix it up, as I have suggested we might try to do, or we shall have to abandon it.

But one thing for sure: an improperly formed analogy is not made better by the demand for only a "Yes" or "No" response. All that means is that we've made errors of presumption, and assumed a particular conclusion, contrary to the facts of the real situation.

It's not an analogy for God, it's just a thought experiment to make a comment on whether we can, in general, say there is a point where it's more reasonable than not to operate on non-omniscient knowledge.

Well, if that's all that it is, then I think it doesn't do very much. For I think there's no person who will suppose that non-omniscient people cannot act, or cannot act upon what they consider the probabilties of a situation. The more important question is, when they do, are they always right? Have they invariably taken into account all the relevant facts? Do they never miscalculate? Are they immune to jumping to conclusions that are not warranted by the full truth? And the answer to that, obviously, is "No."

Probability guesses are always based on a limited set of facts, and a limited set of presumptive conclusions. That's what makes them "probability" and not "certainty."

The problem for this analogy is worse, though: for we do not have the relative probabilities in hand to estimate whether or not a given case of "suffering" is "warranted," or even who the agent of the suffering might be. So we are not in anything like the "alien" scenario.

I don't think this objection works because I don't think something is a "promise" that isn't possible to do in the first place.

That actually IS my point. The existence of "promises" implies that the action is possible. It's not enough to have the cognition; one has to have at least the possibility of the action, too.

That's the point I'd make: "freedom" is "free-willing" and also "potential acting upon that will." Deeds and desires are not really separable in the way you were perhaps suggesting, as if a person can be free to want to do but not to do. To desire is to desire to do. I would suggest, therefore, that the "toy world" idea is incoherent. One cannot have desires without possibility of action. And maybe that's why we refer to such a scenario as "toy," right?

I don't see how it would be possible to have free will but not have the potential for unrequited love.

Yes.

If you want a world with "love" in it, you're going to have to accept at least the potentiality and risk of going "unloved." And that has to be a real possibility.

But God wants a world with love in it. What is He going to have to risk?

However, stubbed toes and gun violence and leukemia do not have to exist in order for free will to exist.

Do we know that? How?

It seems likely to me that in a world that is alienated from God, stubbed toes, gun crime and leukemia are exactly the kinds of things one should expect. What else would it be? Sunshine and roses?

Mental and emotional suffering is necessary to be able to accomplish things like freely exchange ideas, freely form friendships, freely form romantic relationships.

Physical suffering is not necessary for any of those things.

I don't think there's an easy detachment between physical and emotional suffering. So much of what we suffer emotionally is because of the prospect or the reality of physical suffering; and so much of what we suffer physically is occasioned to us emotionally.

For instance, something like friendship is so valuable precisely because friends are the people who help you out in times of physical need or trauma, as well as in emotional vexation. And friendships are forged on the "battlefield," so to speak. Romantic relationships, one might say, are purely emotional; but then, why do we say they "hurt," and why are our guts in a knot over something emotional? How about achievement? Look at athletics. How much pain is involved in the life of an athlete, with all the training and self-denial involved, but with it, how much emotional elation and victory, and how much pain and failure? How much of what we are, and of what our relationships are, are formed in the crucible of suffering?

And you agree, it seems, for you write,

Violence might be tied to a type of free will, but there is plenty of free will without violence.

I don't think we know this, do we? We do know that things like mercy presuppose the possibility of violence, and plausibly a world with mercy in it is much better than one without. Likewise, things like competition, overcoming, play, and so forth are tied to dynamic physical interactions that contain the possibility of violence. Plausibly, the world might be worse without them, too.

Leukemia though? It isn't required for freedom. We can still freely form friendships and relationships and share our minds with one another and choose what to do with our time without leukemia. So why does it exist? Leukemia doesn't seem like it's necessary for free will to exist.

We're again in a situation of having to admit we're not sure.

We don't know why leukemia is involved in some people's lives, and not in other people's. We do know we live in a world that is out of any harmonious relationship to its Creator. That much is apparent to us all, I think. And this involves not just the people (many of whom obviously have no use for God) but also the whole environment over which mankind was given stewardship by the Creator. Mankind lives in an environment consonant with his/her own moral liberty. Things don't happen here in a predicatable way, nor doled out according to evident deserving. Everything's indeterminate here. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad ones. But that's the kind of environment that free will entities in the moral condition we find ourselves in need to exist in; at least for now.

But again, we are not seeing the end of the story yet. So we don't know. There is no shame in arriving at that point, either: it's just honest. In fact, it would be preposterous of any of us to claim to have the whole story while the story is still being written, wouldn't it?

Are you punting to mystery, IC?

No. But let me show you that I'm not.

There's a difference between saying, "I don't know," and "It's a mystery."

If somebody asks me how many stars one can see from Earth, I say, "I don't know."

And I think that nobody knows. How good are each person's eyes? How bright are the lights from where they are on Earth? Do we mean, with or without a telescope? Do we mean, with the Hubble telescope? Do we mean, assisted by satellite telescopes? Do we include the various telescopes and devices that are yet to be invented, but surely will soon be invented? Which is the right number? I don't know.

But that stars exist is certain. That we can see a great many from Earth is not disputable. That there must be some definite number that we can see is reasonable. At no point are we punting to mystery. But still, honesty requires us simply to admit what we are capable of knowing, and what we are not.

I dont know why leukemia and other cancers exist. I have some ideas, some thoughts that lead in a particular direction, but no definite answers. I'm not sure. But is it reasonable for me to expect that I should know? I can't see why it is. And does my not-knowing mean something's wrong with me? No, I'm just a single human being, a limited creature. Does it mean there's no answer? I can't see why we would be warranted in concluding that...especially if, as I think, God exists. But my non-possession of that answer neither indicates a failure on my part, nor causes me to "punt to mystery." I simply admit what I do not know.

Would that the skeptics were all so quick to do the same. But they seem to think that merely posing a question to which they have no answer is some sort of warrant for their skepticism. I can't see that it is. And it looks to me as if they are expecting far too much from their own wisdom.

Okay...long again, but perhaps much shorter than it might have been. My apologies again.

[Agent Smith]

It's true, omniscience and omnibenevolence don't make any sense at all. How can one be omniscient and omnibebevolent when the great deceiver, the devil, Satan, exists. How?

Nobody is either of those omnis. Those omnis are aspirational only.

Omnibenevolence and omniscience fit together in the sense of he who knows all forgives all. Therefore both of these omnis together as one compound value are good to aspire towards.
Satan is a good egg because he is the one who told Eve to rely on her own judgement and not that of authorities.

Indeed, mon ami, indeed. I wish god were different, but wait, may be He is.

[Astro Cat]

No, I don't mean "morally incongruous," I just mean regular logical congruity. If we imagine "benevolence" to mean something like striving never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, we aren't making a moral judgment if we say "there shouldn't be any gratuitous suffering, then, if the creator is omnipotent and omniscient and strives never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering."

I see what you're aiming for, but I don't think it can quite be had.

There is no "logical" incongruity between something happening and something else happening. (We can't use the terms "good" and "bad," or "benvolent" or "gratuitous," because all are morally-freighted terms.

Benevolent and gratuitous as defined aren't moral terms. Let me put it this way, let's say we're talking about money. I could define a special definition for "affluent" which means to never seek to cause or allow "debt," and then I demarcate "permanent debt" from "temporary debt." It's not incongruous to affluence (as defined) to make an investment, whereby a person temporarily goes into debt, if that person reaps benefits for the investment later: they suffer a "temporary debt," but not a "permanent debt."

Now, if an omnipotent/omniscient being is affluent (as defined), then it means they can do this perfectly; so we don't expect to see them in permanent debt: that would be incongruous with their properties (of being omnipotent, and so able to actualize any logically possible state of affairs; of being omniscient, and so aware of all possible truths' distinctions from all possible falsities perfectly, and of being "affluent" as defined). If we were to see permanent debt, then we would understandably have reason to suspect that the being isn't omnipotent/omniscient/affluent (as defined).

So, gratuitous suffering is just "permanent debt," whereas non-gratuitous suffering is just "temporary debt." Benevolence is just affluence as defined. Given an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent being (where benevolence is to never cause or allow gratuitous suffering), then we shouldn't expect to see gratuitous suffering in the world. That's not a moral judgment. It's just a logical one. Below, you question further whether or not we have reason to think there's actually gratuitous suffering, but that's beside the point of whether this argument is a moral one (it's not, it's just logical).

And we certainly can't says "there shouldn't be," and mean thereby "there ought not to be," because those are also definitely moral terms.

This is an easy response: "shouldn't" isn't always a moral term. If I have a room containing only bachelors, then I "shouldn't" see any married men in the room. It's just the way we phrase stuff in English sometimes. Language is dumb. Hopefully this clears that up though. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, then we shouldn't see any gratuitous suffering in the world; meaning, it would be inconsistent with the premises if there is gratuitous suffering in the world.

Again, we do not have to judge suffering as "bad" or benevolence (as defined) as "good" for these two things to be incongruous. Asking "is there suffering?" isn't the same thing as asking "is suffering bad?"

That latter sentence is true: one is an "is" and the other is an "ought," because it implicates "badness," a definitely moral term. But the first sentence, I think, isn't at all obvious. There's nothing "illogical" about any state of affairs that causally can have a result, resulting in any other state of affairs that can causally follow from it. Without the moral dimension, we've lost all grounds for objection.

We're not making an objection on moral grounds though.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and has some property that He does not want to cause or allow red objects in the world, then it follows that observing red objects in the world is incongruous with the premises.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and has some property that He does not want to cause or allow gratuitous suffering in the world, then it follows that observing gratuitous suffering in the world is incongruous with the premises.

Again, this is not a moral objection. This is showing a reductio ad absurdum, a conflict with premises. The conflict emerges specifically because of the special status an omnipotent and omniscient being has.

If Erin desires never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, there is no conflict with the premise if we observe gratuitous suffering in the world because Erin isn't omnipotent: her ability to prevent suffering is limited. Erin also doesn't know everything, she may potentially step on a spider that she might have otherwise (with some willpower) ushered outside instead if she just didn't see it underfoot. So there's no conflict with the existence of grauitous suffering, even gratuitous suffering she accidentally caused, with the premises.

But God is a type of being for which there are no unknowns, no accidents, and no gross power limitations other than logical limitations. That's why there is conflict between the premises (God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, God is benevolent) and the observation (there is, possibly, gratuitous suffering in the world). This is still not a moral conflict (though a moral conflict could be made by someone over this, that's not what this argument is doing). It is just a logical conflict, the same as in the example where "God doesn't want there to exist red objects in the world" example being in conflict with the existence of red objects in the world.

We define "gratuitous suffering" as suffering that doesn't serve a purpose that's beneficial to the sufferer (a strong form of this definition), or we can use a weaker definition that "gratuitous suffering" is suffering that doesn't serve a beneficial purpose in general (in a utilitarian sense; the sufferer may not reap the benefits of their own suffering under this weaker definition and it may not be gratuitous).

Okay. We're going to have to use an example here, I think. It's a real-life one.

I have a little dog. I sent my dog to the groomers. He came back not happy at all. I believe she had actually injured him, doing something rather nasty to his back end. I sent him a happy, shaggy dog; he came home a miserable, sick puppy. He spent a whole night crying in pain.

So naturally, I took him to the vet immediately. But he was terrified. After all his pain, I betrayed him by taking him to "that man" he has to see once a year. He shook, he whined, he begged to go home. He was already suffering; why did I take him to a place where more fear, discomfort and misery awaited him? I was "gratuitiously" punishing the poor little guy...

Or was I? Was the additional suffering to which I was putting him "gratuitous" or not? If you had asked him, it was totally "gratuitous," I'm sure. But it was not. It was simply part of a plan for his ultimate healing that he was not capable of understanding. And had I not done what was necesssary, if I had not made him "suffer gratuitiously" in this way, I would have been a very bad dog owner. But I cannot expect him ever to make sense of what was really going on. It involved things dogs just don't understand, like how pain and healing are actually related, or what the true intentions of the vet were, or even what was the fastest route to delivering him from his misery. All that was simply beyond him.

Great example! In this case, of course the dog's suffering from visiting the vet is not gratuitous; we have command of enough facts to know that. But you're sort of jumping the gun here: all I'm trying to get out of you is whether you agree gratuitousness is a concept that makes sense. I understand your objection is that we can't necessarily know it even if we were to see it, but that's what the next stage of the discussion will be about. For right now it's just sufficient to get you to agree that gratuitous suffering, if it exists, is incongruous with the existence of a being that is omnipotent/omniscient/benevolent (with "benevolence" being defined explicitly as something like "desires never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering").

Agreeing that this makes sense doesn't concede the argument to me, it just acknowledges that the definitions make sense. We can then move on to whether I can close the argument, which I'm sure you suspect I can't (while I suspect I can), but that's expected. I would have to show that either we can know suffering is gratuitous (which I will not attempt) or (as I have said) that there is a threshold where it becomes more reasonable to suspect some suffering is gratuitous than it would be to doubt that it is. But again, for right now, I just need confirmation that these terms are sensible and that if gratuitous suffering were to exist, it would be incongruent with the existence of an omnipotent/omniscient/benevolent creator. It's only an "if" for now.

And this is the problem with the "doesn't serve a purpose" definition of "gratuitious." It's tempting to think there's some easy relationship between "what we like" and what is "deserved." It's easy to assume that things we "don't like" are also "gratuitous," especially if we don't know the purpose of them, if they have any. It's easy to suppose that "the sufferer" is the best one to judge the warrant for "the suffering." Or at least to assume that we should be able to see a "beneficial purpose in general" to others, plausibly, as to why we have to experience things we don't like.

As natural as such a supposition is, it's not reasonable. My dog didn't get what I was doing. To him, it was "gratuitious" and "non-beneficent." But what I was doing was the right thing, in both the strong sense (beneficial to him) and the weak sense (generally beneficial).

Yes, this is the highest mountain for my position to overcome of course. I could go back in time and give someone that doesn't understand anything about what I'm doing a smallpox vaccine (actually are those shots? Let's pretend they are, for the discussion here; if they're not). This person might go the rest of their lives never knowing why that crazy lady stuck a needle in their shoulder and operate under the assumption that she was malevolent and just out to cause them pain. They might think the suffering was gratuitous, even though it was not: that's totally possible.

But as I've said, we have to make non-omniscient decisions to the best of our ability all the time. I will be trying to address this when we get there: whether there is a threshold at which we're being reasonable to think suffering is gratuitous, specifically more reasonable to think it is gratuitous than to doubt it is. It will never be an argument that we'll absolutely know suffering is gratuitous. So yes, it will always be possible that we're wrong about a belief that some suffering is gratuitous. But if that is the only objection, then that is encouraging to my position: because that is already a known and accounted for objection for the arguments I'll be giving.

Something, I think, is also going to compound this problem. How do we evaluate the "benevolence" of an action, or its "gratutiousness" if we don't confine our attention to our own perspective and to this present world? Only if this life is all there is, can you and I know what we need to know in order to claim that "suffering" is "gratuitous" or "warranted." But if the answer to why things happen as they do is forestalled until the day of Judgment, then we're out-of-position to be able to say what's "gratuitious" or "benevolent" or not. For then, the judgment has to wait upon the completion of the relevant narrative, and that narrative is incomplete in this life, and incomplete if viewed only from my personal perspective.

The Christian narrative is full of claims that much suffering can be warranted by the beneficence of the outcome. Christians revere a Man who suffered an excruciating, unjust death, in order to obtain an overwhelming good on behalf of others. Their history is full of men and women who decided to forego present-day pleasures and satisfactions in order to have faith in the prospect of much better things to come, when the full explanation for the 'why' of things comes in. (If you needed to see this, I would point you to Hebrews chapter 11...that's practically all it talks about.)

This is what I would call punting to mystery, though: it is all essentially saying, "what if there's some unknowable reason that x, which looks like y, is actually z?" That is what I wrote some other entire post about. We can talk about it, but it's going to be a long discussion. It should be bundled into my arguments about whether there is a threshold of reasonableness, which we should get to soon.

I have seen theists say, "well, it doesn't help the child, but it helps the family grow stronger together as they grieve" and stuff like that.

What I would say about that is this: that if it is hasty for secular persons to jump to the conclusion that suffering is "gratuitious" simply because it seems so to them, then it is equally hasty for a Theist to propose to know what a given case of suffering means. Both are taking into account only the "seemings" or "possible explanations" that can occur to them in this life, and from their own limited perspective. So just as I would call into question the secularist's confidence to be able to say "gratuitious suffering happens," so to I would call into question the Theist's right to make facile guesses as to what the real justification for the suffering (assuming such is possible) might be.

Interestingly, the Book of Job contains a narrative about Theists who try to speak too soon, and based on too little knowlege, about why another Theist is suffering. They don't come off well, in that narrative. They nearly end up under the judgment of God for their temerity in daring to pass off Job's suffering by way of their own facile and incorrect explanations.

However, maybe coming up with trite explanations to slough off suffering may not be what the Theists you mentioned had in view. Perhaps they were only attempting to suggest that there could be a way in which a better explanation than "it was gratuitious" could be conceived. That is, maybe they were only trying to point out that there are ways in which it's possible to think suffering can be justified, other than the obvious. Still, even with that modest goal, I think they should be cautious.

I do think they were speaking only of possibility, which was good, because I concede the point. But I always have conceded the point. The ultimate argument, though, is that we can and do make rational and reasonable decisions non-omnisciently; and if we were to freeze in terror of unknowable reasons why the appearance of y is actually z instead, we wouldn't be able to do or know anything. I couldn't bank on the sun appearing to rise tomorrow because, for unknowable reasons, maybe tomorrow's the day that it won't, for instance. It would be a silly world where we couldn't reasonably operate non-omnisciently. And that is the point: I think there is a threshold where it's reasonable to think suffering may be gratuitous; and furthermore, I think there is a threshold where it's more reasonable to suppose it's gratuitous than to doubt that it's gratuitous. I will always simply shrug and agree if it's only pointed out "but maybe it's not gratuitous for some unknowable reason." But I will always think that's a weak objection which has many problems that I'll move on to enumerate and elucidate on.

In any case, benevolence is going to be defined for the sake of this argument as simply the state of striving never to instantiate or allow gratuitous suffering.

As a definition, it works: but only so far as the definition of "unicorn" also works. That is, it works as a description of a thing we still do not yet have good reason to suppose actually exists.

So we arrive at this question: Do we have adequate reason to know that "gratutious" suffering exists? And I think the answer, for everybody, has to be "No."

Excellent. So we have for the most part agreed on terms that will be used in an argument then: the ball falls in my court to make a case for why we might suppose suffering is gratuitous from there. I can do that in a post next week (as a response here, so everything stays together).

Ah shit. I'm just seeing I'm only now down to "the second item," lmao.

Let us shift to the second item: 2. Whether or not we can make God out to be the only effective moral will in the universe.

The reply to this was:

I'm not saying that God is the only culpable person for an act of gratuitous physical suffering (let's say stabbing as an example). The stabber is still fully culpable for their act.

Hold. We have to become very precise here.

To whatever extent we say, "the stabber is fully culpable," then God is not. For it's not merely that God is under no obligation to prevent a "stabber" from "stabbing," although that would be true, too; it's that the "stabber" is possessed of free will and volition, and so does not have to "stab," and bears his own "full culpability" for it.

Moreover, if God prevents the "stabber" from "stabbing," then he's never able to be a "stabber" at all. That choice is simply prevented. He maybe can want to stab. But he cannot do it.

But you say:

God has special culpability for the simple reason that He is responsible for the very environment and rules that make the stabbing possible.

What evidence have you that the "enviroment" and "rules that make stabbing possible" are according to the will of God? Are there not states of affairs that are contrary to the will of God? A Determinist would have to say "No," but a free-willian (which I think both you and I are) would say, "Certainly, there are."

As an omnipotent and omniscient being that created the world, God has to be the one responsible for the environment and rules of the environment that other beings live in. As it is logically possible to make a world where stabbing isn't possible (yet where people are still free, and even still free to make morally significant choices such as whether to lie or expose a secret someone else told them, etc.), then creating a world where stabbing is possible must logically be a deliberate choice. Since it is a choice, there is culpability.

This is why I made the holodeck example. If I am in charge of the holodeck environment, and it's possible to have the safety features turned on, it is my deliberate choice to turn the safety features off, which imparts me with a form of culpability for anything that happens due to that choice; even if I'm not the one that pulled the trigger. The trigger-puller is culpable for pulling the trigger, I'm culpable for making the act of pulling the trigger actually dangerous. I'd get court-martialed by Starfleet and the first questions they'll ask me are "why did you disable the safety protocols?" if someone murders someone else under my watch. The point of the analogy is to make it more intuitive how this culpability sticks and works.

If God created a world where violence is possible (when a world with "safety protocols" is also possible), that has to be a deliberate choice. Per God's omniscience and omnipotence, He couldn't have accidentally done this. It had to be deliberate. So God is culpable in the same way I am for disabling the safety protocols on the holodeck.

I don't understand your objection, I guess. I said that the stabber is "fully culpable," but you responded "...you have to make everybody else not ultimately responsible." What do you mean? I said the stabber is culpable, but your response reads as though the stabber is not culpable.

The word "ultimately" is the important one.

If we say the stabber was responsible for a proportion of what happened, then that's the proportion we can't blame God for. If we say God was responsible for it, then that's the proportion to which we cannot blame the stabber. It's always a zero-sum calculation, because suffering is limited. It comes in different intensities, seriousnesses, durations, and so forth, but each case of suffering has only a limited quantity and quality. It is not infinite. Whatever blame we assign, it has to be proportioned off between what we blame on men and what we blame on God.

Maybe we could dodge this by saying that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of the stabber, for his desire to stab, and for his opportunity to stab. But if we go this route, we might well wonder, where is the culpability of the stabber? Are we now positing a world wherein free will is merely a seeming, a false appearance, and ultimate responsibility for everything always goes back to God? Or are we leaving a place for human volition?

I think I just reject outright that culpability is a zero-sum notion. We can be more culpable or less culpable than other people that are also culpable for some event, but the severity of our culpability doesn't have to "add up to one" or anything with their culpability. I think this is easy to show, for instance, if two people shoot and kill a man in cold blood, if culpability were a zero sum scenario then each of them is "half culpable," they are half as culpable for murder than if a single man had murdered the victim. I think that's very silly and should be rejected. If culpability is not a zero-sum game, then this objection vanishes; and God can be culpable for violence at the same time as violent people are culpable for violence without their relative culpabilities depending on each other.

It's [the Mars Attacks example] not an analogy for God, it's just a thought experiment to make a comment on whether we can, in general, say there is a point where it's more reasonable than not to operate on non-omniscient knowledge.

Well, if that's all that it is, then I think it doesn't do very much. For I think there's no person who will suppose that non-omniscient people cannot act, or cannot act upon what they consider the probabilties of a situation. The more important question is, when they do, are they always right? Have they invariably taken into account all the relevant facts? Do they never miscalculate? Are they immune to jumping to conclusions that are not warranted by the full truth? And the answer to that, obviously, is "No."

Probability guesses are always based on a limited set of facts, and a limited set of presumptive conclusions. That's what makes them "probability" and not "certainty."

The problem for this analogy is worse, though: for we do not have the relative probabilities in hand to estimate whether or not a given case of "suffering" is "warranted," or even who the agent of the suffering might be. So we are not in anything like the "alien" scenario.

The Mars Attacks scenario is simplified just to keep things clean, again, not meant to be an analogy for God. I understand the real world scenario is far different and with many variables. But the point is just to get a listener to agree that there are thresholds where it's reasonable to make decisions non-omnisciently. I think at some point anyone under fire from the Mars Attacks aliens would go ahead and begin to act as though the Martians aren't their friends; they wouldn't be paralyzed by asking, "but what if there's some unknowable reason that makes them my friend, despite the appearances and evidences to the contrary?"

And once that's admitted (which, it seems maybe that it is: do you agree that you could reasonably believe "this Martian is not my friend," that it would be reasonable, even if it's possible you're wrong?), that's the seed that I will nurture and grow into an argument that can be used for the real world and classical theism.

I don't think this objection works because I don't think something is a "promise" that isn't possible to do in the first place.

That actually IS my point. The existence of "promises" implies that the action is possible. It's not enough to have the cognition; one has to have at least the possibility of the action, too.

That's the point I'd make: "freedom" is "free-willing" and also "potential acting upon that will." Deeds and desires are not really separable in the way you were perhaps suggesting, as if a person can be free to want to do but not to do. To desire is to desire to do. I would suggest, therefore, that the "toy world" idea is incoherent. One cannot have desires without possibility of action. And maybe that's why we refer to such a scenario as "toy," right?

I don't think the objection sticks. The holodeck analogy is a good one. When the Starfleet crew are in the holodeck and the safety protocols are turned on, are they not free? They certainly appear to be free. Sometimes they go in and they have a drink at the bar. Sometimes they go in to solve detective mysteries for entertainment. It's implied that Starfleet members go in to just hang out with one another and do fun things all the time. Yet with the safety protocols on, they can't physically suffer in there (let us ignore things like having an unrelated heart attack, that is obviously a chink in the analogy, but I think that is easy to look past).

Now, can Starfleet members make moral choices in the holodeck? It appears they can! On one occasion, they actively deceived and lied to a sentient Moriarty program for instance. (Now, this was in service to an arguably good cause -- saving the Enterprise -- but nevertheless, they could lie in there, deceive in there, if they wanted to). They could insult one another in there, that is obvious. Someone could tell someone a secret in there, and that person could betray the secret-teller's trust by telling someone else. Someone could judge someone based on the color of their hair or skin or whatever in the holodeck. Someone could just be a nasty jerk to someone in the holodeck. All kinds of moral choices that can be made.

Yet, there can't be real violence on the holodeck with the safety protocols turned on. Starfleet members shot by a 19th century gun miraculously don't have bullet holes in their bodies afterward! Are they not free? Are they sad, miserable creatures (as you have previously said people in a Toy World must be) because they can't shoot each other or get shot? I don't think so, and it's hard to believe anyone would truly say "those poor things, they can't shoot each other or be shot in there, how terrible!"

Now imagine the universe is a holodeck. The safety protocols are on. Is that so bad? People would still be free (as free as anyone using the holodeck), people would still be significantly free (as they can still make morally significant decisions, such as whether to betray others' trust, or to lie, or to be rude, or to be prejudiced against certain classes of people, etc.) Violence doesn't seem to be necessary for them to be free or to be significantly free. None of this is incoherent because it's easily imaginable, too: if you can imagine a holodeck (which surely you can, having presumably seen the show at least once), then you can imagine the world as a holodeck; and God is in control of the safety protocol switch. Why did He turn off the safety protocols?

Let us imagine for a moment that in the real world, in this world, humans invent some kind of technology that has the same effect as safety protocols. Let's say Erin leaves astrophysics and goes into particle physics, she travels to CERN and discovers a new particle called the holodeckle (because she gets to name it, damn it). Holodeckle technology works by irradiating an area with holodeckles, and through some scientific mumbo jumbo, it makes that area behave exactly like a holodeck with the safety protocols turned on.

Now imagine that this technology is cheap, effective, and easy to distribute.

Do you think for even a moment that these wouldn't be distributed to workplaces, schools, public transportation, sold in individual homes, probably installed along streets and highways (holodeckle technology is that ubiquitous and accessible)? Of course they would be! They'd be installed everywhere! And people complaining "but now I'm not free" would probably be far and few between, can't you imagine? Maybe thrill seekers would turn off their personal holodeckle field while going on a motorbike run, but would you turn yours off while on a commute to work "so you can be free?" Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Who would be the ones complaining "but now I can't stab my neighbor?" Probably not people I'd want to know, how about you?

I don't see how it would be possible to have free will but not have the potential for unrequited love.

Yes.

If you want a world with "love" in it, you're going to have to accept at least the potentiality and risk of going "unloved." And that has to be a real possibility.

But God wants a world with love in it. What is He going to have to risk?

That's what I'm saying: God is not culpable for unrequited love in the same way God is culpable for stab wounds: that's under the premise that being able to love freely is better than not. Unrequited love is necessary for being able to love freely, it can't be helped.

But what are stab wounds necessary for? We might say things like heroism and bravery. But I've argued that saying heroism is "worth it" to have stab wounds is like saying smallpox is "worth it" to have a vaccine. I think the world where smallpox never existed is a better world than the one where millions suffered and died (but it has a vaccine!) Now maybe we just might not agree on that, and perhaps that's valid. But all I can do is to make the case to see if the case is agreed upon.

Do you think having firefighters is such an immensely desirable thing that it's "worth it" to have house fires?

Would you rather live on Earth A, which has house fires (but has firefighters!)

Or would you rather live on Earth B, which doesn't have house fires in the first place?

Now, something just occurred to me: isn't the God of a Toy World the ultimate firefighter? If God prevents all housefires, wouldn't people still have a hero: God? If hero worship in itself is such a good thing (and I don't think that it is*), why can't God be the hero?

[* -- I say "I don't think that it is" because while I agree firefighters are good, I only think they are good because they prevent or alleviate physical suffering. If physical suffering wasn't a threat, they wouldn't be necessary; and their purported goodness is only a response to physical suffering. It's circular, in other words, to me: the goodness of firefighting isn't a goodness "unto itself," it's only a goodness in response to something else. Not so with love: love seems to be good unto itself, while unrequited love is an unfortunate possibility because of that. But love itself isn't just a response to suffering, it is desirable in its own right to most people.

I think that difference is significant, and I will probably need to make terms to capture this difference. Something like the difference between a "reactive good" (something that is only good because it responds to suffering) and an "inherent good" (something that is good for its own reasons). This language is of course using the trappings of moral realism because it's an afterthought right now, but do you see what I'm getting at? Heroism is only a "reactive good," so it's not worth it for suffering to exist for heroism to exist: that's circular. But free love is an "inherent good," so it's worth it for unrequited love to exist because it's just a side effect of free love existing.]

However, stubbed toes and gun violence and leukemia do not have to exist in order for free will to exist.

Do we know that? How?

It seems likely to me that in a world that is alienated from God, stubbed toes, gun crime and leukemia are exactly the kinds of things one should expect. What else would it be? Sunshine and roses?

Again, I think it's easy to show: just imagine the world is a holodeck with safety protocols turned on. Stubbed toes, gun violence, and leukemia do not exist; yet all the people are free and even significantly free.

Mental and emotional suffering is necessary to be able to accomplish things like freely exchange ideas, freely form friendships, freely form romantic relationships.

Physical suffering is not necessary for any of those things.

I don't think there's an easy detachment between physical and emotional suffering. So much of what we suffer emotionally is because of the prospect or the reality of physical suffering; and so much of what we suffer physically is occasioned to us emotionally.

For instance, something like friendship is so valuable precisely because friends are the people who help you out in times of physical need or trauma, as well as in emotional vexation. And friendships are forged on the "battlefield," so to speak. Romantic relationships, one might say, are purely emotional; but then, why do we say they "hurt," and why are our guts in a knot over something emotional? How about achievement? Look at athletics. How much pain is involved in the life of an athlete, with all the training and self-denial involved, but with it, how much emotional elation and victory, and how much pain and failure? How much of what we are, and of what our relationships are, are formed in the crucible of suffering?

Stomachs don't have to hurt when we've been emotionally blindsided, and God could easily make physical achievement with pain (for those that like that) optional and self-inflicted willingly; such that those that don't want to experience that don't have to.

Violence might be tied to a type of free will, but there is plenty of free will without violence.

I don't think we know this, do we? We do know that things like mercy presuppose the possibility of violence, and plausibly a world with mercy in it is much better than one without. Likewise, things like competition, overcoming, play, and so forth are tied to dynamic physical interactions that contain the possibility of violence. Plausibly, the world might be worse without them, too.

I think a world without mercy (in physical contexts) is better than one with it.

On Earth A, you can get beat up (but someone might show you mercy when you cry for it). It might even make you tougher and more prepared for future bullies later in life.

On Earth B, you can't get beat up in the first place. You will never be beat up. There is no reason to have to "prepare" for getting beat up. Not getting bullied in school never means you'll be unprepared for bullies later in life because no one is ever able to beat you up, so you don't miss out on anything.

Which is really better? I'd pick Earth B every time. Would you choose Earth A? Why? This goes back to the terms I was making up: mercy is a "reactive good" in that it's not "good" for reasons unto itself, it's only "good" as a response to suffering (and so it's questionable whether beatings are "worth it" just to have mercy -- a bit like saying smallpox is "worth it" just to have a vaccine). Contrast that with something like freely made love, which is desirable for its own reasons to most people (and so it is worth it for unrequited love to exist). These are my opinions anyway. Do you find them intuitive? Do you disagree? Why would you choose Earth A if so?

Leukemia though? It isn't required for freedom. We can still freely form friendships and relationships and share our minds with one another and choose what to do with our time without leukemia. So why does it exist? Leukemia doesn't seem like it's necessary for free will to exist.

We're again in a situation of having to admit we're not sure.

We don't know why leukemia is involved in some people's lives, and not in other people's. We do know we live in a world that is out of any harmonious relationship to its Creator. That much is apparent to us all, I think. And this involves not just the people (many of whom obviously have no use for God) but also the whole environment over which mankind was given stewardship by the Creator. Mankind lives in an environment consonant with his/her own moral liberty. Things don't happen here in a predicatable way, nor doled out according to evident deserving. Everything's indeterminate here. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad ones. But that's the kind of environment that free will entities in the moral condition we find ourselves in need to exist in; at least for now.

It so obviously doesn't have to be that way though. Again, holodeck universe with safety protocols on. In what way aren't people free in that universe? They go about doing what they will, loving whom they will, hanging out with whom they will, imagining what they will, enjoying whatever hobbies or vocations they will, and so on. They even make moral choices such as being nice to people, refraining from lying to people, keeping secrets, keeping promises, not being prejudiced, and so on. That doesn't sound miserable to me. Does it to you?

Are you punting to mystery, IC?

No. But let me show you that I'm not.

There's a difference between saying, "I don't know," and "It's a mystery."

If somebody asks me how many stars one can see from Earth, I say, "I don't know."

And I think that nobody knows. How good are each person's eyes? How bright are the lights from where they are on Earth? Do we mean, with or without a telescope? Do we mean, with the Hubble telescope? Do we mean, assisted by satellite telescopes? Do we include the various telescopes and devices that are yet to be invented, but surely will soon be invented? Which is the right number? I don't know.

But that stars exist is certain. That we can see a great many from Earth is not disputable. That there must be some definite number that we can see is reasonable. At no point are we punting to mystery. But still, honesty requires us simply to admit what we are capable of knowing, and what we are not.

I dont know why leukemia and other cancers exist. I have some ideas, some thoughts that lead in a particular direction, but no definite answers. I'm not sure. But is it reasonable for me to expect that I should know? I can't see why it is. And does my not-knowing mean something's wrong with me? No, I'm just a single human being, a limited creature. Does it mean there's no answer? I can't see why we would be warranted in concluding that...especially if, as I think, God exists. But my non-possession of that answer neither indicates a failure on my part, nor causes me to "punt to mystery." I simply admit what I do not know.

Would that the skeptics were all so quick to do the same. But they seem to think that merely posing a question to which they have no answer is some sort of warrant for their skepticism. I can't see that it is. And it looks to me as if they are expecting far too much from their own wisdom.

Okay...long again, but perhaps much shorter than it might have been. My apologies again.

Fair enough; but as we will see, my argument isn't going to be a claim to know (about gratuitous suffering). It's going to be an argument that there is a threshold where it's reasonable to think it's more likely some suffering is gratuitous than it's reasonable to doubt it's gratuitous.

Welp, I've gone and made this super long *cartwheels into the sun*

[Immanuel Can]

Maybe what we can do is divide the message into subtopics, and this will allow us to have shorter, more focused conversation. In particular, I'd rather give you the easiest chance to respond directly to points, because that's how I derive the most benefit from your feedback, and that's how our conversation becomes more "conversational" -- less of me banging on for long periods of time, and more of a back-and-forth sharing of insight, if you know what I mean.

How does that sound to you?

Okay, Astro Cat; on we go, then, assuming that works for you.

No, I don't mean "morally incongruous," I just mean regular logical congruity. If we imagine "benevolence" to mean something like striving never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, we aren't making a moral judgment if we say "there shouldn't be any gratuitous suffering, then, if the creator is omnipotent and omniscient and strives never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering."

I see what you're aiming for, but I don't think it can quite be had.

There is no "logical" incongruity between something happening and something else happening. (We can't use the terms "good" and "bad," or "benvolent" or "gratuitous," because all are morally-freighted terms.

Benevolent and gratuitous as defined aren't moral terms.

Well, I think that's fairly easy to show.

Let's start with "benevolence." It's Latin. It's a combination of two words, "bene" and "volens." "Bene" means "good," and "volens" is "wishing" or "willing." So "benevolence" is literally, "wishing the good to somebody." But "good" is a moral quality. I don't think that can be disputed.

"Gratuitous" is a little more subtle, but not much. It comes from the French, "gratuit," which means "free." To be "gratuitious" is to be free (of something). And you're right to suppose it can be morally positive, negative of neutral. (One can, for example, get free candy -- good, presumably. But one can also receive a gratuitious rebuke, which would be negative. Or one could receive a free coupon, which could be neutral, if you don't redeem it.

But in which sense do you have to mean it in the present discussion? Are we accusing God of providing too much free candy? Too many free coupons? I don't think so. I think the question you want to ask is about what you characterize as "gratuitious" harm or evil. And unless we share your assumption that this "free" entity you indict is morally negative, it makes nonsense of the whole discussion: why would anybody complain about free candy and coupons? Sounds like a win.

So I think the right answer to your objection is simply to point out that it isn't reasonable to say that "bene volens" is morally neutral, nor to interpret your question as reading, "Is God too kind," or "Is God too neutral?" I think I'd be missing what seems to be your point if I don't assume you mean, "Why does God gratuitiously allow bad things to happen?"

Am I now being fair to your case?

...gratuitous suffering is just "permanent debt," whereas non-gratuitous suffering is just "temporary debt."

I think that's right...and I like your analogy.

But what we have not established at all is that "permanent debt" exists, in this regard. We both recognize that "temporary debt," which is suffering that has a longer term value and is not "gratuitious" exists. But it seems to me that if that's all we concede to each other, then you've let God off the hook in the way you most want not to, right? You've conceded, in fact, what I say: that suffering is temporary, and that it's likely to be shown "non-gratuitious," given what I believe to be the character and nature of God.

So that admission won't get you any case against God, if you want one. What you'd need to show is that the suffering you and I both see is certain to be "gratuitious" and "non-benevolent," a permanent not temporary "debt," morally speaking.

Can you provide such evidence?

N.B. -- Part 2 to come. I'll keep my word, and stop here. I'll make a separate message for the next point.

[Immanuel Can]

And we certainly can't says "there shouldn't be," and mean thereby "there ought not to be," because those are also definitely moral terms.

This is an easy response: "shouldn't" isn't always a moral term. If I have a room containing only bachelors, then I "shouldn't" see any married men in the room.

You're right: "should" can be used multiple ways. "It should be cold tomorrow" doesn't mean, "The weather morally owes it to me to become cold." Fair enough.

But in which way does it make sense in the present discussion? We've already established in my previous message that we can't use words like "gratuitious" in a morally-neutral or morally-positive way, and sustain your point at the same time. And we've seen that "bene volens" is intrinsically implicating "good." So can the "should" here be neutral, or related to issues like mere probability, and still fit into the present discussion?

I think it's evident, similar to "gratuitous," that it cannot. Unless by "shouldn't be" we mean something akin to "It is wrong that there is," we're not going to be able to fashion any indictment of God's dealings from it. We would be merely saying something akin to, "It is probable that God will allow suffering, and that suffering is morally neutral." Or alternatively, "It is probable that God will allow suffering, and that suffering is good." Without the presumption of negativity in "should not," we're out of luck for any objection to suffering.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, then we shouldn't see any gratuitous suffering in the world;

Right. And we don't.

What we see is "suffering exists." We don't know if it's "gratuitious" or "non-benevolent." We can't even say, He "shouldn't" allow it.

That is, if you want to stand by your claim that all three words are merely "logical" and have no moral implications.

There's nothing "illogical" about any state of affairs that causally can have a result, resulting in any other state of affairs that can causally follow from it. Without the moral dimension, we've lost all grounds for objection.

We're not making an objection on moral grounds though.

It seems to me, you have to. As I say, there's nothing that is a problem of pure logic between any particular event X, if event Y is a plausible cause of it. Logic tells us that any reasonable cause can result -- and in fact, is likely to result -- in a projected effect.

If Erin desires never to cause or allow gratuitous suffering, there is no conflict with the premise if we observe gratuitous suffering in the world because Erin isn't omnipotent:

There's nothing inherent to ominipotence itself that gives us the premise, "An omnipotent being should not allow suffering," unless we are already certain that what we are calling "suffering" is both "gratuitious" and "non-benevolent," and that an ominpotent being has a duty ("should") to be both non-gratuitious in His actions and benevolent.

In other words, we smuggled the moral terms in the back door again, without realizing we did it.

And I want to concede you your point, that a morally-good, ominipotent God would indeed have a moral duty not to allow gratuitious and non-benevolent suffering, especially if such were in every sense unjust and unrighteous; but in order to grant you your premise, I have to assume you're using moral terms again.

But if you insist I should read them as merely logical, then I can't find an interpretation of your claim that works. You might as well say, "My claim is strictly mathematical"; it would be just as possible for me to interpret. Logic itself is only a mathematical-type procedure, and has no moral values inherent to it.

But unless I miss what seems very obvious to me, you need moral valuations in your claim, or again, the indictment against any doings of the Omnipotent one simply vaporizes.

Thus endeth part 2. Part 3 shortly.

[Immanuel Can]

I've jumped a bit here, not because I didn't read it, but because it goes over the "benevolent" and "gratituous" definitional territory again, and I think I've raised enough problems to occupy us for the present moment. This gives me a chance to be a tad more parsimonious, which is what I am (still hopelessly ) trying to achieve by breaking our exchanges into bits this way.

And this is the problem with the "doesn't serve a purpose" definition of "gratuitious." It's tempting to think there's some easy relationship between "what we like" and what is "deserved." It's easy to assume that things we "don't like" are also "gratuitous," especially if we don't know the purpose of them, if they have any. It's easy to suppose that "the sufferer" is the best one to judge the warrant for "the suffering." Or at least to assume that we should be able to see a "beneficial purpose in general" to others, plausibly, as to why we have to experience things we don't like.

As natural as such a supposition is, it's not reasonable. My dog didn't get what I was doing. To him, it was "gratuitious" and "non-beneficent." But what I was doing was the right thing, in both the strong sense (beneficial to him) and the weak sense (generally beneficial).

Yes, this is the highest mountain for my position to overcome of course. I could go back in time and give someone that doesn't understand anything about what I'm doing a smallpox vaccine (actually are those shots? Let's pretend they are, for the discussion here; if they're not). This person might go the rest of their lives never knowing why that crazy lady stuck a needle in their shoulder and operate under the assumption that she was malevolent and just out to cause them pain. They might think the suffering was gratuitous, even though it was not: that's totally possible.

Right. When a baby gets her smallpox vaccine, I doubt she turns to the doctor and says, "What doest thou?" She doesn't know. She experiences pain as nothing but pain. And the answers as to why she has the pain, though available, don't fit into her small brain yet.

But as I've said, we have to make non-omniscient decisions to the best of our ability all the time. I will be trying to address this when we get there: whether there is a threshold at which we're being reasonable to think suffering is gratuitous, specifically more reasonable to think it is gratuitous than to doubt it is. It will never be an argument that we'll absolutely know suffering is gratuitous. So yes, it will always be possible that we're wrong about a belief that some suffering is gratuitous. But if that is the only objection, then that is encouraging to my position: because that is already a known and accounted for objection for the arguments I'll be giving.

I'll look forward to that.

But let me hand you an agreement easily here. I think it's very reasonable and legitimate for us to ask, "Why is X happening?" (X being an instance of suffering, of course). In the Biblical record, many people asked God this very thing...and He answered them, at least with a sufficient partial answer. So if it were ultimately a complete "mystery" as to why suffering happens, that would not be possible at all.

So let me stipulate here that I think it's both natural and permissible to question these things. And this is where I won't punt to "it's a mystery." There can be reasonable explanations for suffering; and while we have full explanations available to us only rarely so far, that does not for a moment imply there is none, or that it's unreasonable to ask for one, or that we will never get the satisfaction of an answer to our question.

But it might mean we don't always get the answer we legitimately long for, at least in the present world.

And maybe that's fair. For we only calculate probabilistically that maybe there is suffering that might be "gratuitious" and "non-benevolent." But we admit we don't know so much. And given that the problem itself is only probabilistically estimated, it's both reasonable for us to ask it, but also reasonable for us not to know the answer...maybe we've got our estimation of the problem wrong, after all.

Maybe there is no "gratuitious" and "non-benevolent" suffering. Maybe what happens by way of suffering in this present world is exactly the right proportions for the ideal outcome in terms of human freedom and responsibility, or the capacity for love and relationship, or in terms of the virtues cultivated by response to suffering, or by way of a justice to which you and I are not privy, or all of these, or something else.

If it were otherwise, how would we know?

Part...good heavens; what are we up to now? Part 4 to come shortly.

[Immanuel Can]

Ah shit. I'm just seeing I'm only now down to "the second item," lmao.

Can I complain? I'm on my fourth post out of one.

We're both hopeless.

Let us shift to the second item: 2. Whether or not we can make God out to be the only effective moral will in the universe.

God has special culpability for the simple reason that He is responsible for the very environment and rules that make the stabbing possible.

What evidence have you that the "enviroment" and "rules that make stabbing possible" are according to the will of God? Are there not states of affairs that are contrary to the will of God? A Determinist would have to say "No," but a free-willian (which I think both you and I are) would say, "Certainly, there are."

As an omnipotent and omniscient being that created the world,

That, I recognize.

But did He create the world as it now is, or did He create it better than that, and something came in to interfere with that? I'm sure that Biblically, you know which I'll suggest is the case.

I think you're correct to intuit a mis-fitting between a good and benevolent God, on the one hand, and the situation of suffering we find ourselves and others in, at the moment. But what does that suggest?

It can suggest two possibilities:

1. That God isn't good, since He created this world as it is.

2. That God is good, but that this world is not as He created it.

God has to be the one responsible for the environment and rules of the environment that other beings live in.

If that's right, mankind bears no responsibilty for the situation in which he/she is. But this is where the idea of "fallenness" come into the theological equation: the Biblical postulate is that this world is neither as God made it originally, nor as this world is going to remain permanently. The suffering we observe is a function of the present time only. And it is necessary for the staging of an environment suitable to the cast that needs to play out the discovery of its freedom, its volition and its choices. Without these things, the concluding result of free individuals who can choose (or reject) relationship with God is simply not possible, logically speaking.

But the injustices of the present are only a seeming. They are not the final reality.

You see this powerfully illustrated in the Semon on the Mount, for instance. Christ says such things as,

"Blessed are the poor in spirit...Blessed are those who mourn...Blessed are the gentle...Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness..." and even "Blessed are those who have been persecuted..." (Matt. 5)

In no human terms does any of that make sense. In this world, it's "Blessed are the proud...blessed are the happy...blessed are the powerful...blessed are those who glut themselves on the good things of the Earth...blessed are the triumphant." All of that makes perfect sense, in human terms; but the Sermon makes no sense at all.

Except for, ...in "the Kingdom of God."

The answers for the meek, the powerless, the poor, the merciful and the persecuted (so long as it is "for righteousness's sake") are in that Kingdom...not here.

As it is logically possible to make a world where stabbing isn't possible (yet where people are still free, and even still free to make morally significant choices such as whether to lie or expose a secret someone else told them, etc.),

I see that you believe it is.

I believe it's not. I think that desire and action are of-a-piece in the actualization of human freedom. What is "stabbing," after all? It's just an action. If I do it on a side of beef, or on a tree stump, or in the dirt, it's not immoral at all. If I do it on a human being, it is. Why? Because the action is an expression of a disposition, one both morally-relevant and contradictory to the will of God. It is an expression of the reality of my ability to resist and deny the moral authority of God. And it is only because I know I can do it that I can even desire to do it.

But the point is not the "stabbing," which is, after all, just an upward-downward motion with an object in hand: it's the moral intention actualized by the action.

And that's what concerns God. For it has to do with our relationship with Him.

This makes sense of a further thing Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.'" (v. 27-28)

Here, Christ does not deny that the action of adultery is bad; rather, He points out that the lustful indulgence of the desire is of-a-piece with it. The action of lust plus the action of committing adultery is not two sins, but one sin, the same sin, twice. This powerfully reverses the assumption of the existing religious leaders, who assumed that all that mattered was the action...the heart-state was irrelevant, they thought. So they could think of themselves as righteous men, so long as they had not actually bedded anybody's wife. Christ says, though, that it is not with such outward demonstrations of disobedience alone that God is concerned, but that every external action is also an expression of the state of the heart.

The project God is working on, so to speak, in this life is not the rectifying of external injustices. It's the preparing of hearts. It's not the solving of political and social problems, as important as they might be; it's the preparing of a people capable of freely loving Him. And while the ostensibly "gratuitious" and "non-benevolent" things that go on here will one day be rectified, they are secondary, not primary. The main thing is to get to free entities capable of knowing and loving God, having chosen Him freely and even against the run of their own superficial, worldly self-interests. The saving of the world itself, its material conditions, comes second.

And Marx knew this, about Christianity. It's what he hated about it most.

P.S. -- I'm going to take the liberty of skipping the holodeck, except to point out how that in Star Trek (how nerdy are we, that we're talking about this? ) , you'll remember they had to have several episodes in which "something went wrong" and the safety protocols on the holodeck went off.

Why did the writers feel the need to do this? Is it not because they knew that the viewers would be insufficiently emotionally invested in a scenario they were instructed to see as fake, or as artificially safe? Of course. They knew that a sense of artificial danger was not good enough; it had to be a sense of real peril. If there was nothing real at stake, then nobody would care about anything that happened on the holodeck.

Or again, think of Neo in The Matrix. Why is he portrayed as having a violent, convulsive reaction when he discovers that his whole life has been a fake? It wasn't that great to begin with, obviously. As Morpheus says, the mind can't stand it. But it's quite an existential revolution (and revulsion) to find out one's choices were never real, never mattered, and that one's tastes, delights, joys, achievements, and struggles were all just shadows playing on a wall. That much is real.

It's not the same. The beliefs, absent the possibility of action, are not real. They're "Matrix" beliefs.

One of the scenes that makes me chuckle about this is Neo's scene in the car on Main Street, when he's back in the Matrix, on the way to the Oracle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhlWz8baY0o. "Really good noodles..."

Worth thinking about? It points to the inevitably fusion between thought and action, in the production of a serious scenario, I think.

On we go...part 5 to come.

[Immanuel Can]

We do know that things like mercy presuppose the possibility of violence, and plausibly a world with mercy in it is much better than one without. Likewise, things like competition, overcoming, play, and so forth are tied to dynamic physical interactions that contain the possibility of violence. Plausibly, the world might be worse without them, too.

I think a world without mercy (in physical contexts) is better than one with it.

Ah, but consider this: a world without mercy (in physical contexts) is also a world without mercy (in psychological contexts). There's no possiblity of a person understanding what "mercy" would be, if she has never either given nor receieved any such thing, in practice. So you haven't saved the experience of mercy by stipulating only "in physical contexts": rather, you've eliminated the whole possibility of mercy.

Likewise, charity, love, compassion, loyalty...and various other things that people take to be very great goods. They all disappear if there are no real-world situations of possible and real injustice, rejection, suffering, judgment, disloyalty, and other such unpleasantness.

On Earth A, you can get beat up (but someone might show you mercy when you cry for it). It might even make you tougher and more prepared for future bullies later in life.

On Earth B, you can't get beat up in the first place. You will never be beat up. There is no reason to have to "prepare" for getting beat up. Not getting bullied in school never means you'll be unprepared for bullies later in life because no one is ever able to beat you up, so you don't miss out on anything.

Which is really better? I'd pick Earth B every time.

So would I...but only IF my only concern was to minimize my physical suffering.

Would you choose Earth A? Why?

Because whereas Earth A would enable me to become a free and independent human being, one capable of experiencing and learning things like mercy, love, charity, benevolence, loyalty, love, and so on, Earth B would offer me only physical security...but at the cost of all those other things.

It's a trade-off. But it's a necessary one.

Fair enough; but as we will see, my argument isn't going to be a claim to know (about gratuitous suffering). It's going to be an argument that there is a threshold where it's reasonable to think it's more likely some suffering is gratuitous than it's reasonable to doubt it's gratuitous.

I'm keen to see that argument. But I can already see you're going to have to watch out for the word "likely," since it certainly reduces if not eliminates the certainty of the basic claim one needs: namely, that a God who purports to be good is complicity in gratuitious, non-benevolent suffering.

And truth be told, we're still stuck back at the problem that both "gratuitious" and "benevolent" are value-laden terms. As such, they need to be demonstrated as correct valuations, not merely asserted then assumed true.

Welp, I've gone and made this super long *cartwheels into the sun*

Five posts now. Mea culpa.

But hopefully, this is the last of the set. Don't feel obligated to pick up all of them, if one or two of them seem sufficient to you as we have developed them, or if you feel you've said your piece and don't want to go back to the point. But if I've missed something you want me to address, or if one or two of the posts make you with to respond, feel welcome to do so. This is proving to be a very productive exchange, I think.

[Astro Cat]

Beep boop

Definitely a real quote. Just letting you know I’ll be doing a lot this weekend and will be back early in the week.

Also I wanted to point out real quick that re: how my argument is using benevolence and gratuitousness. Be careful about caring too much about their etymologies, beware the etymological fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymolo ... 20invalid.

[Immanuel Can]

Beep boop

Definitely a real quote. Just letting you know I’ll be doing a lot this weekend and will be back early in the week.

Also I wanted to point out real quick that re: how my argument is using benevolence and gratuitousness. Be careful about caring too much about their etymologies, beware the etymological fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymolo ... 20invalid.

Oh, fair enough if there's a hiatus...no hurry. I just had some time this morning, and felt the urge to philosophize.

I know all about etymology and how it works, don't worry. It's something I pay a lot of attention to, but also know where its limitations stand. A word that began one way can become idiomatically transformed into something quite different.

However, that's not the case with "benevolent." It's pretty much held to its original connotation. It implies "goodness." One can debate what kind, but it can't be interpreted as "malevolence" or even neutrality.

As for "gratuitous," it still means, "free." So I think I'm on good ground with both.

But even if they had idiomatically transformed meanings, the problem would remain: one can't get an indictment of a situation without assuming that situation is "bad." So even from a purely logical perspective, the moral is going to come back into necessary play.