Omniscience and omnibenevolence

[Immanuel Can]

Sure: but this is why we make reasonable decisions about things without omniscience based on things like appearances. "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck," that sort of thing

No, that's not a good analogy, because we don't know "what it looks like." We have no reasonable expectation that observations some of us personally may have about that are reliable at all.

At one time, there was an intuition that the world was flat. That was an incredibly strong intuition...it looked totally right, based on visible evidence, and it was general, in that 100% of the people on the planet felt they had every reason to believe it. It matched common sense, not just intuition.

And it was utterly wrong.

Things we believe today are likely wrong.

No doubt, that's true. At least, it's highly, highly likely.

But the point is simple: nothing about the number of people who "feel" a thing or are convinced of a thing (whichever way it is) gives us any reason to assume that they are correct. That's simply "bandwagon" fallacy. Numbers don't make right. Appearances also don't make right. So something can be a persistent intuition, even one generally shared, and that wouldn't ever get us to any serious measure of certainty. It might make us estimate their intuition to be a bit more probable than otherwise, but even that measure of confidence, we'd have to hold very loosely. It really gives us very little to work with, and nothing certain.

All suffering is gratuitous unless there is a plan behind it:

We might say that that is definitionally the case. Okay, go on...

The point is that it's reasonable to move forward on the belief that there isn't a plot behind suffering or lightning bolts unless evidence of such a plot is forthcoming.

That's a poor analogy, of course; lightning bolts are, so far as we know, mere physical events, but suffering is a human experiential attribution of some kind of event. The question is when and why that experiential attribution is warranted and not. And that's the question we're not getting to, here.

...the person that puts forward the proposition that all suffering is non-gratuitous is the one with the onus of proof.

Except the problem with that is that the person who put forward the proposition is yourself.

I think I've got that right. You were wanting to advance an objection to theodicy through the attribution of "gratutiousness" to incidents you interpret as "suffering," right? So then, fundamental to your position is your claim is that "gratuitious suffering" exists. At the moment, nobody else is making any claim. You are attributing a claim, perhaps, as per your subsequent syllogism. But that's not the same thing.

They, not you, rightfully have the "lack of evidence" on their side. It would be enough to defeat your proposed argument if you were not able to show you know there is such a thing as "gratuitious suffering." So long as you don't know for sure, and don't have even reasonable bases for such a supposition, you are not warranted in insisting, "gratuitious suffering exists," and then building an argument from it -- which I really think is what you're hoping to do, is it not?

But the point, simply put, is this: it's the first to claim that bears the burden of proof. And if you want to withdraw the claim that "gratuitious suffering exists," you could. I don't think, though, that you will. And even if you did so to me, I am fairly sure you'd still hold it as a private opinion.

Thus, we should look at the warrant for your claim, or assumption, that "gratutious suffering exists." Very clearly, you logically need it in order to fortify your premises...both of them...namely, that God wouldn't allow GS, and that GS exists.

Let me ask it again, then: how do you know that the suffering you observe is "gratuitious"? The burden remains on the claimant, until something has been done to meet it.

Well, again, "gratuitous suffering" is just "suffering."

I'm not sure.

In fact, I'm not even sure what we're talking about, in specific. For example, when I go to the gym, I "suffer." I sweat, my muscles ache, my back and knees get sore, I get short of breath...but is that the "suffering" we mean? I don't think so. In any case, it's not at all "gratuitous," obviously, since I chose to go to the gymn and work out. But I'm not even sure it's what we want to call "suffering," as opposed to "effort," or "overcoming," or even "becoming stronger."

So we need a case of "gratuitious suffering." And what's that going to look like? It has to look like a case that is indisputably an instance of "suffering," and for which we have good reason to know there isn't even possibly a plan that could include it.

It's actually non-gratuitous suffering that's special.

That's presumptive, not demonstrated. To argue that way is to assume already that "gratuitious suffering" is the default, and move on. But I don't assume that. Nor do a lot of people, actually.

Basically, if you're agnostic about whether suffering is gratuitous, then you must be agnostic about whether God is good,

No, that doesn't follow either. In fact, if one believes God is good, that only strengthens one's conviction that suffering is unlikely to be "gratuitious." And one can believe God is good, not on intuition, but on revelation and even on experience. So the evidentiary basis is there, for the goodness of God; but there's still nothing for "gratuitous suffering."

It does follow, because what you said didn't quite match up to what I said. I said "if you're agnostic about whether suffering is gratuitous..."

I'm not, but it doesn't matter here. I could be an agnostic about suffering, and still need to ask you the question about whether or not the "gratuitious suffering" to which you need to refer in both of your premises actually exists...and withhold any conviction until I'd seen what you had to offer on that.

...it sounds like you want to do revelation instead of theodicy, and that's OK. I'll go wherever you need to.

Revelation is an essential part of theodicy, of course. It's basic to the Christian worldview.

It may be the assumption of a purely secular person that we should be able to settle these things by dint of something like "pure rationality," but to believe that is to be a purely secular person. Christians don't assume that. They don't assume that the realm of truth is precisely coextensive with the realm of pure, human reasoning. Rather, reasoning forms a part of the realm of the discovery of truth, but only a part of it. (And actually, secular judgment agrees...for it at least requires us to go beyond the merely rational to the empirical. Only Kant, perhaps could think otherwise.)

For example, we can reason about God. But apart from God's self-revelation, we would not even know there was a God at all, and so we'd have nothing to reason about. We can reason about the statements of Jesus Christ or the Apostle Paul; but without a Jesus Christ or a Paul, we'd have no possible thing to be debating at all.

So the secular, quasi-Kantian idea that some sort of pure formalism is going to lead us to knowledge of God is something that neither empirically nor in terms of theodicy, holds up at all.

Well, as you well know, I'm a moral noncognitivist and to me "moral intuition" probably means more something like "intuition about what aligns with our values or not," which is really more like an introspection.

Yes. That always seems horribly weak and quite circular, to me.

It means that "moral" essentially just means "what we are doing at the moment." For instance, at the moment, we are aborting our babies...so that's "moral." Tomorrow, we may have a backlash against such infanticide, and abortion will no longer be "moral." So "moral" turns out, on that account, not to mean anything. "Morality," thus conceived, never contradicts common prejudices, except by mounting a new common prejudice against an old one. But it stops well short of suggesting that "morality" has any quality capable of pronouncing judgments on any act inherently or objectively. So to say, "Allowing abortion is moral" is really just to say, "Allowing abortion is blah" ("blah" being a meaningless placeholder, simply circularly referring back to the fact that we happen to abort today).

But as I'm speaking to a moral realist, I have to test the waters on where the realist decides in a given moment what is "right" and what is "wrong" if it's something other than their personal values: so, I imgagined it must be something like an intuition or a "sense."

No, that's to grab a small part of the whole, and then mistake it for the whole. That's the mistake that secular ethical reasoning is always making -- the emphasizing of one element of the moral experience for the totality or essence of it.

Intuition is related to conscience. Conscience is, indeed, an innate quality given to all human beings. But it's a fallible faculty, and as such, cannot always be guaranteed to work. Thus, it is necessarily informed by things like revelation, the Law, principles from precedents, and so forth. On its own, it's an inadequate guide; its intuitions need to be evaluated before being accepted.

...it seems you agree that God has the power to give people sufficient knowledge to make accurate moral decisions.

God "has the power"? Yes, of course. Has He actually done that, such that human knowledge of the moral realm is "sufficient" in an independent way, one not requiring the Law or revelation or the Spirit? No, I don't believe that.

Unfortunately, this explanation renders the ensuing syllogisms moot. I don't believe what is required for them to stick, I'm afraid.

Of course, having to make an uninformed choice at all could have been avoided if God simply gave them the knowledge they required in the first place: so why didn't He?)

He did, in fact. This is the first part of Milton's axiom: Adam and Eve were, Milton says, "...sufficient to have stood..." That means that they had the necessary information to make the right decision.

But there is a second part to the axiom: "...but free to fall." This speaks to the issue of personal freedom. Adam and Eve, suggests Milton, knew what they ought to do. They did not do it. They had that freedom, the freedom to select between obedience and disobedience. Their problem was not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will, a lack of fidelity.

Morality is not just a matter of knowledge. It's also a matter of volition. If it were only a matter of knowledge, then the human race would be getting more moral as it got smarter. In fact, we might well argue that the opposite is more evident, given things like global destructive possibilities in nuclear technology, international information abuse, global political volitility, pollution, engineered viruses, and so on. We might make a case that man is becoming less moral as he's becoming more powerful.

And the whole field of secular ethics today is blind. There is no secular theory that unites the various ethics "schools" into any kind of harmonious consensus, and nothing capable of doing so. As a result, we are all governed not by ethics, but by power.

I agree, this is expected on moral noncognitivism though.

It was anticipated by Nietzsche.

Nietzsche knew (and his disciple, Foucault, developed the idea) that when belief in God is stripped away from humanity, there would be nothing left but the naked fact of "will to power." There would only be those who held the power, and those who wanted the power, with no overarching objective conception to arbitrate between them and say, "This use of power is legitimate, but that one is not."

This is the world that most of our Western contemporaries in academia seem to believe fervently that we are in. Morality is a fiction, they quietly hold; the reality is a struggle of pure power, faction against faction. Ironically, they still often try to make moral appeals to things like "injustice," or "oppression," or "equity" which cannot at all be explained in terms of the world of raw power they think we live in. For they appeal to objective moral imperatives in which the Social Justice Warriors themselves simply do not believe. For them, the moral language has to be a fake; just a serviceable "handle" by which to "grab" the naive and traditional, and swing them around. But the deep fact, were they honest, is that their understanding is that of only of one race, sex, culture or other factional group hating and fighting with another, with no objective and rationally defensible rightness or wrongness to either side. Just postures and power.

I think secular moral realists are grasping at straws trying to hang onto an idea they think is cool and want to borrow from theism.

Bingo!

Dead on point. You're absolutely right. That's what they are doing. And I've thought a bit about how that happens, actually.

I think it happens this way: people are raised in a culture heavily influenced by a particular traditional kind of view of morality (say, Christian). When they get older and get more secular in their thinking, often as a result of educational indoctrination into secularism, they may abandon belief in the traditions and beliefs that make any sense of the moral precepts they acquired in youth. If you ask them, are any moral values objective, they would unhesitatingly say "No." If you push the boundaries on a new moral predilection, they'll soon cave in and let it go. They are more tolerant than morally committed.

However, does this mean they have simply abandoned the moralizing of their youth? Not at all. They tend to accept their moral traditions for everything that's not currently being assailed, and yet drop their traditions instantly when they actually are assailed, especially if the assault comes from the media, educators, or the apparent trends of the crowd. They give up moral earnestness with alacrity, the minute it's actually tested; but they do not give up the entire set of values they acquired in youth, at the same time. They hold onto them as long as nothing tests them too seriously.

So their remaining moral practices and beliefs are an irrational hash of things they learned from Christianity and things in which they've capitulated the the lastest amoral fad. They are at once viscerally opposed to murder, perhaps, but completely blase about lying or adultery. They can scream blue murder about "inequity," but couldn't care less about infanticide. They are half-"moral" in a Christian sense, but half complete relativist in another. And while no part of that makes any rational sense, this is the way in which most people do their moral business in real life, at least in the West.

Or so it seems to me.

Cheers IC

Cheers back.

[Astro Cat]

IC, I'm separating out the debate about the onus of evidence and just doing that for this post; then doing the rest of the post in a separate post. Hopefully that proves helpful rather than a hinderance to our discussion, lol.

The point is that it's reasonable to move forward on the belief that there isn't a plot behind suffering or lightning bolts unless evidence of such a plot is forthcoming.

That's a poor analogy, of course; lightning bolts are, so far as we know, mere physical events, but suffering is a human experiential attribution of some kind of event. The question is when and why that experiential attribution is warranted and not. And that's the question we're not getting to, here.

I think the analogy is apt. In fact, it's so apt, that all we have to do as amend one thing to draw a really close comparison: imagine the lightning bolt strikes a person instead of a tree. I don't think either of us doubts that a person suffers if they're struck by a lightning bolt.

The point I'm making is that we're reasonable for moving forward with the belief that the lightning bolt "simply happened" if it strikes a tree or a rock: we're still being reasonable if we don't say "now hang on, what if this was part of some kind of plan" if evidence of such a plan isn't forthcoming.

If it's reasonable to suppose that lightning striking rocks and trees "just happens," then it's reasonable to suppose that sometimes lightning striking a person "just happens." In both cases it's possible there is a plan behind the lightning strike (maybe God personally directs all of them, maybe aliens or some secret national weather control weapon plans each strike for a purpose), but even so, if evidence of such a plan isn't forthcoming, it's completely reasonable to suppose that the strikes are happening without a plan behind them: because lightning strikes are just apparently contingent events.

We can acknowledge that we're possibly wrong, yet have confidence because that's what we do as non-omniscient beings. Literally everything we "know" could be wrong for incomprehensible or yet-unkown reasons, but that's no reason not to move forward and believe reasonable propositions until proven otherwise. That, again, is why the person that argues all suffering is non-gratuitous has the onus of evidence: they're the ones saying there is a plan (though the skeptic, the one presenting the Problem of Suffering, doens't see any evidence of such a plan), so they're the ones that have to demonstrate a plan exists.

Consider:
P1) The scientific understanding of lightning strikes is based on empirical evidence and physical laws, and the scientific consensus is that they are caused by the buildup and discharge of electrical energy in the atmosphere.
P2) In the absence of evidence to support the existence of a secret weather control device, it is reasonable to assume that lightning strikes are natural occurrences that happen due to atmospheric conditions.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is reasonable to think lightning strikes are natural and random occurrences, even under the hypothetical where a weather control device is secretly responsible for lightning strikes.

If it's reasonable to suppose lightning strikes are natural occurrences (until proven otherwise), it's reasonable to suppose that lightning striking people is a natural occurrence (until proven otherwise). Then, of course, it's obvious that people suffer if struck by lightning (with injuries including muscle pains, broken bones, cardiac arrest, hearing loss, seizures, burns, ocular cataracts, and death). It follows that it's reasonable (not omnisciently certain, but reasonable) to suppose that lightning strikes on people are an example of a natural and random example of suffering the same way it's reasonable to suppose lightning striking a rock is a natural and random event. If a person claims that all suffering is non-gratuitous, they are the ones that have to demonstrate there is a plan behind all suffering to render it non-gratuitous, including lightning strikes.

...the person that puts forward the proposition that all suffering is non-gratuitous is the one with the onus of proof.

Except the problem with that is that the person who put forward the proposition is yourself.

I think I've got that right. You were wanting to advance an objection to theodicy through the attribution of "gratutiousness" to incidents you interpret as "suffering," right? So then, fundamental to your position is your claim is that "gratuitious suffering" exists. At the moment, nobody else is making any claim. You are attributing a claim, perhaps, as per your subsequent syllogism. But that's not the same thing.

They, not you, rightfully have the "lack of evidence" on their side. It would be enough to defeat your proposed argument if you were not able to show you know there is such a thing as "gratuitious suffering." So long as you don't know for sure, and don't have even reasonable bases for such a supposition, you are not warranted in insisting, "gratuitious suffering exists," and then building an argument from it -- which I really think is what you're hoping to do, is it not?

But the point, simply put, is this: it's the first to claim that bears the burden of proof. And if you want to withdraw the claim that "gratuitious suffering exists," you could. I don't think, though, that you will. And even if you did so to me, I am fairly sure you'd still hold it as a private opinion.

Thus, we should look at the warrant for your claim, or assumption, that "gratutious suffering exists." Very clearly, you logically need it in order to fortify your premises...both of them...namely, that God wouldn't allow GS, and that GS exists.

Let me ask it again, then: how do you know that the suffering you observe is "gratuitious"? The burden remains on the claimant, until something has been done to meet it.

It isn't true that "first to claim" has the onus of evidence: that sort of just becomes about who initiated a conversation. The burden of evidence is about who makes the positive claim, regardless of who goes first.

"Suffering exists" is a positive claim, but I don't have to support that because both of us already accept it. We both accept that things like "amputation" or "poison ivy welt" are things that exist. My job is done: suffering exists, and you agree that it does. Your position is the one that adds, positively, "...but there is a plan behind it such that it happens for a purpose," that is what renders it non-gratuitous.

My position is one of skpeticism, in other words: until I see evidence that there is a plan behind all suffering, I'm skeptical of that claim. That's the positive claim, and that's the one that has the burden of evidence. Recall that even though I'm "starting" the conversation, the Problem of Suffering operates on premises given by theists. The Problem of Suffering operates on premises such as "God is omnipotent," "God is omniscient," "God is perfectly good" (leading to "God would never cause or allow gratuitous suffering," which is just another way of saying "All suffering is non-gratuitous"). That all suffering is non-gratuitous is actually the theist's claim, and actually made "first" by way of informing what premises the Problem of Suffering/Problem of Evil are even operating on. The theist has the burden of evidence of supporting that all suffering is non-gratuitous; the Problem just demonstrates that there is a contradiction with God's supposed properties and observations of the world if they fail to meet that burden.

And so, we will have to have a conversation about revelation as that is your choice so far for defending your belief that all suffering is non-gratuitous.

Well, again, "gratuitous suffering" is just "suffering."

I'm not sure.

In fact, I'm not even sure what we're talking about, in specific. For example, when I go to the gym, I "suffer." I sweat, my muscles ache, my back and knees get sore, I get short of breath...but is that the "suffering" we mean? I don't think so. In any case, it's not at all "gratuitous," obviously, since I chose to go to the gymn and work out. But I'm not even sure it's what we want to call "suffering," as opposed to "effort," or "overcoming," or even "becoming stronger."

So we need a case of "gratuitious suffering." And what's that going to look like? It has to look like a case that is indisputably an instance of "suffering," and for which we have good reason to know there isn't even possibly a plan that could include it.

Asking to prove there is no plan gets the onus of evidence backwards, though. If I say, "I got held up in traffic, it's unfortunate that circumstances worked out that way," I'm being perfectly reasonable even though it's possible there's a conspiracy to block my commute: this is because it's reasonable to say that traffic is a happenstance, just a contingent part of reality. If you were to insist there's a conspiracy to slow my transit and demand I prove there isn't, that just sort of gets things backwards in a way that I'm finding difficulty articulating. I can cede that yes, it's possible there's a conspiracy to slow my commute, but I find it unlikely: but I'm just going to cite things like that it isn't intuitive there's a traffic conspiracy, that it's parsimonious that there isn't a traffic conspiracy, and that given everything I know it's reasonable because the absence of evidence there is a traffic conspiracy is reasonably evidence of absence of a traffic conspiracy. So it goes with my supposition that lightning strikes are natural, contingent, basically random events, and so it goes with my supposition that suffering is a natural and contingent aspect of physical beings inhabiting a world in which their bodies are capable of being physically damaged by apparently contingent happenstance.

Seems to me that even though I'm the one that mentioned the traffic's apparent happenstance "first," the onus of evidence is on the person that suggested "actually, there's a national conspiracy designed to slow your (specifically your) commute." Seems to me that's still the case even if I can't "prove" there isn't a conspiracy, even if I suppose that it's logically possible (but implausible). Seems that that person has the onus of evidence to show there's a conspiracy, and that I'm being reasonable in my skepticism that there is such a conspiracy in the absence of evidence: it is to the point of being evidence of absence. (By the way, I thought of this example because there is a conspirational ideation called "crowd stalking" where people do genuinely believe there is a national conspiracy to do things like have cars cut them off, to have lights turn red on them, to have people queue up in lines before them and make them wait, etc.)

It's actually non-gratuitous suffering that's special.

That's presumptive, not demonstrated. To argue that way is to assume already that "gratuitious suffering" is the default, and move on. But I don't assume that. Nor do a lot of people, actually.

What I mean by this is that if we were to categorize suffering as a venn diagram, it wouldn't be that we would have a large circle labelled "suffering" and then two sub-circles labelled "gratuitous" and "non-gratuitous." It would be that we would have a large circle titled "suffering" and then just a single sub-circle labelled "non-gratuitous." The part of the venn diagrom not in the "non-gratuitous" subcircle is gratuitous.

It's maybe counterintuitive because "non-gratuitous" is a privative descriptor (because of the "non-" prefix), so let's put it this way. "Non-gratuitous" suffering is suffering that exists as part of a plan that benefits the sufferer. We might as well call it "planned suffering."

So a venn diagram of suffering would actually be a circle labelled "Suffering" with a single subcircle labelled "planned suffering." Every part of the "Suffering" circle that's outside of the "planned suffering" circle is "gratuitous." Gratuitous is just a term we use for "any suffering that isn't part of that "Planned" subcircle." So, again, non-gratuitous suffering is the "special" kind of suffering, any other suffering is just suffering; it's "gratuitous" if it's not "planned." Gratuitousness isn't a positive property, in other words; while "planned" or "non-gratuitousness" (two words for the same thing) is a positive property.

Going back to lightning strikes, we might have a circle labelled "lightning strikes" and a subcircle labelled "weaponized lightning strikes" for instance. If we suppose that lightning strikes are natural and contingent events we're just talking about all the lightning strikes not in the "weaponized" subcircle. We're not ascribing anything positive to them, but we do ascribe something positive when we suppose that one is weaponized by a plan/purpose/weapon.

[Gary Childress]

This is just an anecdote and tangent concerning the compatibility between science and religion.

I once wrote to an astronomer tenured at the University of Virginia who claimed to be a Christian and believed that the universe was 6000 years old (or whatever the timeframe some have given to the Bible). In order to reconcile his belief that the universe was 6000 years old, he posited that when God created the universe he created everything "as is" so that it appeared that the universe was much older in scientific observation. In other words, the light we receive from galactic phenomena that would have required more than 6000 years (at the speed of light) to reach earth was placed there mid-way by God in the creation so it would only take 6000 years for the rest of its journey to Earth. Why God would seek to confuse and fool the sciences is beyond me, however, I just wonder how one can possibly reason with people like that. Literally, NO AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE will convince them. They will go to the point that they will posit all manner of special explanations for the way things are. The guy was literally repeating the method of Ptolemy when Ptolemy tried to explain the orbit of everything around the Earth. I thanked him for his time explaining his theory to me but, I mean, what can a reasonable person do when confronted with that level of fanaticism to a cause or belief?

Can one really call such a person's activity "science"?

[Astro Cat]

Well, as you well know, I'm a moral noncognitivist and to me "moral intuition" probably means more something like "intuition about what aligns with our values or not," which is really more like an introspection.

Yes. That always seems horribly weak and quite circular, to me.

It means that "moral" essentially just means "what we are doing at the moment." For instance, at the moment, we are aborting our babies...so that's "moral." Tomorrow, we may have a backlash against such infanticide, and abortion will no longer be "moral." So "moral" turns out, on that account, not to mean anything. "Morality," thus conceived, never contradicts common prejudices, except by mounting a new common prejudice against an old one. But it stops well short of suggesting that "morality" has any quality capable of pronouncing judgments on any act inherently or objectively. So to say, "Allowing abortion is moral" is really just to say, "Allowing abortion is blah" ("blah" being a meaningless placeholder, simply circularly referring back to the fact that we happen to abort today).

Again, non-cognitivism describes the world that we see quite well. And I am not sure how realists will ever get around the chief complaints of non-cognitivism (what it means for an ought to correspond to reality outside of a hypothetical imperative, and also the open question problem).

Consider the open question problem. Say there is a moral standard, and that is "that which is in accordance with God's nature." According to that standard, you ought to do this and you ought not to do that; that's all well and good. But why you ought to follow that standard is an open question.

For instance, consider that "God is loving" as a statement is informative and helpful: it gives us a link between one thing (God) and tells us that it has a property (is loving). But then suppose that someone says "God is love," which is distinct from "being loving." If God is identical to some thing, then we can just substitute "God" for any instance of that thing. But "God is love" just becomes "God is God," which is tautological and not useful. The same thing happens if we say "God is good," and we don't mean "God fulfills a standard called goodness" but rather "God is what goodness is". Again we're left after transcribing with "God is God," which doesn't tell us anything. To be "good" is just to be "Godlike," but nothing about this situation tells us why we ought to be Godlike. I am a person for instance, and we could make some property of being "Erin-like;" but that doesn't tell anybody why they ought to be Erin-like.

You can say things like, "well, if a person wants things like love, peace, harmony, and so on, then they ought to be good (e.g., they ought to be God-like)." But that's just a hypothetical imperative: it necessitates that they value those things, and doesn't say anything about why they ought to value those things.

There is a gap, in other words, between descriptiveness and normativeness; a gap between is and ought, that moral realism will never be able to close. But that is the point of the moral non-cognitivist: that morality isn't some mind-external thing that exists and has truths about it that aren't dependent on hypothetical imperatives; because it's always going to depend on hypothetical imperatives.

To have a standard of some kind doesn't tell us anything about why we ought to follow that standard, even if we can make true statements about what that standard implies. For instance, "this company operates in accordance with industry standards" is a good example of a non-moral standard. We can make true statements about "industry standards," and we can understand what "industry standards" say "ought" to be the case. But we'll never get to why we ought to follow industry standards without just making a hypothetical imperative (an "if you value x, then you ought to do y" statement). And, in the same way, if God exists and God has or sets a standard, we can make true statements about what that standard says ought to be the case, but we'll never get to why we ought to follow that standard -- again, unless we give up and make a hypothetical imperative, which will necessitate that we value that standard first. We will never get to why we ought to value that standard because there will just be a microcosm question of why we ought to do that.

And this is why moral realism will fail: it will never bridge this descriptive/normative gap, this is/ought gap, between a standard existing and an "ought" to follow the standard. It will always have to use a hypothetical imperative to get there, but this is just giving up and admitting that moral truths aren't mind-independent (if there is a hypothetical imperative, there is mind-dependence; or more aptly value-dependence), and so the claim that they are mind- or value-indpendent will be rendered non-cognitive.

...it seems you agree that God has the power to give people sufficient knowledge to make accurate moral decisions.

God "has the power"? Yes, of course. Has He actually done that, such that human knowledge of the moral realm is "sufficient" in an independent way, one not requiring the Law or revelation or the Spirit? No, I don't believe that.

Unfortunately, this explanation renders the ensuing syllogisms moot. I don't believe what is required for them to stick, I'm afraid.

Some of the syllogisms still stand. Do you believe that God created Adam and Eve with sound minds, for instance? A couple of the syllogisms were about how a person with sound mind would know not to make a choice without ensuring they have enough information to make that choice, for instance.

There is still this incoherence in claiming that God made Adam and Eve "perfectly," yet Adam and Eve acting imperfectly. The only way they could make a choice that went poorly is if they weren't created with sound minds (which would be God's fault), or if they didn't have enough information (which would also be God's fault). Thus any suffering that ensued would be God's fault: either for the way He chose to create them when He could have created them better, or for Him putting them in a situation without equipping them with the knowledge necessary to make a decision. I'm more interested in the first than the latter because again, a person of perfectly sound mind wouldn't make an uninformed choice; so if God made Adam and Eve perfectly, that implies they never could have been deceived in the first place because they wouldn't make a choice without first seeking out all possible information about said choice (and that's not apparently what they did, which implies not being created with perfectly sound minds).

If God creates beings imperfectly, setting them up for a Fall beyond their control (because they aren't equipped right, it becomes inevitable over time: the odds approach one that their imperfect design flaw will rear its head if they aren't created perfectly), then God created beings in order to make them suffer. From my perspective and values I'd call that malevolent, what about you?

Of course, having to make an uninformed choice at all could have been avoided if God simply gave them the knowledge they required in the first place: so why didn't He?)

He did, in fact. This is the first part of Milton's axiom: Adam and Eve were, Milton says, "...sufficient to have stood..." That means that they had the necessary information to make the right decision.

But there is a second part to the axiom: "...but free to fall." This speaks to the issue of personal freedom. Adam and Eve, suggests Milton, knew what they ought to do. They did not do it. They had that freedom, the freedom to select between obedience and disobedience. Their problem was not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will, a lack of fidelity.

No, we will have to bring back some of the syllogisms you snipped here.

For instance:
P1) People of sound mind would make decisions based on what is good
P2) When presented with a choice, a person of sound mind would evaluate the information available and consider the potential consequences of each option
Conclusion: Therefore, a person of sound mind will always choose the good option if given an informed choice between a good and a bad option

And

P3) People of sound mind making an informed choice will always choose the good option if presented with a good and bad option
P4) Adam and Eve chose the bad option
Conclusion: Adam and Eve either didn't have sound minds or were not informed

You say it's a matter of "will," but it's not: nobody of sound mind would choose an option that literally causes death, earthquakes, birth defects, all the other stuff Christians blame on "The Fall" if they actually understand that those are the consequences, and that "life, love, health, fellowship, etc." are the consequences of the other choice. If someone picks the "bad" option while understanding those consequences, they aren't of sound mind. So which is it? Were Adam and Eve not of sound mind, or were they not informed? Both would be God's fault, not their own; and neither could be described as being "sufficient to stand."

If you create a creature that isn't of sound mind, then you have created imperfectly and the creature can't be blamed for its choices.

If you create a creature of sound mind, but which isn't informed about potential dangers and consequences of those dangers (and you deprive the creature, furthermore, of knowledge it really needs ot even seek the knowledge it needs on its own: such as keeping "knowledge of good and evil" away from them), then you have also set the creature up for failure deliberately. Uninformed choices behave a lot like random choices, since by definition uninformed choices mean the creature doesn't understand what the consequences or facts are surrounding the choice. You might as well have the creature making choices based on coin flips. As time goes on, the probability approaches 1 that the creature will make the "bad" choice sheerly out of ignorance: and ignorance is the only way a creature of sound mind can make a bad choice, after all. So, I repeat: which is it? Did God make Adam and Eve not of sound mind, or did God not equip them with the required information to make choices? Because if they were created "perfect," it's incoherent to claim that they would have knowingly, informedly chosen wrongly. That position is not coherent.

[Belinda]

An omnipotent God can't make anything that is imperfect. Eve was(is) imperfect so she was(is) excluded and had(has) to make own life sans God. Eve is us all.

We have told the doctrine of perfect power to get lost, but we can retain our respect for omniscience and omnibenevolence even in our imperfect relative world.

[promethean75]

This girl is the goddamn antichrist, Belinda.

IC u better do something fast cuz I'm losing faith.

[Immanuel Can]

IC, I'm separating out the debate about the onus of evidence and just doing that for this post; then doing the rest of the post in a separate post. Hopefully that proves helpful rather than a hinderance to our discussion, lol.

The point is that it's reasonable to move forward on the belief that there isn't a plot behind suffering or lightning bolts unless evidence of such a plot is forthcoming.

That's a poor analogy, of course; lightning bolts are, so far as we know, mere physical events, but suffering is a human experiential attribution of some kind of event. The question is when and why that experiential attribution is warranted and not. And that's the question we're not getting to, here.

I think the analogy is apt.

Well, but you're presuming that suffering is "gratuitious." I'm not. And I'm asking what your evidence is.

If it's reasonable to suppose lightning strikes are natural occurrences (until proven otherwise), it's reasonable to suppose that lightning striking people is a natural occurrence (until proven otherwise). Then, of course, it's obvious that people suffer if struck by lightning (with injuries including muscle pains, broken bones, cardiac arrest, hearing loss, seizures, burns, ocular cataracts, and death). It follows that it's reasonable (not omnisciently certain, but reasonable) to suppose that lightning strikes on people are an example of a natural and random example of suffering the same way it's reasonable to suppose lightning striking a rock is a natural and random event. If a person claims that all suffering is non-gratuitous, they are the ones that have to demonstrate there is a plan behind all suffering to render it non-gratuitous, including lightning strikes.

And yet, it remains nothing at all but a presumption. And it's one that requires us not to notice the amphiboly between lightning "strikes" and other events that "strike" in a metaphorical sense only.

But let me grant you your presumption. You're free to regard it reasonable to think that cancer "just struck" Aunt Phillis. But then again, Aunt Phillis smoked. Or maybe Uncle Phil did, and she breathed his smoke. And you're free to think the plagues "just struck" the Egyptians; but then again, maybe God "struck" them, and had a purpose in so doing.

We're very far from the sort of evidence you need. We need a certain case of "gratuitious" suffering, suffering that simply CANNOT be explained as meaningful, anytime, by anyone, even God. Absent that, you've lost the basis of your first two premises, and have only a gratutious conclusion left.

Which is what a presumption is: it's a conclusion without the requisite evidence.

It isn't true that "first to claim" has the onus of evidence:

Certainly. One cannot get a burden-to-prove by not having made a statement.

And the argument is your own, at the moment. It asserts that gratuitious suffering exists. And you need it for your conclusion. So it seems a really good time for you to provide it, I think.

"Suffering exists" is a positive claim, but I don't have to support that because both of us already accept it.

True enough.

Your position is the one that adds, positively, "...but there is a plan behind it such that it happens for a purpose,"

Look back. You will not find I have said this. Anywhere. Ever.

You'll find, instead, that I've been consistently asking for the evidence of "gratuitious suffering." And while I don't deny that what you attribute to me is possible for somebody to assert, it's a paraphrasing from you about what you hope I might say, but have not said. It's not my words, and it's not my argument.

What I would, in fact, say, and what I have already said, is somewhat different. I've said that mankind is limited, contingent, time-bound and fallible. As such, he/she has no reasonable expectation of ever eliminating so many variables and possible explanations for suffering that he/she can safely ask us to conclude that "gratuitious" suffering exists. He/she would have to be God Himself.

And that's my real position. I think it's quite evident that every clause in it is true beyond reasonable dispute. We are limited, localized, fallible, perspectival beings. No doubt about it. If there is an explanation of suffering it's bound to be complicated, involved multiple, complex interplays of purpose, cross various timelines, and thus exceed the mental capacities of any person who has ever lived. If there's an answer to why suffering happens, it's clearly not an easy one-off kind of explanation. It's bound to be complicated, very complicated.

In this position, I see nothing that even remotely lacks evidence. No sane person would deny any of it, I think. So there really isn't anything it requires me to prove. However, if you find you are persistently unable show that the suffering we both acknowledge to exist is "gratutious," then my next question would be simple: then what justification have you for any indictment against belief in God of the sort your syllogism advances?

So I have no burden to prove that I know what the meaning of suffering is. In fact, my insistence has always been that you and I are likely never to know such a thing, by dint of our limitations as local, fallible, transient, perspectival beings. What we are asking, if you and I ask to know why God allows suffering X or Y, is like us asking to have the Pacific Ocean in a Dixie cup. (The Dixie cup is an analogy for any particular human brain, even the smartest one, of course; and the ocean is an understated analogy for the complexity involved in understanding the possible meanings of sufferings.)

So we should expect that any proper explanation of the meaning of suffering should be complex, multi-faceted, long-term, employing infinitely long chains of cause and effect, aiming at transcendent purposes, and so on...really, the sort of thing that only omniscience can properly grasp. And we would have to trust that the Omniscient One is quite capable of putting all the relevant pieces in place, even if we are not. But we ought to become suspicious immediately if any human being ever says to us, "I know why you're suffering." How could she? How did she achieve such insight and wisdom? Where did she get her access to the secrets of the universe? And how is she so wise that she can explain-it-down to poor little me?

Asking to prove there is no plan gets the onus of evidence backwards, though.

Well, if you read the above, you'll see this objection holds no water now. I've never made the claim you say I'm making, and in fact, my position is that such a thing is impossible. And, in fact, I have no futher need of evidence: the truth of what I've said above is nothing, I think, that a sane person can possibly doubt is true. If the explanation of suffering is possible, it's likely very, very complicated.

Do you doubt that? Do you have any supposition that only simple answers to suffering could possibly be true answers? I don't think so.

It's actually non-gratuitous suffering that's special.

That's presumptive, not demonstrated. To argue that way is to assume already that "gratuitious suffering" is the default, and move on. But I don't assume that. Nor do a lot of people, actually.

What I mean by this is that if we were to categorize suffering as a venn diagram, it wouldn't be that we would have a large circle labelled "suffering" and then two sub-circles labelled "gratuitous" and "non-gratuitous."

well, but your Venn diagram assumes that the realms of "suffering" and "purposeful" are not co-extensive.

If they are, then your diagram fails to represent how things actually are. It misrepresents the possible truth. It could well be that there are no "gratuitious" suffering events, plausibly. The burden is on the claimant of "gratuity" to show otherwise, so as to justify the Venn diagram in the first place.

[Astro Cat]

This girl is the goddamn antichrist, Belinda.

IC u better do something fast cuz I'm losing faith.

I lol’d

[iambiguous]

You'll find, instead, that I've been consistently asking for the evidence of "gratuitious suffering."

He can't even spell the word right!!

Gratuitous: "uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted"
Suffering: "the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship"

Now, given all this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...how can he possibly reconcile it with an alleged "loving, just and merciful" Christian God? Other than in falling back on His alleged "mysterious ways".

[Immanuel Can]

...how can he possibly reconcile it with an alleged "loving, just and merciful" Christian God? Other than in falling back on His alleged "mysterious ways".

You didn't read my point, I guess.

My argument is that NOBODY has that kind of information. And that's without any appeal to "mystery" at all. It's just screamingly obvious to everybody. You are one person, in one place, at one time, with a fallible mind and limited experience, with knowledge of very, very few of the variables in play in any given situation. You can't even doubt that's true. It's true of everybody, all the time.

Now, if you think differently, and if you think any of that is even contestable, please...explain how you came into posssession of all the causes, consequences and actions in this tapestry of a universe of ours, and how you were able to declare, "it's all gratuitious." I'd love to know your secret. We all would.

[Gary Childress]

...how can he possibly reconcile it with an alleged "loving, just and merciful" Christian God? Other than in falling back on His alleged "mysterious ways".

You didn't read my point, I guess.

My argument is that NOBODY has that kind of information. And that's without any appeal to "mystery" at all. It's just screamingly obvious to everybody. You are one person, in one place, at one time, with a fallible mind and limited experience, with knowledge of very, very few of the variables in play in any given situation. You can't even doubt that's true. It's true of everybody, all the time.

Now, if you think differently, and if you think any of that is even contestable, please...explain how you came into posssession of all the causes, consequences and actions in this tapestry of a universe of ours, and how you were able to declare, "it's all gratuitious." I'd love to know your secret. We all would.

Do you, IC, believe that there has never been a single instance of suffering by a human being that was not either helpful to that person or deserved, AND that was the direct responsibility of God? In other words the number of instances of gratuitous suffering (suffering that is neither helpful to the sufferer nor just) that God is the only one responsible for is 0.

Or to use one concrete example, not a single one of the tens of thousands of people killed in the recent earthquake in the middle east was not deserving of death? (I assume it's reasonable to conclude that death was not helpful to at least one of those people that died in the earthquake, and that no one but God can be held responsible for the earthquake.)

[Immanuel Can]

Do you, IC, believe that there has never been a single instance of suffering by a human being that was not either helpful to that person or deserved, AND that was the direct responsibility of God?

I believe that nobody knows for sure why any particlar incident of suffering happens, unless God were to explicitly tell them. In most cases, such an explanation is not offered; and I think it's because the answer in most cases is not simplistic and shallow, and so nobody has a brain capable of handling the kind of equation necessary to explain the relationships between the things that are involved.

And you know I'm right about that, if you think about it at all.

[Astro Cat]

Post

It’s the weekend so you know what that means

I’ll be back Monday or Tuesday. There was a second post about Adam and Eve also, not sure if you saw that.

[iambiguous]

Gratuitous: "uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted"
Suffering: "the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship"

Now, given all this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

...how can he possibly reconcile it with an alleged "loving, just and merciful" Christian God? Other than in falling back on His alleged "mysterious ways".

You didn't read my point, I guess.

My argument is that NOBODY has that kind of information. And that's without any appeal to "mystery" at all. It's just screamingly obvious to everybody. You are one person, in one place, at one time, with a fallible mind and limited experience, with knowledge of very, very few of the variables in play in any given situation. You can't even doubt that's true. It's true of everybody, all the time.

Yeah, that sure let's your Christian God off the hook, doesn't it?

The fact is that however fallible our minds are and however limited our experiences and knowledge, there's no getting around the fact that God is responsible for all of those terrible things I linked you to above.

Unless, of course, Rabbi Kushner nailed it.

Now, if you think differently, and if you think any of that is even contestable, please...explain how you came into posssession of all the causes, consequences and actions in this tapestry of a universe of ours, and how you were able to declare, "it's all gratuitious." I'd love to know your secret. We all would.

Of course: make this all about me. But: I didn't create planet Earth that, over and over and over again, makes life a living hell for mere mortals. I didn't create viruses and bacteria. I didn't create a human body bursting at the seams with hundreds and hundreds of ghastly afflictions.

By the way, has Gary contacted you yet about the videos? The ones you claim warrant the belief that the Christian God does in fact reside in Heaven?

Just out of curiosity, any videos that offer the best explanation for why your loving, just and merciful God should not be seen as a sadistic monster instead?

[Gary Childress]

Do you, IC, believe that there has never been a single instance of suffering by a human being that was not either helpful to that person or deserved, AND that was the direct responsibility of God?

I believe that nobody knows for sure why any particlar incident of suffering happens, unless God were to explicitly tell them. In most cases, such an explanation is not offered; and I think it's because the answer in most cases is not simplistic and shallow, and so nobody has a brain capable of handling the kind of equation necessary to explain the relationships between the things that are involved.

And you know I'm right about that, if you think about it at all.

Ok. Fair enough. It seems to me that you posit the existence of God before anything else and then based on the world and what happens in it, tailor your idea of God to somehow fit into that framework.

Of course contradictions to human intuition arise and it seems those are simply left as ineffable and unable for us to comprehend.