Christianity

[Gary Childress]

I'm pointing out that until you solve the secular problem of evil, there IS no "problem of evil." There's nobody capable of even alleging such a thing, so long as he remains committed to the idea that "evil" cannot be objective.

I see, so if God does things that God himself would call "evil" if we did them, it is just a fallacy of et tu quoque for us to conclude that they therefore must not be evil because God himself does them? Is that correct?

No, it's an et tu quoque fallacy to argue, "if you can't, I can." It does not follow. The inability of one does not signal the ability of the other. To prove one can, one has to actually be able to show how one can DO the thing implicated.

And I believe I can. But whether or not I can will not make the slightest change to the secular problem.

So how do you figure that "if you can't, I can" is the form of a tu quoque argument? Or can you flesh out a little better what your argument is concerning secular people committing the "tu quoque" fallacy when they say that "because God sometimes does evil, God is not benevolent"?

[Belinda]

You said it, Immanuel:-

Then, like Belinda, all you're suggesting is that "evil" means, "AJ doesn't like..." But what one likes or dislikes is both variable and merely subjective. So there's no grounds in such an account for attributing any quality of objective "evil" to the event or situation. It's 100% about liking and disliking, then.

The most objective you can get is ( mutually inclusively) the law of the land, religious moral codes, and folk traditions.

But they're not at all mutually inclusive, as it happens. American human rights are not the caste system. British citizenship is not Sharia. Modern jurisprudence in Western climes is not The Code of Hammurabi or tribal vendettas. They don't line up -- at all. Which would mean that "evil," again, means "most (current) Brits or Americans don't like...," a conclusion no more durable than the next wave of immigration or the next change of fashion. Islamists do love violence. That's crystal clear. How can it be "evil" for them to slit throats on a beach, since evil does not have any stable meaning in the vocabulary you're providing?

And again, clearly, BLM or Free Palestine say that burning businesses, blocking streets, beating Jewish, Korean and even black shopkeepers, or throwing bricks at police stations is "good." By what standard do we judge whether their "mostly peaceful protesting" is good or evil?

In short, your definition of "evil," so far, lacks any stable content at all. It can't give even you enough reason for a belief in objective "evil" of any kind.

And if it can't, then how can a secularist even suppose that there is a "problem of evil" in this world to be solved? His own ideology denies that there can be any such thing.

Immanuel, do you perhaps understand the moral theory that evil is absence of good?
I hand it to you, Immanuel, that Good is God who exists , and evil is absence of good.

To answer your concerns that there are different moral codes, this is correct. However all axial age religions' moral codes have in common that what we call The Golden Rule is basic .In Augustine’s view, good is the default state of being; evil is not a rival force but the absence or corruption of that default.

(Axial age:- around 500BC, between 800BC and 200BC. The time of the OT prophets.)

Which religious sect do you belong to ,Immanuel?

[promethean75]

https://youtube.com/shorts/1AZ0M9NIk6Y? ... bntYkedefe

[Alexis Jacobi]

So evil means, "not ideal"? But whose "ideal" gets to count, in that? And why should something yet-unrealized, as all ideals are, be a grounds for any objective categorization of something as "evil"? How many purely imaginary things get to determine our value judgments, and why should any?

First, you as Evangelical Christian believer have already made up your mind. You know this, I know this. For this reason a conversation with you is futile. However, over the course of about a decade now I have been engaging with you off-and-on and, as I have indicated, you have had a negative influence on my own *theology* such as it is, and in relation to your fanatical beliefs, I have had to revise my own. I doubt you read with any interest or concern anything that I write simply because you are a fanatic Christian believer and your central function is to "hold your own" in the face e of the opposition which you come here to encounter and refute.

I said "At least on one level an answer is really quite easy: nature is intolerable to human idealism". The operative words were 'on one level'. And I explained, I believe coherently, why the human being, generally speaking, finds the world intolerable, confusing, depressing, difficult, overwhelming, and why it produces in man a type of craziness. Man reacts to the *cruelty* and absolute insensitivity of 'the world' to any of his suffering. And everything is totally mutable. There is nothing that man can build here that endures. It all crumbles away, and man faces mortality which, for everyone, is distressing. It all dissolves away. It all turns *to dust* as all philosophical religions note.

You disregarded, as you will always disregard because that is what you do! the carefully inserted word 'on one level'. It implies there is, or there may be, another level. But it is now difficult, and it will always be difficult, for man to determine on what 'other level' he can base his ethics and morality. The world as Nature has none. It is simply a terrible world of processes (I say 'terrible' to indicate not so much something terrifying, though there is that, but rather overpowering and totally strange when it is seen).

I say that when man becomes aware that then idealism is born. An animal living tooth and claw and unconscious of the system it is in cannot, certainly, conceive of an ideal circumstance different from the one it is in. But man is conscious, and to the degree that consciousness and awareness is developed is the degree that man could even become aware of higher possibilities of visualization. Thus if a world such as our own exists, it becomes conceivable that other worlds might also exist: ones more terrible than this one, and ones much better, more suffering-free. Man meditates on *this world* and sees that everything in it is brutal and unconscious, but man is different, and thus he stands apart. It is in all that that man's idealism originates.

In the story you have invested in, you do exactly this: you conceive of a better world prior to the Fall. A mistake was made, or a bad, willful choice was made, and the entire cosmos was brought down into the terrible state that is seen in nature. This is your 'explanatory model'. It is precisely similar, though crude, to many of the models described in the far longer history of the religions of the Indian subcontinent. They all involve explanatory models.

Because I am not a Christian, nor a Jew -- though I come out of this matrix -- I opt to build a metaphysics on other foundations. I have no choice. Part of that involves going back over more ancient, developed metaphysics, but then like any modern I must face a world that has been turned over by scientific awareness. For this reason (as all know) metaphysics is a problematic territory and has been done away with at least by many. Probably the closest approximation to a philosophical base in my case would be a qualified Platonism.

The idea of a savior remains an interesting one but I cannot see *saving* except in a very broad sense. What does *salvation' mean in our world today and for man? I reject your definitions more or less across the board. (Hence my view of you as a negative influence). Our present is infused with a very contaminated Evangelical conceptualization of the figure of Jesus and of 'salvation'. You are contaminated. Your thinking is on one level quite good (you have a sharp mind and you bother to read, etc.) but in the end I find that you are third-rate. And you are a terrible apologist even for your brand of Christianity. You alienate everyone who comes into contact with you.

That can't be right. A lion pulls down a gazelle...and we call it "evil"?

Why should a moral attribution from another species, the human, be added to that?

You fool. How deliberate is your mis-conceptualization!

A lion who kills and eats your entire family out on the savanna will never be seen benignly. The loss of your beloved family and children will be felt to be a terrible evil. The loss will do you great harm. You may even no longer want to live. In this sense 'the world' does things to man which he cannot live with. An animal has no capacity to think things through (as far as I know, though I have read that elephants have a striking awareness of death and 'remember' dead companions).

As I carefully explained it is *the world of nature* which is intolerable to man's sensibilities, and the 'evil' man experiences in that world drives him crazy. Especially when, by circumstance, he is forced to participate in those processes.

Then, like Belinda, all you're suggesting is that "evil" means, "AJ doesn't like..." But what one likes or dislikes is both variable and merely subjective. So there's no grounds in such an account for attributing any quality of objective "evil" to the event or situation. It's 100% about liking and disliking, then.

No, you insipid moron, that is not what I say. That is what you say. I simply point out that 'in certain senses' and on 'one level' what man determines is 'evil depends a great deal on what he feels.

The metaphysical dimension -- when man feels the need or develops a sense of a need to live in accord with higher, metaphysical principles -- all of that is another question. I do not negate that, I actually put emphasis on it. But I doubt you have ever read anything I have written because ...

"Obstinacy makes us unable to hear for all that we have ears".

Why is that order which you call "natural" deserving of also being characterized as "evil," then?

I carefully explained this. The closer man is to raw nature, the more terrible is the life lived. Man creates separation where a more protected experience can take place.

My view is that sociopathic evil, at least on one level and to some degree, rises in man out of his condition -- the condition of nature. But deliberate harm, psychopathic acts of harm, joy in inflicting pain -- these require a separate analysis.

That's a mere "et tu quoque" fallacy, of course -- were it true that I have no such theory, it would not mean you did. It would just mean that NEITHER of us had any justification for the word "evil," not that you would suddenly acquire one.

You rely on a theory, pre-formulated, that is entirely inadequate as a large explanatory model. To believe what you believe means that you have stopped reasoning in ways needful. That is my view of you and what you have invested in.

My theory is more realistic, more communicable, and it starts from a recognition of the terrible nature of Nature.

[Gary Childress]

You said it, Immanuel:-



The most objective you can get is ( mutually inclusively) the law of the land, religious moral codes, and folk traditions.

But they're not at all mutually inclusive, as it happens. American human rights are not the caste system. British citizenship is not Sharia. Modern jurisprudence in Western climes is not The Code of Hammurabi or tribal vendettas. They don't line up -- at all. Which would mean that "evil," again, means "most (current) Brits or Americans don't like...," a conclusion no more durable than the next wave of immigration or the next change of fashion. Islamists do love violence. That's crystal clear. How can it be "evil" for them to slit throats on a beach, since evil does not have any stable meaning in the vocabulary you're providing?

And again, clearly, BLM or Free Palestine say that burning businesses, blocking streets, beating Jewish, Korean and even black shopkeepers, or throwing bricks at police stations is "good." By what standard do we judge whether their "mostly peaceful protesting" is good or evil?

In short, your definition of "evil," so far, lacks any stable content at all. It can't give even you enough reason for a belief in objective "evil" of any kind.

And if it can't, then how can a secularist even suppose that there is a "problem of evil" in this world to be solved? His own ideology denies that there can be any such thing.

Immanuel, do you perhaps understand the moral theory that evil is absence of good?
I hand it to you, Immanuel, that Good is God who exists , and evil is absence of good.

To answer your concerns that there are different moral codes, this is correct. However all axial age religions' moral codes have in common that what we call The Golden Rule is basic .In Augustine’s view, good is the default state of being; evil is not a rival force but the absence or corruption of that default.

(Axial age:- around 500BC, between 800BC and 200BC. The time of the OT prophets.)

Which religious sect do you belong to ,Immanuel?

When you say "Good is God", do you mean that God = Good? Is it literal to say that "Good" is God? Meaning you worship "Good"? For example: Who or what is God? If "God" = the creator of all that is, are you saying that all that is, is "Good"? Or is some evil too?

[promethean75]

Please do shorten your posts, folks. One often gets the feeling they've walked into some in kind of symposium of Texan auctioneers when they come in here.

[Immanuel Can]

Not sure if that is an tu quoque fallacy or not...
I'll look up the definitions a little closer. BRB

It is.

But please, certainly do that.

[Gary Childress]

Not sure if that is an tu quoque fallacy or not...
I'll look up the definitions a little closer. BRB

It is.

But please, certainly do that.

What exactly are you saying is a tu quoque argument? More importantly, can you give an example of what you think secularists are arguing that makes them guilty of tu quoque?

[Immanuel Can]

I see, so if God does things that God himself would call "evil" if we did them, it is just a fallacy of et tu quoque for us to conclude that they therefore must not be evil because God himself does them? Is that correct?

No, it's an et tu quoque fallacy to argue, "if you can't, I can." It does not follow. The inability of one does not signal the ability of the other. To prove one can, one has to actually be able to show how one can DO the thing implicated.

And I believe I can. But whether or not I can will not make the slightest change to the secular problem.

So how do you figure that "if you can't, I can" is the form of a tu quoque argument?

It's easy. It's saying, "I may be wrong, but you are too, and therefore, my wrongness isn't a problem anymore." But if one person has cancer, then saying, "You have cancer too" will not cure the first person...even if it turns out that the second person also has cancer.

In this case, the problem seems to be that secularists want to say, "How can you explain the existence of evil," and yet cannot themselves explain in any way compulsory to anybody else, what they mean by "evil," -- beyond, "things I don't like," which of course, does not compel anybody else to believe anything at all is evil.

They're jammed up. So they turn around and say, "Yeah, we'll you Theists can't explain evil either" (et tu quoque). The problem, of course, is that it isn't true; but much more importantly for the present question you ask, even if true it wouldn't imply that secularists themselves had created an account of evil. It would just mean there were two people who were confused.

Yet the problem for the secularist who wants to press "the problem of evil" would remain: he still couldn't say what he's asking. After all, he doesn't believe in real evil.

It's like he's blaming God for having created too many unicorns...his conception of evil is nothing he can explain in real terms at all.

[Gary Childress]

No, it's an et tu quoque fallacy to argue, "if you can't, I can." It does not follow. The inability of one does not signal the ability of the other. To prove one can, one has to actually be able to show how one can DO the thing implicated.

And I believe I can. But whether or not I can will not make the slightest change to the secular problem.

So how do you figure that "if you can't, I can" is the form of a tu quoque argument?

It's easy. It's saying, "I may be wrong, but you are too, and therefore, my wrongness isn't a problem anymore." But if one person has cancer, then saying, "You have cancer too" will not cure the first person...even if it turns out that the second person also has cancer.

In this case, the problem seems to be that secularists want to say, "How can you explain the existence of evil," and yet cannot themselves explain in any way compulsory to anybody else, what they mean by "evil," -- beyond, "things I don't like," which of course, does not compel anybody else to believe anything at all is evil.

They're jammed up. So they turn around and say, "Yeah, we'll you Theists can't explain evil either" (et tu quoque). The problem, of course, is that it isn't true; but much more importantly for the present question you ask, even if true it wouldn't imply that secularists themselves had created an account of evil. It would just mean there were two people who were confused.

Yet the problem for the secularist who wants to press "the problem of evil" would remain: he still couldn't say what he's asking. After all, he doesn't believe in real evil.

It's like he's blaming God for having created too many unicorns...his conception of evil is nothing he can explain in real terms at all.

What if, as a "secularist" (agnostic) I say "God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them?" Is my argument a tu quoque?

[Immanuel Can]

You said it, Immanuel:-



The most objective you can get is ( mutually inclusively) the law of the land, religious moral codes, and folk traditions.

But they're not at all mutually inclusive, as it happens. American human rights are not the caste system. British citizenship is not Sharia. Modern jurisprudence in Western climes is not The Code of Hammurabi or tribal vendettas. They don't line up -- at all. Which would mean that "evil," again, means "most (current) Brits or Americans don't like...," a conclusion no more durable than the next wave of immigration or the next change of fashion. Islamists do love violence. That's crystal clear. How can it be "evil" for them to slit throats on a beach, since evil does not have any stable meaning in the vocabulary you're providing?

And again, clearly, BLM or Free Palestine say that burning businesses, blocking streets, beating Jewish, Korean and even black shopkeepers, or throwing bricks at police stations is "good." By what standard do we judge whether their "mostly peaceful protesting" is good or evil?

In short, your definition of "evil," so far, lacks any stable content at all. It can't give even you enough reason for a belief in objective "evil" of any kind.

And if it can't, then how can a secularist even suppose that there is a "problem of evil" in this world to be solved? His own ideology denies that there can be any such thing.

Immanuel, do you perhaps understand the moral theory that evil is absence of good?

That won't work for the secularist. He doesn't have any idea of what "good" means either...unless it simply means "things I happen to like."

But equally importantly, it leaves out the whole category of positive evil, meaning that evil which is not merely the absence of something one wants or recognizes as good, but the active addition of something one does not want and recognizes as evil.

...all axial age religions' moral codes have in common that what we call The Golden Rule is basic .

It's not, actually. How did the Babylonians or Aztecs "love their neighbours" by sacrificing virgins, or the Romans "love their neighbours" by exposing children on the hillsides, or the Spartans "love thy neighbours" by warring incessantly with the Athenians, or the Egyptians "love their neighbours" by enslaving the Jews, or the Arab nations "love their neighbours" by enslaving and castrating Sub-Saharan blacks, or Somalis "love their neighbours" by forcible female "circumcision" upon puberty?

It's not even in most cultures, let alone all; and even today, there are major religions in the world that hold the contrary, such as that enemies and apostates should be terrorized and murdered.

[Immanuel Can]

What if, as a "secularist" (agnostic) I say "God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them?" Is my argument a tu quoque?

No. But you leave yourself open to a very easy rejoinder: who told you that that sort of consistency is a virtue? Even for that, you'll find you have to take some basic assumptions about hypocrisy and unfairness...assumptions you just can't get from your secularism.

So you're having to accept the potential rightness of important aspects of the Biblical morality in order to launch your criticism of the Biblical morality...if you want to stay secular, and thus be consistent yourself, you just can't do it coherently.

[Gary Childress]

What if, as a "secularist" (agnostic) I say "God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them?" Is my argument a tu quoque?

No. But you leave yourself open to a very easy rejoinder: who told you that that sort of consistency is a virtue? Even for that, you'll find you have to take some basic assumptions about hypocrisy and unfairness...assumptions you just can't get from your secularism.

So you're having to accept the potential rightness of important aspects of the Biblical morality in order to launch your criticism of the Biblical morality...if you want to stay secular, and thus be consistent yourself, you just can't do it coherently.

OK. What if I say, "If the Bible is true, then God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them"? Is that a problematic argument?

[Immanuel Can]

What if, as a "secularist" (agnostic) I say "God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them?" Is my argument a tu quoque?

No. But you leave yourself open to a very easy rejoinder: who told you that that sort of consistency is a virtue? Even for that, you'll find you have to take some basic assumptions about hypocrisy and unfairness...assumptions you just can't get from your secularism.

So you're having to accept the potential rightness of important aspects of the Biblical morality in order to launch your criticism of the Biblical morality...if you want to stay secular, and thus be consistent yourself, you just can't do it coherently.

OK. What if I say, "If the Bible is true, then God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them"? Is that a problematic argument?

Well, then you're only going as far as asking a question like, "If Sherlock Holmes had not figured out the speckled band, would he still be tall and dapper?" In other words, while insisting the situation is entirely fictitious, you're asking for a serious and rational answer. And on that premise, no such thing would be possible. How can one answer an "if" about a fictional character? Having never existed, no "other case" is even supposable. You're not assuming enough even to pose the question coherently.

But again: the problem will not be what a Theist can or cannot do, either way. If secularism finds no warrant for evil, then it cannot speak coherently of any problem associated with evil. So to treat "evil" as any real thing, he's going to have to abandon his secularism -- and, as your question points out to us, his hope that the Biblical record might be merely fictional, as well.

[Gary Childress]

No. But you leave yourself open to a very easy rejoinder: who told you that that sort of consistency is a virtue? Even for that, you'll find you have to take some basic assumptions about hypocrisy and unfairness...assumptions you just can't get from your secularism.

So you're having to accept the potential rightness of important aspects of the Biblical morality in order to launch your criticism of the Biblical morality...if you want to stay secular, and thus be consistent yourself, you just can't do it coherently.

OK. What if I say, "If the Bible is true, then God does evil because he does things in the Bible that he would consider evil if we did them"? Is that a problematic argument?

Well, then you're only going as far as asking a question like, "If Sherlock Holmes had not figured out the speckled band, would he still be tall and dapper?" In other words, while insisting the situation is entirely fictitious, you're asking for a serious and rational answer. And on that premise, no such thing would be possible. How can one answer an "if" about a fictional character? Having never existed, no "other case" is even supposable. You're not assuming enough even to pose the question coherently.

But again: the problem will not be what a Theist can or cannot do, either way. If secularism finds no warrant for evil, then it cannot speak coherently of any problem associated with evil. So to treat "evil" as any real thing, he's going to have to abandon his secularism -- and, as your question points out to us, his hope that the Biblical record might be merely fictional, as well.

I'm not insisting that the situation is entirely fictitious. I'm agnostic. are you saying God is a "fictional" character or that the Bible is a fictitious work?