Philosophy Now Forum

Why 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

Well, the man who suggested that God was loving just and merciful but, unfortunately, did not possess the power to prevent them has died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/28/book ... -dead.html

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, Reassuring Best-Selling Author, Dies at 88
With a wide-reaching spiritual message in books like “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” he drew on his own experience with grief and doubt.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, a practical public theologian whose best-selling books assured readers that bad things happen to good people because God is endowed with unlimited love and justice but exercises only finite power to prevent evil, died on Thursday in Canton, Mass. He was 88.

His death, in hospice care, was confirmed by his daughter, Ariel Kushner Haber.

Several of Rabbi Kushner’s 14 books became best-sellers, resonating well beyond his Conservative Jewish congregation outside Boston and across religious boundaries in part because they had been inspired by his own experiences with grief, doubt and faith. One reviewer called his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” a “useful spiritual survival manual.”

Rabbi Kushner wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” (1981) after the death of his son, Aaron. At age 3, just hours after the birth of the Kushners’ daughter, Aaron was diagnosed with a rare disease, progeria, in which the body ages rapidly.

When Aaron was 10 years old, he was in his 60s physiologically. He weighed only 25 pounds and was as tall as a three-year-old when he died in 1977 two days after his 14th birthday.

“Like a lot of children who feel they’re going to die soon, he was afraid he would be forgotten because he didn’t live long enough, not knowing parents never forget,” Rabbi Kushner told the alumni magazine Columbia College Today in 2008. “I promised I’d tell his story.”

The book was rejected by two publishers before it was accepted by Shocken Books. It catapulted to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and transformed Rabbi Kushner into a popular author and commentator.

“It was my very first inkling of how much suffering was out there, all over the world, that religion was not coping with,” he told The Times in 1996.

His thesis, as he wrote in the book, was straightforward: “It becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.”

Rabbi Kushner also wrote:

“I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best.

“‘What did I do to deserve this?’ is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is, ‘If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?’”

He was making the case that dark corners of the universe endure where God has not yet succeeded in making order out of chaos. “And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless,” he wrote, “because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness.”

Unpersuaded, the journalist, critic and novelist Ron Rosenbaum, writing in The New York Times Magazine in 1995, reduced Rabbi Kushner’s thesis more dialectically: “diminishing God to something less than an Omnipotent Being — to something more like an eager cheerleader for good, but one decidedly on the sidelines in the struggle against evil.”

“In effect,” he wrote, “we need to join Him in rooting for good — our job is to help cheer Him up.”

Rabbi Kushner argued, however, that God was omnipotent as a wellspring of empathy and love.

Great men ... and women ... have come and gone. Ubi sunt que antes nos fuerunt?. They thought ... and they imagined ... they toiled ... and they bled. Is it true that air is colorless, odorless, tasteless?

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 6:21 pm Great men ... and women ... have come and gone. Ubi sunt que antes nos fuerunt?. They thought ... and they imagined ... they toiled ... and they bled. Is it true that air is colorless, odorless, tasteless?

That depends.

Pick one:

1] the red pill
2] the blue pill
3] the purple pill*

* the one they left out of the movie

Now, let's discuss how this is at all applicable to theodicy.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 9:04 pm

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Sat May 06, 2023 6:21 pm Great men ... and women ... have come and gone. Ubi sunt que antes nos fuerunt?. They thought ... and they imagined ... they toiled ... and they bled. Is it true that air is colorless, odorless, tasteless?

That depends.

Pick one:

1] the red pill
2] the blue pill
3] the purple pill*

* the one they left out of the movie

Now, let's discuss how this is at all applicable to theodicy.

As far as I can tell, the purple pill's God, at least in our eyes. Your turn.

People have always supposed there is or may be a world that has meaning. Every sort of other-world beliefs from ancestors, animism, nature gods, to God himself rest upon the idea of Heaven, Nature, the unseen order, and personal or impersonal gods or monogod. All religious rituals and myths are theatre that expresses belief in the unseen order that rules this world of immediate experience.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2023 11:06 am People have always supposed there is or may be a world that has meaning. Every sort of other-world beliefs from ancestors, animism, nature gods, to God himself rest upon the idea of Heaven, Nature, the unseen order, and personal or impersonal gods or monogod. All religious rituals and myths are theatre that expresses belief in the unseen order that rules this world of immediate experience.

On track m'lady, on track! I see an opening there, but I'm a lazy, laaazy was-man. When ya smash the brains of someone, ya don't get pieces of consciousness, oui mademoiselle?

Free will, the Holocaust, and The Problem of Evil
David Kyle Johnson

"Wenn es einen Gott gibt muß er mich um Verzeihung bitten."
anonymous

This German quote, which translates as “If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness,” appears in a documentary about the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Who among us would dare to go that far? What if we do have free will and we have it because God intended us to have it. On Judgement Day, after He explains exactly how our free will can be reconciled with His own omniscience, will we be given the chance to judge Him?

Starting with the Holocaust for some and for others starting with this...

...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages...

Or does our free will revolve entirely around worshipping and adoring Him despite all of the things it might seem reasonable for Him to ask our forgiveness for.

Or has Harold Kushner himself having just died recently now been able to confirm that in fact God is not in the least omnipotent?

It was supposedly written by an unknown prisoner there, on the wall, during the holocaust. Because the walls have long since been painted over, the veracity of this claim is difficult to verify—but there is little reason to doubt it. The events of the holocaust have long raised questions about God’s existence, and why (if he exists) God would allow such suffering; so it’s not hard to imagine that a prisoner in one of Hitler’s concentration camps, in the throes of despair, would have etched such a thing on the wall of their prison cell.

It would be interesting to know the reaction of the other prisoners after reading it. Would some, smack dab in the middle of a death camp that an omnipotent God permitted to exist, consider it to be blasphemy? Would the prisoner who wrote it be hounded into taking it off the wall...to recant and beg forgiveness from God?

Now this quote is far from a clearly articulated argument with a specific conclusion. But once we realize that conditional (if… then) statements like this can be translated into disjunctive (either…or) statements, the potential conclusions the prisoner might have had in mind become clear. So translated, the quote becomes this:

"Either God doesn’t exist or he will have to beg for my forgiveness"

If we add in the assumption that God certainly exists, then the conclusion becomes that God will have to beg the prisoner for forgiveness. And from there, it is a short step to the conclusion that God is morally imperfect (I); any divine being that has done something to apologize for, by definition, cannot be morally perfect.

On the other hand, it's not for nothing that the arguments of those like Harold Kushner manage to comfort the faithful. It's not that God is morally imperfect but that He is not omnipotent. He created the Heavens and the Earth but He found Himself unable to fully control it. For example, suppose in creating the laws of matter, God Himself is not permitted to transcend the consequences of them in regard to those "natural disaster" above?

So, when you die and Judgment Day arrives, if you truly do worship and adore God, then your soul is saved and you are in Heaven. And once there all of the souls of the faithful who perished in those "natural disasters" are there as well.

Free will, the Holocaust, and The Problem of Evil
David Kyle Johnson

...one might even argue that a moral imperfection that allows God to permit the holocaust makes God downright evil. If, however, we add the assumption that God is, by definition, morally perfect and thus cannot do anything deserving of an apology, then the prisoner’s statement becomes part of an argument that God doesn’t exist.

"Either God doesn’t exist or he will have to beg for my forgiveness. If God exists, he is morally perfect. And if God is morally perfect, he cannot ever have to beg for my forgiveness. Thus, God does not exist."

Click.

And around and around some will go in this direction or around and around others will go reconciling the Holocaust with a morally perfect existing God.

How?

Of course: a morally perfect existing God, the morally perfect existing God, my morally perfect existing God's mysterious ways.

So, Mr. Atheist, go ahead, prove this is wrong.

Not only that but atheists of my ilk, in rejecting God and religion, are left dealing with the existential reality of living in an essentially meaningless and purposeless world, being fractured and fragmented morally and awaiting their own tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion.

Sure, some will take pride in having the intellectual mettle and integrity to accept the consequences of living in a No God world. Me, I'm rather partial myself to finding a way back onto the path that leads to immortality and salvation.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the prisoner didn’t know which assumption to make, and thus which conclusion to draw. But it is the latter argument that is more interesting. After all, anyone can “tweak” their definition of God, after the evidence has already come in against him, so that they can continue to say that God exists. But it is another thing entirely to reject God’s existence all together.

Of course, here even the staunchest atheist is "for all practical purposes" an agnostic. After all, in a free will world, whether you entirely accept or reject God's existence you're still stuck with "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule".

Starting here:

* Why something instead of nothing?
* Why this something and not something else?
* Where does the human condition fit into the whole understanding of this particular something itself?
* What of solipsism, sim worlds, dream worlds, the Matrix?
* What of the multiverse?

Indeed, the latter argument is essentially a version of the problem of evil, the classic argument which suggests that God must not exist because evil does. And what I would like to explore here is whether the evil of the holocaust can be used as a reason to justifiably conclude that God does not exist.

In other words, philosophically.

I'm surprised that no one's posted the standard retort to the PoE. The question that should effectively silence atheists in this particular case begins with "quando" but I'm not here to rattle gilded cages. To be honest though, I haven't encountered the necessary features in theism to back up my own humble and tenuous claim. There are a near infinite variety of reasons to believe in the existence of an OOO-God and we're reminded of great peeps who toiled, perhaps in complete loneliness, in the dead of winter, with no money for a warm fire, to bring some clarity on issues as vexing and yet so close to our hearts.

In my years on and off philosophical fora, I've seen quite a number of theistic arguments, but one stands out; which one is obvious. Also, a number of gurus in the past have essentially grokked what the theism-atheism controversy is all about. The ones who spoke aggravated the controversy, the ones who didn't left us as they found us, mired in conflict.

Perhaps we should dig deeper, the point is to ask, ask questions, as many of them as possible, oui?

Free will, the Holocaust, and The Problem of Evil
David Kyle Johnson

The Problem of Evil and the Holocaust

A basic version of the problem of evil is simple enough to state:
(1) If God existed, evil would not.
(2) Evil does exist.
(3) Therefore God does not.

Yes, if you reduce it down philosophically to a syllogism. But what does that have to do with the leaps of faith that millions upon millions of men and women make in order to attain 1] objective morality on this side of the grave and 2] immortality and salvation on the other side of it.

Especially when over and again the ecclesiastics can subsume evil in God's "mysterious ways". And thus instead making it ultimately good. It's simply something we mere mortals can never possibly understand on this side of the grave.

Then those like Harold Kushner who suggest a loving, just and merciful God who created something He now finds Himself unable to fully control.

Then we can get really creative when all you need do is to speak of God here in a "world of words"...

Some have tried to deny that premise (2) is true, by suggesting that evil does not exist. For example, inspired by Augustine, one might claim that evil doesn’t “exist” per se, but is merely a privation of good (in the same way that black is an absence of color).

Got that? The scare quotes "God".

Anyone here willing to explain that in regard to this:

"...an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events...making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages..."

But not even Augustine endorsed this idea as a solution to the problem of evil. Even if evil is merely a privation of good, which itself is debatable, it would still not be clear how God could allow the privation of good. In other words, in response to this “solution,” one need merely clarify the argument to suggest that, if God did exist, there would be no privation of good (and certainly no privations as grand as the holocaust). And from this, the argument’s conclusion would still follow.

In that case, thank God for His "mysterious ways"?

Free will, the Holocaust, and The Problem of Evil
David Kyle Johnson

Those known as skeptical theists might also deny premise 2 -- Evil does exist. Or, at least, that we can know that premise 2 is true. “Since God’s knowledge is beyond us, and we cannot see all ends, for all we know the things that we think are evil will ultimately work out for the good, and thus for all we know evil does not exist at all.” (This, in essence, is an a academically sophisticated version of “God works in mysterious ways.”).

That's exactly what it is. And the "skeptical theists" among us merely have to believe this. Either because they were indoctrinated as a child to accept it or "on their own" they thought it up and it seemed to work best for explaining away the horrors that have existed throughout human history. Both man-made and as a result of Nature thumping us up one side and down the other.

Again, here, the key is not what you can demonstrate that you believe is true but that in believing it, it comforts and consoles you. That may well be the most important component of the human condition. It certainly is for those like me unable to believe it anymore.

But this answer also falls short. I have refuted skeptical theism in a different context elsewhere (showing why its probabilistic calculations are erroneous), but the objection most relevant here is that it leads to moral agnosticism—it makes moral knowledge impossible.

Actually, none of us can really refute skeptical theism because none of us can demonstrate unequivocally that a God, the God does not exist. God is, after all, one possible explanation for why existence itself exists. And if He does exist, what can we utterly insignificant mere mortals on this utterly insignificant planet in this utterly insignificant galaxy given the staggering vastness of the universe...

"When we look in any direction, the furthest visible regions of the Universe are estimated to be around 46 billion light years away. That's a diameter of 540 sextillion (or 54 followed by 22 zeros) miles." BBC

...possibly know about His "Ways".

If I cannot know that something has horrific and consequential as the Holocaust is in fact evil—because, “for all you know, six-million murdered Jews might actually turn out to be a good thing”—then I cannot know anything, at least in regard to moral truth.

This, of course, is what we are reduced down to noting. Better to attribute the Holocaust to God. Then, one way of another, it it is ultimately a good thing. Or we are left with...what exactly? That in a No God world it "just happened" given the "brute facticity" of an utterly indifferent universe? And that if the fascists manage to prevail in a world where that can hardly be ruled out these days, it can happen again?

Then the next extinction event wipes out the human race and it is as though we were never around in the first place?

Or some determinists arguing that if it does happen it happened only because it could never have not happened in the only possible "human condition"?

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2023 11:06 am People have always supposed there is or may be a world that has meaning. Every sort of other-world beliefs from ancestors, animism, nature gods, to God himself rest upon the idea of Heaven, Nature, the unseen order, and personal or impersonal gods or monogod. All religious rituals and myths are theatre that expresses belief in the unseen order that rules this world of immediate experience.

Sort of like equations do for some.

Agent Smith wrote: ↑Mon Jun 05, 2023 12:45 am I'm surprised that no one's posted the standard retort to the PoE.

Edgar Allen? Power over ethernet? Point of Entry? Point of embarkation?

The question that should effectively silence atheists in this particular case begins with "quando"

It should silence all of us and certainly has me. Not that it proves anything. But it should slap the smugness off anyone's face. The metaphysically weird has happened. Exactly what that is, is another issue.

At least some religions realize this, and then a small, perhaps tiny subset of religious people, that awe and not fully understanding are inevitable. But then classy humanists and scientists will also acknowledge this.

Perhaps we should dig deeper, the point is to ask, ask questions, as many of them as possible, oui?

Or perhaps get under all the mental verbal bullshit and explore. Via practices -whatever, scientific, religious, shamanistic, contemplative and more. Literally metaphorically dig deeper. You know, coming at it with a classic working class skepticism about all that white collar blather.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 4:43 pm 2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

I don't think this holds.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, there is a God or gods.
Certain people get more insights and/or are more confident than others and they present their ideas of the divine, including practices, stories, descriptions.
Different paths are necessarily going to be affected by the culture they arise in and the person(s) writing, speaking, leading, claiming divine inspiration, etc. And to some extent each language and culture would need different metaphors, different approaches, to some degree different practices to achieve whatever the goals are.

So, different religions could have degrees of correctness and distortion, and also work better for some people than others - whether at the cultural background level or at the individual level. And also that there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

If we take the religions as projects to generally bring people closer to the divine and to better treat other humans, it seems like there can be degrees of correctness and effectiveness.

Rather than only one path is correct, period.

They are human projects and thus fallible, but there's no reason for someone outside all these traditions (or even in them) to assume that we throw out any tradition that has any distortion or falsehood. Or that any difference means one religion is wrong, period.

And most religions have some kind of non-verbal reaching out to the deity(ies) practice - meditation, contemplation. Often compliments by non-thinky reaching out to the deity processes that are verbal - chanting, singing.

Perhaps that core center of the vast bulk of religions is the main product and the rests are metaphors and stories tailored to certain local cultures and also run through the filters of this or that profet.

It's a bit like saying there is only one way to improve your marriage or running or business talents or psychological health. So only one book, one teacher/coach/therapist's approach is right and all the others are wrong. Binary. It's right 100 percent or wrong 100%.

And, yes, religious people often fall into the mine in right 100%, yours is wrong 100%. Or some percent anyway.

But then there are others who do not think this way and further, non-believers have no reason to assume this is the case. That would be to choose some specific religions person as THE AUTHORITY, and to pick one who says only this path is right.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 06, 2022 4:43 pm 2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed...but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?

I don't think this holds.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, there is a God or gods.

Okay, but we have to establish in turn what this means "for all practical purposes" down here among us mere mortals. Does this God have moral Commandments mere mortals are obligated to embody? Does worshipping this God come around to one or another rendition of Judgment Day? And, if you are judged for the behaviors you choose on this side of the grave, is there the possibility of immortality and salvation on the other side?

Also, is this God omniscient and omnipotent? Is there an actual Scripture/Bible available to mere mortals?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmCertain people get more insights and/or are more confident than others and they present their ideas of the divine, including practices, stories, descriptions.

What people, what insights...what God/Gods? Those that exist only for the sake of argument?

Different paths are necessarily going to be affected by the culture they arise in and the person(s) writing, speaking, leading, claiming divine inspiration, etc. And to some extent each language and culture would need different metaphors, different approaches, to some degree different practices to achieve whatever the goals are.

Well, that's my point. That things like religion and politics and morality are rooted existentially in dasein...in the many, at times, very, very different historical and cultural and interpersonal contexts any particular individual may be a part of.

So, different religions could have degrees of correctness and distortion, and also work better for some people than others - whether at the cultural background level or at the individual level. And also that there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

Again, here I always come down to the bottom line [mine]...religion as it is most relevant to the lives we live: connecting the dots between morality [sins] on this side of the grave, Judgment Day and immorality/salvation on the other side. Or eternal damnation.

Or, for those who worship "the Gods", whatever the equivalent of that is.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmIf we take the religions as projects to generally bring people closer to the divine and to better treat other humans, it seems like there can be degrees of correctness and effectiveness.

Rather than only one path is correct, period.

Sure, "for the sake of argument". But that's not what the overwhelming preponderance of religious folks are focused in on. They live very real lives involving very real conflicting goods anchored to very real beliefs in Gods they both love and fear. Gods "up there" or "out there" passing judgments on them.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmThey are human projects and thus fallible, but there's no reason for someone outside all these traditions (or even in them) to assume that we throw out any tradition that has any distortion or falsehood. Or that any difference means one religion is wrong, period.

Again, if there is a God, the God [which most believe] mere mortals can't afford to be fallible. It's not for nothing that Christians and Moslems proselytize. From their frame of mind, they are literally attempting to save souls.

Only for all practical purposes that can become rather problematic:

Imagine three Christian missionaries set out to save the souls of three different native tribes. The first one is successful. The folks in the first tribe accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior and are baptized in the faith. The second is not successful. The folks in the second tribe refuse to accept Christ as their personal savior and instead continue to embrace their own god...their own religion. The third missionary is not even able to find the tribe he was sent out to save.

Now, imagine one member of each tribe dying on the same day a week later. What will be the fate of their souls? Will the man from the first tribe ascend to Heaven having embraced the Christian faith? Will the man from the second tribe burn in Hell for having rejected the Christian faith? And what of the man from the third tribe---he will have died never having even been made aware of the Christian faith. Where does his soul end up?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmAnd most religions have some kind of non-verbal reaching out to the deity(ies) practice - meditation, contemplation. Often compliments by non-thinky reaching out to the deity processes that are verbal - chanting, singing.

Perhaps that core center of the vast bulk of religions is the main product and the rests are metaphors and stories tailored to certain local cultures and also run through the filters of this or that profet.

Okay, but back to there actually being a God, the God. Or a collection of Gods...the Polytheists. Or those like Buddhists. With all that is at stake on both sides of the grave, had not one better choose the right religion?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmIt's a bit like saying there is only one way to improve your marriage or running or business talents or psychological health. So only one book, one teacher/coach/therapist's approach is right and all the others are wrong. Binary. It's right 100 percent or wrong 100%.

Yes, but with God and religion, moral Commandments are involved. And immortality and salvation. Nothing like that exists in regard to the specific interactions/institutions of mere mortals. There is no ultimate Judgment Day for them. They vary considerably from time to time, from place to place.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmAnd, yes, religious people often fall into the mine in right 100%, yours is wrong 100%. Or some percent anyway.

With the fate of their very soul on the line, why would they do otherwise?

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:17 pmBut then there are others who do not think this way and further, non-believers have no reason to assume this is the case. That would be to choose some specific religions person as THE AUTHORITY, and to pick one who says only this path is right.

Okay, let them choose one or another AUTHORITY to entrust their soul to. But how on Earth if there is an actual God or collection of Gods would it not have to be the right one?

And then the other three focuses of mine:

1] a demonstrable proof of the existence of your God or religious/spiritual path
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual's belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path

The latter in regard to this thread.