From: davidch@ZIMMER.CSUFRESNO.EDU (David Choweller)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: RE: The "God Does Not Exist" Proof
Date: 7 Apr 92 02:35:28 GMT









Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The "God Does Not Exist" Proof
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Distribution: world,local
Organization: California State University, Fresno
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In article <1992Apr6.154504.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu> pralmo01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes:
|First of all:
|I do not believe divine foreknowledge necessarily extends to all possible
|universes, but only to those which actually exist.

Then, you don't believe in an omnipotent God.  Your beliefs are consistent.
The is, however, a problem with an omnipotent, yet benevolent God.

|
|Secondly:
|To say that God 'imagines' human beings and then aborts them based on the
|trouble they would probably cause is certainly not a vision of a good God.
|I seems to me that such actions would be so unloving and unjust as to be 
|incompatible with a good God.  It would seem that it is impossible for a 
|perfectly  good
|God to abort persons on the basis of foreknowledge.  It follows that God

To say that God creates human beings that he knows will fry in Hell in
the future is certainly not a vision of a good God.  It seems to me
that such actions would be so unloving and unjust as to be incompatible
with a good God.  It would seem that it is impossilbe for a perfectly
good God to create persons on the basis of foreknowledge.  It follows that
God should not do this.

|does not do this. (An assumption I make is that life is itself a great good.)

But eternal torture in Hell is a far worse evil.

|
|
|Thirdly:
|
|Without perfect foreknowledge of uncreated universes (something I do not accept
|as a necessary characteristic of God)  it is impossible to tell what 

Then, there is no problem.  Your God is not omnipotent.  But some culpability
can still be laid at his feet.  Your God is still someone who, perhaps because 
he was bored, created souls so he could play around with them.  Furthermore
he puts them in an screwy world full of dangers and indescribable tortures
, makes it in their nature to be sinful (Who among you is not a sinner), and
then punishes them for acting according to their natures.  All this for what?
So he can be worshipped freely by the souls he has deigned to let
into heaven.  Idi Amin is a saint compared to this guy.


|will happen in an
|autonomous environment due to non-linearities in certain features of 
|reality (not even considering free beings).  This is a clear result
|of modern dynamics.  The mechanical universe of Leibniz is dead, killed by
|a non-linear oscillator.  It is therefore somewhat rediculous to me to 
|hear people argue that God must have had the means to stop certain 
|individual evil things from occuring, simply be refusing to create 
|those universes.  God may be able to run simulations of the universe,
|but he can't tell which simulations will correspond to which actual universe.
|
|As I said before, I don't accept the proposition that God must have
|divine foreknowledge of uncreated universes.  God can only know 
|everything which can possibly be known.  I don't see how it is possible

Just because you don't see how it's possible to know what a universe
will do before it exists, doesn't mean an omnipotent God can't do it.

|to know what a universe will do before it exists, unless the universe is
|of a very restricted type (far and away simpler than our own).
|
|
|> 
|>>The statement 'an omnipotent being should have access to such alternative
|>>means' is precisely the point in question.  I say it has not been 
|>>demonstrated.  I certainly don't have any sort of metaphysical proof that
|>>sainthood can be achieved just as well with a non-evil universe
|>>as with an evil universe.
|> 
|> The only way in which an omnipotent being *wouldn't* have access to such
|> alternative means would be if such means were logically impossible.
|> Since people here seemed to be able to formulate several coherent
|> such means, that seems unlikely.  (Unfortunately, I did not save any
|> of those postings.  Perhaps those who posted them before would be
|> willing to post again.)
|> 
|>>Also, you're introducing the classification of ends and means.
|>>Does this mean that you are in fact assuming that every means must 
|>>be classified as either good or bad?  Or can you demonstrate that in
|>>fact every means is either good or bad or neither?  I would be 
|>>interested in that demonstration.  Now here we are embroiled at just
|>>the point I thought would be crucial:  just what are good and evil?
|>>Also, is 'bad' the same as evil?
|> 
|> This seems irrelevant since the problem of evil argument does not
|> require such a universal generalization to work. 
|
|Doesn't the argument pivot on the idea of a 'perfectly good' God?
|
|> One instance
|> suffices.  Neither are necessary and sufficient conditions for
|> "good" and "evil" required for the argument to work (if such
|> conditions could even be formulated, which I doubt).
|> 
|
|ONE INSTANCE OF WHAT????  You say all you need is one instance of 
|something, but you don't know what that something is?

One instance of suffering that is avoidable, and not logically neccessary,
is what I think he meant. Note the asterisked text from the original
poster below:

|
|                                         
|>>Now reality is made up on a basic level not of 'goods and evils' but of
|>>events in a continuum.  I deny that on a theoretical OR practical
|>>level that one must classify EVENTS as good or evil but not both.  In fact,
|>>I live my life classifying many things as good and evil both.
|>>  
*********************************************************************
|>>> It is sufficient for the argument to show that there is a single
|>>> instance of an event which is evil which could have been prevented
|>>> by God without creating greater evil as a consequence.
*********************************************************************
|
|I have already gone into the qualities of the universe which appear to 
|be such that to violate them would require 'greater evil'.
|                                                          
|>> 
|>>In my opinion, the argument should be formulated as:
|>>Could God create the good things of life without creating the 
|>>bad things too, since given the choice, I want the good things even if
|>>I have to have the bad things.
|> 
|> Fair enough.  Then the Christian viewpoint is that these good things
|> cannot exist without bad things existing also.  The Panglossian view
|> ridiculed in _Candide_.
|
|Do you really think I sit on my butt and simply
|wave at the evils of the world???  Pangloss is a for cry from Teilhard
|de Chardin, or Jesus.  By the way, 
|I don't have my Voltarie handy, but wasn't Pangloss so rediculous not because
|he accepted bad things, but because he eliminated any reason to work against
|evil, being that this must be the best-of-all-possible worlds.?  I didn't say 
|this was the best-of-all-possible worlds.  I am saying that it's

Well, this is the same as what many theists do.  They say humans can never
solve the problems of the world, so they have to wait for God to come and
save them.

|not clear that God hasn't done the best he could.  It's pretty obvious
|people haven't.

Well, if they haven't done it it's because God created them that way.
We are created imperfect.  How can you expect to be perfect when you're
created imperfect.  So God is perfect; big deal.  That's his nature.  How can
you judge people when you made them imperfect? 

|
|
|> 
|>>>I think that
|>>> plenty of examples can be enumerated which virtually everyone would
|>>> agree are evils.  The only disagreement is likely to be over whether
|>>> or not such evils could have been prevented.  Your use of the free
|>>> will defense is an argument that they could not have been.  Your
|>>> argument above appears to be an argument that they aren't really
|>>> evils.  I don't think either one works.
|>> 
|>>Good God!!  I never said I have shown they couldn't be prevented!! I said
|>>that if God wants to create beings with free will in an autonomous universe,
|>>then it does not appear to me that God could guarantee a non-evil 
|>>universe.  And no I never said they aren't evils!!!
|> 
|> Implied in what I wrote above was that they couldn't be prevented
|> *without losing other things desired as good*, e.g., free will.
|> See above, where I write "It is sufficient for the argument to show
|> that there is a single instance of an event which is evil which could
|> have been prevented by God without creating greater evil as a consequence."
|> I take it that your view is that loss of free will would qualify
|> as such a "greater evil."
|
|My view is that the debater has not shown conclusively that there is no
|such loss.  I have suggested several possibilities for such a loss.  I do 
|not claim that I have exhausted the possibilities because I do not know
|what God eventually has in store.  I view the loss of free will as being a
|*possibly* great evil.
|>                                
|>>>>Lastly let me add that I think what the post does disprove is 'The
|>>>>Nice Guy Theory of God':  God is such a nice guy, he wouldn't do anything
|>>>>to hurt me.  In my opinion, that's just a different version of a dysfunctional
|>>>>psychology. 
|>>> 
|>>> If you add "intentionally" to the above, then "the nice guy theory of
|>>> God" seems like a logical consequence of the claim that God is
|>>> perfectly good.  And the problem of evil still goes through.
|>> 
|>>Sure, sure, if you want to DEFINE a perfectly good being as one who is only
|>>associated with perfectly good things, then in fact God is not perfectly 
|>>good.  He wouldn't like most of the people I know.
|> 
|> That's not what I said, nor would I accept that definition.  An omnipotent,
|> omniscient, perfectly good being, however, would only *create* perfectly
|> good things.
|
|I say we have a tautology here.  Perfectly good including in it's definition:
|a being which does not create non-perfectly good things.
|
|See, there we are arguing over what perfectly good means.
|
|
|> 
|>>In my view, this argument against the existence of God is weak primarily
|>>because it doesn't deal with the purpose of creation.  Now, if you could
|>>show that God had a certain good purpose in creating the world, and it was
|>>possible to attain that good purpose, and God has in fact, or will in fact,
|>>fail to attain that purpose, now that would be something!
|> 
|> What is the purpose of creation?
|
|Hell if I know.  'Eye has not seen and ear has not heard.'
|

If you dont' know, how can you be sure it justifies all the evil in the
world.  To my mind *nothing* can justify the death of a little child
due to hunger and malnutrition.  And you're saying it's justified by 
this purpose that you don't even know?

|                                                          
|See ya,
|Joe Deasy
--
                                                 davidch@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU
"Don't have a cow, Homer!"
                -- Bart