From: pralmo01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu
Subject: Re: The "God Does Not Exist" Proof
Organization: University of Louisville
Distribution: world,local
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 19:45:04 GMT

In article <5APR199214474472@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>, lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes:
> In article <1992Apr5.150659.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu>, pralmo01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes...
>>In article <4APR199219553704@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu>, lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes:
>>> In article <1992Apr4.201457.1@ulkyvx.louisville.edu>, pralmo01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu writes...
>>>>Since the free will I am talking about means free will to do evil,
>>>>and since the number of chances men and women have to make choices
>>>>to do good or evil is in fact infinite (since time is continuous)
>>>>the only possible way for people to not do evil is for the probability
>>>>of doing evil to be identically equal to zero.  Since this contradicts
>>>>the notion of free will, I conclude that God cannot create people
>>>>who have free will and who will, in fact, not do any evil whatsoever.
>>> 
>>> This "free will" seems to have nothing to do with "will" at all, but
>>> rather is randomness.  Why should anyone accept that in order for
>>> a person to be free with respect to a choice between x and y, given
>>> enough time, that person will choose x on some occasions and y on other
>>> occasions?  Why can't I be free to choose between x and y yet never
>>> choose y (because of my own desires not to choose y)?  Does that
>>> make me unfree?  If so, then the freedom you are describing is
>>> a disconnection of my desires/intentions and my actions, which seems
>>> to be a distinct *lack* of freedom{  It seems to me that it is because
>>> my actions *are* determined by my desires and intentions that my actions
>>> are free.
>> 
>>First of all, I am not addressing individual events.  The question is:  could
>>God create a world of beings able to freely choose between good and evil
>>and *guarantee* that no evil will be chosen.  The x and y analogy is in my
>>view a poor test case since we are in fact talking about a world of beings
>>and non just joe test-case.  It seems to me that one must realize that the
>>number of opportunities to do evil in a world such as ours, including all 
>>people, is in fact without bounds  (in fact, for any person it is without
>>bounds).  Now tell me, just what sort of free will
>>is God supposed to give people such that God can know, a priori, that no
>>evil acts will be commited?  
> 
> Because God supposedly has divine foreknowledge, he knows what actions
> each of his creations will freely choose to perform throughout their
> lifetimes.  He may therefore choose not to create any of those which
> will choose to perform evil acts.

First of all:
I do not believe divine foreknowledge necessarily extends to all possible
universes, but only to those which actually exist.

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


Thirdly:

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

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


> 
>>>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.'

                                                          
See ya,
Joe Deasy
Newsgroups: alt.atheism