Metaphysical paradox

With due respect, the thing that most bothers me about by-the-Book Christians and the atheists who love to tease them is that here are two polar opposites who both believe they have it all nailed down. But like comic Brother Dave Gardner (look him up) used to say, "If it's all nailed down, then what is this all around it?" Most members of both groups are basing their beliefs on what others before them have written or said. Most religious people haven't actually seen God or his angels. And most atheist haven't actually perform the scientific experiments and studies that they quote. In fact, they're most alike in that both assume things they as individuals can't possibly know. I've read that even some of Einstein's theories have since been proven wrong. But I haven't run the mathematics or done the experiments myself, so I just don't know.

Good and evil are simply expressions of man's free will, which exists whether or not there is a God. Man often assigns good and evil values to things of nature or of chance, the same way people see human characteristics in dogs and cats and dolphins, etc.

A flood kills hundreds of people in China, a volcano wipes out a South Sea island, a swimmer is eaten by a shark, your neighbor dies in a house fire. Are those acts of evil or acts of nature? Is a shark or bear evil because it follows its natural (or God-given, whatever) instincts in making a meal of another less-fit animal, even if that animal is human? Good and evil are simply human judgments imposed rather randomly. Most societies view lynching as evil because a mob operating outside the law elects to kill another person without due process or trial simply because of public prejudice against that person. A war can be good or evil, depending on one's point of view, which in turn is the result of one's free will, which can be God-given or natural.

That the creation of evil is 'evil' is a moral judgement on your part.

If there is a god, and this god is omniscient, then he\she\it could not create anything unknown to itself.

If, as it says in the biblical text, god created satan, who by all appearances turned against him, then one has to assume that satan was created as part of god's larger plan and that everything satan could do is known already by god. The motivations of something so much larger than ourselves may escape our understanding. In fact it MUST be of an understanding that is wider than our capabilities or we would all equal god.

Exactly.

Personally I have no problem with the concept of god/a god. It's when things start getting specific (ie a specific religion) that the interpretation of men starts clouding the waters.

Obviously life is THE mystery, followed closely by all things that support it. We can observe some things about it but IMHO people who are absolutely certain about anything have made a bunch of stuff up (or follow those who have) to fill in the gaps of understanding.

I have no inherent need to explain it all. For the time being, I'm happy riding the wave.

Fair points, but surely there's a distinction in that you could have a bash at delving into the Einsteinian maths etc if you really wanted to, whereas tracking down an angel might prove somewhat harder?

And i think there's a fair bit of 'gut calling' going on which can be seen of as independent of any big speakers on either side. (Everyone likes to fire that nail-gun wildly from time to time after all )

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Maybe what your statistics really proved is that the answer to prayers often is "No." Answering prayers is not the same as granting prayers.

In all honesty praying creeps me out. While I don't hold religious people their beliefs against them, I personally think religion is BS frankly. But that's just me.

Just to make a point..
"Several studies have found Sweden to be one of the most atheist countries in the world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

Also. Do keep in mind we take in a lot of people from Muslim countries (among other religions) every year, and that we are by numbers a tiny little country, so the percentage of those actually believing in a higher presence will affect the total percentage more than say Russia or USA.

God created man in his own image (spiritually, not physically).
God created evil and gave us free will to test us to see if we were worthy of that gift.

Sometimes you just need faith.

As far as I (or any individual) know, I am the only thing in this universe that I know without a doubt is real.
Everything else I have ever known or seen has happened through my mind's awareness of those things.
For all I really know, I am the only certainty and all of you and the entire universe is all part of my own mind.

Can you prove to me that you exist?

Show me irrefutable proof that you and science are not a part of my imagination.
That you are not a dream my mind has conjured up.
That you aren't some program running in a matrix somewhere set to entertain me.
Nothing you do or say can ever truely prove you are as real as me.

Yet somehow I still have faith that you and your world of science are all real.

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You seem to be deviating into Plato's cave, I am pointing out what you just stated, if there was a God He would in fact hold the same weaknesses as man, which would nullify any idea of an inherently "good" will.

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...uh the post is up there...

Yeah that shouldn't be so difficult.

Well I'm not saying that I'm not. But if so, then god is an imagination as well. Hence "not real"..
<edit>If by "your imagination" you mean things projected by your brain, then that would make everything unreal.

It's like people saying "How do you know my blue is perceived the way you perceive it?"

The answer is simple - It don't matter, because from the time we learn what blue looks like, that will always be blue to us. For someone else it might be our red, but we don't know that. Nobody can ever be sure two people are seeing the same shade of color. All they can agree on is that X shade is known as X color.

There is no proof. Which leads into your next question...

I have two responses to this:

1) We all claim things to exist when we can't prove it. We all do it, all the time. We all believe in things we've never seen, conclusions we've never reached ourselves, and historical figures that only exist on paper. Burdens of proof vary from subject to subject, but nearly all human progress is based on the idea that we can and should believe things that other people have done or demonstrated somehow, without always doing all the legwork ourselves. There is no grand rule of logic which makes it inherently unreasonable to form conclusions about things for which there is no absolute proof.

2) Certain things are outside of the realm of empirical observation and the scientific method. Questions like morality, purpose, and God. These things matter, but can't be measured. This is where philosophy (or theology) comes in. The only way to determine whether or not these things exist -- and what they may be like, if they do -- is with simple reason.

It's the science of thought, really; a series of experiments inside your mind. It must follow rules of logic and consequence. It's the same sort of thought process that gives us the scientific method, but applied to things we can't fit inside a bunsen burner. A conclusion based on sound philosophy is every bit as valid as a conclusion based on sound science.

Don't forget love, Chris!

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Yeah, like I said, I don't believe it. But I'm not sure I could dismiss it as impossible, either. Though perhaps you could? No idea. I just couldn't stand the idea of thinking of a possibility and not mentioning it.

I don't think free will is nullified by those sorts of things, really. If it was, a mere murderer would be said to have the power to take away our free will. But neither takes away our ability to make independent choices; it just takes away our life.

Again, this is probably a pointless distinction for anyone who's actually dying, but it's an important distinction nonetheless. Killing someone takes away their choices, but not their ability to choose, if you get my meaning.

I'm glad you picked up on the "tough love" God idea, because I think it's very important. Now and then I'll catch myself dismissing an idea about God because I don't like it, and I'll have to remind myself that it can be true, anyway, and if it is it would be for reasons bigger than I can comprehend. And as you say about the "life is bigger than this life" idea, it's not a sentiment that plays well in these discussions, but it's undeniably both convenient and perfectly reasonable.

Re: whether or not some of the "bad" people could be working their way towards becoming good people. I think so, yes. Though at that point we're getting into questions of redemption that I don't understand and probably won't ever claim to. It seems a small thing to accept that, if God exists as I believe He does, that there are easy ways to make allowances for things. Or that the line simply has to be drawn somewhere.

Absolutely true. What I wonder, though, is whether this makes it more objective, or less objective.

This idea seems to pop up all over the place in any political or religious debate. People in favor of public welfare programs will insist that people opposed to it don't know what it's like. People in favor of abortion rights will suggest that people opposed to them should put themselves in the shoes of a young pregnant girl. People against the death penalty should think of how they would feel if their own loved one was killed. Et cetera.

On one hand, this seems reasonable. There are many experiences of heartache and pain that change our opinions about these things. But should they? That, I'm less sure of. I know there are certain things that have an important human element, and must be experienced to be understood. But I don't know if that understanding is the kind that allows us to genuinely comprehend the matter, or just the kind that allows us to genuinely relate to people who have suffered through it.

If I lost a loved one, some of my thoughts on this site would probably seem glib and heartless to me in retrospect. I would understand the pain involved and might come to a different conclusion. But would I really have a better understanding of the issue, or would my emotions simply be clouding my judgments?

After all, there's a reason we don't let the families of a murder victim choose the killer's punishment. There's a reason judges and lawyers have to recuse themselves from trials involving people they know. We all recognize that being close to an event can compromise your objectivity. Is human suffering different? I admit, I'm not sure. I am convinced that the philosophies I'm expressing are sound, but I'm almost as convinced that I'd temper them if I suffered great loss.

This is all just a long way of saying that I agree with you: it does seem to make sense as an explanation, and it does seem glib, anyway.

I think this is trickier, because there are many, many reasons why people can be born with these conditions. A careless mother could cause it. There could be some kind of genetic abnormality that stems from God-knows-what (no pun intended in the phrasing, I promise). There are so many billions of variables that I don't think we can possibly determine whether or not such things are the result of our own actions, directly or indirectly, or some cruel God-assigned fate. I'm generally of the belief that even the seemingly random events have an underlying order that we haven't yet discovered, as you know from many other discussions.

Yes, that'd be a stretch, except insofar as I think all people are deeply flawed (don't know if I'd use the word "evil" to describe most of us, of course). But I certainly wouldn't suggest that people afflicted by life-threatening conditions are reliably worse than your average person.

But, back to the sub-perfect arguments. What don't you think works about it? If we didn't have earthquakes or cancer, why couldn't the same point be made about more frivolous things?

D'oh! And the greatest of these is love! How stupid am I? Don't answer that.

Yes, love. Though, technically, I conciously steered clear of all emotions, if only because if someone wanted to be particularly cold, they could claim that all human emotions can be explained by mere chemical reactions (though none of them would ever say so their girlfriends or mothers). This is another of those things that could, conceivably, be technically true, but seems to fall short of the reality. But yes, there's a lot of philosophy about love which is worth pondering regardless of exactly what it is or how it comes to be.

Sorry for all the posts; necessary to keep things organized. I'll combine these last two, though.

I disagree; religions aren't just random lottery numbers. If one idea is true, its likelihood of being true doesn't go down simply because someone comes up with an alternative idea. Nor are all ideas created equal. A religion's chance of being true is already set, but even from our perspective its odds would be determined by its internal consistency, overall coherence, historical examples, and whatever insight it has about the world at large and how to live in it. Some have more of these attributes than others, and thus are more likely to be true. They don't all get the same odds simply by virtue of existing.

I don't think this follows at all. I think there is an inevitable conflict between freedom and perfect goodness, and that freedom is the better of two imperfect choices. Even a perfectly good being cannot make a better choice than the best of all possible choices. Thus, even a perfectly good God would choose to give us free will, which also makes evil possible. I see no reason why this would demonstrate a lack of goodness in God.

Bring everything to the table man, that's my philosophy too . But yeah, tho i wouldn't dismiss it outright, the nigh zero-evidence in its favour does weaken its case a touch . (Of course Gaia theories started with some huge evidential gaps, altho from a firmer factual basis than that hypothesis - and some of those gaps eventually got filled in surprising ways, such as bacteria influencing weather conditions and such. That said, it now suffers from another issue pertinent to this discussion - the 'Medea' counter-argument: life-earth interactions going down globally 'life-destructive' paths {photosynthesis causing past ice ages etc} - if perhaps beneficially so in the long run]

(****, i've just realised, exponents of this idea really should join the gun-jumpers saying increased storms / hurricanes are definitely due to anthropogenic climate change - kinda fits the bill )

Yeah, i was stretching my own hypothesis too far there . Reckon the disease/disability fallout from natural disasters is still a potential 'free will' problem though, if possibly only on a level of 'scale' (IE the limited options & increased torment thing).

There's a difference between not knowing the exact root cause of an inherited or novel infirmity & suggesting human causation or influence as a strong candidate. Introducing ethical dimensions makes it a bigger leap still.

We can rule-out human-only causation in certain senses after all. Many variants of cancer, for example, seem to pre-date humanity, & many inherited diseases seem to be preserved because the normal gene serves some important evolutionary purpose. No human action, ethical or otherwise, could have influenced these changes back in the day.

I grant you that we might now be modulating these 'pre human' conditions, but establishing to what extent, even in highly-studied fields like cancer, is wrought with difficulties. Certainly the existence of genetic propensity for certain cancers suggests a strong 'nature' component regardless of societal influences (altho i am very strongly in the 'nature-via-nurture' camp, so i'm not saying it's impossible that human actions might influence all known diseases & infirmities. It's just that the evidence for infirmities in particular suggests strong 'deep time' nature factors being predominant).

And all of this still begs the question, why in many cases is the child suffering for the flaws of the parent or grandparent etc - or indeed for the 'environmental' actions of others? It all fits with the tough-love idea, & the 'inscrutability' aspect contained therein, it just seems harsh to a non-believer. Having settled on this idea of Godly benevolence not necessarily tallying with our human perception of it, i'm happy enough to let the suffering go (within this argument ). The 'inscrutable good' angle is a rather stonkingly huge get-out clause when it comes to examining good & bad in 'nature' & human actions though, it seems worth pointing out.

I agree with that angle, just not the bit about 'absence of superpowers also being a potential critique of god'. The critique of deficits from the observable 'norm' seems fine on its own as an 'agnostic' attack on 'natural evil'. Extending it into the fanciful feels like 'reification' more than a justifiable expansion of the argument.

I actually thought I was posting this in this thread.

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You seem to be working under the impression that this universe should have been God's utopia.
Heaven is his perfect reality so why create two?

I've always thought of the universe he created for us as his 'testing grounds' of our worthiness for an immortal soul with free will.
Some will pass, some will fail.

I'm exploring the idea of what a benevolent God might mean, SFG, especially against the backdrop of apparently impartial suffering in the world. Beyond that, as a non believer (or at least, a 'non-aligned' believer), i'm always intrigued by the warp and weft of religious thought. Such as that bit of "heaven exists, therefore..." 'a priori' thinking you just displayed

Sounds like it's proof nature is at work and taking its course.

Why is it, I wonder, that atheists seem always to come from a Christian background and complain about the Christian faith? I mean, have you ever heard of athiests demanding that the statue of Buddah be removed from the corner Chinese cafeteria?