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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.
It's a slightly more complicated version of whether God can create a rock so big he cannot lift it. Can God create a universe where I simultaneously have freewill and also don't have the ability to do anything outside his will (evil)? Can 0 equal 1? The answer to that question isn't yes/no, it's that the question is invalid. Freewill does not equal non-freewill. It'll confuse some unprepared Sunday School teacher, but that's it.
I agree, this is not a good argument against the existence of god, but it seems to be a fine argument against certain models of god. To get out of the paradox, one must be willing to give up certain notions about god. Either:
I think there are a lot of theists who would have trouble accepting one of these notions, which would keep them stuck within this paradox.
The Orthodox Christian God is all knowing. Evil is the absence of Good. (e.g. darkness is the absence of light)
Similarly this God is all powerful and has already defeated evil through the sanctification of man's nature through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Faith and cooperation with the Holy Spirit is how man communes with God.
Evil is the absence of good. So wherever people sin against God evil exists. Fallen beings exist as well because they too sinned against God but are eternally damned whereas man is redeemable.
God is indescribable and inconceivable. He created a church on Earth so that we can worship him. Worshipping God is good for us not just because God is good to us but because he literally is "good". In a world without God good and evil don't exist.
I appreciate you sharing the model of god suggested by Orthodox Christians, but I fail to see how this information alleviates the Paradox.Could you present your information in a way that relates to the Paradox? I am discussing with good faith, so I am actually curious how a person who believes the Christian model of god would find a way to solve this Paradox.
This being said, I do have some questions and comments regarding your statements.
If god has already defeated evil through Christ, then why is evil so prevalent today, even among those who worship him? God would rather damn people to burn in hell for eternity for doing evil than remove evil from the universe all together? To me, this is, in and of itself, an evil course of action which puts to question god's goodness.
I am not sure if I am understanding you here. If evil is the absence of good, then does this mean that evil and good cannot coexist? In other words, can an action be both evil and good, or does every action fit in a bucket of either good or evil?
As for your final statement regarding how god is good and without god, neither good or evil can exists: I can't help but relate this to the concept in Eastern Philosophy of ying and yang. Not sure if you are familiar with it, but the basic premise is that when you have two opposite concepts (for example, good and evil), one cannot exist without the other. For instance, if we lived in a universe that was only "good" then "good" would not exist, because without "evil" then there doesn't exist a concept of "good". In other words, if everything is "good" then the concept of "good" is irrelevant.
Reading your closing statement and relating it to ying/yang made me think that it kind of goes both ways. If god is good, then evil must exist for god to exist, since evil must be present for good to be present.
It's a very good argument against god, and your second statement is a great addition to it. Omnipotence in itself is impossible, as proven by the rock paradox. An omnipotent being can therefore not exist.
Your free will idea however has a very easy counter argument: If free will is the problem, then god has nothing to offer us - since in the afterlife the same rules would apply. Either a world without suffering is possible, or it isn't. Since the afterlife isn't known to work by taking away our free will, suffering would therefore continue to prevail there as well. If the idea of an afterlife must be possible (as seen in most organized religions) than the idea of a world without suffering must be possible, without taking away something so valuable as our freedom.
The question of God isn't of perfect omnipotence but relative omnipotence. There's plenty of room for a "Godlike" being that does not resolve the paradox of omnipotence. Hell, a guy who sits on a cloud and flings lighting bolts has been sufficient to qualify for eons.
Suffering without purpose. And that's where things get sticky. Because the argument from Evil needs to assume the recipients of suffering are innocent and undeserving. Otherwise it's not evil, just karma.
There's plenty of undeserved suffering in our world, I don't think we have to debate that. Either evil is the consequence of our free will in some convoluted way - then the same will be true in the afterlife - or a paradise without suffering is possible - then an all-loving and omnipotent god would have been able to create just that. It simply disproves the idea that our suffering was somehow unavoidable to an all-powerful god, because that doesn't make sense withing the ideological framework of the abrahamic religions. It must be avoidable. Otherwise paradise would be unthinkable.
Not casually, but as soon as you escalate the scale of the discussion to "X is True Because Evil Exists", you're stuck making these much more formalized and stringent responses.
And I absolutely think - particularly in an era of climate change catastrophe and ecological crisis - that you can argue our collective suffering is a collective punishment for the world we have collectively built.
Hardly convoluted. We act upon each other. And we perceive the actions inflicted on one another as "good" and "evil". If you want to argue a purely deterministic understanding of our behaviors, you can blame God (or the Prime Mover / First Domino / Deist Clockmaker Thing). But once you open up the idea that we own responsibility for our own actions, you abdicate The First Actor from responsibility.
All it disproves is a particular set of assumptions that not even other Christians generally believe. Like, the idea of the Abrahamic God being cruel or capricious or personally flawed isn't even a conclusion you can take away from a straight reading of the Bible. You need one of those Evangelical hype artists to punch up the original material in order to get there.
At the point, you're not arguing against the existence of a deity. You're arguing against the existence of Buddy Jesus and the big smiling sun baby from Teletubbies.
The Argument From Evil can be reduced down to "I don't believe a God exists, because if It did I wouldn't like It."
While you're arguing about all the parts of human suffering that can easily be attributed to humans, other forms of suffering exist as well. Think volcanoes. Think cancer. You're not making a good argument if you're conveniently forgetting that not all suffering has to do with our free will at all.
I think you're misunderstanding the Epicurean paradox. It specifically argues against a very specific idea of god with the characteristics of being omnipotent, omniscient and all-loving at the same time. Call him "buddy jesus" if you will (some call him "God"), but that's exactly the thought exercise we're talking about here. No one is arguing against deities in general. The term is way too broad to have a single conversation about every potential divine entity anyway.
Iceland without volcanoes looks like Greenland. Hawaii without volcanoes doesn't exist at all. Volcanoes aren't evil.
Similarly, cancer is result of a flaw in cellular reproduction. But these flaws in replication are also important in the means by which species evolve over time. Cancer is a consequence of an imperfect but necessary process for life to exist.
You're discounting enormous processes that provide enormous benefits over the order of millennia to marginal discomforts experienced by tiny minorities over the course of months. Why stop at volcanoes and cancer? We could claim that teeth are evil. We could claim that fire and salt are evil. We could claim that emotions are evil.
With the conclusion that such a deity does not deserve to be worshiped, presumably because an immensely powerful but flawed being is not worthy of reciprocal love and devotion. But that's not an argument against God, its an argument against Parents.
Even then, it makes enormous presumptions about the nature of Good and Evil. Volcanoes are Evil Because They Make Me Sad. Cancer is Evil Because It Makes Me Sad. A Perfectly Knowing And Loving God Would Have Done It Better.
It's not a paradox so much as it is a child's whining.
Well, I mean... there's the Atheists.
If you're seriously arguing that there is no unavoidable suffering in this world you're very ignorant towards your fellow human beings. An omnipotent god could create a world without volcanoes and without sickness. Yet he didn't. You're sill not understanding even the starting point of the Epicurean paradox if you don't get that.
Again, you're misunderstanding the conversation. It's not about judgment or whining, it's not about arguing if it's okay for god to be how he is, it's not about any conclusions from gods nature to anything. It's a logical thinking exercise about the premises of the abrahamic idea of god's characteristics and whether they make sense or not.
If the premises are: god is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, the existence of human suffering creates a paradox. (And if you're unsure why just look at the guide above.) What you're saying has nothing to do with that. You don't resolve the paradox by insulting those who find it interesting to think about, you're disqualifying from the conversation. If you believe in a god without those characteristics the Epicurean paradox says nothing about your faith at all.
You're arguing the process of plate tectonics is ontologically wicked. Even then, what so much of this boils down to isn't an objection to suffering so much as a fear of it. The Problem of Evil becomes the Fear of Pain. And I suppose we could argue that the solution to this problem is to simply numb ourselves to the world. But then we're left with the prospect of an opioid induced fugue state is... what? Divine?
To what end? You imagine a world absent changes in the shape of the earth or changes in the human condition. You assert that an omnipotent god could create a vast sea of gray goo where nothing happens. And this would be a Utopia, because it is devoid of anything or anyone that might be discomforting in any conceivable way.
But this sounds like Perdition. Absolutely nightmarish. An eternal hellscape I would wish to escape at any cost.
If god is all-powerful, and all-knowing, and all-loving, I am forced to assume that the suffering he creates isn't evil. And while I cannot understand exactly how or why all these little bits and pieces are necessary, I can confidently assert that they are worthy of praise and admiration.
But it is also perfectly possible that all of this exists without a Singular Perfect Entity at its origin. We are functions of our material conditions and what we perceive as suffering is simply our biological urge to change the world around us. Our dissatisfaction is a motivating force, in the same way that the inner heat from the earth's core is a motivating force for the plates floating on the magma sea above it.
If we don't live in an ideal space, it is only because we have not yet carved it out for ourselves and for our progeny. And that we never will create a perfect Utopia, because a frictionless world wouldn't be one we'd want to live in anyway.
Not at all. You're still fighting a strawman. The existence of volcanoes and cancer isn't evil. If it was however consciously created by an omnipotent and omniscient being, that would be evil. The paradox doesn't relate to our reality itself, only to the claim of said characteristics in a god in relation to said reality. You still seem confused about that part.
If you truly cannot a reality with less suffering than ours you are truly unimaginative, mate. Or completely ignorant to the suffering that exists in this world. Or maybe both.
Right, which is why this is the most obvious answer to the Epicurean paradox: This singular perfect entity doesn't exist. Congratulation, you've now arrived at the same conclusion as Epicurus 2.5 thousand years ago.
That doesn't follow
If I suddenly acquired a million dollars and your home address and use them to bulldoze your living room, would that be evil?
Mean spirited, certainly. But the volcano's going to be here long before you are. This is more akin to you building your house on a bulldozer and then claiming I'm evil if I try to use it.
We're talking about a concept of god who's omnicscient, don't forget that. In your metaphor I knew perfetcly well beforehand were you would build your house and consciously put my bulldozer there, knowing it would one day destroy your home.
Using my power and knowledge to so something that will harm you is mean spirited. The same must be said for god. Exceptions would be if god didn't have another choice or didn't know better. Both of those are addressed in the Epicurean paradox.
An omnipotent god would have been able to build a world without suffering. His volcanoes would maybe spray rainbows.
God didn't build a world without suffering. Therefore we can conclude: It is not possible for him to be at the same time fully able and willing to do so. Or to put it more formally: A omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving god is incompatible with a world that includes suffering.
Within the context of Free Will, which sets up another paradox. "How can you be omniscient if I've got the ability to behave unexpectedly?"
And that's where you get into questions of degree. I can be a mechanic who knows how a car engine works without accounting for every particle within the engine block. To a novice, I might look omniscient simply because I've got experience and familiarity with a particular problem. But then you come back and insist "If you were a real automotive mechanic, the engine would never break!" What even are we arguing, at that point?
I'm walking across a yard. Under my feet, there are thousands of tiny creatures crawling about. I have the capacity and the information necessary to see these creatures, if I spend the time and energy. But instead of checking under every footfall for an ant, I wander carelessly through the yard.
Does this mean I am ontologically evil, or simply in a hurry?
Suffering is a consequence of our human condition. We experience discomfort and pain as a motivating force, extorting us to change. To build a world - at least, to build a modern world - some degree of suffering is necessary.
I would not consider a world devoid of feeling one that was compatible with an all-loving god. Numbness is not a virtue.
Not at all. The premise is "all-knowing". That is in fact a mechanic who's able to account for every particle within the engine block.
You are not all-powerful. The premise says: god is. If you were easily able to spare all those small insects, deciding to kill them anyway would make you a psychopath.
Our human condition, within the scenario of the thinking exercise, was very consciously created that way by god.
An all-powerful god would have been able to create a reality with feeling, but without suffering. And religion already claims that he can - that's the idea of heaven or paradise.
You don't need to be omniscient to appear to be to a sufficiently limited observer.
Compared to an ant, I am like unto the Titans of ancient Greek Mythology. I don't need to be omnipotent for an ant to assume I am.
A condition which drives us to Go Forth and Multiply. Not to languish in Eden for eternity.
The insistence that nothing should ever be unpleasant at any time for any reason is the mentality of a toddler.
Yeah, but the premise of the abrahamic god says he is, that's the point.
Back to the insults? That's weak. Maybe you've never experiences anything truly horrible in your life. Good for you! Bad for you for forgetting about the rest of us though, really, that's actually pretty rude. You're reinforcing the notion that the only way christians can get out of the paradox is by becoming very, very ignorant.
Imagine a young child that painfully dies of cancer. The parents ask: How could god let that happen? How can he be all powerful and not save our sweet child from all this unnecessary pain?
What would you answer them?
The premise written from the perspective of a bunch of Bronze Age shepherds, yes.
If you've ever dealt with a toddler before, this is exactly how they behave. A great screaming and stomping and flailing if they can't get what they want right this instant. Is the existence of a loving god refuted by a screaming toddler? Or are humans themselves expected to show any degree of stoicism in moments of adversity?
Does love mean the total absence of discomfort? How is that even possible when love itself is a tumultuous experience?
You could address it biologically. The child could only be born thanks to the mechanisms of life that perpetrated the cancer. This is a cycle of life and we take the good with the bad, because that's how our mortal forms function.
You could address it medically. Yes, the cancer was painful, but the child was lucky enough to be born into a world of opioids and physicians skillful enough to ease them through the worst of it. This proves we have the tools we need even in the face of misfortune.
You could answer by saying this you had this rare happy moment together, that the child's time on this earth was a blessing and the opportunity to be with that child was a blessing. That we all live and die, and to spend your last moments surrounded by loved ones is by far one of the better ways to leave the world. The pain you feel now is just the reflection of the love you had, and that this love is only possible in a world with a loving god at its center.
You could say that this is a call to action to make the world a better place for other children and parents. That everyone should enjoy the kind of love and care you showered upon your sick child. And so you're going to find other sick children in need of care and care for them as you cared for your own.
Lots of ways to approach this tragedy that don't boil down to "God must be evil, because something bad happened to us."
Which is precisely what the Epicurean paradox is about.
Mate I'm sorry but if you still don't understand what the paradox says in the first place this is a waste of time. Obviously you want to talk about something that hast nothing to do with the paradox itself. I'll leave you to it.
The paradox assumes a much more substantive understanding of philosophy in its axioms.
Right back at you.
How is that an counterargument? Epicurus says: Those axioms create a paradox, they must be wrong. You're saying: Yeah well your axioms are too substantive. You are agreeing that the three premises can't be true. Everything else you've talked about was simply missing the point.
The Epicurean paradox does nothing else than to discuss if the premises as phrased can be true. If you talk about an idea outside those premises you've already missed the mark.
The Epicurian rebuttal to the Bronze Age understanding of omniscience can be resolved by asserting "God is less omniscient than we thought". That's it. And there are plenty of readings of Old Testament that imply the Abrahamic God isn't perfectly omniscient. Hell, the Garden of Eden myth asserts God isn't perfectly omniscient.
It asserts a paradox of infinities, rather than a non-existence of God.
It never attempted to prove non-existence. This is what you misunderstood from the beginning.
In what way is this an argument against God? This is an argument against a god that is all-knowing all-powerful and all-benevolent.
Also your idea of free will is coming loaded with some major baggage.
My bad, that baggage is the capital G God primarily referring to Abrahamic tradition God. Zeus doesn't pass the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent religion check, but Yahweh and Allah definitely have those claimed tied pretty innately to their being.
That is because this isn't an argument against god. It is simply a question that resulted in a Paradox about the character of god as described by the Church
What? the question is not invalid. it is a yes/no, the *implications" of that yes or no however can carry significant correlations
yeah, nobody is making this crazy claim...
Yeah, probably would have been better to use dividing by 0 instead of 0=1 as the example, but the point still stands.
Yes/no isn't a valid answer to a paradox. Can God create a universe where there is freewill and there isn't freewill? Can God create a rock so large he can't lift it? Can he shit so big he can't flush it? All interesting, but in the end invalid questions. But shoehorning in a yes/no when the real answer is just undefined is incorrect.
It's good fun for an internet comment section, or irritating some youth group leader, but in the end not a useful question.
I don't get why you say they are not valid questions? I see nothing invalid in them. Instead it seems to me you seem to disagree with the consequences such "yes/no" answers carry and are preemptively dismissing them
Overall this paradox is a thought experiment, as such, even in the absence of a concrete answer, it is still a very valid and valuable question
What's your logic with 0 = 1?
Can you restate without math?
It's similar to the "unstoppable force meets an immovable object" thought experiment.
They can't both exist, just like 0 can't be the same as 1. If you somehow "forced" it to be true because an all powerful deity made it so, the logic breaks, and the answer is effectively useless to us.
So then if a deity made freewill, there MUST be evil, or at least the capability of it. My metaphor is sorta inverted, but hopefully it makes sense.
It very quickly gets into philosophy. We consider the ability to do evil to be part of our free will, but we don’t consider the ability for us to do djskwjejrj to be part of our free will. We still have free will, even though we cannot djskwjejrj.
Likewise, if we lived in a world that God created without the ability to do evil, but otherwise we had free will, we wouldn’t know of the limitations to our free will - therefore we’d believe we still had it. And in that world, we may also be able to djskwjejrj.
(I just keyboard-smashed to come up with that term, hopefully the metaphor carries.)
0 and 1 are not the same thing. Can an all powerful being make them the same thing? Yes, but doing so would destroy the very concept of logic and render this whole exercise that is existence pointless. The theoretical world in which 0 and 1 are the same thing (or true and false, or hot and cold) does not rely on the rules of logic that underpin all human thought. You are looking at a return to the Ginnungagap; the void before reality. The darkness that existed before the first day.
Of course, the "free will" thingy doesn't explain away all the bad stuff in the world. It explains why we have adultery and murder and nazis. But it doesn't explain why babies get cancer. And the reason that babies get cancer is that the gods do not know everything, they can't fix everything, and besides, they wouldn't if they could because they don't care. The paradox of baby cancer only works on monotheistic religions, and even then only a tiny percentage of them.
Alright so your argument about free will only really adds up if you are an absolutist about free will. Imagine a perfect utopian paradise of a world. All are free to do whatever they want so long as it is not "evil." Your definition of evil can vary but presumably an omniscient god would have a pretty good idea of what that means. Rhe mwans of prevention xouls be literally anything, because y'know omnipotent and omniscient, including just creating people that simply do not have the capacity for evil. Would the people in that world not have free will? Just because there are some things they cannot do does not mean that in my eye. I can't fly or bite my own finger off or perceive and manipulate the fabric of the universe, does that mean I don't have free will? IMO the only way your position here is logically consistant is if you do take the absolutist position that in order to have free will you must be omnipotent yourself, otherwise there will always be things you cannot do.
I think I would say that the people living in that utopia do not have free will. Their will is not their own, it's God's will imposed on them. They can operate within its confines and limits, but it is externally, not internally defined.
I think you have to separate out two things that are often conflated together, freedom of will and freedom of action. The difference is with freedom of will, I can want to fly, and with freedom of action, I can fly if I want to.
It reminds me of the classic Henry Ford quote about having your car in any color you want, as long as it's black. If I want a black car, fine. If I want a white car, that's a problem.
That's already the case with humans. There are things that a human CAN do that I would never do. The same goes for you and every other human. Are you saying I don't have free will because there are actions that I COULD do but never would? Because the same goes for evil. God could have made a world where people COULD do evil things but never chose to. Therefore the only reason to have made not only people who COULD choose evil, but also people who DO choose evil, is because he wanted some people to be punished for being made in a way that they would do things he already knew they would do and chose to make them anyways.
We live in a world right now where people can do good things but don't, and they can also do evil things, but they don't. That's free will.
What I am saying that free will is an internal condition, it's yours. If an external force is placing hard limits and boundaries on your will, it fundamentally cannot be free. Best case, it's limited. Worst case, it's nonexistent.
The traditional definition of evil for many religions, particularly the Abrahamic ones, is anything that runs contrary to the laws/decrees of God is evil. Forced conformation to that, regardless of how it's done, cannot leave people with free will. God creates laws. God creates a law that forces compliance to his laws. By forcing me to choose to comply, there is no real choice (another paradox), and that fundamentally is not free.
I don't think that God in this case needs people to choose evil to punish them, but there are billions of people who think Hell is super real and probably want for both of us to burn there, and they'd probably disagree. I think it is an safer assumption to simply say if that people who make a choice, whether it's good or evil, are better in aggregate than people who can make no choice at all.