Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:29 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 11:51 pm
Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Nov 15, 2020 8:32 pm
Suffering exists.
Okay, I grant that it does.
If God is all powerful and all good He will not allow suffering ,
Is that reasonable to assert? I see you realize that's uncertain, and take it back a bit with the next phrase...
...perhaps a little suffering so we know what is the nature of good.
Ah. You can see that some suffering would be necessary in order to establish what 'good' was? So a universe with no suffering in it would not actually be as ultimately a "good" place as one in which people experienced
some suffering, but with it had knowledge of the Good? Just asking.
How much suffering would be reasonable?
But an all powerful and all good Being would not allow the degree of suffering we poor men know about.
So you believe the present level of suffering is more than the advantage above requires? And it's
unreasonably more?
How did you arrive at that assessment?
(The rest of the previous response is a summary, as I may take it?)
"How much suffering would be reasonable?" asked Immanuel Can. How much do you think, Mannie?
I don't think about it that way, B. I'm simply trying to trace your own argument to find out where it leads...I can't lead off on that one myself.
I need not remind you of atrocities in the newspapers every day.
No, of course not. But I already conceded to you as a starting point that suffering exists. The question has to be, "How much suffering is justified," then...that is, assuming you're committed to your claim that
some measure of it is reasonable so that people can grasp "good" as well.
Before we go saying, "This is too much suffering," we must have some idea of what the tipping point is, so as to say definitively that the present level of suffering in the world exceeds it. Otherwise, how do we know that the world does not have exactly
the right proportions of good and evil in it?
Does that not seem reasonable?
If you or I were a good and all powerful god we would not allow those to happen.
But I am thankful, and I'm sure you are too, that neither of us IS God. So what we think we "would" do or "would not" do is surely a suspect measure of what a God with comprehensive knowledge of both the universe and history and with a definite teleological direction in view would do. Our dismay at evil may be perfectly normal, perfectly human; but is it correct to suppose we understand enough of the big picture to say how and why the balance is off, and what it really ought to be?
You nor anyone else can you justify your god's permitting the sheer unadulterated evil in the world.
I'm not trying to do so. I'm merely inviting you to develop your justification of your concern at evil. After all, if there's no God, then there's no such thing as "evil" either. For then, what IS simply IS; and then one cannot justify any claim that anything at all is
objectively evil...only
subjectively, and what is human subjectivity when posited against the existing order of the universe? Why should your voice or my voice prevail, when we indict the existing order of things as "evil"? The universe, then, would neither know nor care for our objection. And why should it?
And that seems too little to say about the kinds of evils you want to object to, does it not?
But let us flesh that out better: what evidence do you propose that the level of evil in the world, or the level of suffering, has gone beyond the level at which it is even possible for an omniscient God to have reason to allow it?