Why Can’t God Be More Like All the Nice People I Know?

I will repeat my question which I do not believe anyone has answered satisfactorily. What does the word "evil" mean? Do we have a definition? How do we know that what some might call evil, is of any consequence to God? Does what the people here describe as evil, have a purpose? What is that purpose? These are a few unanswered questions but certainly not all.

Let’s start off with something we should be able to agree on: juvenile bone cancer, or the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami . These are both “natural evils” which, in the asbence of God, are not the result of any act and so, dreadful as they are, they are not “evil”.

Why are these things evil? Before we can use Aristotelean logic we have to have a definition of terms. Why isn't a recurrent pain, evil? Or nearsightedness? Or a storm during a couple's wedding or a stay at a vacation house? Or Barry failure to make quarterback or my failure to make a foul shot in high school and not allow our team to make the playoffs (actually happened and I felt bad for a year afterwards). And why juvenile bone cancer? Are adults excluded? The whole argument from evil will fall apart when one tries to define evil and see it has certain characteristics that limit just what it is. I maintain all that we call evil is relative and finite and of no consequence except that it is necessary to accomplish God's objectives, which by definition we will never be able to understand completely in this world.jerry

December 14, 2013

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Good to hear KF! Although many people may think, if they heard him asking about such abstract things as 'countable infinities and time', he may not be completely back to being himself yet :) ,,,bornagain77

December 14, 2013

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Hey, BA: I see I made it into your clips vault! You made my day! ;) KF PS: The young man is back to being himself, a good sign. Asking about countable infinities and time just now.kairosfocus

December 14, 2013

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F/N: The argument from evil against God has been a publicly acknowledged failure for 40 years, since Plantinga's free will defense [as opposed to theodicy]. And frankly, it has been in serious trouble since Boethius, at the very least, because of the pre-supposed but typically un-addressed prior problem of the good. I thought all significant atheism debaters had got the message not to try to use something that shows them to be dated and/or manipulative. KF PS: Ever had to deal with a judge who routinely has to deal with pretty awful cases? Very nice, highly cultured, unquestionably upright, and utterly deadly serious about upholding justice in defense of the civil peace from the barbarians inside the gates. (Reminds me of my favourite judge, a former beauty queen.)kairosfocus

December 14, 2013

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Simple solution eh Lloyd? A person need not think any of his actions are evil if he simply imagines that God does not exist?

John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

But before we resign ourselves to a world of irrational/nihilistic denialism Lloyd, let's dig a bit deeper shall we? The problem with your simplistic solution to the problem of evil, of denying God's existence, is that most people with common sense hold that objective morality is self evidently true.

Understanding self-evidence (with a bit of help from Aquinas . . . ) - November 30, 2013 Conclusion: Therefore, the amorality of evolutionary materialist ideology stands exposed as absurd in the face of self-evident moral truths. Where, such moral yardsticks imply that we are under government of OUGHT, leading onward to the issue that there is only one serious explanation for our finding ourselves living in such a world — a theistic one. https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/understanding-self-evidence-with-a-bit-of-help-from-aquinas/

And as the preceding article, in concise fashion, shows, refusing to acknowledge that objective morality is self evidently true results in logical absurdities. Yet to make the case for objective morality even more watertight, since, as a Christian Theist, I hold that God continuously sustains the universe in the infinite power of His being, and since I also hold that God created our 'inmost being', i.e. our souls, then I also hold that morality is a real, objective, tangible, part of reality that we should be able to 'scientifically' detect in some way. I think this quote from Martin Luther King is very fitting as to elucidating what the Theist’s starting presupposition should be for finding objective morality to be a ‘real, tangible, objective’ part of reality:

“The first principle of value that we need to rediscover is this: that all reality hinges on moral foundations. In other words, that this is a moral universe, and that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws.” - Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

And, contrary to what the materialist/atheist would presuppose, we find much evidence to back up Dr. King’s assertion that “there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws”. For instance, we find that babies have an innate moral sense thus directly contradicting the notion that morals are learned as we grow older: For instance, a caring, loving, touch from the baby towards the mother's uterine wall is found very early on in a baby's development:

Wired to Be Social: The Ontogeny of Human Interaction - 2010 Excerpt: Kinematic analysis revealed that movement duration was longer and deceleration time was prolonged for other-directed movements compared to movements directed towards the uterine wall. Similar kinematic profiles were observed for movements directed towards the co-twin and self-directed movements aimed at the eye-region, i.e. the most delicate region of the body. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013199

Even toddlers display a highly developed sense on 'moral justice:

The Moral Life of Babies – May 2010 Excerpt: From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals.,,, A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.,,, Despite their overall preference for good actors over bad, then, babies are drawn to bad actors when those actors are punishing bad behavior. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Please note the highly developed moral sense of justice that was detected in toddlers in the preceding study when even the bad actors enforced moral justice! The following study goes even further in establishing the objective reality of morality by showing that 'Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional':

Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows – November 29, 2012 Excerpt: People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-moral-instant-emotional-brain.html

Of course, despite the inherent wonder of the preceding study which is inexplicable on atheistic materialism, some atheists will, for whatever reason, try to claim that this instantaneous moral compass which humans have, contra the ‘survival of the fittest, dog eat dog’ mantra, 'just so happened' to evolve to be an instant moral reaction to violent actions (despite the fact that Darwinists cannot even explain how a single neuron of the brain arose in the first place). But the following study, completely contrary to what atheists/materialists would presuppose beforehand, shows that morality is embedded on a much deeper ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, level.

Quantum Consciousness – Time Flies Backwards? – Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual….). In Radin and Bierman’s early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html

As well, the following experiment, from Princeton, is very interesting in that it was found that ‘perturbed randomness’ precedes a worldwide ‘moral crisis’:

Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter – Random Number Generators – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007 Mass Consciousness: Perturbed Randomness Before First Plane Struck on 911 – July 29 2012 Excerpt: The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened – but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.,, Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers. ‘It’s Earth-shattering stuff,’ says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the ‘black box’ phenomenon. http://www.network54.com/Forum/594658/thread/1343585136/1343657830/Mass+Consciousness-+Perturbed+Randomness++Before+First+Plane+Struck+on+911 Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research - Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena - publications http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/publications.html

There is simply no coherent explanation that a materialist/atheist can give as to why morally troubling situations are detected prior to our becoming fully aware of them. The materialist/atheist simply has no beyond space and time cause to appeal to to explain why the phenomena should happen! Whereas as a Theist, especially as a Christian Theist who believes that the Lord Jesus Christ died and rose again to pay for our sins, I fully expect morality to have such a deep, ‘spooky’, beyond space and time, effect since, of course, I hold that God sustains the universe, and I also hold that we have ‘transcendent souls’, not limited by time and space, which were created by God.

Mark 10:18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good–except God alone. Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpYeekQkAdc

bornagain77

December 14, 2013

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One doesn't need evil to exist for the Argument from Evil to "work". Let's start off with something we should be able to agree on: juvenile bone cancer, or the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami . These are both "natural evils" which, in the asbence of God, are not the result of any act and so, dreadful as they are, they are not "evil". They could only be called "evil" were there some actor, which in the materialist world is absent. In the abscence of God juvenile bone cancer is not evil, both the theist and atheist should agree on that. Let 's go beyond that and accept, for the purposes of argument,,that no evil exists if God does not exist. So if there is no God there is no evil. Sounds like curtains for the Argument from Evil. But, if there is no God then there s no God! Assume God. Argument from evil No God Assume no God No God Assume either God or no God and we end up at no God.Tony Lloyd

December 14, 2013

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Eric, I think you are argument is: 1. The materialist believes that particles in motion account for everything real meaning, real purpose, real values, etc. “In other words, at some stage a particular arrangement of molecules produces these non-materialistic things.” 2. The theist also believes that “at some level, we are what we are because a bunch of molecules were put together in a particular arrangement — thus creating us.” 3. Thus, the only difference between the materialist view and the theists view is that the materialist has no answer for the question of where did the molecules come from and the theist does (i.e., God). Eric, your view betrays a profound misunderstanding of at least the Christian view of the relation between God and his creation. In fact, it is a view much criticized by David Bentley Hart in his latest book, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Hart writes:

As it happens, the god with whom most modern popular atheism usually concerns itself is one we might call a “demiurge” []: a Greek term that originally meant a kind of public technician or artisan but that came to mean a particular kind of divine “world-maker” or cosmic craftsman. . . . Suffice it to say that the demiurge is a maker, but not a creator in the theological sense; he is an imposer of order, but not the infinite ocean of being that gives existence to all reality ex nihilo. And he is a god who made the universe “back then,” at some specific point in time, as a discrete event within the course of cosmic events, rather than the God whose creative act is an eternal gift of being to the whole of space and time, sustaining all things in existence in every moment.

Your view of God as merely some cosmic tinkerer by whom a “bunch of molecules were put together in a particular arrangement” is not even close to the God of the classical theism of any of the great monotheistic traditions. In the interests of full disclosure, Hart also blasts the ID movement as a manifestation of “demiurge” type thinking, because he mistakenly believes that ID is tied to a mechanistic view of design. That is not true, but why it is not true is a topic beyond the scope of our discussion. Your write:

Thus, the question of whether a particular arrangement of molecules can “produce” or “result in” or “cause to emerge” a living, breathing, thinking, reasoning, loving, intelligent human, is a question that is not necessarily a materialist-vs-design question.

Of course it is a “materialist-vs-design question” question. How can I be so sure? Because I know the answer to another question you ask:

Is it possible that a particular arrangement of molecules can give rise to intelligence, consciousness, etc.?

The answer to that question is, “no, not even in principle” and this has been known since antiquity. Lucretius knew in the first century BC that his materialism could not in principle be reconciled with consciousness, and he postulated his famous ad hoc “swerve” to dodge the issue. But here we are, thousands of years later, and the materialists are no closer to answering the question, “if particles in motion are all there are, how can those particles become aware of themselves?” Hart again:

All of our modern “scientistic” presuppositions may tell us that mind must be entirely a mechanical function or residue of the brain’s neuronal processes, but even the most basic phenomenology of consciousness discloses so vast an incommensurability between physical causation and mental events that it is probably impossible that the latter could ever be wholly reduced to the former. It may well be, in fact, that he widely cherished expectation that neuroscience will one day discover an explanation of consciousness solely within the brain’s electrochemical processes is no less enormous a category error than the expectation that physics will discover the reason for the existence of the material universe. In either case, the problem is not one of pardonably exaggerated hope but of fundamental and incorrigible conceptual confusion . . . It makes sense to say that a photosensitive cutaneous path may be preserved by natural selection and so become the first step toward the camera eye; but there is no meaning-sensitive or category-sensitive patch of the brain or nervous system that can become the first step toward intentionality, because meanings and categories are not physical things to which a neural capacity can correspond, but are instead products of intentional consciousness. By the same token, these questions cannot be answered by trying to show how consciousness can be built up from the raw accumulation of the purely physical systems and subsystems and modular concrescences constituting conscious organisms. At some stage of organic complexity . . .a qualitative abyss still must be bridged.

Barry Arrington

December 13, 2013

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Barry: I think the only way out for the materialist is to propose (as some no doubt do), that at some stage of evolutionary development what was previously but a series of purposeless natural processes gives rise to real meaning, real purpose, real values, etc. In other words, at some stage a particular arrangement of molecules produces these non-materialistic things. Now we might be quick to react and accuse the materialist of an outrageous non-sequitur. But before I do that, I've realized that such a claim is not all that different from a claim made by many theists: namely, that meaning, purpose, intelligence, rationality, and so on (at least insofar as they relate to us mortals) came about because of our creation. That is, at some level, we are what we are because a bunch of molecules were put together in a particular arrangement -- thus creating us (or Adam and Eve or whomever). Thus, the question of whether a particular arrangement of molecules can "produce" or "result in" or "cause to emerge" a living, breathing, thinking, reasoning, loving, intelligent human, is a question that is not necessarily a materialist-vs-design question. Indeed, AI struggles with this very issue (i.e., is it possible?), and does so in a design-centric sense. So the materialist proposes that a particular arrangement of molecules can produce all that we see. The theist (at least of many stripes) proposes that a particular arrangement of molecules can produce much of what we see. The theist presumably also resorts to more esoteric notions of "spirit" or "soul" and the like. There may be excellent reasons for believing in the latter, but I've realized that I cannot be too quick to condemn the former aspect of the materialist creation story -- at least in principle. Is it possible that a particular arrangement of molecules can give rise to intelligence, consciousness, etc.? That is indeed a very interesting question. Whether the probabilistic resources of the known universe give the materialist creation story anything beyond a laughable shot in the dark at producing such an arrangement of molecules, is of course a separate question. ----- As to the specific statement at issue, I am not impressed by the idea that God should conform himself to commonly accepted morality. Why on earth would we think that? The logic is missing somewhere.Eric Anderson

December 13, 2013

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