Monday, November 7, 2016
Evil? -- No Problem
In sections X and XI, Philo and Demea catalogue human misery and Philo uses this evidence to prove that either God does NOT exist or He is NOT benevolent. Is this argument sound? If not, where does the argument fail? What about the possibility that suffering is part of some great good like free will or character development (a theodicy)?
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Philo makes the argument that if god existed there would not be suffering. God is defined as being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Which means he would, therefore know about human suffering and know how to prevent it, want to prevent suffering, and actively prevent said suffering. But suffering exists in the world around us today which must mean that either god does not exist or there is something wrong with the premises. I find the argument to be fairly convincing and I don't necessarily think it is flawed as much as I believe that free will is the trade off that it doesn't account for. I think that it is quite possible that the reason that we have suffering in the world today is because we create said suffering by our own free will. Maybe, god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent but allows humans the ability act as the wish even if they hurt one another. We would all rather have free will then be forced to act a certain way that prevents us from doing what we wish to do so the trade off is clear. We all choose to suffer a bit (some of us a lot) in order to acquire the ability to do as we please...but following the same logic I'm not sure why a benevolent god would actively choose to make this trade off instead of end suffering. So I come to the same conclusion as Philo...god must not exist or he is not one of the three traits used to describe him.
ReplyDeleteIn sections X and XI of Hulme’s Dialogues concerning natural religion, Philo is able to prove that there are only two possibilities for god in our world, that God can either exist or he is not benevolent. This is a problem because we define God to be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. His argument goes like this: the universe is full of suffering. If god is omnipotent, he can prevent suffering. If God is omnibenevolent, he wants to end suffering. If God is omniscient he knows suffering exists and how to stop it. Therefore since we know suffering exists, that either God doesn’t exist, or he is not something that we defined him to be. This argument is not sound because you have to consider the possibilities of the world. There are only four possibilities of combinations of free will or suffering, either there can be free will with suffering or no suffering, or there can be no free will with suffering or no suffering. From this we can eliminate two possibilities, that there is free will and no suffering and there is no free will and suffering. We know from our experiences that neither of these can be possible. This leaves two possibilities: free will and suffering, and no free will and no suffering. I believe that God would think that giving us a world with free will will always be better than having a world with no free will, even when taking into account suffering. This is because in the world with free will we will be able to make the choices that can either benefit us to cause no suffering or make poor choices.
ReplyDeleteIn Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume presents an argument that says that God cannot be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omnipresent at the same time. He says this because, if we was all of those things, then there would never be any human suffering. However, there are many things wrong with this argument. First, as stated by several people before me, in order to end human suffering, then God would have to end free will. Ending free will is a worse evil than suffering, so human suffering still exists. Someone brought up an interesting argument in class, that said that, at least God can end natural disasters. I think this is a clever argument, but can be refuted. Many natural disasters are influenced by human actions. For example, I read in many places that global warming is making hurricanes worse, and fracking makes earthquakes more frequent and intense, etc. In additions (this leads to my second point) suffering, through human actions or disasters, can actually be good for us. Natural disasters have a tendency to bring families and communities together. If someone is bullied, that person tends to grow up a little tougher. If someone loses a loved one to war or crime, or even just natural causes, that family becomes closer, and we all learn to appreciate life, love, and happiness a little bit more. If there was no suffering, humans would probably be a lot less happy, moral, and unified, since we won't know what it is like to be unhappy, immoral, and isolated. God can still have our best interests at heart, even if it doesn't seem like it all the time, and he can still be omnibenevolent, omnipresent, and omnipotent, while there is still suffering in the world.
ReplyDeleteIn sections X and XI of David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Demea and Philo attempt to disprove Cleanthes’s claim that God exists by disputing God’s key traditional traits (which are his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence). As a whole, Demea and Philo appear to have made a convincing argument (which disproves either God’s benevolence or his omnipotence and omniscience), but they could be completely mistaken upon the possibility of a free-will based society. Their argument starts off by describing the role of misery and its presence throughout the world: “Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a person crowded with malefactors and debtors, and a field of battle strewed with car cases” (Hume 61). With this idea of human suffering, Phil and Demea return to the traditional qualities of God to see if they are in alignment with God’s response to human suffering. For instance, they argue that if such a being is truly omnipotent, he should be completely capable of putting an end to this human misery. Also, if God is truly omniscient, he should have the knowledge of how to end this misery as well. Finally, keeping the two previous premises in mind, God’s omnibenevolence should compel him to stop suffering in the world, as an omnibenevolent being would want to end human suffering since he is good-natured. (Hume 63). This premise is essentially the ‘Achilles heel’ of the entire argument – If someone could prove that the existence of misery somehow doesn’t make God not omnibenevolent, then the whole argument would collapse; if God wouldn’t want to get rid of suffering in the world, it is still entirely possible that he could possess the knowledge and power to end it. The idea of free-will is the perfect objection to this argument. Specifically, if God had intended for free-will to exist, then misery must also have to exist so that one could make mistakes while others could make achievements. However, one could still dispute this by asking: “How does free-will trump the end to all suffering?” Now, for the sake of this question, let’s imagine a world in which suffering does not exist. While such an idea is nearly if not impossible to comprehend, I would attempt to make the argument that such a world wouldn’t actually be as rewarding and fulfilling as one with the inclusion of free will and suffering. Specifically, in a world where suffering does not exist, wouldn’t people ever get ‘bored’ of joy? In other words, since no feelings of misery exist, this could significantly degrade the feeling of joy and happiness (since one could never experience a feeling such as accomplishment after long, tedious work for instance).
ReplyDeleteMany choose to utilize the concept of human suffering in an attempt to disprove G-d’s existence, claiming that if G-d were truly all good, all knowing, and all powerful there would be no suffering at all. But there are many arguments, known as theodicies, which reply to this idea, imagining various ways in which one can explain suffering consistent with G-d’s existence. One such argument states that suffering exists to strengthen us, and without it we would be weak and useless in the world. Proponents of this belief would claim that G-d has us suffer for the best reasons, to make us better, stronger people. But still, this claim is not consistent with G-d’s omnipotency, as if he is truly all powerful, should’t he be able to strengthen us without suffering? And even further, how can suffering, when taken to the extreme, make us stronger if it eventually may kill us?
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps there is another explanation for why G-d has us suffer, found by looking back to the classical depiction of G-d as jealous and often vengeful. G-d is portrayed in the Bible at times to be teaching lessons to his creations, but not always in the kindest ways. Every story in the Old and New Testament can be seen as having a clear moral, a lesson to be learned from the symbolic nature of the stories. Perhaps we are living a modern day version of this, learning from our suffering what we could never learn from a perfect life. Maybe G-d is utilizing negative reinforcement in the form of suffering to strengthen us, or even to test us or teach us lessons essential to humanity that cannot be learned any other way.
In class, we defined God as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being. Therefore, if he is omnibenevolent, he wants good things to happen to us. If he is omnipotent, he can make good things happen and prevent suffering. If he is omniscient, he knows how to stop bad things and prevent suffering. So if God exists, there must not be any suffering in this world right? unfortunately there is a problem with this. The universe is full of suffering and evil. For example, Hume muses that “Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a person crowded with malefactors and debtors, and a field of battle strewed with carcasses” (Hume 61). We all see this kind of suffering every day and it is impossible to say that bad things do not happen. Oh no, that means that God doesn’t exist! What hope do we have if God isn’t real? FEAR NOT! There is a loophole. The first objection I have to this argument is about the nature of joy. If we really lived in a world that was completely devoid of all suffering and ill, we would never experience suffering or anything bad and we wouldn’t know what bad actually felt like. If that was the case, can it be said that we could still understand happiness? There would be nothing with which to contrast our joy and happiness, and thus we wouldn’t be able to perceive the difference, and every emotion we felt would be totally neutral. We would be robots who would go around doing the same things, never feeling any real emotions or making any of our own choices. This is important because in order for us to really be ourselves, God must allow us to have free will. If we have free will, then we can make our own decisions, and more importantly it means that we can make wrong decisions. If we make wrong choices, it can cause suffering that cannot be prevented by God because it is natural consequence from our decisions. Rather than not existing, God must exist because we have the opportunity to choose for ourselves to have good things happen. Because of our free will, he cannot help us from natural consequences without taking away our free agency, but can bless us for making the right decisions, which is why there are also good things that happen in our lives. Sometimes miracles happen that may not be direct consequences of our decisions, but are most always traceable to living one of the laws set down by God and his messengers. Now this is partly religious speculation, but I think it makes sense, as long as you accept that miracles can happen and that blessings can be received by those who ask for them and are worthy of them.
ReplyDeleteIn sections X and XI of David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Philo attempts to prove that either God does not exist or if He does, He is not benevolent due to the fact that there is suffering in the world. Philo begins his argument by describing the suffering the world. He then goes on to list each of God’s aspects (omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence) and how they apply to suffering. First, if God is omnipotent, he can prevent suffering. Second, if God is omniscient, He know that there is suffering and knows how to prevent suffering. And lastly, if God is omnibenevolent, He wants to prevent suffering. Thus, since there is still suffering in the world, Philo concludes that God cannot exist or if He does, He is not omnibenevolent.
ReplyDeleteWhile this seems like a sound argument, Cleanthes has an equally valid response. Cleanthes argues that God’s omnipotence does have limits. He cannot do the impossible like create a rock that He cannot lift, make a four-sided triangle or make something both true and untrue. Instead God is relegated to the scope of what is possible. Cleanthes then explains that suffering is caused by humans and the only way to rid the world of suffering is to take away humans’ free will. Free will though is ultimate form of good that God can give humans, because free will lets us make our own choices and live our own lives. Thus, since God cannot end suffering without taking away free will and since God is omnibenevolent, He must protect free will and allow for suffering to occur in the world.