This video led to the following discussion.
Julio Hernandez commented
I fail to recognize anything remotely similar to the “problem of evil” here…
I, Ken Ammi, replied
Data would be willing to suffer in exchange for certain experiences. This touches upon the (theological) problem of evil since if God has sufficient reason(s) for allowing it then it is not a problem: reason(s) such as bringing about a greater good.
jursamaj noted
- If God were omnipotent (as generally asserted) then he could bring about that greater good without the evil. Anything less is no omnipotence.
- If we can’t see a greater good, we can’t use it to excuse the evil we can see. That good remains hypothetical.
- That Data would be willing to suffer for a good he feels outweighs the suffering has no connection to the actions of an omnipotent good. Data knows that omnipotence isn’t an option, he just weighing the options that could be available.
- Spiner is speaking from a script. The words don’t really reflect what such an android would choose, but what a human thinks this android would choose. It’s incoherent, because if the android can’t feel, how could it feel it was missing something?
Ken Ammi
Friend, you began with a conclusion based on hidden assumptions so first back up and tell us how does your worldview 1) provide a premise for truth, logic, and ethics, 2) for adhering to them, and 3) for demanding that others do likewise?
Johnny Carcinogen chimed in thusly
I believe I must agree with some of the points laid out by others in the comments, that this does speak directly to the problem of evil. However, what you offer is something of an interesting argument, that evil exists in much the same way that we can only know and experience positive and pleasurable emotions/experiences because we have the negative and unpleasurable emotions/experiences to compare them to.
I must, as I started, disagree. If a creator being were infinitely omnipotent, then they would be to create a method for recognizing good without the existence of evil& the harm that evil does to people.
Ken Ammi
Well, I argued no such thing, actually, but noted “if God has sufficient reason(s) for allowing it then it is not a problem: reason(s) such as bringing about a greater good.”
jursamaj
- One does not “adhere” to truth and logic, any more than one “adheres” to physics.
- None of those issues has anything to do with the problem of evil.
- If it did, your worldview would do no better.
Ken Ammi
Seems you decided to simply side-step 1), you commented on 2), and implied a doing away with 3) along the way. Well, you can attempt to not adhere to physics and may die as a result and the same could be said about logic yet, you could not adhere to logic and survive but simply be mistaken. Thus, “One does not ‘adhere’ to truth and logic, any more than one ‘adheres’ to physics” is a category error and if you do not adhere to logic then we cannot even have a discussion. You seem to not see how 1), 2) and 3) are the very foundation upon which to even have a discussion about the problems (plural, actually) of evils (plural, actually) since without answering those then there cannot even be a discussion beyond you asserting emotional statements.
jursamaj
You are mistakens (plural, actually). [👈🏼that’s a joke, in case you didn’t get it]
I did in fact comment on all 3 of your points, in that they are irrelevant to the discussion of the Problem of Evil, and that your worldview doesn’t explain them any better than mine.
Truth, logic, and physics simply are. They aren’t laws that demand adherence, as political laws do. You can choose to speed or not. You don’t “adhere” to physics when you fall, because you have no choice in the matter. You can take advantage of physics, to do things, but that isn’t adherence. Likewise with truth and logic. Ethics aren’t even involved in the Problem of Evil. The POE uses defined terms, in ways that don’t involve making ethical judgements. While truth & logic may well be foundational, we both already agree those are real, so neither of us needs to justify them.
I have no idea what you mean by “implied a doing away with 3) along the way”.
To address your actual argument, which you stated to Johnny, that God could be allowing evil to accomplish a greater good, you clearly don’t understand omnipotence. An omnipotent god could accomplish that greater good without evil. That is why all christian arguments on the POE fail.
Ken Ammi
“mistakens”? I love it and will have to remember that one.
If truth, logic and ethics are irrelevant to the discussion of the problem(s) of evil(s) (plural, actually). [👈🏼that’s NOT a joke, in case you didn’t get it] then it matters not nor can we discuss it since there is no imperative to be truthful, logical or ethical so we
can both say whatever we want however truthful or not, however logical or not, and there are no ethics holding our metaphorical feet to the fire of being truthful and logical within discussions.
For example, when you say “your worldview doesn’t explain them any better than mine” you are basing that on a hidden assumption of truth and logic.
You must be an Atheist to say “Truth, logic, and physics simply are” since that will be your ultimate reply to any meta issue: it just is.
Also, since on your worldview, “They aren’t laws that demand adherence” then you just destroyed the aforementioned ability to have discussions and hold each other accountable for the validity of our
statements.
But when you say “They aren’t laws that demand adherence, as political laws do” you seem to not have considered the “laws” of logic. For example, before humans recognized logic did the universe both exist and also not exist in the same sense at the same time?
When you fall you, by definition, adhere to physics which is why you fall in the first place: it is not about choice, it is about that it is a law acting upon you. Granted, one can be illogical and still survive (yet, in some cases they can be illogical and not survive it) but that does not make it any less a set of laws.
If “Ethics aren’t even involved in the Problem of Evil” then there is not POE as ethics is the very premise upon which the POE is based–which is why it is just an Atheist activist ruse to complain about it, of course.
That we agree that “truth & logic may well be foundational…are real,” even if they “simply are” but the problem is that on an Atheist view there is no imperative to adhere to them.
Any viable worldview would have to account for good and evil (not the pseudo-good and pseudo-evil of an Atheist worldview which makes those terms and concepts purely emotive and subjective), beautiful acts of love and horrible acts of violence, etc., etc., etc. and we find that the Biblical worldview is that God created things according to His will, there was a fall, creation will be redeemed, and then God will have accomplish that greater, ultimate, good after which there will be no more evil. This brings us back around to that God did things in the manner in which He did them and for His own reasons—and since you say that truth, logic and ethics “are irrelevant to the discussion of the Problem of Evil…aren’t laws that demand adherence” then you sawed off the branch upon which you sit.
Keep in mind that even if “all christian arguments on the POE fail” you are still not rid of the POE (even if you fall for actually taking the Atheist worldview which says, “Evil? What evil?” as a denial tactic).
jursamaj
You make a lot of unsupportable assertions, most of which are irrelevant to the POE. It’s really quite simple:
- We agree that there is evil in the world.
- If there is an omnipotent god, it could have accomplished any goal without evil. (By definition of “omnipotent”.)
- If that omnipotent god created everything, then it created that evil. (Since everything that exists is part of that “created everything”.)
- An all-loving being doesn’t intentionally create evil. (If you disagree, then we aren’t talking about the same definition of “loving”.)
The obvious conclusion is that any such omnipotent creator can’t possibly by all-loving. That is the POE. [Note that atheists don’t have to answer the POE, because the POE is specifically about how an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving god can exist in a world that has evil. Since atheists don’t claim such a being exists, there is no POE for them to answer. If you are lumping anything else into the POE, you simply don’t understand the POE.]
A note on one of your sillier assertions, that atheistic ideas of good & evil are subjective: all ideas of good & evil are subjective. If you say it comes from God, and God has a mind, then that is subjective by definition. Something that is objective is true even if no mind is around to think about it.
Ken Ammi
This is getting interestinger and interestinger.
Well, friend, we may “agree that there is evil in the world” but one man’s evil is another man’s good—as we shall see.
Regarding “If there is an omnipotent god, it could have accomplished any goal without evil” you say “By definition of ‘omnipotent’” but bypass the definition of “evil.”
In any case, omnipotence does not mean doing what you subjectively think is best. If God has a reason for having done it a certain way then that too would be omnipotence: knowing better and doing it that way.
On Atheism however, evil is even worse because the evil doer enjoys it and ultimately gets away with it and/or evil becomes a good such as when, for example, some of the most famous Atheists argue that rape played a beneficial role in human evolution—and on evolution, the death of the less fit is a beneficial good.
Thus, the P(s)OE(s) are some of the best reasons for rejecting Atheism. Moreover, Atheist cannot reject God due to the P(s)OE(s) for the very reason that an Atheist universe is one whereby there is no objective, absolute, universal evil which means the Atheist cuts off the branch on which she sits in order to voice her condemnation or evil and rejection of God.
When it comes to God creating evil the issues are that which is known as God’s perfect will vs. God’s permissive will.
This also ties in with “If that omnipotent god created everything, then it created that evil” the reply to which is that the omnipotent God did not created everything, did not created evil, “An all-loving being doesn’t intentionally create evil.”
Now, I refer to P(s)OE(s) because there is not singular problem of evil but there are multiple problems of evils. Thus, when you say “atheists don’t have to answer the POE, because the POE is specifically about how an omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving god can exist in a world that has evil” is only one aspect of it.
If an Atheist rejects God due to one of the PsOEs then, guess what, nothing has changed—and now they do not even have God to blame for it anymore.
Thus, the Atheist will they take any of the routes I noted: claim there is not absolute evil, claim that evil is or can be good, guarantee that evil just is and is un-redeemable, or whatever incoherent consoling delusion they may chose.
When you say “all ideas of good & evil are subjective” you must understand that you just utterly discredited your own arguments since you cannot even any longer claim there even exists any such thing as the POE since you have defined the E out of existence.
jursamaj
By the definition of ‘omnipotence’, an omnipotent god could have created a world with evil or a world without evil. We don’t need to define that evil, because the bible story does it for us. By God’s own standard, it created a world with evil, and by God’s own standard, evil must be avoided. Thus, by God’s own standard, it committed an evil act, and is not perfectly good. That is the Problem of Evil (not “only one aspect of it”, that’s the whole thing). Even if you could show atheism to be incoherent (which you can’t) that would not save the bible story from incoherence.
There is no point in re-addressing your other babble, when you refuse to look at the actual point.
Ken Ammi
It is 100% un-biblical that God “created a world with evil.”
Atheism is incoherent by definition: it fails before it even beings.
For example, none of what you said is the least bit coherent on Atheism since you are appealing to logic, which your worldview cannot account for, and that you should adhere to it, which your worldview cannot account for, and that others should do likewise, which your worldview cannot account for since there is no universal imperative to do so.
There are PsOEs since, for example, a person murdering another person is an evil but so is a hurricane killing a person is also an evil but they are very different.
If you reject God due to the a POE you discredit yourself from rejecting God due to the a POE since the result would be the collapse of the premise upon which you sought to discredit God in the first place.
jursamaj
Unbiblical? Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
And even if it were denied in the bible, that would just mean the was incorrect. If a god created everything that exist (besides itself) and evil exists, then necessarily that god created that evil. That the writers of the bible weren’t able to see the obvious logical consequences of their claims simply proves that the bible was not in any sense created by an omniscient & honest being.
No worldview needs to or can “account for logic”. Logic is just part of the rules humans have written down to describe the world. If the universe behaved in a different way, then logic would have different axioms. If that is simply not possible, then logic couldn’t have been other than it is, and nobody needs to account for it being the only way it can be.
As for “universal imperative”, neither atheists nor theists can really offer one. You claim to do so, but that is mere assertion.
Regarding your assertion of multiple problems of evil, that’s just childishness. That there is more than one sort of evil doesn’t constitute different problems. There is only 1 problem: that those evils exist at all at the same time as an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving creator. Anybody who doesn’t claim such a creator doesn’t need to explain the existence of evil, since there is no logical argument to show such evil to be inconsistent with anything else.
Unless you have something substantive to say, I can’t see any point revisiting this once per week, and this will be our last exchange on the matter.
Ken Ammi
Friend, I noted “It is 100% un-biblical that God ‘created a world with evil’” since we have no indication of that. We have indication of a fall after the creation. Isaiah 45:7 does not have to be taken to mean that God “created a world with evil” but that He creates it as in uses it towards His ends, “That they may know…that there is none beside me. I am the LORD…let them [ye heavens…skies…earth] bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.”
Yet, in any case: your worldview does not provide you a premise upon which to condemn anything—not God, not the Bible, not be (if I misrepresented it), etc.
Also that “god created everything that exist” is vague since, for example, we have indication that God created certain kinds of thing but did not, for example, create atomic bombs.
Every worldview needs to “account for logic” even if you state that in recognition that yours does not. Now, when you claim “Logic is just part of the rules humans have written down to describe the world” you have created, at least, three problems:
- You are telling me that some accidentally existing apes have written things down but why should I care about what accidentally existing apes say?
See, 2. if such is the case then there is no absolute universal imperative to adhere to what accidentally existing apes wrote down.
And 3. you are mixing up ontology and description: that accidentally existing apes have written down descriptions of the world means that, by definition, logic exists extrinsically to accidentally existing apes—it preexisted us. You are referring to our description of that preexistent observed phenomena. Thus, on your worldview we humans are accidental, so is logic (which you admit), so is our ability to discern it, and there is no absolute universal imperative upon which to do so (which you admit).
That which you subjectively find to be “childishness” or “substantive” are not standards.
There are not only the different sorts I noted but also the emotional problem of evil, the intellectual (or logical or philosophical) problem of evil, the theological problem of evil, the Atheistic problem of evil, etc., etc., etc.
But recall that you cannot say “those evils exist at all at the same time as an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving creator” since:
- On your worldview you have no premise upon which to state that not condemn it.
- On your worldview “evil” is subjective and can actually be “good” (which you seem to admit).
But I see why you are desperate to claim “this will be our last exchange on the matter” since it is usually when Atheist begin to think one nanometer deeper than that to which they have become accustomed and they begin to see their worldview collapsing around them that they run away.
Ken Ammi replying to a comment by Joshua Opell that seems to have been deleted
Seems that you jumped to multiple conclusions so, let’s review:
“problem of evil”: what problem? Is there such a thing on your worldview?
“objective morality”: is not assumed, it’s evidenced (I’d opt for the term ethics, referring to the ethos).
“contradiction”: is that a problem on your worldview and if so, how so?
“if god has any reason to allow evil, then he’s not good”: so are you saying that, as far as I know, 100% of parents are not good since we allow evil to befall our kids? Also, what’s the problem with God not being “good” on your worldview?
Joshua Opell
My worldview is irrelevant to the problem because atheists don’t have to believe in such a thing in order to demonstrate a contradiction in the Christian position.
The whole point of the problem is that it shows an incompatibility with the existence of evil in the world and the god that Christians believe in.
The difference is is that parents are not omnipotent, omniscient, or morally perfect like your god is supposed to be.
Your god not being good is only a problem for you since you believe him to be good.
Ken Ammi
I’m empathetic to why you instantly threw your worldview under the bus. Yet, you need to consider how your worldview is utterly relevant since if you apply it then there’s no problem of evil, nor demonstrating a contradiction since your worldview discredits the very concept of contradictions, of condemning them, etc.
Thus, you may have an emotive subjective personal preference based on hidden assumptions about some supposedly alleged incompatibility but that’s on the level of demanding that your preferred ice-cream flavor is the best or a “My Dear Diary, today I feel…” entry.
So, rather than beginning with conclusions, begin with your worldview, apply its implications and eventually work towards what you have thus far merely asserted.
Joshua Opell
The problem of evil is only a problem for the Christian since they do believe in evil. If they also believe that god is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect god, then they have an inconsistency within their position. The problem of evil shows a contradiction with the position of the Christian.
If you also believe in the principle of contradiction, then you can’t escape the fact that the existence of evil and suffering in the world is completely incompatible with the existence of your god.
The problem of evil is an indirect argument. It doesn’t require the atheist to believe in evil as a concept. It assumes the existence of evil and an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being to show that the Christian worldview leads to a contradiction.
Take the analogy of a police officer allowing a crime to take place in his presence.
If a police officer witnesses that a person is about to be stabbed and does nothing to stop it, then that’s completely incompatible with him being a police officer.
The same way that it’s incompatible for a good god who is omnipotent and omniscient to allow evil and suffering.
Ken Ammi
Friend, you utterly ignored the key problem with your assertions. Thus, they are discredited by definition.
“The problem of evil is only a problem for the Christian since they do believe in evil”: indeed, which is part of why Atheism is to be utterly rejected.
But what you asserted is therefore self-defeating, since “The problem of evil is only a problem for the Christian since they do believe in evil” then, by definition, you’ve disqualified yourself from complaining about it, condemning it, etc.
Thus, you discredited your rejection of God.
But you want to play the contradiction card even though you can’t since “The problem of evil is only a problem for the Christian since they do believe in evil.”
But you merely ignored that I already noted, “‘contradiction’: is that a problem on your worldview and if so, how so?” and also, “your worldview discredits the very concept of contradictions, of condemning them, etc.” so you’re jumping to conclusions by beginning with them—and doing so without a premise, of course, based on hidden assumptions, of course.
And that was the end of all discussions.
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