>you arrogant snot.


Can you not do that? Please?
I'm quite aware of the possibility that tone or intention can get lost in translation by way of caps or exclamation points (like "your a cut and paster!!"), or even just the intensity of demonstration or debate (like relentlessly going at someone's fallacy or assumption or whatever)... but so far as I know (and I'm open to correction on this), I'm not swearing and name-calling, am I? I don't know why you do this.

Believe it or not, I had a smile on my face when I typed "you're a cut and paster!!". How could I not? I've done it too. I will probably do it again, even within this post.

I didn't realize the ellipses signified a quote, thanks for filling me in on this. I know now.

I just don't think the swearing and just general belligerence is called for. We're all adults here right? We can argue rigourously and even joke (again, we should be careful, as it's hard to "come across" in text) and we can do all of this without sayin' stuff like "get the f___ over yourself" and "you arrogant little snot".

I'll be the first to admit I've capped some text and addes exclamations, but so far as I know (and again, correct me) I refrain from flat-out insulting people. Am I wrong on this?

anyway...



>Oh, so goodness is not defined by God's fiat,

No, by God's nature. God's commands flow naturally from who/what God is.


>it's defined by
>man's fiat!


No, but it will continue to look that way as long as you remain under the assumption that no human could possibly know any truth about God. So I understand why you think that.


>Still this enforced synonimy doesn't seem to
>improve matters. The statement "God is good" is just as empty
>under this definition, and for essentially the same reason.


I would argue that the word "good" is meaningless (that is, devoide of any real, objective meaning) in a worldview that does not acknowledge God

"God is good" is only empty because you choose not to acknowledge God.



>Chronologically prior? I don't exactly see the relevance of
>that statement.

Well, dualists tend to think there are two infinite, eternal powers in this world... Good and Evil. And I only mentioned it to point out that there seems to be some sort of hint to the idea that "evil" is not "as old" as "good" in just sort of examining what we mean when we talk about evil. It's usually an "indecent means to a decent ends". What I mean is, there doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with long life, financial security, abundant resources, etc... it's just the "means" by which some of these things are gone after that we consider "evil". It seems that evil is a perversion of good, not concept as original and eternal as good, but rather "chronologically prior" (and I see this was a poor choice fo wording, but like you said... "conceptual rigitity"... I believe it works for that) but do you see what I'm getting at?

>However, you give us an opportunity to ask
>why, if goodness (and therefore God, according to your
>definition) is "chronologically prior" to evil, and God is
>taken to be all-powerful, why did He allow evil to come into
>being?

That seems to be the "question of questions" doesn't it?

Will you give me a hearing if I speak (and quoting) on it for a moment?

To begin with...
Notice that the problem is not: "Why do we suffer?"
The problem is really: "If Christianity is true, why do we suffer?"

Lewis says,
"Christianity is not the conclusion of a philosophical debate about the origin of the universe. It is a catastrophic, historical event. It is not a system into which we have to fit the awkward fact of pain. It itself is one of the awkward facts which has to be fitted into any system we make. In a sense it 'creates' the problem of pain. For, pain would not be an intellectual problem, unless side by side with our daily experiences of this painful world, we had received what we think was a good assurance that ultimate reality was, in fact, righteous and loving."

So the problem is not just "pain".
The problem is "a loving God, and pain".

This, in fact, is the only "strong" argument for atheism.
(When Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica, he wrote 4,000 pages of carefully reasoned argumentation, always trying to be utterly fair to his opponent by listing all possible objections an opponent could offer on every one of thousands of questions addressed. "Three" is the minumum number of objections that he offers to each of his arguments. In other words, he is rigorous. Every article in the book has at least THREE objections to it, except the most important article in the whole book... the first one: "The Existence of God". Aquinas can find only TWO arguments against the existence of God in the entire history of human thought. One of these arguments doesn't even claim to be an argument, for if it did, it would be fallacious, an "Ignoratio Elenchi" ("Science can't prove that there is a God, so there's not"). Obvioulsy that would not prove that there is not one.)

The only argument that even CLAIMS to prove that there is no God is the one we are discussing on this board: The Problem of Pain (suffering, evil, etc.).

So this is big.

So what's the problem?

The Syllogism goes:
1. If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures totally happy.
2. If God were almighty, He would be able to do whatever he wished.
3. But we, His creatures, are not totally happy.
4. Therefore, God lacks either goodness, power, or both.

As a Christian, I firmly believe that God is all good, all loving, all powerful, and all wise.

But then, how come we're so miserable? How come the problem of pain?

Well,
Consider that there are three components of an argument:
1) terms (that mean something)
2) propositions (that are either true or false)
3) Inference (the logic of the argument, which claims to prove the conclusion)

Then Logically..
There are also three things that can go wrong with any argument:
1) The TERMS may be ambiguous (their meaning may not be clear)
2) The propositions may be false (remember, you can prove anything with false premises)
3) The inference may not be tight enough (not sound, or invalid)

So what do we make of the "Problem of Pain" argument in light of this?
The logic seems to be extremely tight,
and the premises certainly seem to be true.

So, the only possibility of answering this argument would be showing that the "terms" (all good, all loving, and all powerful) were, in fact, ambiguous.

Lewis says...
"For it must be admitted from the outset that if the meanings attached to these words are the popular meanings, the argument is unanswerable".

It becomes necessary then to make sure that the terms aren't ambiguous. We have to explore this argument at it's most basic level, the terms... how Socratic.



I - All Powerful (omnipotence)
What does it mean when we say that God is "all-powerful"?

Omnipotence is the power to do "all that is possible", but not to do the "intrinsically impossible".

Lewis says...
"You may attribute miracles to God, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power. But if you choose to say 'God can give his creatures free will, and simultaneously withhold free will from them" you've not said anything about God at all. Meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we add to them two other words, 'God can'. "

For instance, If you or I could do miracles, we could walk through a wall. However, even if we could do miracles, we could not both "walk through a wall" and "not walk through a wall" at the same time.
That's a meaningless combination of words. It's nonsense.

So if God chose to give us free choice, He could not at the same time take it away and force us to choose Him. It's one or the other. He either creates beings like the plants and animals, innocent, and incapable of sin (because they have no choice) or else he creates beings like us (or the angles) who have the freedom of choice. And if they have the freedom of choice then they have the freedom of choice, dig? The freedom of choice means that you can choose God, but also that you can choose against God.

So IF that is the origin of all evil, then evil is certainly possible.

Therefore, once you recognize that you exist and are thankful that you exist as a human, with choice, a free being... you can't complain that God is not exercising his omnipotence in eradicating all evil from the world. It would take away one of (if not the central) attribute of your being, choice. It's asking God to do nonsense. (It's like that stupid "quandry" about whether or not God could make a rock so heavy that He could not lift it. There is no such thing as a rock so heavy that God can't lift it. It's nonsense. The argument fails at it's most basic level, the term.)

So the usual argument proceeds then...
"So God decided to give us free will... we used it badly... we sinned... sin came into the world and that's our fault, not God's".

Which works as an explanation. This after all, is the myth contained in the fist two chapters of the Bible. The totally good God creates a totally good universe, and after each of the days of creation He announces that everything He has made is "Good" (including making us). He calls it all good.

So this is all fine, tenable and well but... "what about evil"?
How can this possible cohere with God's "all goodness"?




II - Evil
Evil then did not come into the world because God is evil ("in him there is no darkness, only light"), nor because anything He created is evil (because He called it ALL "good").

Therefore, evil is not a "THING".
Evil's not stuff.
It's not dark "stuff" that fights with light "stuff".
It's not stuff at all, all stuff is "good".

It is, in fact, "wrong choices".
He didn't do it. We did it.

This explains "sin" (moral evil). But what about physical evil?
It's easy to get God off the hook for sin... but what about pain?

The stock answer is quite profound if you consider it seriously.
Consider that we are not just physical creatures, but spiritual creatures too. We are at the same time physical and spiritual. Our body and our soul are not two "things" like a captain and a ship or a ghost and a machine. Rather, they're like the words you're reading here, and the meaning of the words you're reading here. If you change one, you're gonna change the other. You can't alter the words without altering the meaning. My body is like the words, my soul like the meaning. So when my soul fell into evil, by way of sin (choosing against God), my body falls with it, necessarily, into pain, suffering, and mortality.

Lewis says takes this idea even further, saying...
"In order for us to exercise our free will, we have to live in a world that we can make choices 'about'. To have free choice is to choose about something or other."

If we're sinners, and have wills that are not in harmony with God's will, then we're not gonna be in harmony with each other either, and there is going to be competition. Something that may be convenient for me may be inconvenient for you, if there's a "thing" there. So, once God creates a material world and free souls, and they fall into sin, pain follows logically.


III - Divine Goodness (omni-benevolence)

God is totally good?
The problem it seems is that a human being, who was totally "good" wouldn't do (much less allow) the kinds of evil that God allows. But, God allows it. Why? Would a "good" God do that?

A parent who casually looked on as his child ran out into the street while a mack truck was speeding towards would not be a "good" parent. But isn't this similar to what God does in allowing evil to befall us?

Obviously this is a really serious problem.

Lewis addresses this with...
"By the 'goodness' of God, we mean, chiefly, his 'lovingness', and in this we may be right. But by 'love', most of us mean 'kindness', that is, 'the desire to see others happy'... just happy. What we would really like would be a God who said, of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter as long as they are content?'. We want, in fact, not a 'father in heaven', but rather a 'grandfather in heaven'... a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'likes to see the young people enjoying themselves', and who's plan for the universe was that it might be truly said at the end of each day that 'a good time was had by all'. Not many people, I admit, would formulate a theology in precisely those terms, but a conception not very different lurks at the back of many minds. I do not claim to be an exception. I should very much like to live in a universe which is governed on such lines. Let's be honest, wouldn't you? But since it is abundantly clear that I do not live in such a universe, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is love, I conclude that my conception of love must need correction."

Has anyone noticed that we question God by our concept of love, rather than questioning our concept of love by God?
And if we did (do the latter) what would would we deduce?
Possibly we would deduce that kindness is a part of love, but not all of it.
We're kind to strangers, but people we love we're more than kind to.

If some stranger came to you and said "life is meaningless man, I think I'm gonna just say "f--- it" and pick up an ecstacy, heroin and coke habit"... of course you're going to offer something in the way of advice that they shouldn't do so. But if this stranger persisted, and then went on about their way (and you'd never see them again) after your attempts at advice failed, of course you'd worry for them, and be saddened, but that might be the extent of it. Now, if your son, daughter, mother, brother, sister, or best friend came to you and said this same thing, you're reaction would be wholly different. You wouldn't "let it go" after a mere argument. You'd do everything. You'd shout and scream.
Your protest wouldn't cease. Love is more than kindness.

Love is more mysterious than kindness. Kindness is very clear. Everyone has a desire for pleasure and aversion to pain. We all understand this to be the case. But we also have other desires... goodness, honor, righteousness, perfection. If we desire for others what we desire for ourselves, then we desire MORE than just pleasure for them. We desire for them to be made better. Precisely because we love them.

So if God designed all those more mysterious desires, and our desire for them, and if God truly loves us, the whole of us, the best of us, then His love is bound to by mysterious. Sometimes the lower good has to be sacrificed for the higher good. We know this maxim, it's why we go to the dentist.

I think we know, more than we let on, that love may very well cause pain to it's object, but ONLY if that object needs alteration in order to become more lovable.

I will refuse to unlock the door to the room in which my friend going through heroin withdrawals is, painfully screaming and writhing, precisely because I love that friend. That friend my hate me for what I'm doing, even scream at the top of his/her lungs that I'm wholly evil, a heartless tyrant, but it would only be because of their condition that they thought so.

Correlatively,
An animal caught in a trap thrashes wildly, hissing and scratching, refusing to let the approaching human come any closer out of fear. But only because this animal does not know that the approaching human is coming to FREE him. The animal is stuck, and it's pain cannot stop until it allows itself to be saved from its predicament.



IV - Human Happiness, and How Human Wickedness Impedes It

So we see that it is intellectually conceivable that love may cause pain to it's object, if that object is in need of alteration.
Love does not reconcile itself to imperfection.

The question then is WHY do we need so much alteration?
(Cause either we do, or we don't. But pain persists, so we must.)

The Christian answer to this is -
-that we have used our free will to become very bad. This doctrine (original sin) is well known, and hardly needs to be expounded.

However, back when the apostles preached the gospel, just after Jesus' departure, they could preach this doctrine of "being saved" because everyone (jew, gentile, and pagan) believed in a real moral law, and that transgressing it deserved "divine anger". It is evident in every myth of every culture. They believed in objective morality. Sin is only possible if there is objective morality. To sin is to violate the moral law... to do something you know is wrong. Today though, the gospel of "being saved" is up against a greater challenge... for men no longer believe in a moral law. Freud taught us that "morality is relative" (a logically untenable position), and now we believe we can do no wrong because there is no "real wrong". Well, if there's no moral law, then there's no sin, if there's no sin, then there is no need for being saved, if there's no need for being saved, then there is no need for what Jesus claimed He came here, singularly, to do. But now "divine anger must be preached before "divine forgiveness"... the diagnosis before the cure... the bad news before the good news. For years pop-psychology and nihilist philosophy as tried to erase from men's minds the notion that there might really be something "wrong" with them, and yet here we have our world with "wrong" all around us, real wrong, objective wrong, and we KNOW it. Who will save us? A new economic system? A new tax plan? Howard Dean? Think deeper.

Why do you think Christianity (the real thing), is so unpopular in modern America? Because it makes no sense to the modern American.
Jesus is the saviour. "From what?" will be the the reply. Poverty? Ignorance? Voting for the wrong guy? No. Sin! "What's that? That's not real. I don't like that word" will come the reply.

The bad news has got to be understood before the goodness makes any sense. "Sin" is the bad news.
It's the thing that no one wants to believe and yet, ironically, it is that peculiar Christian doctrine that is completely, wholly emperically verifiable. How? Just look around! Why is there a lock on your door? Your car? Why are there courts? Why are there cops? Just look. It's right there staring us all in the face.

Lewis says...
"I believe sin to be a fact, and I notice that the holier a man is, the more aware of that fact he is".

Who's the authority on how good we are, bad people, or good people? Good people.
Who is a more reliable source on how sober we are, drunks, or sober people? Sober people.
Then, ask the saints how good we as people are, and you will hear "we're all terrible sinners".
Paul (the apostle) referred to himself as the "chief of sinners".

Lewis says...
"Perhaps you have imagined that this humility among the saints is a pious illusion that wins God's favor. This is a most dangerous error. For it makes you identify a virtue, which is a perfection, with an illusion, that is an imperfection. "

Ok, so we're sinners, and we need a lot of alteration that we don't understand. But how did this state of affairs come about?

Lewis says...
The point of "The Fall" is that man as a species spoiled himself, and that "good" to us in our present, fallen state, must therefore mean remedial or corrective good."

We're broken, we've got to be restored.

So what part "pain" plays in such a remedy or correction now has to be considered.

Divine providence is not just "God has a great plan for your life". It is more, it is "God is straightening you out".

Lewis says...
"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, and shouts to us in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world".

And also...
"A bad man who is happy is a man without any inkling that his actions do not answer, that is, who is unaware that his actions are not in accord with the laws of the universe. A perception of this truth lies at the back of the universal human feeling that
'bad men ought to suffer'.

It's not just vengeance. It's not even just justice. It's charity. We need truth. If I'm bad, and I don't know that, then what's not charity is having that illusion fostered.

That's one use of pain. There's a second.

Lewis says...
"If the first operation of pain shatters the illusion that all is well with us, the second shatters another illusion, namely that what we have in this world, however good it is, is our own and enough for us. We've all noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well. Now, God who has made us, knows what we are and knows that our happiness lies in Him alone. Yet, we will not seek it in Him alone as long as he leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for."

But this raises a really obvious question
If God is "supreme joy", why would we look for it in anywhere but Him, going so far as to concsiously avoid him and pursue it where it can't be found.

The only answer to that is "because we're nuts" (The Fall).

Lewis says...
"While what we call our own life remains agreeable to us, we will not surrender it to Him. But He made us such that that surrender is the only way to our happiness. What then can God do in our own best interest but make our life LESS agreeable to us and take away these plausible sources of false happiness. It is just here that God's providence seems, at first, to be the most cruel... We are preplexed to see to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffesive, worthy people. How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said? Let me just implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God who made these deserving people, may really be right when He says that their modest worldly prosperity, and even the happiness of their children, is not enough to make the fully blessed (eudymonic), that all of this must fall from them in the end."

and

".... The Christian doctrine of suffering, I believe, explains a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world. Any one of us might fall into death, suffering, a horrible accident, tragedy, at any moment. But joy and pleasure, He has scattered broadly. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, even ecstacy. Why? I think it is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world, and make it very hard to return to God. But a few moments of happy love, or a landscape or a symphony, or a merry meeting with our friends, or a bath or a football game have no such tendency. Our father refreshes us on the journey with some very pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home. "