tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post4349159618813237612..comments2024-02-17T19:58:47.311-05:00Comments on Textuality: The Evil God ChallengeLarry Tannerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-35411181981992235382011-11-23T20:11:15.239-05:002011-11-23T20:11:15.239-05:00Cool! A picture of Calvin's God and Jesus arm-...Cool! A picture of Calvin's God and Jesus arm-wrestling.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-44934790532914644742011-11-18T13:58:30.083-05:002011-11-18T13:58:30.083-05:00"Can you please mention one of those argument..."Can you please mention one of those arguments that a good God exists?"<br /><br />Well, you could review the Jewish Encyclopedia on "God." There you will find reference to:<br /><br />* God being "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth" (Ex. xxxiv. 6-7). <br /><br />* Good and evil proceed from God, as do life and death (Ecclus. [Sirach] xi. 14). Yet sin is not caused by God, but by man's own choice (ib. xv. 11 et seq.).<br /><br />* God's "benevolence is due not to any incapacity of His for evil, but to His free preference for the good ("De Plantatione Noe," § 20)."<br /><br />* He is complete in Himself, and contains within His own being the sum of all conceivable good ("De Mutatione Nominum," § 4).<br /><br />* The anthropomorphic representation of God as suffering pain with men merely illustrates His goodness (Sanh. vi. 5).<br /><br />But then, at the JE, there is also this:<br /><br />* The final cause some philosophers have held to be material, an atom. But in going one degree higher, and in assuming the existence of a creator, man must know him as the highest; that is to say, God is the noblest but also the most subtile goal of speculative reflection. Many represent God as corporeal, because they do not push their ascending knowledge far enough beyond the corporeal to the abstract and incorporeal. The Creator being the originator of all bodies, He of necessity must be apprehended as supramundane, supercorporeal. Those that ascribe to God motion and rest, wrath and goodness, also apperceive Him as corporeal. The correct conception culminates in the representation of God as free from all accidents (ib.). If this conception be too abstract, and is to be replaced by one more material and concrete, reflection is forced to recede. The final cause must be, by the very postulates of reason, an abstract being. God-perception is thus the rise from the sensual to the supersensual and highest limits of thought.<br /><br />Christian arguments for God's goodness are many. Here is one from Anselm, from the Monologion, as given by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "In the first chapter of the Monologion Anselm argues that there must be some one thing that is supremely good, through which all good things have their goodness. For whenever we say that different things are F in different degrees, we must understand them as being F through F-ness; F-ness itself is the same in each of them. Thus, for example, all more or less just things “must be more or less just through justice, which is not different in diverse things” (M 1). Now we speak of things as being good in different degrees. So by the principle just stated, these things must be good through some one thing. Clearly that thing is itself a great good, since it is the source of the goodness of all other things. Moreover, that thing is good through itself; after all, if all good things are good through that thing, it follows trivially that that thing, being good, is good through itself. Things that are good through another (i.e., things whose goodness derives from something other than themselves) cannot be equal to or greater than the good thing that is good through itself, and so that which is good through itself is supremely good. Anselm concludes, “Now that which is supremely good is also supremely great. There is, therefore, some one thing that is supremely good and supremely great—in other words, supreme among all existing things” (M 1). In chapter 2 he applies the principle of chapter 1 in order to derive (again) the conclusion that there is something supremely great." (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm/)Larry Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-44030170028410960492011-11-18T13:18:49.507-05:002011-11-18T13:18:49.507-05:00I meant the former -- he does things that appear t...I meant the former -- he does things that appear to be evil. <br /><br />But you seem to agree that one who believes in a good God due to biblical revelation(and only employ philosophical arguments in order to show that the "evil" we see isn't NECCESARILY evil), the EGC isn't relevant. So we don't disagree with each other, do we? <br /><br />Can you please mention one of those arguments that a good God exists?abele dererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00484542027906387245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-24150562808593795972011-11-18T12:32:40.842-05:002011-11-18T12:32:40.842-05:00"I have yet to hear a decent philosophical re..."I have yet to hear a decent philosophical reason that points to a good God." <br /><br />Please refer to Western philosophy from about 400 to 1400. <br /><br />"I have, however, heard good philosophical reasons that show why a good God would do evil. "<br /><br />Perhaps you mean "would do things that seem evil to us." Many folks consider it contrary to the definition and essence of God to do evil. God is incapable of evil, in other words.<br /><br />But this is why the evidential problem of evil is potent. If God doesn't do evil and is not a source of evil, then where does evil com from? Of course there are very many attempts to answer this question or to make the question simply go away.<br /><br />Any reason you give for disbelieving in an evil god can be flipped to serve as a reason to disbelieve in a good god.<br /><br />Now if you actually meant that God can do evil and not "God does things that appear evil to us," then you believe in a different God than most Judeo-Christians. Your position, then, is essentially, "He's an asshole but still my God."Larry Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-81252624551002362002011-11-18T12:11:58.862-05:002011-11-18T12:11:58.862-05:00The EGC does not challenge the vast majority of pe...The EGC does not challenge the vast majority of people who believe in a good God. It challenges nobody, except maybe three philosophers who believe in a good God due to philosophical reasons. I have yet to hear a decent philosophical reason that points to a good God. I have, however, heard good philosophical reasons that show why a good God would do evil. The EGC does not challege any of those reasons. It merely states that those reasons could be used to defend and EG. OK, fine, so what? We have no positive reason to believe in an EG. (I read the the EGC way before you posted it here).abele dererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00484542027906387245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-58829489726276836522011-11-18T12:02:04.634-05:002011-11-18T12:02:04.634-05:00Everything you are saying reinforces the EGC. Read...Everything you are saying reinforces the EGC. Read the argument.Larry Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-63068829235200887832011-11-18T11:24:59.236-05:002011-11-18T11:24:59.236-05:00I don't see how one could philosophically prov...I don't see how one could philosophically prove that a "good" God exists, unless through observing that most of our lives are pleasureful (an idea I brought up in my previous post).<br />Philosophically, it's a challenge to prove that any god exists, let alone a) one b) that happens to be perfectly good.<br /><br />Regarding your second point (the synonym-laden Dawkins quote), I agree that there are some actions of God (reported in the Bible) that you would consider unjust. You are entitled to your opinion. However, according to the Bible, God was fully justified in all His actions: "He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong; how just and upright he is" (Deuteronomy 32:4, NLT).<br />So, to get back to my point, those who believe in a good God do so because the Bible says that He's good. That He does some stuff that you consider bad does not make it illogical for me to believe in a good God.abele dererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00484542027906387245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-27513487128305712672011-11-18T10:09:22.450-05:002011-11-18T10:09:22.450-05:00Tristan,
You are right about Feser. He usually co...Tristan,<br /><br />You are right about Feser. He usually comes across much more convincing, but the EGC has his number, no matter how many times he insists that it doesn't apply to his god.Larry Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-82258146160566404402011-11-18T10:07:17.636-05:002011-11-18T10:07:17.636-05:00abele derer,
Often, philosophy will attempt to es...abele derer,<br /><br />Often, philosophy will attempt to establish truths about gods without recourse to holy books such as the Bible. Why? Because if a particular god can only be established as existing via a certain text, then we must also establish the authenticity and authority of that text. In the case of the Bible, authenticity and intrinsic authority are very much up in the air, if not downright doubtful. Thus, the Bible's description of God as "good" has no overriding value. We're looking for the philosopher's God.<br /><br />Nevertheless, I wonder if the Bible really does describe God as good. Some people read the Torah and make the case that it describes God as "the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."Larry Tannerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14642725101009530480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-73166851797968300782011-11-18T09:20:10.260-05:002011-11-18T09:20:10.260-05:00We start with the assumption that God is good, bec...We start with the assumption that God is good, because that's the Bible's description of God. If the Bible would describe God as being perfectly evil, then, yes, you could reconcile the facts on the ground with an evil God. Possibly.<br /><br />The fact is that there is so much more good than there is evil on this earth. Most of what people consider "evil" -- such as losing a child, or having an illness, or losing a job -- is actually merely a negation of the amount of good that they EXPECTED to have. The only real evil on this earth is physical or emotional pain. And the vast majority of our lives are free from major pain. AS PROOF, THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE DO NOT COMMIT SUICIDE. In short, it's much easier to reconcile the facts on the ground with a good God than an evil God.abele dererhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00484542027906387245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3559910.post-68793897729696982442011-11-17T22:41:02.200-05:002011-11-17T22:41:02.200-05:00Feser's first response to the challenge is onl...Feser's first response to the challenge is only half accurate. He is right to state it's about a specific variety of theism. He is wrong to leave out (perhaps deliberately) the omnibelevolant God the argument is seeking to refute.<br /><br />The Bible states God is love. It uses agape to define his love for us--the epitome of love itself--manifested in God.<br /><br />By this understanding, it appears Law's argument is devastating, because the belief in an evil God, as he shows, is completely absurd.<br /><br />Then he goes on to ask the theist--how can they say that an all loving God--by their very logic--is not any less absurd?<br /><br />What Feser has done is avoid addressing this by skipping over the "love" aspect of God's character. Sly, but obviously a dodge.Tristan Vickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05348780254008374268noreply@blogger.com