Seeing Things Differently -DanP the apologist excuse.

[IWMP]

https://youtu.be/vBG621XEegk?si=D_CzTzqM9j5U-D98

Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Not quite following your rules. Pretty cool though.

[huckelberry]

What if that source of human suffering is also the necessary source of something so wonderful that it is worth the price?

Officer Nine says something similar.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” said the ninth officer.”Moments after Ms. K. flatlined, I had her resuscitated, and flown to a tropical resort where she is now experiencing extraordinary bliss, and her ordeal is just a distant memory. I’m sure you would agree that that’s more than adequate compensation for her suffering, so the fact that I just stood there watching instead of intervening has no bearing at all on my goodness.”

https://infidels.org/library/modern/mark-vuletic-five/

Think about the worst things that have happened to a people, pick the most grotesque to happen to you, and then ask yourself what it would take to compensate you for that? And if you can convince yourself to take the plunge, from there, ask if God just throwing you into the deal without your consent is really the moral thing to do.

I am able to respect the observations made here. I also have no conclusive answers yet I think there are intentional shortcomings in the article.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” said the ninth officer.”Moments after Ms. K. flatlined, I had her resuscitated, and flown to a tropical resort where she is now experiencing extraordinary bliss, and her ordeal is just a distant memory. I’m sure you would agree that that’s more than adequate compensation for her suffering, so the fact that I just stood there watching instead of intervening has no bearing at all on my goodness.”

This summary of lifes goal sounds a bit like a good dose of heroin. Probably a bit less revolting than the idea looking for opportunities to display ones virtue. (was that officer one or two?)

Fortunately life is more interesting than this.

[Physics Guy]

I think officer nine's idea of ample compensation does reduce the problem of evil, but it undersells the real point by offering only a compensation with no necessary connection to the suffering. What I tried to express in my previous post was rather the idea that suffering could be a necessary price for some greater good.

It is hard to imagine what good that could be, or how its price could be necessary. Poverty of imagination isn't a good argument, though, especially when we are discussing a God who is hypothetically far beyond the limits of our brains.

We do know of cases where good results can justify painful prices. It would be good to kill a dog to save a child, or to cause someone temporary pain if it were the only way to save their life. Perhaps God can face choices like that, in situations that we can't understand.

That possibility even seems likely to me, though of course I can't prove it, just because it seems to me that painful prices for greater goods become more common for humans the more wise and powerful we become. So I can imagine that trend continuing up to God.

The parable of the Lost Sheep is popular because we like to think of ourselves as the one missing sheep who gets found, but the story would seem to imply that ninety-nine percent of the time we are going to be left in danger for the sake of someone else.

[huckelberry]

My thoughts are in general agreement with Physics Guy's comment. Similarly I see a glimpse of answer mixed with unknowns and some uncertainty.

It is clear that we are here responsible ourselves to meet genuine threats which could mount to the point of our destruction. We must learn and act with courage to meet life. I think that is basic to the creation of the human family and its success is a joint effort involving all of us not just individuals passing or failing a test.

If I try to understand any possibility of life after death I imagine a successful development of the shared courage of this life. Something overcoming not just masking the suffering and injustice of this life.

It is clear to me that I cannot imagine how that actually could work. I cannot demonstrate that the hope is anything more than the faith to make the best of life as we meet it and hope something of that continues in future generations.

[MG 2.0]

Your Primary President would be thrilled with that little wall of ambiguity. But I’m not sure you understand what you’ve said. When you say “Satan is real. Evil is real.” What do you mean, specifically?

Why does MG always run away?

IHQ, it’s not a matter of ‘running away’. It’s a matter of time allocation. When I’m present I create controversy and friction. Without meaning to in most instances. For my own mental health and well being it’s better that I don’t succumb to the constant feeling/compunction to answer all of the questions and potential conflicts that come my way.

As you and others know, within the social media space (which I consider this to be one among many) there are those that feel as though they need/have to check their feeds constantly. Or at least fairly often. I don’t like doing that because then it starts to feel more or less like an addiction to some extent.

When I come here off and on I usually see the same ‘players’ that are right here ready to roll. That’s not my thing. Coming in every once once in a while gives me opportunities to focus on other things besides what’s going on in ‘Mormon world’.

So don’t take it personally or as any kind of slam. If I can see that I’ve been drawn deeply into a discussion and it’s literally been going on for two or three weeks, it’s time for me to excuse myself. Not because I’m bailing out, although you might see it that way. As it is, the discussion has gone on and I’ve been doing other things the last few days without even looking at the remainder of the thread.

I like to go for months without going on to this social media/board site. It is what it is. I’m finding this to be a much better modus operandi for me. Back in the day I spent way too much time here over weeks and sometimes months. I mentioned a while back that this can’t/won’t be the case for me anymore.

If you respond to this post, or others do, I won’t respond and be drawn back into any discussion. I’ve been more than accommodating to most questions during this thread and others but I find that after a couple or three weeks I’m ready to go on to other things.

I hope you can understand without looking at me harshly.

Until another time.

Take care,
MG

[Res Ipsa]

It is trivially easy to create a God that is “better” than MG’s God: create a God who created this world, but minus one less source of human suffering.

What if that source of human suffering is also the necessary source of something so wonderful that it is worth the price?

This is why I still listen to an ancient answer to the problem of evil.

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place, that it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

For me to just assume that everything bad is somehow justified is just facile. If there is an actual God, though, it seems to me not just plausible but likely that omnipotence means that everything is about opportunity costs. So I can hardly presume to justify the ways of God to humans, but for myself, at least, I can bow with Job to the voice from the whirlwind.

We don't know what prices are unavoidable even to omnipotence because they are logically necessary, because we don't know what anything actually is. If we had only a medieval understanding of water, for example, we might think that water could be better by being different in some way that was perfectly compatible with our impression of wetness, but that was not compatible at all with being H2O.

We would be wrong to think that real water could ever have been better that way. And everything is like that, for us. We might imagine that God could have made a non-molecular world in which water was defined by our concepts of wetness, and was not constrained by any molecular dynamics, but that is probably just because, just as medievals didn't understand what water actually is, so perhaps even now we don't understand what reality actually is.

Well, if we want to play "what if" why don't we use your reasoning to posit that God isn't bound what what we mistakenly think are logical contradictions. Maybe our perception of reality is so far off that we can't see that God isn't bounded by human logic. If we understood the universe as it truly is, we would know that God can create a square circle.

What is interesting to me is that the response to the problem of evil is often to place constraints on God. In your what if example, God is constrained by the rules of human logic. Your response to the problem of evil was to posit that God is even more constrained because we can't reliably identify logical contradictions. So, God has more constraints on his actions than we know about. If we follow that logic, we end up with a God that lacked the power to create the earth with any less suffering than humanity has experienced. To me, that doesn't sound like an omnipotent anything. Humans have been able to reduce suffering by eliminating diseases, but somehow God was prevented from doing that because it would have been a logical contradiction?

Of course, I have no quarrel with however you personally think about God. I don't read your post as doing what MG was -- making specific claims about the nature of God as a rationalization. I also think that accepting the answer God gave to Job is a principled response to the problem of evil. I think Reformed Christianity is also principled. Beyond that, I see rationalizing God's behavior as the same as what the Mopologists do with Mormonism.

[Philo Sofee]

Res Ipsa
Maybe our perception of reality is so far off that we can't see that God isn't bounded by human logic.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if God is not constrained by our human logic. Assuming a God, of course...

[Gadianton]

I know that some will differ, but I've come to believe it's the middle of the three men looking through the window in the center of the composition. As the one who is represented by the tallest, whitest mountain behind him, he seems to be running the show from afar. Being on the outside of the room, he can claim that he was hemmed in by the circumstance of being caught between two of his fellows. It's not like God can control the natural world.

Would be hard to argue, as the middle must be the Father. Thank you for the illuminating response. Probably the first time this painting has contributed to a theodicy. I expect its value to increase.

[Gadianton]

it undersells the real point by offering only a compensation with no necessary connection to the suffering.

We do know of cases where good results can justify painful prices.

To me, your case boils down to "there is no accidental evil", all evil is "productive" evil, and that once in those terms, dismissing the evidential case of evil on grounds that if there is a God, we simply don't know his moral calculus.

Some of the problems I see with this: It's flirting with arguing from ignorance. What about proportionality? The greatest sufferers somehow need to have the greatest advantage in the next life, hence their suffering? Or they suffer for the greater good? And what about consent? Would you create a creature in the lab if you knew you had to punish the *s out of it without its consent in order to make it much happier down the road, or worse, to suffer for the betterment of others of its kind without its consent? And of course the suffering is in ways that seem meaningless and absurd to the creature.

If I were told by an oracle that there is a God, and now I had to make my best guess to explain evil, I'd relax the assumption of God being a personal God, and go the zoo route. I'd call it the Amazon route, though. The Amazon is nearly as big as the United States, and packed with the largest quantity of suffering that has ever existed upon the earth. Yet, we see it as a wonder of nature, we feel inclined to preserve it, and we don't think of it in terms that reduce to violence. We don't feel as if we've gone full-blown "officer 3" because we don't stop the suffering. However, it's a delicate balance. There is this YouTuber with a large sub base who has built his own basement rainforest. He introduces new creatures and dramatically narrates the changes to the ecosystem and often the result is brutal to one or more life form. Something isn't right here. I can't see God intimately planning the life of every ant in the rainforest, or even getting too close to the action. We don't want to manage or even know about everything in the rainforest, we're content thinking there is this vast, wonderous repository of life doing its own thing and let it be.

[malkie]

it undersells the real point by offering only a compensation with no necessary connection to the suffering.

We do know of cases where good results can justify painful prices.

To me, your case boils down to "there is no accidental evil", all evil is "productive" evil, and that once in those terms, dismissing the evidential case of evil on grounds that if there is a God, we simply don't know his moral calculus.

Some of the problems I see with this: It's flirting with arguing from ignorance. What about proportionality? The greatest sufferers somehow need to have the greatest advantage in the next life, hence their suffering? Or they suffer for the greater good? And what about consent? Would you create a creature in the lab if you knew you had to punish the *s out of it without its consent in order to make it much happier down the road, or worse, to suffer for the betterment of others of its kind without its consent? And of course the suffering is in ways that seem meaningless and absurd to the creature.

For a look at this kind of evil/suffering, I recommend The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by the incomparable Ursula K. Le Guin.
https://www.amazon.ca/Ones-Who-Walk-Awa ... op?ie=UTF8

If I were told by an oracle that there is a God, and now I had to make my best guess to explain evil, I'd relax the assumption of God being a personal God, and go the zoo route. I'd call it the Amazon route, though. The Amazon is nearly as big as the United States, and packed with the largest quantity of suffering that has ever existed upon the earth. Yet, we see it as a wonder of nature, we feel inclined to preserve it, and we don't think of it in terms that reduce to violence. We don't feel as if we've gone full-blown "officer 3" because we don't stop the suffering. However, it's a delicate balance. There is this YouTuber with a large sub base who has built his own basement rainforest. He introduces new creatures and dramatically narrates the changes to the ecosystem and often the result is brutal to one or more life form. Something isn't right here. I can't see God intimately planning the life of every ant in the rainforest, or even getting too close to the action. We don't want to manage or even know about everything in the rainforest, we're content thinking there is this vast, wonderous repository of life doing its own thing and let it be.