I've heard apologists of all stripes make this argument before, but I think it is fairly weak. A knowledge of evil does not require that evil actually exists.
Do you realize what you've just claimed here? You've just asserted that a knowledge of x does not require that x exists - which implies that knowledge is independent of experience. You have just claimed, for example, that a knowledge of dishonesty (what it "is") has no relation to any actually existing dishonesty (
that it is).
One could then have a
knowledge of love quite without a conceptual basis upon which to ground that knowledge (as over against non-love) or without ever having any experience of it as an actually existing phenomena. But, without such experience, how can knowledge be generated? And without knowledge of a phenomenon, how can we ever experience it? Both knowledge of and experience with would seem to require each other and require each other as a deeply interconnected, coexistent whole. Good and evil, in other words, must exist together for the knowledge of either to be possible, and experience of them, grounded in such knowledge, meaningful.
Your arguments here seem a bit confused, in my view.
Imagine you exist in a perfect universe, but you read a novel that contains evil characters in it. Even though you and all other things in the universe are good, you understand the concept of evil as an intellectual matter.
Please help me to understand how, if I live in a perfect universe in which the concept of evil is absent, evil characters within a novel could ever have been conceptualized at all?
If god is omnipotent (and Mormon doctrine, with its many different gods, calls this into question)
The LDS doctrine of plurality of gods is not polytheistic, but only admits of the existence of other gods functioning within their own spheres of influence in other universes/kingdoms. Those "other gods" are not worshiped nor do they mediate any experiences we have on this earth. Further, I'm not at all sure I see how the bare existence of other gods in any way could detract from the inherent personal characteristics of Jesus Christ or the Father as individual, exalted personages.
then it makes sense that he could have created a universe similar to the one in my example, and allowed people to understand evil, without actually being evil.
This is going back to the definition of "omnipotent" as an absolute, transcendent power or influence that allows god to
do anything, which LDS doctrine disallows as inconsistent with his perfect character and as a matter of strict laws of reality within which God himself is embedded. God, in other words, cannot himself cancel or override the principles of the plan of salvation as it applies to his children and still be a god, not only having all power, but operating lawfully and consistently according to fixed, eternal laws which he himself represents in perfection.
The response commonly made here is that this would violate free will, but the problem with that response is that free will would be an illusion no matter what. When you make a choice you are choosing the option you most prefer out of some set of possible options that you have before you, which means that choice is ultimately determined by preferences. But our preferences are not something that we choose for ourselves, we develop them because of our genes, social factors, our upbringing, and so on.
This is, itself, a
theory of the origins of choice derived from secularist "social science" and hardly settled or non-controversial (let alone established scientifically).
If we were choosing our own set of preferences then we would already have a set of preferences in place, which means we would be making a choice, and therefore choosing our preferences is impossible.
If we always have our own set of preferences "in place," it would appear that your assertion that, from this, we would then be making our own choices is contradictory, as, if they are already set, choice is then hardly choice, but only grazing from a preset body of options who's origins themselves are rather hazy. There is no reason to think, as well, that we would already have all these options "in place" at all points in time, as values and preferences grow, develop, and are modified over a person's lifetime, and especially from childhood into adulthood where many such preferences are generated and established.
It should also be pointed out that "If we were choosing our own set of preferences then we would already have a set of preferences in place, which means we would be making a choice, and therefore choosing our preferences is impossible." involves a conclusion that is a non-sequiter:
1. If we were choosing our own set of preferences, then we would already have those preferences in place.
2. If all preferences are in place, then we can choose.
3. Therefore, choosing our preferences is impossible.
Your argument says nothing about the origin or generation of the preferences themselves, yet comes to the conclusion that choosing them is not possible, a conclusion not anywhere implied in the premises. Here, choosing from the predetermined range of options they present is all we have (which is not really choosing, but simply selecting from the predetermined menu).
Retreating into reductionistic arguments from genetics and environmental determinism will not do here, in my view, as these hypothesis and theories about the nature of free will are themselves open to serous question as to there ultimate adequacy as explanations.
Another possible response is that in order for a concept it must be realized in the actual world, but that is a ridiculous argument. I can conceive of a color that human eyes can detect but which is never actualized in the actual world.
But have you not, in so conceiving it, actualized it in the actual world (or is your mind and its ability to conceive colors and other phenomena not a part of the "actual world")?
It is defined by its contrast with the other colors that do exist so is in a sense the opposite of them.
So then, all contrast is opposition? Red is the "opposite" of blue?
Now, I grant that is a physical sensation, but I think that the point is quite clear. You need to explain why we can experience a raw feel and understand distinctions but can't do the same with concepts. You make a distinction between the two but do not explain the relevance of your distinction.
Good and evil are not physical sensations but moral/spiritual aspects of consciousness itself, like love/hate, and as such, the only distinction that can ever be made between them occurs between the dynamic interplay of both as concepts whose definitions are embedded inextricably in the conceptual structure of the other.
Evil, like good, is, without the other as the contrasting meaning from which its own definition can be known and extracted, a primary experience without meaning - like a dog who "likes" ice cream but does not and can never understand the concept of "I like
x because
x is sweet and not bitter"
It is in preferring good to evil, or evil to good, that we find the meaning of both to consciousness. Pure, raw experience is, literally, meaning
less, (although still experienced) without concepts and definitions, and only from concepts and definitions, can experience have either meaning or usefulness within the plan of salvation.