h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do we really have to turn this into yet another religion thread wherein Della makes a bunch of half-baked statements and fails to understand the framework of reasoned debate, while a horde of posters who should have better sense rise to her bait? I'm really tired of having that conversation.

I think a lot hinges on definitions. Discussions about the existence or non-existence of God tend to conflate two questions.

1) Is there a sentient creator?
and
2) If so, who is he, what is the extent of his power and knowledge, what is he up to, and what does he want of us (if anything)?

Although I agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, I don't think that the claim that there is a sentient creator is such an extraordinary claim - though I'm open to persuasion. I'm strongly attracted to the deist position that holds that there is a creator, but that we have no sure way of knowing anything about him/her/it. What I would regard as an extraordinary claim in this sense is the claim of any religion that it's got it right.

Thank you for the information about Sinterklaas, Nite Owl. (I was going to mention Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) but I didn't know if I should, in these politically correct times, as you say.

I was a much more cynical child - I never did believe in Santa Claus, and in fact, my own children were brought up *not to*..

Mind you, it didn't help, when I was about 8 and my father who took it for granted that I didn't believe in Santa, asked me to explain to my sister who was three, why Santa wouldn't be bringing her the life-sized doll my parents couldn't afford. (I don't remember what I said, just that I didn't spoil *her* belief in Santa Claus. It was harder than telling my Mum when I was 16, that I had got a letter from her aunt by marriage telling me to tell her that her only Uncle had died.)

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Good points, although I'd have to disagree with you about the last part...

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If you accept the argument that a universe as remarkable as this requires a sentient creator, then you have the following problem. This sentient creator must also be very remarkable, and would, by the same argument, also require a creator.

You can see where this is heading. A creator is a non-explanation, it leaves more to be explained than you started with, perhaps infinitely more if you deduce an infinite regression of creators.

If, as the only escape, you think creators can get simpler as you regress, then you are halfway to evolution and natural cosmology.

If you start allowing exceptions to the 'remarkable things require a creator' principle, then all gods are redundant, not just all but one.

Potholer,

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Although Epicurus' point is evidence of absence.

It is the absence of evidence combined with substantial evidence of absence that makes a compelling case.

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I have to say that I don't find Epicurus' points compelling. Do you have any other evidence of absence?

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Why not?

If you don't mind I'd rather not start explaining my other reasons only for you to say 'not compelling' each time.

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There are different types and causes of evil. IMO, most evil is committed by humans, and that raises the issue of free will, obviously something God values.

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Possibly perfectly able, but given that God has allowed human behaviour freedom, I suppose that counts as not willing. But that's not malevolent.

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Human nature. Would we prefer to be perfectly good robots?
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I think I've dealt with that...
<< But this would be contrary to the spirit of the question. Epicurus demands that a God worthy of the name is omnipotent and good, and concludes, rightly that the existence of evil is inconsistent with the existence of such a being.>>
I dispute that he concludes "rightly", i.e., correctly.


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I am not a theologian. However, if you are talking about 'natural evil' - earthquakes and such, I'd say these are a function of the kind of world we live in. God could have created it otherwise, but for reaosns which I don't pretend to know, the world we have, is one which is geologically unstable, as who should know better than someone living where I do - New Zealand? In 1987, the Edgecumbe earthquake did a shedload of damage to a place where a huge chunk of my family lived.

Earthquakes terrify me. Volcanoes (Auckland sits on top of ten of them) don't thrill me either. But I don't *blame* God for them. They simply are. God made the rules, now God plays by them, as you would wish - or so I assume. You wouldn't want to be a robot without free will, or to live in a world where there was no danger.

"On the topic of God, I basically agree with Epicurus, though I'd like to add one thing. If the current theories on the origin of the universe are correct, then *something* must have caused the Big Bang. According to the laws of thermodynamics, something cannot be created out of nothing, so the point of infinite mass and infinite density from which the universe sprang, must have been created by something. You could call this 'first impulse' God, but I don't think it actually is a sentient entity (it's more likely a force of nature), let alone that it has the power to influence the daily lives of the people on this planet.

True Nightowl if you ignore one point which could make a lot of difference.

The something leading to something else process, causality exists for everthing *within* the universe. Its hard for us to say what was happening prior to the universe itself. There is a paucity of evidence which stil allows ofr a lot of speculation.

Now before we found the evidence that proved evolution and causality people believed that the bigG's seven day act of creation was how *this* came to be. What you are doing Nightowl is guessing which is no bad thing but a guess without evidence could be just as far of the mark as Eve being made from a rib of Adam.

one love

Evolution is not proved. There is strong evidence for its applicability.

Pedantry or good mental hygiene? I think the latter; your opinion may be different.

As for causality, I believe there is a thought experiment, to do with entangled photons and the like, where the effect precedes the cause. I'm not an expert in QM, so I could have this garbled, but I don't think so....

The prance Tsar

"Wine? How crass."

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Della, I would rather live in a world without earthquakes. Wouldn't you?

You are suggesting that God is constraint by rules that he previously wrote. But this is nonsense. Omnipotence and omniscience demand that God chose the rules in full knowledge of the consequences and could have chose them differently.

If evil is the price of free will, then clearly the population of heaven consists of robots. Even if the rule were admitted, as a logically necessary rule that constrains even God, that doesn't explain suffering that does not arise from human choices but from the imperfection of the natural world.

You say:

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And bingo. The "logic" of your belief in God being good, forces you to conclude that geological instability is good. You have surrendered your sense of good and evil in return for some cognitive dissonance. Your sense of good and evil has lost all relation to human happiness and suffering, it has become meaningless, and you have become amoral.
The mystery of how believers in a benevolent god can become suicide bombers, inquistors, crusaders, and members of the KKK is solved.

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Yes, true - and as I said, for reasons I don't pretend to know, this is what God chose.

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Perfected people - those whose choices have led to their not being subject to making the wrong choices that result in evil.
<< Even if the rule were admitted, as a logically necessary rule that constrains even God, that doesn't explain suffering that does not arise from human choices but from the imperfection of the natural world.>>
I freely admit that I don't know the answer to 'natural evil', and may never in this life do so. I have done (am doing) some googling, to see what some others have had to say about it.
Wikipedia has something to say..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_problem_of_evil#Responses_to_the_problem

"Was the creation of beings endowed with free will a mistake of God (as it could be used against its very purpose)? No, because this was the only way possible for Him to have free communion with His creatures, which means a greater good not otherwise attainable. Without free will, angels and mankind would only have been a lifeless world of robots. In order to have perfect communion with the Creator, a created being needs the possibility to choose it freely. This is why God allows to exist starvation, disease, murder, war, etc, in our world. Although such facts constitute reasons for atheism, they represent the cost of preserving our (misused) free will."
From this site...
http://www.comparativereligion.com/evil.html
This is a really good one, and you really should read the whole page.http://www.cresourcei.org/evil.html
Extract - "Yet, if we step away from this conception of God and look in a different direction, we realize that there may be a different and perhaps a better way to understand God’s work in the world. As Creator, God has created the world to work in a certain way. Our modern scientific categories tend to define the natural "laws" that we observe to be operating in our world in terms of independent forces, an impersonal collection of causes and effects that we call "nature." Yet biblical faith understands that no matter what the process, behind it lies the Creator God.

There are "laws" of physics that operate in certain ways that make life on earth possible. The same weather systems that create tornadoes also create thunderstorms that water the earth and that bring fires to rejuvenate forests (certain kinds of pine seeds cannot germinate until they have been through the heat of a forest fire!). The same earthquakes that destroy buildings are part of the very dynamic of the earth that makes it a living planet. The same kinds of bacteria that sometimes make us sick also yield substances that bring healing. And I suspect with all of our scientific knowledge we have not yet begun to scratch the surface of the intricate interrelationships of forces on our planet. And God created it. We simply do not know enough about our world even today to declare what is inherently "good" or "evil" in those processes apart from our personal experience of them."



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Not good, necessary.
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I'm sorry, no.
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I strongly disagree!

Della, thankyou for those links.

From the third link:

"So, on this basis, I think the syllogism presented above is fatally flawed, and cannot be of much use in helping us deal with the realities of the world in which we live. Rather than helping frame the question in terms that lead to a solution, I think it actually creates an irresolvable problem. I do not think it is adequate to view the world based on the premise of God’s absolute and total control of every event, and therefore on his intention of every single event happening. Nor do I think it is adequate to use our own criteria of experiential good to define God."

The use of "irresolvable problem" is interesting, when of course the whole problem is easily resolved by dropping the belief in the existence of God.

The author says "I want to affirm the goodness of God, and certainly want to say that God is just and righteous. But we need to admit that we are not always able to define exactly what that is in our own particular situations". Indeed. He is saying that he wants to affirm the goodness of God without knowing what that goodness means.

And, bingo, affirming that somebody is x, without knowing what x means is not affirming anything. It is a meaningless affirmation. Condense all these 'solutions' to the problem of evil, and they all do the same. They give up the goodness of God by professing an inability to tell the difference between good and evil. If you can't tell the difference, you can't tell that God is one and not the other.

<> (Della)

How or why should earthquakes (or hurricanes, or volcanic eruptions, etc) be called 'natural evils'?


az

I didn't get that he was saying that at all! What he was saying is not that he doesn't know what goodness is, simply that we want to define it in terms of what suits us! I remember the title of a book written by a Christian about racist churches in the deep South of the USA - 'Your God is too Small' - and that's what this discussion makes me think of. We want to define God and make God manageable.

(In your case, define God out of existence - expcept, as a former atheist I know of once put it - when God has to be kept handy to blame...)

"If you accept the argument that a universe as remarkable as this requires a sentient creator, then you have the following problem. This sentient creator must also be very remarkable, and would, by the same argument, also require a creator. You can see where this is heading. A creator is a non-explanation, it leaves more to be explained than you started with, perhaps infinitely more if you deduce an infinite regression of creators.
If, as the only escape, you think creators can get simpler as you regress, then you are halfway to evolution and natural cosmology. If you start allowing exceptions to the 'remarkable things require a creator' principle, then all gods are redundant, not just all but one."

I think there are a number of responses to the infinite-regress argument - questions about who created the creator. One response is just to pose a parallel problem to the atheist - how did the universe come into being? I think that some recent work in physics has shown something about how particles might pop in and out of existence, but I don't claim to understand the detail. Of course, this is an area in which science may be able to make progress, and in the face of a widely-accepted theory (among experts) about how the univse might have come from nothing, I would have to rethink my position. It's a parellel problem because there's a similar regress argument - if the universe was created by the big bang, what caused the big bang, and so on.

I think a deist would have to be open to the possibility that the creator of our universe was in turn created by another entity. Could our whole universe be something like a child's toy? But one way to stop the infinite regress is to deny that it follows that a remarkable universe implying the existence of a creator in turn implies the existence of a meta-creator. A deist could argue that the creator might share the property of 'remarkableness' with the universe, but not share other properties, such as 'requiring a creator'. A deist could also deny that the requirement for a creator follows from the remarkableness of the universe, but from some other factor.

An argument which tries to break the infinite regress by simply asserting that the creator might just be the kind of thing that doesn't itself need a creator is not a good argument in the sense that it's *persuasive*, but I think it might be a good argument in the sense that it could form part of a coherent system, which is not quite the same thing. I suppose the view that I currently want to support is that it's not irrational (in a philosophical sense) to hold the view that there's a creator.

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Whatever the extent of his ability to grasp what goodness is, surely that is the limit of his ability to assert the goodness of God.

And similarly an assertion that "God exists" is only meaningful to the extent that you can define (or at least describe the meaning of) "God".

If you assert that God exists, without asserting that God must be benevolent or omnipotent, or anything else about God, then I would agree. Lots of things exist, and any or all of them could be God by this standard. Only by defining God, does the assertion that God exists have any meaning at all.

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Right. But it is not entirely parallel. There is, if you like, a "problem of the origin of everything" that remains unsolved, with or without gods. By "everything" I mean including any gods that may exist. Nobody has the answer to this, theist or atheist. Get over it.

However, there are some lesser problems of origins - the problem of the origin of complexity, of life, or of intelligence, that physics, abiogenesis and evolution solve, and that theistic creation do not solve - because god is already complex, alive and intelligent, and so the moment of creation is not the origin of these things.

So, although we have not solved the "problem of the origin of everything", it is thanks to the solutions to these lesser problems a much reduced problem. At some point in history "everything" can be simple, dead and stupid. To the theist, this was never the case; they have to solve the origins of something, complexity, life and intelligence all at the same time.

Surely, it's possible to have free will, to allow the divine to commune with the earthly, and/or to provide entertainment for them, whilst having divine sanction against misbehaviour imposed within people's lifetimes, rather than waiting for the afterlife?
If there actually was a significant risk of divine punishment in the short term for serious wrongdoing, it might discourage much evil whilst still allowing people to be other than robots.
Even having a deity clearly manifesting itself might result in a serious decrease in unpleasant behaviour whilst still allowing humans to be humans.

Della, if you believe in an omnipotent god, what is your answer to the paradox of the stone? It's the ones that asks whether an omnipotent being could create a stone too heavy for that being to lift.

And if god is omniscient and gives humans free will, knowing full well that we will use it for evil I'm afraid that is malevolence. No real way around it, he knows his actions will result in evil and carries on.

My real gripe is why God needs to be omnipotent, is there any real need? Why not simply say he is maximally potent, capable of doing all that it is logically possible to do.