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But insofar as Human Suffering is concerned, you gotta remember the whole "Free Will" deal. He bestowed that upon us after The Fall and so unfortunately some of us are going to commit evil deeds.
Even keeping that in mind, the victims of a tsunami or typhoon or earthquake are neither the perpetrators nor the victims of "evil deeds". In many cases, victims of fatal diseases are in the same class, or guilty of nothing more than being human.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hombre_Corriendo
It is juvenile to think that God prevents Bad things from happening to Good People. Paul referred to this when he talked about thinking and praying like a child before putting away childish things.
I agree that the notion is juvenile but the Bible speaks out both sides of its metaphorical mouth in this regard. There are many unambiguous promises and enticements to belief that suggest that the faithful are systematically rewarded with prosperity, protection, and comforts of all kinds. Even you admit the necessity of this, though you are willing to defer it to pie-in-the-sky, by-and-by.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hombre_Corriendo
But what Faith CAN provide you is a Strength to weather those bad times, and a comfort in knowing that in the End you will be rewarded.
And unbelief in my experience does a far better job of it, without the comforting lies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hombre_Corriendo
The rabbi Harold Kushner's excellent book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" deals with the very subject of your OP and might be a great help to you.
Rabbi Kushner "resolves" the Problem of Evil (or as I prefer, the Problem of Suffering) by picking one of the three major omni-attributes of god as untrue: he does not believe god is omnipotent with respect to suffering. He cannot prevent it. He can mostly only do what we do, which is bear witness to it.
It is the only way for Kushner to salvage god's benevolence and awareness in the face of suffering. God's heart can still bleed for us, and he can still "comfort" us, but he is substantially powerless to act on our behalf.
Christian apologists do something similar with their "robots" argument which says free will is necessary and suffering is simply a side effect of it. This allows them to tie god's hands without actually admitting that this destroys his omnipotence. They also assiduously avoid applying this argument to heaven, where all suffering will be removed. Somehow free will is no longer important or needed there, and it's okay if we're all "robots". Or somehow, the lack of free will in this life makes us robots but the lack of freewill in the afterlife does not.
Either way, a god with limitations exposes god for what it is: a human invention and not actually a god at all.
Looking at the original quote from Dawkins, I believe he contradicts himself or at best, falls down on trying to support his point. He made a conscious choice of the things to mention: animals being eaten, parasites, etc. By choosing things that are considered "bad" by some people, he is in fact creating a paradigm where there is good and evil. Otherwise, he would have thrown in...baby smiles, blooming flowers, sunrises, etc.
The existence of "bad" stuff doesn't automatically mean the complete absence of "good" stuff.
If there is no bad or good, just indifference, then why would there even be a need to discuss this stuff in the first place? Whatever choices anyone makes (theists or non-theists) would be ....well, it would just "be."
Looking at the original quote from Dawkins, I believe he contradicts himself or at best, falls down on trying to support his point. He made a conscious choice of the things to mention: animals being eaten, parasites, etc. By choosing things that are considered "bad" by some people, he is in fact creating a paradigm where there is good and evil. Otherwise, he would have thrown in...baby smiles, blooming flowers, sunrises, etc.
The existence of "bad" stuff doesn't automatically mean the complete absence of "good" stuff.
If there is no bad or good, just indifference, then why would there even be a need to discuss this stuff in the first place? Whatever choices anyone makes (theists or non-theists) would be ....well, it would just "be."
Well I think he chose to point to certain things to make a certain point. I doubt that he denies, e.g., baby smiles and rainbows. His point is essentially that "s__t happens". In other places he also mentions things like the wondrous aspects of natural beauty and the elegance of natural and mathematical laws. But that was not his particular point at that particular time.
It IS possible to carry this line of reasoning too far and do a sort of negative version of the theist's agency inference. Ligotti for example likes to flog the assertion that life is MALIGNANTLY USELESS (reflexive all-caps are his). Almost as if he actually believed in Lovecraft's Great Old Ones -- and indeed, his works of fiction are very Lovecraftian.
Where I feel that Dawkins redeems himself in the quoted passage is that he does not push a negative view of life, he simply argues against a Pollyanna-ish belief that an invisible guy in the sky has everything in hand and is working things out in our long term best interests. There is no Orchestrator upon which to palm off our personal responsibilities.
Of course there is suffering in this world, both among humans as well as our four-legged and our winged friends. Not even the most fundamentalist Christian would argue that point. "Nature is red in both tooth and claw" someone once said.
I don't believe God intervenes in the affairs and the practices and mechanisms of Nature; rather, He lets things unfold as they should. In this respect I suppose you could refer to Him as an "Absentee Landlord" as many others who have been disgruntled with His seeming complacency have done.
But insofar as Human Suffering is concerned, you gotta remember the whole "Free Will" deal. He bestowed that upon us after The Fall and so unfortunately some of us are going to commit evil deeds.
And you are right in thinking "why not me?" instead of "why me?" Especially if the misfortune that prompted that feeling in you stemmed from the actions of another human being who was exercising their Free Will.
It is juvenile to think that God prevents Bad things from happening to Good People. Paul referred to this when he talked about thinking and praying like a child before putting away childish things.
But what Faith CAN provide you is a Strength to weather those bad times, and a comfort in knowing that in the End you will be rewarded.
The rabbi Harold Kushner's excellent book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" deals with the very subject of your OP and might be a great help to you.
Ok, so you take the Deist view that God made the world as it is and much of what we suffer from is our own doing.
But as pointed out, a lot isn't. Is God doing it? Obviously not. It 'just happens'. It is unfortunate, but nobody's fault. But why is it allowed to happen? God must be so resolutely not interfering that it is much an evil act as actually causing the bad things.
Moreover, there is the Tooth and Claw nature, thing. Didn't God set it up that way? Or is evolution to blame? But isn't that also god's doing? Didn't he - or it - know?
Quote:
Originally Posted by charlygal
Looking at the original quote from Dawkins, I believe he contradicts himself or at best, falls down on trying to support his point. He made a conscious choice of the things to mention: animals being eaten, parasites, etc. By choosing things that are considered "bad" by some people, he is in fact creating a paradigm where there is good and evil. Otherwise, he would have thrown in...baby smiles, blooming flowers, sunrises, etc.
The existence of "bad" stuff doesn't automatically mean the complete absence of "good" stuff.
If there is no bad or good, just indifference, then why would there even be a need to discuss this stuff in the first place? Whatever choices anyone makes (theists or non-theists) would be ....well, it would just "be."
You pick up on that point, Charlygal. But really, picking up on the good points is not explaining why the bad points exist. Some survival methods are frankly horrible, whether using Biblical morality..well, yes...or human moral preferences, which is of course what Dawkins is talking about.
Neither Dawkins nor I would say there is no good or evil. We only say that it is good or evil in terms of the human -constructed morality we all use. it is not an immutable set of moral laws dictated by God.
Thus the argument seems to be that that God is nothing to do with it (being remote) and it is not his fault the way he set it up - which I don't believe washes for a minute.
The old dictum applies: If there was no god at all, what would be different? There would still be good, bad (according to our humanist preferences) and indifferent. Tragedies would happen for no reason. Good people would suffer and the unscrupulous would get away with it. And there is no credible sign of god at all; just a belief that there is such a thing (choose your own) and that he gets credit for all the good stuff and everything else (if it can't be lamed on us) 'just happens'.
That's the answer. Evolution is often nasty, because that it the inevitable result of competition to survive by whatever means. Morals do not come into it and if you survive by eating your host or killing the male and his children and taking his women (whether you are a lion or a 10th c BC Hebrew) that's what survival instinct drives us to do.
It is nothing to do with a God who might as well not be there for all the good it does.
The only conclusion that makes sense to be is that it ISN'T there, and never was. Thus, the universe coming about by natural means and the mechanisms proposed for Abiogenesis being more probable that goddunnit seems to be by far the most reasonable answer. The problem of evil goes away because it doesn't need to be explained. Sin goes away - though good and evil remain for us to deal with, as a human preference.
We have to deal with life as it is, and not avoid the issue on the grounds that God will sort it all out, or it's all our fault or it's all predicted in the Bible or we'll all be raised (or at least those who believed some religious shibboleth or other) after we die.
There is probably no god, and probably no afterlife - if there is one, it is one we all get. But don't bet the farm on it. Better to take the reverse Pascal wager and live this life as though it was the only one you have, for others, too, because that is the way of human morality, never mind the knock on effect of be nice to others and they will be nice unto you.
Atheism for me is not only logically evidentially and rationally streets ahead of any Theist thought, but is morally superior, too. Not least in that I can leave others to believe what they want, so long as they accept that it is based just on Faith (active or just residual) and there is no sound case for trying to sell it to anybody or everybody else.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-20-2014 at 03:26 AM..
Well I think he chose to point to certain things to make a certain point. I doubt that he denies, e.g., baby smiles and rainbows. His point is essentially that "s__t happens". In other places he also mentions things like the wondrous aspects of natural beauty and the elegance of natural and mathematical laws. But that was not his particular point at that particular time.
It IS possible to carry this line of reasoning too far and do a sort of negative version of the theist's agency inference. Ligotti for example likes to flog the assertion that life is MALIGNANTLY USELESS (reflexive all-caps are his). Almost as if he actually believed in Lovecraft's Great Old Ones -- and indeed, his works of fiction are very Lovecraftian.
Where I feel that Dawkins redeems himself in the quoted passage is that he does not push a negative view of life, he simply argues against a Pollyanna-ish belief that an invisible guy in the sky has everything in hand and is working things out in our long term best interests. There is no Orchestrator upon which to palm off our personal responsibilities.
Well, he does purport to metaphorically "unweave" the rainbow in his one book--hence its title as such. (He devoted all of a few pages to that titular topic, as I recall, as it was one of many topics addressed). I do think that Dawkins' total output is really really damning to any sort of irrationally positive view of life. The quote you included in the original post is confined to a couple paragraphs. Imagine that sort of quote multiplied by say 3x (to get a page's worth of material) then by say 500 pages then by 10 volumes, or whatever Dawkins' popular output ultimately is. Hell, The Ancestor's Tale did a psychological number on me and I only read around 50 pages of that one. Just to truly consider evolutionary history and timescales (which he deftly presents in narrative form in that work...inspired by the Canterbury Tales, hence the title)--it's enough to make one stop caring about the present.
I personally have gotten to the point where I see everything, baby's smile included, in an indifferent-if-not-negative light. It's no fun to apply the lens of naturalism to everything you encounter. But...if you wanted "fun" you probably wouldn't claim atheism. Then the victory to attempt is to...try to undo that thought process, to regress to a more primitive viewpoint? Hell if I know. I'm still working on these things, myself.
(Most of what I say here is not directly aimed at you, mordant)
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 07-20-2014 at 04:34 AM..
Neither Dawkins nor I would say there is no good or evil. We only say that it is good or evil in terms of the human -constructed morality we all use. it is not an immutable set of moral laws dictated by God.
Well in one sense you would both say there is no good or evil. There is no morality that we all use--it does however happen to overlap massively. That's just happenstance, though, which can be overcome if one truly wants (for "better" or "worse").
I agree with what you say here regarding the levels of (a)morality, but I don't want to let you off the ultimate hook for nihilism, the hook that you yourself have acknowledged. I guess one might ground an argument for nihilism in saying that "the human-constructed morality we all use" is ultimately elusive and thus undefinable.
Last edited by Matt Marcinkiewicz; 07-20-2014 at 04:31 AM..
Looking at the original quote from Dawkins, I believe he contradicts himself or at best, falls down on trying to support his point. He made a conscious choice of the things to mention: animals being eaten, parasites, etc. By choosing things that are considered "bad" by some people, he is in fact creating a paradigm where there is good and evil. Otherwise, he would have thrown in...baby smiles, blooming flowers, sunrises, etc.
The existence of "bad" stuff doesn't automatically mean the complete absence of "good" stuff.
If there is no bad or good, just indifference, then why would there even be a need to discuss this stuff in the first place? Whatever choices anyone makes (theists or non-theists) would be ....well, it would just "be."
When one is truly indoctrinated into the evolutionary perspective, then one sees the good stuff as a means to the end of the bad stuff. The baby smiles to be fed by mom so that he may one day feed on the carcass of another mammal. Blooming flowers are deconstructed in terms of what ecological effects said blooming flower has...and to do so is to eliminate any sense of beauty from nature. Beauty is projected by us onto nature...no account that strives for objectivity also strives to preserve beauty. Beauty and truth are mostly (entirely?) antithetical.
Well in one sense you would both say there is no good or evil. There is no morality that we all use--it does however happen to overlap massively. That's just happenstance, though, which can be overcome if one truly wants (for "better" or "worse").
I agree with what you say here regarding the levels of (a)morality, but I don't want to let you off the ultimate hook for nihilism, the hook that you yourself have acknowledged. I guess one might ground an argument for nihilism in saying that "the human-constructed morality we all use" is ultimately elusive and thus undefinable.
I have not acknowledged nihilism. I have stressed that good and evil are relevant to us just as much as for theists. It is that it is a relative, human devised concensus -morality, though based on evolved -instinct drives and preferences, so I theorize, and is not implanted by a god, much less Given unto us through a set of (revised and edited) commands in a Holy Book.
Such supposedly immutable divine Moral code - quite apart from being very unsatisfactory - is, as I suggested, changed all the time to catch up with changing human preferences. Religious morality is in fact based on a hi- jack of human morality with added religious demands on a 'Hank's ass' argument of 'don't be nasty and be nice to everyone. well, we know those things are true, so all the rest must be true, too'.
In fact, my argument is that we evaluate the doings of God into Good and not good, but either someone elses's fault or 'He Had to do it'. In other words, we are applying non -Biblical humanist moral evaluation to God's actions as described in the Bible.
There is no Hook, in reality, that atheism has to 'get off'. It exists only in the minds of theists who swallow the canard about 'No God = no morality'.
Now you know better. I don't want to have this conversation again.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 07-20-2014 at 05:03 AM..
Reason: scrap the parenthesis -my Allowance is running low
I have not acknowledged nihilism. I have stressed that good and evil are relevant to us just as much as for theists. It is that it is a relative, human devised concensus -morality, though based on evolved -instinct drives and preferences, so I theorize, and is not implanted by a god, much less Given unto us through a set of (revised and edited) commands in a Holy Book.
Such supposedly immutable divine Moral code - quite apart from being very unsatisfactory - is, as I suggested, changed all the time to catch up with changing human preferences. Religious morality is in fact based on a hi- jack of human morality with added religious demands on a 'Hank's ass' argument of 'don't be nasty and be nice to everyone. well, we know those things are true, so all the rest must be true, too'.
In fact, my argument is that we evaluate the doings of God into Good and not good, but either someone elses's fault or 'He Had to do it'. In other words, we are applying non -Biblical humanist moral evaluation to God's actions as described in the Bible.
There is no Hook, in reality, that atheism has to 'get off'. It exists only in the minds of theists who swallow the canard about 'No God = no morality'.
Now you know better. I don't want to have this conversation again.
It's pretty simple: there is no good or evil. As long as you maintain that there is good and evil (of any definition), then we'll continue to have this conversation, so long as you're able and willing. Ambiguously sensed human instincts don't (or at least shouldn't automatically) count as moral lawmaking imperatives.
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I don't want to have this conversation again. 
