God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving (Commandments, scripture, preachers)

[LogicIsYourFriend]

Originally Posted by legoman

Read my posts. I have said this numerous times.

The logical fallacy is you saying suffering is not needed to learn virtues, when suffering is an integral component of said virtues.

But you have not shown it to be true that suffering must happen to know virtues. In fact, you have not proved your case as to why virtues (that only have relevance when suffering exists) are necessary in the first place. Maybe because it's only your opinion.

You may want to double-check that. I went back and reread the OP to make sure I wasn't missing this... the OP is actually claiming all suffering is needless. Read it yourself: "If god is all-powerful, then all suffering is needless, because he could accomplish whatever purpose suffering serves without our actually having to experience suffering."

But all suffering is not needless because suffering is needed to understand virtues that contain suffering. So the OP fails at this point. I already covered experiencing suffering vs. having knowledge of suffering in a previous post. Effectively from our perspective they are the same.

So clearly you refuted your own point by saying that we don't have to experience suffering to gain virtues.

Which is moot because you never have shown why suffering-dependent virtues are necessary other than opinion.

Actually we can conclude that no suffering is needless:

1. given suffering exists, and
2. given an all-powerful/all-loving God would not create needless suffering
3. then no suffering is needless, all suffering is necessary for whatever virtues God would teach us
4. furthermore this suffering must realize a greater good because an all-loving/all-powerful God will always work things out for the greatest good of all

Except that it is better to have never been raped and tortured than to have been. (admittedly my opinion, but I don't think I'm alone..)

(1) is a guess on your part. Given that some suffering is not needless, it is actually reasonable to assume that all suffering is needed, given an all-powerful God, as I showed above.
(2) because it is the ultimate greater good.

The OP has been refuted. You are reduced to arguing against the greater good for all.

No, you've given nothing more than opinion. "Ultimate greater good" is an opinion, yet it is a vital cornerstone of your entire argument.

You say suffering is necessary because we must learn suffering-dependent virtues. But these virtues would be unnecessary in a world where suffering doesn't exist. You have only shown suffering to be necessary in a world where your god wants it to exist (i.e. "for the greater good"); you have not shown that your god has no other choice (i.e. necessary).

[ACEsydney]

Originally Posted by LogicIsYourFriend

But you have not shown it to be true that suffering must happen to know virtues. In fact, you have not proved your case as to why virtues (that only have relevance when suffering exists) are necessary in the first place. Maybe because it's only your opinion.

So clearly you refuted your own point by saying that we don't have to experience suffering to gain virtues.

Which is moot because you never have shown why suffering-dependent virtues are necessary other than opinion.

Except that it is better to have never been raped and tortured than to have been. (admittedly my opinion, but I don't think I'm alone..)

No, you've given nothing more than opinion. "Ultimate greater good" is an opinion, yet it is a vital cornerstone of your entire argument.

You say suffering is necessary because we must learn suffering-dependent virtues. But these virtues would be unnecessary in a world where suffering doesn't exist. You have only shown suffering to be necessary in a world where your god wants it to exist (i.e. "for the greater good"); you have not shown that your god has no other choice (i.e. necessary).

This is precisely the point I don't think he is understanding. He simply cannot "step outside the box" and conceive of a world any different than this one. Yes, a world could exist without suffering. These so-called "suffering-dependent virtues" would be completely unnecessary in that world. Undoubtably an all-loving, all-powerful god would spare us from the UNNECESSARY tragedies that exist in this world.

[ACEsydney]

Originally Posted by legoman

Actually any "acts of god" (ie. creation, flood, miracles, etc) are quite reasonable and logical if you assume there is an all-powerful God. But saying God should be able to make X equal to "NOT X" is illogical.

He is all-powerful. Read my response to LIYF after my response to you.

Using an illogical example like suggesting He teach us suffering (patience) without us knowing suffering, (ie. making a rock so big He can't lift it) does not disprove He is all-powerful. It only means that either illogical things cannot exist or we simply can't comprehend something illogical.

And by the way I don't necessarily believe God created the world in 7 days either...

Re-read my post (#111). I think you missed my replies to your previous post (I put them in bold font so they wouldn't blend in with your own). Maybe you just didn't feel like addressing those replies, I don't know.

I'm not posing some sort of paradox. You are the one asserting that things CANNOT be learned without suffering. This is an assumption, and your opinion. Without that assumption, no paradox exists.

If you don't think god has the power to "hard-wire" patience, or other such virtues into our brains from birth without making us suffer, then you are conceding to the statement that god is not all-powerful.

As for your other so-called "suffering-dependent" virtues, obviously they would have no use (and consequently couldn't exist) in a world without suffering.

Like I said before, you simply need to stop thinking in two dimensions.
Analogy:
"How can you know how to drive a car without first going to driver's ed.?"
"For starters, I could be born knowing how to drive a car. I was born knowing how to breath, blink, ect without being taught. Why not drive? Secondly; It would be pretty useless (and 'unnecessary') to attend driver's ed. in a world without cars."

[Tricky D]

Originally Posted by LogicIsYourFriend

Sorry, I misread it. But that doesn't make sense either... morality is irrelevant?

No my point is that immortality makes morality and desire irrelevant.
If nobody dies it doesn't matter what you do since nobody will die.
And when you're immortal there is no difference in being tortured for 1 hour or 1000 years since time also has lost all its meaning.
And if there is no more death people will also lose all their desires because with the coming of immortality it has lost its function.
I also believe that only mortal people will have the desire to stay alive, simply because their lives will end.


Originally Posted by ACEsydney

If you don't think god has the power to "hard-wire" patience, or other such virtues into our brains from birth without making us suffer, then you are conceding to the statement that god is not all-powerful.

The thing is that in reality being "hard-wired" could become a handicap.
There are situations were it pays to be impatient.
I guess that being hard-wired amounts to not having a choice, which in the ends means not being able to adapt to unforeseen situations.

"For starters, I could be born knowing how to drive a car. I was born knowing how to breath, blink, ect without being taught. Why not drive?

You were born knowing how to breathe etc because all that is absolutely necessary to stay alive, while driving isn't.
One can lead a normal life without being able to drive a car.
The thing is that you do not need to be moral to survive.
Unfortunately there even are situations where it pays to not to be moral in order to survive.

[ACEsydney]

Originally Posted by Tricky D

Originally Posted by LogicIsYourFriend No my point is that immortality makes morality and desire irrelevant.
If nobody dies it doesn't matter what you do since nobody will die.
And when you're immortal there is no difference in being tortured for 1 hour or 1000 years since time also has lost all its meaning.
And if there is no more death people will also lose all their desires because with the coming of immortality it has lost its function.
I also believe that only mortal people will have the desire to stay alive, simply because their lives will end.


Originally Posted by ACEsydney The thing is that in reality being "hard-wired" could become a handicap.
There are situations were it pays to be impatient.
I guess that being hard-wired amounts to not having a choice, which in the ends means not being able to adapt to unforeseen situations.

Very good points sir! You misunderstood my meaning of "hard wired" though. My fault, "hard wired" was a little vague. Knowing how to be patient from birth doesn't automatically mean you are ALWAYS patient. Obviously there are situations where patience can be a hinderance. I was not implying that by being born with patience that would in any way negate a person's natural intelligence to know which situations require patience and which require urgency.

You were born knowing how to breathe etc because all that is absolutely necessary to stay alive, while driving isn't.
One can lead a normal life without being able to drive a car.
The thing is that you do not need to be moral to survive.
Unfortunately there even are situations where it pays to not to be moral in order to survive.

Define "normal life". Driving is one of my favorite things in this world. HAHAHA!

Anyways, the driving thing was just an analogy. I was substituting "driving" for "patience", and "driver's ed" for "suffering". The point of the analogy was to demonstrate that in a world where things are a little different, suffering would have no place whatsoever.

Unfortunately you're right, you DON'T need to be moral to survive. Again you're right, there ARE situations where being immoral actually helps to survive.
We could attribute this to several things:
1. God made a mistake when he created this world, in which there is a loop-hole where; sometimes immorality benefits an individual.
2. This "immorality" is acutally a byproduct of the evolutionary process in which; sometimes the "immoral" individual survived because he stole another individual's dinner, ect...
3. God created this world knowing there would be immoral people in it. He allowed people to learn that immorality could bring them benefit. He also allowed people to get away "scott free" without punishment which further enboldened them to do more immoral acts. *Don't worry though, they'll get theirs in the end. (They will spend eternity burning in hell)*

*Or maybe people just tell themselves that so they can make sense of all the injustice in "god's" world.

[The Matrix]

I've only glanced at a few posts, and haven't come anywhere near reading them all in this thread. So I apologize if I simply repeat what others have said. Nonetheless, I hope I can advance the discussion. And then I'll leave you alone again.

Here's the basic argument put forth:
Premise 1. If God is both all powerful and all loving, then there would be no unnecessary suffering.
Premise 2. There is unnecessary suffering.
Conclusion (through modus tollens): It's not the case that God is both all powerful and all loving.

So we have a valid argument. Is it sound? That is, are the premises true? Hard to tell. I'll start with premise 2. Some of the important questions here are the following. First, what do we mean by "unnecessary suffering"? This needs a sharp presentation if it is to get anywhere. Second, how do we know what is and is not unnecessary suffering when we see it? From what perspective? In other words, premise 2 is an empirical claim, that there is indeed unnecessary suffering in the world. So we need to have a conceptual understanding of what this means, and we need to be able to ascertain that in fact there is unnecessary suffering. Not simply suffering--but suffering that is unnecessary. Can we actually identify unnecessary suffering? We would have to have a "God's eye" view of the world to be sure. That's something we don't have, unfortunately.

The term "unnecessary" is not the easiest of terms to pin down. If we say X is unnecessary we can mean that (1) X is possible, (2) X is contingent, (3) X is gratuitous, (4) X is an inferior means of attaining some other goal Y, (5) X is mean or evil, (6) X is/was preventable, and probably a bunch of other things that escape me right now.

So, what do we mean when we say suffering is "unnecessary"? In this context we probably mean that suffering is unnecessary because it is either preventable or there is a better way to achieve the same goals.

Let me turn to the first premise: If God is both all powerful and all loving, then there would be no unnecessary suffering. Let's assume God is all powerful, or at least powerful enough. Is there any conceivable reason for God to allow unnecessary suffering? What if I bring it on myself? Or what if humanity as a whole has brought suffering upon themselves (ourselves), in the sense that we suffer, even though we could have prevented it, and there is a better way to achieve the same goal? Suffering is, perhaps, our own fault, and unnecessary suffering is also our fault. Should God allow it? If he allows it is he still all loving? To say God "allows" is to say God is not the cause of the suffering, but that we are. We cause ourselves to suffer, we cause each other to suffer. Perhaps God also suffers along with us.

Now, unnecessary suffering is not (necessarily) meaningless suffering. And I think the real problem would be meaningless suffering, rather than unnecessary suffering (in the ways I suggested we understand "unnecessary"). Perhaps there is suffering in the world as a consequence of the choices we have made. And the "unnecessary" dimension of our suffering would be the consequence--that we did not choose the higher road, that we intensionally inflict harm on others, that we are dissatisfied with our lot in life, etc. etc. Much suffering is unnecessary, but it is not meaningless. We can use suffering to cultivate virtues--to be more courageous, to become compassionate, to learn how to love, to ease another's suffering, etc.

What I think is clear, however, is that God would not desire suffering in the world because of its instrumental good. This is parallel to saying that God wants there to be evil in the world because of all the good he can get out of it. I think this is wrong. God cannot/does not desire evil, and similarly, he does not desire for us to suffer because of the good consequences. So, I don't agree with the solution where we say God allows suffering because of all the good consequences that can come of it.

I don't have a quick fix here. But I've always been intrigued by Leibniz's answer. Basically, God allows suffering and evil because to prevent these things in the long run/big picture would bring about more evil/suffering than simply allowing it. God does not desire evil or suffering. He prevents when preventing does not lead to worse consequences. He uses suffering for greater good whenever possible, but not because he desires suffering--it is because suffering is inescapable for finite creatures. In short, with the creation of finite, limited creatures, there is no escaping the evil and suffering that follows. And this is the best world possible given our limited, finite natures. Can we empirically verify this? No. We are too limited in our understanding. But from God's perspective, all suffering is meaningful, and even what seems to us as unnecessary fits, in some way we cannot understand, into a bigger picture of reality.

I suggested that "unnecessary" can be understood as either "can be prevented" or "there is a better way to go about getting the same result." Leibniz's answer covers both. God would not prevent suffering if something worse were to happen. And there is no better way, since God has prevented ALL suffering that can be prevented without leading to something worse.

Is this a fully satisfying answer? No. But it might have a shot at answering this difficult challenge. Plantinga has also written on these sort of things. But I can't remember right now exactly how he approaches the issue (similar to Leibniz, but he criticizes Leibniz, too).

[legoman]

Originally Posted by ACEsydney

This is precisely the point I don't think he is understanding. He simply cannot "step outside the box" and conceive of a world any different than this one. Yes, a world could exist without suffering. These so-called "suffering-dependent virtues" would be completely unnecessary in that world.

ACE, I do understand what you are saying. Yes, a world could exist without suffering, but in such a world virtues could not be fully known or understood. Yes, virtues would be unnecessary in such a world. But would that world be better?

I am suggesting that a world with virtues and temporary suffering is better than a world without virtues. The reason I believe that is because learning the virtue (which is an ultimate good, and will last forever) outweighs any negative temporary suffering. Can I prove that? Maybe not to you. No more than I can prove God exists. But this isn't even the main point I am trying to make.

Undoubtably an all-loving, all-powerful god would spare us from the UNNECESSARY tragedies that exist in this world.

You are assuming the greater good is that no tragedies exist, not even temporarily. You are also assuming that there is unnecessary suffering in this world.

The main point I am trying to make is that if we go with the premise that having virtues is part of the greatest good, then knowledge of suffering is a temporary necessity in that world. This should be plain to see because knowledge of a virtue implies knowledge of the suffering in that virtue. The knowledge of the virtue is tied to the knowledge of the suffering - it cannot be divided.

Now: knowledge of suffering directly ties to experience of suffering (either passively or actively). The knowledge of this suffering, is gained by the experience of this world. You might say God could just put the knowledge directly in our brain to avoid the suffering, but to get the exact same knowledge as the experience, it would feel like we are experiencing time passing and events happening - thus we would still feel the suffering - it is part of the knowledge. The knowledge is the experience. And I'm not saying we all need to experience the exact same suffering. But we would all experience what is necessary to develop the necessary virtues to achieve the greater good.

Under such a world suffering is necessary and the greater good is realized for all.

[legoman]

Originally Posted by ACEsydney

Re-read my post (#111). I think you missed my replies to your previous post (I put them in bold font so they wouldn't blend in with your own). Maybe you just didn't feel like addressing those replies, I don't know.

Sorry I totally missed them. I find it hard to see replies within someone else's quote.

I'm not posing some sort of paradox. You are the one asserting that things CANNOT be learned without suffering. This is an assumption, and your opinion. Without that assumption, no paradox exists.

Perhaps I wasn't clear before, but I do appreciate this discussion as it is clarifying these concepts for myself (if for no one else - due to my inability to explain this well).

What I mean is the knowledge of suffering is contained within the knowledge of a virtue. Thus you cannot know a virtue without also knowing suffering. So then the question becomes how do you get knowledge of suffering? How do you get knowledge of anything? By experience. I mentioned this a bit in my previous post.

Thus to get a knowledge of a virtue requires an experience of suffering.

If you don't think god has the power to "hard-wire" patience, or other such virtues into our brains from birth without making us suffer, then you are conceding to the statement that god is not all-powerful.

No. God could "hard-wire" virtues (perhaps that is what He is doing! ), but in the process, a knowledge of suffering would also be "hard-wired". And we literally "know" this as experience. Thus we feel the suffering as we learn it in this life. And then the virtues are developed.

As for your other so-called "suffering-dependent" virtues, obviously they would have no use (and consequently couldn't exist) in a world without suffering.

Like I said before, you simply need to stop thinking in two dimensions.
Analogy:
"How can you know how to drive a car without first going to driver's ed.?"
"For starters, I could be born knowing how to drive a car. I was born knowing how to breath, blink, ect without being taught. Why not drive? Secondly; It would be pretty useless (and 'unnecessary') to attend driver's ed. in a world without cars."

I think your analogy would be better like this. Sure you could be born knowing how to drive a car. But could you be born knowing how to drive a car without knowing what a steering wheel is? Logically it is impossible. Thus a paradox.

Sure you don't need to know how a steering wheel works in detail, mechanically etc. But you need to know that if you turn the steering wheel one way, that the car goes that way, etc. You need to know that a steering wheel steers the car. If you didn't know that, you wouldn't know how to drive.

So should we say God is not all-powerful because He cannot give someone the ability to drive a car without also letting them understand what a steering wheel does?

Knowing what a steering wheel does is integral to understanding how to drive a car.
Knowing what suffering does is integral to understanding a virtue.

How do we know things? By experience...

[OhioanKid]

God could probably create paradoxes and make them "work" in a "not possible" way, but then it would defy our inherent nature to think logically. Therefore, he chooses to make the world work in a logical fashion; and the only logical way to have a virtue is by undergoing suffering.

[legoman]

Originally Posted by LogicIsYourFriend

But you have not shown it to be true that suffering must happen to know virtues. In fact, you have not proved your case as to why virtues (that only have relevance when suffering exists) are necessary in the first place. Maybe because it's only your opinion.

Yes we all have our opinions. See my other posts to ACE, I think I covered most of this. Knowledge of suffering is contained in knowledge of virtues.

So clearly you refuted your own point by saying that we don't have to experience suffering to gain virtues.

Again see my other posts. Knowledge is based on experience. Even if God directly gave us the knowledge, it would seem to us to be an experience.

Except that it is better to have never been raped and tortured than to have been. (admittedly my opinion, but I don't think I'm alone..)

Ok. Hold on. First of all your statement is untrue if a greater good can be achieved at some point (which admittedly is probably in the afterlife). You are assuming no greater good can come of it.

Second you ignored my proof that shows needless suffering doesn't exist, given the parameters of an all-powerful all-loving God working towards the greatest good.

No, you've given nothing more than opinion. "Ultimate greater good" is an opinion, yet it is a vital cornerstone of your entire argument.

You say suffering is necessary because we must learn suffering-dependent virtues. But these virtues would be unnecessary in a world where suffering doesn't exist. You have only shown suffering to be necessary in a world where your god wants it to exist (i.e. "for the greater good"); you have not shown that your god has no other choice (i.e. necessary).

Sure I believe a greater good can come of suffering than if there were no suffering, and the greater good itself relies on the existence of suffering due to the knowledge of suffering in virtues.

To be honest guys, I've enjoyed the discussion and I hope I've given something for people to think about. Its actually helped me to clarify it for myself, although it is still difficult to explain this to another person. However, I've been wasting too much time thinking and writing about this, and I actually have some work to do! Not to mention I will be out of town next week, so I will (mostly ) end it here and probably won't have much time to continue this. I doubt anyone will change their mind here but hopefully readers can see its not quite as clear cut as the OP makes it out to be.