Cap'n Refsmmat

I think this is the part I'm most interested in reading more about. I'm going to see if I can find anything on my own, but if you happen to have references I'd like to read them. It could certainly play a role in the resolution of this problem, and in any case I'm interested in learning more about different religions.

Let's make a different analogy, then. Dr. Frankenstein is creating a human in his lab. By carefully putting together the right parts, starting the right reactions, and stimulating the right nerves, he can create life where there was none before. Late one night, Dr. Frankenstein is working on his human. He's got most of the parts together, and all he has to do now is hook the human's brain up to the lightning rod to start its mind and bring it to life. "Igor! Throw the main switch!" But at that moment, the angry villagers burst through the door, terrified of the prospect of yet another Frankenstein monster. (He said this one would have true morals, but they never believe mad scientists.) Brandishing pitchforks and torches, they roughly shove Dr. Frankenstein aside and hack his almost-alive creation to bits. Is it wrong to destroy Frankenstein's monster? (He was right about the morals, by the way -- it was going to be a productive member of society, not a man-eating monster.) I think this analogy is fair. Sure, the monster's larger than a fetus, but it shares some attributes: it's not yet independent of external systems (Frankenstein's machinery or the host mother), it will very likely soon be "alive" and independent, and its creation was a choice. (Dr. Frankenstein often wonders how the unskilled masses manage to do what takes him, a genius, months of careful work. With the help of a skilled Igor, at that.)

Before I respond completely, let me make sure I understand your position. Are you saying that God can allow suffering in the world, because there exists an afterlife in which the good are rewarded?

Let's start up a reading list of recommended books about religion. So, what books have you read have been thought-provoking, influential, or just downright interesting? I'll start. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. I'm not done yet, but the annotations are very helpful and there are collections of explanatory essays and introductions to give background material about the theology and history involved. Lost Christianities, by Bart Ehrman. An interesting introduction into the early variants of Christianity that didn't survive to modern times. The variety is fascinating.

But we can certainly infer and draw conclusions from other observations and through logic.

You've inspired me to ask about philosophical reading. Let's see what interesting books I can get on my Kindle.

I'm sure there are some members here with their favorite philosophical writings. Let's make a sort of reading list, shall we? So, what kinds of philosophical books do you like?

But choosing abortion is altering that probability. If I choose to abort, I am making that chance practically zero, whereas if don't, and I get the best medical treatment available, I'm making that chance very high. To look at it from the flip side, suppose I have choices A and B: I choose to give someone a medical treatment that has a 90% chance of killing them, but is very cheap. I choose to give someone a treatment that has a 10% chance of killing them, but is far more expensive. If I choose A for no reason but my own gain, I'm being immoral, aren't I? In the same way, choosing not to "give life a chance" can be immoral in most situations. Right?

So if there is no way of determining which hypothesis is correct, each person can call their own "true"? I'm not sure I'm philosophically ready for an argument about what is "truth." But I can certainly see that in such a case, you cannot argue that any particular hypothesis is false. If someone says "this is true," you can't prove them wrong. But neither can they prove themselves right. So for practical purposes, I could agree that they could believe it to be true, and there's no reason they should ever change their mind, but whether it is true seems to be a matter of whether truth is relative or objective.

Hmm, so perhaps the second proposition is the false one. Do you happen to know where in the Bible this is stated, or should I start searching? I'm interested to see how this is expressed. But why, if God is not all-powerful, is sacrifice required? I don't quite see the jump there.

But an embryo on its own is far more likely to result in a person than an individual egg, sperm, or lump of bacon. Isn't the likelihood relevant?

Is it a worthwhile endeavor to speculate about the nature of reality, and whether it's an illusion, even if we can't prove anything? There are many possible "solutions" for the underlying nature of reality. One postulates a supreme being that keeps the place running; the other postulates a computer program of some kind. Should we bother trying to figure out which is the most likely?

Enjoy. If you find recent threads that should be moved into it, just report them and someone will handle it.

And, of course, being far ahead of us means He could perhaps prevent us from gaining the appropriate knowledge, so that He is secure in his position. I suppose that brings new meaning to the saying that "we are not meant to understand Him." Unless He wants a group of angry atheist scientists trying to trap Him in a lab to tinker with Him, He'd better slow us down a bit.

Everyone who learns the scientific method and understands how science works understands that for an idea or explanation about reality to be meaningful, it must be testable. It must make predictions that we can verify through experiment. Now, there are unfortunately limits to what is testable. That is, we can verify that a particular hypothesis is true, but we cannot distinguish between it and another hypothesis that makes identical predictions. They are indistinguishable, even if their mechanisms are completely different. To make a fanciful example, I could argue that tiny demons move particles around according to the laws of physics as we know them. Since the demons know the rules, particles obey the same rules -- so there's no way I can verify whether it's demons or some other mechanism that causes particles to obey the rules. (The demons are clearly too small to be detected.) Most scientists dismiss that sort of speculation as meaningless, since an untestable hypothesis is completely unhelpful. But due to our limits on perception, this means we can never actually know which of those indistinguishable hypotheses is right -- we know how the universe behaves, but not why. Is the pursuit of that why, though not enabled by science and not aided by experiment, a worthwhile endeavor?

Or if your big drooping belly is actually a big drooping bomb.

Doesn't this imply that one day there will be a sufficiently advanced physical theory that can explain God and His existence? And perhaps some time after that we will be able to achieve whatever God can?

We've heard dozens of requests for it, so it's finally here. SFN now has an Earth science forum. Enjoy! If there are any threads you believe should be moved into it, feel free to use the Report Post mechanism to let us know.

Let's suppose there's a person who's lost the ability to create new memories. Introduce yourself to him, then step out for a few minutes, and he won't recognize you at all when you come back in. So this person won't remember anything, even pain, for more than a few minutes. Is it immoral to cause him temporary pain? If I hit him -- not hard enough to break something, of course, since he'd at least notice that something was broken, even if he didn't remember why -- and caused him pain, he would never remember it. It's like it never happened. He'd not hesitate to meet me again, not knowing that I'm likely to hit him. To him, being hit doesn't matter, because he never remembers it. His life goes on, and if he's a happy person, he's happy no matter how many times I hit him. But is hitting him immoral?

Perhaps we can put God above morality. Suppose we ask whether God's actions are just or unjust. First, we must define "just," and there are really two ways of doing so: Giving what is owed. If I owe anyone anything, whether by contract or moral obligation, and give it to them, I am being just. Fairly interpreting a higher set of rules. For example, a judge is just if he fairly interprets the law to make his decision. Now, in the case of God, a transcendent omnipotent God likely does not owe anyone anything. He is not indebted to us, we are indebted to Him. So God cannot be just or unjust in that regard. A transcendent God also makes the rules. There is no higher set of rules than God, there's only God. So He cannot be considered just or unjust on the basis of how He interprets rules. Thus, God is not unjust in causing suffering, nor is He just in stopping it. But we have to give up the "omnibenevolent" label, since God is really neither omnibenevolent nor omnimalevolent. Is that an acceptable cost to solve the problem? Does it even solve the problem?

But is that Biblically supported? Nowhere in the epilogue does God prevent Job from remembering his suffering. God could also bring Job to heaven, but at the time of writing it's hard to see that the concept of heaven was around -- Job seems to think that if he dies, he will simply rest, and cease to exist. But certainly it's possible that there is a heaven, and Job (and others will suffer) will receive everlasting life. But does that outweigh the suffering he receives on Earth? Do good things just sort of "drown out" bad things? His suffering is still bad, whether or not the outcome is not. The ending being good does not make the suffering good. It's not clear that we need any additional information to solve this contradiction. We can't just add additional propositions. Say we add: 5. God has a plan for the universe. Propositions 1-4 still have a contradiction. Necessarily, one of them must be false. We can at least speculate which it is. Okay, suppose the suffering ends. Job still suffers greatly until the suffering ends. To someone who is "blameless" and good, such suffering (which is great, as evidenced by Job's speeches) is probably disproportionate. It does not matter that the suffering eventually ends. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Could we not simply define God as "the creator of the universe" and then attempt to determine if He exhibits omnibenevolence?

You know the angle of part of the triangle, because it's the angle the bar is thrown at. Well, you know it's the angle that gives maximum range. You can use it as a variable and solve for it, I think.

Ah. So the purpose of Job's suffering was more than to test Job; it was to teach the rest of mankind a lesson. Again, however, we run into the question of "do the ends justify the means? Does a good outcome justify a bad method?" It would be easy, for example, to say that "an omnipotent god can, by definition, teach the important lesson without causing any suffering." He did grieve -- until God came in the end to answer his questions (or, rather, refuse to answer them). And yes, in the end he did not blame God or curse Him. But didn't Job suffer? Before God appeared to him, wasn't he suffering and wishing he was never born?

Perhaps, although we see in Genesis that at least some people of ancient times loved their children: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+22:2&version=NIV But Isaac is a subject for a different thread, I think.

But he acts in our realm, as shown in Job. And he allows Job to suffer in our realm. So is God in fact omnibenevolent in our reality? I have made no such claim. I didn't bring up the Problem of Evil as a way to disprove God's existence but as a way of puzzling over it. So what I'm instead doing is saying: We think God is X But God doesn't seem to fit the definition of X God isn't X? Or perhaps there's a loophole? This is the part we are trying to answer in this thread. But in our reality, God seems to break those rules. So by our definitions, He seems not to be omnibenevolent. I'm not interested in God's reality, as we describe Him in relation to his actions and appearances in ours, using our terms. So should we not claim God is omnibenevolent, since "good" is not absolute and we are forcing it on Him?