What’s Wrong with the World

God is the "ground of all being" ... *everything* that exists has its ultimate cause and continuous upholding-in-existence in God's will that it exist.

Now, if "the Creator" is a separate being from God, this doesn't get God off the hook; God is still responsible: for God created this Demiurge who is, so it is being asserted, morally wicked.

Or, if "the Creator" and God are one-and-the-same, as indeed they are, and if "the Creator" is morally wicked, or even just morally indifferent -- and how does moral indifference differ from moral wickedness, exactly? -- then whence comes the standard by which to judge "the Creator" as wicked?

Are there other arguments, perhaps less metaphysically abstract, to the same effect? Can we argue that a self-existent being capable of creating and interested in creating but indifferent to the suffering of his creations is improbable?

-a self-existent being who can be the ultimate explanation for consciousness but who is not good

Let's see: A self-existent being doesn't depend on anything for either its being or for its "achieving" its perfection, its completedness. And presumably it is eternally complete, precisely because it depends on nothing else. Now, we are also to suppose that this being is not to be understood as "good" in some sense. What sense? Since it has the attribute of "completeness", it is not in defect as regards what-(ever) it is that this being could and would be. And isn't that precisely a sort of good - that it be entirely, perfectly whole, complete?

Ah, but this is not moral perfection, is it? A rock is whole with regard to rockness, but it isn't morally good. True, but this indifferent creator is a spiritual being, and an intelligent being. Being complete, then, it must know all things, including "the good". And being complete, it must incline rightly to the good, or it is still incomplete with regard to something, that which it loves.

To start with a self-existent being means to start with absolute perfection, there is no way around it.

A Thomist would also say that evil, as such, is the privation of perfect being. Perfection, which is a vague sounding word to modern ears, means something like completion (as Tony said). The completion or perfection of a nature is the actualization of a potency and is what we first call "good." Notice that it is not only act that is called good but also potency, and potency is the subject of privation as well as act. Even a potency for evil must be, in a sense, good.

In the case of God, who is pure act with no admixture of potency, we can say that His Goodness cannot possibly be the subject of some evil because good can only be the subject of evil inasmuch as it is in potency to some act. In other words, because a potency is a potency for some perfection it may also be deprived of the same perfection and is therefore what we call privation or evil. As pure act, none of this can be said of God. He is simply "outside" all potency and privation.

The real issue at hand, though, is what sense of omni-benevolent is meant when we say that the existence of evil somehow contradicts God's omni-benevolence. People usually say something like "doing all possible goods," but I have never seen such a quality argued for by any philosopher, theologian, or even religious figure. Christ certainly never argued for this sense of omni-benevolence, and the Church has never affirmed this. In fact, I would go so far as to say that omni-benevolence is an imprecise way of articulating God's goodness. Why not just say that God's goodness has more to do with desirability than any form of benevolence. God is infinitely desirable and all things seek perfection inasmuch as they seek to assimilate to Him.

Omni-benevolence is a vague term since there are different senses, like the one above, in which God may be called all-good. I could concede that the argument from evil is perfectly successful, but only in the sense that it helps us refine our definitions and what it means to predicate goodness of God.

To paraphrase the argument attributed to Epicurus, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

If the only self-existent Creator there is is morally indifferent, do the concepts of "good" and "evil" have a meaning at all?

It wasn't by accident that the "forbidden fruit" in Eden was knowledge of good and evil. So yes, they do have meaning, but that meaning separates humans from God.

It wasn't by accident that the "forbidden fruit" in Eden was knowledge of good and evil. So yes, they do have meaning, but that meaning separates humans from God.

I don't see how that follows, Step2. After all, the whole situation in Eden takes place on the background assumption that God does exist. No God = No Eden.

I'm inclined to say that objective good and evil have no meaning unless there is *at least* some sort of Platonic Good, a standard obtaining entirely outside of finite beings. The trick for making the moral argument, I would say, is arguing that this Platonic standard must be (or co-exist with the essential nature of) a personal being.

I don't see how that follows, Step2. After all, the whole situation in Eden takes place on the background assumption that God does exist. No God = No Eden.

I'm addressing your main question about whether God could be morally indifferent, not whether God exists. It follows that if God is morally indifferent, developing a moral sense of good and evil would make one aware of that indifference, perhaps to the point of calling it the problem of evil.

I'm inclined to say that objective good and evil have no meaning unless there is *at least* some sort of Platonic Good, a standard obtaining entirely outside of finite beings.

I don't know what you mean by "a standard obtaining entirely outside of finite beings". If finite beings cannot grasp it, even just partially, how can it be a standard?

I think the point is that the standard exists apart from whether finite beings recognize it, or how clearly they recognize it: the standard pre-exists their awareness thereof.

Lydia, is there any way of revising the question so that the presumed "creator" is not the self-existent being, but rather the First existent being, who merely happens to be first, not on account of any special nature that makes him of different order ("self-existent) but of the same sort as all the other stuff, only first. Being first, he cannot have "been created", because that would require something else prior. Something like what the atheists like to pretend the universe as a whole is: just a brute fact that "IT IS." If the creator just "happens" to be, and was first of course, then naturally everything else comes from him, but that doesn't make him necessary being as such. Coming from that kind of "creator", I would think there is a better chance of proposing he is morally indifferent.

But I agree with you that there would STILL have to be an independent standard of the good by which to measure that he is indifferent. Which is really weird: would it have pre-existed him? Would it be co-eternal with him?

Coming from that kind of "creator", I would think there is a better chance of proposing he is morally indifferent.

"... presume to [judge] ..."

Lydia
I think one way to pursue the strategy you are suggesting is to tie the definition of "evil" or "cruelty" to "irrationality."

Another way would be to propose "Anselmian Theism" as a hypothesis. God is a "title" belonging to the being most worthy of worship. So God would be defined as the greatest conceivable being. This means that God becomes the best available explanation of morality. David Baggett and Jerry Walls pursue a similar strategy in "Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality".

We could also, perhaps, argue that human existential desires are best explained by "Anselmian Theism". This strategy is suggested, but not developed in detail, by Clifford Williams in "Existential Reasons for Belief in God".

Graham

Jerry Walls has a paper entitled "Hume on Divine Amorality" Religious Studies 26 in which he argues that, given our moral intuitions, God must be "perverse" or "good". We cannot settle on "amoral". I haven't read the paper, and I am unaware of the details of his argument.
I think that Alexander Pruss has developed an argument that suffering is evidence for the existence of God. And Dave sent me a short e-mail once in which he sketched out a similar argument.

Graham

Tony, I want to go back to one of your first comments. You said:

And being complete, it must incline rightly to the good, or it is still incomplete with regard to something, that which it loves.

Would you say that a being that creates other conscious beings ex nihilo is not inclining to the good if he (the creator) refuses to use his power to bring about (as far as is consistent with their freedom) the highest good of the conscious beings he has created? That is, is positive benevolence on the part of a creator tied directly to "goodness" where "goodness" means "inclining to the good"? Or to put it a different way, can we see by the natural light that if a creator makes other conscious beings (really makes them), he has a responsibility to them?

We could also, perhaps, argue that human existential desires are best explained by "Anselmian Theism".

Graham, is this similar to Lewis's "argument from desire"?

The idea that God must be perverse or good is an interesting one.

Alvin Plantinga has argued that _our sense_ that evil is truly evil is evidence for the existence of God. This is because he considers naturalism as the alternative to the existence of God and argues that if naturalism is true there is no meaning to "evil." I think he is right about this latter but occasionally wonder if Platonism can, as it were, save atheism by allowing the atheist to posit The Good which allows us to identify evil but is non-personal. Not that most atheists want to be helped in that way! :-)

Something like what the atheists like to pretend the universe as a whole is: just a brute fact that "IT IS."

I was going to respond that one of God's many names is "I am that I am", but it turns out that is a weak translation. A more correct interpretation is "I will be who I will be". Which read a certain way suggests an incompleteness, a God in the act of becoming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh

I was going to respond that one of God's many names is "I am that I am", but it turns out that is a weak translation. A more correct interpretation is "I will be who I will be". Which read a certain way suggests an incompleteness, a God in the act of becoming.

Lydia
Yes, William's is defending Lewis. There are desires for goodness, justice, love, meaning, awe, delight (in goodness), forgiveness, heaven, and cosmic security. Williams argues that a certain emotional engagement is required to know certain truths. One cannot know the horror of the Holocaust, for example, without some emotional engagement with the eyewitness testimony of survivors.

"Someone who does not recognise the importance of the needs mentioned in the existential argument for believing in God is not likely to be moved by them to believe in God or to think of the needs as requiring an explanation. But if one does recognise the importance of the needs, one is more likely to be moved by them to believe and to regard them as requiring explanation. One will be less inclined to accept a naturalistic explanation of them. "They cannot simply be explained away", such a person will say. " pp76-77, emphasis mine

So Williams seems to be giving an analysis similar to Plantinga's argument from our sense of horror. He is offering a cumulative argument, similar to Swinburne's (p143) although he does not spell this out in Bayesian terms. He points out that the needs are connected, and that God alone can satisfy all the needs. So it strikes me that his cumulative case would be strengthened significantly by the design and moral arguments. The latter seems important, as Williams wisely states that we should evaluate each need to determine if it is acceptable.

Graham

… Or to put it a different way, can we see by the natural light that if a creator makes other conscious beings (really makes them), he has a responsibility to them?

Morality is interpersonal -- only persons have, or can have, moral obligations and moral expectations, and only of other persons. Mere things are wholly outside the scope of morality.

Morality is relational -- the moral obligations and expectations between two persons depend upon the relationship that obtains between them. If there is no relationship at all between two persons, then there can be no moral obligations and expectations between them.

A father’s moral obligations to and expectations from his son differ from those of the son to the father, and both differ again from those obtaining between either and a nephew/cousin.

If there are persons living on some planet orbiting a distant star, we here on this planet have no moral obligations to them, for there is absolutely no relationship between us. On the other hand (the comic book hand), were some Mad Scientist to invent a Death Ray, for the purpose of destroying any life in that solar system, we, gaining knowledge of his Dastardly Plans, would have the moral obligation to do what we can to stop him, for there is now some minimal relationship between us and them; which is that our acts and omissions affect their lives.

God, being the Creator and Sustainer of all that is not-God, permanently partakes of an interpersonal relationship with all the persons he has created. Thus, God has moral obligations to and moral expectations of his creatures, as they to him. But, as with a father and a son, his obligations to us are not the same as our obligations to him.

I think he is right about this latter but occasionally wonder if Platonism can, as it were, save atheism by allowing the atheist to posit The Good which allows us to identify evil but is non-personal.

Incredibly, Sam Harris manages to get something right now and then in "The Moral Landscape".

"it is also useful to notice that a universal morality can be defined with reference to the negative end of the spectrum of moral experience: I refer to this extreme as "the worst possible misery for everyone"
Even if each conscious being has a unique nadir on the moral landscape, we can still conceive of a state of the universe in which everyone suffers as much as he or she (or it) possibly can. If you think we cannot say this would be "bad" then I don't know what you could mean by the word "bad" (and I don't think you know what you mean by it either). Once we conceive of "the worst possible misery for everyone" the we can talk about taking incremental steps towards this abyss: what would it mean for life on Earth to get worse for all human beings simultaneously?...
It seems uncontroversial to say that a change that leaves everyone worse off, by any rational standard, can reasonably be called "bad", if this word is to have any meaning at all."

pp38-39

Now Sam can't use this thought experiment to explain morality. It is practically impossible to derive objectively real duties from it, he can't use it to explain the moral worth of persons, he can't use it to develop a theory of objective rights, and so forth.
However, I think Sam is right about one thing- I think that he has defined a state that a rational being could not value, and that every rational being would take action to avoid. And I think that every rational being would command others to avoid bringing about such a state.
It seems to me that God would be irrational to value suffering as an end in itself, for example. And that seems to be true whether or not there are objective moral truths. So I think that there is some merit to your idea that a "self-existent being capable of creating and interested in creating but indifferent to the suffering of his creations is improbable"
It certainly seems to be an idea worth exploring.

Graham

ilion

I think that what you say is true of obligations, but there is more to morality than duty. For example, the earth was "good" before the sixth day. I doubt that it is possible to provide a complete description of the good. But it certainly includes aesthetic states of affairs.

It is also easy to imagine a state in which a Deistic God creates humans, but does not desire a relationship with them.

Graham

It is also easy to imagine a state in which a Deistic God creates humans, but does not desire a relationship with them.

Ilion

By that definition I'm in relationship with this computer. The relationship is purely causal.
Whether or not a Deistic creator is worthy of the title "God" is an open question, I agree with you there.

Graham

It is also easy to imagine a state in which a Deistic God creates humans, but does not desire a relationship with them.

I think that point that Graham makes is central to the question raised in the main post. A deistic God would not be expected to do anything about human (or for that matter animal) suffering. In fact, a deistic God might not even provide an afterlife in which all would be explained, an afterlife which "eye has not seen nor ear heard" and in relation to which the sufferings of this present life are as nothing.

Now _if_ such a deistic God really is conceivable, then he is possible. (How's that for a controversial statement?)

It seems to me that the natural theologian who wants to argue that Divine goodness is _metaphysically provable_ will run into a bit of a dilemma:

On the one hand, if goodness--that is, benevolence--is rationally metaphysicall provable, then we can know that a Deistic God (that is, a God indifferent to our fate, who does nothing for us but create us) is a metaphysical impossibility. If one hung onto the conceivability doctrine, one would then say that it only momentarily seemed that we could conceive of such a God, because we were not thinking very clearly about the matter.

On the other hand, St. Thomas said (if I recall correctly) that the plan of salvation could not be known by pure reason but must be revealed. Now, if we can _prove_ that a withdrawn, Deistic God who does nothing to save man, does not help man, etc., is impossible, are we not coming rather close (if not over the line) of saying that we can prove by pure reason that God must have a plan of salvation for His creatures?

I suppose one way to go between the horns of this dilemma would be to say that we can prove rationally that God must be omnibenevolent but have only the haziest notions of what that benevolence entails and cannot be sure of how much "distance" and lack of help--including eternal help--God could give us, consistent with His omnibenevolence.

I'm not sure if this works, though.

By that definition I'm in relationship with this computer.

... you uphold the existence of your computer? If you were to stop thinking "My computer is" it would cease to exist?

On the other hand, St. Thomas said (if I recall correctly) that the plan of salvation could not be known by pure reason but must be revealed. Now, if we can _prove_ that a withdrawn, Deistic God who does nothing to save man, does not help man, etc., is impossible, are we not coming rather close (if not over the line) of saying that we can prove by pure reason that God must have a plan of salvation for His creatures?

No, Lydia, I don't think that argument can fly. Even if God had no plan in mind for saving some men, He would still have the good angels who share the Blessed Realm for eternity. That would be a sufficient good to explain the economy of the universe. (Otherwise, you would be forced to say that in a world in which X man will be saved and Y = All-X will be not-saved, the goodness of the economy of creation is insufficiently explained in X being saved, when He could have saved at least one more out of Y. And if at least one more, than any number more. And if any number more, then all.) The argument hangs on a view of the totality of good that is inherently a creature's limited view, and is not what the Bible points to. It's just not true that goodness (necessarily) implies saving all men, and therefore it cannot be true that goodness necessarily implies saving some men. It could have been (just as logical possibility) sufficient for Divine Goodness to have created man in the good and make it possible for Adam to choose aright, thus providing the sufficiency for happiness to him had he chosen right. Or, it might be sufficient for Divine Goodness to limit the degree of evil that men will now suffer to a lesser degree than we really deserve, so that He shows mercy to every man though He does not save every (or any) man. Neither of these shows God being indifferent to man.

No, Lydia, I don't think that argument can fly. Even if God had no plan in mind for saving some men, He would still have the good angels who share the Blessed Realm for eternity.

Nevertheless, the question comes to me: what if we are "the bad angels"? What if our mortal lives are both mercy and justice? What if this life is our opportunity to repent of having rebelled when we dwelt with God face to face?

Or, what if *all* the angels are required to pass through the test/temptation of a mortal life? What if the demons are angels who were too proud to submit to the test?

These are, of course, pretty much pointless speculations, as there is no way to present evidence for or against them.

Lydia, I've been wondering this same question for several months now. Still picking at it. However, perhaps my question is slightly different. Normally, I am not terribly concerned whether there is a Platonic Good existing independently from all finite creatures, which we somehow grasp with our intellects. What is more pressing to my mind is the sort of stuff that I call good or evil -- and not merely "call", but what I somehow feel as good or evil. Whether there is a Platonic Good or not doesn't change the way I react to cold-blooded murderers. (Okay, maybe it would change it somewhat, but I would still very much like to have no more murderers in the world, and that's sufficient for my point here.)

So my question is not whether God is good according to some Platonic Standard, but whether God is "good" according to what we typically think of as "good" in opposition to what we typically think of as "evil." And I'm using "we" here because I'm assuming you and I -- and a lot of people -- share a good deal of overlap in our use of these terms. So, dispensing with these terms for a moment, is it possible that God delights in creating a world full of pain, full miserable creatures? Or take out the word "delight" if it causes too much trouble, reword it some other way. Or is it possible that God is "indifferent" to us in the sense of not willing to bring into being the sort of end that we desire for ourselves? Or more concretely, could God only be creating us to live this finite life, in this world of much suffering, of death and loss, without anything further for us beyond death?

There is the idea of the true Good being part of God's perfection, but how do we know what this true Good is, if it indeed is? How do we know that we are not "depraved", not knowing what the true Good is, or not recognizing it as such and perhaps even seeing it (to our sensibilities) as Evil? We seem to think we humans are capable of being wrong, so how wrong might we be about God? How do we get from our own sensibilities about "good" and "evil" to a Platonic, Transcendent Good? How do we know what "perfection" really looks like, with regard to goodness?

Is it really not possible that the Creator could create us only for the lives we live here, and nothing more, similar to how many think of the fate of the animals, as being here just to do their thing for a while, to eat, sleep, mate, repeat, and then die?

I also have been wondering whether there could not be multiple Creators, infinitely many, each separate from the other with their own universe to make and run. And I wonder whether "self-existent" isn't in fact a term that could apply to the world itself. It seems empty to attach the term "self-existent" onto some hypothetical being that we define as separate from the world, or prior to it. I cannot conceptualize this being, so I cannot actually think out how this being -- as opposed to everything else -- is self-existent. And so I look at the world and think, well I don't seem to know everything about the world itself, so maybe it's possible that the world itself is self-existent, and I just don't "see" that aspect of it. What is the gain, philosophically, for supposing that the self-exisent ground of the world is something separate from the world itself? But that's a tangent. I just bring it up because it seems like all of these questions are closely interconnected.

peace

So, dispensing with these terms for a moment, is it possible that God delights in creating a world full of pain, full miserable creatures? Or take out the word "delight" if it causes too much trouble, reword it some other way. Or is it possible that God is "indifferent" to us in the sense of not willing to bring into being the sort of end that we desire for ourselves? Or more concretely, could God only be creating us to live this finite life, in this world of much suffering, of death and loss, without anything further for us beyond death?

I definitely think that this is an important place where revelation comes in. That is, perhaps such a God is _possible_ (that's the main question I'm bringing up in the main post), and it is that possibility (not, interestingly, atheism--that there is _no_ God) which gives any interest at all to the probabilistic problem of evil. That is, take on the one hand the hypothesis that a benevolent God exists, a God who cares something about man and is going to "do" something (perhaps we don't know exactly what) about man. Take, on the other hand, the negation of that hypothesis. Now, within that negation, we have both the possiblity that there is _no_ God of any sort whatsoever and the possibility that there is a God but that he has no intention of "doing" anything about human (or, for that matter, animal) suffering. It may be that _all_ of the probabilistic resources for explaining evil in the world sans benevolent God comes from the hypothesis of a real God but a God who does not "do" anything about his creatures here on earth--an indifferent God.

Even if we suppose that that is true, that would not have to be the end of the story. It could mean that the existence of evil in the world has _some evidential force_ against the existence of an actively benevolent God. But even if that were the case, that would just be the beginning of the story. There is still (I believe) massive _further_ evidence, specifically related to God's revelation to man, that a God who cares and acts does indeed exist but that his caring and acting does not take the form of removing all or even most of the suffering here on earth.

So the questions we're raising here concern what we might think of as a fairlY "early" point in our investigations into the existence and nature of God, more of a "pure natural theology" point.

Tony, interesting discussion of salvation. The thing is, I've always previously maintained that God could, consistent with his character as good, have refrained from developing a plan of salvation. But it just happens that today I'm waffling on that. Consider this point that you make:

It's just not true that goodness (necessarily) implies saving all men, and therefore it cannot be true that goodness necessarily implies saving some men.

I'm a pretty strong believer in human free will, so I would never even consider that Divine goodness requires _actually_ saving anybody, since people can always refuse salvation. So let's consider instead _providing a means_ by which men can be saved. Now, I think that question scoots us back to a prior question: Does Divine goodness require that God _love_ his creatures? If it does, then what implications does that have for God's providing some way of salvation which is at least available to mankind?

I'm not at all convinced that whatever is conceivable is possible; and I'm not convinced that any contingent fact could exist without God.
But the problem is that I want my arguments for God's existence to be persuasive; and to be persuasive to as many people as possible. So I want to be able to respond to the sceptic who thinks that "Anselmian Theism" is not plausible. (And, on an existential level, the most horrible thing that we can imagine is a horrible creator. I think that we want to banish that thought as best as we are able, and to use whatever resources are available.)
So I think that it is worth accepting the premise that Deism is possible for the sake of argument and exploration. And I think that it is likely that a "maximally powerful, maximally knowledgeable" creator would not be "evil". For I think "evil" is inextricably linked to irrationality. And I think that there are certain states of the universe that no rational being would or could desire.

Graham

Ilion

Creating and sustaining a personal being is not sufficient to have a personal relationship with that being; not unless you are equivocating on "relationship", or are smuggling in a bunch of premises about what it means to create or sustain.

We've already granted that Thomism has a good reply to this problem; I think Anselmian Theism does too. But what about Swinburne's Theism (which Davies and Feser incorrectly dismiss as "Theistic Personalism")? Does it have a reply to the thesis that God could be amoral.

Swinburne says "yes", because morality is independent of God and God would know all morally true propositions. And God, being free, would always act morally. But suppose we don't grant that moral facts strongly supervene on physical facts. Can we still make some response to the thesis that God is cruel?

Or, put another way, can we make predictions about states that God would value without speculating on God's moral character? I think we can.

Graham

As I understand it, according to our friend & colleague Ed Feser, St. Thomas equates God with the final cause (-10 below) in such "essentially ordered causal series'" as this:

0: the movement of the hand
-1: the flexing of the muscles of the hand
-2: the movement of the arm
-3: the flexing of the muscles of the arm
-4: the firing of certain motor neurons
-5: the firing of certain other neurons
-6: the overall state of the nervous system
-7: the molecular structure of the nervous system
-8: the atomic basis of the molecular structure of the nervous system
-9: electromagnetism, gravitation, the weak and strong forces
...: and so on and so forth
-10: the unmoved mover

It is not entirely clear where, exactly, "the love that moves the sun and the other stars" kicks in.

Does Divine goodness require that God _love_ his creatures? If it does, then what implications does that have for God's providing some way of salvation which is at least available to mankind?

If we posit that the "creator" is the one responsible for creating us, then either he creates us for our good, or he creates us for purposes that have nothing to do with our good. It is hard to consider the second seriously: if he creates us for the good of some OTHER created being, then it just moves the question back further: why did he created that OTHER creature? So that's a pointless avenue. If he created us for his own good that is not somehow implicitly also for our good, then oddly we must conclude that he is incomplete and needs us in some fashion, and further that he can arrange to become complete by making us - i.e. he manages to perfect himself. And if he has such power that he can perfect himself, why did he need us again?

(Of course, a being that can move itself from imperfect state to perfect state without any outside help is a contradiction in terms, but we son't look to closely at that, now will we? )

Unless we are talking about a creator that is not only indifferent to us but actually irrational and does things without reason altogether, it doesn't really go anywhere to suppose he would create us without caring about the result of that act of creating.

Steve, I think that your chain ignores what Ed says about what St. Thomas teaches about what Aristotle gave us: that the soul is what makes the body to be a living human body, is the formal cause. The movements of the muscles and neurons are BOTH under the guidance of the physical forces and causes, AND under the guidance of the soul itself, in each and every part of the process. The formal cause is not something that acts only at the last step in the chain before you get to God. That's mechanistic thinking.

Tony & Steve

I think the argument would be that final causes are ubiquitous; and only Theism can account for this.
I think that Ilion is drawing on the Thomistic account of creation, in which God is completely and intimately present in everything that God creates (given divine simplicity).
I'm not really convinced that this makes any sense, or that it is a plausible account of creation.

Graham

(Sorry - I should clarify. The argument from "final causes" is interesting. It's the baggage that worries me.)

Graham

if he creates us for the good of some OTHER created being, then it just moves the question back further: why did he created that OTHER creature?

Ah, but Tony, in terms of an attempted probabilistic problem of evil, that could be a fruitful avenue. If God created all creatures on earth as a sort of morality play for the edification of angelic beings, then he might have a completely "hands off" approach to all earthly suffering and degradation and might be, _from our perspective and for all the good it does us_ quite indifferent to anything that happens to us. Then he would be not only unlikely to intervene but also would not have any benevolent ultimate purpose (e.g., in the afterlife) _toward us_. In other words, he might be treating us as a means to an end. I brought this up once in a discussion with Zippy over whether there is any point in saying, "God loves everyone equally." Zippy's position was that there isn't, because "loves" already contains "not using us for some other end." I was pointing out that "God loves everyone equally" is a way of denying precisely the existence of a God who created us for someone else's good. From the perspective of the POE and mankind, a God who created us (and all the animals on earth) for someone else's good is equivalent to an indifferent God and thus is a denial of (meaningfully) benevolent theism.

Graham, I think you have to pack a lot into "rational" to get the idea that no rational being would desire evil. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it certainly isn't a garden-variety notion of "rationality." On that view, would a God who makes man and then just sits back and watches man suffer be "irrational"?

It's impossible to see what could be gained from watching a person suffer. Sadism depends on the illusion of power. But an omnipotent, omniscient creator doesn't need to delude himself. He has unlimited power.
There would need to be some greater good, dependent on the human's suffering, for the act to be rational.

Graham

Okay, a God who created babes to kill them and then damn them could not be said to be "good". Radical Calvinist Nominalism can't escape that conclusion by defining "good" as "whatever God desires". That would rob the term "good" of all meaning.
The same seems to go for "rationality". At some stage God's actions could be so pointless that we could no longer consider them to be "rational". There would no longer be any analogy between God's rationality and ours.
Now a universe of endless suffering seems to be pointless and irrational. So there's at least one state that every rational being would not value for its own sake. Are there others?

Graham

It's impossible to see what could be gained from watching a person suffer.

I suppose we can make stuff up. "See, angels, this is what happens when Adam sins. Interesting, no? Mind you don't go that way."

Okay, so we need some sort of "greater value defence" to save God's rationality. And this needs to be plausible. I don't think that we can appeal to inscrutable values too often or we empty terms like "rationality" of all meaning.

Graham

I am sorry I am late to the topic at hand (really not nice weekend - my home heater motor started up spontaneously, even though turned off (how is that possible?), lost my cell phone and ipod nano which I used as a harddrive and put student's grades on, etc. I don't know whether to offer it up or call an exorcist).

To begin with, there is no idea of good outside of God. If God were evil, we would never know it, because there would simply be nothing to compare the concept to in order to derive a concept of good. Thus, we MUST start from the notion that what we perceive as good is, by definition, good, since whatever is in relationship to God can only be classified as good. God cannot create evil, since evil does not, strictly speaking, exist. God simply creates and what he creates can only be consistently defined as good or evil as a label, but if it is created, it must be good, in fact.

If God creates, he cannot, by definition be indifferent. If he were indifferent, he would indifferent to himself, which would be a contradiction. In fact, to be indifferent means to be indifferent to any sort of order - which is the ultimate expression of indifference. Now, given that there is even a notion of good and evil implies order which implies that God cannot be indifferent. If he were truly indifferent, time and space would be random, so that part of my words would appear in part in 2011 and in part in 1122 (the computer would magically appear). You would have two children, one in 2011, one in 3000 and your husband would be in 5000. If God were indifferent the ability to even be married would not exist, since the concept of stability would go out the window.

God did not create man to teach the angels. He created man perhaps to test the angles - would these perfect creatures be willing to serve smelly, sinful lumps of DNA? Really, God created man because God is love and love always takes a risk - it believes all things, and what is a greater risk than man? If God wanted to exercise his love to the fullest extent, he would create a being with the greatest risk of both perfection and damnation. The angels got one shot at it. Man gets the chance every day and every day God holds his breath hoping that the risk of his love will be fulfilled. Grace and love are perfected in weakness and who is weaker than man? He is the last of the beings capable of knowing sin. Angels will never get to hold Jesus in their hands, will never be able to comfort him in his suffering, will never be able to carry his cross (what do angles know of crosses?), will never be able to be healed by him, will never be able to love his humanity with a human love.

The notion of an indifferent God will be ignored by the indifferent rich, will be cried over by the suffering poor, and will be understood as something only a smelly lump of DNA could conceive of by the blessed (who will still love the smelly lump of DNA even while smiling at the question).

No angel could ever comprehend an indifferent God. They have already known his difference. Those in heaven see him and his actions and love him; those in hell see him and his actions and hate him, but none dare say he has been indifferent to them.

It is only man, man who chooses the good and the evil moment by moment, who could even think to ask if there is an indifferent God. God cannot be indifferent - he has made all of his choices, once, for all time, but man can be indifferent, day by day, moment by moment, since man can choose not to love or even care right now. It is only man who could conceive of an indifferent God, not the angels, not God, himself for it is only man who can be indifferent. Talk about creating God in your own image!

The Chicken

I think that God would need to have goals or intentions that we can recognise as valuable to count as rational. And I think Theism is a purposive explanation, and an irrational God has zero explanatory power.
(I'm thinking this through as I go - as you can probably tell. But my gut feeling is that you're on to something here. We can argue that an immoral God is improbable.

Graham

God did not create man to teach the angels. He created man perhaps to test the angles - would these perfect creatures be willing to serve smelly, sinful lumps of DNA? Really, God created man because God is love and love always takes a risk - it believes all things, and what is a greater risk than man?

I believe all this, MC. I'm trying to figure out, inter alia,

a) How much of this can be known by pure reason?

b) If we figure out "too much" of it by reason, how much do we leave to be shown to us by revelation?

c) If we can't figure out by pure reason that a God who makes no provision to help mankind, a God indifferent to human suffering, is an impossibility, to what extent can we argue against such a God probabilistically?

d) To what extent does any remaining possibility of such a God "help" the anti-theist in constructing a probabilistic argument from evil against the existence of a benevolent God?

I'm not sure I agree with your argument about an indifferent God and the craziness of space-time. When I say "indifferent," I mean "indifferent to human and/or animal suffering," or something like "making no provision to help man or to redeem his suffering." I don't mean that such a deity would be indifferent to whether things seemed to follow a rational temporal sequence for man.

"See, angels, this is what happens when Adam sins. Interesting, no? Mind you don't go that way."

Okay, but you had fallen angels before the fall of man (although that story mostly originates from outside the Bible). If God was going to make an example for the other angels, expelling the rebellious angels from heaven seems to be clear. Why create inferior beings to teach a fairly easy lesson?

It is only man who could conceive of an indifferent God, not the angels, not God, himself for it is only man who can be indifferent.

Meh. Although the idea of God holding his breath hoping for those sinful lumps of DNA to do the right thing has a certain strangeness about it, because you have to wonder what sort of omniscience can't figure this out.

When I say "indifferent," I mean "indifferent to human and/or animal suffering," or something like "making no provision to help man or to redeem his suffering." I don't mean that such a deity would be indifferent to whether things seemed to follow a rational temporal sequence for man.

What is suffering except an improper ordering of space-time effects within a man? The two concepts are connected. God cannot allow "suffering in space-time" because it has to obey his will. That space-time is not disordered completes the bi-conditionality. Space-time is ordered. An indifferent God could not create order (to create and order go hand-in-hand). Therefore, God is not indifferent. If God is not indifferent, then there must be order in space-time. There is order in space-time, therefore, God must not be indifferent.

Why, therefore, if space-time is perfectly ordered, is there suffering? (Watch, as I solve the problem of evil while standing on one foot :) ) Man is higher in order of creation than space-time, having both natural and spiritual aspects. By Adam's sin, death entered the world by a free act, something space-time has no option for. Suffering is a result, directly or indirectly, of the freedom of man. If man were perfectly ordered, there would be no suffering, but there are only two options for such a perfection: the perfection of man without free will (and, therefore, nothing but a collection of atoms as the rest of the universe), or the perfection of man with a free will perfected and we have already lost that (outside of Christ, who is a man with his will perfected).

The simplest possible demonstration that God is not indifferent is simply that Christ was not indifferent. He healed suffering, which is a resetting of nature to what it would have been under control of God if man had not sinned.

People so often forget that Christ is both God and man. Nature, even human nature, was meant to be run as a partnership. God cannot be indifferent to suffering, but man can. There is the Great Divorce. God cannot cause suffering, but man can. If there is suffering in the world, it was not caused by the indifference of God. It was caused by the indifference, if only for a moment, of a man named, Adam. God gave perfection and asked that Adam follow that perfection in obeying his perfect command. Adam was indifferent to that command and heedless of the consequences, if only for a moment, and the crack in perfection has been felt ever since. Adam did not hate the command not to eat from the Tree. He was indifferent to it, loving something different than God in the process. For an instant, he lost his care for God. He became indifferent to him and that explains all of the rest.

a) How much of this can be known by pure reason?

Man does not have pure reason nor total reason. How much of this can be know to the limits of reason? Actually quite a lot, since the concept of sin was known even to the pagans and in every culture, suffering is united to sin.

b) If we figure out "too much" of it by reason, how much do we leave to be shown to us by revelation?

We could know that there was sin, but not directly that there was salvation. More than that, we could not know that it would take a direct hypostasis of God and man to save us. The incarnation could only be known by revelation, but it is exactly the key to relief from suffering if not from suffering.

c) If we can't figure out by pure reason that a God who makes no provision to help mankind, a God indifferent to human suffering, is an impossibility, to what extent can we argue against such a God probabilistically?

If Christ is who he says he is, then to the extent that this is true, then the probability that God is not indifferent to suffering is identical to Christ being God. See St. Paul's argument in 1Cor 15:14.

d) To what extent does any remaining possibility of such a God "help" the anti-theist in constructing a probabilistic argument from evil against the existence of a benevolent God?

It is an either-or. Either Christ is God or not. There is an absolute fact involved. The dual of the probability that Christ is God is the probability that Christ is not God, so if one has to use Pascalian arguments, then the anti-theist and Christian probabilities sum to 100%. The results of the actions of the probabilities, when multiplied by the infinite nature of God, only hold meaning for the Christian side, so even an infinitesimal probability that Christ is God should be enough to induce the anti-theist to relent if the probability is based on evidence of acts beyond the capacity of man. If the probability were identically zero, then and only then could the anti-theist be correct, since zero times infinity is zero.

I didn't say that clearly, I know. In other words, anyone can claim to be the son of God, but unless they back it up by evidence beyond the capacity of man, then the probability of him being God is regressive to zero. ANY evidence of actions beyond the capacity beyond man, no matter how small and low in probability, is enough to weigh the argument to Christianity, alone, since those actions would be preceding from not merely man but an infinite God. This is why Christ said that if one could not believe him because of his words, believe him because of his acts.

What about powerful space aliens? They are still man for the purposes of discussion. Powerful aliens can knit bones back to perfection, but only God can do it ex nihilo. How can one tell the difference? Aliens, however powerful, must use matter to create matter. God has no such limitations. In other words, they must draw on a source outside of themselves, whether it be matter, energy or the m-brane. God does not have to.

The Chicken

Meh. Although the idea of God holding his breath hoping for those sinful lumps of DNA to do the right thing has a certain strangeness about it, because you have to wonder what sort of omniscience can't figure this out.

Then let's all go home. Obviously, God did not have to create anything because he would have already known how everything would turn out. While that is true, omniscience means more than simple knowledge of contingent universes. Such knowledge is connected to a will. It is not enough for God to simply know. His knowing is doing.

The Chicken

If Christ is who he says he is, then to the extent that this is true, then the probability that God is not indifferent to suffering is identical to Christ being God

Amen, MC. But I'm afraid I was being unclear. I meant _prior_ to a consideration of the evidence for the incarnation. I meant just "while doing the problem of evil" (while we're doing "pure natural theology" and before we "get to" considerations of the incarnation) can we argue that an indifferent God is improbable?

I think that Ilion is drawing on the Thomistic account of creation, in which God is completely and intimately present in everything that God creates (given divine simplicity).

Graham, you might better say: God is "present to" everything intimately and completely. But this in no way implies God is constitutive with everything, as the pantheists mistake. Or, as scholastics have it, God is acting on everything by maintaining it in existence. By acting on it, maintaining both its nature and its existence, He is obviously with it, intimately. I don't see why the final cause issue creates worrisome baggage.

Ah, but Tony, in terms of an attempted probabilistic problem of evil, that could be a fruitful avenue. If God created all creatures on earth as a sort of morality play for the edification of angelic beings, then he might have a completely "hands off" approach to all earthly suffering and degradation and might be, _from our perspective and for all the good it does us_ quite indifferent to anything that happens to us.

True, Lydia. I had briefly considered this, but assumed that there was a sufficient counter. For example, if God is the sort of being who is not indifferent to the angels...WHY? If He loves the angels because they are, for example, made in His image and likeness, then that would apply also for men. Or, if God's love is a smorgasbord of unexplainable choices, then He might just as well be said to love some angels and some men, and thus is not indifferent to men simply.

But more fundamentally: if he created the created order on account of the good of some created being, (regardless of which level that being rests), he is not indifferent to THAT creature. And once you explain that fact, that He is inclined concerning a creature, you are going to have to explain what sort of creator can BE so inclined. I just think that such a creator is going to be incoherent if he is assumed to care about one creature but simply not care about suffering of ANY creature. If the explanation is that he cares, but has a REASON to allow the suffering for this angel or that man, then that explanation in principle contains what is needed to cover the entirety of the problem.

Although the idea of God holding his breath hoping for those sinful lumps of DNA to do the right thing has a certain strangeness about it, because you have to wonder what sort of omniscience can't figure this out.

I think MC's speech has to be taken metaphorically, Step2: God not only knows who is going to be saved, He is the cause of that salvation. I am not too fond of the figure of speech myself, though.

He created man perhaps to test the angles - would these perfect creatures be willing to serve smelly, sinful lumps of DNA? Really, God created man because God is love and love always takes a risk - it believes all things, and what is a greater risk than man?

MC, is there something intrinsic about love that it "take a risk"? I mean, if you are given that there is a beloved that is at risk, love implies leaping in to that situation (to lessen, or to share, the risk). But nothing about love that I can see makes God being love automatically implies "creating risk" as a concomitant that follows of natural course. I don't see the risk itself as carrying any explanatory power at all.

What I have seen (in St. Thomas and others) is the explanation that Good is, inherently, effusive. It belongs to good as such to exude good, and thus it is supremely fitting that God create new things to be good to. And since (as MC points out) there is a niche of being possible between angels and animals - men who are have materiality as well as spirituality - it is fitting that God create beings who can love him in THAT niche as well as creating angels. It is natural to man that he be capable of choosing his end many times, sometimes well and sometimes ill, and in this he is unlike the angels. So, while we see in man's condition the risk of choosing ill, over and over, the angels had the same possibility of failure once, and that "risk" is the risk of love being given freely (or not), so it is not risk but freedom that is the good. Risk is merely the obverse side of the coin of freedom, which is the good that explains the condition.

OK, I'll try this argument, and see how it goes.

Suppose all value is subjective. Wouldn’t it be more likely than not that a conscious, rational agent like God would value things that resemble him in important ways?
We can justify this auxiliary hypothesis – that God would be more likely than not to value beings that resembled him in important ways – with what Swinburne calls the principle of charity. We should assume, as far as possible, that other agents’ intentions are similar to our own. Of course God’s intentions would differ from ours in important ways. He would not fear bodily harm, for example. But not adding extra, incomprehensible, intentions and motivations to our picture of another’s mind is an application of the principle of simplicity. And this could be sufficient to justify the auxiliary hypothesis.
To be conscious and rational would be to resemble God in an important way. In which case, God is more likely than, say, chance to cause complex states of affairs like embodied rational agents.
And God is also more likely than not to value embodied rational agents.

Graham

And once you explain that fact, that He is inclined concerning a creature, you are going to have to explain what sort of creator can BE so inclined. I just think that such a creator is going to be incoherent if he is assumed to care about one creature but simply not care about suffering of ANY creature. If the explanation is that he cares, but has a REASON to allow the suffering for this angel or that man, then that explanation in principle contains what is needed to cover the entirety of the problem.

I think what you are saying here is that if the creator cares about the good of some of his creatures then we can reason that he would care about the good of all of them, because the alternative would be a capricious creator, like a person who has favorites "just because." And such a capricious creator is...what...irrational? incoherent?

I don't think a person pressing the problem of evil wants to make all value subjective anyway, Graham, or he undermines the POE to begin with. I think the POE requires real good, or else why get all upset about evil and suffering?

So we don't have to grant him that.

Skipping that, I think one question we could ask about your argument would be this: If a creator values conscious, rational agents in some sense does it follow that he loves them and wants to help them--either to avoid suffering or to transcend it in an afterlife? Compare an entomologist who "values" ants in the sense that he enjoys watching them. But it doesn't follow that he's particularly likely to intervene to help them. After all, if these ants over here get killed there are always more ants over there that he can watch. So a creator could "value" conscious, rational agents enough to _make_ them--out of interest, say--but not enough to _love_ them and try to do anything whatsoever for their best good.

By Adam's sin, death entered the world by a free act, something space-time has no option for.

Stop right there. Do not cross the road. All living things die, and we know that many of them died millions of years before humans existed on this planet. Even inanimate things can "die" in the sense of no longer expending energy or being destroyed in its form or function. A river can die, a sun can die, an ice cap can die.

The results of the actions of the probabilities, when multiplied by the infinite nature of God, only hold meaning for the Christian side, so even an infinitesimal probability that Christ is God should be enough to induce the anti-theist to relent if the probability is based on evidence of acts beyond the capacity of man.

What sort of nonsense is this? I'll just magically multiply my side of the probability equation by infinity.

ANY evidence of actions beyond the capacity beyond man, no matter how small and low in probability, is enough to weigh the argument to Christianity, alone, since those actions would be preceding from not merely man but an infinite God.

Really, you don't think there are other religions with miracle stories? Are those other religions also true because they proceed from an infinite God?

While that is true, omniscience means more than simple knowledge of contingent universes. Such knowledge is connected to a will. It is not enough for God to simply know. His knowing is doing.

I don't think omniscience means what you think it means. There is no "extra" part of omniscience that implies what you say.

Suppose all value is subjective. Wouldn’t it be more likely than not that a conscious, rational agent like God would value things that resemble him in important ways?

Why? Perhaps he would value difference. Subjective value is a contradiction in terms outside of God, so we go back to the problem that good or value is what God says it is. He could have valued difference and we would not know the difference (so to speak) if this is good or evil. Anything that God does is right because there is no higher appeal.

It just so happens that God is rational because he has no other choice. God must be rational. If he were irrational, there would be nothing to interpret that he were so because there would be nothing greater to compare his actions against. Just so, even his irrationality would appear rational to us.

MC, is there something intrinsic about love that it "take[s] a risk"?

Well, yes. Life is a risk for us because we do not see the outcome of our actions moment by moment and yet we take the risk to go on. Why? Like life, the end of love is a hoped for good and whether we have defined the good correctly or not, we are always willing to take the risk for the good. Believing in God is a risk, but love impels one to take it, hope says that it is possible, and faith informs the love what to hold.

Think of the incredible risk two people take on their wedding day. Think of the incredible risk that God and his Church take: God risked his only son for the possibility of salvation and man must take up the same risk, the same Cross, if he is willing to be saved. Love forces each to risk their life for the other. Now, that risk must be informed by faith and hope, but a risk it is and one worthy to be taken.

There is a quote on a card I found (I have no idea what season or event it was for):

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of
trouble, attempts what is above its
strength, pleads no excuse of
impossibility
It is therefore able to undertake all
things.
-- St. Thomas Aquinas

The Chicken

Lydia
I was really thinking about people like Mark Bradley who want to argue that Swinburne's design argument cannot work because it depends on the existence of objective values. But do we need to have objective values to have some grasp of what God would value?
One disanalogy with the entomologist is that God would value humans (or at least is more likely than not to value them) because they resemble him in important ways.
I agree that we cannot leap to anything like "love"; but a "good" (efficient, skillful) entomologist is unlikely to torture ants with magnifying glasses just to see them burn.
Moving on to intervention - does that require love? Would a "good" entomologist pass up the opportunity to communicate with ants, if technology made that possible? Or to improve the lot of ants worldwide? Would he let ants go extinct if he could do something about it?
Another point - I started with a very rough argument that humans are more likely on Theism than on chance. Say we accept that humans provide some evidence for God's existence. Then we notice something else - we tend to treat each individual human being as if we all had some transcendent value. Well, could Theism account for that? Well this God could be the most valuable thing in the universe. (And if we accept some version of the cosmological argument, he definitely would be the most valuable thing in the universe). And each human resembles him in important ways. Does that account for the value of each person.
And then you remember that Theism is offering a purposive explanation - is it possible that each person has some signficance to the creator's purpose? Have we not only accounted for the existence of humans, but also for the existence of certain values? After all, up until now we were wondering were objective values could exist...now we seem to have an answer.

That's very rough, but I think that we can see how a cumulative case could go.
I think. It's late over here!

Graham

Okay, after six months, I have to ask...
why does the chicken have a mask???

Graham

Stop right there. Do not cross the road. All living things die, and we know that many of them died millions of years before humans existed on this planet. Even inanimate things can "die" in the sense of no longer expending energy or being destroyed in its form or function. A river can die, a sun can die, an ice cap can die.

a. You did not see them die, so you only suppose this
b. The death Adam brought to the world was the death of man. Singular.

What sort of nonsense is this? I'll just magically multiply my side of the probability equation by infinity.

How to explain? Do you know what a convolution is? If two probabilities are convolved and the probability distribution of one of them happens to be exactly a single point at 1 (which would be the case if God necessarily existed), the result is that the overall distribution would still be one no matter how flat or small the other probability were, unless it were exactly zero, in which case the convolution might be undefined or perhaps zero.

That is not exactly what I mean, but it is similar. If there is even the tiniest evidence beyond the normal capacity of man, then things go not from being to slightly greater being, but from finite to infinite being.

Really, you don't think there are other religions with miracle stories? Are those other religions also true because they proceed from an infinite God?

ANY evidence of actions beyond the capacity beyond man, no matter how small and low in probability, is enough to weigh the argument to Christianity, alone, since those actions would be preceding from not merely man but an infinite God.

If they did proceed from an infinite God, they would be true, but they do not and they do not have any evidence for an actor beyond the normal capacity of man. Evidence that cannot be explained by some action of matter on matter, that is.

I don't think omniscience means what you think it means. There is no "extra" part of omniscience that implies what you say.

You are simply wrong because nothing can be truly omniscience without being omnipotent and omnivolitional.:

From the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Nature and Attributes of God:

(a) The highest perfections of creatures are reducible to functions of intellect and will, and, as these perfections are realized analogically in God, we naturally pass from considering Divine knowledge or intelligence to the study of Divine volition. The object of intellect as such is the true; the object of will as such, the good. In the case of God it is evident that His own infinite goodness is the primary and necessary object of His will, created goodness being but a secondary and contingent object. This is what the inspired writer means when he says: "The Lord hath made all things for himself" (Proverbs 16:4). The Divine will of course, like the Divine intellect, is really identical with the Divine Essence but according to our finite modes of thought we are obliged to speak of them as if they were distinct and, just as the Divine intellect cannot be dependent on created objects for its knowledge of them, neither can the Divine will be so dependent for its volition. [Empasis, mine] Had no creature ever been created, God would have been the same self-sufficient being that He is, the Divine will as an appetitive faculty being satisfied with the infinite goodness of the Divine Essence itself. This is what the Vatican Council means by speaking of God as "most happy in and by Himself" — not that He does not truly wish and love the goodness of creatures, which is a participation of His own, but that He has no need of creatures and is in no way dependent on them for Hisbliss.

(b) Hence it follows that God possesses the perfection of free will in an infinitely eminent degree. That is to say, without any change in Himself or in His eternal act of volition, He freely chooses whether or not creatures shall exist and what manner of existence shall be theirs, and this choice or determination is an exercise of that dominion which free will (liberty of indifference) essentially expresses. In itself free will is an absolute and positive perfection, and as such is most fully realized in God. Yet we are obliged to describe Divine liberty as we have done relatively to its effects in creation, and, by way of negation, we must exclude the imperfections associated with free will in creatures.

In God, the entitative and operative perfections are united.

Graham: It is also easy to imagine a state in which a Deistic God creates humans, but does not desire a relationship with them.

Ilíon: Wouldn't matter. In creating us and sustaining our existence, such a Deistic "God" cannot escape relationship with us.

Graham: By that definition I'm in relationship with this computer. The relationship is purely causal...

Ilíon: Really? Your computer is a person, rather than a mere thing? ... you uphold the existence of your computer? If you were to stop thinking "My computer is" it would cease to exist?

Graham: Creating and sustaining a personal being is not sufficient to have a personal relationship with that being; not unless you are equivocating on "relationship", or are smuggling in a bunch of premises about what it means to create or sustain.

Graham:I'm not at all convinced that whatever is conceivable is possible; and I'm not convinced that any contingent fact could exist without God. ...

Earlier, I had considerend imagining for you an invisible pink unicorn -- a logical impossibility -- to go along with that Deistic "God". I am doing so now.

========
Do you not understand that in upholding our existence, God is intimately involved in every aspect of our lives? God is not *watching* us, as though our lives were a play or a movie for his entertainment; God is living our lives, right here, right now, with us; God doesn't merely know *about* us, God *knows* us ... from the inside. And. our sinfulness is so deserving of death precisely because in sinning we force Truth Himself to experience and take part in self-contradiction.

Graham: Swinburne says "yes", because morality is independent of God and God would know all morally true propositions. And God, being free, would always act morally.

Graham: But suppose we don't grant that moral facts strongly supervene on physical facts. Can we still make some response to the thesis that God is cruel?

Is it 'cruel' to cut your son's throat? Always? (I expect that answere to be, "Yes" to both parts.)

Is it 'not-moral' to cut your son's throat? Always? (Careful! this is a trick question) Even if he is suffocating because he ate a poison ivy berry and is experiencing a severe alergic reaction as a consequence?

From what I understand (as a Catholic) God permits evil to occur so that he may draw a greater good out of it Summa Theologica III, 1, 3, ad 3".

As Dr Craig one put it, the 'Problem' of evil is not so much a logical problem but an emotional one, I myself would say that God may have excellent reasons for allowing suffering if it brings a person in love to realise their absolute depenednce on him.

Also one must bear in mind that in order for the problem of evil to have any teeth in the first place one must acknowledge an objective standard of good and evil, something that the natrualist do since he believes in blind impersonal darwinian processes; which is why I get annoyed when athiests such dawkins contradict themselves first by stating that there is no such thing as good and evil and then refer to religious education as a form of child abuse.

addendem in the last paragraph it should read "something the natrualist cannot do"

Ilion

I think I said earlier that I don't think that conceivability = possibility, but that I would like a reply for those who do hold that conceivability means possibility.
(But, in any case, I should also think that conceivability is a guide to possibilty!)
I think that we use the title God in similar ways; but I'm not quite prepared to accuse Richard Swinburne of atheism! You're on your own there! (-;

I'll try to get back to your other comments later.

Graham

c) If we can't figure out by pure reason that a God who makes no provision to help mankind, a God indifferent to human suffering, is an impossibility, to what extent can we argue against such a God probabilistically?

Okay, after six months, I have to ask...
why does the chicken have a mask???

You want the long or short version? Do you have violins and a crying towel?

I answered this at Mark Shea's blog last year, but if you insist (and if Lydia can overlook the short digression):

Many years ago, when I was but a wee chick, I was a meek, mild-mannered academic bulletin board commenter, occasionally making comments on mathematics, music, apologetics, botany, acoustics, puzzle, and tenured graduate student boards. I also was ahead of the curve on web pages, writing the first Gregorian chant tutorial on the Internet (using the vi text editor!). All was sunlight and the birds were singing while I typed.

I graduated and was sans Internet except at the library for a few years. I was only able to comment on humor bulletin boards and I was an outside commenter for a web class on the psychology of humor.

Then, it happened. Miracles of miracles, I found a Mac 2ci at the university surplus - keyboard, color video, computer, and mouse - for the entire sum of $25 dollars (I was still out of work). It had been the bookstore's and they never took off the copy of Word 5.1 or Netscape. I was back in business.

I used the computer to type a scientific paper and an apologetics paper as well as starting a book on humor and mathematics. I had dial-up and it was at long-distance rates, so I used it seldom until my current teaching gig gave me dial-up for free (I was employed, by then).

Still, I only commented on a few bulletin boards and not very often.

Then, several things happened. I had been intensely studying Charismatic theology for a few years and read almost everything of substance on it from Biblical times to the present. I developed such a specialization that I could say exactly when, where, why, and how the current movement started (there is a lot of myth, there). In fact, I told my spiritual director my conclusions and he said it was the finest treatment he had ever heard, despite the fact that two friars from his order had produced a so-called landmark work a few years, before. He was so impressed that he offered to type the work. I have continued my study to this day.

In any case, I made my conclusions tentatively known on a spiritual bulletin board and the blow-back was horrific. They had done know research and didn't really know anything but the party line, but this was the first time I had ever seen the real teeth of the Internet.

This was not the first time I has seen this aspect of the Internet. A little earlier, I was on the same bulletin board and somebody sent all of the members one of those spiritual chain letters. I let into that person so badly I reduced her to tears. I had just seen the potential for abuse of another first-hand and I immediately stopped writing anything on the Internet for about six years, because I never wanted to do that to another individual, again.

Then, blogs happened. I started reading a few and it was on Amy Welborn's blog that I first heard of Terri Shaivo, but that's another story. Anyway, when I finally got the nerve to stick my head into the comment box of a blog, I was so spooked by the thought that I might hurt someone else, that I would only send an e-mail to the blog owner and let them decide if what I were writing was good enough and safe enough to put on the blog, which they sometimes did. I never commented in the comment box, itself. I will never forget what I had done to that person when I reduced her to tears. I am sure she got over it and forgave me, but still...

Finally, after two or so more years, I thought I had enough interesting things to say that I stuck my head into a comment box for real. It was a really contentious post about James White at Jimmy Akin's blog. It had been going on for about 500 posts. I went in, guns blazing, since they were talking about his misuse of humor and I managed to silence everyone in about three posts. Once again, I saw just how savage I could be in a discussion. I took no prisoners.

Once, again, I was ashamed and retreated. Finally, I decided that, perhaps I could be of service as a blog commenter, but that I could not do so as myself. I realized that the reason I was so abrupt with people was really because I was afraid to look foolish in the very public forum of the Internet and I was over-compensating. I decided that if I were to write, I would need a disguise. Considering my underlying shyness, I decided that I should be a chicken, since that was my dominant personality, but not just any chicken - a chicken so chicken that he couldn't even let his face be seen. So, I became the Masked Chicken.

It really helped. With the alias, I was able to publish without so much fear and I was able, also, to remember what my tendencies were. It helped me to become temperate and fair-minded. I have been able to keep my cool even under great temptation, although I still have a thin-skin.

Happy?

Not what you thought, eh. Thought there must be some brilliant reason? No, just little ol' me and my buzzing electrons.

A few people know my real identity and it is not too hard to find, but I prefer to use my alias, since I can always cover my beak and pretend that no one really sees me.

The Chicken

P. S. to Lydia - delete as you see fit.

Ilion
Again, I did say that an Anselmian Theism, or a Thomistic view of God, has nothing to fear from the "possibility" that God is not good. It's just not possible on those conceptions of God. It's not what either thinks the word "God" means.
But I still think that it is helpful to say "even if you don't buy my Anselmian Theism, it is unlikely that God would be morally indifferent because...."
Ed Feser brought this up on his blog a while back, wondering how "Theistic Personalists" like Plantinga and Swinburne would reply. (Which leads me to say that they can't be lumped together under the label "Theistic Personalist" like that...and I wish Brian Davies hadn't coined that phrase.)So even a Thomist might at least wonder what other Theists could say.

Graham

Chicken
That took me back to reading Marvel comics as a kid! It was better than "The Origins of Spiderman!"

Graham

then we can reason that he would care about the good of all of them, because the alternative would be a capricious creator, like a person who has favorites "just because." And such a capricious creator is...what...irrational? incoherent?

Lydia, I was hoping to get out of the work of having to establish just how it would be incoherent to propose a creator that cares about one creature, but doesn't care about others, because I cannot keep such incoherence in my mind well enough. (And, in this context, irrationality does the same work as incoherence, because a creator who "cares" about a creature but does so irrationally might just as well be said to only _appear_ to care about the creature - if it is truly for the creature's good, then it needs rationality to be so.) My idea was that the sort of creator we are positing when we say that the creator cares (rationally) about some creature is a creator capable of (moral) good, and it just does no good to construct a supposition like this with a creator capable of ONE moral good but also capable of moral evil or indifference. What sort of being would that be? A Zeus? But Zeus ISN'T the creator (even according to the mythology, that is.) Once you posit his having good will toward a creature, and rationality (which is implicit in true good will), you must also posit that there could be some RATIONAL reason to posit his being indifferent to men, and there isn't one.

Step2: "Okay, but you had fallen angels before the fall of man (although that story mostly originates from outside the Bible). If God was going to make an example for the other angels, expelling the rebellious angels from heaven seems to be clear. Why create inferior beings to teach a fairly easy lesson?"

Hebrew Names of God In the traditional Jewish view, YHVH is the Name expressing the mercy and condescension of Almighty God ... Elohim is the Name given for God as the Creator of the universe (Gen 1:1-2:4a) and implies strength, power, and justice. YHVH, on the other hand, expresses the idea of God's closeness to humans. For example, YHVH "breathed into his (Adam's) nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). ...

... and besides, contrary to the vain imaginings of decadent moderns, 'mercy' implies 'justice', which implies 'judgement'. That is, there can be no 'mercy' if there is not first the passing of 'judgement'.

... since zero times infinity is zero.

[I also haven't given it a huge amount of thought ... but the question was buzzing around at the back of my mind the other night when I ought to have been sleeping]

Graham: "I think that we use the title God in similar ways; "

I suspect that our agreement is broader and deeper than that ... and includes the recognition that the word 'God' is a title, not a name, and is certainly not The Name.

Graham: "... but I'm not quite prepared to accuse Richard Swinburne of atheism! You're on your own there! (-;"
What? Didn't I use enough subjunctives? Still, maybe no one has told him that if that is what he's saying, then *that* is what he's saying.

On the questions of 'love' and 'risk' and "creating risk" (in creating us) and so on ... and “pain and suffering”

I trust that we all here at least understand the proposition "God is perfect"? Oh, you don't, quite? Well, it's like this: 'perfect' does not mean "maximally good"; rather, 'perfect' means "whole, complete, integral" and so forth. So, to say that "God is perfect" is, among other things, to say that God lacks-not and changes-not. God lacks-not as that there exists not, nor can exist, anything to be "added" to God to make him "more complete." God changes-not as that-which-changes (that-which-is-changeable) is, definitionally, not complete.

Now, when God creates, he necessarily creates not-God ... he necessarily creates that-which-lacks: even if God desires to do the logically impossible and create an entity with all his attributes, what he creates must necessarily lack self-existence; and there is also a huge logical problem with attributing being the “ground of all being” to the created entity. For, to deny the proposition that what God creates must necessarily be that-which-lacks is to assert the proposition that "God can create God", and that is absurd in at least two ways:
1) that which is created is, definitionally, not self-existent, and that which is not self-existent lacks perfection (consider, again, the meaning of the word), for its existence requires something “outside” or “beyond” itself;
2) it is to say that ‘God’ is ‘not-God’, this is not a circular reference back the beginning statement of this paragraph, but rather it is a logical implication of 1);
And, of course, the proposition that "God can create God" also sets up an infinite regress problem; plus, as mentioned, the whole “ground of all being” issue.

So, the point of all that blather was to get to this simple point – it is logically impossible for God to create a world wholly free of what we experience as loss/pain/suffering. That is, just as it is logically impossible for God to create beings who are simultaneously free and not-free, it is also logically impossible for him to create them, or their world, wholly lacking-not.

This centuries-long whinging about “the problem of pain/suffering” is really just whinging about “the problem of existing.”

But I still think that it is helpful to say "even if you don't buy my Anselmian Theism, it is unlikely that God would be morally indifferent because...."

I would tend to agree with Graham that something like Swinburne's view is in order.

We need to address the claims of rationality involved here. If one holds to a Humean view of rationality, wherein desires supply the only reasons for acting, then an indifferent God is not a priori improbable. If one, however, thinks that desires do not supply reasons for acting per se, but only goodness, then it is a priori improbable, since a being like God would not be influenced to act against reason - to pursue less than the greatest good - by desire. Where I disagree with Swinburne is in his asserting that goodness is a property independent of God. Indeed, I think that God is the property goodness, albeit a queer property, since He has causal powers and is an agent.

It is worth noting here that a historical argument from the Resurrection is of no avail in averting the hypothesis of an evil God. After all, there is hardly anything more evil than faking the Resurrection - perhaps Satan is God and he intends to resurrect the wicked to everlasting happiness and the righteous to torment, forever mocking believers for their credulity and selflessness. This hypothesis would account for the evidence just as well as the standard Christian one provided there is no a priori reason to suppose God is good.

This hypothesis would account for the evidence just as well as the standard Christian one provided there is no a priori reason to suppose God is good.

It would? It would account, for instance, for the apostles living long lives of self-denial and willing self-sacrifice of tortured death to testify to the power of love to overcome sin? How is that again?

So, the point of all that blather was to get to this simple point – it is logically impossible for God to create a world wholly free of what we experience as loss/pain/suffering. That is, just as it is logically impossible for God to create beings who are simultaneously free and not-free, it is also logically impossible for him to create them, or their world, wholly lacking-not.

So, people suffer in Heaven? Aren't they still lacking, even then? What is the essential difference between Heaven and Earth? Mere matter? Matter, as matter, cannot suffer. Only things with souls can suffer, but the soul is not matter, nor is it divisible.

The Chicken

It is worth noting here that a historical argument from the Resurrection is of no avail in averting the hypothesis of an evil God. After all, there is hardly anything more evil than faking the Resurrection - perhaps Satan is God and he intends to resurrect the wicked to everlasting happiness and the righteous to torment, forever mocking believers for their credulity and selflessness. This hypothesis would account for the evidence just as well as the standard Christian one provided there is no a priori reason to suppose God is good.

John, I couldn't disagree with you more, but in this thread I'm working, as I said to Chicken above, at a prior level--at the point where we're "doing" the problem of evil before we get to specific evidence for, say, Christianity as a revelatory religion.

Ilion, if I understand you correctly, you are carrying the Thomist torch on this thread. My question for you would be this:

If it is possible to tell by pure reason that God must be good and that this goodness must mean actually loving his creatures and seeking their best good, what does this mean for the necessity of revelation? Is it that we could know by pure reason that God must have _some_ plan for helping (or, more precisely, offering help to) man in man's degradation, suffering, and sin, but without revelation we don't know _what_ the plan is?

And if God's being good could mean that God loves all his creatures but does _not_ have any plan whatsoever for "doing something," either here or hereafter, about human suffering and sin, not even offering any help to individual men nor offering them any good afterlife, what does this knowledge that God loves his creatures actually amount to?

Have to go to class, but, yes, to the goodness of God a priori. Known to Aristotle; supported by Aquinas. More, later.

The Chicken

Ilion, if I understand you correctly, you are carrying the Thomist torch on this thread.

It's almost as funny as the time a French-Canadian (and Catholic) internet-friend asked me whether I had been educated by the Jesuits.

My question for you would be this:

Lydia,

From the Summa, Prima pars Q 12, 13:

Article 12. Whether God can be known in this life by natural reason?

Objection 1. It seems that by natural reason we cannot know God in this life. For Boethius says (De Consol. v) that "reason does not grasp simple form." But God is a supremely simple form, as was shown above (Question 3, Article 7). Therefore natural reason cannot attain to know Him.

Objection 2. Further, the soul understands nothing by natural reason without the use of the imagination. But we cannot have an imagination of God, Who is incorporeal. Therefore we cannot know God by natural knowledge.

Objection 3. Further, the knowledge of natural reason belongs to both good and evil, inasmuch as they have a common nature. But the knowledge of God belongs only to the good; for Augustine says (De Trin. i): "The weak eye of the human mind is not fixed on that excellent light unless purified by the justice of faith." Therefore God cannot be known by natural reason.

On the contrary, It is written (Romans 1:19), "That which is known of God," namely, what can be known of God by natural reason, "is manifest in them."

I answer that, Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God "whether He exists," and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him.

Hence we know that His relationship with creatures so far as to be the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, inasmuch as He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from Him by reason of any defect on His part, but because He superexceeds them all.

Reply to Objection 1. Reason cannot reach up to simple form, so as to know "what it is"; but it can know "whether it is."

Reply to Objection 2. God is known by natural knowledge through the images of His effects.

Reply to Objection 3. As the knowledge of God's essence is by grace, it belongs only to the good; but the knowledge of Him by natural reason can belong to both good and bad; and hence Augustine says (Retract. i), retracting what he had said before: "I do not approve what I said in prayer, 'God who willest that only the pure should know truth.' For it can be answered that many who are not pure can know many truths," i.e. by natural reason.
Article 13. Whether by grace a higher knowledge of God can be obtained than by natural reason?

Objection 1. It seems that by grace a higher knowledge of God is not obtained than by natural reason. For Dionysius says (De Mystica Theol. i) that whoever is the more united to God in this life, is united to Him as to one entirely unknown. He says the same of Moses, who nevertheless obtained a certain excellence by the knowledge conferred by grace. But to be united to God while ignoring of Him "what He is," comes about also by natural reason. Therefore God is not more known to us by grace than by natural reason.

Objection 2. Further, we can acquire the knowledge of divine things by natural reason only through the imagination; and the same applies to the knowledge given by grace. For Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i) that "it is impossible for the divine ray to shine upon us except as screened round about by the many colored sacred veils." Therefore we cannot know God more fully by grace than by natural reason.

Objection 3. Further, our intellect adheres to God by grace of faith. But faith does not seem to be knowledge; for Gregory says (Hom. xxvi in Ev.) that "things not seen are the objects of faith, and not of knowledge." Therefore there is not given to us a more excellent knowledge of God by grace.

On the contrary, The Apostle says that "God hath revealed to us His spirit," what "none of the princes of this world knew" (1 Corinthians 2:10), namely, the philosophers, as the gloss expounds.

I answer that, We have a more perfect knowledge of God by grace than by natural reason. Which is proved thus. The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions.

Now in both of these, human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed, so as to express divine things better than those do which we receive from sensible objects, as appears in prophetic visions; while sometimes sensible things, or even voices, are divinely formed to express some divine meaning; as in the Baptism, the Holy Ghost was seen in the shape of a dove, and the voice of the Father was heard, "This is My beloved Son" (Matthew 3:17).

Reply to Objection 1. Although by the revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God "what He is," and thus are united to Him as to one unknown; still we know Him more fully according as many and more excellent of His effects are demonstrated to us, and according as we attribute to Him some things known by divine revelation, to which natural reason cannot reach, as, for instance, that God is Three and One.

Reply to Objection 2. From the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much the more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in man; and thus through the revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light.

Reply to Objection 3. Faith is a kind of knowledge, inasmuch as the intellect is determined by faith to some knowable object. But this determination to one object does not proceed from the vision of the believer, but from the vision of Him who is believed. Thus as far as faith falls short of vision, it falls short of the knowledge which belongs to science, for science determines the intellect to one object by the vision and understanding of first principles.

The Chicken

And if God's being good could mean that God loves all his creatures but does _not_ have any plan whatsoever for "doing something," either here or hereafter, about human suffering and sin, not even offering any help to individual men nor offering them any good afterlife, what does this knowledge that God loves his creatures actually amount to?

To love is to will the good. If God loves us, then he has to have a plan, since otherwise, he would not be willing anything and there would be a contradiction.

The Chicken

a. You did not see them die, so you only suppose this

That is the worst argument you could have made. Let me turn it around: You didn’t see any of the events in the Bible, so you only suppose they were real.

b. The death Adam brought to the world was the death of man. Singular.

So now you’ve backtracked from your claim that space-time has no option for suffering to saying that the sin of Adam is responsible for human suffering. I should first ask if that is your final answer, because you’ve been moving the goalposts all over the field. If it is your answer, what does it say about God’s mercy and sense of justice that the sins of one man and one woman should hang over the heads of all humans until the end of time? Talk about extreme collective punishment, a literal belief in the Fall by itself is sufficient to question God’s morality.

That is not exactly what I mean, but it is similar. If there is even the tiniest evidence beyond the normal capacity of man, then things go not from being to slightly greater being, but from finite to infinite being.

So it is your way of saying, “I don’t understand how something could happen, and therefore it could only have been caused by an infinite being.” If you don’t understand how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty temporarily disappear, that doesn’t mean you are justified in saying Copperfield is an infinite being. All it justifies is saying that you don’t understand how it happened (hint: misdirection).

If they did proceed from an infinite God, they would be true, but they do not and they do not have any evidence for an actor beyond the normal capacity of man. Evidence that cannot be explained by some action of matter on matter, that is.

Since you’ve apparently never read any miracle stories of other faiths that is no reason to dismiss them as within the normal capacity of man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichadon
Faith healing has a long tradition in many religions, so I don’t know how you could neutrally determine that one healing is false while another is real.

You are simply wrong because nothing can be truly omniscience without being omnipotent and omnivolitional.

Previously you wrote: Obviously, God did not have to create anything because he would have already known how everything would turn out. While that is true, omniscience means more than simple knowledge of contingent universes. Such knowledge is connected to a will. It is not enough for God to simply know. His knowing is doing.

You are waffling between saying God doesn't have to create anything in order to have full knowledge of contingent realities and saying God's knowledge is by default creation. Perhaps you are equivocating between time frames, that knowledge of the the present moment is necessarily creation, while knowledge of the future (which would include knowledge of the present) is the more standard definition of omniscience.

That is the worst argument you could have made. Let me turn it around: You didn’t see any of the events in the Bible, so you only suppose they were real.

There is a clear, unbroken continuity of evidence - in literature, in archeology, in tradition, that witness to the events of the Bible. No one seriously doubts that there is an historical Jesus. It doesn't matter tha I did not see him. Many reputable witnesses did. On the other hand, the cult of Zeus died out very rapidly after 476 A. D., never to return. There is no continuous tradition after that time of Zeus worship or even evidence that such a diety did anything not explainable by other material means. All miracles are not created equally.

So now you’ve backtracked from your claim that space-time has no option for suffering to saying that the sin of Adam is responsible for human suffering. I should first ask if that is your final answer, because you’ve been moving the goalposts all over the field. If it is your answer, what does it say about God’s mercy and sense of justice that the sins of one man and one woman should hang over the heads of all humans until the end of time? Talk about extreme collective punishment, a literal belief in the Fall by itself is sufficient to question God’s morality.

I have not changed any goalposts. I have always said that sin and death (which can be taken in more than one way - I assumed you have read Scripture and would understand this Pauline shorthand) came by one man. It appears that you deny the doctrine of Original Sin. God is free to do what he pleases and the sin of Adam was so grave that it merited an infinite and ongoing punishment. God said to be fruitful and multiply, which was to directly imitate the Divine Creativity by virtue of man being created in God's image. When Adam shattered that image by his sin, he was no longer able to be fruitful and multiply in a perfect sense. Now, imperfection cannot give rise to perfect, so Adam, now being imperfect, could not give rise to perfect offspring.m evey offspring from that point on would inherit the imperfection of Adam.

So it is your way of saying, “I don’t understand how something could happen, and therefore it could only have been caused by an infinite being.” If you don’t understand how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty temporarily disappear, that doesn’t mean you are justified in saying Copperfield is an infinite being. All it justifies is saying that you don’t understand how it happened (hint: misdirection).

No, I stated the variable under consideration quite clearly: the capacity of man. David Copperfield is a man. He has no capacity beyond man (and by capacity I mean ability to act outside of material forces - I quite clearly explained this many posts, ago). His supposed magic can always be explained by physical forces, however hidden.

Since you’ve apparently never read any miracle stories of other faiths that is no reason to dismiss them as within the normal capacity of man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichadon
Faith healing has a long tradition in many religions, so I don’t know how you could neutrally determine that one healing is false while another is real.

The Vatican has a whole dicastery set up to do this very thing. Excluding the actions of demons, which by their nature can not do ultimately good acts, there can be only one God who performs miracles beyond the capacity of man. The other miracle stories, implying a multitude of Gods other then the One, are either acts of msn or demons, but, in either case are not within the supernatural actions of God. I did not mention demons, before, because I was talking about good acts.

You are waffling between saying God doesn't have to create anything in order to have full knowledge of contingent realities and saying God's knowledge is by default creation. Perhaps you are equivocating between time frames, that knowledge of the the present moment is necessarily creation, while knowledge of the future (which would include knowledge of the present) is the more standard definition of omniscience.

You didn't read the Catholic Encyclopedia citation I gave, above, did you? My comment was in regards to your comment ( which you did not quote):

You: Meh. Although the idea of God holding his breath hoping for those sinful lumps of DNA to do the right thing has a certain strangeness about it, because you have to wonder what sort of omniscience can't figure this out.

Me:
Then let's all go home. Obviously, God did not have to create anything because he would have already known how everything would turn out. While that is true, omniscience means more than simple knowledge of contingent universes. Such knowledge is connected to a will. It is not enough for God to simply know. His knowing is doing.

God did not have to create anything in order to get the knowledge that such creation would give. Wasn't that clear in what I wrote? If not, I will endeavor to be clearer. I do tend to use short-hand and assume a common theological background, at times.

God does not, a priori, have to create anything, but because of his omnibenevolence and other omnis in the Divine Simplicty, in order to be who he is, most fully, he did create. It is in the Divine Perfection to create, as he wills. Go back and read the Catholic Encyclopedia article I quoted from, above.

There is a clear, unbroken continuity of evidence - in literature, in archeology, in tradition, that witness to the events of the Bible.

That doesn’t matter in the slightest. Your point was that if I hadn’t seen it that is good reason to doubt its veracity. You are acting as if the fossil record is not evidence that suffering and death were common aspects of the world millions of years before man evolved. At the same time you assert that archeology supports the events of the Bible, which it doesn’t, at least not for a majority of the events in the Old Testament.

No one seriously doubts that there is an historical Jesus. It doesn't matter tha I did not see him. Many reputable witnesses did.

I haven’t disputed a historical Jesus. Although it very much matters to the theological claims how reliable the witnesses were who did see him, and how truthfully their accounts were later recorded. There is a reason that prosecutors prefer hard evidence (fingerprints, DNA) over eyewitness testimony, and that is because eyewitness testimony is prone to suggestion and bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect

I have always said that sin and death (which can be taken in more than one way - I assumed you have read Scripture and would understand this Pauline shorthand) came by one man. It appears that you deny the doctrine of Original Sin. God is free to do what he pleases and the sin of Adam was so grave that it merited an infinite and ongoing punishment.

Then it is a sure sign of mercy and justice that Adam knew he was doing evil. Oh wait, he didn’t know. Also, it is a grave sin and infinitely deserving of punishment to have moral knowledge of good and evil. This takes “ignorance is bliss” to new levels.

His supposed magic can always be explained by physical forces, however hidden.

All magic can be explained by hidden forces plus the audience’s desire to believe in the improbable or impossible.

The Vatican has a whole dicastery set up to do this very thing. Excluding the actions of demons, which by their nature can not do ultimately good acts, there can be only one God who performs miracles beyond the capacity of man.

So your personal bias is a trump card over other miracle stories. No thanks.

God does not, a priori, have to create anything, but because of his omnibenevolence and other omnis in the Divine Simplicty, in order to be who he is, most fully, he did create. It is in the Divine Perfection to create, as he wills. Go back and read the Catholic Encyclopedia article I quoted from, above.

Again, if God doesn’t have to create it to have full knowledge, that is the typical usage of omniscience. If God must create it, for whatever other omni-reason, that is your atypical meaning. In either case, I don’t see where you imagined that God would be in a state of hopeful expectation about human acts. Either God knows or he doesn’t.

Step2,

I will respond, later, but there seems to be a disconnect in our communicative process. No blame on either part, just an observation.

The Chicken

Step2:

I'd just like to make a few quick comments.

1. I believe God to be omniscient, and I also believe that God transcends space and time. But even though God knows our past, present and future choices, I would also maintain His knowledge of our free choices is still _logically_ subsequent to (rather than prior to) His decision to create us. In that sense, we can speak of God taking a risk whenever He creates a free moral agent.

2. I don't buy the claim that the probability of a miracle is infinitesimal. If it were, then I agree that it would be reasonable to reject miracles. But why should the probability of a miracle be that low? A miracle's improbability is no part of its definition. A miracle is simply an event that is beyond the power of Nature to produce. If you happen to think there are compelling reasons for belief in God, then there is no good reason to rule out miracles. And the evidence for Jewish and Christian miracles is quite good. See here:

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/jerry.html#section2

I've heard claims of Hindu miracles, but the claims don't seem to stack up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba#Reputation_for_miracles_and_clairvoyance

Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto don't make any official claims of miracles.

3. In ordinary parlance, the term "punishment" means a penalty inflicted on someone because of something wrong they did. In that sense, nobody except Adam and Eve can be punished for their transgression. However, if Adam and Eve take responsibility for the future welfare of the entire human race, then humanity can suffer the consequences of their bad choice. And if they (retroactively) take responsibility for the animal kingdom, then their bad choice can (retroactively) open the floodgates to a host of natural evils that would not have occurred if they had made the right choice. That is the solution proposed by Professor William Dembski in his book, The End of Christianity (B & H Academic, Nashville, Tennessee, 2009). I discuss Dembski's view (with which I partly agree) here:

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/thomas2.html#section6 (see also section 7).

I hope that helps.

I don’t see where you imagined that God would be in a state of hopeful expectation about human acts. Either God knows or he doesn’t.

"Hopeful expectation" = a metaphor. OK? Not literal. Figure of speech. Fanciful expression. Allegorical. Athropomorphic.

Again, if God doesn’t have to create it to have full knowledge, that is the typical usage of omniscience. If God must create it, for whatever other omni-reason, that is your atypical meaning. In either case, I don’t see where you imagined that God would be in a state of hopeful expectation about human acts. Either God knows or he doesn’t.

... what God knows cannot not be.