Greetings Norm,
:hello dunsscot/dan (and everyone else of course too),
i've read your comments on the freedom of thought and keirkegaard threads...not that i understand much of it, but it looks you are a person with lots of knowledge in philosophy/theology. i'm not very well versed in these fields but one question that i have been wondering about is what i is called theodicee(sp??). as you know, it basically goes like this if i understand it correctly,:
Its spelled "theodicy." I'm not trying to be pedantic, but I just wanted to get that issue out of the way before I talk about the subject.
:- either god wants to do away with evil (or suffering) and he is unable to do so: that would mean he is a weak god, and according to the bible he is the almighty sovereign ruler of the universe
- or he is able, but unwilling to remove evil: that would mean he is not benevolent and wants evil to exist, which is also in conflict with the scriptures (if he created everything, why did he create evil in the first place?)- or he is able and willing to do so: why does evil still exist then?:
:this seems to be a fundamental question of theology to me, one that is hard if not impossible to solve. i'm sure that many religious people / philosophers must have thought about this. what did the great thinkers say? what's your take on this? i'd really like to hear your thoughts. please keep it simple for me, and take into account i don't have a lot of philosophy books available:
I think it was J.L. Mackie, in modern times, who presented this old conundrum to modern thinkers. Mackie formulated his argument this way, as he claimed theism is incoherent in view of the evil that pervades our cosmos. Mackie the atheologian presents his syllogism thusly:
(1) God is omnipotent
(2) God is wholly good
and
(3) Evil exists.
Mackie insists that the claims of theism are "inconsistent with one another." One simply cannot contend with any degree of coherence, Mackie asserts, that God is simultaneously omnipotent and benevolent if evil obtains.
Before delineating the theodic efforts of certain theists, I must mention that philosophers of religion normally make a crucial distinction between moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil refers to situations such as the mother in Texas who recently murdered her five children, whereas natural evil has reference to earthquakes or floods. It is clear that men commit one type of evil, and they (as well as the demons) may be responsible for the second type of evil.
Western theists have normally argued that evil is a privation of the good: it is not a positive reality, but an ontological deficiency. Every created thing, therefore, is good as far as being qua being is concerned, but evil insofar as it lacks being. Etienne Gilson, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, et alii have tried to justify the ways of God to man through this route. Their approach is also akin to the "hidden harmony" theory espoused by Heraclitus (the ancient Miletian thinker).
Nevertheless, the "privative" argument seems unsatisfactory to me. (The 10,000,000 orphans in Africa deprived of their parents because of the dreaded disease AIDS probably would not buy the "privative" argument either. At the very least, one must say that "lived existence" suggests evil is a "positive" reality.) But there are others who expand on this argument somewhat. Alvin C. Plantinga has presented a free will theistic defense (See his _God, Freedom, and Evil_), and Stephen T. Davis also appears to have provided a challenge to Mackie's argument in his _Logic and the Nature of God_. Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig as well as Kelly Clark have also provided excellent theodices that merit reading. The high-level debate between Corey Washington and William Lane Craig (concerning God's existence) is also available online at infidels.org. Read the debate and decide for yourself, Norm.
Nevertheless, Plantinga has basically shown that Mackie's argument simply will not do. He has used the free will defense to demonstrate that the three premises posited by theism are consistent. This was all Plantinga was required to do. He basically shows that God could not have created a world where humans always worked righteousness without creating programmed automata. He, in other words, argues that there are certain possible worlds (counterfactual situations) that God cannot actualize without violating the law of logical necessity. His argument is admittedly complex and protracted. You can read it though, in _God, Freedom, and Evil_. He also had two high-end (advanced) works entitled _The Nature of Necessity_ and _God and Other Minds_.
:ps. i, for one, think it's great your on this board, dan, but please try to be gentler to people. it's easy to make fun of everyone when you're anonymus. anyway, keep it up!:
A lot of what I do is satiric, and I do not mean anything by it. Sometimes I feel like putting on my philosopha persona. At other times, it just takes too much energy to be "Duns." But I hope this information is of some help, Norm. I can add some to what I written if you like.
Shalom,
Dan
Duns the Scot
