Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Angelo Cannata wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 5:14 am You need to use your brain in order to determine what logic is. Something that nobody has identified as logic cannot be considered logic. So, logic is what humans decide that logic is. How can we trust logic, since all its characteristics, including what it is, if it exists or not, are all dependent on humans? You said that A = A is logic. I assume that you used your brain to say this and I needed to use main to understand. How can we trust logic, considering that it is so much dependent on human judgement?
In terms of certainty, and the search for it, we can observe that, in the world we experience, there is none. Not in logic, not in sensation and perception, not in anything. That doesn't condemn us to live under the shadow of randomness, though. Although certainty is denied to us, there are many things in which we are confident, and that confidence is confirmed to be reasonable every time it works. And it works quite often, in practice. I.e. our guesses are educated guesses, and that's what makes the difference between what we have, and chaos/randomness.

Against this background, we can see that logic is a number of guidelines for when we indulge in serious, structured, thought. And we have a fair amount of confidence in their use because, like all such rules of thumb, they have been tried and tested over a long period of time. So I would say that we can trust logic, but we would be rash to place absolute trust in logic, or anything else.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Gertie »

Astro Cat wrote: June 20th, 2022, 10:45 pm Here I will be giving my version of the Problem of Evil. To pre-empt inevitable responses of the form "define what you mean by 'evil,'" I usually present this in the form of a problem of suffering, because we all know what suffering is.

This is an argument that relies on a few definitional premises: thus we can also pre-empt a few other responses by noting that if the premises don't apply, then neither does this argument; e.g., if you believe in a God that doesn't meet the definition provided in the argument of omnipotence, or omnibenevolence, or whatever, then the argument does not apply, so there's no need to point that out.

What sort of God is this argument aimed at?
This argument is aimed at any God that's claimed to be:

Omnipotent: For the purposes of this argument, omnipotence is the capacity to actualize any logically possible state of affairs. This avoids silly paradoxes like "making a rock so large He can't lift it," or any other irresistible force meets immovable object type paradox (these are not logically possible, so we don't have to worry about them).

Omniscient: For the purposes of this argument, it's sufficient for an omniscient being to know every possible truth and avoid believing every possible falsity. We do not have to worry about deeper nuances such as "can God predict an exact free will choice," that will be irrelevant here.

Omnibenevolent: This is probably the trickiest one to nail down. For the purposes of this argument, a being is omnibenevolent if it doesn't desire to cause suffering and purposefully takes every measure logically possible to prevent its instantiation. This definition leaves open the door for certain theodicies which will be addressed piecemeal.

The argument proceeds like a traditional PoE: the existence of physical suffering is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator. What is meant by physical suffering? I mean just that: any form of suffering ultimately caused by the physical universe, such as stubbed toes, disease, aging, animal suffering, etc. This does not include non-physical forms of suffering, such as suffering from unrequited love, or a lost friendship after treating a person like a jerk.

Why do I make this distinction? Because one of our premises, as requested by so many theists, is that free will is a highly desirable attribute of the universe such that God wants to make beings that have free will (or the illusion thereof, but we are not entering that debate here). Since God is in charge of the physics of the universe, God is culpable for physical suffering, but not culpable for suffering caused by two friends splitting apart as that comes ostensibly from the friends' own free will.

"But Cat," you might ask, "what about physical suffering people inflict on each other, like a stabbing?" Ostensibly God could stop this sort of suffering without removing free will: people physically incapable of stabbing each other are still relevantly free because they can still wake up and choose what they're wearing today, where they're going, who they're hanging out with, what they're going to do when they get there, etc.

"But Cat, someone that can't stab someone else is less free than someone who can." Technically true, but we have to ask if that's a good sort of freedom to have for the sake of it? We already have multiple actions we aren't free to do, yet still consider ourselves free: I can't teleport to Mars or walk unaided on my ceiling. Am I not free because of these few actions I'm physically prohibited from performing? I don't think that would be a reasonable take to have. Additionally, if we really did want to make the argument that "more freedoms, no matter what kind, are better," then we must reach the absurd conclusion that a universe where we're free to enact Hellish tortures with telekinesis or pyrokinesis or whatever on other people only seen in horror movies in our universe is somehow "more free" and therefore "better." I don't think that's a good line of argument, and I hope you agree. So, let us agree that God can cease physical suffering without removing our status as free beings with agency, and that objections this is "less" free are ill-founded.

So, with all of that background established, is it possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being to create a universe with free agents that doesn't contain physical suffering?

Yes. I think it was Swinburne that first called one of these concepts a Toy World, so I will use the terminology here. Can God make a Toy World? How would we know if that's possible?

The argument is simple: if something can be simulated, then an omnipotent, omniscient being can actualize it; because if something can be simulated, that means that it's logically possible.

It's easy to conceive of a universe in which physical suffering is physically impossible. Most gamers have done this in the 90's when they first typed in "iddqd" while playing Doom. Nearly any video gamer that's used an invincibility cheat can probably easily imagine a world in which actors in that world don't suffer physically because the physics of the world simply don't allow it. We can imagine that God could easily do this with something like conditional physics (e.g., for a knife blade, if the knife blade meets tomato flesh, then cut. If the knife blade meets human flesh, remove all inertia).

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then God should have created a world minimizing the amount of suffering to the extent possible to keep free agency according to the premises. Such a world would be a Toy World, one in which physical suffering is impossible, yet in which free agents can still make choices (and so, they can still suffer if they bring it upon themselves entirely without physics, such as by breaking a friendship or unrequited love: not even an omnimax being could prevent that if free agency is a goal, so God is not culpable).

Yet the world we observe has plentiful sources of physical suffering. This is incongruent with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God existing: due to God's omnipotence, He could have made the Toy World, due to His omniscience he knew how to make the Toy World, and due to his omnibenevolence he ought to have created the Toy World, but He ostensibly chose not to, and created a world with copious amounts of physical suffering instead. This incongruence is a good reason to doubt the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God exists.

Now, I mentioned that the definition of omnibenevolence (since it is rather inexhaustive) allows for some theodicies: we can still get our typical theodicies such as the good-making theodicy (maybe physical suffering is a necessary means to a good end, e.g. firefighters are heroes, heroes are good, and firefighters/heroes can't exist unless the bad things they fight exist). My response to this sort of theodicy is that it's kind of like arguing it's "worth it" to invent smallpox because it would be "good" to cure smallpox. It's hard to articulate why this is absurd, but there it is, I hope you agree that this is absurd.

We might also encounter the theodicy by which the theist says, "God actualized physical suffering for a mysterious reason that only God knows, but we can be sure that it's a good reason." This is special pleading, and I always like to illustrate how this sort of thinking is a trap that can never be escaped from. Let me tell you a quick story and I think you'll agree that once this special pleading is adopted, nothing can ever shake the theist out of it, and I think we should agree that these kinds of traps are fallacious for a reason and should be avoided:
The Special Pleading Problem in Story Form (adapted form a story by Mark Vuletic) wrote: Suppose that P dies and goes to Heaven, and he's thrilled to enter a room with God sitting on a throne. God gets up, cackles wickedly, and mercilessly hits P in the stomach with a flanged mace.

P is hurt, but he thinks to himself, "I know that God is good, and since I am a finite creature, I can't always imagine the reasons God has for doing some of the things that God does. Therefore I can conclude that God had a good reason for doing that, and isn't malevolent."

God strikes P with the mace again. Then again. Then again. Over, and over, and over. P still thinks, "Surely God has some good, yet unknowable reason for doing this to me."

A year goes by. A decade. A century. P still thinks God has a good reason. A millennia. An eon. And so on.

At what point can P ever give up and just admit that God might be malevolent? His thinking -- assuming that his finite epistemology and God's presumed goodness -- is completely unassailable. So on he goes being mercilessly beaten by a malevolent God, forever believing God is benevolent for reasons mysterious to him.
For obvious reasons, I think we can see why this kind of special pleading is fallacious and should be warned against.

I'll conclude the post at this point. There are a multitude of other theodicies and defense, but I can respond to those as they come out. Thanks!
Spot on. Nice post.

Your parameters are reasonable, but goalposts tend to shift with theodicies, which puts the onus on those shifting them to define, justify and fortify them imo.

Your story example reminded me of Stephen Law's omni Evil God hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_God_challenge
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Gertie »

Angelo Cannata wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 3:15 am We don't need to find errors. The possibility of errors is enough and it is implied by logic itself. Using logic makes us realize that the last checker of its errors is always human. We cannot check if logic contains errors without involving ourselves in the action of checking. This is logical. Human involvement means impossibility to guarantee from errors. So, the impossibility of guaranteeing logic from errors is a constitutive element of logic: it comes directly from logic itself. If logic is logic, then it cannot guarantee itself from errors, otherwise it is not logic.
You think that God should undergo such a ridiculous human instrument that has as its own rules that it has to be not able to guarantee from errors?
I'd say humans infer the rules we call Logic from the nature of the world we observe and how it works. But we are flawed and limited observers and thinkers, so that's a big caveat.

However it's a caveat to how we understand what God might be like too. As we create flawed and limited models of the reality of the world, so must we create flawed and limited models of its even less observable/falsifiable creator, including the Omni God model discussed here.

So what can we rely on as evidence for an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent god? Special revelation? That has its own set of problems.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

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Pattern-chaser wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 7:16 am I would say that we can trust logic, but we would be rash to place absolute trust in logic, or anything else.
I agree. Thinking that God must obey logic means placing in logic more than absolute trust.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

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Gertie wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 9:14 am So what can we rely on as evidence for an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent god? Special revelation? That has its own set of problems.
Evidence of God doesn’t exist, cannot exist, must not exist, because the reationship with God is a relationship of faith, that is, a free choice based on the whole of your humanity. If there was evidence, then it would not be faith, not God, it would be science.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Gertie »

Angelo Cannata wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 10:00 am
Gertie wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 9:14 am So what can we rely on as evidence for an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent god? Special revelation? That has its own set of problems.
Evidence of God doesn’t exist, cannot exist, must not exist, because the reationship with God is a relationship of faith, that is, a free choice based on the whole of your humanity. If there was evidence, then it would not be faith, not God, it would be science.
Well that's one possibility for why evidence of god is elusive to us, but it's special pleading isn't it, and if faith is not evidence based isn't it revelation based... or what?

And faith is not a matter for philosophy, if anything it's perhaps a matter for psychology or a life-style choice. Which can work out great, but has many risks. People can believe lots of things for their own reasons, and do unthinkable things on the basis that it's justified by reasons beyond our mortal concerns.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

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The idea of revelation is based on the perspective of the believers, so, it is a very limited perspective. Once both believers and non believers agree that any revelation is conditioned by (not reduced to) the humanity of the believer, I think the ultimate shareable ground for faith is humanity, which is, the whole of our being humans.

As for a matter, all disciplines can deal with faith, of course, from their perspectives. The closest fields are anyway theology and spirituality. As for behaviour moderation, I think we just need to work on shared ideas about what being humans, good humans, means. We cannot find objective reference points: they would turn out to be just imposition of a perspective, dressed-up as an objective evidence.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

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Angelo Cannata wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 9:57 am Thinking that God must obey logic means placing in logic more than absolute trust.
Not at all. Logic is a handful of guidelines that have, in the past, helped to minimise the chances of us making mistakes in our thinking. God would naturally follow such guidelines too. I suspect, as God, She could hardly do otherwise. If God is omniscient, as some believe, this would surely mean that She would always get her thinking right, because She would never do anything illogical (i.e. likely to lead to an error in thinking).
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

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Gertie wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 10:16 am Well that's one possibility for why evidence of god is elusive to us, but it's special pleading isn't it, and if faith is not evidence based isn't it revelation based... or what?
There are quite a few issues, not just this one, for which there is no evidence at all. [By evidence, I mean what a scientist would class as evidence of a suitable standard for use in investigation.] So, if we deem it necessary to reach a conclusion, it will be based on something other than science, or any similar 'scrutinous' discipline.



Scrutinous a. Referring to scrutiny. 😉
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by 3017Metaphysician »

Astro Cat wrote: June 20th, 2022, 10:45 pm Here I will be giving my version of the Problem of Evil. To pre-empt inevitable responses of the form "define what you mean by 'evil,'" I usually present this in the form of a problem of suffering, because we all know what suffering is.

This is an argument that relies on a few definitional premises: thus we can also pre-empt a few other responses by noting that if the premises don't apply, then neither does this argument; e.g., if you believe in a God that doesn't meet the definition provided in the argument of omnipotence, or omnibenevolence, or whatever, then the argument does not apply, so there's no need to point that out.

What sort of God is this argument aimed at?
This argument is aimed at any God that's claimed to be:

Omnipotent: For the purposes of this argument, omnipotence is the capacity to actualize any logically possible state of affairs. This avoids silly paradoxes like "making a rock so large He can't lift it," or any other irresistible force meets immovable object type paradox (these are not logically possible, so we don't have to worry about them).

Omniscient: For the purposes of this argument, it's sufficient for an omniscient being to know every possible truth and avoid believing every possible falsity. We do not have to worry about deeper nuances such as "can God predict an exact free will choice," that will be irrelevant here.

Omnibenevolent: This is probably the trickiest one to nail down. For the purposes of this argument, a being is omnibenevolent if it doesn't desire to cause suffering and purposefully takes every measure logically possible to prevent its instantiation. This definition leaves open the door for certain theodicies which will be addressed piecemeal.

The argument proceeds like a traditional PoE: the existence of physical suffering is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent creator. What is meant by physical suffering? I mean just that: any form of suffering ultimately caused by the physical universe, such as stubbed toes, disease, aging, animal suffering, etc. This does not include non-physical forms of suffering, such as suffering from unrequited love, or a lost friendship after treating a person like a jerk.

Why do I make this distinction? Because one of our premises, as requested by so many theists, is that free will is a highly desirable attribute of the universe such that God wants to make beings that have free will (or the illusion thereof, but we are not entering that debate here). Since God is in charge of the physics of the universe, God is culpable for physical suffering, but not culpable for suffering caused by two friends splitting apart as that comes ostensibly from the friends' own free will.

"But Cat," you might ask, "what about physical suffering people inflict on each other, like a stabbing?" Ostensibly God could stop this sort of suffering without removing free will: people physically incapable of stabbing each other are still relevantly free because they can still wake up and choose what they're wearing today, where they're going, who they're hanging out with, what they're going to do when they get there, etc.

"But Cat, someone that can't stab someone else is less free than someone who can." Technically true, but we have to ask if that's a good sort of freedom to have for the sake of it? We already have multiple actions we aren't free to do, yet still consider ourselves free: I can't teleport to Mars or walk unaided on my ceiling. Am I not free because of these few actions I'm physically prohibited from performing? I don't think that would be a reasonable take to have. Additionally, if we really did want to make the argument that "more freedoms, no matter what kind, are better," then we must reach the absurd conclusion that a universe where we're free to enact Hellish tortures with telekinesis or pyrokinesis or whatever on other people only seen in horror movies in our universe is somehow "more free" and therefore "better." I don't think that's a good line of argument, and I hope you agree. So, let us agree that God can cease physical suffering without removing our status as free beings with agency, and that objections this is "less" free are ill-founded.

So, with all of that background established, is it possible for an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being to create a universe with free agents that doesn't contain physical suffering?

Yes. I think it was Swinburne that first called one of these concepts a Toy World, so I will use the terminology here. Can God make a Toy World? How would we know if that's possible?

The argument is simple: if something can be simulated, then an omnipotent, omniscient being can actualize it; because if something can be simulated, that means that it's logically possible.

It's easy to conceive of a universe in which physical suffering is physically impossible. Most gamers have done this in the 90's when they first typed in "iddqd" while playing Doom. Nearly any video gamer that's used an invincibility cheat can probably easily imagine a world in which actors in that world don't suffer physically because the physics of the world simply don't allow it. We can imagine that God could easily do this with something like conditional physics (e.g., for a knife blade, if the knife blade meets tomato flesh, then cut. If the knife blade meets human flesh, remove all inertia).

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then God should have created a world minimizing the amount of suffering to the extent possible to keep free agency according to the premises. Such a world would be a Toy World, one in which physical suffering is impossible, yet in which free agents can still make choices (and so, they can still suffer if they bring it upon themselves entirely without physics, such as by breaking a friendship or unrequited love: not even an omnimax being could prevent that if free agency is a goal, so God is not culpable).

Yet the world we observe has plentiful sources of physical suffering. This is incongruent with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God existing: due to God's omnipotence, He could have made the Toy World, due to His omniscience he knew how to make the Toy World, and due to his omnibenevolence he ought to have created the Toy World, but He ostensibly chose not to, and created a world with copious amounts of physical suffering instead. This incongruence is a good reason to doubt the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God exists.

Now, I mentioned that the definition of omnibenevolence (since it is rather inexhaustive) allows for some theodicies: we can still get our typical theodicies such as the good-making theodicy (maybe physical suffering is a necessary means to a good end, e.g. firefighters are heroes, heroes are good, and firefighters/heroes can't exist unless the bad things they fight exist). My response to this sort of theodicy is that it's kind of like arguing it's "worth it" to invent smallpox because it would be "good" to cure smallpox. It's hard to articulate why this is absurd, but there it is, I hope you agree that this is absurd.

We might also encounter the theodicy by which the theist says, "God actualized physical suffering for a mysterious reason that only God knows, but we can be sure that it's a good reason." This is special pleading, and I always like to illustrate how this sort of thinking is a trap that can never be escaped from. Let me tell you a quick story and I think you'll agree that once this special pleading is adopted, nothing can ever shake the theist out of it, and I think we should agree that these kinds of traps are fallacious for a reason and should be avoided:
The Special Pleading Problem in Story Form (adapted form a story by Mark Vuletic) wrote: Suppose that P dies and goes to Heaven, and he's thrilled to enter a room with God sitting on a throne. God gets up, cackles wickedly, and mercilessly hits P in the stomach with a flanged mace.

P is hurt, but he thinks to himself, "I know that God is good, and since I am a finite creature, I can't always imagine the reasons God has for doing some of the things that God does. Therefore I can conclude that God had a good reason for doing that, and isn't malevolent."

God strikes P with the mace again. Then again. Then again. Over, and over, and over. P still thinks, "Surely God has some good, yet unknowable reason for doing this to me."

A year goes by. A decade. A century. P still thinks God has a good reason. A millennia. An eon. And so on.

At what point can P ever give up and just admit that God might be malevolent? His thinking -- assuming that his finite epistemology and God's presumed goodness -- is completely unassailable. So on he goes being mercilessly beaten by a malevolent God, forever believing God is benevolent for reasons mysterious to him.
For obvious reasons, I think we can see why this kind of special pleading is fallacious and should be warned against.

I'll conclude the post at this point. There are a multitude of other theodicies and defense, but I can respond to those as they come out. Thanks!
AC!

My argument with a-theists has been relative to their 'seemingly' unsophisticated thinking (the inability to think for themselves)in their approach to apologetics, etc.. As you so very well pointed out/qualified your thesis (which shows your own level of sophistication), what logic allows one to conclude that the mind of a God, is Omni-3?

To help, other alternatives to the concern relate to Process Theology and the like. Existentially, are you suggesting that you know the mind of a God? How is that possible, you think?
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Angelo Cannata »

Pattern-chaser wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 11:26 am49133[/sup]]
[Logic is a handful of guidelines that have, in the past, helped to minimise the chances of us making mistakes in our thinking. God would naturally follow such guidelines too. I suspect, as God, She could hardly do otherwise. If God is omniscient, as some believe, this would surely mean that She would always get her thinking right, because She would never do anything illogical (i.e. likely to lead to an error in thinking).
Whatever we think God follows, the consequence is that that thing precedes God; as consequence, God is not God. If God is God, he (or she or whatever) must precede anything, must be the one who determines what everything is. For example, God must be the one who determines what good is, what omnipotent means, what God means, what infinite means and so on.
This is the intuition that is expressed in the book of Job, where Job demolishes his friends' answers trying to find a defence of God. At the end, when all his friends' efforts have been shown as groundless, God himself answers and his argument is the one I said. In other words, the line of defence adopted there by God is that he is the source of all definitions, all senses, meanings, justifications, so that it is impossible to criticize or blame him because, whatever argument you make us of, you are automatically making that argument something that precedes God. Even if you argument against God something that he said, it is still him who establishes what being consistent whith himself, with his own words means.
I think that that defense adopted by God can be criticized as well, because, after all, it is metaphysics at this is its weakness. But apart from this, I think it gives an essential criterion about how God needs to conceived in order to be logical. I know that now I said that God needs to be logical, but I think at this point I have actually made God superior to logic, because I have said that the necessary logic how to conceive God is that God must be conceived as the source of every logic, including the one I am using to express what I said. So, I think the paradox of what I said is just a limit of our language and our ideas, not really a problem or a contradiction. I mean, it might be a formal paradox, just because our expressing structures and instruments have these limits and problems.
So, since, as I said, the possible weakness of God's defence is its being metaphysic, trying to defeat God by using a metaphysical concept of logic cannot work: it would be easily demolished by showing the necessary involvement of subjectivity.
I think that the only way to defeat God, that is, the only working argument to defeat all the defences of God in the problem of theodicy, is the reference to the importance of subjectivity.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Gertie »

Angelo
The idea of revelation is based on the perspective of the believers, so, it is a very limited perspective. Once both believers and non believers agree that any revelation is conditioned by (not reduced to) the humanity of the believer, I think the ultimate shareable ground for faith is humanity, which is, the whole of our being humans.


The concept of gods, including the omni god Cat refers to, comes from somewhere and relies on some justification (barring childhood indoctrination which is a big factor once the idea catches on). I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow because I've observed it happen every day so far. You're saying the source isn't logic, evidence or revelation of specific truths (eg Jesus is the incarnation of god, an angel whispering in Allah's ear, Moses picking up god's tablets or whatever), rather that humans were created by god with some inclination or innate understanding of the connection, from which we intuit the nature of god simply by being human?


I'd say that's perhaps a dilution of revelation as stronger claims have struggled to justify themselves as our understanding of the world and ourselves changes. For example for ancient Jews Yahweh was a feature of their world who physically intervened, rewarded, punished and made covenants with his people, not some almost ethereal spark of recognition within human nature. (Tho gnostics believed something similar., but as an esoteric elite cult rather than a human universal intuition as I think you're suggesting).
As for a matter, all disciplines can deal with faith, of course, from their perspectives. The closest fields are anyway theology and spirituality.
Which I believe can be better explained by psychology
As for behaviour moderation, I think we just need to work on shared ideas about what being humans, good humans, means. We cannot find objective reference points: they would turn out to be just imposition of a perspective, dressed-up as an objective evidence.

I agree, but I think our shared humanity is enough to work from. And once we stray into matters which over-ride our mortal concerns we're walking into dangerous territory, and a reason not to work for change here and now.

All that's not to say faith can result in great good and be incredibly meaningful to people. I'd say it's a mixed bag, and in a globalist world of competing faiths, we're facing a whole new level of risk, when we can instead find some common cause in our shared humanity.
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Astro Cat »

Angelo Cannata wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 5:14 am You need to use your brain in order to determine what logic is. Something that nobody has identified as logic cannot be considered logic. So, logic is what humans decide that logic is. How can we trust logic, since all its characteristics, including what it is, if it exists or not, are all dependent on humans? You said that A = A is logic. I assume that you used your brain to say this and I needed to use main to understand. How can we trust logic, considering that it is so much dependent on human judgement?
Do you have a good reason to doubt that our minds of capable of discerning truth from falsity?

I think your position here is flirting dangerously close to universal skepticism (and so with self-contradiction). After all, you are typing words with the belief that they convey meaning, and that I am another being which can receive those words and understand their meaning. You must find it reasonable to perform these actions because you have a reasonable expectation that communication is possible to work in principle (and so on).

If we take universal skepticism to its conclusion it would be that we are incapable of knowing any truths, which would self-contradict with our universal skeptical claim that "there are no truths that we can know" (e.g., do we know that?)

When we use language to communicate, we are presupposing things like "these utterances I'm making convey meaning" and "my target is capable of discerning the meaning from these utterances" and even "my mind is capable of discerning truth from falsity in principle." It doesn't mean that our minds are perfect at it, but the presumption is already made when we open our mouths (or waggle our fingers on a keyboard).

I think it is most reasonable to think carefully about things, understand that we're indeed finite and can make mistakes, but not to reject every possible statement universally under the premise that it's possibly mistaken simply because it came from a finite source. After all it seems possible for us finite creatures to know some things absolutely, as with the cogito: cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. Attempting to doubt our own existence only proves it to ourselves: it is incorrigibly true that we can know ourselves exist in some form.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Astro Cat
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Astro Cat »

Gertie wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 9:01 am Spot on. Nice post.

Your parameters are reasonable, but goalposts tend to shift with theodicies, which puts the onus on those shifting them to define, justify and fortify them imo.

Your story example reminded me of Stephen Law's omni Evil God hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_God_challenge
Thank you!

And thanks for that link. I've been aware of some arguments that flip benevolence-->malevolence, but hadn't encountered this specific one (I note the year 2014, probably that falls into a period where I wasn't doing dedicated atheology anymore). That's a good one to store somewhere in my head.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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Re: Toy Worlds and the Problem of Suffering

Post by Astro Cat »

3017Metaphysician wrote: June 22nd, 2022, 1:51 pm AC!

My argument with a-theists has been relative to their 'seemingly' unsophisticated thinking (the inability to think for themselves)in their approach to apologetics, etc.. As you so very well pointed out/qualified your thesis (which shows your own level of sophistication), what logic allows one to conclude that the mind of a God, is Omni-3?

To help, other alternatives to the concern relate to Process Theology and the like. Existentially, are you suggesting that you know the mind of a God? How is that possible, you think?
Hi Metaphysician,

I'm not claiming to know the mind of God. This is a reductio ad absurdum argument whereby the arguer takes some premises, reaches an absurd or incongruent conclusion, and then argues "therefore these premises can't possibly be true." If anything, I am simply saying "God can not have these properties in aggregate."

It's saying "I don't know what a God might be, but it at least can't be this."

Thanks
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
--Richard Feynman
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