If there is a God, why is there evil?

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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Karpel Tunnel
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:18 am
Karpel Tunnel wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:13 am I thought The Mists of Avalon managed to describe and intregrate a separation of worlds quite well in the narrative.
Thanks for mentioning that. I really know nothing about fiction or such books as that, so I cannot comment. I am not so much interested in integration as how to live the separation.
I meant integration in terms of integrating the idea of different worlds into the story, not integration of worlds. There's a lot of stuff I'd happily leave behind. And in fact I see some people I would mind leaving who seem to be merging with their devices. Maybe they are functioning as escapte hatches.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Karpel Tunnel wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:23 am
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:18 am

Thanks for mentioning that. I really know nothing about fiction or such books as that, so I cannot comment. I am not so much interested in integration as how to live the separation.
I meant integration in terms of integrating the idea of different worlds into the story, not integration of worlds. There's a lot of stuff I'd happily leave behind. And in fact I see some people I would mind leaving who seem to be merging with their devices. Maybe they are functioning as escapte hatches.
i think I understand the integration or better yet the dis-integration of worlds better than I understand any kind of story. I tend not to think in a story line. I understand and like musique concrete more that I do a symphony. I feel more at home (home?) with separation than I do with unity.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Belindi wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:22 am GaryLouisSmith wrote:
So is there one Great Meaning beyond all those sub-meanings? I use the word “beyond”. I say that the Eternal Form is beyond its appearance as this or that. What is the Eternal Form of Beyond beyond all its many definitions? As I write about the Forms (with a capital F) they are rather dreamy and indeterminate and vague. The Boy is more of a ghost that a clear presence before you. Or He is too too too clear and determinate. Either way He is different from the ordinary thing.
" What is the Eternal Form of Beyond beyond all its many definitions? "

Uncaused cause?

"The Boy is more of a ghost that a clear presence before you. Or He is too too too clear and determinate. Either way He is different from the ordinary thing."

Beauty? Enchanted by beauty? Those occasions when your fingertips touch the Other?
You always make a gallant effort to understand my ideas in terms of something else. Good luck with that. I always think of that something else as something else.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 7:04 am i think I understand the integration or better yet the dis-integration of worlds better than I understand any kind of story. I tend not to think in a story line. I understand and like musique concrete more that I do a symphony. I feel more at home (home?) with separation than I do with unity.
Ah, I'm always looking for stories, though I certianly notice disconnected things, especially if they are interesting. I get OCD with an anomaly. I want to know how it fits in this world or what world it belongs to. But your experience is interesting. I could briefly imagine what that was like.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Karpel Tunnel wrote: September 21st, 2019, 7:35 am
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 7:04 am i think I understand the integration or better yet the dis-integration of worlds better than I understand any kind of story. I tend not to think in a story line. I understand and like musique concrete more that I do a symphony. I feel more at home (home?) with separation than I do with unity.
Ah, I'm always looking for stories, though I certianly notice disconnected things, especially if they are interesting. I get OCD with an anomaly. I want to know how it fits in this world or what world it belongs to. But your experience is interesting. I could briefly imagine what that was like.
I'm sorry that I cannot speak knowledgeably about OCD. I think in my world I notice separation and disconnectedness more than the opposite. On the other hand I see separate particulars as exemplifying one and the same Form. I don't know if that makes sense to you or not. To me the world is the manifestation of gods. And those gods are very separate from and different from each other. OK, you probably think that is crazy. It is. But that's how I see it. I know that word "gods" is going to throw you, but I'm leaving it there. You can think about that any way you want.
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Felix
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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On the other hand I see separate particulars as exemplifying one and the same Form.
Could you give an example of that?
"We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are." - Anaïs Nin
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Felix wrote: September 21st, 2019, 4:52 pm
On the other hand I see separate particulars as exemplifying one and the same Form.
Could you give an example of that?
At the beginning of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus we read, “The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist. Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge.

Consider my coffee cup which is on my desk. According to Wittgenstein, we must consider not the cup and the desk as things, but the fact that there is a particular x which is a cup and a particular y which is a desk and x is on y. So what you have there are two bare particulars x and y, and you have the properties of universals Cup and Desk which those particulars exemplify, and you also have the relation On which x and y together exemplify.

Now consider two coffee cups; one is red and one is blue. So you have two particulars both of which exemplify the universal form Coffee Cup. The world consists of universal forms exemplified by particulars. Everywhere you look you see such facts. I think right now you are looking at a particular that exemplifies the universal form Computer. And that particular, together with other particulars also exemplifies relations, which are other universal forms. OMG, facts are everywhere!! The world is enchanted!
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:47 pmThe world consists of universal forms exemplified by particulars.
Don't you believe in unexemplified universals?
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Consul wrote: September 21st, 2019, 8:51 pm
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:47 pmThe world consists of universal forms exemplified by particulars.
Don't you believe in unexemplified universals?
After analysis and universals and bare particulars and the various connectors and quantifiers are grasped "outside" facts, then they are "outside" the world. The world consists of facts. Ontological things are separate from the world. The world is not all there is.
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Consul
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 9:24 pm
Consul wrote: September 21st, 2019, 8:51 pmDon't you believe in unexemplified universals?
After analysis and universals and bare particulars and the various connectors and quantifiers are grasped "outside" facts, then they are "outside" the world. The world consists of facts. Ontological things are separate from the world. The world is not all there is.
It depends on what you mean by "world". For example, given Grossmann's distinction between the (ontological) world and the (physical) universe (see below!), the world is all there is.

Anyway, if the world consists of facts, and facts consist of particulars and universals, then particulars and universals are part of the world too.

With Chisholm we can say that the particular(s) in a fact is/are its substrate(s), and that the universal in it is its content. An unexemplified first-order universal isn't the content of, and isn't part of any first-order fact; but it can be a higher-order substrate and thus be part of higher-order facts, with first- or lower-order universals exemplifying higher-order universals. For example (just a toy example), every unexemplified universal exemplifies the higher-order universals being a universal and being unexemplified. So an unexemplified universal can still be an exemplifying universal.


"We turn now from Plato's world of two realms to the physical universe. The universe (or cosmos) is the totality of matter and energy in existence.

It is clear, I think, that the universe belongs to Plato's realm of concrete things; for it is a spatio-temporal entity. It is also clear that everything that belongs to the universe, that is part of the universe, is a concrete thing; for it is a spatio-temporal part of the universe and, hence, itself spatio-temporal. The universe is a concrete thing, and so is every part of it.

But properties…are abstract things; they are not spatio-temporal. It follows that they do not belong to the universe. They are not part of the universe. The shade of reel we talked about, for example, surprising as this appears, is not a (spatio-temporal) part of the universe. And what holds for this particular property holds for every other: none of these things is a part of the universe. But this means that there are things which are not parts of the universe. Let us agree to say that everything there is, that every existent, whether or not it belongs to the universe, belongs to the world. Properties, then, belong to the world, but do not belong to the universe. Plato, by discovering that properties are abstract, discovered that there are things which do not belong to the universe. He discovered that there is a world and not just a universe."


(Grossmann, Reinhardt. The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 8 )
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Consul wrote: September 21st, 2019, 10:11 pm
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 9:24 pm After analysis and universals and bare particulars and the various connectors and quantifiers are grasped "outside" facts, then they are "outside" the world. The world consists of facts. Ontological things are separate from the world. The world is not all there is.
It depends on what you mean by "world". For example, given Grossmann's distinction between the (ontological) world and the (physical) universe (see below!), the world is all there is.

Anyway, if the world consists of facts, and facts consist of particulars and universals, then particulars and universals are part of the world too.

With Chisholm we can say that the particular(s) in a fact is/are its substrate(s), and that the universal in it is its content. An unexemplified first-order universal isn't the content of, and isn't part of any first-order fact; but it can be a higher-order substrate and thus be part of higher-order facts, with first- or lower-order universals exemplifying higher-order universals. For example (just a toy example), every unexemplified universal exemplifies the higher-order universals being a universal and being unexemplified. So an unexemplified universal can still be an exemplifying universal.


"We turn now from Plato's world of two realms to the physical universe. The universe (or cosmos) is the totality of matter and energy in existence.

It is clear, I think, that the universe belongs to Plato's realm of concrete things; for it is a spatio-temporal entity. It is also clear that everything that belongs to the universe, that is part of the universe, is a concrete thing; for it is a spatio-temporal part of the universe and, hence, itself spatio-temporal. The universe is a concrete thing, and so is every part of it.

But properties…are abstract things; they are not spatio-temporal. It follows that they do not belong to the universe. They are not part of the universe. The shade of reel we talked about, for example, surprising as this appears, is not a (spatio-temporal) part of the universe. And what holds for this particular property holds for every other: none of these things is a part of the universe. But this means that there are things which are not parts of the universe. Let us agree to say that everything there is, that every existent, whether or not it belongs to the universe, belongs to the world. Properties, then, belong to the world, but do not belong to the universe. Plato, by discovering that properties are abstract, discovered that there are things which do not belong to the universe. He discovered that there is a world and not just a universe."


(Grossmann, Reinhardt. The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology. New York: Routledge, 1992. p. 8 )
First I need to know if I am having a discussion with Consul or with Chisholm and Grossmann.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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Consul wrote: September 21st, 2019, 8:51 pm
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 6:47 pmThe world consists of universal forms exemplified by particulars.
Don't you believe in unexemplified universals?
Facts do not consist of universals and particulars as whole to part. Facts analyze into universals and particulars. So now we have to analyze analysis. There is the everyday world in which there are no such things as universals and bare particulars. Then we perform what psychologists call a shift of set and we “see” those everyday things differently. I begin to see my everyday coffee cup as a bare particular exemplifying the universal Coffee Cup. That jump from the everyday to the analyzed thing is not the same as taking something apart, eg. a clock.

I don’t see any nexus or connector (such as “consisting of”) between the everyday and the ontological. It’s just a subtle shift or jump. That’s about as much as I can phenomenologically see. I do know it isn’t part-whole. I think we are here at the limits of analysis when we analyze analysis.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 11:52 pmFacts do not consist of universals and particulars as whole to part. Facts analyze into universals and particulars. So now we have to analyze analysis. There is the everyday world in which there are no such things as universals and bare particulars. Then we perform what psychologists call a shift of set and we “see” those everyday things differently. I begin to see my everyday coffee cup as a bare particular exemplifying the universal Coffee Cup. That jump from the everyday to the analyzed thing is not the same as taking something apart, eg. a clock.
Okay, but universals and particulars are still parts (components) of facts despite their "non-mereological composition" (Armstrong's phrase, which David Lewis thought to be as self-contradictory as "non-chemical osmosis"). That is to say, the fact that a is F or the state of affairs of a's being F is not the same as or more than the mere mereological sum of a and F, a+F. Nonetheless, a and F are parts (components) of the corresponding fact or state of affairs as a super-/trans-summative whole; so I'd use the phrase "super-/trans-mereological composition" instead of "non-mereological composition".
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

Post by GaryLouisSmith »

Consul wrote: September 22nd, 2019, 12:47 am
GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 21st, 2019, 11:52 pmFacts do not consist of universals and particulars as whole to part. Facts analyze into universals and particulars. So now we have to analyze analysis. There is the everyday world in which there are no such things as universals and bare particulars. Then we perform what psychologists call a shift of set and we “see” those everyday things differently. I begin to see my everyday coffee cup as a bare particular exemplifying the universal Coffee Cup. That jump from the everyday to the analyzed thing is not the same as taking something apart, eg. a clock.
Okay, but universals and particulars are still parts (components) of facts despite their "non-mereological composition" (Armstrong's phrase, which David Lewis thought to be as self-contradictory as "non-chemical osmosis"). That is to say, the fact that a is F or the state of affairs of a's being F is not the same as or more than the mere mereological sum of a and F, a+F. Nonetheless, a and F are parts (components) of the corresponding fact or state of affairs as a super-/trans-summative whole; so I'd use the phrase "super-/trans-mereological composition" instead of "non-mereological composition".
I don't think "super-/trans-mereological composition" means anything. It seems to me, metaphorically speaking, that you are either trying to drag heaven down to earth or lift earth up to heaven and neither will work. I would just get rid of the equally metaphorical "mereology" as dead weight. On the other hand I think some fun poetry could be made out of super-/trans-mereological composition.
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Re: If there is a God, why is there evil?

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GaryLouisSmith wrote: September 22nd, 2019, 1:05 amI don't think "super-/trans-mereological composition" means anything.
I think it does. What I mean to say is that objects/substances and properties or relations are parts of facts/states of affairs, but their mode of composition therein isn't mere summation, because it also involves attribution or exemplification/instantiation. So facts/states of affairs aren't mere sums of their parts but relation-including complexes.
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