God and smallpox

[Jim B.]

Theodicy looks different from an outside perspective than from the inside, which is why Stephen Law wrote that essay - to show the inside from the outside.

For starters, I noticed that he framed the question in a way that is very prejudicial against theism by assuming that "God is inflicting" evils on humanity. He's either being less than honest or he's unaware of the nature of free will arguments.

I don't think his inversion, or philosophical judo, really works. For one thing, the definition of God that I believe in includes that his nature is good. In the same way, God is definitionally necessary. Could there be a successful inversion argument that assumes that God is contingent? It wouldn't be God.

What do we mean by "good"? Something like "Ideally desired object or condition," a term of commendation, approval, aspiration. So it's hard to see how 'good' could be replaceable or symmetrical with 'evil.' Would this evil God be doing what he believes is good?

The things with think of as good are ontologically prior, more basic, than their corresponding evils. Think of life. Life isn't valuable because death is evil or murder is evil. Lying is parasitic on the truth. Injustice makes no sense as a concept independent of justice. To think otherwise is to think that 'missing the mark' is more basic than 'hitting the mark,' which is absurd. What does theft mean outside of the context of right to ownership? Love is productive and generative, the motive force of our lives. We could even subsume hatred under a broad definition of love, but the opposite is impossible. If God is ontologically prior, it's much more likely that his character involves ontologically more basic traits than their opposites.

If you were as committed to the idea of an evil god as you are to a good one, you'd see apparent good as a flowerbed filled with nice stinky manure to allow the growth of your ultimate goal - the Flowers of Evil. More basic is not necessarily better. We don't create bricks for their own sake, we create then as a step towards our aim - say, constructing an unstable building that collapses on its occupants causing untold misery, for example. Delicious misery.

Les Fleurs du Mal. Ooh, how deliciously decadent! I wanna dress up like a 14 year old goth kid!

I never claimed that more basic is necessarily better. The evil god argument assumes that the things we usually take to be "better," really are better, such as truth over lies, love over hate, etc. The argument isn't that our conception of good and bad is flawed but that our connecting our idea of good with God can be made just as suspect as our connecting God with evil. Maintaining this (conventional) understanding is what the inversion relies on. It's not a Nietzschean overturning of values but a preservation of values. So the things that both sides agree are really better happen, inductively, to be more basic, prior. If God is ontologically prior, again defintionally, then it's far more likely that his traits, if he has any, would align with the "better" traits. So it's not symmetrical.

[Jim B.]

No, they are not the same. And yet you have chosen to lump them together. That way you can argue about moral evil, and pretend it also applies to natural evil.

This thing we're jawing about is called the "Problem of Evil." Evil covers both moral and natural kinds of evil. I didn't make up the problem. Atheists as well as theists and all other denominations agree that this is what the word "evil" denotes.

Why not stick to natural evil?

Because moral agents are part of the natural world. Even if there were no moral agents but only potential sufferers, this is a world capable of producing moral agents. We can't unknow that fact.

Now can you address what I actually said?

I have addressed it. Apparently I am not giving you the answer you want. Why not try to mount a counter-argument to what I've been saying?

But you are comparing two different things.

We are talking about one thing; allowing smallpox to flourish. Either allowing smallpox to flourish serves the great good, or not. The greater good may be the consequences, it may not, it is whatever God considers it to be.

The principles God follows are for the greater good, even though the possibility of evils necessarily results.

That reason being a rule he has imposed on himself, and, according to Christianity, he is able and willing to break.

My moral rules I've imposed on myself, but I can break them under extraordinary circumstances.

Which is to say, he has made a choice, but if you wrap it up as a "rule" or a "principle", it seems to excuse his not stepping into prevent evil.

It's not like he's saying "I choose not to step in to cure this person's cancer or that person's quadriplegia." These are timeless principles that are part of his nature eternally.

Right. You do not steal or kill because you choose not to, rather than because you are unable to. And if it was more moral to kill, you might choose to do so, if you were defending your home and family, for example. God does not intervene because he chooses not to, even though he is capable of doing so. The issue is whether he is willing to intervene when intervening is the more moral option.

You make it sound as if he's like a person on a river bank watching another person drown and intentionally choosing not to throw her the rope he has in his hand. I'm suggesting another way of looking at it, a non-sadistic way, which you don't seem willing to even entertain. If you're not, then what's the point of pursuing this? You're absolutely intent either on Sadist-God or No-God. No possibility of any other option or way of looking at it. That's the false dichotomy!

Did you mean that? If you want to evaluate consequences, you just need to consider the consequences.

No. Sometimes you have to look at the context. Remember the missing leg thing?

So what is your point about rules and principles?

You do not kill people because killing is generally morally wrong, but you might do so if it was morally right. The overriding principle is that you do what is morally right. Is that the same for God? Or does his non-intervention rule override the act morally rule?

The 'act morally rule' doesn't necessarily cash out in the exact same results for an infinite God who is the ground of being and undergirds the whole "act morally thing" itself as it would be for us humans. The way the same basic moral code is applied and manifests itself can differ radically due to different kinds of background knowledge and reasoning capacity. Think of how bizarre a lot of adult behavior seemed when you were a small child, even behavior that was morally justifiable. Or between radically different cultures. The difference there is infinitesimal.

Whether it is morally right?

If he goes by any other principle, he loses the claim of omnibenevolence.

Or to allow for the possibility of creatures capable of rightness in the first place. Is it "right" to allow for that, even though it carries the necessary cost of the possibility of wrongness as well?

It is curious that your perfectly good God is identical in all practical ways to an imaginery God; neither of them impact the universe in any way.

Which brings me back to the question you've ducked so far: How would you imagine this physical existence to be if there were a God?

So was Jesus wrong when he said this:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

Or do you not think Jesus said it?

He was exhorting people. Like saying, "You should do this." We still have the freedom not to. I believe in an ecumenical God. He was exhorting us to acknowledge the reason for our being and for everything being.

So God is perfectly good because he provides the grounds for the possibility of rights?

So pretty much the same as an imaginary god then.

He provides the grounds for the possibility of existence itself, and being is good.

That was the impression I got. You said God was unable to take an aspirin to cure a headache. If he can incarnate, he can do that.

Are you prepared to state that he can incarnate?

I think I said that he 'cannot' cure my headache for me. He cannot scratch my itch. He cannot give me a haircut or shine my shoes. Doesn't mean he cannot possibly override his own rule.

Yes, he can incarnate and take an aspirin once he does, though he could probably prevent his getting a headache in the first place.

Sure. God eradicating smallpox would be a third choice. In fact there is a whole spectrum of options between non-intervention and

And what? First, we don't necessarily know about the evils he has prevented or eradicated . Your argument isn't really about smallpox but about the fact that there are any natural evils at all. Your argument is centered on the fact that there is a world like this one. If it weren't smallpox, you'd single out plague, if not plague, cancer, etc... Omnipotence carries a different stringent set of meta-principles. If you can do anything possible, that confers infinite responsibility for what you do and what you do not do.

No, we do not know what heaven is like, but it is generally presented as a place without suffering, where everyone is happy. If God existed, and was all-good, all-loving ad all-powerful, that is what I would expect it to be like here.

And what if it weren't? If you get there, would you remain an atheist?

So? The bar is at the height it is.

If the bar is higher than your religion can reach, may be that is because your religion is wrong.

The bar's been set there by atheists who know it cannot logically be cleared because all of us truly enlightened ones already agree that there is no God. So let's just dispense with formalities and confirm what we already know.

So your logic is:

1. The question relates to the topic
2. Therefore you can expect an explicit answer

If I ask you any question at all that relates to the topic, can I to expect an explicit answer? Seems to me there have been plenty of instances where that has not happened.

I would settle for any answer at all, even in principle. This is what I've given you throughout. It's a way of trying to move the discussion off of dead center, to get a glimpse of the assumptions you're working off of.

Cool so here is the question:

Either God allowing smallpox to flourish was for the greater good or not, given identical factors to evaluate the nature of the consequence.

Right, except there are not identical factors to evaluate the nature of the consequence.

But that is the implication. If his overriding principle is this deontical moral for non-intervention, then failing to do that is morally wrong.

Sorry, that's not right. Nearly all deontical duties are capable of exception. Maybe I was unclear. When I said "overriding" I didn't mean exceptionless but paramount, all things being equal.

If that is not his overriding morality, then you do not get to use that as an excuse.

What you seem to be saying is that God is perfectly moral, he just adjusts his moral system as when he feels like, so on some days non-intervention is the highest moral, and on others day, incarnating as Jesus is the highest moral good. As Magritte said; "endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering".

Yes, he has an overriding, exceptionless morality. In most cases I don't lie but in some cases I do lie for the greater good. A small child might see this as an example of "endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering," that the greatest good, as I see it, is served now by following principle x and later by violating principle x. That's due, in large part, maybe not entirely, to our differing knowledge bases and also to the fact that her moral reasoning capability is less developed than mine. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily right. Or that the gap between my knowledge base and reasoning capacity and God's isn't infinitely greater than between mine and the child's. Only meant to suggest that an epistemic and/or imaginative gap does not pose an insurmountable problem to reconciling, in principle, different manifestations of morality.

Ah, okay. I thought this related to something else (and as I check back, I now realise I was discussing with met!).

You keep mis-spelling words like "realise". Aren't you edumacated?

[met]

The problem is that if a good God who allows some evil for perfectly good reasons is unfalsifiable, due to the kinds of endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering exemplified in standard theodicies (and this thread...!), then so is an evil God who allows some good for perfectly evil reasons.

This is what Stephen Law addresses with his "God of Eth" scenario.

Please indicate how what I've written is an example of "endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering."
Theodicies aren't about falsifiability but about justifying evils under a given definition of God.

Theodicy looks different from an outside perspective than from the inside, which is why Stephen Law wrote that essay - to show the inside from the outside.

Yeah, it makes a certain sense: "God as torturer who tempts us with baubles and then takes them away?" One could imagine in such a world a philosophy like Buddhism - "desire always leads to suffering" - might be arise and become prevalent, and it would seem obvious to many that there isn't a "God" (except there is).... and then that philosophy would be accused of "mindlessly harmonizing with global equalization movements by teaching an overreaching detachment" by the Bizzaro-world Zizek....

The further theo/philosophical implications there could also be interesting, you know? I would like to ponder what "X-ian universalism" would be translated to in that universe?

One can invert good and evil for a Creator, I think, only as long as there is nothing inherently "good" in creating, or just essentially in contingent beings' existence .... Can ugliness, suffering and despiar be 'depth' experiences'? Or be sublime? Well, maybe they can, as long as there is some "good" that can be lost, but then again, that is only human experience, and we're spun back into "Bizarro-Buddhism".

I think the PoE is difficult to argue, since it's so hard to find agreeable def's for "good", "evil", and omni-benevolent in the first place....If I had to have one, mine might tend to "lack of omnipotence"....


ETA:

The vile, rotting stench of God’s creation is overwhelming!

My point to Px above about all "suffering" being ultimately rooted in our finitude and so pretty much inextricable is reiterated there....

[Jim B.]

Yeah, it makes a certain sense: "God as torturer who tempts us with baubles and then takes them away?" One could imagine in such a world a philosophy like Buddhism - "desire always leads to suffering" - might be arise and become prevalent, and it would seem obvious to many that there isn't a "God" (except there is).... and then that philosophy would be accused of "mindlessly harmonizing good with evil by teaching an overreaching detachment" by the Bizzaro-world Zizek....

In that case, detachment from desire would be a 'good' thing (?)You could further ask then why that world is 'better' than one without desire, unless the internalizing of that value through experience (a steriological drama Buddhist version) is invoked. You could also argue that desire and things desired are good but the over-attachment is not, so a world with the need for detachment has greater overall value than one without that need.

One can invert good and evil for a Creator, I think, only as long as there is nothing inherently "good" in creating, or just essentially in contingent beings' existence .... Can ugliness, suffering and despiar be 'depth' experiences'? Or be sublime? Well, maybe they can, as long as there is some "good" that can be lost, but then again, that is only human experience, and we're spun back into "Bizarro-Buddhism".

Maybe this is where to cue the cataphatic/apophatic distnction? If not von balthasar? That being is giving, sharing, generativity...

I think the PoE is difficult to argue, since it's so hard to find agreeable def's for "good", "evil", and omni-benevolent in the first place....If I had to have one, mine might tend to "lack of omnipotence"....

True dat, but remember that this "evil God" argument is assuming agreed upon defs of good, evil and omnibenevolence.

[met]

Suppose we answer affirmatively to my question above, "Can ugliness, suffering and despair be 'depth' experiences'? Or be sublime?" and then wonder if, in this "fair is foul and foul is fair" universe, tragic heroes arose who, because of their excess of free will, refused to succumb to their suffering (a la some of Shakespeare's own characters), then what could be done? would they have to be handed over to some insipid, do-gooder therapists who would lock them away in warm, safe, secure, soft palces and help them get in touch with their 'true inner feelings'?

Since we are now verging on comfy chair and feather territory (again) I just think this whole line of analogy keeps getting curious-er and curious-er ... so maybe there's just something wrong with it?

I think the PoE is difficult to argue, since it's so hard to find agreeable def's for "good", "evil", and omni-benevolent in the first place....If I had to have one, mine might tend to "lack of omnipotence"....

True dat, but remember that this "evil God" argument is assuming agreed upon defs of good, evil and omnibenevolence.

Not sure if, looked at carefully, there's really sufficient agreement according to what's been posted in this thread? But that might only be stating the whole problem again, and just in a slightly different way....

[The Pixie]

If you wanna be entirely Biblical, it would be hard to argue from this passage (explicated here by Slavoj Zizek) that God is EITHER omnipotent or omni benevolent.

Indeed. If God is not omnipotent or is not omnibenevolent, the PoE disappears. It is only whe theists claim he is both that the PoE can be invoked.

[The Pixie]

This thing we're jawing about is called the "Problem of Evil." Evil covers both moral and natural kinds of evil. I didn't make up the problem. Atheists as well as theists and all other denominations agree that this is what the word "evil" denotes.

The thread title says smallpox. If your argument is not applicable to smallpox, it is irrelevant.

Because moral agents are part of the natural world. Even if there were no moral agents but only potential sufferers, this is a world capable of producing moral agents. We can't unknow that fact.

The thread title says smallpox. If your argument is not applicable to smallpox, it is irrelevant.

Pix: No God does not have to withdraw to ensure our free will. If God had intervened to stop smallpox, that would not reduce our free will one bit. Quite the contrary - it would have increased the free will of all those people who died of it.

Jim: Do you know the reasons for and implications of God violating one of his principles?

Pix: Now can you address what I actually said?

Jim: I have addressed it. Apparently I am not giving you the answer you want. Why not try to mount a counter-argument to what I've been saying?

You asked a question. I call that dodging, not addressing.

But you are comparing two different things.

We are talking about one thing; allowing smallpox to flourish. Either allowing smallpox to flourish serves the great good, or not. The greater good may be the consequences, it may not, it is whatever God considers it to be.

The principles God follows are for the greater good, even though the possibility of evils necessarily results.[/quote]
Okay. Now relate that to our discussion. In particular, my claim:

Either allowing smallpox to flourish serves the great good, or not.

That reason being a rule he has imposed on himself, and, according to Christianity, he is able and willing to break.

My moral rules I've imposed on myself, but I can break them under extraordinary circumstances.

You can break them if doing is is the more moral option, right? The overriding rule is to act morally. Not to kill is derived from that; it is a lesser rule, and can therefore be ignored if killing is more moral.

What is God's overiding rule? To be moral? To not intervene?

Or whatever is conventient to your argument at them moment?

Which is to say, he has made a choice, but if you wrap it up as a "rule" or a "principle", it seems to excuse his not stepping into prevent evil.

It's not like he's saying "I choose not to step in to cure this person's cancer or that person's quadriplegia." These are timeless principles that are part of his nature eternally.

No they are not. Not if the Bible is even partly true. This is a guideline that he chooses to follow most of them, but will break in some circumstances. There would have to be some other moral principle that is imore important, assuming God intervenes for moral reasons. Otherwise God is immoral when he intervenes.

1. Has God intervened in human history at all in the last 5000 years?
2. If so, was his intervention morally right, from his perspective?
3. If so, why was it morally right, given his non-intervention rule?

Christianity seems very clear that the answer to the first two are yes; do you agree?

You make it sound as if he's like a person on a river bank watching another person drown and intentionally choosing not to throw her the rope he has in his hand. I'm suggesting another way of looking at it, a non-sadistic way, which you don't seem willing to even entertain. If you're not, then what's the point of pursuing this? You're absolutely intent either on Sadist-God or No-God. No possibility of any other option or way of looking at it. That's the false dichotomy!

So establish this third option.

Because at the moment you have a God who sits on the riverbank without intervening because he has chosen to make not intervening his moral basis, despite a history of intervening.

So what is your point about rules and principles?

You do not kill people because killing is generally morally wrong, but you might do so if it was morally right. The overriding principle is that you do what is morally right. Is that the same for God? Or does his non-intervention rule override the act morally rule?

The 'act morally rule' doesn't necessarily cash out in the exact same results for an infinite God who is the ground of being and undergirds the whole "act morally thing" itself as it would be for us humans.[/quote]
Sure, I will grant that. But I am assuming it is consistent. If non-intervention is the highest moral imperative for God, then it necessarily follows that any intervention is morally wrong.

If God in omniobenevolent, and if God has intervened as it says in the Bible, then non-intervention cannot be his overriding moral principle.

Jim: We don't know the meta-principles he has. If he eradicated smallpox, what principle would he appeal to in order not to eradicate glaucoma, starvation, cancer, aging, death.....

Pix: Whether it is morally right?
If he goes by any other principle, he loses the claim of omnibenevolence.

Jim: Or to allow for the possibility of creatures capable of rightness in the first place. Is it "right" to allow for that, even though it carries the necessary cost of the possibility of wrongness as well?

You asked for meta-principle, and the meta-principle has to be whether it is morally right, at least from God's point-of-view, if he is omnibenevolent.

Your reply would seem to be a red herring.

Which brings me back to the question you've ducked so far: How would you imagine this physical existence to be if there were a God?

Actually I did answer that. Here is what I posted:

No, we do not know what heaven is like, but it is generally presented as a place without suffering, where everyone is happy. If God existed, and was all-good, all-loving ad all-powerful, that is what I would expect it to be like here.

So was Jesus wrong when he said this:

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.

Or do you not think Jesus said it?

He was exhorting people. Like saying, "You should do this." We still have the freedom not to. I believe in an ecumenical God. He was exhorting us to acknowledge the reason for our being and for everything being.

I love these semantic twistings. Just because the Bible states that Jesus says it is a command does not really mean it is a command, right? It is just a suggestion, really. Like that bit about giving your money away and not eating shellfish. It is like a morality Smörgåsbord, where Christians can come along and select the morals that are convenient.

Must admit, you are first Christian I have come across who has said that worshiping God is merely a request.

He provides the grounds for the possibility of existence itself, and being is good.

In what sense is being "good"? Do you mean morally good? I assume so, otherwise the comment is irrelevant.

Does being make any moral choices? Does being differentiate between good and evil in any way? Not that I am aware of.

My guess is that your reasoning here starts from God is good, and God is the ground of being. But I look forward to you enlightening us.

I think I said that he 'cannot' cure my headache for me. He cannot scratch my itch. He cannot give me a haircut or shine my shoes. Doesn't mean he cannot possibly override his own rule.

Again with the doublespeak. He cannot cure your headache, but actually he can.

Yes, he can incarnate and take an aspirin once he does, though he could probably prevent his getting a headache in the first place.

Right. He is (supposedly) all powerful so he can do all these things. He could even scratch your itch, I would guess.

It took us a long time to get here, but at least we got here.

Jim: I've been arguing for why it is not a false dichotomy. Can you argue why it is? Just labeling something as false doesn't mean you've said anything meaningful.

Pix: Sure. God eradicating smallpox would be a third choice. In fact there is a whole spectrum of options between non-intervention and

Jim: And what? First, we don't necessarily know about the evils he has prevented or eradicated . Your argument isn't really about smallpox but about the fact that there are any natural evils at all. Your argument is centered on the fact that there is a world like this one. If it weren't smallpox, you'd single out plague, if not plague, cancer, etc...

You offered two options, I showed a third was also possible. You have been arguing it is not a false dichotomy; I have just shown it is.

It is not an all-or-nothing deal. There is a whole spectrum of possibilities, and your post even alludes to the many possibilities.

What this seems to be about is that you doubt the ability of your God to determine a cut-off point.

Omnipotence carries a different stringent set of meta-principles. If you can do anything possible, that confers infinite responsibility for what you do and what you do not do.

Meta-principles that you seem to think God can disregard if he wants to. I would say God got those responsibilities when he created the universe, and not stopping smallpox was shirking them.

No, we do not know what heaven is like, but it is generally presented as a place without suffering, where everyone is happy. If God existed, and was all-good, all-loving ad all-powerful, that is what I would expect it to be like here.

And what if it weren't? If you get there, would you remain an atheist?

No, because I would have evidence of God.

Cool so here is the question:

Either God allowing smallpox to flourish was for the greater good or not, given identical factors to evaluate the nature of the consequence.

Right, except there are not identical factors to evaluate the nature of the consequence.

Why?

Do not give the amputation analogy again. This is not choosing between a doctor saving your life and a sadist getting off on it. This is just the doctor, now. One guy, one moral perspective. Either amputation is for the greater good or it is not.

Sorry, that's not right. Nearly all deontical duties are capable of exception. Maybe I was unclear. When I said "overriding" I didn't mean exceptionless but paramount, all things being equal.

So what makes the exceptions moral?

Yes, he has an overriding, exceptionless morality.

Right. That is what we need to discuss. Not the deontical duties that he can ignore if necessary, but the overriding, exceptionless morality.

In most cases I don't lie but in some cases I do lie for the greater good. A small child might see this as an example of "endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering," that the greatest good, as I see it, is served now by following principle x and later by violating principle x. That's due, in large part, maybe not entirely, to our differing knowledge bases and also to the fact that her moral reasoning capability is less developed than mine. Doesn't mean I'm necessarily right. Or that the gap between my knowledge base and reasoning capacity and God's isn't infinitely greater than between mine and the child's. Only meant to suggest that an epistemic and/or imaginative gap does not pose an insurmountable problem to reconciling, in principle, different manifestations of morality.

Yeah, yeah. We have done that with the killing people thing.

So what is this overriding, exceptionless morality?

And why did we have to go though the deontical bullshit before we got here?

You keep mis-spelling words like "realise". Aren't you edumacated?

Sorry, I was taught English in England, and so use the English spelling in my English.

[met]

Right. That is what we need to discuss. Not the deontical duties that he can ignore if necessary, but the overriding, exceptionless morality.

I wonder if there could be a thing along the lines of an "unrequired morality"? EG, someone might not be REQUIRED to forgive another who murdered their loved one, or say, throw a that person rope if they were drowning?

Some might even feel such actions would be immoral, but others more admiringly might consider them, more like,"extra-moral" - a kindness that exceeds the requirements of morality (even if it serves a moral end)?

[Jim B.]

The thread title says smallpox. If your argument is not applicable to smallpox, it is irrelevant.

The thread title is "God and Smallpox." Smallpox is being used as a supposed counter-example to God's omnibenevolence and omnipotence. My argument is that God's justification of smallpox and other similar natural evils is implicated in both free process and free will. They are implicated in each other. So to address your smallpox example, I am invoking the argument of how the two things are implicated in each other. So my argument is relevant to the thread title.

If you do not understand the argument, that's fine, but in that case, I'd have to try to explain it once again or we have to move on to something else. If you disagree with the argument, please try to engage the argument I am making and not the one you assume or wish I am making. If you disagree, please tell me whether it's a logical flaw (deductive) or that the consequence is highly unlikely (inductive) so that we don't continue going round and round the same tired rhetorical points.

The thread title says smallpox. If your argument is not applicable to smallpox, it is irrelevant.

It is relevant because it is applicable to smallpox.

Pix: Now can you address what I actually said?

I have addressed it numerous times. If God intervened, he would need a deontic principle justifying that one intervention as opposed to the infinite number of other interventions he could be making. If this one intervention is not justifiable, RELATIVE TO THE INFINITE NUMBER OF OTHER INTERVENTIONS OPEN TO HIM AT EVERY MOMENT, then his de facto principle holds.

You asked a question. I call that dodging, not addressing.

You call it dodging because you apparently cannot or will not engage with what I've actually been saying. Do you think my writing it out a 17th time will really yield different results? All that you're willing to look at is one consequence: smallpox and the fact that man eradicated it. What I have been trying to say is that is too myopic a view, even in everyday ethical situations, per the examples I have given, which you haven't addressed.

But you are comparing two different things.

We are talking about one thing; allowing smallpox to flourish. Either allowing smallpox to flourish serves the great good, or not. The greater good may be the consequences, it may not, it is whatever God considers it to be.

The principles God follows are for the greater good, even though the possibility of evils necessarily results.

It serves the greater good for God who is responsible for creating and maintaining a free world. We humans are not responsible for creating and maintaining a free world so that our responsibilities are smaller than God's. Our responsibilities our to people and things in our immediate field of care and to human society. As knowledge, reasoning capacity and responsibilities change, so does the manifestation of morality; the more those former things change, the greater the change we would expect in the latter. Let's assume for a moment that you could hold the basic moral code constant and plop a medieval down in contemporary society. Setting aside the other aspects of culture shock, would our morality be utterly baffling to him, even tho it is basically the same?

Okay. Now relate that to our discussion. In particular, my claim:

Either allowing smallpox to flourish serves the great good, or not.

For God, yes. See my last quote.

You can break them if doing is is the more moral option, right? The overriding rule is to act morally. Not to kill is derived from that; it is a lesser rule, and can therefore be ignored if killing is more moral.

What is God's overiding rule? To be moral? To not intervene?

Radically different contexts result in radically different applications of the same morality. If the facts and the non-moral beliefs of an agent with the same moral code are radically different from yours, you will not be able to recognize their morality as the same, unless you learn the different context. If God's context is, in its details, beyond human comprehension, then a detailed understanding of exactly how God's morality is the same as yours cannot be gotten. But this doesn't mean we can't understand in principle how it is the same. And we can have other evidence that it is the same as well.

Or whatever is conventient to your argument at them moment?

Please indicate where I have changed my argument. It has been the same throughout. It's not the usual theodicy that atheists are used to batting down, and it is a two-step argument, which I suppose is what atheists translate as "endless rationalizations and ad-hoc gerrymandering." If I have changed my argument to answer different challenges, you might have a point, but I haven't.

Which is to say, he has made a choice, but if you wrap it up as a "rule" or a "principle", it seems to excuse his not stepping into prevent evil.

No, we've been over that several times before. It's not a "choice" to follow your de facto principle. It's eternally an essential part of his character.

No they are not. Not if the Bible is even partly true. This is a guideline that he chooses to follow most of them, but will break in some circumstances. There would have to be some other moral principle that is imore important, assuming God intervenes for moral reasons. Otherwise God is immoral when he intervenes.

Revelation in the interest of salvation.

1. Has God intervened in human history at all in the last 5000 years?
2. If so, was his intervention morally right, from his perspective?
3. If so, why was it morally right, given his non-intervention rule?

Christianity seems very clear that the answer to the first two are yes; do you agree?

Yes, I agree. I keep saying that they are not exceptionless. Was I wrong to lie to the Nazis? Was it wrong for me to lie given my truth-telling rule? Can we know the circumstances affecting an infinite God? Note: this is not an argument from ignorance. I am not saying God's ways are not our ways; therefore he's justified. I am giving an argument in principle for justification, even though the situational details are constitutionally beyond any finite mind to comprehend. If I can give a framework for justification that is coherent, I don't have to fill it in with minute details, which no human can know anyway. I have shown how justification is not logically incompatible with God and that it is plausible.

So establish this third option.

Because at the moment you have a God who sits on the riverbank without intervening because he has chosen to make not intervening his moral basis, despite a history of intervening.

God does not choose his character traits. They are eternally his nature. He may 'choose' to temporarily suspend one of his traits for other considerations in line with the rest of his character/nature. If my character involves telling the truth, I may 'choose' to temporarily suspend that trait in the interest of my overall character, and serving the larger goal that my character is about.

A third option is one I've been suggesting. You keep trying to force it into one of your two options. Other options beyond that would be a God that is neither good nor bad, or beyond that opposition. There's some merit to that option, although I don't think it precludes the omnibenevolent, omnipotent idea necessarily, but transcends it in terms of God's essence (as opposed to his energies). An epistemic option is skeptical theism, which Magritte brought up and linked to last week.

Sure, I will grant that. But I am assuming it is consistent. If non-intervention is the highest moral imperative for God, then it necessarily follows that any intervention is morally wrong.

If God in omniobenevolent, and if God has intervened as it says in the Bible, then non-intervention cannot be his overriding moral principle.

Did I say it was the highest? When i said "overriding" I didn't mean exceptionless but paramount given all things being equal. I think love may be his highest principle.

Pix: Whether it is morally right?
If he goes by any other principle, he loses the claim of omnibenevolence.

Yes, I never said it was not moral for him not to eradicate smallpox, and that's because of the inevitable deontic implications that such eradication would have for God. Those implications do not apply to humans because we are not responsible for creating and maintaining a free world.

You asked for meta-principle, and the meta-principle has to be whether it is morally right, at least from God's point-of-view, if he is omnibenevolent.

Yes, I agree. The meta-principle is morally right.

Actually I did answer that. Here is what I posted:

No, we do not know what heaven is like, but it is generally presented as a place without suffering, where everyone is happy. If God existed, and was all-good, all-loving ad all-powerful, that is what I would expect it to be like here.

Non-responsive. I said this physical existence.

In what sense is being "good"? Do you mean morally good? I assume so, otherwise the comment is irrelevant.

Does being make any moral choices? Does being differentiate between good and evil in any way? Not that I am aware of.

My guess is that your reasoning here starts from God is good, and God is the ground of being. But I look forward to you enlightening us.

In what sense is pleasure "good"? Does pleasure make any moral choices?

If being is "good" intrinsically, then God would have a reason for fostering being. No, I'm not saying that being is good because God is good, etc. I believe that being is good even without invoking God. Being is the ground of possibility for any particular good things, as well as bad things, but the good things are ontologically prior to the badness so that what's ontologically prior to goods is also good. It's better to be conscious with the risk of pain than to be in a perfectly peaceful coma throughout your life. There are some logical problems maybe with this argument. I haven't worked out all the details.

Again with the doublespeak. He cannot cure your headache, but actually he can.

I cannot torture but actually I can. It's doublespeak only if you assume that words have one and only one meaning. Look at my first post on this thread again!

Right. He is (supposedly) all powerful so he can do all these things. He could even scratch your itch, I would guess.

It took us a long time to get here, but at least we got here.

Yes, and that shows the silliness of your smallpox edifice. Why go to all that trouble when you can use taking an aspirin or scratching an itch. We are drowning in evils that God 'cannot' eradicate that we 'can'! Alert the media! That's why this thread isn't really about smallpox

You offered two options, I showed a third was also possible. You have been arguing it is not a false dichotomy; I have just shown it is.

It is not an all-or-nothing deal. There is a whole spectrum of possibilities, and your post even alludes to the many possibilities.

What this seems to be about is that you doubt the ability of your God to determine a cut-off point.

I offered at least three options: A non-sadist God, sadist-God, no-God, given the world as it is now. I should have stipulated that's what I meant. Given this world, which other options, aside from the last two, do you entertain?

Meta-principles that you seem to think God can disregard if he wants to. I would say God got those responsibilities when he created the universe, and not stopping smallpox was shirking them.

The exact opposite of what I'm saying. Who knows what God's ultimate principle is? Perhaps it's love. Perhaps the question is mistaken. Upholding the principle that resulted in the non-eradication of smallpox was moral. If I cut off your leg, I am technically harming you. We have to look at the reasons why and not just the presence of an evil.

And what if it weren't? If you get there, would you remain an atheist?

No, because I would have evidence of God.

I have my doubts.

Why?

Do not give the amputation analogy again. This is not choosing between a doctor saving your life and a sadist getting off on it. This is just the doctor, now. One guy, one moral perspective. Either amputation is for the greater good or it is not.

I'll try this one last time. It is not just the doctor alone. It is the doctor and the unavoidable logical consequences of doing some harm or allowing some harm for a greater good.

So what makes the exceptions moral?

They serve a greater good or follow an overriding principle. If I lie to the Nazis, that can be justified either for the first (consequentialist) or second (deontic) reason.
Yes, he has an overriding, exceptionless morality.

Yeah, yeah. We have done that with the killing people thing.

So what is this overriding, exceptionless morality?

And why did we have to go though the deontical bullshit before we got here?

because that's what God's de facto morality is, according to this argument. That's why things are allowed to happen on their own. My belief is that love is the overriding exceptionless morality. I can anticipate your response already; How can an all-loving God choose not to eradicate smallpox, and on and on and on we go....

You keep mis-spelling words like "realise". Aren't you edumacated?

Sorry, I was taught English in England, and so use the English spelling in my English.

It was an attempt at humor, or should I say humour? Mark Twain wrote that the English and Americans are two people separated by a common language.

[Jim B.]

Right. That is what we need to discuss. Not the deontical duties that he can ignore if necessary, but the overriding, exceptionless morality.

I wonder if there could be a thing along the lines of an "unrequired morality"? EG, someone might not be REQUIRED to forgive another who murdered their loved one, or say, throw a that person rope if they were drowning?

It's called "supererogatory" or going beyond what's required. A lot of what's considered morally good isn't required and a lot of what's not considered morally good isn't required not to do. I wouldn't say that saving an innocent life is supererogatory in the scenario I suggested, where all that's required is to throw a rope you have in your hands. Probably forgiving someone who murdered a loved one would be.