Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[Anamata]

> God created many other beings in the universe with free will, viz. human beings and other spiritual beings, who therefore also possess the capability to be causal agents independent of God's causality. When I ask you to pass me the salt, and you do, it is not God who is causing the action, but you, motivated by my communication. Human beings are bona fide causal agents in the affairs of life.

If God never created me, could I ever have passed the salt?

> You have it opposite and backwards. Christianity, as a belief system, says that God did not do that, but humans acted with free will in defiance of what God has commanded. In Christianity, as a belief system, there is human freedom, objective morality, and moral accountability. We are significant beings in the image of God, not meaningless robots. That's my belief system.

Yes, it says so, but that is in direct contradiction with the idea that God created humans.

[jimwalton]

> If God never created me, could I ever have passed the salt?

Nope. Fer sher not. But in the context of our conversation, that doesn't mean God made you pass the salt. You did that with your mind moving your muscles in response to communication that entered your ears or eyes. So, in this instance, God is neither to be credited nor blamed for the moving salt container.

> Yes, it says so, but that is in direct contradiction with the idea that God created humans.

I'll admit that you have my flummoxed there. Can't even figure out what you're talking about and what you mean. Help me by explaining and substantiating, please.

[Anamata]

> Nope. Fer sher not. But in the context of our conversation, that doesn't mean God made you pass the salt. You did that with your mind moving your muscles in response to communication that entered your ears or eyes. So, in this instance, God is neither to be credited nor blamed for the moving salt container.

Without a specific action on God's part, of which he knew the result, I could not have passed the salt. At the very least he is partially involved in the causation.

But he is actually the entirety of the ultimate causation. If A causes B, and B causes C, A is by extension causes C. Usually it's more complicated than a simple chain like that, but it becomes very simple when you believe that one being is the origin of everything.

> I'll admit that you have my flummoxed here. Can't even figure out what you're talking about and what you mean. Help me by explaining and substantiating, please.

The substantiation is what we've been discussing. If God created everything, he also caused everything. If God doesn't create it, it doesn't exist. I don't know how you can't see that that is causation.

[jimwalton]

Let's put it in these terms: Google is working hard at a car that drives itself. It has sensors, cameras, and computers to sense its surroundings and to govern its locomotion. Let's say that the car, after a period of driving, experiences a malfunction, and in the course of its driving misinterprets some data and crashes into a tree. What you are telling me is the designers of the car caused it to crash into the tree. To me that doesn't logically follow. It was a malfunction, not the design or the designer, that was the causal entity.

Therefore your syllogism is flawed (well, not in the form you gave it, but the form you gave it doesn't fit the situation of our conversation).

1. Google designs and manufactures a car that drives itself. (A causes B)
2. The car malfunctions due to some unforeseen circumstance and does not perform according to design or manufacture. (A did not cause B)
3. The car's malfunction causes a collision. (B causes C)
4. Therefore A did not cause C.

> If God created everything, he also caused everything.

Not when beings that God caused have their own volition. Let's look at it another way. Say I design and manufacture a hunting knife, specifically designed to gut an animal after being killed. Someone buys the knife I made for slicing purposes and chooses to use it to kill someone. Your logic says therefore I killed that person. No I didn't. The tool was used for a different purpose than that for which it was designed and intended. While I made it, I am not guilty for how it was used. That was never my intent. The perpetrator is guilty for how it was used. Any court of law works this way.

[Kibbles and Bits]

Its a bit disingenuous to compare a friend picking chocolate and god allowing the torturous deaths of 3,000+ people and the suffering of their families that remain. What would be a better example is, you know your friend is a pedophile that just got hired as a nanny. You allow them to nanny anyway without notifying the authorities or the parents of the child. You may not have raped the kids, but you allowed it to occur unchecked.

[jimwalton]

It's not disingenuous, but a mere analogy of logic. The point is (and always was in my discussion) that knowledge doesn't imply causality. It doesn't matter what I know or how much I know. My knowledge, or anybody's knowledge, does not and cannot have any effect on your behavior. Knowledge doesn't CAUSE anything outside of its own entity. It matters not whether it's trivial or substantial, because knowledge can only make an effect in someone or something else if it is linked with a power (a causal mechanism) to create an effect. Knowledge by itself is impotent as a causal mechanism in another entity. That's the point; the situation, whether significant or silly, doesn't change the reality of the obvious difference between knowledge and action. No matter how much I know, you can never say that my knowing something caused (forced) you to do something. Knowledge just doesn't work that way.

[Anamata]

> Not when beings that God caused have their own volition.

God creating us means that we don't have volition.

> Say I design and manufacture a hunting knife, specifically designed to gut an animal after being killed. Someone buys the knife I made for hunting purposes and chooses to use it to kill someone. Your logic says therefore I killed that person.

No it doesn't. If you created the knife, and the murderer, and everything else, and knew exactly when the murder was taking place, and had the ability at anytime to make the knife disappear, or turn into rubber, or miss the victim, then I would say were a cause of their death (although I might not say you killed them). Your metaphor fails because it does not reflect the entirety of God's involvement or power to get involved that you believe God to have.

The same is true of your Google metaphor. If Google made the car, the part that malfunctioned, the road the car drove on, and the person hit by the car, and had the power to instantly stop the car, or make it fly over the victim, or teleport it somewhere safe, then the metaphor would approach accuracy.

[jimwalton]

> God creating us means that we don't have volition.

Whoa, whoa. The Bible teaches that we have volition. Our human condition demands that we have volition. Science as a legitimate discipline requires that humans have volition. Logic tells us that we have volition: Humans have self-awareness, and that self-awareness shows itself in our self-direction (also a ground of science). To be self-directed requires free-will (volition).

The burden of proof rests on you to prove that "God creating us means that we don't have volition."

> If you created the knife, and the murderer, and everything else, and knew exactly...(etc.)

Again, the burden of proof rests on you to prove "the entirety of God's involvement". The Bible says that God created everything, but humans have free-will and are accountable for the decisions they make, that we are not determined, and that God's knowledge is not a causal mechanism. You are claiming that God is forcing us to do it, or that his knowledge somehow causes our behavior—but knowledge doesn't imply causality.

Your model of God's involvement in life (turning the knife to rubber, making the car fly over the victim) is not a Biblical model. It's not what the Bible teaches God is like. If you claim that God is like that, you have to give evidence, and if you claim God's power requires him to act in those ways (also not a Biblical idea), then you need to validate your assertion.

Since you're discussing this with a Christian, I think it's fair to say that we're sticking with what the Bible says about God. If you're going off of that, you're debating quasi-religion or debating a caricature of Christianity. But if you want to know what Christianity teaches and what the Bible says, it doesn't say the things you are asserting. God isn't like that, he doesn't work that way, and your proposals don't come under the "entirety of God's involvement" or a proper understanding of his power.

[Jumbo Shrimp]

I read over this exchange and I've noticed 2 things: 1) You're obviously very intelligent--at least that's the impression I get from your responses. But... 2) For the life of me, I cannot understand how you don't see the problem with your position. Perhaps this is a flaw with my own thinking, but I am inclined to think it is not.

No analogy is perfect, but I think the Google one was good. However, this analogy needs to be amended to include the fact that the designers knew prior to the malfunction that the car would indeed experience a malfunction. Not only this, but they must have known the exact moment, and all the events that would transpire after this event. This more accurately describes the position of God prior to the creation of man, does it not?

[jimwalton]

Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to respond to you. First we have to take an honest look at the nature of things: God is eternal. Therefore anything created (i.e., that has a beginning) is not eternal, and is not God. But if anything created is not God, infinity is not its only shortcoming. It is also not God in every other way. Therefore as good as anything God makes is or can be, it's not perfect. Perfection belongs to God alone. It may have been good, and it may be have been perfect in its design and creation, but because it's not God, it is always susceptible to malfunction. It can fail, where God cannot. This doesn't mean the design is faulty, or that any flaw was built in. It only means that it's not God, by definition, and is capable of malfunction.

Back to the Genesis story, or even 9.11, yes, God knew "the car would indeed experience a malfunction...the exact moment...and all the events that would transpire." This still doesn't mean God made it happen, or that he is responsible for it happening, or that he is complicit in the evil. People have free will—Adam and Eve, as well as the perpetrators of 9/11.

God cannot interfere with their free will (or it's not free will, by definition). The perpetrator is guilty for what they have done with what God made. What we see in Genesis is that he knew failure was in the cards, and before the creation of the world to undo it and redeem it (Eph. 1.4). So also with 9/11, God is actively at work to redeem the evil.

Again, as I've said before, God's knowledge (for that matter, any knowledge) has no causative properties in other entities. What I know doesn't make anybody do anything, and it doesn't make anything happen. I have to combine some kind of power to that knowledge for it to be causative. God may have known the car would malfunction, but that just means he knows that everything that isn't God eventually malfunctions somewhere along the path. Everything. Nothing is perfect in that it is insusceptible to problems. So God puts other factors in place to deal with the inevitable problems. In my mind He's being responsible, not monstrous.