If God were good, why would She allow evil universes to persist?
(Yes, I apologise for "He", I had to pick some pronoun, and went for the most traditional one as hopefully being less distracting :))
Well, exactly. That's the question: would a good God do so? Is that a problem with the question? You seem to have a clear answer.
I could see two opposing arguments. On the first hand, that bad things are bad, so God should remove or alter universes with many bad things.
But on the other hand, many people would rather exist than not: should you just stop "bad" universes. How bad? If God controlled this universe, and couldn't change it, just let it go on, or stop it, should he stop it? I think most people would say "no". What if you transform each "bad" universe into a "better" universe. If that "better" universe already exists, have you really done anything different than just stopping the other universe?
This is all very sophistry-like questions, ones I might not have asked before watching the matrix and reading a lot of Greg Egan. And in some sense they're completely irrelevant, in that almost certainly this universe is all we have the power to affect. But it seems to me like there should still be answers.
it seems evident to me that the long term survival of the human race is predicated precisely on the ability to make decisions based on a more-than-local morality
See also a response to Rysmiel. But I know what you mean, I think we do and should strive to become less local.
But I've touched on this before, that as correct as it is in the abstract to say "all people should have equal worth" (what previously I would have unhesitatingly said) we have to accept how people actually do behave, and that that is to prioritise close people.
That civilization is expanding that circle of "close" people wider and wider, which is good, but that we may have to start by working with people close to us, and may never get to making all humanity a single civilization, but that doesn't mean that what we did do was worthless.
Question #2 was thinking about this. Supposing you aren't God, but can view, or maybe travel to, the parallel universes, you're faced with an infinite amount of humanity. In a Zelazny novel the protagonist can walk between worlds, and finds a knight wounded, and helps him, and commented that if he walked on he would have found a world where the knight had lived and the attackers had died, but chose to help the knight he saw, and said something about that being his humanity, that he couldn't turn away when the knight needed him.
And I emotionally completely agreed with that viewpoint. Even though, if you said all life was equal, there was no point helping this particular person, just because he was there, when he could have walked on to a world where he could have helped someone else -- or several people.
The only justification I can find, is that sometimes it's ok to prioritise someone because they're right there.
As for your main question, I think that you're actually asking whether God has empathy
That's interesting, I didn't see it as that at all. I imagined a God who would help people if he could. But if you think allowing the infinite universes is clearly wrong, then the only question is if a "good" God is in any other way justified not helping people if he can.
(Actually, that last makes me ask the question: are we making unwarranted assumptions about the sentience of bacteria and other species?
That's also interesting. If you ever read the sequel to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, it discusses the idea of life you cannot ever communicate with. It doesn't provide any answer, but my impression was that the characters thought (a) you should consider that it may always be the case that you haven't reached any communication yet and saying never is a failure of imagination and (b) if however it's truly impossible, you have to accept that. If we assume we can never reach any amicable agreement with bacteria, then we are justified in doing whatever necessary to understand them, since an unchecked bacteria could wipe us out.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-06 07:07 pm (UTC)(Yes, I apologise for "He", I had to pick some pronoun, and went for the most traditional one as hopefully being less distracting :))
Well, exactly. That's the question: would a good God do so? Is that a problem with the question? You seem to have a clear answer.
I could see two opposing arguments. On the first hand, that bad things are bad, so God should remove or alter universes with many bad things.
But on the other hand, many people would rather exist than not: should you just stop "bad" universes. How bad? If God controlled this universe, and couldn't change it, just let it go on, or stop it, should he stop it? I think most people would say "no". What if you transform each "bad" universe into a "better" universe. If that "better" universe already exists, have you really done anything different than just stopping the other universe?
This is all very sophistry-like questions, ones I might not have asked before watching the matrix and reading a lot of Greg Egan. And in some sense they're completely irrelevant, in that almost certainly this universe is all we have the power to affect. But it seems to me like there should still be answers.
it seems evident to me that the long term survival of the human race is predicated precisely on the ability to make decisions based on a more-than-local morality
See also a response to Rysmiel. But I know what you mean, I think we do and should strive to become less local.
But I've touched on this before, that as correct as it is in the abstract to say "all people should have equal worth" (what previously I would have unhesitatingly said) we have to accept how people actually do behave, and that that is to prioritise close people.
That civilization is expanding that circle of "close" people wider and wider, which is good, but that we may have to start by working with people close to us, and may never get to making all humanity a single civilization, but that doesn't mean that what we did do was worthless.
Question #2 was thinking about this. Supposing you aren't God, but can view, or maybe travel to, the parallel universes, you're faced with an infinite amount of humanity. In a Zelazny novel the protagonist can walk between worlds, and finds a knight wounded, and helps him, and commented that if he walked on he would have found a world where the knight had lived and the attackers had died, but chose to help the knight he saw, and said something about that being his humanity, that he couldn't turn away when the knight needed him.
And I emotionally completely agreed with that viewpoint. Even though, if you said all life was equal, there was no point helping this particular person, just because he was there, when he could have walked on to a world where he could have helped someone else -- or several people.
The only justification I can find, is that sometimes it's ok to prioritise someone because they're right there.
As for your main question, I think that you're actually asking whether God has empathy
That's interesting, I didn't see it as that at all. I imagined a God who would help people if he could. But if you think allowing the infinite universes is clearly wrong, then the only question is if a "good" God is in any other way justified not helping people if he can.
(Actually, that last makes me ask the question: are we making unwarranted assumptions about the sentience of bacteria and other species?
That's also interesting. If you ever read the sequel to Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, it discusses the idea of life you cannot ever communicate with. It doesn't provide any answer, but my impression was that the characters thought (a) you should consider that it may always be the case that you haven't reached any communication yet and saying never is a failure of imagination and (b) if however it's truly impossible, you have to accept that. If we assume we can never reach any amicable agreement with bacteria, then we are justified in doing whatever necessary to understand them, since an unchecked bacteria could wipe us out.