Question of Evil
May. 6th, 2008 03:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIf you were the God, and all possible parallel universes existed side-by-side, what would you do? Would you delete most, or transform them into copies of the one where people were happiest? Or let them run?
To me, that thought experiment relates to several questions:
* The problem of evil "If God existed, and were omnipotent and good, why would he let there be bad things". If you can even conceive of God not reordering all his universes to be "best", that is one possible answer to the question. (Not that I think that's true, but it's possibly a rebuttal to the argument that "There are bad things, therefore God is at most two of good, omnipotent, and existing")
* A logical extension of local morality. People naturally care more for people close to them (both friends, and people similar to them, and people physically closer to them). To a greater or lesser extent depending on circumstance. This has bad effects, that far away tragedies can get ignored, but good effects, that people can choose to help some people close to them, even if this is a drop in the ocean compared to everything else, but a lot better than just freezing up. But if all possible parallel universes existed, it would make it obvious how every thing you chose to do was an essentially arbitrary decision about how people close to you matter more than everyone else,
To me, that thought experiment relates to several questions:
* The problem of evil "If God existed, and were omnipotent and good, why would he let there be bad things". If you can even conceive of God not reordering all his universes to be "best", that is one possible answer to the question. (Not that I think that's true, but it's possibly a rebuttal to the argument that "There are bad things, therefore God is at most two of good, omnipotent, and existing")
* A logical extension of local morality. People naturally care more for people close to them (both friends, and people similar to them, and people physically closer to them). To a greater or lesser extent depending on circumstance. This has bad effects, that far away tragedies can get ignored, but good effects, that people can choose to help some people close to them, even if this is a drop in the ocean compared to everything else, but a lot better than just freezing up. But if all possible parallel universes existed, it would make it obvious how every thing you chose to do was an essentially arbitrary decision about how people close to you matter more than everyone else,
no subject
Date: 2008-05-11 01:14 pm (UTC)Yes. Er, I mean, the second of those.
My personal philosophy is a bit of a hotch-potch of things that I think are important and/or sound plausible - and that does include the probable/possible existence of some kind of supreme being or beings, but without comment on how much control he has/wields over the lives of people.
My own take on the free will argument is that it's entirely useless when people try to use it as *proof* of a divine being, but that it's entirely possible, hypothetically speaking, that it applies to a divine being if one (or more) exists.
Purely personally, I think I do hold free will as having a higher value than the absence of suffering, though this is largely because I've bought classic(al) and romantic ideas that life doesn't mean much without suffering and so taking it away would just leave us with highs and no lows, which would a) be a bit boring, and b) perhaps have a lessening effect on our ability to enjoy the highs.
Anyway, given that I have this opinion, I don't see why it's *impossible* (I'm not saying that it's probable) that a god would also have a similar philosophy.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-12 05:36 pm (UTC)Fair enough. I think I lean towards thinking removal of suffering would be a more significant moral imperative for a putative three-omni deity; largely because I remain entirely unconvinced that humans do actually have free will.
Purely personally, I think I do hold free will as having a higher value than the absence of suffering, though this is largely because I've bought classic(al) and romantic ideas that life doesn't mean much without suffering and so taking it away would just leave us with highs and no lows, which would a) be a bit boring, and b) perhaps have a lessening effect on our ability to enjoy the highs.
I'm out of sympathy with that; which is not an argument of position, just an emotional reaction. Partly because I'll take boredom over even what suffering I've experienced, which is trivial compared to any number of readily suggestible examples, and partly because I am uncconvinced that suffering is the only route to the relevant kind of emotional wisdom leading one to really value the highs; love gets there too, I think.