| Subject: Scales of Balance |
Author:
Damoclese
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Date Posted: 06/26/02 4:03pm
In reply to:
Wade A. Tisthammer
's message, "My glasses." on 06/26/02 12:01pm
>
>I’m only going to deal with this section of the text
>because it’s the only real evidential argument put
>forth. The question, “Why did God create us if He
>knew we were going to misuse our free will?” is a good
>one to bring up. Very briefly, my answer is, “why
>not?” Is it better to never give humanity a chance to
>use its free will to begin with? It’s not clear that
>it’s better off for us to have never existed. Yes,
>there is hatred, cruelty, and neglect, but there is
>also caring, friendship, and love. Maybe it’s better
>that God created us than to not have created us.
Let me clarify by saying that I don't think God created us to begin with, but for the sake of the points I'm going to try to make, I'm going to assume he did.
I believe one of the prime tenets of the Bible is that God is considered to be a "good" entity. Some go as far as to say supremely good. We have to ask ourselves then what it means to be good. Does the holder of the title "goodness" hold it all of the time or some of the time? Is pain good or bad? If it is within the scope of our power, are we ethically remiss if we do not stop pain if we are provided the opportunity?
To me, the answer to most of these questions is pretty straight forward. God in order to be good would have to be good all of the time logically, otherwise there are times when he is something other than good. Pain is categorically bad. One might argue that positive causes can arise from pain, but are they causes they would have arisen without that impetus? Well, it depends. They surely would have had something with absolute power (meaning power within its scope to stop pain) decided to act upon the condition of that which is pain and evil. (is it or is it not our ethical obligation to stop pain if it is within our power?)
These things lead me to believe that it was probably not better had a God made us that we existed.
Instead, I proffer another rationale for why there are things like pain and evil and the ilk, and that is that we are genetically inclined and fine tuned by the environment to produce these things despite ourselves. Whether we like it or not, the meek get stomped on and killed on a daily basis. Barberic tribes conquer ones that aren't so inclined to kill.
Our survival is something that is not in question; we fight every second for every breath we take, and each second is a second that we've managed to stave off another attack by something that would like to take us out. The strong become stronger and the weak get eaten or killed. What we consider evil is merely nature taking its course of events that were set into motion by either chance or something that didn't possess the qualities of the Christian God.
>Although the existence of evil isn’t a direct
>consequence of free will, the possibility of it is. I
>still believe that it’s better to give humanity a
>chance to use its free will correctly.
That's provided there is even a free will to begin with. I don't think the condition of christian doctrine is such to permit free will as we've had this conversation numerous times before. What's more, I don't think biology permits us to have a free will outside of christian doctrine.
All it takes is one lone tumor to push on the right part of our brains, and suddenly our free will is zapped. Give us a different neurotransmitter and we go from depressed to exuberant. I needn't point out that there is a very intimate connection with the chemicals that dictate our moods and the way we perceive the world, which all utimately affect the decisions we make.
Instead, I pose that we are but like computer programs that have certain environmental variables hardwired into our brains--that we may have a couple of case statements or conditions that might happen if a certain condition arises, but beyond checking those conditions our free will is zilch. Even our main constituent processor, logic, is a very limiting framework that doesn't allow us to have total free will. We are trapped by a system of which we cannot escape.
To me, it
>doesn’t seem fair to kill a person (whether it’s
>preventing them from being born or whatever) who has
>yet to do anything wrong and in fact was never given a
>chance to do otherwise.
I suppose that hinges on whether or not one truly knows their future. If they truly know they are going to kill someone, the person has no choice but to kill that person. After all, is knowledge something we are permitted to say that is true all of the time or some of the time? If the person doesn't kill the person, then it wasn't ever accurate to say someone knew their future. They only thought they did.
I might also suggest Ben’s
>idea of God not being able to know the future, in
>which case your objection would also appear unsound.
Ben isn't necessarily bound by the edicts of what the Bible puts forth as I understand his philosophy. Inasmuch as he isn't, he is permitted to think whatever he likes about God. The Bible however, limits one to the option that God has to either know the future, or the Bible is lying when it indicates God does.
>
>One might object in not stopping evil at the precise
>moment when people decide to misuse their free will.
>This way, people would be given a fair chance and also
>be justly stopped in this manner.
Again, it goes back to whether it was ever truly known to begin with.
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