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old Existence of evil and god

Lee
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Definitions:
Evil - immorality and malevolence
God - Creator of the universe

Omniscient - All knowing
Omnipotent - All powerful
Benevolent - Perfectly good

Resolution: If evil exists, then there cannot exist a god that is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. (Epicurus)

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Lee
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The existence of evil and a god that is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent results in a logical contradiction.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Lee
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user Lys has written
Yea well, that is wonderful. My question was rather, why you wrote us this revolutionary theory?


It's an assertion more so than a statement, the point is to debate its validity by contributing contentions and counterpoints both in affirmation and in negation of the assertion.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Lys
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Oh well, thats what you want. We could actually refer to those "Does god exist?"-threads, but leave it. Fact is, that we can't prove that god exists, neither can we disprove that. And because of that, we can't say, in which form he exists. I mean, if he simply would exist, nothing would say that he is purely good. Just as we humans. Everyone of us can be nice and kind but we all can be assholes as well. God can be the same, I guess. As long as he exists of course.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Lee
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Well, the point isn't so much to justify whether god exists or whether some existent god is good or evil as these are purely dominated by subjectivity.

If we make the presumption that the existence of the universe implies the existence of some entity that created it, then given the theoretical constraints that god exists, and evil exists, can we deduce that god is both benevolent and omnipotent?

Note that while the presumption itself is a logical fallacy, namely that the modus ponens of the converse of an implication is not a tautology, we must make that presumption in order to formalize the resolution. That is, the resolution itself carries the implication that god exists, which must hold for both affirmation and negation.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

FlooD
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analogy:
1. dc created the world of cs2d
2. players joined the world of cs2d
3. cool free hax yay

feel free to point out whatevers wrong with this but seriously im not even gonna argue cuz:
1. epicurus is a philosopher
2. philosophical arguments never get anywhere
3. restating 2, 1+1=3

something more interesting: the existence of 'good' entails the existence of 'evil'.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Time
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There is no good. What we consider good, others might find bad. That's why war exists. Actually, war. It does not matter whether you kill people for defending or destroying. You're still killing people. Those defending themselves might consider the death of their attackers good, and even celebrate it. But since when is killing good? Those two terms are way to vague to debate on.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Lee
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Assuming that malevolence embodies intentional acts of malice, where the individual knowingly acts on malicious thoughts that he/she realizes to be unethical, ethicality being subjective, then and only then can we define a categorically imperative moral absolute that can be used as definitions of evil.

Like wise, by negating the previous predicate, we can define good, while ambivalence classifies everything in between.

In your example, you assume that good and evil are defined by the perspective of the individual of an affected party. Obviously, there are no moral absolutes under this system of assumptions. However, categorically, if the killers can justify their actions by their own standards, then their acts are considered imperatively good, no matter what the opposing side believes. While this system of ethical justification is obviously unsound, its existence gives rise to other systems of moral absolutes (utilitarianism being a prime counterpart).

But beyond all of that, the following are also implicit of the assertion:
1. Given that the assertion places the burden on a theoretical entity god, a moral absolute is equivalent to good/evil through the perspective of god. In this case, good/evil of every action is not variable.
2. Good and evil being polar opposites, what is considered good cannot be considered evil and vice versa

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Phenixtri
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Wonderful piece of philosophy there very well thought out yet so simple. Too bad 70% of the worlds population (brain dead propaganda believing wanks) don't have half a brain cell to figure out its meaning & how it ties in to the daily lives of us all

old Re: Existence of evil and god

FlooD
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user Phenixtri has written
how it ties in to the daily lives of us all


like everything else concerning philosophy, it doesn't.
i say the 70% who say to themselves tl;dr (actually more like: lee's post, not gonna bother reading) are better off than the ones who attempt to understand philosophical arguments and, after some period of time (the duration of which varies from person to person), realize how pointless philosophy is.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

ohaz
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Resolution: If evil exists, then there cannot exist a god that is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. (Epicurus)
This sentence is not a valid resolution. You can be perfectly good at something, and know everything about it, and still there might be people who don't have a clue of it. There is no logical connection between the left side and the right side of your resolution.

old Re: Existence of evil and god

FlooD
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user Lee has written
the point is to debate its validity by contributing contentions and counterpoints both in affirmation and in negation of the assertion.


aah didn't read that.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/
what you probably meant was "debate its soundness." since validity is necessary (http://philosophy.wisc.edu/hausman/341/Skill/nec-suf.htm) for soundness, i will first check the argument for validity.

original post in a philsophical argument's format:
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premise1: evil is defined as immorality and malevolence
conclusion1: evil exists
premise2: conclusion1
premise3: if premise2, then there cannot exist a Creator of the universe that is All knowing, All powerful, and Perfectly good.
conclusion2: there cannot exist a Creator of the universe that is All knowing, All powerful, and Perfectly good.


k so is this valid? look at conclusion1; there is no way to get that conclusion from premise1.

let's add new premises, which were implied in the original post but not explicitly stated:
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premise0.1: immorality exists
premise0.2: malevolence exists
premise1: evil is defined as (immorality and malevolence)
premise1.5: if (immorality and malevolence) exists, then evil exists.
conclusion1: evil exists
premise2: conclusion1
premise3: if premise2, then there cannot exist a Creator of the universe that is All knowing, All powerful, and Perfectly good.
conclusion2: there cannot exist a Creator of the universe that is All knowing, All powerful, and Perfectly good.


k now the argument is valid up to conclusion1.
premise2, premise3, conclusion2 is just p, if p then q, q.
this is obviously valid.

so the above argument is valid.
now we can safely check for soundness by examining the premises

premise0.1 and premise0.2 are clearly true.
premise1 and premise1.5 are too.
so the first part of the argument is sound, therefore premise2 is as well.

but wtf is up with premise3?? ooohhhh fuck that's what this thread is all about. and i've yet to see anyone make an argument for or against premise3.

see philosophy is stupid ;d

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Surplus
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Without bad, there wouldnt be good.
                                                       -Wise man

old Re: Existence of evil and god

Globetrotter
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user Surplus has written
Without bad, there wouldnt be good.
                                                       -some random film quote


Why?

old Is there is there not? and/or how can it be there?

KimKat
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My answer would be rather simple but effective, I don't think we can know that here is or there is not a god, lol. It's sort of like we're making up this character (just like always) because we all know Santa Clause exist? or does he? and in what way? lol, details would be nice. o_O. This is why we are positioned to chose to either (A: Accept the so called Gods existence even though you don't know for sure or think you do. B: Decline the socalled Gods existence even if you don't know for sure or think you do. C: Laugh at it and say this could lead to anything, we are simply not sure if there could be a god or not. It's up to oneself to take this decision and to also accept it that people can believe in whatever they want.)

I have chosen C because out of all this it is imo the most fair thing to say. It makes sense too, we simply don't know. Philosophy is to me a complex science, I just have to say that. The more you read about things in life the more it will affect your thinking. Based on that is where you take your topics and what will it that lead to? what exactly? exactly, the unknown. Which seems to me the best answer. I think this is also a matter of taste, to put it frankly.
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