Can God Be Trusted?

[@bike4aday]

I think what's missing from the presentation (although very well put together!) are the more challenging pieces to the puzzle. So on The Heart of It slide, #1-3 are caused by Original Sin. It is through Knowledge of Good and Evil that S develops their own Will separate from God's Will. So if we added the cause for #1, it might look like this:
1.A) S chooses to take the Knowledge of Good and Evil (KOGAE)
1.B) S develops their own will to be fulfilled
1.C) S trusts God to perform action A of their will
...
It then follows that there will be distrust because there is a conflict of wills.
The reason why this is so important is because by resolving 1.A you solve the problem. S must choose to give up the KOGAE. Why would S choose to do this? They would once they've exhausted every other option to resolve their suffering.
1. S chooses to take the KOGAE
2. KOGAE causes S to suffer and to misinterpret the suffering coming from evil instead
3. S exhausts every option to destroy evil
4. S finally surrenders and lets go of KOGAE
5. S is finally freed of some suffering and now sees the way to liberation
6. The turn of events causes S to start building trust with God again
7. S continues to give up KOGAE, trust increases, suffering decreases
8. KOGAE is given up completely and S no longer suffers
9. Perfect harmony and synchronicity between S and God
In other words, the problem of trusting God is inevitably resolved by taking the counter-intuitive path after all intuitive paths are exhausted. When there's no where left to go, we go back through which we came.

[@PhilosophywithProfessorParsons]

Thanks for your comment! I don't see what relevance the concept of original sin has to my argument? On the "Heart of It" slide, points 1-3 are as follows:
1) S trusts God to perform action A
2) God has the power to perform action A on behalf of S
3) To S, God's failure to perform A would be an apparently gratuitous or horrendous instance of evil
You say that these things are "caused by original sin," but I am not sure how?
That aside, I don't think bringing in original sin constitutes an objection to my argument anyways. If there is any such thing as original sin, that would be something that surely impacts S, but it would not at all be the sort of thing that S is responsible for or can really control for. Meaning, even if our inability to see that evils are not actually gratuitous or horrendous is explained by original sin, God still allows those things to happen to us knowing full well that we are not in an appropriate epistemic situation to see that those things are not actually gratuitous or horrendous due to the effects of original sin.

[@bike4aday]

@@PhilosophywithProfessorParsons Hi, thanks for your reply to my comment.
The argument presented identifies a "problem" where the goal is trust and counterproductive actions lead to distrust. Although this makes sense in itself, I found the point of view to be narrow and lacking which missed the bigger picture. If you look further back at the cause and further forward at the solution, you'll see that the "problem" is just part of a cyclical process.
Yes, we [humans] are going into this without any of the necessary skills to navigate it. Yes, God is allowing this to happen knowing full well that our inability to see that evils are not actually gratuitous or horrendous will cause us to distrust him. So then, one might be quick to suggest "Why doesn't God enlighten us about the situation if he wants us to trust him and avoid this whole problem?". But this IS God enlightening us. This IS the process of us gaining that knowledge. This is literally the thing that's being suggested. If you follow through the path to the end, the "problem" gets resolved.
This is the cyclical process:
Begin: Ignorance (suffering)
Middle: Hero's Journey (becoming intimate with suffering)
End: Wisdom (end of ignorance and suffering)
The argument was only looking at the middle of the path. Everything looks like a problem in the middle of the path, that's what makes it the Hero's Journey, it's the turning point between beginning and end.
When S exhausts all other options to be free from suffering, they will take the last option available - giving up original sin. This leads to reduction in suffering, which leads to trust in God, which leads to path, which leads to liberation. This is how S comes to know what sin is and it's the only way S could ever truly make a choice between God and sin. It is all necessary.

[@PhilosophywithProfessorParsons]

@@bike4aday here is the point, though; if going from "the middle" to "the end" as you call it requires that one exercise trust in God, then to the extent that God makes it difficult for an individual to exercise trust, one cannot properly be blamed for failing to trust God and hence not secure whatever goods that God intends. This is specifically addressed in the paper and the lecture video. What you need to do is provide some reasons for thinking that one *is* blameworthy for failing to exercise trust.

[@bike4aday]

@@PhilosophywithProfessorParsons Ahh I see your point. Why is one blameworthy?
I think that's the punchline of the whole thing. There isn't anyone to blame. Is it a sprout's fault for not being a seedling seedling's fault for not being a plant?
When we point at a person and say "this is your fault!", what are we pointing at? It is our interpretation that there is something in a person which is independent from the process, in control, and at fault for it. It is a reflection of how we see ourselves. But this is what Original Sin causes us to see. That's the ignorance. There isn't actually anything independent to blame.