😁CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS😁 (1) I incorrectly spelled 'Shafer-Landau' -- I wrote 'Schaffer' instead of 'Shafer'! (2) I should have said 'moral rightness' rather than 'moral goodness' at 1:27:13! (3) The Bengson/Cuneo/Shafer-Landau paper is not open access, actually! (4) It's helpful to clarify the point at 38:40. Importantly, I did not say *Trent himself* is (or is being) triumphalist. Instead, I said he was *using triumphalist language* , similar to when someone claims to 'debunk' something. I take words like 'proves', 'demonstrates', 'debunks', and co. to be triumphalist language; if others don't, that's alright, but we should all recognize that I didn't say Trent was triumphalist. One can use triumphalist language without being triumphalist oneself. I wholeheartedly agree that, while Trent employed this sort of language, Trent is not himself triumphalist; indeed, I tried to emphasize my admiration for his qualities as a person at the outset! :) A further clarification here is that I actually regard 'show' to be far less triumphalist than 'proves' and 'demonstrate' -- both of which Trent has used in the context of arguments for God, and the former of which Trent used in his video. 'Show' is a borderline case for me, and I can definitely see it not being triumphalist, at least in many contexts. In the moment, I lumped it in with 'proves' because Trent had also used it in close connection with 'proves', but I'm more than willing to remove 'shows' from the list of triumphal words to generally try to avoid! (5) A commenter brings a nice point to attention: "we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too." This is an excellent point. I agree that we can’t infer merely from our preventing x that x has no outweighing goods. So I would want to modify and correct what I said at that juncture in the video (even though I don't think it significantly hampers my overarching point). In particular, I would say that *even when* we don’t have such duties, and *even when* we can secure someone’s net good, we often still prevent the relevant tragedies (or at least view their prevention [or non-occurrence] as the best/most valuable/most desirable outcome, even if their prevention is out of our control), thus plausibly revealing that we don’t regard the relevant goods of, say, free will or virtue cultivation/manifestation as outweighing the relevant tragedy. Consider cases of supererogatory prevention of tragedy (e.g., doctors staying well overtime to prevent certain tragedies). These are cases without the duty element. And, quite plausibly, many such cases are such that, even if the tragedy were to transpire (rather than being prevented), the relevant supererogatory actor *would* have the resources to secure the patient’s net good. (Given our medical prowess at this time in history, doctors have the wherewithal to secure the patient’s net benefit, after all is said and done, for many medical tragedies.) Even still, doctors under these conditions prevent the relevant tragedies. Or consider cases where the prevention of tragedy is outside of an agent’s control. These, too, are cases without the duty element. Even when such cases are such that the agent can secure the benefit of the victim of the tragedy, the agent [and victim] will very often still regard it as best that the tragedy never occurred, will have wished that such a thing never occurred, and so on, again plausibly revealing commitment to what I said in the video.
Thanks for the thoughtful criticism Joe! I watched most of it and my only major pushback would be on the claim of me being "triumphalist". I try hard not to do that and I know theists (especially Thomists and some apologists) who are quite obnoxious about it. I think if a person thinks an argument succeeds it's fine for them to say it "shows" or "proves" something. I wouldn't consider an atheist "triumphalist" for saying divine hiddeness "shows" God doesn't exist, just mistaken. Also, I didn't intend to "blitzkrieg" the arguments for God but just mention them. It would have bogged down the response to exhaustively defend each one. I'm also open to having a dialogue with you on my channel in the next few weeks regarding the issues you raised if you are interested. Cheers!
Hey Trent! Glad you saw the video! I'll now offer some thoughts on your comment: You say: "I watched most of it and my only major pushback would be on the claim of me being "triumphalist"." Thanks for this; it allows me to offer a helpful clarification. Importantly, I did not claim that you, Trent, were being triumphalist. Instead, I said you were using *triumphalist language* , similar to when someone claims to 'debunk' something. I take words like 'proves', 'demonstrates', 'debunks', and co. to be triumphalist language; if you don't, that's alright, but we should both recognize that I didn't say *you* were triumphalist. One can use triumphalist language without being triumphalist oneself. I wholeheartedly agree that, while you employed this sort of language, you are not yourself triumphalist; indeed, I tried to emphasize my admiration for your qualities as a person at the outset :) You say: "I think if a person thinks an argument succeeds it's fine for them to say it "shows" or "proves" something. I wouldn't consider an atheist "triumphalist" for saying divine hiddeness "shows" God doesn't exist, just mistaken." Again, though, I didn't call *you* triumphalist; I said you employed triumphalist *language* . And while I certainly regard 'show' to be far less triumphalist than 'proves' and 'demonstrate' -- both of which you've used in the context of arguments for God, and the former of which you used in your video -- I still regard it as at least bordering on triumphalist. I would also take issue with an atheist who said they could 'prove' or 'demonstrate' God's non-existence through the hiddenness argument. 'Show' is a borderline case for me, and I can definitely see it *not* being triumphalist, at least in many contexts. In the moment, I lumped it in with 'proves' because you had also used that in close connection with 'proves', but I'm open to removing 'shows' from the list of triumphal words to generally try to avoid! You say: "Also, I didn't intend to "blitzkrieg" the arguments for God but just mention them. It would have bogged down the response to exhaustively defend each one." This also allows me to clarify things. By 'blitzkrieg approach', I mean precisely what you did -- mention many arguments, in very quick fashion, the success of (most of) which is required for the point being made, without offering defenses of those arguments. It's what I was attempting to mimic when I merely mentioned many atheistic arguments, in very quick fashion, the success of (most of) which was required for the point being made, without offering defenses of those arguments. That's just what I meant by 'blitzkrieg approach'. You say: "I'm also open to having a dialogue with you on my channel in the next few weeks regarding the issues you raised if you are interested. Cheers!" I'd be happy to have a chat, but it would be best not to do it in the next few weeks. My knee is in a very unhappy point in life, with significant post-op swelling. If I sit for even an hour straight without doing some of my exercises, it gets stuff and more painful. So, then, I propose we wait perhaps 2-3 months before having a chat. But I'm certainly up for it!
@@MajestyofReason I'd enjoy watching this dialogue/chat. It would be nice to see something that was like the opposite of the Dave/Tour debate, where you challenge each other in a respectful way. However, I'd love to see one (or both) of you concede that the other has made a good point when it in fact does happen. I'd be curious to see what the other side considers to be a good point (whether it's a defeater or not).
@@MajestyofReason Y'know Joe, I would wonder why you call out Trent on this kind of language but do it sometimes as well. For example, there are a few times in this video where the word "obvious" is used to prove your point without really giving an argument as to why it's true or considering objections to this point. I agree that using words like "show", "debunk", "prove", etc. are triumphant. I also question why you seem to be bothered by Trent making this type of video but you haven't made any videos on Stephen, who uses this type of language all the time, and makes points that have good objections. I'm unfamiliar with the internet religion debate, but I always got the impression that atheists were more dominant. But if you're doing this because it's actually the other way around and you want to open more people's minds I completely understand.
@@MasterMooper Thanks for the comment my dude! You say: “Y’know Joe, I would wonder why you call out Trent on this kind of language but do it sometimes as well. For example, there are a few times in this video where the word "obvious" is used to prove your point without really giving an argument as to why it's true or considering objections to this point. I agree that using words like "show", "debunk", "prove", etc. are triumphant.” Great question! A few notes here: First, even if I do the very thing I’m urging us all to try not to do, that only shows that I have some of the very imperfections I’m trying to urge us all to improve upon. That doesn’t at all invalidate my point; it shows only my own imperfection. But I already knew I was imperfect, and presumably others did too! Second, on the significant majority of instances in the video where I use words like ‘clearly false’, ‘obvious’, etc., I am very quick to add qualifiers: I explicitly say things like ‘“at least by my lights”, “to me”, “I think that”, “it seems to me that”, and so on. And when I had the ‘obviously’ in all caps and bolded and italicized, I was careful to include a footnote saying ‘at least to me…’. Third, my injunction against the use of these words was preceded by a ‘generally’ modifier. I think it’s *generally* best to avoid them and use less triumphal language. But there are cases where I think it becomes appropriate - in particular, it might be appropriate to use triumphal language in response to someone who does so in order to highlight the negatives of using that language to that person and their audience. (This is why on at least a few occasions, I’ll respond to bombastic, annoying, condescending comments with similar bombastic language - it shows the other person how it feels to be the recipient of this language. Still, though, I generally try to avoid this.) Continuing back with you: “I also question why you seem to be bothered by Trent making this type of video but you haven't made any videos on Stephen, who uses this type of language all the time, and makes points that have good objections.” Lots of reasons: (1) The market of responses to Stephen is already saturated - people like WLC, Cameron Bertuzzi, Trent Horn, Christian Idealist, Invoking Theism, etc., already make responses to Stephen when Stephen seems (to them) to make mistakes. If I think these people have already made most of the relevant points I would want to make in response to Stephen, then there isn’t much use of me making a response, too. [And, indeed, in Trent’s case, I think Trent successfully made my three major criticisms of Stephen’s video here that I had: first, that faith is really just trust; second, that theists can be rational; and third, that Stephen’s case overlooks the total evidence requirement.] (2) Unlike most other RUclipsrs - especially most non-theist RUclipsrs - Trent’s videos to which I respond tend to fall directly within my area of philosophical research. Among other things, I research classical theism and classical theistic proofs in tremendous depth. Trent is one of the only RUclipsrs who makes videos on this stuff which meet a minimal threshold of being worthy of taking seriously. (3) I actually do respond to non-theists quite often; I even made a video with Trent on his channel responding to a plethora of non-theist arguments! :) You then say: “I’m unfamiliar with the internet religion debate, but I always got the impression that atheists were more dominant. But if you're doing this because it's actually the other way around and you want to open more people's minds I completely understand.” This is actually one of the major reasons, too. We have to distinguish what I find to be a hugely important distinction within the YT sphere: (A) Philosophically non-competent videos, channels, etc. that are not worth being taking (philosophically) seriously; and (B) Philosophically competent videos, channels, etc. that are worth being taken (philosophically) seriously. My own perception is that theistic apologetics has the leg up within the (B) sphere, and that’s the only sphere that matters for me. Part of the motivation is to add another non-theistic voice within the (B) camp so as to help us all grow in intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, and gain a better understanding of reality. :)
@@MajestyofReason "Trent is one of the only RUclipsrs who makes videos on this stuff which meet a minimal threshold of being worthy of taking seriously." I'm grateful for the high compliment :-)
You are quite literally my favorite channel when it comes to philosophy, even if your videos are insanely long and ur terminology goes ever my head sometimes. I love that I can feel myself learning as I listen to you.
I'm note sure i agree on your take on not using terms like "obvious". Especially when used in an informal conversation or short-timed presentation. To me, when terms like "It seems obvious" are used, what one is trying to convey, is that they are saying something akin to "This proposition is obvious to the vast majority of people". It would get quite tiresome having to say "It seem obvious "to the vast majority of people" that..." Note that one could obviously be false in asserting the "seeming obviousness", but that doesn't make the usage of the word and its meaning invalid or bad. At least in my opinion.
I appreciate this format. My english level is not that great and subtitles aren't always very good. Thanks for your hard work and for all the information, it's really needed.
I find this type of content to be very good at improving my english skills, i feel like i've learnt a lot from guys like joe :D (the hard part comes when trying to understand what he even says haha)
@@MajestyofReason i think the record for critiques is digital gnosis' critique of pinecreek's critique of hamza's den's critique of hamzas den's critique from pincreek over the critique of pinecreek on hamzas den. at least, it made a wormhole that was stable for like, 2 milliseconds.
I have nightmares of some day finding the reasons to justify belief in catholic theology and then doing public apologetics and eventually having joe rebut my rebuttals
I have just stumbled into this world. I was enjoying Bertrand Russell's TKO of Nietzsche in his History of Western Philosophy and I wondered what Walter Kaufman would say about it. I only have Existentialism from D to S on hand and none of Kaufman's other works, so I was just googling things like "Bertrand Russell Walter Kaufman rebuttal" etc and I found some twitter thing which lead me here. The internet is wild. In any event, I have subscribed and while I did not watch any of these videos all the way through, the point at which I just stopped watching the Trent guy was exactly the point when you started dismantling him. Since we agree, it is clear that you are a genius. Keep up the good work.
I have a question: Is there not a distinction between moral value and value in general? I can't imagine how this is not the case. Moral values would deal with good and evil, and general value would deal with positive and negative. We could say, for example, that intelligence is an objectively positive thing, and therefore stupidity (a lack of intelligence) is an objectively negative thing, but it does not follow from that fact that stupidity is evil. To claim that objectively negative things are objectively evil things would lead to absurd conclusions. If stupidity is supposed to be evil simply because it is negative, then it would follow that any and all beings that lack intelligence would be evil simply in virtue of them lacking intelligence. But every being that is not maximally intelligent lacks intelligence to some degree. If the maximal degree of intelligence a being can have is infinite, then all beings which are not infinitely intelligent would lack intelligence to an infinite degree. This would render all beings that are not infinitely intelligent infinitely evil, which is crazy. And if maximum intelligence is not infinite but simply some very large finite quality, then clearly that quality is vastly beyond human intelligence, and so we would have to conclude that all beings we are aware of are massively lacking in intelligence, and therefore, massively evil. You could run the same line of reasoning with many other things, such as rationality. It would result in beings which are irrational being evil in virtue of their irrationality. So, children and mentally disabled people would have to be considered evil in virtue of their irrationality, which again seems crazy. The point of this is to say that claiming things are intrinsically positive or negative, such as suffering being intrinsically negative, isn't even relevant to the moral argument. The moral argument does not claim that value in general is grounded in God, it argues that MORAL values (and duties) are grounded in God. So, we could grant that the atheist can explain the positive or negative nature of certain things by arguing they are intrinsically that way, but how does the atheist explain objective MORAL values? How do you jump from general value to moral value in an atheistic worldview? The atheist could claim, for example, that the suffering experienced in the holocaust was objectively negative, due to suffering being intrinsically negative, but how does the atheist then argue that the Nazi's causing that suffering is objectively evil (objective moral value) and objectively wrong (objective moral duty)? You say that theists simply need to live with the fact that atheists can ground objective moral values in their worldview, but you have no presented a reason for us to do so. You only presented an argument to ground general value (positive and negative things) not moral values (good and evil things). I have still yet to see an account of objective moral values (and also duties) on an atheistic worldview that made any sense to me.
Maybe you don't see an account of "objective" moral values because objectivity is a meanongless concept with regards to morals? This is also perfectly well illustrated by the weird notion of yours that intelligence is an "objective" good according to you. Why? How is it _objectively_ good to be more intelligent? You do know that the most numerous, thereby arguably biologically most successful organisms on this planet, are microscopic ones? Followed by insects, iirc. How is intelligence an _objectively_ good thing? I can see why one would _subjectively_ claim it is a good thing, because it allows for better and more correct understanding of the universe. But that is a _value judgement_ - and values, ironically, are _subject-dependant._ Meaning they are _subjective_ by definition. Moving on, moral value and epistemic/societal/personal value can be different categories, sure. And suffering is also never _objectively_ bad - as 'bad' and 'good', again, are _value judgements,_ making them subjective by definition. But! Here comes the kicker; this is only true if you accept the reasonable conclusion that belief in what is a definitionally ultimate moral arbiter with maximal power and knowledge is _untrue._ If you hold, however, the unfounded opinion that such a being actually exists/is real, and that _it_ is the reference point with which to claim moral "objectivity", then you run into two problems; firstly, that being by virtue of being both ultimate moral arbiter as well as supposedly omniscient and omnipotent, is necessarily _responsible_ for everything, even according to Christianity itself. It says so in the bible. If an omniscient being created a universe, nothing in that universe could be other than it would have known it to be before even lifting one finger to create it. Omniscience equals a _necessity_ for everything to be according to its knowledge - because omniscience cannot be true if that being does not know the future. Curiously, this also functions not just as Illustration that your god-creature is necessarily directly responsible for all moral 'good' and all moral 'evil', but also serves to show that belief in any kind of "free" will is entirely illogical under Christianity - because under it, the universe is necessarily pre-determined according to your god-creature's knowledge. Secondly, if you believe in an "omnibenevolent" arbiter in combination with the other stated attributes, then the only logical conclusion is that there _is no evil._ After all, benevolence implies or is defined rather as being good, being a force for good. Anything that is omnibenevolent is _only_ good by definition - and anything that is additionally omniscient and omnipotent would have both the knowledge of any 'evil', and the power to do something against it (let alone the moral responsibility to, as illustrated above, by virtue of being responsible for "creation"). So, the only sensible conclusion resulting from the working of these there definitions is that there _is_ no evil; because in a reality with such a being, there cannot be. It is a logical impossibility, again, because omnibenevolence would mean that that creature, even if it potentially could do 'evil', would only ever do 'good'. If all it did ever was good, then creating was also all-good from the get-go - including any and all factors. Thereby, we would have to include that the "objective" Moral standard you proclaim exclude necessarily leads is to include that everything has to be good, and that we do not know evil. Because if we _did_ know evil, well then since nothing can logically occur which your assumed god-creature is not ultimately responsible for, that would mean that it created the world with evil in it, making it definitionally not omnibenevolent. The last argument I want to bring up is that atheists generally do not use categories such as "morally bad suffering" in an _objective_ sense. Most of us acknowledge that suffering is _subjective_ - like morality. That no two people have the same feelings on it. But, arguments like the Problem of evil, hinge on the fact that the _theist_ disagrees. In other words, they are so potent because they expose the illogciality of the Christian belief, showing that Christian claims are logically contradictory. In essence, you are correct - leave Christian mythology behind, and the Problem vanishes, which is _exactly_ the point of arguments like these; to show that other beliefs are more logically sound.
Is pain the only way for none-rational organism to avoid dangerous situations? There's a reason evolution favours cretures that feel pain. Even rational creatures like us do gain a lot by negative emotions. The most deadly diseases are often those with no symptoms until they become terminal ( cancer, HIV) ...
I want to read that paper from Draper on panpsychotheism. It comes to mind listening to research into NDEs, as some describe a sense of oneness with the universe or God, and others experience a life review where they experience not only their own perspective but experience it from the perspective of others in the room (see Dr. Bruce Greyson's research). Not sure what to make of all that and am certainly skeptical, but if there is something to it, Draper's idea might help explain it.
(Did I just copy and paste my original comment from Trent’s video… yes. Yes I did) I think another solid rebuttal to the argument from nonhuman animal suffering is to pose a defeater for the Naturalist. When analyzing Naturalism and Theism, we’re looking for the best explanation considering what we observe in the universe. A Naturalist can point out towards a long chain of animal predation, but the Theist can then point out to a universe with +30 “lucky” constants. To sum it up, in a Naturalistic world we wouldn’t even expect to see any organic matter at all, especially something like a fully aware animal.
Thanks for the comment, and you make a fascinating point! Ultimately, though, I don't think it's a successful response to the argument from animal suffering -- I highly recommend checking out this video here which explains why [it has to do with clarifying the relevant background knowledge at play in the argument]: ruclips.net/video/z1VHUiauaZk/видео.html I'd also recommend checking out my Design Arguments playlist wherein I offer some worries of mine for the fine-tuning arg! :)
@@MajestyofReason Thanks for the response Joe! I love your channel and your desire to help philosophical babies such as myself. You’ve really inspired me to pursue philosophy at university next year. I will check out the videos you listed :)
Connecting suffering and evil has always been, to me, strange. They are often analogized on some level, take the Problem of Suffering variation of the Problem of Evil, but I can think of times where this analogizing falls apart. Take for instance the emotional suffering after a profound sense of loss. It seems intuitive to me that one that it is only right to face suffering at that moment, and that the lack of suffering would actually be a bad thing. It seems only right for suffering to exist in that moment, that it is the correct state of affairs. The "evil", if there truly is evil in this instance, is not the suffering but the loss itself. Think of when you hear of a parent dying and a sibling shows no negative emotion, this often gets viewed as a bad thing (not necessarily because of the lack of showing an emotion, but because of the inference that they have no negative emotional response). In a way, it seems, to me, like human intuition tends to be that the lack of suffering when there is profound loss is not a good thing, it is a bad thing. If this is accurate, then we can now say that not only can some negative forms of suffering be necessary for "higher order goods", but that some types of suffering are, themselves, such that their absence would, in and of itself, increase "evil" in the world. Yet if we reach that conclusion, it seems harder to justify the analogizing of suffering to evil, which then raises the question on if gratuitous suffering is a gratuitous evil, and how we reach that conclusion.
These responses tend to either severely undermine or outright ignore god’s omnipotence/omnibenevolence. The logical contradiction arises when an all-loving, all-powerful god stays idle while spectating his subjects suffering from all sorts things: diseases, accidents, natural disasters, psychological pain, etc. you say that suffering is good because it can lead to “greater goods”. Apart from the fact that suffering can also lead to greater suffering which I will come back to later, this response would only work on a god that is either not all-loving or not all-powerful; if he is all powerful then he is capable of allowing us to understand and appreciate those greater goods without suffering unnecessarily in the process. If he is all-loving then he would want to ensure we’re not harmed and not suffering. The only way out of this is to somehow say that suffering is intrinsically good, that suffering in itself is a good thing which is a preposterous idea; if this was true then all of us would turn sado-masochists, inflicting pain and suffering on ourselves and on other people, but obviously this isn’t the case as is evidenced by everything around us not the least of which our own intuitions. Even your own response that suffering is good because it can lead to those greater goods goes against the idea that suffering is intrinsically good, which leads me to the greater good notion. The idea that suffering can lead to greater goods hence why it’s justified is an appeal to possibility; like I mentioned earlier suffering can lead to no greater goods and in fact can cause more suffering. You frame all suffering as a necessary step for an eventual fruitful lesson, but what happens here then is ALL suffering will be justified as such, you can always run the same response to anyone suffering and tell them eventually something good will happen to you due to the unfolding of causes and effects originating from the moment you suffered; thereby justifying all manner of suffering. But then I ask you what about those instances in which suffering really does not lead to anything good? Can you look into the eyes of a 5 year old with terminal cancer and tell her she’ll be fine?
"Take for instance the emotional suffering after a profound sense of loss. It seems intuitive to me that one that it is only right to face suffering at that moment, and that the lack of suffering would actually be a bad thing. It seems only right for suffering to exist in that moment, that it is the correct state of affairs." Yeah but you have to ask yourself "why do I have that seeming? What's causing it? Is it truth-tracking or is there some explanation for why I have it that is independent from whether the seeming corresponds to an actual state of affairs" Here's a suggestion: In the actual world, when we see a person who does not show any signs of suffering after a profound loss, we take that observation as evidence that there are some psychological issues going on with that person and that they might even be dangerous (e.g. psychopatic). Internalizing that simple but handy heuristic has been a part of your socialization since childhood and so it now seems to you that normatively, it's "only right" to experience suffering after a profound loss. Also, notice that this seeming is very culturally contingent. There has been a very large number of traditions in which these kinds of emotial states are decidedly not percieved as "only right" but as normatively defective, as something that one ideally ought to get rid of.
@@abdallam4039You are assuming that there exists no suffering from which greater good will come. Yes that child might go to Heaven and her suffering won't be in vain. If there is no Heaven than that child suffered for absolutely no reason. What is than a better situation?
@Abdalla M I hate to be pedantic, but how do you define all loving and all powerful? If God can't be evil, square the circle and cease to exist, is he therefore not all powerful? I think it's kind of futile to tie our moral and ontological precepts to these kinds of categories. As for the notion that if suffering can be good we should have unlimited suffering, I think that is plainly silly. Surely you don't hold this position towards the good, right? It's good to give to charity therefore everyone should give away all thier money. You can say that we have the Goldy Locks of suffering.
Under the privation theory of evil, “God” cannot maximally will the suffering of conscious creatures, because there will always be some greater way to cause more suffering to them. Also, neutrinos are in fact good, insofar as they are the way they are inclined to be. You seemed to take issue with something being able to not act in accordance with its nature, to which I answer that if teleology is real, then something can have improper accidents, yet still have the same underlying form, albeit suppressed. This is what is meant by evil.
U r literally the goat. Every video you make shows you have an absolutely elite level understanding of phil of religion and argumentation/philosophy in general. Every video of yours I watch I can’t help but nod along in agreement the whole time. Seriously magnificent, you don’t see philosophy content this high quality anywhere else
I didn't say that parents couldn't have a reason for abandoning their children in this manner; instead, I construed the orphans' reasoning as an inference to the best explanation of the relevant data. That allows for the possibility that the parents have some good reason for abandoning the children in the way described; but it argues that this isn't the *best* explanation for the data of being abandoned and mistreated in the relevant way.
When Trent said, “Things are good when their existence is in accordance with its nature” I am confident that what he means by existence is its current state of being. And nature is what its given purpose is or otherwise “obvious” functional purpose is. Eg. A Knife thats purpose is to cut flesh, can perform that task effectively. As opposed to a knife with that same purpose, that can’t cut room temperature butter. Me may also mean good in sort of an overarching good as to mean effective for a purpose and of it does it is good.
30:45 Yes, a dentist is limited by the world he finds himself in, so he therefore has no other way to achieve the greater good than by inflicting pain. Trent Horn seems to think a God is like the dentist, i.e. somehow limited by the world he finds himself in, but that would be, in my opinion, not a God by definition. A God would not be limited, he would be the one setting the limits; if he wanted to make a world where drilling into teeth made you laugh, he would not be limited by anything to do that. If he wanted to create beings that could survive on words being spoken in their direction, nothing is limiting him from doing that. Trent is saying the evil is necessary because that's the only way a God can get out of the maze to some ultimate goal, but any maze a God would need to navigate through is turning him into a non-God, i.e. something limited by outside factors like a maze. Assuming the existence of an all-powerful, all-good being, all evil is gratuitous evil.
God isn't limited by the universe. God created the universe as he deemed the best. That would include free will. Which ultimately requires pain for us to develop ourselves. Could have God created a different universe? Sure but He didn't for a reason. So your objection doesn't hold.
@@snokehusk223 Which is fine - but it seems to invalidate the idea that that god is omnibenevolent and omniscient. Dentists have changed over the years because even they realize the futility of needless suffering and work to offer more pain-free treatments for their patients. God seems to not care about the needless suffering, which is fine unless you try to propose that that god in the ultimate in benevolence. God could certainly clear things up by explaining that a bit more (like any good dentist or physician would do), but instead we tend to get - "don't question God because he knows more that you". Which, in and of itself, seems like a very non-benevolent approach. That's probably why many parents in the past would answer their children with "don't question me - I'm your father/mother" instead of actually explaining the reasons and consequences to teach their children how to navigate the world better.
I've just thought of an interesting line of reasoning: Suppose you have an all-loving Arsenal manager. Is the manager all-loving because they love all the players maximally, or because they love Arsenal maximally. Maybe their all-lovingness towards Arsenal is cached out in terms of winning trophies or reaching some end goal successfully. So, the thought goes, perhaps god's omnibenevolence cached out in terms of stewarding the universe to reach some morally ideal end state, only intervening when this is in jeopardy. Or maybe god is just rooting for the humans as a species or civilisation, but that doesn't extend to any one individual necessarily, so god rarely intervenes. On this view of omnibenevolence, there's no problem of evil, as we think of it, since evils to us may not be evils to god
Hey joe, I saw a comment that makes interesting points but did so in very tribalist fashion which neither you nor I like. But I really wanted to know what you would respond. I decided to take the comment and made it less tribalist hoping you would respond? Please at least for my sake. I have made the less tribalist version below, while keeping the substance. I separated the comment with dotted lines. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your Problem 1 faces difficulties. Trent (and likewise many theodicists) merely needs to appeal to the opportunity for very valuable virtues like compassion, care, forgiveness, sacrificial love, triumph, etc that is key in one's ultimate well-being that, again, require permitting very serious evils (this can ofc be done in an afterlife-an implication of theism). So, saying "well, there are cases of people who (i) go thru other hard stuff like depression as a result or (ii) don't use the opportunity to defeat or overcome that evil" since (i) can be an evil with the aforementioned hardening, soul-destroying, etc thats defeated in the afterlife or (ii) ain't God's fault but can still be defeated in the afterlife. Also, the fact that we prevent cancer does not show what you want to show. We're not powerful enough to guarantee people's ultimate well-being which includes redemption/defeat of serious evils along with extended opportunities for virtues like forgiveness, compassion, etc, but God is not limited in such a way. You won't get far by pointing out our limited abilities constrain our duties. Likewise, we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too. And if you're tempted to give a Lougheed-style reply (based on risk and genuine sacrifice), then that faces challenges too Another thing to note. In order for your Jimmy argument to relevantly connect, you'll need sub-arguments for its underlying contentious assumptions-like God having moral obligations or God having pertinently similar kinds of obligations that parents have. But you do not seem to justify those. Problem 2 also does not seem serious. Overcoming cancer or triumphing over trauma like rape is not close to having the same type of value/virtue as completing a dissertation or winning a soccer match. We need very serious types of evils for very serious types of soul-building goods. And it does not appear you can respond by saying, “I was just responding to Trent's specific formulation." Since then I will reply in the manner you did to Trent’s response to Steven. It’s a stronger formulation and is what the literature has in mind.
PART 1/2 Thanks for the comment!! I’ll offer some thoughts below - I had actually already typed up most of this on my computer. I decided against posting it because I didn’t think it was situated within a fruitful, truth-oriented exchange, and usually I check out when that happens. But your comment is different, so I’ll happily offer some thoughts below :) Comment: “Your Problem 1 faces difficulties. Trent (and likewise many theodicists) merely needs to appeal to the opportunity for very valuable virtues like compassion, care, forgiveness, sacrificial love, triumph, etc that is key in one's ultimate well-being that, again, require permitting very serious evils (this can ofc be done in an afterlife-an implication of theism). So, saying "well, there are cases of people who (i) go thru other hard stuff like depression as a result or (ii) don't use the opportunity to defeat or overcome that evil" since (i) can be an evil with the aforementioned hardening, soul-destroying, etc thats defeated in the afterlife or (ii) ain't God's fault but can still be defeated in the afterlife.” First, I don’t think the cultivation and manifestation of those virtues require the permission of horrific evils. To me, it’s entirely conceivable that one could develop and exercise those virtues in the absence of horrors, and conceivability is all I need to run a Bayesian-style argument here. It’s similar to the psychophysical harmony argument, which you may have seen making the rounds on the internet. For that argument to run, we don’t need the genuine metaphysical possibility of altered psychophysical laws; we need only their *conceivable* alteration, and that will secure us with the relevant epistemic probabilities of certain psychophysical laws on the respective hypotheses. Likewise, I need only offer *conceivable* alterations in which one develops and exercises virtues in the absence of horrors, which will secure us with relevant epistemic probabilities of horrors on the respective hypotheses. And at least speaking for myself, I find it entirely conceivable that, say, the virtues cultivated and exercised with horrors in the *actual* world be instead cultivated and exercised with circumstances *other than* horrors. It’s conceivable, for instance, that God structured our psychological makeup in such a way that we genuinely develop and exercise profound sacrificial love, forgiveness, and the like in certain simulated environments, or in non-horror-involving sport, or in academic dissertating, and so on. I fully grant that the virtues *actually* associated with simulated environments, sport, dissertating, etc. are not as valuable as those that are at least sometimes *actually* associated with horrors. But the point is that they *conceivably* are. (Again, it’s like how pleasure isn’t *actually* associated with avoidance behavior, but it *conceivably* is.) [Footnote: As an aside, I think conceivability would be a good guide to metaphysical possibility under theism, so I would also argue that these are metaphysically possible under theism. But I don't need to make that stronger claim for my case to go through.] Second, note that Trent didn’t appeal to heaven in connection with soul-making and defeat. If he did, I would’ve gone into that; but he didn’t. Any full treatment of the issue would certainly require exploring that. But I didn’t promise a full treatment; I promised only to respond to Trent. And just as I was careful not to *fault* Trent for only engaging with Stephen - and just I granted that his response to Stephen may very well succeed, precisely because it was only targeted at Stephen’s version - so too am I not at fault only for fulfilling my sole intention to respond to Trent (and so too, I would argue, is my response to Trent successful for the same reason). And just as Trent’s points by themselves do not address the new and improved version I articulated, so too would my soul-destroying points (in my video) by themselves not address the new and improved version you just articulated. So yes, the soul-destroying objection, by itself, won’t target the heaven and defeat stuff; but it will target *Trent’s* deployment of the soul-building theodicy. If Trent wants to add new machinery about heaven and defeat, so be it; the dialectic will then proceed onto that! Third, I’m not convinced that an afterlife is an implication of theism - and so, by my lights, this represents an auxiliary hypothesis that decreases theism’s intrinsic probability - but that’s a rabbit hole I won’t go down right now. Would probably take me an essay to flesh out! But briefly: I agree that theism is plausibly falsified by certain horrors we observe if there's no afterlife. But that doesn't mean theism entails an afterlife; it only means that theism (T), *conjoined with our observations O of evil/horrors, entails the existence of an afterlife (A): P(A| T & O) = 1. But that doesn't mean P(A | T) = 1. We could only infer as much if P(O | T) = 1. But, quite evidently, P(O | T) < 1. Fourth, I do still worry about Sebastian’s point re: predictive power. Prima facie, afterlife and defeat can be appealed to for any amount, kind, or distribution of evil we see; it doesn’t appear (to me) to do anything, then, to raise the probability of the data [the actual amount, kind, and distribution of evil] above what it was prior to invoking heaven and defeat. But I’m more than open to changing my mind on this point, since my area of research/publishing in Phil Rel is (i) cosmological arguments, (ii) ontological arguments, and (iii) models fo God - not the problem of evil! So there may be stuff within the literature that addresses this point of which I’m unaware. Comment: “Also, the fact that we prevent cancer does not show what you want to show. We're not powerful enough to guarantee people's ultimate well-being which includes redemption/defeat of serious evils along with extended opportunities for virtues like forgiveness, compassion, etc, but God is not limited in such a way. You won't get far by pointing out our limited abilities constrain our duties.” Speaking for myself, I don’t find this plausible. Even when we *are* powerful enough to secure that, we still prevent tragedies. (More on this anon.) Comment: “Likewise, we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too. And if you're tempted to give a Lougheed-style reply (based on "risk" and genuine sacrifice), then that faces challenges too.” Here’s a point of agreement and concession! I agree that we can’t infer merely from our preventing x that x has no outweighing goods. So I would want to modify what I said at that juncture in the video (and I’ll add the modification to the corrections list in the pinned comment). In particular, I would say that *even when* we don’t have such duties, and *even when* we can secure someone’s net good, we often still prevent the relevant tragedies (or at least view their prevention [or non-occurrence] as the best/most valuable/most desirable outcome, even if their prevention is out of our control), thus plausibly revealing that we don’t regard the relevant goods of, say, free will or virtue cultivation/manifestation as outweighing the relevant tragedy. Consider cases of supererogatory prevention of tragedy (e.g., doctors staying well overtime to prevent certain tragedies). These are cases without the duty element. And, quite plausibly, many such cases are such that, even if the tragedy were to transpire (rather than being prevented), the relevant supererogatory actor *would* have the resources to secure the patient’s net good. (Given our medical prowess at this time in history, doctors have the wherewithal to secure the patient’s net benefit, after all is said and done, for many medical tragedies.) Even still, doctors under these conditions prevent the relevant tragedies. Or consider cases where the prevention of tragedy is outside of an agent’s control. These, too, are cases without the duty element. Even when such cases are such that the agent can secure the benefit of the victim of the tragedy, the agent [and victim] will very often still regard it as best that the tragedy never occurred, will have wished that such a thing never occurred, and so on, again plausibly revealing commitment to what I said in the video.
PART 2/2 Comment: “Another thing to note. In order for your Jimmy argument to relevantly connect, you'll need sub-arguments for its underlying contentious assumptions-like God having moral obligations or God having pertinently similar kinds of obligations that parents have. But you do not seem to justify those.” First, I confess to finding it overwhelmingly plausible that God has obligations. It just seems overwhelmingly plausible to me, for instance, that God would be doing something wrong by creating a world populated solely by infinitely many innocent creatures experiencing nothing but pure agony for infinitely many years (and where God is the one directly inflicting this agony on said creatures). If that isn’t wrong or impermissible for God to do, I lose my grasp of what those terms mean [or else nothing is wrong/impermissible, as in moral nihilism]. And if that’s the case, it seems God has obligations (for, in doing something wrong, one violates an obligation, and so God is bound by at least one obligation - namely, not to create and inflict things in the aforementioned way). There's also a very good recent paper, authored by long time MoR viewer James Reilly [not kidding!], arguing against 'no norms theism' that's relevant here: philarchive.org/archive/REITCF-4 Second, if I recall correctly the point in my video you’re referencing, then at this juncture, I’m simply following Trent in requiring that God have morally justifying reasons for his doings and allowings in the form of outweighing goods. So either having morally justifying reasons in this manner requires that God be bound by moral obligations - in which case, it’s no problem that I assume as much in response, since I’m following Trent’s lead - or it doesn’t require God to be bound by obligations - in which case, I’m not assuming that God is bound by moral obligations, and the problem disappears. Third, I don’t see the relevance of parental obligations. In mentioning Jimmy, I wasn’t making an argument by analogy from parenthood. I was simply trying to elicit intuitions that the relevant goods accruing to Jimmy, the doctors, and Jimmy’s family/friends - in terms opportunities for virtue cultivation and manifestation, per Trent’s theodicy - do not plausibly justify putting Jimmy’s through living hell [partly because those goods to which Trent appeals don’t seem to outweigh the badness of the tragedy]. Comment: “Problem 2 also does not seem serious. Overcoming cancer or triumphing over trauma like rape is not close to having the same type of value/virtue as completing a dissertation or winning a soccer match. We need very serious types of evils for very serious types of soul-building goods. And it does not appear you can respond by saying, “I was just responding to trent's specific formulation." Since then I will reply in the manner you did to Trent’s response to Steven. It’s a stronger formulation and is what the literature has in mind.” First, once more, I was only responding to Trent. And I was careful not to fault Trent for not steelmanning (and modifying) Stephen’s case, since that wasn’t his goal; his goal was simply to respond to that case. Likewise, it’s no fault on my end (and no lack of seriousness on my end) for not steelmanning (and modifying) Trent’s case, since that wasn’t my goal; my goal was simply to respond to that case. It’s a legitimate next point in the dialectic to offer a new and improved theodicy or defense; but it’s illegitimate to fault me for not considering that, as it would’ve likewise been illegitimate for me to have faulted Trent. Second, and returning to a point previously made, I don’t think that the virtues of overcoming horrors like that *in the actual world* are close in value to the virtues gained and manifested in simulations, sports, dissertating, etc. *in the actual world* . But it’s entirely conceivable - to me, at least - that the ‘aretaic laws’ be different. Aretaic laws are descriptions of the connections between one’s circumstances and actions, on the one hand, and which virtues are developed and exercised, on the other hand. Such laws are conceivably different than how they in fact are (in part because our psychologies and psychological dispositions to develop certain traits in response to certain stimuli are conceivably different), much like how the psychophysical laws are conceivably different than how they in fact are. And, as explained earlier, conceivability is all I need to make my case. Hope all this helps you in your pursuit of truth ♥
BONUS As a bonus, I recommend checking out another commenter who brought up deontological theodicies -- I offered some very brief thoughts on them, but they're probably relevant here, too. The commenter also offered some really helpful resources to get started, in case you wanna dive into the literature :)
I don't think it's as disreputable or 'mumbo jumbo' as you might think! More precisely, they focus on *what it is to be* the properties *adverted to* in normative truths. Presumably there are normative truths, like 'it's wrong to torture puppies'; and such truths presumably advert to (make reference to) various properties, like wrongness; and presumably we can legitimately talk about *what it is to be* certain properties. E.g., mathematicians can explore what it is to be cardinally infinite, or what it is to be triangular (e.g., to be a closed plane figure with 3 sides etc.). Once we unpack it, it becomes at least not-facially-absurd and not obviously unintelligible!
@@MajestyofReason From my PoV that's a sentence one can write or say, and there's no need for a theory of occult entities that bear truth and have the relevant properties in a philosophical discourse that states what is *really* being said or *grounds* the discourse. This is a philosophical problem in philosophical discourse that simply doesn't exist for people who say "it's wrong to torture puppies". This philosophical problem is just another way of talking about things, and one that relies on lots of metaphors and speaking about "entities" like "reasons" and "propositions" in odd ways that we hear philosophers saying like "bearing truth", "being a reason for", "having such and such a property" and "being normative" - as if it were a brick that is bright red, or a ball that is blue and round.
Every could have argument is so unnessasary is it’s incredible Trent is dealing with the stance on life from Christian perspective and you having a 😢 problem with that isn’t an argument
13:39 To be fair. Woodford doesn't say "it's obvious". His use of the word "seems" is (or, at least, seems like) an imbedded disclaimer. Notice: When I said it seems to be a disclaimer, I wasn't assuming it seems that way to everyone. I'm just speaking from my perspective. And isn't that pretty much always what "seems" means? I'm pretty sure he meant "seem to me" and "seems to some (or many)"; with the implication that it's reasonable for it to seem as such
Good clarification! In some moods, I'm sympathetic to what you say; but in others I've seen people many times not use 'seems' as a disclaimer flagging simply that it seems to the person making the claim that such-and-so. For instance, some moral realists have often said 'moral realism seems true' without using this as a mere report of their personal seemings; instead, some moral realists are claiming that this is *the* common sense view, or *the* intuitive view, or that moral realism is intuitive *full stop* . (In the past, I probably did precisely this, and I've encountered lots of others who do.) So I still think it's valuable to include my cautionary note :)
While I admit it might not be obvious to everyone. ... I have to wonder if maybe it seems obvious to Religious Fundamentalists too. They just might consider it obvious; but don't want to admit it. I can't be sure. But I have to wonder. I notice they have not even bothered to create a defense where animal suffering generates some form of spirit-energy that gets used for purposes which are greater. Although, I can imagine them doing so. "Oh, all the extra suffering that serves no greater good directly ... serves some greater good indirectly. It gets turned into spirit-bricks. And then Jesus uses those to "build the wall"; to protect the residents of Heaven.". He's just making the Mexi ... err... "worldly" creatures pay for the wall.".
37:00 I dislike how all the animations are done in a way that might lead people to have really misleading intuitions, like what the universe as a whole is like at a macro-scale or that a "necessary being" is a sphere of light - even intended metaphorically that's clearly a religious-type depiction.
A visit to the dentist: recently my child had their wisdom teeth removed. To counter the suffering god requires she received local anesthesia and gas. We did not assume the suffering was required. Every theist should embrace the suffering god wants of them when having their wisdom teeth removed by forgoing anesthesia. If not, you are countering gods will.
Trent’s worldview is based on making naturalistic fallacies. We go against nature everyday but Trent only has issues with some instances of unnatural things
One could argue that the need for wisdom tooth removal is a consequence of adulteration of the human diet from pre-industrial revolution times. Skulls prior to our “advances” in food processing had all wisdom teeth present without space issues, no dental crowding, robust bone structure, and no evidence of dental decay. Anthropology confirms this is how human skulls developed until the 1800s. So ultimately, God isn’t requiring the suffering for wisdom teeth, we caused the developmental problems. And we suffer for our own generational actions. So it was never God’s intent to begin with that we suffer from wisdom teeth. ;) Source: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston Price, DDS
First, very often they're instead writhing in clear agony. Second, when they aren't, that's because they're in a state of shock, not because they're actually internally peaceful. The same often happens to rape victims and other human victims of trauma, unfortunately. It doesn't mean their state of mind is actually peaceful.
@@MajestyofReason These are rebuttals into the future not rebuttals into the past. So it wouldn't disprove kalam as they can keep approaching infinity but never reach it. :)
22:27 I totally disagree that "cancer in children" is in the same category as these other evils. Apologists try to group then all together and then explain some of them as a way of masking the weakness in their theodessy.
100% agree. Under the “greater good” theodicy, all evil and suffering is completely homogenized. And the only thing they have to back up that defense is skeptical theism, which itself is always a very ad hoc retreat to me. Edit: fixed the suggestive spelling error lol.
@@FaptainCalcon750 It seems to undermine Christianity itself. If God is just summing up good vs evil, then surely sending the majority to hell means he's failed. If good during life is the goal, it seems God doesn't help Christians and often deliberately "tests" them more.
In math we have the term proof by intimidation. It is when someone claims something is "obvious" that isn't obvious trying to insult their intelligence.
26:40 - I think we need to point out that there is a difference between "My model cannot explain something we observe in the world" and "My model predicts the opposite of what we observe in the world". The model of an all-powerful all-loving God, predicts that there will not be gratuitous suffering. This is not simply a gap in our knowledge, it is a contradiction.
i think when we stop someone from doing evil thats a good in itself, triumphing evil is a good thing i also think that triumphing evil is objectively better than triumphing lesser things in a world with no evil (i dont think that can be changed, it seems to me that triumphing suffering and evil will always be objectively greater than triumphing lesser things and god knows this, even if he changed the psychology of humans)
(Pausing at 17:17) I think a theist would need to argue that either the gratuitous evil is not really gratuitous... or they need to cede the fact that God willingly made some imperfect system and left the gratuitous evil in on purpose (which puts his benevolence in question).
Both may be true. In the line of Pope, "All nature but art unknown to thee." I'm not sure what we would quantify as sufficiently evil. I've always considered the case through resonance. A happy family has happy people. An abusive family has unhappy people. Detachment from God yields suffering, communion with God yields fulfillment. The temporal world is not God and is removed from him--so is the temporal world full of suffering. Intrinsically, a theist would say that it is a tautology that God created an imperfect world. The world is not God.
@@archie8767 that is a thing. God is the world. The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. So according to that statement in the bible, everything is god. Even satan. A person can believe otherwise, but that is just trying to make god fit in a box of their own choice.
@@archie8767 yeah, I think maybe only some of the more mystic oriented christians, but not sure about that. But no matter what they mean, it's there. Plain and clear.
Ahhhh…the Disneyland defense! (from Blameless in Abbadon by James Morrow) I paraphrase: “It’s okay to rape children so long as you take them to Disney later.”
I disagree regarding your point on gratuitous evil around the 6 minute mark. A definition is definitely necessary, otherwise you run into the problem you just did. Even if you are just using the definition of theists to show that they are internally inconsistent, you need that definition. The problem here is that yes theists believe there is evil, but no they do not believe that suffering is evil, rather feelings and emotions are just feedback, they are always good, so it doesn't matter if suffering is gratuitous or not, because it's not evil according to the theists worldview. To the theist, evil is a conscious and intentional bad will, it requires a free will actor. Suffering is perceived by the consciousness rather than an act of will, it's just information that is a response to what is happening. Let's say that you are an animal and you want to live, suddenly a rock falls on you and you lose one of your limbs and experience immense suffering. That suffering is information that something that you didn't want to happen happened to you, it's good. It would be much more problematic if you didn't notice or worse, if it was pleasant. The rock falling did so without bad will, because it has no freedom, so we can't attribute evil here. There is gratuitous suffering, but it's not evil, and that's why you need the definition...
Has anyone talked or written at length about how Christians ignore that they're not universalists when they bring up the "compensation in the afterlife" theodicy?
Nice response. I personally don't go as far to say theism is "irrational" - but I think there's something odd/conflicting with the idea that a good God allows 'evil' because it's 'good'. It seems to me to almost be a kind of conflict of interests. Like - theists want to say evil is bad, but also good because God has a purpose for it.
There are plenty of arguments on RUclips that prove the impossibility of a Christian God if it is defined as being all three of (1) all-powerful, (2) all-knowing, and (3) all-good.
@@snokehusk223 Thanks. That is what I mean by a conflict of interests. Evil isn't good, yet a theist thinks it's good that evil exists because God allows it (for some unknown purpose). Like - God only makes 'good' decisions -> God chooses to allow evil -> so God choosing to allow evil is a 'good' decision. I don't think there are any reasons for God to allow evil. As above - I don't think the concept of a good God is compatible with allowing evil (at all). I'm not sure what "God knows how to make good from evil" means. If 'evil' does not have any property of 'goodness' then it doesn't make much sense to me how can one get "good from evil."
@@roger5442 Evil like itself doesn't exist. What exists are evil actions and states. Evil is just a deprivation of good. That deprivation can be tiny or big. So it isn't good that evil exists but God's decision to allow evil to exist is good because God can make greater good from evil, not from it but from it's effect on other things. Say, is it good that we humans exist?
For the first objection, I think it fails on multiple counts. Here are some: How can one speak of an "ought" without presupposing a superior standard over what is. Goodness or badness are judgements and all judgements require both a criteria for judgement and an agent that judges things. To speak of "ought not" is to make the judgement that what is, is inferior to the criteria of "ought", yet if materialism is true, what superior criteria is there to evaluate the is? At best, it would be a relative criteria sourced in the individual. But if the criteria itself is subjective as opposed to objective, why would we claim that the objective is inferior to the subjective? This ought could not be objective because the objective is already actual and so there's no meta-objective criteria that would make any movement of judgement from the subjective superior. In a similar note, I find the notion of an objective basis for moral judgements absent God to be just incoherent. How can there be a judgement without a judge? An evaluation without an evaluator? It is clear that the subject is a judge and an evaluator, and so we may judge things subjectively, but those judgements, if sourced within the agents do not have a greater scope beyond the subject itself. We may even refer to such subjective judgements as opinions and nothing is lost. To posit an objective "badness" would imply either an objective judgement(which logically requires an objective evaluator) or "badness" to not be an evaluation, but what would it then be? I see this as trying to have one's cake and eat it too. As Sartre said, "The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense." It seems this is a move to suppress God without an expense. I think it's similar to Joe's note on "obviousness". There's no "obviousness" in abstract, and in the same way there is no "goodness" or "badness" in the abstract. It is always "good/bad" TO someone BASED on a given criteria. Now, Joe did say that he was not committing himself to defending the truthfulness of this move/view, only that there's an alternative to Trent's, but it still hinges in the alternative actually succeeding, or seem reasonably plausible, and it seems to lack either property. To many, the rejection of God is fatal to ethics, and yes, there will be some, probably most of them secularists, who will try attempt to revitalize ethics without God, but if the attempts are destined to die in the womb, to say that there are many who have attempted, theorized about it is not very helpful. In philosophy, there's a theory for almost any view, and there are schools who push forward similar thoughts and for similar reasons. That there are many secularists who want to argue the lack of need of God is a given, and maybe some attempts are of note and of importance and value, but its value needs to be defended and affirmed in a meaningful sense prior to positing them as a reasonable alternative
Great video, as always, BUT... You say that you think these are honest mistakes on Trent's part but I gotta know, what's your account for how a professor with (*checks notes*) THREE advanced degrees in this stuff keeps making the same arguments as Frank Turek?
I’m more pessimistic about the powers of the human mind… lol My interactions with deeply honest people with a PhD (sometimes multiple PhD’s) reveals that humans (including me, though I’m working on it…) are just deeply biased, flawed, and confused, and education often doesn’t have much of an impact on that, especially when the education isn’t top notch. So I’m willing to have much more mercy (in my tendentious view: more understanding), when others may not be so willing, haha
@@MajestyofReason Fair enough; I totally respect that. For what it’s worth, I appreciate that you’re willing to be so charitable with your interlocutors, even when I may not be so willing. Nothing is more annoying than a response video with constant accusations of bad faith. Yeah, they may be arguing in bad faith, but then either don’t respond or set that aside to address the substance of their argument (unless it’s explicitly a video about social epistemology and expert deference or something, in which case knock yourself out talking about motivations and good/bad faith)
@@mf_hume thanks, and know that I always appreciate seeing you in the comments🙂 Here’s another valuable thought. I don’t like to speak of ‘tactics’, but sometimes it’s helpful: being super generous and charitable to one’s opponents can be a very effective tactic for reaching people who are otherwise very sympathetic to that opponent’s position. (It’s one reason I’m much more willing to listen to, say, The Analytic Christian than some other Christian channels.) Through my content, I’m really trying to reach people who disagree with me - in this video, theists especially.🙂
The first video of yours I watched was a response to Trent's video defending Aquinas' first mover arguments. I remember I even edited a transcript of the relevant parts to read several times.
Around 1:03:00 Why is "growing" a character important in the first place? Why not just have the required character? If one believes in the existence of a God, the God has their character built-in, but I would assume a theist would not claim that makes that being's character less valuable.
Apologists could argue that Jesus didnt sin despite having the ability or desire to (obviously controversial amongst christians), but didn't because "he's god" so I think a better example would be Mary since she was canonically born without sin and was still a human.
I think you two have much more to discuss together. As you point out in response to Trent's blitzkrieg of arguments for God, the premises for said arguments are massively contestable. Yes indeed, as are the premises for most arguments. And this is what makes philosophy so fun and interesting!
@MajestyofReason I think there's a big issue with your use of the Frankfurt style case for free will around the 56 minute mark. I think it undermines your response but it can be adapted to further rebut Trent and theistic apologists in general. The main issue is that free will in this context refers to the "could have chosen otherwise" not "could have acted otherwise". In the Frankfurt case, the person could have still *chosen otherwise*, just not "done otherwise". The case only works when the unknown controlling agent is able to observe the *free choice* being made or if we assume as sort of determinism of the mind, sees the sufficient causal preconditions which mean that the choice the controlling agent does not want is *going to be made*. Suffice it to say, I don't think the Frankfurt case works as a response here. The problem for Trent and the theistic apologists that rely on the libertarian free will defense is that neither god nor anyone in heaven will be able to even *choose to do* evil, let alone actually *do the evil* - so god by definition has no libertarian free will with respect to morality. I think the way theistic apologists try to get past this is that they will define free will as 'not having a nature that was determined to make you arrive at any given choice" - and god doesn't have a created nature. At least William Lane Craig will do this and I've heard a few other apologists make the same move. Since god doesn't have a designed nature, he escapes the "lacking free will" category - but I believe that it causes problems because if god has molinistic foreknowledge such that any given created being will "always freely do X in situation Y" it means god created that persons nature so that they would "always freely do X in situation Y" which obliterates any sense of what the word "freely" could possibly mean in that Molinistic framework.
And of course I made the rookie mistake of typing a comment before finishing the video and you largely addressed this. I was not the change I want to see in this world. Sorry Joe!
Per your critique of Trent’s definition of evil, couldn’t it be the case that your counter example of God not “supposed to be a certain way” doesn’t work because under Trent’s view, God is equivalent with goodness, thus he is the standard for how things ought to be?
The point, though, isn’t that under Trent’s view there can be no standard for how God is supposed to be. The point is that x being created for a purpose is not necessary for x being a way x is supposed to be, which Trent must grant since God is supposed to be such-and-such a way, and yet God isn’t created for a purpose. And hence Trent’s inference from to is a non-sequitur.
@@MajestyofReason Ah, ok i understand. I think I agree with you. Even as a Catholic myself, that’s not the understanding of evil or Goodness I’d go with. That is a helpful criticism, thank you!
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
You note something key. You mention something to the effect of a lack of creative imagination from theists on what possible worlds God could bring about that would seem to achieve relevant goods without the downsides of our world. You mention some of these such as if we photosynthesized our energy. I see similar constraints on creative imagination when it comes to similar ideas within Christianity such as the unnecessary nature of Eternal Conscious Torment, or the allowance of the fallen angels to influence our world. Or my favourite, resolving the problem of non- belief by being less stingy shall we say by providing divine Revelation around the planet over time so the Divine Will were more evident.
1:06:38 Boom Roasted Tottenham Fans! COYG! On serious note thanks for the carefully crafted response and helping us viewers to be more informed on these issues and being able to critically assess these arguments. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
The problem of evil should rather be called the problem of suffering. To say that it is evil is to say that it ought not to happen. But since prescriptions do not aim at representing reality, they do not possess any truth value. For this reason there are no facts about what is evil, there are only human judgments that declare it to be evil.
You often confuse general and specific cases for theodicies. For example with developing virtues of the doctors. Of course case by case, we would not want it to be necessary but in general it is good for the doctors to learn these skills. Take the case of educating someone in each instance you would want them to know the subject but that is not the same as saying they should in general always be protected from being wrong (eg. Safe spaces). It is often the lack of these safeguards that allows one to progress.
To rephrase the point made in the section around 34:00: The argument does not necessarily state that an all powerful being cannot remedy gratuitous evil. I think a better description would be, that a supposedly infinitely-powerful-knowing-and-loving being could, per definition, find a solution that is arbitrarily complex in such a way to completely remove any of those instances of unnecessary evil. (if simplicity is another goal, the entity would still be accountable for the tradeoff between complexity and resulting evil) The argument does not target the entity as being impossible ... rather the created solution (reality) is deemed to be improvable in such a way, that a god as described would never be tempted to create it in exactly that manner.
God isn't accountable for anything he didn't do. Just like we aren't. When there is a group of people that want to steal one persons money and you do nothing you aren't accountable for those actions, the thieves are. If you decide to help that is good. But what if your helping results in those thieves not getting the money which they need for a surgery of one of theirs children which will die without it. You wouldn't again be accountable but it sure would be better that they just took some money right? You could say God can stop both those instances but than a million new could result from that and should God solve them all? If yes God would be basically interfering with our lives all the time which would mean we are no longer free. Did you think that this world could be even worse but isn't because God to some extent stops bigger evils from ever happening. I don't knoe if you heared about Taiping rebellion where 50 million people died and nobody even knows about it. What if those situations were a daily occurence but aren't because of God. When you look at the ancient world and modern one in which is there less evil. In todays but why. Because of Christianity which is also God's work.
@@snokehusk223 ok lets run with this. I am a computer scientist. Lets suppose I have infinite ressources in creating an artificial intelligence, and also the ability to know what my resulting AI agent would do (that seems to me to be a subset of all knowing and all powerful sufficient for this context). Lets call the agent 'Dave'. Am I responsible for actions of Dave if I: 1. Have the sole ability to create Dave, and I am able to choose the way I create it. 2. Have the ability to exactly know what my agent will do, including all consequences. 3. I have the option to simply not create Dave at all
@@freethought8517 Well I would say no. Why do I say that. It's because Dave is just a tool. Dave doesn't do anything. Other people use Dave for their actions. Just like Kalashnikov isn't responsible for creating AK-47 even though he knew people will use it to kill. Even though those working on nuclear bomb aren't responsible although they knew what it will be used for. And concerning Dave many good things will come from him also. Just like we build cars for people to drive in although we know someone will die in them etc. We aren't responsible for actions of others. Or did you maybe regard Dave as something of Skynet? A real AI. If yes than I would argue such Dave couldn't exist.
@@freethought8517 Alright let's say hypotethically real AI would be able to exist. That would just mean he is a human, he would be rational, he would be emotional just made from electronics instead of organic matter. So you think that it would be better for a human to not exist rather than for them to exist. Maybe because he would do bad things like Hitler let's say. But everybody is capable of bad things and good things. So why not let a person experience life for themselves. If they decide to do them for really bad things they will face consequences and if not they will be rewarded. So when you take into question what will that person do you will need to pick who you want to create and who not to. But when you take one person out of picture due to butterfly effect that world will change and another person might become really bad. So to ensure no bad people exist you would best not create any but we know it is good to exist. So if you would create just one Dave in this current society and you know he will do really bad things than sure don't make him, that isn't bad because you have no obligation to make him exist, but even if you do you aren't responsible because Dave in the end did those bad things. It isn't like you are an assassin raising a baby to be a killer.
Why would a benevolent God not choose people that would go to heaven or only choose the good or that will only be good? if one says then we are not free then why in heaven one has free will and everything is blissful , why cannot obtain on earth either god is malevolent or doesn't exist and by the way causality , time , gravity and colors are illusions.
While I agree with Joe that TH makes a huge amount of silly mistakes (I'm an utter layman, yet even I knew what WLC meant about his view of infinities, in a recent video, yet TH misrepresented WLC in his response video and WLC had to correct him, in his own recent podcast), I also disagree with Joe in his assumption that everyone approaches the subject of belief in God, in an objective, truthful and above all, honest, manner. That's very naive of Joe.
Thanks for the comment! I don't recall saying that; in fact, that claim seems obviously false to me, so I'm quite skeptical that I said that anywhere. I'm more inclined to think you've (unintentionally) misinterpreted something I said.
Hey, you immediately made the same point that I made in Trent's comments. Nothing turns on what my namesake Stephen thinks evil is, but on what Trent thinks evil is. ----- I still think you're as much as athiest, and for the same reasons and to the same extent, as I am. I don't know for sure either, does anyone? But we're both religiously unaffiliated.
16:00 onward, one could argue that such a thing exists, it's actually called Syncope, and it has various subcategories, NS, VS, etc. Where you decide at which point it should happen is totally subjective, but since such a trigger exists to stop the pain from torturing the nervous system and the conscious mind, then your point doesn't stand. Unless I missed something from your rebuttal?
He doesn’t tow the ‘Thomist party line’ on every issue - eg, he seems very open to animal afterlife, which Thomism traditionally rejects - but he does accept much of the core of Thomism, eg, act and potency, substance metaphysics, essences and acts of existence, God being “Being Itself”, etc.
Apologists treat evils as tools with which gods achieve greater goods. Humans do this, but the entire reason humans must use evil as tools to accomplish greater goods is because we are not gods. Since when do gods need tools?
RE: Stephen's omission of "necessariness" from his claim that gratuitous evils can't be justified by the goods they produce. I believe Stephen might say that the necessariness clause is contained in how he is using "gratuitous" and that he does probably understand the argument in the same way that you do. In other words, a "gratuitous evil" is exactly one that imposes more pain/suffering/etc. than is strictly necessary for the production of any set of goods.
Hey Joe, do you find other forms of theism(polytheism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, etc) to be as rational as Abrahamic theism? All other forms of theism that aren’t one of the big three monotheist religions seem to be dismissed and hand waved within western academia as not to be taken seriously from a philosophical perspective. And that’s a real shame, as I think they have a lot going for them.
You and Stephen are awesome, though I feel you serve different audiences (with some overlap). Stephen goes 2-3 levels into the details while you go to 11.
I think JL mackie and error theorist like him would agree with Trent on God is required for morality For them concepts of stance independent moral facts are unintelligible and queer I don’t think the strong intuition that ‘torturing children is wrong’ support moral realism , we need something like torturing children has the objective property of wrongness At least for me I have strong intuition that my moral intuition is something like taste preferences (ie in the eye of the beholder)
All my best friends justify slavery. Trent is such a good dude. I just love useless rationality in a vacuum. I usually eat it with a nice chianti and fava beans.
In the Non-human Animal Suffering section it seems to me that you can even appeal to aspects of the theist (or at least Christian) worldview by saying that God created a world without suffering, according to their beliefs, and that world was 'perfect'. No need for evils to generate 'greater goods'. That world either CANNOT have those 'greater goods' but it is still superior since it was perfect, or it CAN have those 'greater goods' without necessitating the evils. So the whole argument about gratuitous evils not existing (or actually being necessary evils) crumbles from within the Christian worldview.
29:22 "the good of free will, or virtue: they explain many human evils." -- If you don't have a framework of free will that makes sense, you don't have an explanation.
Are you serious? Did you read your comment? Does a normal person not know what free will is? You do what you decide. There's the framework for you if you didn't know for your whole life.
@@snokehusk223 There are many interpretations of how the details might work, each with problems much debated by theologians, philosophers and sometimes neuroscientists. e.g. When you 'do what you decide', could you have decided otherwise? It might seem like a clear 'yes' to a 'normal person', but that doesn't play out so well when rigorous thinkers look at it.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke What you are implying I quess is that our actions are restricted due to outside factors and thus we can't choose more than one action at certain times. But free will doesn't mean you have absolute decision on your actions. For example if you are drunk and tired it is clear you won't come with the solution to cancer. But you will do what you can like stop drinking and go to sleep or continue drinking. You have a choice on what to do and it's up to you.
@@snokehusk223 Is your choice determined or undetermined? Is it explained or unexplained? Neither will do the sort of explanatory legwork desired here. The former kicks the can down the road and means free will isn't the explanation, just a domino. The latter also means free will cannot serve as an explanation. If it's undetermined, you didn't determine it and aren't responsible for it. If it's unexplained, it's just vacuous when offered as an explanation itself. There are many more issues with free will. Most materialists will accept a 'compatibilist' version of free will, where whatever mechanism we are experiencing when making choices we call it free will, no matter how 'free' it really is. The dualist side complains 'that's not what we mean by free will!'.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke Your choices are determined by you. Although they are influenced by outer factors. If you decide to eat strawberry ice cream or vanilla it is your choice but that choice will be influenced by what you like more. Care to explain how it isn't your choice?
If the psychophysical laws being altered by God for animals would produce no change in “3rd person” observations, than how do we know that it hasn’t already happened?
An excellent question! This is part of the broader problem of other minds. After all, it's entirely conceivable that no one else apart from me has *any* mental states while keeping all their '3rd person facts' exactly the same. So, then, I think some approaches to the problem of other minds can be employed here in response to your point: e.g., phenomenal conservatism, arguments by analogy and best explanation, etc. I will say that, if the theist grants that God has done precisely the sorts of psychophysical alterations that I mention in the video, then that theist will circumvent my point there. They'll still succumb to the problem of alternative evolutionary histories containing just photosynthesizing/chemosynthesising/aerosynthesizing animals (and non-animals), but they'll have avoided the former point!
When are you going to have a discussion with William Lane Craig. (I actually want to see you lose the discussion as cosmic skeptic did😅, i really do). Thanks for the work friend.
15:00 I strongly agree with you about words like obvious and plausible. To reiterate, various facts or conclusions may be obvious (etc.) to one person but not another. Nevertheless, one might reflect on that situation and ponder if there might be a use for these words anyway that’s not totally relative. If you consider mathematical proofs as a simple example domain, you can have theorems and proofs that require few steps and few notions to state and prove respectively, and then you have some that require many notions and many steps to prove. (There are other considerations as well.) Seasoned mathematicians might train their intuitions to see abstract patterns in the structure of proofs and so on, so things might be obvious to them that aren’t obvious to a freshman or a five year old. Still, there are clearly theorems and proofs that predictably in almost every instance takes people more work than others. Exactly where to put the lines between nonobvious and obvious might be a useless discussion, but such a gradation does seem to have some amount of predictability in modeling some actual feature about theorems and proofs. Alright. Not everything in philosophy is like a mathematical theorem or a proof. There are vaguer things like intuitions that seem to just either be there or not and so on. In such cases maybe obviousness isn’t a useful notion at all. It’s just too ambiguous. But another point is that words like obvious fit well in rhetorics. You can phrase sentences well, and sometimes stating that something is obvious is a way of socially insisting very much that something is true. Being persuasive is not unimportant. If you rhetoric makes you sound persuasive or non persuasive independently of whether the content of the claims is actually true or false, then that’s a problem. But that problem is probably there anyway, since we are so flawed in so many ways as reasoners. Under theoretical scrutiny, I don’t think we should let arguments hinge on being obvious. But it isn’t unreasonable that something you want to argue is obvious in a sense that saying so actually describes something about the content of the ideas. Saying gratuitous evil is obvious isn’t actually that much of a stretch. If someone don’t find it obvious, saying it’s obvious isn’t an interesting argument. But if you say it’s obvious, you might be signaling that, it’s obvious in the sense that if you go out and look at the world, you’ll find many things that at least look like gratuitous evil very much, similarly to how it’s obvious you’ll find plenty of straws of grass, if you take a magnifying glass and take a close look at your lawn. It’s an informed type of claim, putting the weight of your judgement and expertise behind it. Of course maybe you could be wrong or mistaken. But I think I’m such cases such words have a role to play.
Hi Joe -- can you elaborate on the difference between saying that "Theism is rational" vs. "Theists can be rational in their beliefs"? What does it mean to say that a worldview (e.g. Theism) is rational, when we can construct scenarios for any theory in which someone can hold it rationally? It is trivially easy to conceive of scenario in which it's rational to believe that Kim Jong Un has never defecated in his life -- millions of north koreans are subjected to such a scenario. We probably wouldn't say that such a view itself is "rational," however. To call a view itself rational, maybe we mean something like the following: "Someone well-versed in a relatively large percentage of the best reasons for and against the view can rationally hold the view."
If I were to guess what Joe would say: “rational” is based upon a persons knowledge. If someone’s foundational knowledge is different then ours, it could be rational for them to make different conclusions. The challenge we atheists face is to break down those foundational concepts that drive theists. Many of these are instilled at a young age to prevent questioning them.
@@Nick-Nasti interesting what you say. What I find so interesting about a person like Trend is that he seems so open and interested, but in fact is only holding strong onto his belief. He has the big pro of being very well mannered and well spoken. Het is also very smart, but uses that smartness only to justify his world views, not to scrutinize them.
One thought on the point about atheists answering with "I don't know" when asked about stuff like the origins of the universe and claiming that christians do the same, when they saying they don't know why and who this specific evil serves a higher purpose. As long as you do not claim to know something you don't have to prove your knowledge, but christians claim to know that god is the ultimate good and all he does and lets happen is to support this ultimate good, so they really have to answer who any evil in the world serves a higher purpose, cause how else can they claim to know, that god is allgood? Sorry for my english, I am not a native speaker.
This is the point of conflict for Catholicism / Christianity, there could be a god that is all loving but is not all powerful so even if we want´s evil to not exist he can´t prevent it.
Are there multiple ways to act perfectly? I dont think so, at least not for any actions which can affect moral patients in any way. Any change in the act which affects moral patients surely affects their experience, at least slightly, which can either be for better, worse, or neutral. There would be some global maximum (think of Sam Harris' moral landscape), where any adjustment would be a reduction in moral value. There could be some morally neutral changes, like the arrangement of distant stars, but even those affect human interactions (think astrology). I dont think an omni-god could have free will.
Trent should embrace the evil, since God admits creating it. Isaiah 45:7. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Psychophysical laws are ad hoc though! Yes, God 'could' do that, but it doesn't work in practice, when a animal hurts itself, it would simply be be ad hoc to have in some events animals feel pain to avoid continuing in that state e.g. running from a preditor or moving away from danger, and another pain where God is somehow obligated to make the state of affairs so that the animal doesn't feel pain or is in bliss. For complex animals like us, require a large biodiversity to sustain them.
Why would it be ad hoc? In the first case the animal is experiencing pain because of some greater good - avoiding tissue damage, whereas the other cases would be those that would be gratuitous - the pain doesn't serve any necessary purpose. You muse about whether "God is somehow obligated" as if to imply he lacks responsibility in the matter, when by definition he cannot allow any gratuitous suffering or evil, so one way or another, God must make it the case that any animal suffering whatsover is absolutely necessary.
@Jockito because if God has to intervene to that extent, it would be absurd, pain receptors are a greater good, they promote self-preservation to the individual, it prevents unintentional harming and the need to flee in the sight of danger. Any mechanism that would preserve that and at an instant suddenly have to change to give the individual bliss or no pain is ad hoc. God is obligated to create a biosphere that sustains life, it does that.
@@danbarnes8905 you're assuming God couldn't have changed the laws of nature such that pain is only experienced non-gratuiously such that no constant intervention would be necessary. Why limit God with such an assumption? God needn't step in and intervene once he has set up the laws and parameters that would make it the case that gratuitous suffering wouldn't be experienced. If you can imagine no gratuitous suffering in heaven you should be able to imagine it here. I disagree that God is obligated to create a biosphere that sustains life, why is he obligated to do that? What part of his nature would it contradict if God decided not to create anything at all. On the other hand, making creatures readily be able to experience extreme suffering without any sufficient purpose would contradict his nature. Emotional torment and the level of extreme pain experienced by creatures is not fundamental to sustaining life - unless you think it's also required in heaven? Regarding danger, this could have been an innate trait that's part of our biology and genetics, we needn't experience extreme agony and anguish in order to know what is dangerous - in the same way that I needn't have to see something grotesque and horrific in order to see beauty. Beauty stands on it's own. Similarly, extreme anguish and suffering is not required to preserve ones life.
@Jockito 1. That misses the point, any laws that would be required would make the world inexplicable, how could it operate successfully without intervention all the time, e.g, a zebra who gets caught by a lion,yet may escape, but given a non-intervention route, the zebra would stop feeling pain and would try to flee. 2. I never said God is obligated too create a biosphere, but if you want a complex biosphere capable of sustaining life, you need something like what we have now. 3. That is ad hoc,
@@danbarnes8905 why would a lion need or want to eat a zebra in the first place if, for example, it's a herbivore? You seem stuck in the idea that the world as we know it had to be the way it is and there's no other way God could feasibly have made it. Perhaps you think heaven is infeasible too.
13:55 Don't say something is obvious in general as it's always subjective. 15:30 "First, that's just clearly false" lol TBH he did clarify that it's by his lights but still made me laugh initially.
It's very rational to believe in an invisible friend/being that can communicate telepathically and created the universe. There are plenty evidence for its existence, like Him being born of a virgin.
When the mind beliefs from deep inside that survival and ones eternal fate is depended on this 'friends' good grace, then everything else morphs to kind of fit accordingly. From the colored and selected information available, and from the deepest imaginable need to hold every thing in place at the price of your soul, there is a rationality in theïsm. But it still isn't connected to actual reality.
I want to disagree right off the bat, I think it's a bit irresponsible to run the problem of evil without defining your terms, such as the term evil. The way I see it, you could define this term into distinct ways which creates two distinct arguments: the problem of suffering, and the problem of sin. Why do either of these things exist if God is all-powerful all good and all loving? The problem of sin is necessarily an internal critique of Christianity, but the problem of suffering need not be, but in either case, it has been important to define what we mean by evil.
I had the same objection to Stephen that Trent initially offered. I agree with you that the existence of gratuitous evil is a problem for moral Theism, but to me that makes it a very week argument precisely because it's not my problem (as an Atheist). I don't believe that either gratuitous evil or God exists, so I think Stephen needs to justify the former as much as Trent does. Your section on evolution highlighted this especially. Agreed, God didn't need to create evolutionary suffering. Turn that around on the Atheist: Did nature "need" to create evolutionary suffering? If you believe in natural selection, it kinda seems like, yeah it did need to. After all we evolved from non sentient organisms to one that can experience suffering. Suffering therefore must be more evolutionary advantageous. So it doesn't make any sense to me to count it as a gratuitous evil.
The argument is that the Christian god of ultimate goodness, power and knowledge does not reflect the world we see. God could be any two, but not all three.
@Nick-Nasti I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like you are describing the basic Problem of Evil. I'm saying that this begs the question by assuming that there is a counterfactual to God's attributes that needs accounting for. If there is Evil then there presents a challenge to God's Goodness, since God can't be both Good and Evil at the same time (Ignoring the notion of an Omnipotence that allows for God to be contradictory). If God is Good, then Evil is a challenge to some other attribute of God, eg., Omnipotence- God lacks the power to prevent Evil. And so on. The problem is that Evil is the only counterfactual to God being presented. As we've established it's only counterfactual to Goodness. In other words we haven't presented similar claims to God's other attributes that require thier own explanations. Evil on it's own doesn't challenge God's omnipotence- he can be Evil and Omnipotent. You see the circular reasoning here? We start off assuming God is Good, Omnipotent and Omniscient. Why are we assuming that, and then why are we bringing in a specific challenge to only one of those? If we think God is responsible for Evil we shouldn't be assuming his Goodness in the first place, his other attributes are irrelevant. If we are assuming his other attributes, then we might as well just assume his Goodness.
@@JebeckyGranjola We said the same thing except I was more concise. A god could be omnipotent, omnigood or omniscienent (only two of these at most), but not all three based upon the world we see.
@Nick-Nasti I don't agree. My point wasn't very clear, but I dispute that from the problem of Evil we can conclude that God could be 2 of those things. I think we can't conclude that he actually is any of them, or none. "From the world we see" we have no knowledge of what God knows , so we can't say he is or isn't omniscient. We don't know what all possible things there could ever be so we can't say whether he is or isn't omnipotent. And since the whole point of the excercise is to determine if God is Good, then we can't say God is Good or Evil. These are three arbitrary categories we're prescribing to God, just to try to refute at least one of them. If we simply reject any of these out of hand, then there is no need to try to resolve them.
😁CORRECTIONS & CLARIFICATIONS😁
(1) I incorrectly spelled 'Shafer-Landau' -- I wrote 'Schaffer' instead of 'Shafer'!
(2) I should have said 'moral rightness' rather than 'moral goodness' at 1:27:13!
(3) The Bengson/Cuneo/Shafer-Landau paper is not open access, actually!
(4) It's helpful to clarify the point at 38:40. Importantly, I did not say *Trent himself* is (or is being) triumphalist. Instead, I said he was *using triumphalist language* , similar to when someone claims to 'debunk' something. I take words like 'proves', 'demonstrates', 'debunks', and co. to be triumphalist language; if others don't, that's alright, but we should all recognize that I didn't say Trent was triumphalist. One can use triumphalist language without being triumphalist oneself. I wholeheartedly agree that, while Trent employed this sort of language, Trent is not himself triumphalist; indeed, I tried to emphasize my admiration for his qualities as a person at the outset! :)
A further clarification here is that I actually regard 'show' to be far less triumphalist than 'proves' and 'demonstrate' -- both of which Trent has used in the context of arguments for God, and the former of which Trent used in his video. 'Show' is a borderline case for me, and I can definitely see it not being triumphalist, at least in many contexts. In the moment, I lumped it in with 'proves' because Trent had also used it in close connection with 'proves', but I'm more than willing to remove 'shows' from the list of triumphal words to generally try to avoid!
(5) A commenter brings a nice point to attention: "we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too."
This is an excellent point. I agree that we can’t infer merely from our preventing x that x has no outweighing goods. So I would want to modify and correct what I said at that juncture in the video (even though I don't think it significantly hampers my overarching point). In particular, I would say that *even when* we don’t have such duties, and *even when* we can secure someone’s net good, we often still prevent the relevant tragedies (or at least view their prevention [or non-occurrence] as the best/most valuable/most desirable outcome, even if their prevention is out of our control), thus plausibly revealing that we don’t regard the relevant goods of, say, free will or virtue cultivation/manifestation as outweighing the relevant tragedy.
Consider cases of supererogatory prevention of tragedy (e.g., doctors staying well overtime to prevent certain tragedies). These are cases without the duty element. And, quite plausibly, many such cases are such that, even if the tragedy were to transpire (rather than being prevented), the relevant supererogatory actor *would* have the resources to secure the patient’s net good. (Given our medical prowess at this time in history, doctors have the wherewithal to secure the patient’s net benefit, after all is said and done, for many medical tragedies.) Even still, doctors under these conditions prevent the relevant tragedies.
Or consider cases where the prevention of tragedy is outside of an agent’s control. These, too, are cases without the duty element. Even when such cases are such that the agent can secure the benefit of the victim of the tragedy, the agent [and victim] will very often still regard it as best that the tragedy never occurred, will have wished that such a thing never occurred, and so on, again plausibly revealing commitment to what I said in the video.
This video is amazing. Thank you for all the resources!
diligent lamf
(triumphalist; wo) humility can suck it, but i dig.
Thanks for the thoughtful criticism Joe! I watched most of it and my only major pushback would be on the claim of me being "triumphalist". I try hard not to do that and I know theists (especially Thomists and some apologists) who are quite obnoxious about it. I think if a person thinks an argument succeeds it's fine for them to say it "shows" or "proves" something. I wouldn't consider an atheist "triumphalist" for saying divine hiddeness "shows" God doesn't exist, just mistaken. Also, I didn't intend to "blitzkrieg" the arguments for God but just mention them. It would have bogged down the response to exhaustively defend each one. I'm also open to having a dialogue with you on my channel in the next few weeks regarding the issues you raised if you are interested. Cheers!
Hey Trent! Glad you saw the video! I'll now offer some thoughts on your comment:
You say: "I watched most of it and my only major pushback would be on the claim of me being "triumphalist"."
Thanks for this; it allows me to offer a helpful clarification. Importantly, I did not claim that you, Trent, were being triumphalist. Instead, I said you were using *triumphalist language* , similar to when someone claims to 'debunk' something. I take words like 'proves', 'demonstrates', 'debunks', and co. to be triumphalist language; if you don't, that's alright, but we should both recognize that I didn't say *you* were triumphalist. One can use triumphalist language without being triumphalist oneself. I wholeheartedly agree that, while you employed this sort of language, you are not yourself triumphalist; indeed, I tried to emphasize my admiration for your qualities as a person at the outset :)
You say: "I think if a person thinks an argument succeeds it's fine for them to say it "shows" or "proves" something. I wouldn't consider an atheist "triumphalist" for saying divine hiddeness "shows" God doesn't exist, just mistaken."
Again, though, I didn't call *you* triumphalist; I said you employed triumphalist *language* . And while I certainly regard 'show' to be far less triumphalist than 'proves' and 'demonstrate' -- both of which you've used in the context of arguments for God, and the former of which you used in your video -- I still regard it as at least bordering on triumphalist. I would also take issue with an atheist who said they could 'prove' or 'demonstrate' God's non-existence through the hiddenness argument. 'Show' is a borderline case for me, and I can definitely see it *not* being triumphalist, at least in many contexts. In the moment, I lumped it in with 'proves' because you had also used that in close connection with 'proves', but I'm open to removing 'shows' from the list of triumphal words to generally try to avoid!
You say: "Also, I didn't intend to "blitzkrieg" the arguments for God but just mention them. It would have bogged down the response to exhaustively defend each one."
This also allows me to clarify things. By 'blitzkrieg approach', I mean precisely what you did -- mention many arguments, in very quick fashion, the success of (most of) which is required for the point being made, without offering defenses of those arguments. It's what I was attempting to mimic when I merely mentioned many atheistic arguments, in very quick fashion, the success of (most of) which was required for the point being made, without offering defenses of those arguments. That's just what I meant by 'blitzkrieg approach'.
You say: "I'm also open to having a dialogue with you on my channel in the next few weeks regarding the issues you raised if you are interested. Cheers!"
I'd be happy to have a chat, but it would be best not to do it in the next few weeks. My knee is in a very unhappy point in life, with significant post-op swelling. If I sit for even an hour straight without doing some of my exercises, it gets stuff and more painful. So, then, I propose we wait perhaps 2-3 months before having a chat. But I'm certainly up for it!
@@MajestyofReason I'd enjoy watching this dialogue/chat. It would be nice to see something that was like the opposite of the Dave/Tour debate, where you challenge each other in a respectful way. However, I'd love to see one (or both) of you concede that the other has made a good point when it in fact does happen. I'd be curious to see what the other side considers to be a good point (whether it's a defeater or not).
@@MajestyofReason Y'know Joe, I would wonder why you call out Trent on this kind of language but do it sometimes as well. For example, there are a few times in this video where the word "obvious" is used to prove your point without really giving an argument as to why it's true or considering objections to this point. I agree that using words like "show", "debunk", "prove", etc. are triumphant. I also question why you seem to be bothered by Trent making this type of video but you haven't made any videos on Stephen, who uses this type of language all the time, and makes points that have good objections. I'm unfamiliar with the internet religion debate, but I always got the impression that atheists were more dominant. But if you're doing this because it's actually the other way around and you want to open more people's minds I completely understand.
@@MasterMooper Thanks for the comment my dude!
You say: “Y’know Joe, I would wonder why you call out Trent on this kind of language but do it sometimes as well. For example, there are a few times in this video where the word "obvious" is used to prove your point without really giving an argument as to why it's true or considering objections to this point. I agree that using words like "show", "debunk", "prove", etc. are triumphant.”
Great question! A few notes here:
First, even if I do the very thing I’m urging us all to try not to do, that only shows that I have some of the very imperfections I’m trying to urge us all to improve upon. That doesn’t at all invalidate my point; it shows only my own imperfection. But I already knew I was imperfect, and presumably others did too!
Second, on the significant majority of instances in the video where I use words like ‘clearly false’, ‘obvious’, etc., I am very quick to add qualifiers: I explicitly say things like ‘“at least by my lights”, “to me”, “I think that”, “it seems to me that”, and so on. And when I had the ‘obviously’ in all caps and bolded and italicized, I was careful to include a footnote saying ‘at least to me…’.
Third, my injunction against the use of these words was preceded by a ‘generally’ modifier. I think it’s *generally* best to avoid them and use less triumphal language. But there are cases where I think it becomes appropriate - in particular, it might be appropriate to use triumphal language in response to someone who does so in order to highlight the negatives of using that language to that person and their audience. (This is why on at least a few occasions, I’ll respond to bombastic, annoying, condescending comments with similar bombastic language - it shows the other person how it feels to be the recipient of this language. Still, though, I generally try to avoid this.)
Continuing back with you: “I also question why you seem to be bothered by Trent making this type of video but you haven't made any videos on Stephen, who uses this type of language all the time, and makes points that have good objections.”
Lots of reasons:
(1) The market of responses to Stephen is already saturated - people like WLC, Cameron Bertuzzi, Trent Horn, Christian Idealist, Invoking Theism, etc., already make responses to Stephen when Stephen seems (to them) to make mistakes. If I think these people have already made most of the relevant points I would want to make in response to Stephen, then there isn’t much use of me making a response, too. [And, indeed, in Trent’s case, I think Trent successfully made my three major criticisms of Stephen’s video here that I had: first, that faith is really just trust; second, that theists can be rational; and third, that Stephen’s case overlooks the total evidence requirement.]
(2) Unlike most other RUclipsrs - especially most non-theist RUclipsrs - Trent’s videos to which I respond tend to fall directly within my area of philosophical research. Among other things, I research classical theism and classical theistic proofs in tremendous depth. Trent is one of the only RUclipsrs who makes videos on this stuff which meet a minimal threshold of being worthy of taking seriously.
(3) I actually do respond to non-theists quite often; I even made a video with Trent on his channel responding to a plethora of non-theist arguments! :)
You then say: “I’m unfamiliar with the internet religion debate, but I always got the impression that atheists were more dominant. But if you're doing this because it's actually the other way around and you want to open more people's minds I completely understand.”
This is actually one of the major reasons, too. We have to distinguish what I find to be a hugely important distinction within the YT sphere:
(A) Philosophically non-competent videos, channels, etc. that are not worth being taking (philosophically) seriously; and
(B) Philosophically competent videos, channels, etc. that are worth being taken (philosophically) seriously.
My own perception is that theistic apologetics has the leg up within the (B) sphere, and that’s the only sphere that matters for me. Part of the motivation is to add another non-theistic voice within the (B) camp so as to help us all grow in intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, and gain a better understanding of reality. :)
@@MajestyofReason "Trent is one of the only RUclipsrs who makes videos on this stuff which meet a minimal threshold of being worthy of taking seriously." I'm grateful for the high compliment :-)
You are quite literally my favorite channel when it comes to philosophy, even if your videos are insanely long and ur terminology goes ever my head sometimes. I love that I can feel myself learning as I listen to you.
Trent Horn: *Breathes*
Joe: *REBUTTED!!!!!*
I'm note sure i agree on your take on not using terms like "obvious". Especially when used in an informal conversation or short-timed presentation.
To me, when terms like "It seems obvious" are used, what one is trying to convey, is that they are saying something akin to "This proposition is obvious to the vast majority of people".
It would get quite tiresome having to say "It seem obvious "to the vast majority of people" that..."
Note that one could obviously be false in asserting the "seeming obviousness", but that doesn't make the usage of the word and its meaning invalid or bad. At least in my opinion.
I appreciate this format. My english level is not that great and subtitles aren't always very good. Thanks for your hard work and for all the information, it's really needed.
I find this type of content to be very good at improving my english skills, i feel like i've learnt a lot from guys like joe :D (the hard part comes when trying to understand what he even says haha)
Lmao Trent has nightmares of Joe rebutting his rebuttals for sure
He's mainly scared of my existential quantification shirt, which I was wearing at 0:45
So true lmao
@@MajestyofReason i think the record for critiques is digital gnosis' critique of pinecreek's critique of hamza's den's critique of hamzas den's critique from pincreek over the critique of pinecreek on hamzas den. at least, it made a wormhole that was stable for like, 2 milliseconds.
I have nightmares of some day finding the reasons to justify belief in catholic theology and then doing public apologetics and eventually having joe rebut my rebuttals
@@Greyz174why, it is an unreasonle phobia, joephobia
I have just stumbled into this world. I was enjoying Bertrand Russell's TKO of Nietzsche in his History of Western Philosophy and I wondered what Walter Kaufman would say about it. I only have Existentialism from D to S on hand and none of Kaufman's other works, so I was just googling things like "Bertrand Russell Walter Kaufman rebuttal" etc and I found some twitter thing which lead me here. The internet is wild. In any event, I have subscribed and while I did not watch any of these videos all the way through, the point at which I just stopped watching the Trent guy was exactly the point when you started dismantling him. Since we agree, it is clear that you are a genius. Keep up the good work.
> Doesn't take too much effort
> The video is over 90 minutes and needed quite some editing
I wish more youtubers had such good work ethic!
I have a question: Is there not a distinction between moral value and value in general?
I can't imagine how this is not the case. Moral values would deal with good and evil, and general value would deal with positive and negative. We could say, for example, that intelligence is an objectively positive thing, and therefore stupidity (a lack of intelligence) is an objectively negative thing, but it does not follow from that fact that stupidity is evil. To claim that objectively negative things are objectively evil things would lead to absurd conclusions.
If stupidity is supposed to be evil simply because it is negative, then it would follow that any and all beings that lack intelligence would be evil simply in virtue of them lacking intelligence.
But every being that is not maximally intelligent lacks intelligence to some degree. If the maximal degree of intelligence a being can have is infinite, then all beings which are not infinitely intelligent would lack intelligence to an infinite degree. This would render all beings that are not infinitely intelligent infinitely evil, which is crazy.
And if maximum intelligence is not infinite but simply some very large finite quality, then clearly that quality is vastly beyond human intelligence, and so we would have to conclude that all beings we are aware of are massively lacking in intelligence, and therefore, massively evil.
You could run the same line of reasoning with many other things, such as rationality. It would result in beings which are irrational being evil in virtue of their irrationality. So, children and mentally disabled people would have to be considered evil in virtue of their irrationality, which again seems crazy.
The point of this is to say that claiming things are intrinsically positive or negative, such as suffering being intrinsically negative, isn't even relevant to the moral argument. The moral argument does not claim that value in general is grounded in God, it argues that MORAL values (and duties) are grounded in God. So, we could grant that the atheist can explain the positive or negative nature of certain things by arguing they are intrinsically that way, but how does the atheist explain objective MORAL values?
How do you jump from general value to moral value in an atheistic worldview?
The atheist could claim, for example, that the suffering experienced in the holocaust was objectively negative, due to suffering being intrinsically negative, but how does the atheist then argue that the Nazi's causing that suffering is objectively evil (objective moral value) and objectively wrong (objective moral duty)?
You say that theists simply need to live with the fact that atheists can ground objective moral values in their worldview, but you have no presented a reason for us to do so. You only presented an argument to ground general value (positive and negative things) not moral values (good and evil things).
I have still yet to see an account of objective moral values (and also duties) on an atheistic worldview that made any sense to me.
Maybe you don't see an account of "objective" moral values because objectivity is a meanongless concept with regards to morals?
This is also perfectly well illustrated by the weird notion of yours that intelligence is an "objective" good according to you. Why? How is it _objectively_ good to be more intelligent? You do know that the most numerous, thereby arguably biologically most successful organisms on this planet, are microscopic ones? Followed by insects, iirc. How is intelligence an _objectively_ good thing? I can see why one would _subjectively_ claim it is a good thing, because it allows for better and more correct understanding of the universe. But that is a _value judgement_ - and values, ironically, are _subject-dependant._ Meaning they are _subjective_ by definition.
Moving on, moral value and epistemic/societal/personal value can be different categories, sure. And suffering is also never _objectively_ bad - as 'bad' and 'good', again, are _value judgements,_ making them subjective by definition.
But! Here comes the kicker; this is only true if you accept the reasonable conclusion that belief in what is a definitionally ultimate moral arbiter with maximal power and knowledge is _untrue._ If you hold, however, the unfounded opinion that such a being actually exists/is real, and that _it_ is the reference point with which to claim moral "objectivity", then you run into two problems; firstly, that being by virtue of being both ultimate moral arbiter as well as supposedly omniscient and omnipotent, is necessarily _responsible_ for everything, even according to Christianity itself. It says so in the bible. If an omniscient being created a universe, nothing in that universe could be other than it would have known it to be before even lifting one finger to create it. Omniscience equals a _necessity_ for everything to be according to its knowledge - because omniscience cannot be true if that being does not know the future. Curiously, this also functions not just as Illustration that your god-creature is necessarily directly responsible for all moral 'good' and all moral 'evil', but also serves to show that belief in any kind of "free" will is entirely illogical under Christianity - because under it, the universe is necessarily pre-determined according to your god-creature's knowledge.
Secondly, if you believe in an "omnibenevolent" arbiter in combination with the other stated attributes, then the only logical conclusion is that there _is no evil._ After all, benevolence implies or is defined rather as being good, being a force for good. Anything that is omnibenevolent is _only_ good by definition - and anything that is additionally omniscient and omnipotent would have both the knowledge of any 'evil', and the power to do something against it (let alone the moral responsibility to, as illustrated above, by virtue of being responsible for "creation"). So, the only sensible conclusion resulting from the working of these there definitions is that there _is_ no evil; because in a reality with such a being, there cannot be. It is a logical impossibility, again, because omnibenevolence would mean that that creature, even if it potentially could do 'evil', would only ever do 'good'. If all it did ever was good, then creating was also all-good from the get-go - including any and all factors. Thereby, we would have to include that the "objective" Moral standard you proclaim exclude necessarily leads is to include that everything has to be good, and that we do not know evil. Because if we _did_ know evil, well then since nothing can logically occur which your assumed god-creature is not ultimately responsible for, that would mean that it created the world with evil in it, making it definitionally not omnibenevolent.
The last argument I want to bring up is that atheists generally do not use categories such as "morally bad suffering" in an _objective_ sense. Most of us acknowledge that suffering is _subjective_ - like morality. That no two people have the same feelings on it. But, arguments like the Problem of evil, hinge on the fact that the _theist_ disagrees. In other words, they are so potent because they expose the illogciality of the Christian belief, showing that Christian claims are logically contradictory. In essence, you are correct - leave Christian mythology behind, and the Problem vanishes, which is _exactly_ the point of arguments like these; to show that other beliefs are more logically sound.
I want to see you debate Trent in a formal debate!😊
Same
I wish you and your ACL a speedy recovery!
❤
28:15 Trent says the theist can just say “I don’t know why gratuitous evil exist”, but by doing so they would undermine their own religious worldview.
Is pain the only way for none-rational organism to avoid dangerous situations? There's a reason evolution favours cretures that feel pain. Even rational creatures like us do gain a lot by negative emotions. The most deadly diseases are often those with no symptoms until they become terminal ( cancer, HIV) ...
20:13 THANK YOU, SO MUCH, THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS, YOU DESERVE THE WORLD JOE ❤❤😢🎉
I want to read that paper from Draper on panpsychotheism. It comes to mind listening to research into NDEs, as some describe a sense of oneness with the universe or God, and others experience a life review where they experience not only their own perspective but experience it from the perspective of others in the room (see Dr. Bruce Greyson's research). Not sure what to make of all that and am certainly skeptical, but if there is something to it, Draper's idea might help explain it.
(Did I just copy and paste my original comment from Trent’s video… yes. Yes I did)
I think another solid rebuttal to the argument from nonhuman animal suffering is to pose a defeater for the Naturalist. When analyzing Naturalism and Theism, we’re looking for the best explanation considering what we observe in the universe. A Naturalist can point out towards a long chain of animal predation, but the Theist can then point out to a universe with +30 “lucky” constants. To sum it up, in a Naturalistic world we wouldn’t even expect to see any organic matter at all, especially something like a fully aware animal.
Thanks for the comment, and you make a fascinating point! Ultimately, though, I don't think it's a successful response to the argument from animal suffering -- I highly recommend checking out this video here which explains why [it has to do with clarifying the relevant background knowledge at play in the argument]: ruclips.net/video/z1VHUiauaZk/видео.html
I'd also recommend checking out my Design Arguments playlist wherein I offer some worries of mine for the fine-tuning arg! :)
@@MajestyofReason Thanks for the response Joe! I love your channel and your desire to help philosophical babies such as myself. You’ve really inspired me to pursue philosophy at university next year. I will check out the videos you listed :)
@@existential_o best thing I’ve heard in a while! Great to have you on the MoR Train!❤️
Connecting suffering and evil has always been, to me, strange. They are often analogized on some level, take the Problem of Suffering variation of the Problem of Evil, but I can think of times where this analogizing falls apart.
Take for instance the emotional suffering after a profound sense of loss. It seems intuitive to me that one that it is only right to face suffering at that moment, and that the lack of suffering would actually be a bad thing. It seems only right for suffering to exist in that moment, that it is the correct state of affairs. The "evil", if there truly is evil in this instance, is not the suffering but the loss itself.
Think of when you hear of a parent dying and a sibling shows no negative emotion, this often gets viewed as a bad thing (not necessarily because of the lack of showing an emotion, but because of the inference that they have no negative emotional response). In a way, it seems, to me, like human intuition tends to be that the lack of suffering when there is profound loss is not a good thing, it is a bad thing.
If this is accurate, then we can now say that not only can some negative forms of suffering be necessary for "higher order goods", but that some types of suffering are, themselves, such that their absence would, in and of itself, increase "evil" in the world.
Yet if we reach that conclusion, it seems harder to justify the analogizing of suffering to evil, which then raises the question on if gratuitous suffering is a gratuitous evil, and how we reach that conclusion.
These responses tend to either severely undermine or outright ignore god’s omnipotence/omnibenevolence.
The logical contradiction arises when an all-loving, all-powerful god stays idle while spectating his subjects suffering from all sorts things: diseases, accidents, natural disasters, psychological pain, etc. you say that suffering is good because it can lead to “greater goods”.
Apart from the fact that suffering can also lead to greater suffering which I will come back to later, this response would only work on a god that is either not all-loving or not all-powerful; if he is all powerful then he is capable of allowing us to understand and appreciate those greater goods without suffering unnecessarily in the process. If he is all-loving then he would want to ensure we’re not harmed and not suffering.
The only way out of this is to somehow say that suffering is intrinsically good, that suffering in itself is a good thing which is a preposterous idea; if this was true then all of us would turn sado-masochists, inflicting pain and suffering on ourselves and on other people, but obviously this isn’t the case as is evidenced by everything around us not the least of which our own intuitions. Even your own response that suffering is good because it can lead to those greater goods goes against the idea that suffering is intrinsically good, which leads me to the greater good notion.
The idea that suffering can lead to greater goods hence why it’s justified is an appeal to possibility; like I mentioned earlier suffering can lead to no greater goods and in fact can cause more suffering. You frame all suffering as a necessary step for an eventual fruitful lesson, but what happens here then is ALL suffering will be justified as such, you can always run the same response to anyone suffering and tell them eventually something good will happen to you due to the unfolding of causes and effects originating from the moment you suffered; thereby justifying all manner of suffering. But then I ask you what about those instances in which suffering really does not lead to anything good? Can you look into the eyes of a 5 year old with terminal cancer and tell her she’ll be fine?
"Take for instance the emotional suffering after a profound sense of loss. It seems intuitive to me that one that it is only right to face suffering at that moment, and that the lack of suffering would actually be a bad thing. It seems only right for suffering to exist in that moment, that it is the correct state of affairs."
Yeah but you have to ask yourself "why do I have that seeming? What's causing it? Is it truth-tracking or is there some explanation for why I have it that is independent from whether the seeming corresponds to an actual state of affairs" Here's a suggestion: In the actual world, when we see a person who does not show any signs of suffering after a profound loss, we take that observation as evidence that there are some psychological issues going on with that person and that they might even be dangerous (e.g. psychopatic). Internalizing that simple but handy heuristic has been a part of your socialization since childhood and so it now seems to you that normatively, it's "only right" to experience suffering after a profound loss. Also, notice that this seeming is very culturally contingent. There has been a very large number of traditions in which these kinds of emotial states are decidedly not percieved as "only right" but as normatively defective, as something that one ideally ought to get rid of.
@@abdallam4039You are assuming that there exists no suffering from which greater good will come.
Yes that child might go to Heaven and her suffering won't be in vain.
If there is no Heaven than that child suffered for absolutely no reason.
What is than a better situation?
@Abdalla M I hate to be pedantic, but how do you define all loving and all powerful? If God can't be evil, square the circle and cease to exist, is he therefore not all powerful? I think it's kind of futile to tie our moral and ontological precepts to these kinds of categories. As for the notion that if suffering can be good we should have unlimited suffering, I think that is plainly silly. Surely you don't hold this position towards the good, right? It's good to give to charity therefore everyone should give away all thier money. You can say that we have the Goldy Locks of suffering.
Under the privation theory of evil, “God” cannot maximally will the suffering of conscious creatures, because there will always be some greater way to cause more suffering to them.
Also, neutrinos are in fact good, insofar as they are the way they are inclined to be. You seemed to take issue with something being able to not act in accordance with its nature, to which I answer that if teleology is real, then something can have improper accidents, yet still have the same underlying form, albeit suppressed. This is what is meant by evil.
I'm still waiting on Ed Feser response to you on your response with Mullins on your blog
U r literally the goat. Every video you make shows you have an absolutely elite level understanding of phil of religion and argumentation/philosophy in general. Every video of yours I watch I can’t help but nod along in agreement the whole time. Seriously magnificent, you don’t see philosophy content this high quality anywhere else
42:51 Parents can have a reason for abandoning their children and will repay them later so no they doesn't lack any of characteristics.
I didn't say that parents couldn't have a reason for abandoning their children in this manner; instead, I construed the orphans' reasoning as an inference to the best explanation of the relevant data. That allows for the possibility that the parents have some good reason for abandoning the children in the way described; but it argues that this isn't the *best* explanation for the data of being abandoned and mistreated in the relevant way.
When Trent said, “Things are good when their existence is in accordance with its nature” I am confident that what he means by existence is its current state of being. And nature is what its given purpose is or otherwise “obvious” functional purpose is. Eg. A Knife thats purpose is to cut flesh, can perform that task effectively. As opposed to a knife with that same purpose, that can’t cut room temperature butter.
Me may also mean good in sort of an overarching good as to mean effective for a purpose and of it does it is good.
30:45 Yes, a dentist is limited by the world he finds himself in, so he therefore has no other way to achieve the greater good than by inflicting pain. Trent Horn seems to think a God is like the dentist, i.e. somehow limited by the world he finds himself in, but that would be, in my opinion, not a God by definition. A God would not be limited, he would be the one setting the limits; if he wanted to make a world where drilling into teeth made you laugh, he would not be limited by anything to do that. If he wanted to create beings that could survive on words being spoken in their direction, nothing is limiting him from doing that. Trent is saying the evil is necessary because that's the only way a God can get out of the maze to some ultimate goal, but any maze a God would need to navigate through is turning him into a non-God, i.e. something limited by outside factors like a maze. Assuming the existence of an all-powerful, all-good being, all evil is gratuitous evil.
I make a somewhat similar point later in the video regarding Trent’s button-pushing thought experiment🙂
@@MajestyofReason I just passed it and thought the same thing :)
Maybe we can get them to become open theists to reduce the cognitive dissonance
God isn't limited by the universe.
God created the universe as he deemed the best.
That would include free will. Which ultimately requires pain for us to develop ourselves.
Could have God created a different universe? Sure but He didn't for a reason. So your objection doesn't hold.
@@snokehusk223 Which is fine - but it seems to invalidate the idea that that god is omnibenevolent and omniscient. Dentists have changed over the years because even they realize the futility of needless suffering and work to offer more pain-free treatments for their patients. God seems to not care about the needless suffering, which is fine unless you try to propose that that god in the ultimate in benevolence. God could certainly clear things up by explaining that a bit more (like any good dentist or physician would do), but instead we tend to get - "don't question God because he knows more that you". Which, in and of itself, seems like a very non-benevolent approach. That's probably why many parents in the past would answer their children with "don't question me - I'm your father/mother" instead of actually explaining the reasons and consequences to teach their children how to navigate the world better.
I've just thought of an interesting line of reasoning:
Suppose you have an all-loving Arsenal manager. Is the manager all-loving because they love all the players maximally, or because they love Arsenal maximally. Maybe their all-lovingness towards Arsenal is cached out in terms of winning trophies or reaching some end goal successfully.
So, the thought goes, perhaps god's omnibenevolence cached out in terms of stewarding the universe to reach some morally ideal end state, only intervening when this is in jeopardy. Or maybe god is just rooting for the humans as a species or civilisation, but that doesn't extend to any one individual necessarily, so god rarely intervenes.
On this view of omnibenevolence, there's no problem of evil, as we think of it, since evils to us may not be evils to god
Dude, your content is obviously fire (at least by my lights anyway)
New subscriber 🙃
Hey joe, I saw a comment that makes interesting points but did so in very tribalist fashion which neither you nor I like. But I really wanted to know what you would respond. I decided to take the comment and made it less tribalist hoping you would respond? Please at least for my sake. I have made the less tribalist version below, while keeping the substance. I separated the comment with dotted lines.
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Your Problem 1 faces difficulties. Trent (and likewise many theodicists) merely needs to appeal to the opportunity for very valuable virtues like compassion, care, forgiveness, sacrificial love, triumph, etc that is key in one's ultimate well-being that, again, require permitting very serious evils (this can ofc be done in an afterlife-an implication of theism). So, saying "well, there are cases of people who (i) go thru other hard stuff like depression as a result or (ii) don't use the opportunity to defeat or overcome that evil" since (i) can be an evil with the aforementioned hardening, soul-destroying, etc thats defeated in the afterlife or (ii) ain't God's fault but can still be defeated in the afterlife.
Also, the fact that we prevent cancer does not show what you want to show. We're not powerful enough to guarantee people's ultimate well-being which includes redemption/defeat of serious evils along with extended opportunities for virtues like forgiveness, compassion, etc, but God is not limited in such a way. You won't get far by pointing out our limited abilities constrain our duties.
Likewise, we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too. And if you're tempted to give a Lougheed-style reply (based on risk and genuine sacrifice), then that faces challenges too
Another thing to note. In order for your Jimmy argument to relevantly connect, you'll need sub-arguments for its underlying contentious assumptions-like God having moral obligations or God having pertinently similar kinds of obligations that parents have. But you do not seem to justify those.
Problem 2 also does not seem serious. Overcoming cancer or triumphing over trauma like rape is not close to having the same type of value/virtue as completing a dissertation or winning a soccer match. We need very serious types of evils for very serious types of soul-building goods. And it does not appear you can respond by saying, “I was just responding to Trent's specific formulation." Since then I will reply in the manner you did to Trent’s response to Steven. It’s a stronger formulation and is what the literature has in mind.
PART 1/2
Thanks for the comment!! I’ll offer some thoughts below - I had actually already typed up most of this on my computer. I decided against posting it because I didn’t think it was situated within a fruitful, truth-oriented exchange, and usually I check out when that happens. But your comment is different, so I’ll happily offer some thoughts below :)
Comment: “Your Problem 1 faces difficulties. Trent (and likewise many theodicists) merely needs to appeal to the opportunity for very valuable virtues like compassion, care, forgiveness, sacrificial love, triumph, etc that is key in one's ultimate well-being that, again, require permitting very serious evils (this can ofc be done in an afterlife-an implication of theism). So, saying "well, there are cases of people who (i) go thru other hard stuff like depression as a result or (ii) don't use the opportunity to defeat or overcome that evil" since (i) can be an evil with the aforementioned hardening, soul-destroying, etc thats defeated in the afterlife or (ii) ain't God's fault but can still be defeated in the afterlife.”
First, I don’t think the cultivation and manifestation of those virtues require the permission of horrific evils. To me, it’s entirely conceivable that one could develop and exercise those virtues in the absence of horrors, and conceivability is all I need to run a Bayesian-style argument here. It’s similar to the psychophysical harmony argument, which you may have seen making the rounds on the internet. For that argument to run, we don’t need the genuine metaphysical possibility of altered psychophysical laws; we need only their *conceivable* alteration, and that will secure us with the relevant epistemic probabilities of certain psychophysical laws on the respective hypotheses. Likewise, I need only offer *conceivable* alterations in which one develops and exercises virtues in the absence of horrors, which will secure us with relevant epistemic probabilities of horrors on the respective hypotheses. And at least speaking for myself, I find it entirely conceivable that, say, the virtues cultivated and exercised with horrors in the *actual* world be instead cultivated and exercised with circumstances *other than* horrors. It’s conceivable, for instance, that God structured our psychological makeup in such a way that we genuinely develop and exercise profound sacrificial love, forgiveness, and the like in certain simulated environments, or in non-horror-involving sport, or in academic dissertating, and so on. I fully grant that the virtues *actually* associated with simulated environments, sport, dissertating, etc. are not as valuable as those that are at least sometimes *actually* associated with horrors. But the point is that they *conceivably* are. (Again, it’s like how pleasure isn’t *actually* associated with avoidance behavior, but it *conceivably* is.) [Footnote: As an aside, I think conceivability would be a good guide to metaphysical possibility under theism, so I would also argue that these are metaphysically possible under theism. But I don't need to make that stronger claim for my case to go through.]
Second, note that Trent didn’t appeal to heaven in connection with soul-making and defeat. If he did, I would’ve gone into that; but he didn’t. Any full treatment of the issue would certainly require exploring that. But I didn’t promise a full treatment; I promised only to respond to Trent. And just as I was careful not to *fault* Trent for only engaging with Stephen - and just I granted that his response to Stephen may very well succeed, precisely because it was only targeted at Stephen’s version - so too am I not at fault only for fulfilling my sole intention to respond to Trent (and so too, I would argue, is my response to Trent successful for the same reason). And just as Trent’s points by themselves do not address the new and improved version I articulated, so too would my soul-destroying points (in my video) by themselves not address the new and improved version you just articulated. So yes, the soul-destroying objection, by itself, won’t target the heaven and defeat stuff; but it will target *Trent’s* deployment of the soul-building theodicy. If Trent wants to add new machinery about heaven and defeat, so be it; the dialectic will then proceed onto that!
Third, I’m not convinced that an afterlife is an implication of theism - and so, by my lights, this represents an auxiliary hypothesis that decreases theism’s intrinsic probability - but that’s a rabbit hole I won’t go down right now. Would probably take me an essay to flesh out! But briefly: I agree that theism is plausibly falsified by certain horrors we observe if there's no afterlife. But that doesn't mean theism entails an afterlife; it only means that theism (T), *conjoined with our observations O of evil/horrors, entails the existence of an afterlife (A): P(A| T & O) = 1. But that doesn't mean P(A | T) = 1. We could only infer as much if P(O | T) = 1. But, quite evidently, P(O | T) < 1.
Fourth, I do still worry about Sebastian’s point re: predictive power. Prima facie, afterlife and defeat can be appealed to for any amount, kind, or distribution of evil we see; it doesn’t appear (to me) to do anything, then, to raise the probability of the data [the actual amount, kind, and distribution of evil] above what it was prior to invoking heaven and defeat. But I’m more than open to changing my mind on this point, since my area of research/publishing in Phil Rel is (i) cosmological arguments, (ii) ontological arguments, and (iii) models fo God - not the problem of evil! So there may be stuff within the literature that addresses this point of which I’m unaware.
Comment: “Also, the fact that we prevent cancer does not show what you want to show. We're not powerful enough to guarantee people's ultimate well-being which includes redemption/defeat of serious evils along with extended opportunities for virtues like forgiveness, compassion, etc, but God is not limited in such a way. You won't get far by pointing out our limited abilities constrain our duties.”
Speaking for myself, I don’t find this plausible. Even when we *are* powerful enough to secure that, we still prevent tragedies. (More on this anon.)
Comment: “Likewise, we cannot infer merely from our preventing some tragedy that such a tragedy has no outweighing good. There are many reasons we can prevent things with outweighing goods. For instance, we can have certain duties. That is, in virtue of being human persons-we can have certain negative and positive duties to one another. Or we might not have the resources to guarantee someone's net good. Because we're limited, in the relevant ways, to affecting & controlling one another's earthly well-being, that's what our duties will be set too. And if you're tempted to give a Lougheed-style reply (based on "risk" and genuine sacrifice), then that faces challenges too.”
Here’s a point of agreement and concession! I agree that we can’t infer merely from our preventing x that x has no outweighing goods. So I would want to modify what I said at that juncture in the video (and I’ll add the modification to the corrections list in the pinned comment). In particular, I would say that *even when* we don’t have such duties, and *even when* we can secure someone’s net good, we often still prevent the relevant tragedies (or at least view their prevention [or non-occurrence] as the best/most valuable/most desirable outcome, even if their prevention is out of our control), thus plausibly revealing that we don’t regard the relevant goods of, say, free will or virtue cultivation/manifestation as outweighing the relevant tragedy.
Consider cases of supererogatory prevention of tragedy (e.g., doctors staying well overtime to prevent certain tragedies). These are cases without the duty element. And, quite plausibly, many such cases are such that, even if the tragedy were to transpire (rather than being prevented), the relevant supererogatory actor *would* have the resources to secure the patient’s net good. (Given our medical prowess at this time in history, doctors have the wherewithal to secure the patient’s net benefit, after all is said and done, for many medical tragedies.) Even still, doctors under these conditions prevent the relevant tragedies.
Or consider cases where the prevention of tragedy is outside of an agent’s control. These, too, are cases without the duty element. Even when such cases are such that the agent can secure the benefit of the victim of the tragedy, the agent [and victim] will very often still regard it as best that the tragedy never occurred, will have wished that such a thing never occurred, and so on, again plausibly revealing commitment to what I said in the video.
PART 2/2
Comment: “Another thing to note. In order for your Jimmy argument to relevantly connect, you'll need sub-arguments for its underlying contentious assumptions-like God having moral obligations or God having pertinently similar kinds of obligations that parents have. But you do not seem to justify those.”
First, I confess to finding it overwhelmingly plausible that God has obligations. It just seems overwhelmingly plausible to me, for instance, that God would be doing something wrong by creating a world populated solely by infinitely many innocent creatures experiencing nothing but pure agony for infinitely many years (and where God is the one directly inflicting this agony on said creatures). If that isn’t wrong or impermissible for God to do, I lose my grasp of what those terms mean [or else nothing is wrong/impermissible, as in moral nihilism]. And if that’s the case, it seems God has obligations (for, in doing something wrong, one violates an obligation, and so God is bound by at least one obligation - namely, not to create and inflict things in the aforementioned way). There's also a very good recent paper, authored by long time MoR viewer James Reilly [not kidding!], arguing against 'no norms theism' that's relevant here: philarchive.org/archive/REITCF-4
Second, if I recall correctly the point in my video you’re referencing, then at this juncture, I’m simply following Trent in requiring that God have morally justifying reasons for his doings and allowings in the form of outweighing goods. So either having morally justifying reasons in this manner requires that God be bound by moral obligations - in which case, it’s no problem that I assume as much in response, since I’m following Trent’s lead - or it doesn’t require God to be bound by obligations - in which case, I’m not assuming that God is bound by moral obligations, and the problem disappears.
Third, I don’t see the relevance of parental obligations. In mentioning Jimmy, I wasn’t making an argument by analogy from parenthood. I was simply trying to elicit intuitions that the relevant goods accruing to Jimmy, the doctors, and Jimmy’s family/friends - in terms opportunities for virtue cultivation and manifestation, per Trent’s theodicy - do not plausibly justify putting Jimmy’s through living hell [partly because those goods to which Trent appeals don’t seem to outweigh the badness of the tragedy].
Comment: “Problem 2 also does not seem serious. Overcoming cancer or triumphing over trauma like rape is not close to having the same type of value/virtue as completing a dissertation or winning a soccer match. We need very serious types of evils for very serious types of soul-building goods. And it does not appear you can respond by saying, “I was just responding to trent's specific formulation." Since then I will reply in the manner you did to Trent’s response to Steven. It’s a stronger formulation and is what the literature has in mind.”
First, once more, I was only responding to Trent. And I was careful not to fault Trent for not steelmanning (and modifying) Stephen’s case, since that wasn’t his goal; his goal was simply to respond to that case. Likewise, it’s no fault on my end (and no lack of seriousness on my end) for not steelmanning (and modifying) Trent’s case, since that wasn’t my goal; my goal was simply to respond to that case. It’s a legitimate next point in the dialectic to offer a new and improved theodicy or defense; but it’s illegitimate to fault me for not considering that, as it would’ve likewise been illegitimate for me to have faulted Trent.
Second, and returning to a point previously made, I don’t think that the virtues of overcoming horrors like that *in the actual world* are close in value to the virtues gained and manifested in simulations, sports, dissertating, etc. *in the actual world* . But it’s entirely conceivable - to me, at least - that the ‘aretaic laws’ be different. Aretaic laws are descriptions of the connections between one’s circumstances and actions, on the one hand, and which virtues are developed and exercised, on the other hand. Such laws are conceivably different than how they in fact are (in part because our psychologies and psychological dispositions to develop certain traits in response to certain stimuli are conceivably different), much like how the psychophysical laws are conceivably different than how they in fact are. And, as explained earlier, conceivability is all I need to make my case.
Hope all this helps you in your pursuit of truth
♥
BONUS
As a bonus, I recommend checking out another commenter who brought up deontological theodicies -- I offered some very brief thoughts on them, but they're probably relevant here, too. The commenter also offered some really helpful resources to get started, in case you wanna dive into the literature :)
@@MajestyofReason thx!!
10:30 "the intrinsic nature of properties in those truths" - nearly killed me
I don't think it's as disreputable or 'mumbo jumbo' as you might think! More precisely, they focus on *what it is to be* the properties *adverted to* in normative truths. Presumably there are normative truths, like 'it's wrong to torture puppies'; and such truths presumably advert to (make reference to) various properties, like wrongness; and presumably we can legitimately talk about *what it is to be* certain properties. E.g., mathematicians can explore what it is to be cardinally infinite, or what it is to be triangular (e.g., to be a closed plane figure with 3 sides etc.). Once we unpack it, it becomes at least not-facially-absurd and not obviously unintelligible!
@@MajestyofReason From my PoV that's a sentence one can write or say, and there's no need for a theory of occult entities that bear truth and have the relevant properties in a philosophical discourse that states what is *really* being said or *grounds* the discourse.
This is a philosophical problem in philosophical discourse that simply doesn't exist for people who say "it's wrong to torture puppies". This philosophical problem is just another way of talking about things, and one that relies on lots of metaphors and speaking about "entities" like "reasons" and "propositions" in odd ways that we hear philosophers saying like "bearing truth", "being a reason for", "having such and such a property" and "being normative" - as if it were a brick that is bright red, or a ball that is blue and round.
I thought he was transforming into Paul Vanderklay when I heard him say that.
Every could have argument is so unnessasary is it’s incredible
Trent is dealing with the stance on life from Christian perspective and you having a 😢 problem with that isn’t an argument
Love the clarification on the terms such as "obvious", "plausible", "self-evident", etc. 13:46 - 15:00
13:39
To be fair. Woodford doesn't say "it's obvious".
His use of the word "seems" is (or, at least, seems like) an imbedded disclaimer.
Notice:
When I said it seems to be a disclaimer, I wasn't assuming it seems that way to everyone.
I'm just speaking from my perspective.
And isn't that pretty much always what "seems" means?
I'm pretty sure he meant "seem to me" and "seems to some (or many)"; with the implication that it's reasonable for it to seem as such
Good clarification! In some moods, I'm sympathetic to what you say; but in others I've seen people many times not use 'seems' as a disclaimer flagging simply that it seems to the person making the claim that such-and-so. For instance, some moral realists have often said 'moral realism seems true' without using this as a mere report of their personal seemings; instead, some moral realists are claiming that this is *the* common sense view, or *the* intuitive view, or that moral realism is intuitive *full stop* . (In the past, I probably did precisely this, and I've encountered lots of others who do.) So I still think it's valuable to include my cautionary note :)
While I admit it might not be obvious to everyone. ...
I have to wonder if maybe it seems obvious to Religious Fundamentalists too.
They just might consider it obvious; but don't want to admit it.
I can't be sure.
But I have to wonder.
I notice they have not even bothered to create a defense where animal suffering generates some form of spirit-energy that gets used for purposes which are greater.
Although, I can imagine them doing so. "Oh, all the extra suffering that serves no greater good directly ... serves some greater good indirectly. It gets turned into spirit-bricks. And then Jesus uses those to "build the wall"; to protect the residents of Heaven.". He's just making the Mexi ... err... "worldly" creatures pay for the wall.".
@@MajestyofReason That's fair.
Thanks for sharing your further thoughts about it.
37:00 I dislike how all the animations are done in a way that might lead people to have really misleading intuitions, like what the universe as a whole is like at a macro-scale or that a "necessary being" is a sphere of light - even intended metaphorically that's clearly a religious-type depiction.
A visit to the dentist: recently my child had their wisdom teeth removed. To counter the suffering god requires she received local anesthesia and gas. We did not assume the suffering was required.
Every theist should embrace the suffering god wants of them when having their wisdom teeth removed by forgoing anesthesia. If not, you are countering gods will.
Trent’s worldview is based on making naturalistic fallacies. We go against nature everyday but Trent only has issues with some instances of unnatural things
One could argue that the need for wisdom tooth removal is a consequence of adulteration of the human diet from pre-industrial revolution times. Skulls prior to our “advances” in food processing had all wisdom teeth present without space issues, no dental crowding, robust bone structure, and no evidence of dental decay.
Anthropology confirms this is how human skulls developed until the 1800s.
So ultimately, God isn’t requiring the suffering for wisdom teeth, we caused the developmental problems. And we suffer for our own generational actions.
So it was never God’s intent to begin with that we suffer from wisdom teeth. ;)
Source: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Dr. Weston Price, DDS
16:43 Who says he didn't? Have you seen antilopes being calm when they are in jaws of lions. It's like they aren't thinking anything.
First, very often they're instead writhing in clear agony. Second, when they aren't, that's because they're in a state of shock, not because they're actually internally peaceful. The same often happens to rape victims and other human victims of trauma, unfortunately. It doesn't mean their state of mind is actually peaceful.
Ngl, I'm tempted to do a Maverick Christian's rebuttal to Majesty of Reason's rebuttal to Trent Horn's rebuttal of Rationality Rules. 😜
We'll then get an infinite regress of rebuttals upon rebuttals! So we'll have disproved the Kalam in the process... hehe... 😉
@@MajestyofReason These are rebuttals into the future not rebuttals into the past. So it wouldn't disprove kalam as they can keep approaching infinity but never reach it. :)
22:27 I totally disagree that "cancer in children" is in the same category as these other evils. Apologists try to group then all together and then explain some of them as a way of masking the weakness in their theodessy.
100% agree. Under the “greater good” theodicy, all evil and suffering is completely homogenized.
And the only thing they have to back up that defense is skeptical theism, which itself is always a very ad hoc retreat to me.
Edit: fixed the suggestive spelling error lol.
@@FaptainCalcon750 It seems to undermine Christianity itself. If God is just summing up good vs evil, then surely sending the majority to hell means he's failed. If good during life is the goal, it seems God doesn't help Christians and often deliberately "tests" them more.
@@FaptainCalcon750theodussy
Not all evils are on the same level but they are all evil in the end.
@@goldenalt3166God doesn't send anyone to Hell. People send themsleves by removing God from themsleves.
In math we have the term proof by intimidation. It is when someone claims something is "obvious" that isn't obvious trying to insult their intelligence.
26:40 - I think we need to point out that there is a difference between "My model cannot explain something we observe in the world" and "My model predicts the opposite of what we observe in the world". The model of an all-powerful all-loving God, predicts that there will not be gratuitous suffering. This is not simply a gap in our knowledge, it is a contradiction.
i think when we stop someone from doing evil thats a good in itself, triumphing evil is a good thing
i also think that triumphing evil is objectively better than triumphing lesser things in a world with no evil (i dont think that can be changed, it seems to me that triumphing suffering and evil will always be objectively greater than triumphing lesser things and god knows this, even if he changed the psychology of humans)
Excellent video. But, I think it should have been calling: Destroying most criticisms of the argument of evil
(Pausing at 17:17) I think a theist would need to argue that either the gratuitous evil is not really gratuitous... or they need to cede the fact that God willingly made some imperfect system and left the gratuitous evil in on purpose (which puts his benevolence in question).
Both may be true. In the line of Pope, "All nature but art unknown to thee." I'm not sure what we would quantify as sufficiently evil.
I've always considered the case through resonance. A happy family has happy people. An abusive family has unhappy people.
Detachment from God yields suffering, communion with God yields fulfillment. The temporal world is not God and is removed from him--so is the temporal world full of suffering.
Intrinsically, a theist would say that it is a tautology that God created an imperfect world. The world is not God.
@@archie8767 that is a thing. God is the world. The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega. So according to that statement in the bible, everything is god. Even satan.
A person can believe otherwise, but that is just trying to make god fit in a box of their own choice.
@@inajosmood Except no Christian has ever taken that to mean that.
@@archie8767 yeah, I think maybe only some of the more mystic oriented christians, but not sure about that. But no matter what they mean, it's there. Plain and clear.
@@inajosmood It fundamentally conflicts with the Trinity, which is the most fundamental mystery of Christianity. It's incompatible.
Ahhhh…the Disneyland defense! (from Blameless in Abbadon by James Morrow)
I paraphrase: “It’s okay to rape children so long as you take them to Disney later.”
I disagree regarding your point on gratuitous evil around the 6 minute mark. A definition is definitely necessary, otherwise you run into the problem you just did. Even if you are just using the definition of theists to show that they are internally inconsistent, you need that definition. The problem here is that yes theists believe there is evil, but no they do not believe that suffering is evil, rather feelings and emotions are just feedback, they are always good, so it doesn't matter if suffering is gratuitous or not, because it's not evil according to the theists worldview. To the theist, evil is a conscious and intentional bad will, it requires a free will actor.
Suffering is perceived by the consciousness rather than an act of will, it's just information that is a response to what is happening. Let's say that you are an animal and you want to live, suddenly a rock falls on you and you lose one of your limbs and experience immense suffering. That suffering is information that something that you didn't want to happen happened to you, it's good. It would be much more problematic if you didn't notice or worse, if it was pleasant. The rock falling did so without bad will, because it has no freedom, so we can't attribute evil here. There is gratuitous suffering, but it's not evil, and that's why you need the definition...
Has anyone talked or written at length about how Christians ignore that they're not universalists when they bring up the "compensation in the afterlife" theodicy?
A man that weighs 600 lbs with a BMI of 40 would be 8'6" so I imagine he would be in the NBA, until he dies at 24.
Nice response.
I personally don't go as far to say theism is "irrational" - but I think there's something odd/conflicting with the idea that a good God allows 'evil' because it's 'good'.
It seems to me to almost be a kind of conflict of interests.
Like - theists want to say evil is bad, but also good because God has a purpose for it.
There are plenty of arguments on RUclips that prove the impossibility of a Christian God if it is defined as being all three of (1) all-powerful, (2) all-knowing, and (3) all-good.
@@paulthompson9668Name one.
Evil isn't good. But God knows how to make good from evil. You should maybe look at the arguments and see why there is reason for God allowing evil.
@@snokehusk223 Thanks.
That is what I mean by a conflict of interests. Evil isn't good, yet a theist thinks it's good that evil exists because God allows it (for some unknown purpose). Like - God only makes 'good' decisions -> God chooses to allow evil -> so God choosing to allow evil is a 'good' decision.
I don't think there are any reasons for God to allow evil. As above - I don't think the concept of a good God is compatible with allowing evil (at all).
I'm not sure what "God knows how to make good from evil" means. If 'evil' does not have any property of 'goodness' then it doesn't make much sense to me how can one get "good from evil."
@@roger5442 Evil like itself doesn't exist. What exists are evil actions and states. Evil is just a deprivation of good. That deprivation can be tiny or big.
So it isn't good that evil exists but God's decision to allow evil to exist is good because God can make greater good from evil, not from it but from it's effect on other things.
Say, is it good that we humans exist?
For the first objection, I think it fails on multiple counts. Here are some:
How can one speak of an "ought" without presupposing a superior standard over what is. Goodness or badness are judgements and all judgements require both a criteria for judgement and an agent that judges things. To speak of "ought not" is to make the judgement that what is, is inferior to the criteria of "ought", yet if materialism is true, what superior criteria is there to evaluate the is? At best, it would be a relative criteria sourced in the individual. But if the criteria itself is subjective as opposed to objective, why would we claim that the objective is inferior to the subjective? This ought could not be objective because the objective is already actual and so there's no meta-objective criteria that would make any movement of judgement from the subjective superior.
In a similar note, I find the notion of an objective basis for moral judgements absent God to be just incoherent. How can there be a judgement without a judge? An evaluation without an evaluator? It is clear that the subject is a judge and an evaluator, and so we may judge things subjectively, but those judgements, if sourced within the agents do not have a greater scope beyond the subject itself. We may even refer to such subjective judgements as opinions and nothing is lost. To posit an objective "badness" would imply either an objective judgement(which logically requires an objective evaluator) or "badness" to not be an evaluation, but what would it then be? I see this as trying to have one's cake and eat it too. As Sartre said, "The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense." It seems this is a move to suppress God without an expense.
I think it's similar to Joe's note on "obviousness". There's no "obviousness" in abstract, and in the same way there is no "goodness" or "badness" in the abstract. It is always "good/bad" TO someone BASED on a given criteria.
Now, Joe did say that he was not committing himself to defending the truthfulness of this move/view, only that there's an alternative to Trent's, but it still hinges in the alternative actually succeeding, or seem reasonably plausible, and it seems to lack either property. To many, the rejection of God is fatal to ethics, and yes, there will be some, probably most of them secularists, who will try attempt to revitalize ethics without God, but if the attempts are destined to die in the womb, to say that there are many who have attempted, theorized about it is not very helpful. In philosophy, there's a theory for almost any view, and there are schools who push forward similar thoughts and for similar reasons. That there are many secularists who want to argue the lack of need of God is a given, and maybe some attempts are of note and of importance and value, but its value needs to be defended and affirmed in a meaningful sense prior to positing them as a reasonable alternative
Great video, as always, BUT... You say that you think these are honest mistakes on Trent's part but I gotta know, what's your account for how a professor with (*checks notes*) THREE advanced degrees in this stuff keeps making the same arguments as Frank Turek?
I’m more pessimistic about the powers of the human mind… lol
My interactions with deeply honest people with a PhD (sometimes multiple PhD’s) reveals that humans (including me, though I’m working on it…) are just deeply biased, flawed, and confused, and education often doesn’t have much of an impact on that, especially when the education isn’t top notch. So I’m willing to have much more mercy (in my tendentious view: more understanding), when others may not be so willing, haha
@@MajestyofReason Fair enough; I totally respect that.
For what it’s worth, I appreciate that you’re willing to be so charitable with your interlocutors, even when I may not be so willing. Nothing is more annoying than a response video with constant accusations of bad faith. Yeah, they may be arguing in bad faith, but then either don’t respond or set that aside to address the substance of their argument (unless it’s explicitly a video about social epistemology and expert deference or something, in which case knock yourself out talking about motivations and good/bad faith)
@@mf_hume thanks, and know that I always appreciate seeing you in the comments🙂
Here’s another valuable thought. I don’t like to speak of ‘tactics’, but sometimes it’s helpful: being super generous and charitable to one’s opponents can be a very effective tactic for reaching people who are otherwise very sympathetic to that opponent’s position. (It’s one reason I’m much more willing to listen to, say, The Analytic Christian than some other Christian channels.) Through my content, I’m really trying to reach people who disagree with me - in this video, theists especially.🙂
The first video of yours I watched was a response to Trent's video defending Aquinas' first mover arguments. I remember I even edited a transcript of the relevant parts to read several times.
Happy to have served (and continue to serve) your search for truth🥰
Around 1:03:00 Why is "growing" a character important in the first place? Why not just have the required character? If one believes in the existence of a God, the God has their character built-in, but I would assume a theist would not claim that makes that being's character less valuable.
God is perfect, we aren't do we need to grow in our perfection.
@@snokehusk223 Can God create a perfect being?
Apologists could argue that Jesus didnt sin despite having the ability or desire to (obviously controversial amongst christians), but didn't because "he's god" so I think a better example would be Mary since she was canonically born without sin and was still a human.
I think you two have much more to discuss together. As you point out in response to Trent's blitzkrieg of arguments for God, the premises for said arguments are massively contestable. Yes indeed, as are the premises for most arguments. And this is what makes philosophy so fun and interesting!
15:55 how would we detect if god had done that or not?
I was wondering the same thing
Can we see the document you used as a guide? I’ve been in contact with Shafer Landau on an argument I have relating to moral realism. Thanks :)
Sure! docs.google.com/document/d/1Vfg0wThn-LOCLcUmzz2ghZsigzannl133fVrU-stCTA/edit?usp=sharing
@@MajestyofReason thanks :)
@@MajestyofReason love your channel by the way
@MajestyofReason I think there's a big issue with your use of the Frankfurt style case for free will around the 56 minute mark. I think it undermines your response but it can be adapted to further rebut Trent and theistic apologists in general.
The main issue is that free will in this context refers to the "could have chosen otherwise" not "could have acted otherwise". In the Frankfurt case, the person could have still *chosen otherwise*, just not "done otherwise". The case only works when the unknown controlling agent is able to observe the *free choice* being made or if we assume as sort of determinism of the mind, sees the sufficient causal preconditions which mean that the choice the controlling agent does not want is *going to be made*.
Suffice it to say, I don't think the Frankfurt case works as a response here. The problem for Trent and the theistic apologists that rely on the libertarian free will defense is that neither god nor anyone in heaven will be able to even *choose to do* evil, let alone actually *do the evil* - so god by definition has no libertarian free will with respect to morality.
I think the way theistic apologists try to get past this is that they will define free will as 'not having a nature that was determined to make you arrive at any given choice" - and god doesn't have a created nature. At least William Lane Craig will do this and I've heard a few other apologists make the same move. Since god doesn't have a designed nature, he escapes the "lacking free will" category - but I believe that it causes problems because if god has molinistic foreknowledge such that any given created being will "always freely do X in situation Y" it means god created that persons nature so that they would "always freely do X in situation Y" which obliterates any sense of what the word "freely" could possibly mean in that Molinistic framework.
And of course I made the rookie mistake of typing a comment before finishing the video and you largely addressed this. I was not the change I want to see in this world. Sorry Joe!
@@CounterApologist Great minds think alike😉😉😉
Per your critique of Trent’s definition of evil, couldn’t it be the case that your counter example of God not “supposed to be a certain way” doesn’t work because under Trent’s view, God is equivalent with goodness, thus he is the standard for how things ought to be?
The point, though, isn’t that under Trent’s view there can be no standard for how God is supposed to be. The point is that x being created for a purpose is not necessary for x being a way x is supposed to be, which Trent must grant since God is supposed to be such-and-such a way, and yet God isn’t created for a purpose. And hence Trent’s inference from to is a non-sequitur.
@@MajestyofReason Ah, ok i understand. I think I agree with you. Even as a Catholic myself, that’s not the understanding of evil or Goodness I’d go with. That is a helpful criticism, thank you!
@@sneakysnake2330 always happy to see you in the comments!
@@MajestyofReason Thank you!
@@MajestyofReasonTurn those around. So because things are created by a purpose they are suposed to be in a certain way. That does follow.
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
You note something key. You mention something to the effect of a lack of creative imagination from theists on what possible worlds God could bring about that would seem to achieve relevant goods without the downsides of our world. You mention some of these such as if we photosynthesized our energy. I see similar constraints on creative imagination when it comes to similar ideas within Christianity such as the unnecessary nature of Eternal Conscious Torment, or the allowance of the fallen angels to influence our world. Or my favourite, resolving the problem of non- belief by being less stingy shall we say by providing divine Revelation around the planet over time so the Divine Will were more evident.
1:06:38 Boom Roasted Tottenham Fans! COYG! On serious note thanks for the carefully crafted response and helping us viewers to be more informed on these issues and being able to critically assess these arguments. Wishing you a speedy recovery!
Much love❤❤🩹
The problem of evil should rather be called the problem of suffering.
To say that it is evil is to say that it ought not to happen.
But since prescriptions do not aim at representing reality, they do not possess any truth value.
For this reason there are no facts about what is evil, there are only human judgments that declare it to be evil.
You often confuse general and specific cases for theodicies. For example with developing virtues of the doctors. Of course case by case, we would not want it to be necessary but in general it is good for the doctors to learn these skills.
Take the case of educating someone in each instance you would want them to know the subject but that is not the same as saying they should in general always be protected from being wrong (eg. Safe spaces). It is often the lack of these safeguards that allows one to progress.
To rephrase the point made in the section around 34:00:
The argument does not necessarily state that an all powerful being cannot remedy gratuitous evil.
I think a better description would be, that a supposedly infinitely-powerful-knowing-and-loving being could, per definition, find a solution that is arbitrarily complex in such a way to completely remove any of those instances of unnecessary evil. (if simplicity is another goal, the entity would still be accountable for the tradeoff between complexity and resulting evil)
The argument does not target the entity as being impossible ... rather the created solution (reality) is deemed to be improvable in such a way, that a god as described would never be tempted to create it in exactly that manner.
God isn't accountable for anything he didn't do. Just like we aren't. When there is a group of people that want to steal one persons money and you do nothing you aren't accountable for those actions, the thieves are. If you decide to help that is good. But what if your helping results in those thieves not getting the money which they need for a surgery of one of theirs children which will die without it. You wouldn't again be accountable but it sure would be better that they just took some money right?
You could say God can stop both those instances but than a million new could result from that and should God solve them all? If yes God would be basically interfering with our lives all the time which would mean we are no longer free.
Did you think that this world could be even worse but isn't because God to some extent stops bigger evils from ever happening.
I don't knoe if you heared about Taiping rebellion where 50 million people died and nobody even knows about it. What if those situations were a daily occurence but aren't because of God.
When you look at the ancient world and modern one in which is there less evil. In todays but why. Because of Christianity which is also God's work.
@@snokehusk223 ok lets run with this. I am a computer scientist. Lets suppose I have infinite ressources in creating an artificial intelligence, and also the ability to know what my resulting AI agent would do (that seems to me to be a subset of all knowing and all powerful sufficient for this context). Lets call the agent 'Dave'.
Am I responsible for actions of Dave if I:
1. Have the sole ability to create Dave, and I am able to choose the way I create it.
2. Have the ability to exactly know what my agent will do, including all consequences.
3. I have the option to simply not create Dave at all
@@freethought8517
Well I would say no. Why do I say that. It's because Dave is just a tool. Dave doesn't do anything. Other people use Dave for their actions.
Just like Kalashnikov isn't responsible for creating AK-47 even though he knew people will use it to kill.
Even though those working on nuclear bomb aren't responsible although they knew what it will be used for.
And concerning Dave many good things will come from him also.
Just like we build cars for people to drive in although we know someone will die in them etc.
We aren't responsible for actions of others.
Or did you maybe regard Dave as something of Skynet? A real AI. If yes than I would argue such Dave couldn't exist.
@@snokehusk223 in this case it is a real AI, thx for clarifying. It can exist in this case as per definition I would be able to do so.
@@freethought8517
Alright let's say hypotethically real AI would be able to exist. That would just mean he is a human, he would be rational, he would be emotional just made from electronics instead of organic matter.
So you think that it would be better for a human to not exist rather than for them to exist. Maybe because he would do bad things like Hitler let's say. But everybody is capable of bad things and good things. So why not let a person experience life for themselves. If they decide to do them for really bad things they will face consequences and if not they will be rewarded.
So when you take into question what will that person do you will need to pick who you want to create and who not to. But when you take one person out of picture due to butterfly effect that world will change and another person might become really bad. So to ensure no bad people exist you would best not create any but we know it is good to exist.
So if you would create just one Dave in this current society and you know he will do really bad things than sure don't make him, that isn't bad because you have no obligation to make him exist, but even if you do you aren't responsible because Dave in the end did those bad things. It isn't like you are an assassin raising a baby to be a killer.
Why would a benevolent God not choose people that would go to heaven or only choose the good or that will only be good?
if one says then we are not free then why in heaven one has free will and everything is blissful , why cannot obtain on earth either god is malevolent or doesn't exist and by the way causality , time , gravity and colors are illusions.
While I agree with Joe that TH makes a huge amount of silly mistakes (I'm an utter layman, yet even I knew what WLC meant about his view of infinities, in a recent video, yet TH misrepresented WLC in his response video and WLC had to correct him, in his own recent podcast), I also disagree with Joe in his assumption that everyone approaches the subject of belief in God, in an objective, truthful and above all, honest, manner.
That's very naive of Joe.
Thanks for the comment! I don't recall saying that; in fact, that claim seems obviously false to me, so I'm quite skeptical that I said that anywhere. I'm more inclined to think you've (unintentionally) misinterpreted something I said.
I hope you recover well from your surgery ⚽
Good luck on your recovery from surgery. Hope you fully recover and can keep playing soccer for years.
❤❤
Hey, you immediately made the same point that I made in Trent's comments. Nothing turns on what my namesake Stephen thinks evil is, but on what Trent thinks evil is.
-----
I still think you're as much as athiest, and for the same reasons and to the same extent, as I am.
I don't know for sure either, does anyone? But we're both religiously unaffiliated.
37:51 lol. This impression of Oppy was great. "Sooo.."
16:00 onward, one could argue that such a thing exists, it's actually called Syncope, and it has various subcategories, NS, VS, etc.
Where you decide at which point it should happen is totally subjective, but since such a trigger exists to stop the pain from torturing the nervous system and the conscious mind, then your point doesn't stand. Unless I missed something from your rebuttal?
Is Trent a Thomist? He seems to dip his toes in but I don’t know if hes taken a stand. Its also contentious within the church.
He doesn’t tow the ‘Thomist party line’ on every issue - eg, he seems very open to animal afterlife, which Thomism traditionally rejects - but he does accept much of the core of Thomism, eg, act and potency, substance metaphysics, essences and acts of existence, God being “Being Itself”, etc.
I had no idea Thomism traditionally denied an animal afterlife. How depressing 😢
@@logans.butler285very
Apologists treat evils as tools with which gods achieve greater goods.
Humans do this, but the entire reason humans must use evil as tools to accomplish greater goods is because we are not gods.
Since when do gods need tools?
RE: Stephen's omission of "necessariness" from his claim that gratuitous evils can't be justified by the goods they produce. I believe Stephen might say that the necessariness clause is contained in how he is using "gratuitous" and that he does probably understand the argument in the same way that you do. In other words, a "gratuitous evil" is exactly one that imposes more pain/suffering/etc. than is strictly necessary for the production of any set of goods.
Joe please debate someone. Debates are very controversial and interesting.
Great fun indeed and the "orphans" counterexample at 4.40 is a delight.
Hey Joe, do you find other forms of theism(polytheism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, etc) to be as rational as Abrahamic theism?
All other forms of theism that aren’t one of the big three monotheist religions seem to be dismissed and hand waved within western academia as not to be taken seriously from a philosophical perspective.
And that’s a real shame, as I think they have a lot going for them.
I think that it is a mistake to judge God based on any given religion. Any religion's failure to understand God is not God's fault.
Its all fake
@@todradmaker4297there is no god duh
You and Stephen are awesome, though I feel you serve different audiences (with some overlap). Stephen goes 2-3 levels into the details while you go to 11.
I think JL mackie and error theorist like him would agree with Trent on God is required for morality
For them concepts of stance independent moral facts are unintelligible and queer
I don’t think the strong intuition that ‘torturing children is wrong’ support moral realism , we need something like torturing children has the objective property of wrongness
At least for me I have strong intuition that my moral intuition is something like taste preferences (ie in the eye of the beholder)
All my best friends justify slavery. Trent is such a good dude.
I just love useless rationality in a vacuum. I usually eat it with a nice chianti and fava beans.
a horrible film but a good analogy
In the Non-human Animal Suffering section it seems to me that you can even appeal to aspects of the theist (or at least Christian) worldview by saying that God created a world without suffering, according to their beliefs, and that world was 'perfect'. No need for evils to generate 'greater goods'. That world either CANNOT have those 'greater goods' but it is still superior since it was perfect, or it CAN have those 'greater goods' without necessitating the evils.
So the whole argument about gratuitous evils not existing (or actually being necessary evils) crumbles from within the Christian worldview.
29:22 "the good of free will, or virtue: they explain many human evils."
-- If you don't have a framework of free will that makes sense, you don't have an explanation.
Are you serious? Did you read your comment? Does a normal person not know what free will is?
You do what you decide. There's the framework for you if you didn't know for your whole life.
@@snokehusk223 There are many interpretations of how the details might work, each with problems much debated by theologians, philosophers and sometimes neuroscientists.
e.g. When you 'do what you decide', could you have decided otherwise?
It might seem like a clear 'yes' to a 'normal person', but that doesn't play out so well when rigorous thinkers look at it.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke
What you are implying I quess is that our actions are restricted due to outside factors and thus we can't choose more than one action at certain times.
But free will doesn't mean you have absolute decision on your actions. For example if you are drunk and tired it is clear you won't come with the solution to cancer. But you will do what you can like stop drinking and go to sleep or continue drinking. You have a choice on what to do and it's up to you.
@@snokehusk223 Is your choice determined or undetermined? Is it explained or unexplained? Neither will do the sort of explanatory legwork desired here. The former kicks the can down the road and means free will isn't the explanation, just a domino. The latter also means free will cannot serve as an explanation. If it's undetermined, you didn't determine it and aren't responsible for it. If it's unexplained, it's just vacuous when offered as an explanation itself.
There are many more issues with free will. Most materialists will accept a 'compatibilist' version of free will, where whatever mechanism we are experiencing when making choices we call it free will, no matter how 'free' it really is. The dualist side complains 'that's not what we mean by free will!'.
@@HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke Your choices are determined by you. Although they are influenced by outer factors. If you decide to eat strawberry ice cream or vanilla it is your choice but that choice will be influenced by what you like more.
Care to explain how it isn't your choice?
Someone imitating Joe would be them imitating a bunch of philosophers.
Waiting for trent horn vs Joe Schmid
If the psychophysical laws being altered by God for animals would produce no change in “3rd person” observations, than how do we know that it hasn’t already happened?
An excellent question! This is part of the broader problem of other minds. After all, it's entirely conceivable that no one else apart from me has *any* mental states while keeping all their '3rd person facts' exactly the same. So, then, I think some approaches to the problem of other minds can be employed here in response to your point: e.g., phenomenal conservatism, arguments by analogy and best explanation, etc.
I will say that, if the theist grants that God has done precisely the sorts of psychophysical alterations that I mention in the video, then that theist will circumvent my point there. They'll still succumb to the problem of alternative evolutionary histories containing just photosynthesizing/chemosynthesising/aerosynthesizing animals (and non-animals), but they'll have avoided the former point!
When are you going to have a discussion with William Lane Craig. (I actually want to see you lose the discussion as cosmic skeptic did😅, i really do). Thanks for the work friend.
15:00 I strongly agree with you about words like obvious and plausible. To reiterate, various facts or conclusions may be obvious (etc.) to one person but not another.
Nevertheless, one might reflect on that situation and ponder if there might be a use for these words anyway that’s not totally relative.
If you consider mathematical proofs as a simple example domain, you can have theorems and proofs that require few steps and few notions to state and prove respectively, and then you have some that require many notions and many steps to prove. (There are other considerations as well.)
Seasoned mathematicians might train their intuitions to see abstract patterns in the structure of proofs and so on, so things might be obvious to them that aren’t obvious to a freshman or a five year old.
Still, there are clearly theorems and proofs that predictably in almost every instance takes people more work than others.
Exactly where to put the lines between nonobvious and obvious might be a useless discussion, but such a gradation does seem to have some amount of predictability in modeling some actual feature about theorems and proofs.
Alright. Not everything in philosophy is like a mathematical theorem or a proof. There are vaguer things like intuitions that seem to just either be there or not and so on. In such cases maybe obviousness isn’t a useful notion at all. It’s just too ambiguous.
But another point is that words like obvious fit well in rhetorics. You can phrase sentences well, and sometimes stating that something is obvious is a way of socially insisting very much that something is true. Being persuasive is not unimportant. If you rhetoric makes you sound persuasive or non persuasive independently of whether the content of the claims is actually true or false, then that’s a problem. But that problem is probably there anyway, since we are so flawed in so many ways as reasoners.
Under theoretical scrutiny, I don’t think we should let arguments hinge on being obvious.
But it isn’t unreasonable that something you want to argue is obvious in a sense that saying so actually describes something about the content of the ideas.
Saying gratuitous evil is obvious isn’t actually that much of a stretch.
If someone don’t find it obvious, saying it’s obvious isn’t an interesting argument.
But if you say it’s obvious, you might be signaling that, it’s obvious in the sense that if you go out and look at the world, you’ll find many things that at least look like gratuitous evil very much, similarly to how it’s obvious you’ll find plenty of straws of grass, if you take a magnifying glass and take a close look at your lawn.
It’s an informed type of claim, putting the weight of your judgement and expertise behind it. Of course maybe you could be wrong or mistaken.
But I think I’m such cases such words have a role to play.
Hi Joe -- can you elaborate on the difference between saying that "Theism is rational" vs. "Theists can be rational in their beliefs"? What does it mean to say that a worldview (e.g. Theism) is rational, when we can construct scenarios for any theory in which someone can hold it rationally? It is trivially easy to conceive of scenario in which it's rational to believe that Kim Jong Un has never defecated in his life -- millions of north koreans are subjected to such a scenario. We probably wouldn't say that such a view itself is "rational," however.
To call a view itself rational, maybe we mean something like the following: "Someone well-versed in a relatively large percentage of the best reasons for and against the view can rationally hold the view."
If I were to guess what Joe would say: “rational” is based upon a persons knowledge. If someone’s foundational knowledge is different then ours, it could be rational for them to make different conclusions.
The challenge we atheists face is to break down those foundational concepts that drive theists. Many of these are instilled at a young age to prevent questioning them.
@@Nick-Nasti interesting what you say. What I find so interesting about a person like Trend is that he seems so open and interested, but in fact is only holding strong onto his belief. He has the big pro of being very well mannered and well spoken. Het is also very smart, but uses that smartness only to justify his world views, not to scrutinize them.
One thought on the point about atheists answering with "I don't know" when asked about stuff like the origins of the universe and claiming that christians do the same, when they saying they don't know why and who this specific evil serves a higher purpose. As long as you do not claim to know something you don't have to prove your knowledge, but christians claim to know that god is the ultimate good and all he does and lets happen is to support this ultimate good, so they really have to answer who any evil in the world serves a higher purpose, cause how else can they claim to know, that god is allgood?
Sorry for my english, I am not a native speaker.
We can't support God. Higher purpose isn't for God but us. I think you mixed some thoughts.
This is the point of conflict for Catholicism / Christianity, there could be a god that is all loving but is not all powerful so even if we want´s evil to not exist he can´t prevent it.
Poor Trent. He lives for the day when he will posts a video without Joe making a rebutted video.
I mean couldn't the evil God argument's proponent just assert the opposite. meaning the good doesn't really exist and is just the absence of evil
Are there multiple ways to act perfectly?
I dont think so, at least not for any actions which can affect moral patients in any way. Any change in the act which affects moral patients surely affects their experience, at least slightly, which can either be for better, worse, or neutral.
There would be some global maximum (think of Sam Harris' moral landscape), where any adjustment would be a reduction in moral value.
There could be some morally neutral changes, like the arrangement of distant stars, but even those affect human interactions (think astrology).
I dont think an omni-god could have free will.
Trent should embrace the evil, since God admits creating it. Isaiah 45:7. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Couldn’t you just say that good isn’t a thing, merely a privation, and avoid Horns objection to the evil god challenge?
Psychophysical laws are ad hoc though! Yes, God 'could' do that, but it doesn't work in practice, when a animal hurts itself, it would simply be be ad hoc to have in some events animals feel pain to avoid continuing in that state e.g. running from a preditor or moving away from danger, and another pain where God is somehow obligated to make the state of affairs so that the animal doesn't feel pain or is in bliss. For complex animals like us, require a large biodiversity to sustain them.
Why would it be ad hoc? In the first case the animal is experiencing pain because of some greater good - avoiding tissue damage, whereas the other cases would be those that would be gratuitous - the pain doesn't serve any necessary purpose. You muse about whether "God is somehow obligated" as if to imply he lacks responsibility in the matter, when by definition he cannot allow any gratuitous suffering or evil, so one way or another, God must make it the case that any animal suffering whatsover is absolutely necessary.
@Jockito because if God has to intervene to that extent, it would be absurd, pain receptors are a greater good, they promote self-preservation to the individual, it prevents unintentional harming and the need to flee in the sight of danger. Any mechanism that would preserve that and at an instant suddenly have to change to give the individual bliss or no pain is ad hoc. God is obligated to create a biosphere that sustains life, it does that.
@@danbarnes8905 you're assuming God couldn't have changed the laws of nature such that pain is only experienced non-gratuiously such that no constant intervention would be necessary. Why limit God with such an assumption? God needn't step in and intervene once he has set up the laws and parameters that would make it the case that gratuitous suffering wouldn't be experienced. If you can imagine no gratuitous suffering in heaven you should be able to imagine it here.
I disagree that God is obligated to create a biosphere that sustains life, why is he obligated to do that? What part of his nature would it contradict if God decided not to create anything at all. On the other hand, making creatures readily be able to experience extreme suffering without any sufficient purpose would contradict his nature. Emotional torment and the level of extreme pain experienced by creatures is not fundamental to sustaining life - unless you think it's also required in heaven?
Regarding danger, this could have been an innate trait that's part of our biology and genetics, we needn't experience extreme agony and anguish in order to know what is dangerous - in the same way that I needn't have to see something grotesque and horrific in order to see beauty. Beauty stands on it's own. Similarly, extreme anguish and suffering is not required to preserve ones life.
@Jockito 1. That misses the point, any laws that would be required would make the world inexplicable, how could it operate successfully without intervention all the time, e.g, a zebra who gets caught by a lion,yet may escape, but given a non-intervention route, the zebra would stop feeling pain and would try to flee.
2. I never said God is obligated too create a biosphere, but if you want a complex biosphere capable of sustaining life, you need something like what we have now.
3. That is ad hoc,
@@danbarnes8905 why would a lion need or want to eat a zebra in the first place if, for example, it's a herbivore? You seem stuck in the idea that the world as we know it had to be the way it is and there's no other way God could feasibly have made it. Perhaps you think heaven is infeasible too.
13:55 Don't say something is obvious in general as it's always subjective.
15:30 "First, that's just clearly false" lol TBH he did clarify that it's by his lights but still made me laugh initially.
I was careful to add that! But yes, that may warrant a chuckle :)
Loved the video wouldnt expect anyless from my favorite philosophy channel.
So it's rational to believe is the supernatural? If I fear a supernatural being then I'm being rational? There's no such thing as an irrational fear?
It's very rational to believe in an invisible friend/being that can communicate telepathically and created the universe. There are plenty evidence for its existence, like Him being born of a virgin.
When the mind beliefs from deep inside that survival and ones eternal fate is depended on this 'friends' good grace, then everything else morphs to kind of fit accordingly. From the colored and selected information available, and from the deepest imaginable need to hold every thing in place at the price of your soul, there is a rationality in theïsm. But it still isn't connected to actual reality.
“The price of heaven” is quite a disturbing thing to hear.
I want to disagree right off the bat, I think it's a bit irresponsible to run the problem of evil without defining your terms, such as the term evil. The way I see it, you could define this term into distinct ways which creates two distinct arguments: the problem of suffering, and the problem of sin. Why do either of these things exist if God is all-powerful all good and all loving? The problem of sin is necessarily an internal critique of Christianity, but the problem of suffering need not be, but in either case, it has been important to define what we mean by evil.
Evil just means "I really don't like it."
I had the same objection to Stephen that Trent initially offered. I agree with you that the existence of gratuitous evil is a problem for moral Theism, but to me that makes it a very week argument precisely because it's not my problem (as an Atheist). I don't believe that either gratuitous evil or God exists, so I think Stephen needs to justify the former as much as Trent does. Your section on evolution highlighted this especially. Agreed, God didn't need to create evolutionary suffering. Turn that around on the Atheist: Did nature "need" to create evolutionary suffering? If you believe in natural selection, it kinda seems like, yeah it did need to. After all we evolved from non sentient organisms to one that can experience suffering. Suffering therefore must be more evolutionary advantageous. So it doesn't make any sense to me to count it as a gratuitous evil.
The argument is that the Christian god of ultimate goodness, power and knowledge does not reflect the world we see. God could be any two, but not all three.
@Nick-Nasti I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like you are describing the basic Problem of Evil. I'm saying that this begs the question by assuming that there is a counterfactual to God's attributes that needs accounting for. If there is Evil then there presents a challenge to God's Goodness, since God can't be both Good and Evil at the same time (Ignoring the notion of an Omnipotence that allows for God to be contradictory). If God is Good, then Evil is a challenge to some other attribute of God, eg., Omnipotence- God lacks the power to prevent Evil. And so on. The problem is that Evil is the only counterfactual to God being presented. As we've established it's only counterfactual to Goodness. In other words we haven't presented similar claims to God's other attributes that require thier own explanations. Evil on it's own doesn't challenge God's omnipotence- he can be Evil and Omnipotent. You see the circular reasoning here? We start off assuming God is Good, Omnipotent and Omniscient. Why are we assuming that, and then why are we bringing in a specific challenge to only one of those? If we think God is responsible for Evil we shouldn't be assuming his Goodness in the first place, his other attributes are irrelevant. If we are assuming his other attributes, then we might as well just assume his Goodness.
@@JebeckyGranjola We said the same thing except I was more concise. A god could be omnipotent, omnigood or omniscienent (only two of these at most), but not all three based upon the world we see.
@Nick-Nasti I don't agree. My point wasn't very clear, but I dispute that from the problem of Evil we can conclude that God could be 2 of those things. I think we can't conclude that he actually is any of them, or none. "From the world we see" we have no knowledge of what God knows , so we can't say he is or isn't omniscient. We don't know what all possible things there could ever be so we can't say whether he is or isn't omnipotent. And since the whole point of the excercise is to determine if God is Good, then we can't say God is Good or Evil. These are three arbitrary categories we're prescribing to God, just to try to refute at least one of them. If we simply reject any of these out of hand, then there is no need to try to resolve them.