If God must be omniscient, God doesn't exist
this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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While obviously unsatisfying the resolution to the Epicurean paradox is that evil serves a good purpose that is unknown to us but known to God.
Like a child screaming when a cut is disinfected by a parent. The pain is incomprehensible to a small child. So we too are "small spiritual children", and the grotesque pain of the world serves as some sort of refining process that is incomprehensible to us.
Or so the thinking goes..
Disagree - that implies God is all knowing and all good, but not all powerful. If he was all powerful, he wouldn't need to resort to using evil at all, even it's just a tool to accomplish good.
If he was all three, the child wouldn't be cut in the first place.
That very much depends on what "good" is
We can't come to the debate with our Western humanist ideas as assumptions as that's very much begging the question. We are bound to conclude god is a contradiction if we start with a value hierarchy that's independent of god. Because that is, out the gate, inconsistent with what god even claims to be.
"god" is not just a cosmic dictator in a temporal position of great power (and therefore judged the way we judge a boss). The theological claim is that god defines reality itself. And must therefore necessarily be at the root of value hierarchies. "Goodness" in that view really is defined as "gods will and purposes" and nothing else. As to take any other view first necessitates conceiving of an existence independent of god, which necessarily involves setting oneself up as an independent judge of values and sets one on a course to conclude what one has assumed.
Hypothetically then, if one enters into that "god" reality, then the concept that evil is used to achieve the greatest good (and this is not capricious or wasteful but rather ideal) becomes consistent.
As you say, one can conceive that infinite power would surely find a way to avoid pain, but that assumes that pain does not, in some way, achieve the goodness of god's greater will
And that is Epicurus' assumption- that the greatest good is achieved in minimising pain. Whereas the theological view is that there may be something integral and fundamental in reality itself (that is, god's being) wherein the suffering of pain is necessary in order for us to achieve the greatest end according to god's purposes. Be that transformed into a "child of god" or made more similar to god or have one's soul "refined" in some sense ready for a future existence.
That's a solid assumption though: the claims that define 'god' come from the religion, not from the supposed being itself; it isn't necessary to speculate at the possibility of some theological grand plan that isn't established by the religion's own lore. Choosing to unnecessarily make someone suffer / experience pain is pretty core to the concept of evil. If it's integral to reality or some shit, then the being that made that reality either doesn't care (not all good) or it's unable to whip up an alternative (not all powerful). Every single attempt to explain away the Epicurian paradox just moves the goalposts from the point currently in the spotlight in a way that opens up one of the other two.
You have again assumed that care for the individual trumps anything else and then tried to add 'god' to that worldwide and then concluded with the contradiction that you assumed in the first place
The god of Abrahamic religions does not care about individuals above all else and never says that it does. It cares about its own glory because it is the only uncorrupted being. As a part of magnifying that glory it "loves" the world, but that is very much on its own terms and definitions.
Pain is presented as a necessary consequence of god being good and - crucially - god is the only possible source of the definition of "good" (in that worldview), everything else, your own independent common sense included, is corrupted
All this causes an inward revulsion obviously, I'm just trying to present the alternative train of thought as clearly as possible
Does god not have the power to care for both?
You're doing the goalpost thing.
I'm not sure how that's moving goalposts. The two issues seem fundamentally connected.
I don't think it's an issue of capability, god is supposed to be capable of all things, pain free world included. It's a question more of will.
God could have willed the world another way, or not at all, and still have been completely satisfied. But he has chosen this way because it's his will and god tells us it's good. If he regards his will as good, why would he change it to another?
That's what I mean by moving the goalposts. You just shifted it to support all-knowing and all-powerful by unchecking all-good. If god could have willed our world another way and chose not to, he created and continues to facilitate evil, and is thus malevolent.
I understand what you're saying, but respectively I didn't uncheck the "all good" box. I pointed out that there are two definitions of "good" in play and so the statement "god is all good" is meaningless without further inspection.
If we use god's definition of good then the "all good" remains checked because god gets to define goodness itself and whether or not he wants pain to be necessary to achieve good.
On the other hand if we use our sense of good, then the question is begged because it establishes a hierarchy of values that does not have god at the top and then concludes god is a contradiction. But this is inevitable from our assumptions that there is such a thing as an infinite moral authority yet there is also our moral authority which is better.
In short, I think the Epicurean statement is a pithy way of saying god fails our human standards (which is true, by the way). But then religion doesn't claim god follows our human standards in the first place, so it all seems a bit pedestrian.
Redefining 'good' to whatever it is you speculate may be cooking in Zeus's noggin isn't going to dodge the Epicurian paradox, it just changes it to god can't be all three of 1) all-powerful, 2) all-knowing, 3) all-whatever-the-fuck-word-god-chooses-to-use-to-label-the-concept-of-the-thing-we-call-'good'.
That's like arguing that the thing you're looking at right now isn't a screen, because maybe god calls it a chipmunk instead.
This isn't about labels, but the substance of the thing itself
god can be "all good" if the definition is different to the one you or Epicurus is using.
To restate what I said above, all Epicurus is really saying is "god can't be all powerful, all knowing and fully good according to Epicurus' definition of good."
For the Epicurean paradox to work one has to assume that his definition of good is both correct and universal. That's all I'm pointing out.
I'm not trying to needlessly spilt hairs; abrahamic religions are quite up front that god's idea of goodness is different to 'human goodness'.
So whether or not the statement makes sense depends entirely on whose concept of goodness you assume at the outset.