Benevolence and Conflict

Hi, Stile. Again, you are defining free will in terms of outcomes.What action or ability of yours could god not restrict in the name of saving a child’s life?
If god is allowed to prevent any action that may lead to a child’s death, he is allowed to prevent any action, isn’t he?So, how does free will remain in this no-child-murder scenario?Also, don’t lose sight of my original argument: without free will, there is nobody to benefit from god’s actions except god himself. Thus, god must allow free will (and thus, conflict and other bad things), or he cannot be benevolent.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Nothing. No. He is only allowed to prevent those actions that lead to an innocent child's death.There are an infinite number of actions that do not lead to an innocent child's death. I would wager (can't say for sure...) that all the actions I've taken in my life have not lead to an innocent child's death.Are you saying I don't have free will? Because God isn't restricting ALL actions. Only a select few. We still certainly have free will as we always have (at least, my life wouldn't be any different). I agree that without free will there is nobody to benefit from God's actions.I am not saying that free will is removed. Only a few select, specific, very minute number of actions. Free will, for the most part, is still very much present. Plenty of other "bad" things, like, say... raping a girl, are still very much allowed under free will.

Hi, Stile. Will you at least agree that there are an infinite number of actions that could lead to an innocent child's death?For instance, can't drinking alcohol lead to a child's death?
Can't pushing a playground swing lead to a child's death?
Can't turning the steering wheel of a car lead to a child's death?
Can't making enchiladas lead to a child's death?
Can't painting a fence lead to a child's death?
Can’t spreading a blanket lead to a child’s death?These are the kinds of things that god would have to be able to restrict in order to prevent the death of innocent children.If god is able to prevent these things in the cases where a child dies from them, what mechanism prevents god from doing it in other cases?Without such a mechanism, we’re all slaves to god’s morality. There is no such thing as partial autonomy.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with my point. As seen below: Yes, it can.
But God wouldn't be preventing ALL actions that invlove drinking alcohol.
God would only be preventing those actions that invlove drinking alcohol that lead to a child's death.
There are an infinite number of actions that involve drinking alcohol that do not lead to a child's death. God would not prevent any of those. Yes, it can.
But God wouldn't be preventing ALL actions that invlove playground swings.
God would only be preventing those actions that invlove playground swings that lead to a child's death.
There are an infinite number of actions that involve playground swings that do not lead to a child's death. God would not prevent any of those.... Yes, it can.
But God wouldn't be preventing ALL actions that invlove spreading a blanket.
God would only be preventing those actions that invlove spreading a blanket that lead to a child's death.
There are an infinite number of actions that involve spreading a blanket that do not lead to a child's death. God would not prevent any of those. No, they're not. God would only have to prevent them if they lead to the death of an innocent child.But... forget all that. I can use an even simpler example to show my point.Do you agree that there is some virus out there (I don't care to look one up) that harms (possibly kills) innocent children and has no other purpose then to spread itself by the harming of innocent children?So... an omnipotent, absolutely benevolent God would be able to create a universe in which such a virus does not exist. But we do have such viruses existing in our universe. Therefore:1. God is not omnipotent.2. God is not absolutely benevolent in the sense that He wants this virus to exist over allowing innocent children to be harmed.3. God does not exist.We don't even have to get into free will.

4. Causing children to die is not always a sign of malevolence.

True. It is quite possible that God is causing many "evil-seeming" things in order for some "greater-good" that we (I?) do not know about.However, my inability to find the perfect analogy not withstanding... it gets a bit beyond coincidence with all the "very bad", "bad" and "kinda bad" things that happen in this world to keep telling oneself that "it's all some master plan for some really good unknown stuff."Besides, there must be some "only slightly bad" thing that is pretty close to neutral anyway that could certainly be removed by an "omnipotent, absolutely benevolent" God, without affecting the rest of existence. Identifying such a thing would then leave the 3 conclusions I'm proposing.For example:One day I found some extremely gross belly button lint in my belly button.Surely an omnipotent, absolutely benevolent God could have prevented such a thing? An omnipotent God wouldn't be "too busy," would He? An absolutely benevolent God "just wouldn't care," would He?I am merely attempting to point out how immature and naive the idea of "omnipotence" and "absolutely benevolent" actually are.If there is a God, I'm sure He's:1. Very powerful, being able to do most of the things attributed to an "omnipotent God" anyway.
2. Extremely benevolent... wanting things to be the best for everyone as much as possible.But that's a far cry from being 100% "omnipotent" and also 100% "absolutely benevolent."I just think it's pretty immature to think that there are "no restrictions" on God. There are restrictions on everything that exists. It's one thing to use our imaginations and think of a fairytale-land where He-Man can lift anything he wants. It's quite another to play that game in reality.

True - I prefer the non-perfect Hebrew god that seems to be struggling to understand humanity as much as humanity is struggling to understand him. The God that does sometimes muck about with freewill for the greater good (such as Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery), the god that engages in collective punishments (presumably everybody is partially responsible for the sins of the nation and so everybody should be punished), and even distributing them over generations or deferring them with the ever present promise of 'if the nation/tribe repents I'll stop the punishment'.And besides - he was the kind of God that welcomed a good argument (see Moses and Job).He was a genocidal maniac at times, but at least he was something of an anti-hero. Who wants the read about the Master of the Universe when you can have the Dark Avenger?Erm, anyway the topic. Erm. No sorry that's all I got right now. Oh! Where did this omnibenevolent God come from anyway? I wouldn't be surprised if he was a Greek strawman that everybody just went along with. God is just and merciful - but he doesn't have to make your life comfortable. Erm, no. I'm done - I can't speak to the topic.

I don't understand this.Do you not agree that there are people alive right now, with varying levels of intelligence, that have varying levels of autonomy?We have (for a superficial scale, sorry if this offends anyone):1 - Hospitalized "vegetables"
2 - Those with "special needs" or disabilities
3 - Those with "learning disorders"
4 - "Normal" people
5 - Advanced learners
6 - GeniusesEach different group of people has very obviously different levels of:-autonomy
-abilities
-intelligenceThey are absolutely able to choose between more or less possible actions depending on which group they belong.So... if varying levels of autonomy exist right now:1 - What makes you think that even our "Geniuses" are at the "top" of the autonomy (or free will) scale?
2 - Why can't God make restrictions on certain areas of people's autonomy and still keep free will around in some capacity?It may be difficult, because of current levels of technology, to exactly specify what is the driving mechanism for these varying levels of autonomy... but they are certainly present, and certainly based in physical reality (most likely the brain).

Hi, Stile. It has everything to do with your point. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I don't know what you're saying. All you have done so far is ignore the argument I'm making in favor of repeating the one you made in your last post.You haven't shown that the ability to override free will for the sake of a child's life is any different from the ability to override free will for the sake of any other cause. Your argument has just been an attempt to remove something "bad" on the assumption that there is no tradeoff.----- I could go into a whole discussion about how free will inevitably leads to evolution, and evolution leads to viruses, but this would only derail the point of my thread.My topic is explicitly about conflicts. While I would personally include evolutionary arms races as conflicts, I prefer to focus on human conflicts because I don't want to get distracted by an argument over whether or not viruses and bacteria have free will.I could also go on about how allowing more babies to survive could also be considered non-benevolent because it would create more conflicts with animals and plants, who are being run from their homes to make room for all of these babies, but I don't want to have to defend all my radical green beliefs on top of everything else, so let's restrict the thread to discussing human conflicts.-----Let me try this again another way.My argument on this thread included the observation that there is very little widespread agreement on what constitutes "good" and what constitutes "bad." This is the fundamental cause of conflict, and the inevitable side effect of having multiple, independent entities.If god were to impose any standard of "good" or "bad" upon us, thereby removing our independence, he would override our free will and make us little more than Lego pirates in his play room.I then reasoned that, since the owner is the only beneficiary of the services rendered to a toy, a universe wherein god determines beforehand what his creations believe cannot be made for the benefit of his creations.Thus, I concluded that conflict is an unavoidable side effect of free will. And, any attempt to control the "bad" effects of conflict would be plagued with more conflict over what constitutes "bad," and would only be resolved by the loss of free will.You have decided to attack my idea by imposing an absolute definition of "good" and showing how god's enforcement of this absolute standard would not violate free will.In your scenario, how does god deal with those who disagree that killing babies is evil (they do exist: remember Sparta)? Wouldn't this benevolent intervention on his part still lead to conflicts?Edited by Bluejay, : No reason given.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

And so where does that leave us, with respect to having any sort of reliable, coherent understanding or expectation about what God might be doing for us, or what His purpose(s) might be, or what considerations should hold sway as we try to decide on our various individual courses of action?Things happen that we perceive to be bad, often as a direct and unavoidable consequence of conflict, which is an intrinsic property of our existence. And God, in whom we believe and to whom we pray, lets (makes?) these things happen for reasons beyond our ken -- and so we must accept these things because God's judgment is in fact inscrutable to us.Please try to explain where I've gone wrong in trying to follow your logic, because when I put that line of reasoning up against general assertions like "God is good" and "God's purpose is made clear to us in the Bible" and "the Bible is the foundation of moral judgment" and so on, I detect a colossal self-contradiction, or at least, a substantial tendency to be misleading, misguided, and fairly meaningless.I think I can follow that line of thought further to conclude that, since God does not inhibit free will, He is not really in a position to answer a significant proportion of prayers. Is that consistent with your point of view?Ultimately, I would pursue this perspective on God to arrive at something quite similar to what Dawkins says about deism/theism in general: that this is an unnecessary and superfluous concept -- it really contributes nothing to our overall understanding of ourselves, our situation, or reality as a whole. Everything can be understood much more clearly and coherently on the basis of natural (as opposed to supernatural) explanations and practical evidence, or practical inference where evidence is lacking, or sensible analogy/metaphor wherever practicality might somehow be "inapplicable". No deities with special powers are required.Any sense of purpose that we might detect is purely of our own invention. This fact in itself does not devalue the sense of purpose that we instinctively assign to existence as we perceive it, but like everything else in our perception, our current understanding of purpose leaves room for improvement. Fortunately, there seems to be a built-in tendency for "improvement" (in some inter-subjective sense that is shared by many of us) to be a predominant vector as we continue to evolve.Obviously, there are ample opportunities for interruption, reversal or even outright annihilation of that vector, but in a non-deistic culture, we would at least have the wherewithal to improve our understanding of it while it continues, and to do what we can to try to keep it going, without struggling over vain attempts to attribute everything to some inscrutable entity that requires our devotion.Edited by Otto Tellick, : minor edit in 5th paragraph

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

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If god is able to prevent these things in the cases where a child dies from them, what mechanism prevents god from doing it in other cases?

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Could you shoot a man to save a child's life ? If so what mechanism stops you from going out and shooting all your neighbours ?Even if your answer is no, I don't doubt that there is some hypothetical situation where you would do something you normally considered to be wrong to save a child's life. Yet you don't go out and do it routinely just because you could.If you don't need a mechanism to stop you, then why would God ?

Try not to assume I'm making some arguement you think I'm making.Of course I haven't shown that "the ability to override free will for the sake of a child's life is any different from the ability to override free will for the sake of any other cause." I would argue that it's exactly the same.My arguement most certainly is not "an attempt to remove something "bad" on the assumption that there is no tradeoff."My arguement is an attempt to remove something "bad" on the assumption that we lose a bit of our free will, but not all of it. And, given the obvious fact that there are varying levels of free will (given varying levels of autonomy) already... what's a little more of a restriction?Plus... add in the possibility of adding some levels of free will because certain other areas are restricted... and it may not be a "loss of free will" at all. And this is what I'm saying is wrong.If God imposed any standard of "good" or "bad" upon us, it doesn not result in us becoming Lego pirates. It certainly could... if God placed many large and all-encompassing restrictions on us. But if God only places certain, small, beneficial restrictions... we end up with even more free will than before.Example:1. A girl has full levels of free will.
2. A man rapes this girl.
3. As a result, this girl can no longer talk to other men, she is too scared of the memories of the raping.
Conclusion: The girl has lost a large chunk of her free will (50% of the interaction she used to have with mankind). The man who raped her has full levels of his free will.And now we add a restriction from God:1. A girl has full levels of free will.
2. A man is restricted from raping this girl.
Conclusions: The girl continues with full levels of her free will. The man's free will, however, was restricted. But the restriction on this man is certainly not equal to the resulting restriction he would have placed on the girl. Say he is restricted down to... 90% of his previous level of free will.So, we have "current system of free will" resulting in 100% and 50% capacity.And, we have "God's restriction added" resulting in 90% and 100%.Obviously, more free will is retained when God intervenes... in this situation, anyway.Therefore, even if God ONLY ever intervenes in these types of situations... the God's restrictions would actually be INCREASING our free will. You are correct. There was a "loss of free will" in the scenario where God's restriction was enforced. Of course, that loss of free will was LESS THAN the loss of free will when God does not intervene. So your conclusion has problems. That is, if you find free will important and want to keep it available to everyone as much as possible.In order to judge "loss" and "gain" of free will... you need to define "free will" a bit better. Right now, I'm assuming you're going with something along the lines of "choosing from options available." In which case, the girl's "options available" to her after being raped are greatly reduced as my scenario explains.So, what's more important? The girl's free will? Or the man's? What's worse? The man's interference on the girl's? Or God's interference on the man?I argue that God's interference on the man is equivalent to the man's interference on the girl. In which case... it would be better to restrict the man by whatever means possible... God is a means.

Hi, Otto. What the hell?Your first sentence is in line with my argument.Your second sentence shows that you haven't actually read my argument.God lets/makes these things happen because they are an unavoidable consequence of free will, not for "reasons beyond our ken."But, god must allow free will if he is to be benevolent, because there can be no benevolence without a beneficiary, and there can be no beneficiaries without independence. And, conflict is an unavoidable side effect of independence.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, Paul. God's actions weren't the point.This is the point: Stile proposed a "god filter," whereby god analyzes every decision somebody makes for its potential "evil" outcomes. In effect, every occurrence is then contingent upon god's approval, and not upon your free will.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.

Hi, Stile. Um, yeah... okay, that part was my argument, Stile: the one about god having the ability to restrict any action under any circumstance he deemed necessary. Surely you recognized it, yeah?That part was me showing the downfall of your argument, because that is a point that you have so far continued to ignore.I know that your argument is that restricting free will results in more "good" happening.I’ll try to express my argument better now. Your argument does not resolve the issue of conflicts: if god were to enforce any standard of "good," there would inevitably be people who still disagree with him. Thus, there would still be conflict, and god would still not be perfectly benevolent to absolutely everybody.So, your scenario does not resolve the fundamental problem, and the argument that the existence of bad disproves that god is benevolent is still invalid.----- I’m not sure how much I agree with this statement, but I have to think about it a little bit longer.Can free will be exercised without an external response? Given my argument that free will is not definable in terms of outcomes, I would say that it is possible. However, I’m not sure how far it goes.Is free will associated with the brain? If so, then the mere act of initiating a neural impulse is the actual practice of free will, and the response of limbs is an outcome, and thus, not guaranteed under the free will contract.Consider a paraplegic. No matter how much they will their legs to move, they’re not going to be able to walk. But, they still have the ability to initiate the neural impulses that should make them walk, don’t they? Obviously, if free will is associated with the brain, then a paraplegic still has just as much free will as I do, but their free will is attached to a defective mechanism.If, however, free will is associated with a certain level of intelligence, then it’s possible that people with Down syndrome or other mental defects have less free will than I do. But, I don’t know how or where to draw a line in this regard.Also, if free will is associated with responses of limbs, why is it not associated with knives or bullets? Surely a simple neural connection isn’t the issue: I would assume (perhaps unreasonably, as you may believe) that integration is a key component of free will, which rules out the peripheral nervous system as a seat of free will in humans, because integration is associated with the central nervous system. (Octopus, however, have various peripheral ganglia that control the tentacles, and these ganglia are associated with neural integration.Thus, I suspect that your argument that varying levels of free will exist is incorrect.----- So, because you can make up numbers that fit your argument, your argument is right?What evidence do you have that taking away the man's choice to rape somebody only results in 10% loss of free will, or that one loss of free will will be less than another?I must confess that I view free will as all-or-nothing, though.-----Let me try one more angle.When does god intervene with somebody's free will on behalf of a child's life?
Should he intervene just before the killer pulls the trigger?
Or, should he intervene just before the killer chooses to get up on the morning he intends to kill the child?
Or, should he intervene just before the parents of the killer chooses to try to conceive the killer?The first seems like the optimal choice, because it is localized and direct, but it may still result in psychological trauma for the child, which, in your argument, may result in 50% reduction of free will for the child.Surely the second one rectifies this loss of the child’s free will, then? Perhaps god should intervene in some action before the offending event occurs. But, how much does this affect the killer’s free will? Is it less than the amount the child suffers? And, how much does it affect the free will and benefit of other people that might interact with the killer to their own benefit?What about the third option? If the killer is never born, god never has to worry about his welfare or free will. Why not delay his parents’ desire to conceive him, so that they wait until next month, when the mother’s ovulation produces a different genome for the child, and it turns out to be a girl? How would this impact the free will and benefit of those that might have gleaned something positive from the killer’s existence?Can you argue that any one of these scenarios will result in a reduction of bad in relation to the child’s death? Who knows: maybe God could do it. But, I prefer to stick to the conclusion that intervention adds unnecessary complications without resolving the fundamental issue of conflict.Whenever there is free will (of any degree), there will inevitably be conflict. Thus, if your argument is correct, we may very well already be living in a world where god has removed our ability to do the greatest of evils, along with our ability to even recognize that such evils could have been done otherwise. If this is the case, it only proves my point, because conflict still exists. I hate reading long posts. It's a wonder, then, that I am continually writing long posts.

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-Bluejay/Mantis/ThylacosmilusDarwin loves you.