Theodicies

Honestly, Isn't t better to try to build a framework built on the concept of a God with limitations, rather than struggle with the flawed idea that an all powerful God makes any sense at all. I don't think it does.

I mean my original reason for leaving the church was that one particular group of Chrsitians that I used to knock around with at university were very keen that God couldn't forgive someone, he had to transfer the sins that person's sins to someone else, so he forgave people by transferring their sins since to Christ, who then had to die for his sins!

You can't argue with stuff like that, it is just daft!

Yeah, I don't know if I can wrap my mind around "sin". Then again I have issues with "karma" as well...

[Laird]

If I understand you correctly - based on these posts and our past convos - the idea here is that there is a God of Good and a God of Evil, which means Good and Evil are elemental forces of some sort?

Yep, that's it in a nutshell.

I guess to me this feels a bit odd, as I see Evil as a result of varied issues ranging from personal weakness to societal conditioning to outright mental illness stemming from certain unfortunate abnormalities of the body. Why I assume, given the accounts of hostile spirits, that such problems - or other issues perhaps - manifest even beyond this life.

I get where you're coming from, but to me, evil is not merely a deficit of good - a weakness or abnormality - and thus in a sense passive, but rather an active malevolence in its own (oppositional) right. You can, at times, both literally and figuratively smell it.

The rest of your post I'm fairly amenable to other than that I frame the situation differently per the above.

Honestly, Isn't t better to try to build a framework built on the concept of a God with limitations, rather than struggle with the flawed idea that an all powerful God makes any sense at all. I don't think it does.

I mean my original reason for leaving the church was that one particular group of Chrsitians that I used to knock around with at university were very keen that God couldn't forgive someone, he had to transfer the sins that person's sins to someone else, so he forgave people by transferring their sins since to Christ, who then had to die for his sins!

You can't argue with stuff like that, it is just daft!

Yeah, I don't know if I can wrap my mind around "sin". Then again I have issues with "karma" as well...

The topic of karma is one which irritates me. It is used in both everyday chat as well as a formal sense with a background history and context. I tend to reject both of those as having any significance for me personally.  What remains? Probably a misuse of terminology by myself. I sometimes see patterns, connections between otherwise unrelated events in my life, those links may have some importance in my worldview, even when the events themselves could be trivial. I observe an interconnectedness in my life. Nowadays I've dropped the word 'karma' from my vocabulary but in the past I used to label those links with that term.

edit: When I refer to a link or connection above, I'm referring to something other than a synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. Rather I'm referring to a causal link. To a physical determinist that idea would be absurd. But I have a view of the world with not just some abstract idea of consciousness pervading things but rather there is an interconnected 'beingness', which may involve for example disconnected human events or possibly other occurrences such as the weather, everything seems to mesh together and that's where I apply the idea of causality. I introduced the term 'beingness' and then mentioned the weather. That was intentional, I don't separate the living and non-living in this idea.

As for 'sin', that's another word I don't use, though I may substitute other words or concepts in its place. The problem I think is that sin seems to be intertwined with the idea of guilt and I prefer to consider that separately.

I get where you're coming from, but to me, evil is not merely a deficit of good - a weakness or abnormality - and thus in a sense passive, but rather an active malevolence in its own (oppositional) right. You can, at times, both literally and figuratively smell it.

But why would entities seek to promote Evil for Evil's sake?

I guess this is what I get hung up on. I can see people acting cruel to feel empowered, or forsake the moral answer for expedience or out of selfishness.

I can even see a sadist delight in the pain of others, but that's probably the closest I can think of an entity that is Evil. Are you suggesting there is a God, a primordial being who at the least was the one of the first entities to exist if not a Ground of Being, that is completely driven by sadism?

Interestingly, there appear to be some parallels between your conception of a sort of cosmic dualism between good and evil forces, and Zoroastrianism, one of the world's oldest organized faiths (6th century BC).

Yep. I'd been aware of Zoroastrianism as a dualistic religion for a while, but hadn't looked into it much. Your post inspired me to look it up on Wikipedia and read selectively from its article. It does seem very compatible with my view: that our reality was created as a paradise by the powerful-but-not-omnipotent Good, and then invaded by the contrary Wicked.

I had looked a little more into Manichaeism in the past, which is also a dualistic religion, and which the Wikipedia article on Zoroastrianism describes as having a relationship with Zoroastrianism similar to that of Christianity with Judaism. Manichaeism seems to see our reality not so much as being created outright by the Good and then invaded, as being a consequence of the battle between the Good and the Wicked; a reality in which Wickedness swallows the light of the Good.

(From Wiki):
 

Zoroastrianism is based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster.[2]  It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ontology and predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good.

Its founder Zoroaster stated that the source of all goodness was the Ahura, worthy of the highest worship. He further stated that Ahura Mazda created spirits known as yazatas to aid him. Zoroaster proclaimed that some Iranian gods were daevas who deserved no worship. These "bad" deities were created by Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit. Angra Mainyu was the source of all sin and misery in the universe. Zoroaster claimed that Ahura Mazda used the aid of humans in the cosmic struggle against Angra Mainyu. Nonetheless, Ahura Mazda is Angra Mainyu's superior, not his equal. Angra Mainyu and his daevas, which attempt to attract humans away from the Path of Asha, would eventually be defeated."

Some trains of thought in Zoroastrianism presuppose that both the good sentient force and the evil one are ultimately original and uncreated. It is evident that neither the good sentient force of Ahura nor the evil force can be omnipotent in their battle.

Interesting. It seems, according to the Wikipedia article, that although neither force is omnipotent, it is somehow foreknown that the Good wins in the end. That's a nice thought. I sure hope it's true.

I might point out that in this cosmos involving a non-omnipotent Ahura as the beneficent cosmic sentient force, there could well be the unfolding of the complex system of tradeoffs in the rules and laws of nature which appear to be inevitable as explained by Sewell, and also elements of a spiritual system involving an afterlife and reincarnation, both ideas which appear to have a lot of evidence for them. Maybe Zoroaster was onto something here.

It does seem possible. I think I'd integrate the two ideas like this: originally, there was no need for trade-offs, because our reality was created as a paradise. The invasion introduced limitations which the Good worked (works) with as best (S)He can (via various trade-offs), while fighting the invaders off - a fight which involves all of us.

It still seems to me that the laws of logic applied in a physical world absolutely necessarily entail numerous tradeoffs in the designs of organisms and mechanisms in that realm - that a pure paradise with no degradative and potentially painful processes is impossible unless the laws of logic are suspended.

For instance the existence of disease: life necessarily contains countless biological and microbiological mechanisms and machines, which necessarily entail compromises and tradeoffs in their designs in order to accomplish their complicated functional purposes. One of those tradeoffs is necessarily the inevitable process of biological machines wearing out through the same inexorable and inevitable processes that enable their living operation.

As a simple example just consider Paley's mechanical watch: in order to automatically tell time in a physically deterministic realm it absolutely must contain a finely engineered design incorporating metal gears, levers, springs, ratchets, shafts, jewelled bearings, hands, etc. etc. all connected together through the effects of various physical phenomena, at base primarily friction or molecule-to-molecule repulsion and interaction at the submicroscopic level. The interaction of parts required for operation absolutely requires some process like friction. No friction, no operation. But friction will also inevitably eventually cause bearings to wear out, springs to weaken and the clock to fail, to say nothing for the need to keep winding the mainspring.

Any complicated machine whether non-biological or biological logically must encorporate such ultimately degenerative processes in order to work, unless the laws of logic are suspended and interactions of parts are somehow not required, or are not required to follow deterministic chains of causes and effects. Hence the apparent inevitability of disease (one of the great "natural evils" afflicting mankind) in a deterministic logically organized physical realm. Even in a paradisical realm designed by Spirit, as long as Spirit has to follow the logical laws including cause and effect.

And then there is the apparent necessity in a physically deterministic realm, of pain to accompany degradation and damage. The process of evolution (however the essentially from outside intelligent design was accompished) entailed the progressive manifestation of more and more complex animal organisms, which before the development of Man required, rather than rational reasoning, an automatic instinctual response to damage and degradaton of the body - resting, not putting strain on a broken leg, etc. etc. The most efficient way to accomplish this was clearly to make use of primitive consciousness and have this primitive consciousness perceive damage as unpleasant - painful so as to compell resting and recuperating. 

So Man's animal heritage automatically entails the whole mechanism of damage/disease = pain and suffering. The basic damage = pain and suffering mechanism automatically emerges from the imperfections and compromises of the whole intelligent design evolutionary process, carried out by very powerful and intelligent but still ultimately non-omnipotent and imperfect spiritual beings.

Our physical human existence on this planet is based upon the idea of a lifecycle including an endless chain of birth, reproduction and death. The physical decay of such lifeforms is inherent in the basic idea of the cycle. To change that, removing decay and deterioration would also do away with birth, death and reproduction. There is no logical reason why this is impossible. There are lifeforms which are effectively immortal.

Our physical human existence on this planet is based upon the idea of a lifecycle including an endless chain of birth, reproduction and death. The physical decay of such lifeforms is inherent in the basic idea of the cycle. To change that, removing decay and deterioration would also do away with birth, death and reproduction. There is no logical reason why this is impossible. There are lifeforms which are effectively immortal.

But they are generally very simple organisms, with far less complex biological machinery than the higher vertebrates and invertebrate octopuses, and even the insecta, for instance. Biological complexity, along with greater and greater sophisticated functionality, inevitably brings along with it more and more tradeoffs between and within conflicting complications designed to accomplish these more and more things.

Our physical human existence on this planet is based upon the idea of a lifecycle including an endless chain of birth, reproduction and death. The physical decay of such lifeforms is inherent in the basic idea of the cycle. To change that, removing decay and deterioration would also do away with birth, death and reproduction. There is no logical reason why this is impossible. There are lifeforms which are effectively immortal.

But they are generally very simple organisms, with far less complex biological machinery than the higher vertebrates and invertebrate octopusus, and even the insecta, for instance. Biological complexity, along with greater and greater sophisticated functionality, inevitably brings along with it more and more tradeoffs between and within conflicting complications designed to accomplish these more and more things.

It still isn't clear to me why there would be trade offs. I'm not even sure an entity has to be omnipotent to manage avoiding most of the things you mention in your posts.

We don't have entropy within the world of most video games, where one has to arbitrarily add things like equipment degrading over use/time. Why couldn't some creator god (who isn't omnipotent) make a simplistic (compared to our reality) world like that inside a video game?

Even some of the afterlife realms that are described as being rather close to our physical world - it isn't clear any of these have entropy?

[Laird]

But why would entities seek to promote Evil for Evil's sake?

I guess this is what I get hung up on. I can see people acting cruel to feel empowered, or forsake the moral answer for expedience or out of selfishness.

I can even see a sadist delight in the pain of others, but that's probably the closest I can think of an entity that is Evil. Are you suggesting there is a God, a primordial being who at the least was the one of the first entities to exist if not a Ground of Being, that is completely driven by sadism?

Those are some great questions that provoke deeper reflection.

A preface:

I'm not trying to start a religion here, nor to set in place any dogma; I'm just exploring possibilities/likelihoods based on my experiences and some loose induction. There's a lot I could be wrong about.

An introduction:

Like you, I affirm that morality is objective - at least at its core - which I do on the basis of the simple recognition, given an assumption of their being conscious like ourselves, that others are objectively as important as we ourselves are, and thus deserving of the same consideration that we expect (hope for) for ourselves.

One side of the duality, then, is definitively right, and the other definitively wrong, however, the side that is definitively wrong simply does not care that it is wrong. It has no interest in objectivity. It cares only to further destructive ends.

"Why, though?", you effectively ask. "Why would a primordial being embody, and why would it perpetuate, that wrongness which we call 'evil'?"

Perhaps the simplest answer is: "Because that just happens to be its nature."

Another potentially more explanatory answer is: "Because a neutral ground of being split in two, and the more the one half strove to be good, the more the other hated it, and, stewing in its hatred, became more and more wicked."

There are other possibilities, including a more philosophically elaborate one that sometimes occurs to me in altered states, but I'm not sure I want to share it.

And, yes, "sadistic" seems to be a good start at a definition of "evil": the selfish infliction of (and/or desire to inflict) pain, suffering, harm, and destruction upon others, based on delight and/or hatred, or something more elaborate.

It might not start, then, with "Evil for Evil's sake" as you phrase it, but rather with "sadism for the sake of self-gratification" - which then hardens via habit or conviction into a nature which simply is "Evil for Evil's sake".

[Laird]

It still seems to me that the laws of logic applied in a physical world absolutely necessarily entail numerous tradeoffs in the designs of organisms and mechanisms in that realm - that a pure paradise with no degradative and potentially painful processes is impossible unless the laws of logic are suspended.

I think you're conflating the laws of logic with the laws of physics. There is nothing logically inconsistent with an existence without the sort of trade-offs you describe - which is another way of saying that it is logically possible that the laws of physics could either (1) have been otherwise so as to avoid trade-offs or (2) been consistently contravened by a higher power as necessary to avert negative consequences and the need for trade-offs.