A believer is an antiseptic.
Raymond Devos
PART III
6. The gods and believers behave immorally; So, do not adopt their beliefs. Here, the atheist must be careful to avoid fallacies. First, they are not all gods and all believers who behave immorally, so that only an atheist would be morally irreproachable. Whether you are an atheist or a believer, it is not always what we think is good. If a small number of priests have sexually abused, one can not generalize the wrongdoing to all priests. Regarding the gods, whether one or more, the question remains open. For the Christian God, As I noted in the first objection, based on the principle of charity, it should read the Bible intelligently, so that God's apparent fate exonerated of charges of immorality. Also avoid the fallacy of the attack against the person:
you've done wrong, so your ideas or your opinions are surely false . If my neighbor is a federalist and he is accused of pedophilia, I'm still justified to believe in federalism.
7. If the gods were perfect they would have created a perfect world. But evil exists. So, at best, if the gods exist, they are imperfect. This is perhaps the oldest objections against the existence of a deity (or several), and also more serious. The objection goes back to Epicurus: either God is powerless to prevent evil, or, if he is omnipotent, he is evil by giving it free rein. As for this dilemma, or the believer must recognize that God is not omnipotent and that, contrary to what traditional theology, or else God is wicked, contradicting the traditional claim seeking God is infinitely good. Even the believer experiences all the wretchedness of the world to understand the existence of evil alongside a loving God. At the age of 92, Abbe Pierre still did not understand why so much suffering afflict humanity. He wrote:
I am not cured and never will be any of this lot of suffering that afflicts mankind since the beginning. I recently learned that about eighty billion human beings have lived on earth. How many have had a painful existence, struggled, suffered ... and for what? Yes, my God, why? ( Abbé Pierre with Frédéric Lenoir, My God ... why? Small meditations on the Christian faith and the meaning of life , Paris, Plon, 2005, p. 13. Note that the Abbé Pierre wrote "why" and not "why", as if seeking an explanation Abbé Pierre teleological : for what, for what purpose.)
It is futile, even foolish, to argue, as do most part of believers, that "the Lord's ways are inscrutable" because, well, it meets a mystery by another. In Christian thought, response as to the existence of evil is the doctrine known as the Latin word bonus privatio back to St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas took over after him. Despite appearances to the contrary, evil is definable: it is the absence of good ( privatio bonus). Death, for example - which is probably the ultimate evil for us humans - is the absence or deprivation of the property that is life. Slavery is the deprivation of liberty. Poverty, lack of vital goods, including money. Disease, lack of health etc.. The definition absence of evil as well (bonus privatio ) stems from a general thesis that supports Thomas Aquinas, drawing on Aristotle, wishing that " The property may exist without evil, whereas evil can not exist no good. In other words, if there is evil, then there must first be good. The only reality that exists is good - that is to say, Thomas Aquinas, God. An evil being - Satan, Beelzebub, Adramelech, etc.. - Opposed to God, existing before God, is logically impossible. That is why the devil or the devil Christianity is designed in such a being (an angel) who received forfeit the existence of God. Christianity is not a Manichean.
Evil, moral sense, that is to say that exerted by free beings like men, did so only because of existence of the first property exists. The objection of the unbeliever is whether God created the good, the coup would create evil? No, says Aquinas, because what God creates, in the full sense of the term, well, being, not evil, it had existence by absence of good. Evil, in short, is not to mean "ontological" the term, as like to say the philosophers.
What, replicates the unbeliever, there is no evil? " So what about the calamity that struck Haiti January 12, 2009? Is this not the perfect example of the existence of evil for a people who, moreover, has more than its share of misfortunes? Why them and not us? God be bad for their persecution of this on little people already affected by poverty?
These cries from the heart of the atheist recall the famous poem Voltaire before the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 where he condemned any attempt to divine justification. Thomas Aquinas does not say, however, as the theologians at the time of Voltaire, that the victims deserve the wrath of God or other similar indignities (including the most recent unfortunate Pat Robertson wanting that "Haitian slaves had once found a pact with the devil "). Apparently, full of resentments, Voltaire did not take account of the theory of evil as thomasienne privatio bonus.
According to Aquinas, it should also distinguish between moral evil natural evil . In Latin, the first is said malum culpae the fault. Natural evil, He said malum poena, punishment, pain. If God did not create the malum culpae , the moral fault, is it thus causing the malum poena, produced among other natural disasters? Thomas Aquinas does not deny the existence of pain and sorrows caused by natural disasters. However, the sentences generated by the earthquake in Haiti have passions as real as affecting human sensitivity. Again, both have reality as deprivation of the property.
The objection that the loss of loved ones is undoubtedly an evil. It is indeed a reality that the loss of loved ones in conditions as appalling as the earthquake in Haiti. The Aquinas does not deny for a moment. But in terms of reality "ontological" in terms of what is - and we must never lose sight of that is here to be metaphysical plane where is the good - these losses, as appalling as they are, remain to be deprivation.
Consider an analogy. Suppose I say "There is nothing here." Let us not think that in saying this I want to say that there is something and that something, anything, there! We find ourselves then to "reify" anything, that is to say to make sure that nothing exists in a certain way, nothing would be something, but nothing ... This is logically inconsistent and, worse, misleading. Similarly, when we say that the penalties are a result of the natural disaster, do not believe that what the victims are private - the severe shortage, in a word, evil - exists independently of the property they are private, alone exists. What the Haitians are private, they are real, that is to say persons, property, vital services, institutions, etc.. which are not. That misfortune. According to Aquinas, God did create the missing in the earthquake, but it has not killed; He has not removed their life. In short, it is not the author of evil.
So do we ask, but where does evil, that is to say, the deprivation of being ? Why is this so? Again, do not give reality to the deprivation of being, that is to say evil. In fact, the right question is: how is the deprivation of being?
According to Thomas Aquinas, God is the being who is supremely. Therefore, since be is to be good, God is perfectly good. In the language of metaphysics of Aristotle, God is "pure act" (Actus Purus ). All other beings, including humans, exist only potentially, that is to say that we are always changing. Although we said that we "exist", we are not really. This may seem paradoxical, but true. Exist for us is changing. Only death will put an end to this so-called "existence" to give us access to the true existence, which is God.
Suppose I am suffering from AIDS. As Thomas Aquinas would agree that this evil can be explained by natural causes, namely the presence of HIV in my body. However, if the virus affects me so, he must be good in his way, that is to say, it has to be . In other words, the virus is good, although it grieves me and grieves me that this is not the virus itself, for he is good, but the lack of health, that is to say the lack of property. So to speak, the evil parasitic well.
Likewise, the tectonic plates that are rubbed into the area of Haiti last year, causing the earthquake so devastating, are good in themselves. These frictions are not bad in itself. They are only related to humans in the region, depriving them of their lives and other goods they cherished.
God, be good par excellence, does not create so as well. Hence then comes evil? Accidentally good, Aquinas responds. Following the unparalleled disaster, international relief efforts are mobilizing like never before. Men lack of well create the property. For a believer as Thomas Aquinas, men, private property, creating the property, are instruments of God. It is not said, however, that this overabundance of creative property does not occur sooner or later, by accident , evil, that is to say a good deprivation. The cause is not evil, but accidentally well. In wanting to do good, we can make mistakes. For example, I help someone to build his cardboard house knowing that it will not withstand a possible earthquake. I aim well (building a shelter), but sooner or later, his house collapse on him. I accidentally deprived, without malice, good thinking help. My intention was good, but the consequences of my actions are not.
God would it be unable to predict the future consequences of the property he creates? In this case, it would be perfectly omniscient. If God is not the author of evil by creating good, it would nevertheless be indirectly or accidentally author. This would mean God is not omniscient perfectly.
I believe God is omniscient, perfectly, but I also believe that when He created our world, which is the best of possible worlds - as Leibniz said - it was better that he is not entirely omniscient. In our world, that He created, God can not predict in advance all the consequences of its creation. I argue that this was preferable to a world where God is omniscient, perfectly.
Indeed, suppose that God knows infallibly what will happen. What follows from there? As Bertrand Russell said mischievously (in "The art of rational conjecture"), if God knew that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit, then it was pointless to forbid them to eat! More generally, if Allah is omniscient, He knows the future. If He knows the future is that the latter is determined. If the future is determined, then no one can decide in the strict sense of the word. If no one can decide, free will is illusory.
For all these reasons, God can not be completely omniscient.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the goodness of God leads him to prefer a world where evil can exist (always as a parasite of the property) because this world is preferable to a world where evil does not exist. In short, God has good reason to prefer a world where evil exists in a world without evil. What then is the reason why God would have preferred our world, which includes evil, a world where there are none?
examine the problem from this angle. A world that does not contain any harm would be one where freedom does not exist. Indeed, a world where creatures are not free to choose good or evil is less valid than the one where human beings have free will. In such a world, people are virtually forced to do good. However, to do good because you can not do otherwise has no moral value. If the reason I'm not an alcoholic, because my metabolism can handle alcohol, I do not deserve not to be an alcoholic. By cons, if I manage to get out of this dependence on willpower, I have all the credit (even when I fail, despite my efforts, I still find it morally worthy).
So a world where people can exercise their free will is preferable to a world where free will does not exist. This is the reason why God chose this world where human beings have the free will.
course, in a world like ours, God's omniscience seems limited. God makes perfect in creating free beings He may indirectly create evil. But this situation is preferable to a world where free will does not exist.
Consider the problem from another angle. God did not create a paradise with the man in a state of perfection of foot-in-cap, as a paradise is not the best of possible worlds to enable man to develop. Suppose that our perfect world, where no harm, no suffering, no. So if there is no evil, good would not make sense. Indeed, if there is no danger, courage has no meaning, and if no more than greed, there is more generosity or charity, if no more fear and hatred, love has no meaning. In such a world, man can not be perfected. A perfect world would be the least that is appropriate for the exercise of human freedom.
If you will, God agrees to limit his omniscience in order to generate a greater good. There is however another solution to the problem of the incompatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom. It is that the Roman philosopher Boethius proposed (480-524 AD) in Consolation of Philosophy .
Boethius's solution is closely related to the concept of time when about God. God is the author of all things, including time. It follows then that God, by nature, is timeless.
That was before God created heaven and earth?, Asked Augustine. And the holy respond sarcastically: "He was preparing hell for those who investigate these profound mysteries ( Confessions, Book XI, chapter 12). Augustine rejects this as being struck by inconsistency. It is indeed like asking what was before time, because the word implies a time before time prior to the time, which is contradictory. In fact, time has reality than to humans. In other words, if men did not exist, time would not exist. It follows that there is no time for God. God is just. It was not, and He will not. It is, full stop. Tell God that He is eternal is wrong because it is not in time. "You do not see God as the oldest establishment in the ratio of the amount of time," wrote Boethius.
With these considerations, Boethius can safely say that God has no foreknowledge. Indeed, who said "foreknowledge" uses the time in the future in particular. However, it must be repeated, God is timeless. It can not predict the future, because there is no future for God. Our past, present and future are as it were, under God, that "eternal now". To Boethius, "... the knowledge of [God is] a moment that never goes out." Here, words fail us and play tricks as an "eternal now" or "this never crosses" have no real meaning. It bumps, say Wittgenstein on the limits of language.
Still, Boethius can dissolve the problem of inconsistency arising from the divine foreknowledge with human free will. Indeed, God "sees as present in his eternity events that will occur at a time."
Let an analogy. During a parade, onlookers watch the floats pass one after another. Now imagine someone located on a hill sees the parade a glance: the observer knows beforehand what the tank spectators gathered in the street will.
Thus, God has always what we are about to decide, without depriving us of free will. Thus, the timeless view of God, it was necessary that Adam and Eve sin, while in terms of human time, there was no need there. God, "providing" everything does not necessarily dictate the actions that we have.
If you say "why bother praying to God, since everything is already set in advance? "You get to play God. Praying is believing that everything is not predetermined. As Kierkegaard writes, "the determinist, the fatalist are desperate ... because there is more to them than of necessity "(Treaty of despair ). When one thinks he's God, indeed, the necessity of all things falling on us like a wall of silence. If God made man prayed, let alone nothing is played for man, everything is still possible.
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