paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) (07/05/85)
I apologize for the length of this question, but I feel that laying
the groundwork more or less carefully may prevent many more transmitted
lines than contained in this question. The question appears at the
end, and I welcome answers from any one from whatever religion or
non-religion. I am not interested in paeans to Kaufmann's arguments;
rather, I am interested in reasonable attempts at refutations of his
arguments, from any perspective.
And please! If you decide to reply, feel free to paraphrase me or
Kaufmann, or to refer to "Kaufmann solution X" or "Kaufmann
pseudo-solution Y," rather than dumping all or part of this transmission
into your replies over and over again.
In Chapter VI of "The Faith of a Heretic" (Anchor [Doubleday], Garden
City, New York, 1963 [1961]), Walter Kaufmann takes up the question of
"Suffering and the Bible." In answer to the question, "Why is there
the suffering we know?" Kaufmann proposes three solutions:
1. "Everything in the universe, or at least a great deal, is due
to chance." [WK says Confucianism and Taoism approximately
follow this.]
2. "...the universe... is subject to iron laws but not to any
purpose" [WK says Hinduism and Buddhism approximately follow
this.]
3. "...the world is governed by purpose[s]... not especially intent
on preventing suffering, whether it is indifferent to suffering
or actually rejoices in it." [WK says polytheistic religions
and Zoroastrianism (? my spelling) approximately follow this.]
He then goes on: "In all three cases... the problem of suffering poses
no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering
has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account. To
make the problem of suffering a perplexing problem, one requires very
specific presuppositions, and once those are accepted the problem
becomes not only puzzling but insoluble... The problem arises when
monotheism is enriched with -- or impoverished by -- two assumptions:
that God is omnipotent and that God is just." [WK then goes on to note
that "just" is usually embellished with "good," "morally perfect,"
"hating suffering," "loving man," and being "infinitely merciful." He
also notes that "The use of `God' as a synonym for being-itself, or for
the `pure act of being,' or for nature... cannot be disproved but only
questioned as pettifoggery."]
Kaufmann, raised a Christian, later becoming a Jew (as his family had
originally been) and, I think, an atheist (though I've never heard him
say so) notes that "In most of the Hebrew Scriptures it is simply
axiomatic that suffering comes from God. [This began to change with
the exilic prophets, and] [t]he New Testament assures us, climaxing
a development that began in exilic Judaism: God is perfect. He is
not unjust... It is at this point that the perplexing problem of
suffering is created and at the same time rendered insoluble -- unless
either the traditional belief in God's boundless power or the belief in
his perfect justice and mercy is abandoned. Short of that, only
pseudo-solutions are possible." Kaufmann considers four of what he
calls "pseudo-solutions:"
1. Inspired by Zarathustra (Zoroastrianism), the exilic Jews came
up with Satan, who is invoked to solve the problem of suffering.
"That this is no solution appears as soon as we ask why God
allowed Satan to do such a thing. The problem has merely been
pushed back, not solved."
2. The immortality of the soul or the eventual resurrection of the
dead is invoked. "We are assured that although there is patently
little or no justice in this life and the wicked flourish more
often than the just, the day of reward and retribution will come...
By the time of Jesus, most, but not all, of the Jews took it for
granted... the Pharisees accepted it, while the Sadducees did not."
Kaufmann calls this a pseudo-solution since "...no doctrine of
immortality or resurrection can solve the problem of suffering.
Suppose that Anne Frank enjoys eternal bliss in heaven: should
an omnipotent god have found it impossible to let her have eternal
bliss without first making her a victim of the Nazis and without
having her die in a concentration camp?... Faith in immortality,
like belief in Satan, leaves unanswered the ancient questions: is
God unable to prevent suffering and thus not omnipotent? or is he
able but not willing to prevent it and thus not merciful? And is
he just?"
3. "...a third pseudo-solution remains. It consists in asserting, in
flat defiance of experience, that everybody gets precisely what
he deserves -- no better and no worse: if Anne Frank suffered
more than Heinrich Himmler, that proves that she was much more
wicked."
(Kaufmann then takes an excursion into the Book of Job, in which he
seeks to demonstrate that the first of these pseudo-solutions is
rejected, the second is denied consideration, and the third is
repudiated emphatically. "[Job] never questions either God's
existence or his omnipotence; but God's justice, mercy and goodness
he not only questions but denies outright... it does not occur to
anybody that God might simply be unable to prevent Job's suffering."
When God finally speaks from the whirlwind, "He says in effect:
the problem of suffering is no isolated problem; it fits a pattern;
the world is not so rational as Job's comforters suppose; it is
uncanny. God does not claim to be good and Job in his final reply
does not change his mind on this point: he reaffirms that God can
do all things." Finally, he notes that "In an age in which the
ancient sense of solidarity was crumbling and the individual
experienced his sufferings in that utter solitude which is now once
again the mark of modernity, the author of Job refused all the
comforts that go with the assurance that God is perfectly merciful
and just -- the promises that being moral pays either in this life
or the next -- and... claimed that God was neither just nor the
embodiment of mercy or perfection.")
4. "The fourth spurious solution, which is one of the prime glories
of Christian theology, claims in effect that suffering is a
necessary adjunct of free will.... The following questions must
be pressed. First, if God knew that man would abuse his free
will and that this would entail cancer and Auschwitz, why then
did he give man free will? Second... is there really any
connection at all between ever so much suffering and free will?"
(Kaufmann then considers the case of a girl in West's "Miss
Lonelyhearts" who was born without a nose; one presumes that
he could have obtained a similar example from the realms of
fact.) "If such suffering... is the inevitable consequence of
Adam's sin -- or if this is the price God had to pay for endowing
man with free will -- then it makes no sense to call him
omnipotent. And if he was willing to pay this price for his own
greater glory... or for the greater beauty of the cosmos, because
shadows are needed to set off highlights... what sense does it
make to attribute moral perfection to him?"
Kaufmann then goes on to consider various philosophers and theologians
who considered the problem; all of them, in his eyes, apparently
"have implicitly, but not admittedly, denied God's omnipotence."
Leibniz, for example, asserted that "our world... is the best of all
possible worlds," which denies God's omnipotence "for if God is
unable to prevent [various instances of suffering] without every time
incurring a still greater evil, then he is clearly not omnipotent."
If "suffering is somehow logically necessary," then how could God
create a heaven with no suffering, but not an earth with no suffering;
why not create just heaven and no earth at all? "Would the blessed in
heaven be unable to appreciate their bliss if they could not observe the
torments of the damned?" Royce argued that "`Your sufferings are God's
sufferings.' That is the real meaning of incarnation and crucifixion:
God did not remain a being apart from the world... God really suffers,
too; ...this suffering is necessary because the good which consists in
the overcoming of evil is greater than that which consists in the absence
of evil." In which case, Royce has effectively denied God's omnipotence.
"He also claims that the suffering of the girl born without a nose is
justified because the discovery by some future doctors of some way to
avert such mishaps makes for a better world than we should have had if
there never had been any such mishaps in the first place. That is what
the girl should have been told; also, that it hurt God as much as her."
So, finally, the question: Does anyone out there know of a genuine
solution to the question posed by Kaufmann: Can God or a god be both
omnipotent and just (including good, morally perfect, and so on) and
permit the suffering we know to exist?
Regards, Paul Dolber (...{decvax!mcnc or !decvax}!duke!phs!paul).hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (07/07/85)
In article <1034@phs.UUCP>, paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) writes: > ... Does anyone out there know of a genuine > solution to the question posed by Kaufmann: Can God or a god be both > omnipotent and just (including good, morally perfect, and so on) and > permit the suffering we know to exist? As you might guess, the "problem of suffering" has been discussed on this list in the past. However since I haven't said anything before, I will do so now. As will be obvious, I am speaking from a Christian perspective. I would be interested to hear from people outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. The assumptions which lead to this problem seem clearest from the Biblical perspective. I would be interested to know whether those who follow other religions believe that they have a problem of suffering. I do not know of any solution that causes God to be both omnipotent and just using the definitions you have used. I think it is fairly clear that your definitions are such that this is impossible. Of the theologians I have looked at, all end up weakening (if that is the right word) one, or the other, or both. I'd like to start by taking a look at the idea that God is omnipotent. By and large in the Bible, the idea seems to be that God is more powerful than competing entities. In the early parts, the issue was that he is more powerful than competing gods. In later parts, he is more powerful than Satan. Also, he has power over nature. What he decides to do, he can do. But this is all at a fairly concrete level. The problem of evil involves a discussion that is in some sense at a meta level. The question is not whether God can carry out some specific action or create some specific thing, but whether he could have structured reality in a different way. I'm not sure that the Bible deals with this level of abstraction. To Medieval scholastics, it was obvious that God must be omnipotent at all possible levels of abstraction. To more modern theologians, this is not so obvious. The Bible gives the impression of a God who is affected by what goes on with men. It almost sounds like he is part of the process of history, and not above it. So one possible answer would be that there is some level of reality which God himself must take as given. If we claimed that some competing entity had prevented God from doing what he wanted, I think that would be un-Biblical. But I'm not sure it says he set up the laws of physics, much less whatever metalaws might govern the setting up of the laws of physics. A second possible answer (which may be indistiguishable from the first) is that there may be some deep reason why God couldn't eliminate suffering without also eliminating some other important thing. In effect it may be that people who want no suffering are asking for something that is logically impossible (given the other things God is trying to accomplish). If something is logically impossible, then God can't do it. Not because he lacks the power, but because the request has no meaning. This obviously begs the question of what great thing God wanted that required him to allow suffering. You mentioned free will. I think that is close, but not quite on the mark. Suppose we think of this life as a training ground for our final destiny. It may be that effective training requires real challenges, and even real defeats. There may be a problem of perspective here. Christianity generally deals with this issue on an individual level. It does not deal with suffering in the abstract, nor with the suffering of all mankind, but of my particular suffering. This problem is managable. Christians can generally get at least a dim vision of how suffering fits into a loving plan for them. The problem with the general problem is that we don't have this sort of understanding of other people's lives. So what is managable on an individual level appears impossible when we think of millions of starving people in XXX. However each of those people has his own story. At this point the obvious response is, "yeah, but you're not starving." I don't have any final answer to that. About all I can say is that it is not just rich people who see God working in their lives. On the idea of God being just. In the Bible there is certainly no claim that people get their just desserts immediately. Job is not alone in rejecting this idea. The Psalms also deal with good men suffering at the hands of evil men. However there seems to be confidence that God will eventually see justice done. In most of the Psalms it seems to be assumed that God will do so soon, i.e. in this lifetime. In other contexts, full justice is postponed to the Final Judgement. Indeed in both Jewish and Christian apocalyptic, the idea developed that things would get worse and worse as we approached the end, with Evil apparently becoming victorious. I realize that this is getting into sensitive ground. To many people the idea of eternal life and a final judgement sounds like a cop-out. But it is hard to see how one can avoid it and continue to be a Christian. In fact I believe that the idea of eternal life leads to a correct perspective on things. It shows us that what really matters in the world are the people. It is all too easy to get the impression that what matters are nations, or economics, or the triumph of some particular ideology. But these are all transitory. It is the people who will last, and they are what the world is all about. Actually, I think the real justice is probably going to be that people have to live eternally with what they have made of themselves. If you take this seriously, it is about the most chilling possible end for the bad guys.
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (07/07/85)
** > > 1. Inspired by Zarathustra (Zoroastrianism), the exilic Jews came > up with Satan, who is invoked to solve the problem of suffering. > "That this is no solution appears as soon as we ask why God > allowed Satan to do such a thing. The problem has merely been > pushed back, not solved." The Jewish people only partially believe in Satan. My wife, whose father had a strict Jewish background, claimed that she was taught that the Jewish people do not believe in Satan at all. I had to drag out the Bible and read passages from Job to convince her. They made a deal with a god, they made a deal that he would be their god, and they would be his people. They accepted that he was the best god of all, and they would all stick together. The Prophets, who arose after the exile to Babylon were especially vocal in the assertion that the reason that the Jewish people were having such tough luck was because they had broken their side of the deal (coventent). > > 4. "The fourth spurious solution, which is one of the prime glories > of Christian theology, claims in effect that suffering is a > necessary adjunct of free will.... > > So, finally, the question: Does anyone out there know of a genuine > solution to the question posed by Kaufmann: Can God or a god be both > omnipotent and just (including good, morally perfect, and so on) and > permit the suffering we know to exist? > At the time of the Prophets, c. 500 B.C., the Jewish people had worked out a system that explained the suffering as god's retrubition for them breaking the covenent. It is important to remember that early Juddhism was not abstract like the Ayran religions. They did not worship good, light, and other abstract things, they had a deal with god that went . . . we obey your laws and you heap (material) good fortune on us. Zoroasterism is an Aryan religion brought to the mideast by the Indo-European invaders. It was a Zoroastrian king, Cyrus, (fondly referred to in the Bible as "the annoited one"), who allowed the Jewish people to return from Babylon and rebuild the temple. Any explaination about why god permits evil is as good as the next. The Zoroastrians were dualists, they believed that good and evil were both eternal and uncreated. Their job was to help good fight evil. We get an incredible amount of religious baggage from Zarathustra, including, judgement at death, hell, Satan, the idea of a last judgement when souls are reunited with the flesh, and god as judge. If you don't believe in god, then there is no question to resolve. Good and evil become subjective. What is good to me is good to me, what is evil to me is evil to me. If someone gets eaten by a lion, it is not too good for the person, but it is great for the lion. If someone gets ripped off it is not good for them, but it might improve the life of the person who did the ripping off (or his or her dealer). -- scc!steiny Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terrace Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 (408) 425-0382
sher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher) (07/14/85)
In article <1034@phs.UUCP> paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) writes: ... > > 4. "The fourth spurious solution, which is one of the prime glories > of Christian theology, claims in effect that suffering is a > necessary adjunct of free will.... The following questions must > be pressed. First, if God knew that man would abuse his free > will and that this would entail cancer and Auschwitz, why then > did he give man free will? Second... is there really any > connection at all between ever so much suffering and free will?" > ... >If "suffering is somehow logically necessary," then how could God >create a heaven with no suffering, but not an earth with no suffering; >why not create just heaven and no earth at all? "Would the blessed in >heaven be unable to appreciate their bliss if they could not observe the >torments of the damned?" Royce argued that "`Your sufferings are God's ... >Regards, Paul Dolber (...{decvax!mcnc or !decvax}!duke!phs!paul). From a strictly logical point of view this argument seems to require more assumptions than you have made. The existence of heaven is not necessarily true. (I come from a Jewish tradition where the above argument was made but the existence of heaven was not believed, let me state that this tradition does not correspond to the Orthodox position or possibly any of the standard positions.) Without assuming the existence of any perfect place in particular heaven is this argument still spurious? It would seem difficult to prove the world non-optimal without a complete better world model and even then the evaluation procedure can be attacked. Of course from a standard Christian viewpoint the existence of heaven is axiomatic but also all sorts of wierd things are axiomatic from a standard Christian viewpoint (oops prejudices showing!). -David Sher sher@rochester seismo!rochester!sher
wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) (07/23/85)
In article <501@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes: > If you don't believe in god, then there is no question to >resolve. Good and evil become subjective. What is good to me >is good to me, what is evil to me is evil to me. If someone >gets eaten by a lion, it is not too good for the person, but >it is great for the lion. If someone gets ripped off it is >not good for them, but it might improve the life of the person >who did the ripping off (or his or her dealer). Why is it that so many of you always assume that `secular humanists' always operate in a state of subjective self-interest? It seems to me you've got your minds made up about the reasons we nonreligious barbarians do the things we do. Of course, you don't just trash the secular humanists; I see someone has done a pretty good job on the followers of Islam, recently. Don't you just LOVE sweeping generalizations, folks? I'm an agnostic. Most of you probably assume right off the bat that life has no meaning for someone like me, right? Wrongo, Pentateuch-breath. And the meaning of the things I do in my day-to-day living is NOT defined solely by the value of those things to me. It's very simple, really; we humans are social animals, and any meaning our lives have is defined by our status as social beings. We come into this life with nothing, and inherit a rich culture from those around us. The person who lives his life in selfish isolation from those around him, choosing to act in his own self interest, has rejected the very thing that makes him human: his cultural heritage. There is no judgement at the end of life but our own; we must assess our contributions to the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of our fellow travelers and decide whether we lived our lives by the Golden Rule before we pass on into the great dark. The good and bad effects of our actions are the only immortality we're sure of. -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (07/25/85)
> In article <501@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes: > > > If you don't believe in god, then there is no question to > >resolve. Good and evil become subjective. What is good to me > >is good to me, what is evil to me is evil to me. If someone > >gets eaten by a lion, it is not too good for the person, but > >it is great for the lion. If someone gets ripped off it is > >not good for them, but it might improve the life of the person > >who did the ripping off (or his or her dealer). > > Why is it that so many of you always assume that `secular humanists' > always operate in a state of subjective self-interest? It seems to me > you've got your minds made up about the reasons we nonreligious > barbarians do the things we do. Of course, you don't just trash the > secular humanists; I see someone has done a pretty good job on the > followers of Islam, recently. Don't you just LOVE sweeping > generalizations, folks? > > I'm an agnostic. Most of you probably assume right off the bat > that life has no meaning for someone like me, right? Wrongo, I am amazed that you would believe that I am a Christian or something like that. I am an agnostic too! I think self interest is a wonderful mode of operation. Some people get a lot of pleasure out of doing things for other people. There is nothing about believing that good and evil are relative that makes me a barbarian. All it does is allow me to understand the points of view of different people, and save me from delemmas like "why did god create evil?" -- scc!steiny Don Steiny @ Don Steiny Software 109 Torrey Pine Terrace Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (07/28/85)
> From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) > So one possible answer would be that there is some level of reality > which God himself must take as given. If we claimed that some > competing entity had prevented God from doing what he wanted, I think > that would be un-Biblical. But I'm not sure it says he set up the > laws of physics, much less whatever metalaws might govern the setting > up of the laws of physics. The Bible does give indication that not only did God create the heavens and the Earth, but also the laws which govern them. These verses can be found in Job 38 -- here are a few, quoted from NIV: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone -- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:4-7) "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?" (Job 38:8-11) "Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God's dominion over the Earth?" (Job 38:31-33) These are the words of the Lord to Job. In general, the answer the question (from a Biblical perspective) of God's justice and mercy vs. suffering -- it's not ours to question the will of God, but to obey, and to have faith that he can (and will) deliver us from all suffering, in this life and ultimately. -- Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Greg Skinner (gregbo) {decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu
wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) (07/30/85)
In article <521@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes: > I am amazed that you would believe that I am a Christian >or something like that. I am an agnostic too! I must have misread your posting, so I apologize. All I saw was the old argument that nonreligious people can only base their ethical system on pure self-interest, and felt obliged to point out that it's not necessarily so (although many nonbelievers do, I realize). > I think >self interest is a wonderful mode of operation. Some people >get a lot of pleasure out of doing things for other people. >There is nothing about believing that good and evil are relative >that makes me a barbarian. All it does is allow me to understand >the points of view of different people, and save me from delemmas >like "why did god create evil?" It may work for you, but (as you can tell from my posting) I've chosen a different path. The danger I see in self interest is that it can lead to behaviors that are detrimental to the well-being of my fellow humans. Some people get a lot of pleasure out of doing things for other people like killing them and causing them pain, after all. I find the argument for ethics from the 'social being' perspective much more likely to lead to humanitarian and egalitarian behavior than the argument from the 'self-interest' perspective. And it would seem to lead to a set of ethics everyone in society can agree on, which is not true of the self-interest argument. Proper and improper behavior is a matter of social consensus, not individual choice. The definitions may change through time and across cultures, but there's always a core that most people in a society will agree on. The decision to act only in one's own self interest seems barbaric to me because it runs contrary to that which makes us most human: the social contract we sign with our fellow human beings when we come into the world. -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly