The (non-)Problem of (robotic) Evil

[nanikore]

-Reasoning is based upon internal and external observations, and any "reasons" would be those that humans think up based upon their perceptions

Comments

[dialogic]

Why don't you just post a link to a Wykstra argument, then post a link to Rowe's response, and save everyone involved the trouble?

[nanikore]

Why don't everyone just point to names, and never make arguments?

All of us can start now. Make it a part of community guidelines.

[dialogic]

The point is, a better argument that "God works in mysterious ways" has already been proferred. Inordinately better. It was made by Wykstra. It includes, in it, a reason to believe that it is true. I can see none such in your "argument."

[nanikore]

It is not a "reason" to believe as to what prompted belief and faith. Experience of God does that. Was that the "reason" offered by Wykstra?

If belief is "reasoned," then it has absolutely nothing to do with having faith.

[rouchambeau]

Isn't faith never a matter of evidence?

[nanikore]

Many people need it, judging from past conversations.

[virtual_anima]

Doesn't this still refute omnibenevolence?

If we're going to try to define god's characteristics in 2, you can't go about saying we can't define his characteristics in 3. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either we are limited and can't understand him, or we can and can define all those things.

[nanikore]

It does not.

Being privy to the attribute of omnibenevolence does not entail knowing the executive details of such omnibenevolence.

[virtual_anima]

So how are you judging which attributes are knowable and which aren't?

[nanikore]

It is a given of the Problem of Evil. If we do not acknowledge the attributes, then we don't even have the problem anymore. In other words, what you are asking is outside the scope of the PoE.

However, from a Christian's arational (and not a Philosopher's rational) point of view, attributes are known via personal experience.

There should be no way to "argue" anyone into or out of believing in God, because one does not "impart experience" via argumentation. A major topic of Philosophy of Mind is the subjective experience of "what it is like." A first hand demonstration would be for one person to ask another, "do you know exactly what it is like to be me?"

[empirical_logic]

7. By 2, God is omniscient and therefore his mind is infinite.

What if there are only finitely many knowable propositions? Why would a mind have to be infinite in order to know only finitely many knowable proposions? If you think that there are infinitely many knowable propositions, why do you think so? However, even if it is provably the case that there are infinitely many knowable propositions, if the Christian god can act outside of human reason, why couldn't there still be only finitely many knowable things, thus making the Christian god's omniscient mind finite?

[nanikore]

Not all things are knowable by us. They extend outside propositions.

[empirical_logic]

I see no prima facie reason to accept that there is any fact that is is unknowable-in-principle. It appears to be nothing more than an appeal to invicible ignorance and places an arbitrary limit on human endeavor. I wonder why anybody would care about trying to learn something new when they feel justified in simply declaring that it's "the unknowable will of god". I also wonder why you're apparently attempting to reason about something when you explicitly claim that reasoning is not relevant to it?

[nanikore]

Is this an argument for human omniscience?

[jowmagian]

If the concept of omniscience is something humans can't comprehend, how can we label God with it? For us to label God of it, we'd have to know what it was beforehand, wouldn't humans only be able to label "god" as having an unknowable ,to humans, quality?

[nanikore]

We know of the concept, but we have not the ability that the concept prescribes.

[jowmagian]

I still don't understand. How can we label God as Omnibenevolent or Omniscient if we dont know that those are? Wouldn't that be similar to a blind person labelling something as red?

It's would seem to me that we know the word omnibenevolent or omniscient, but not actually the concept of it.

[nanikore]

Ultimate knowing involves knowing all consequences. We know not of all consequences.

Ultimate good involves all steps involved are leading to good. We see what is in front of us, respectively.