11mo ago

A cool guide to Epicurean paradox

Cool Guides @lemmit.online

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174 comments

Fun fact, if you arrive at this conclusion as an 8 year old in Sunday school at your ultra fundamentalist Baptist Church and proceed to tell the teacher, you get yelled at and spanked by the teacher and your parents! Ask me how I know.
- How do you know?
- It was a test
  
  It's me, the Sunday school teacher
  
  Yeah, and the Sunday school teacher failed.

I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect. If an all-knowing, all-powerful God acted contrary to our understanding of morality, or allowed something to happen contrary to our understanding of morality it would make sense for us to perceive that as undermining our understanding of God, making him imperfect. An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
It presumes to know a perfect morality while also arguing that morality can be subjective. It doesn't make sense, just like an irrational belief in a God. I think the best way to go about this is to allow people to believe how they want and stop trying to convince people one way another about their beliefs. People get to believe differently and that is not wrong.
Edit: holy shit those reddit comments are full of /r/iamverysmart material lmfao
- I don't know if I misunderstood you, but "making millions of people suffer horribly and needlessly for no fault of their own might just be the most ethical thing there is, you never know, so let's not draw any conclusions about God allowing that to happen." just seems like a rather unconvincing line of thought to me. It's essentially just saying "God is always right, accept that"
  I guess god just gave us the moral understanding that his (in)actions are insanely immoral to test our unquestioned loyalty to him, or he just likes a little trolling. Or maybe he just doesn't exist...
  
  Any God that could prevent the suffering of millions and still allow it is not a God worthy of your worship.
- An all-knowing, all-encomposing God may have an understanding that we as mortals are incapable of understanding or perceiving.
  That being could make us understand.
- If you skip the "evil" part and just start talking about "things that are bad for us humans" it's still true though. Sure, maybe child cancer is somehow moral or good from the perspective of an immortal entity, but in this case this entity is obviously operating on a basis that is completely detached from what's meaningful to us. Our lives, our suffering, our hardship - obviously none of all this is relevant enough to a potential god to do anything about it. Or he would, but can't. Hence the Epicurean paradox.
  One answer I've heard from religious people is that life after death will make up for it all. But that doesn't make sense either. If heaven/paradise/whatever puts life into such small perspective that our suffering doesn't matter, then our lives truly don't mean anything. It's just a feelgood way of saying god couldn't care less about child cancer - because in the grand scheme of things it's irrelevant anyway.
  To us humans, our lives aren't meaningless. Child cancer isn't irrelevant. We care about what's happening in this life and to the people we care about. How could a god be of any relevance to us if our understanding of importance, of value, of good and bad, is so meaningless to them? Why would we ever construct and celebrate organized religion around something so detached from ourselves? The answer is: We wouldn't.
  Either god is relevant to our lives or he isn't. Reality tells us: He isn't. Prayers don't work, hardship isn't helped, suffering isn't stopped. Thought through to it's inevitable conclusion the Epicurean paradox is logical proof that god as humans used to think about him doesn't exist, and if something of the sorts exists, it's entirely irrelevant to us.
- I think the fundamental issue with this is that it presumes that our understanding of morality is perfect.
  By that measure, all religions have the fundamental issue of presuming that they have any actual knowledge or understanding of their god(s).
  
  But not all religions claim to have perfect knowledge of their god? Some acknowledge that god is greater and beyond our understanding
- "Uhhh mysterious ways is why children get cancer"
  This is a copout and you're a silly little guy
- Regarding your first paragraph:
  According to the christian bible their God literally told them that for example killing is evil. And yet, it exists and God is a mass murderer according to bible accounts. There are various explicit and implicit definitions of good and evil available in that book which is supposedly written by their God in some way or another. Therefore, the omnipotent being defined clear rules of morality which it doesn't even uphold itself.
  allow people to believe how they want and stop trying to convince people one way another about their beliefs
  Although I agree in principle with the notion of "live and let live", organised religion has caused unfathomable suffering and it still does. In a lot of religions it is sadly incorporated into their very core. That's something which I can not tolerate and will speak out against.
- Double this.
  Basically God's evil != Human's evil
  
  But God told humans what good and evil is, therefore human's evil is at least a subset of God's evil.

What's the definition of "all powerful"? Would an all-powerful being need to be able to draw a square without it being a rectangle? Or to build a house without walls?
If the answer is "no", then I'd argue that the left most arrow/conclusion is logically wrong/misplaced/invalid. Assuming that "free will" is not possible without "evil".
- Agreed.
  Evil is also a subjective concept, the same action can be perceived as good or evil depending on the understood context.
  When you allow action on the subjective experience of life aka free will, you also allow evil to emerge from those actions as those interaction collide with the subjective experience of others.
  
  Well sure. You could argue that evil is subjective. But even so we could just go with gods definition of "evil" things and use the 10 commandments as what he deems good or bad. In which case he created a world in which people will do the things he told them not to (same with the Apple) which makes him either not good or not all powerful.
  Personally God becomes a lot more palettable when he is a non all powerful and non all knowing higher dimensional being that just created us and can't be fucked dealing with this problem he created. Like avoiding cleaning the dishes in the sink.
- That's the thing, it seems too simplistic, though probably is a good start towards something, better understanding I suppose.
  Like all planar squares must be rectangles, but curved square nonplanar washers exist... and those neither disprove nor prove the existence of a God (or Gods, or any spiritual beings at all)?:-P
  
  The devil as they say is in the details, like what exactly is evil, in order to go from mere wordplay to true philosophical understanding. imho at least.

One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you'll agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log.
As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children.
And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.
-Sir Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

there is a non terminating loop in this diagram and that is where god is mic drop
- A ghost hidden within the finite state automata, you say, dare we call it a Deus ex machina even? :-P
- That's where christians are stuck, at least
- Good and Evil are ultimately relative and subjective terms. They also don't really explore the mechanisms by which Good/Evil occur or are evaluated.
  The argument from Evil really just boils down to "God isn't real because I'm not happy". And that doesn't logically follow.

I had a conversation that ended up like this with someone who was genuinely trying to convert me to Christianity once. He eventually argued that god doesn't need to be all powerful to be worshipped, since he is at least extremely powerful.
- Sounds like he was worshipping a mid tier god. At least it’s better than those waste of space reasonably powerful ones.
- The French have invented a nice too to deal with such "extremely powerful" scumbags.

This presupposes that "evil" exists as a universal concept that a god is bound, versus a god that exists outside of concepts of morality.
- It doesn't. What it simply presupposes that if God participates or allows it, that puts god in the "not all good" category
  If God exists withtout morality, god cannot be all good to us
  
  If a god exists, then it could reasonably be believed (without evidence, since there is no evidence for any god at all) that god is defining morality for us, rather than defining morality in regards to themselves. You could likewise argue that if it's the will of god, then it must be good, and if it's not the will of god, then it's not good. So children getting cancer? That's clearly god's will, and is therefore good.
- The god that gave His faithful the ten commandments and has His church promise heaven or hell depending on behavior exists outside of morality ? He literally defines it.
  
  He/it creates and defines concepts of morality, but may not be a part of that system, or bound by those definitions. If we're imagining a being of some kind that is (nominally) omnipotent and omnipresent, the I don't see how we could realistically apply morality based on a mortal existence to it. How could you apply, for instance, a rule that says "don't murder" to a thing that is incapable of death in any way that we would understand it?
  I'm absolutely not a theist, but I think that exercises like this are ultimately futile. When I was a believer, this kind of mental exercise wouldn't have made much of a dent in my belief. The nature of evil has been a study point for religious scholars for >2000 years, and mostly people ahve shrugged and said that they don't understand, but they have faith, and that's good enough. OTOH, I'm a sample size of one, so maybe there are people that would see this argument and question how rational their belief was.
- In Christianity there are several explicit or implicit definitions of good and evil and how their God judges them based on that. Therefore, concepts of morality exist in that context.
- Yes, this. This supposes that either:
  A. There is the existence good and evil that supersedes the authority of God ( which means God cannot be sovereign over morality )
  B. I define good and evil and then judge "god" based on my definition ( which from a moral standpoint would actually make me god )
  I suspect that this really isn't a paradox for most people because they either:
  A. Look at the world and see horrible things they don't like and then want to judge God for them ( with what authority ? )
  B. They don't believe in God to begin with but like to use this chart to re-enforce their belief that they are logically correct.
  A God that literally defines good and evil by his existence ( I AM ) breaks this chart.
  
  A God that literally defines good and evil by his existence ( I AM ) breaks this chart.
  Pretending the epicurean paradox is about the existence of god is a strawman
  The entire thing is about the qualities in the character of god. Is god all knowing, all powerful and all god as he is sold to us by the Church?
  Also, an even bigger strawman and circular logic to boot is your argument about being unable to "judge" god (or the expectation of his behaviour)
  The concept of judging you are using seems to be that or passing sentencing. Anyone can evaluate with simple logic without being a figure of authority.
  If I see a person kicking a freightened dog, I don't need to be any authority over that person to reach the conclusion, aka "judge", they are doing something wrong
  
  see horrible things they don’t like and then want to judge God for them
  I wonder if there are things you'd judge god for. Is there suffering so great that you would ask "how can he let that happen"? Or is your god compatible with even the worst realities imaginable?
  If the former, all we're debating is if the suffering prevalent in our world is great enough to justify the question. And I'd personally argue if you're not entirely ignorant to the suffering of your fellow human beings it definitely is.
  If the latter, the categories of "good" and "bad" become completely meaningless. The term "god" becomes meaningless. At this point there's no connection between our reality and whatever idea we might have of a divine power, since the two do not interfere. He is just an idea with no tangible effect on this world, I am irrelevant to him, he is irrelevant to me. The question of his existence becomes pointless.

Seem confusing?
That's right - because anything that's made up and subject to interpretation IS!

One of the funniest things humanity has done is to invent the concept of God as a super entity and then reduce him/them/it to their level.
Why would a super entity be bound by "love" which only humans understand ? Why would "it" have the concept of "evil", something that humans invented out of fear.
As a species we just need to accept we are just stupid.
- And that is why religion is effectively meaningless. We have invented a being full of contradictions, much like ourselves, but declared [it|whatever] perfect besides that. The answer to the paradox is that there is no God.
  People should learn to strive for good without the threat of eternal punishment from a being of their invention, otherwise those individuals were never good to begin with, and their imaginary all powerful, all knowing and judgemental god would punish them regardless.
  
  Define "good".
- Why would a super entity be bound by "love" which only humans understand ? Why would "it" have the concept of "evil", something that humans invented out of fear.
  It doesn't. That's the point. The Epicurean paradox doesn't say god doesn't exist in some way or form, but the idea of god as someone with a relationship to humanity based on love, omnipotence and omniscience (in any way that's meaningful to us) is apparently false.
  Or from your perspective: God loves us in his way; he doesn't love us in our way, which means we can't expect the same mercy, the same support, the same commitment from him as we humans are capable of.
  Epicurus refuted one very specific idea of god, which was prevalent at one point in time, but is today only believed by very devout evangelicals. What we today conclude from the fact that apparently no god will alleviate the suffering in this life is up to each individual.
- As a species we just need to accept we are just stupid.
  Or in the words of Socrates: "I know that I know nothing."
  Or in the words of (possibly or possibly not) Einstein: "Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
  I agree. It is better not to assume anything and take it for a truth, but to find the truth through reliable and provable methods.

"why can't god create a boulder so heavy that even the can't carry it?" even as a child trying to trick god with basic paradoxes sounded funny to me.
- The existence of those paradoxes could also mean that omnipotence in itself is simply impossible.
  
  Or logic is a blasphemy against god.

Just being the devil advocate here: I disagree with the "destroy Satan" part, Satan isn't the definition of evil, he is only the HR department that deal with the evil people, and the part of God not stopping evil, maybe he don't because it go against free will? About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this, after a few centuries of perfection you don't care/remember I guess
- Good advocate. Anyway, "God not stopping evil, maybe he don’t because it go against free will" - That enters the loop at the bottom. Could God create a universe where free will exists, but evil does not exist? If yes, then why didn't He? If He could not create such a universe, then he's not all powerful and/or not all loving and good.
  "About the not loving, he promises a perfect infinity world after all of this" - Then why do we have to go through this initial, temporary and imperfect part?
  
  Maybe free will requires the infinite complexity of this world and hence must also contain “evil” in some way.
- Literally advocating for the devil.

Kind of falls apart if rejecting the idea of objective good and evil and interpreting the parable of the fruit of knowledge in Eden as the inheritance of a relative knowledge of good and evil for oneself which inherently makes any shared consensus utopia an impossibility.
In general, we have very bizarre constraints on what we imagine for the divine, such as it always being a dominant personality.
Is God allowed to be a sub? Where's the world religion built around that idea?
What about the notion that the variety of life is not a test for us to pass/fail, but more like a Rorsarch test where it allows us to determine for ourselves what is good or not?
Yes, antiquated inflexible ideas don't hold up well to scrutiny. But adopting those as the only idea to contrast with equally inflexible consideration just seems like a waste of time for everyone involved, no?
- I've always thought the better argument was to replace 'good and evil' with 'happiness and sadness'. Everything you said makes sense because good and evil are subjective, but at least everyone agrees that happiness is a goal in itself that we all strive for, regardless of what it takes to get you there personally.
  If you go through this chart and use the word 'happiness' instead, it becomes pretty clear that god is not omnipotent and omniscient and benevolent, or we would only ever feel happiness.

I once heard omnipotent doesn't mean they can overturn logic itself, which seems a little unintuitve to me, but hey why not.
- Being unbound by logic / information theory would make it impossible to reason about anything at all
  
  Thereby implying that everything becomes meaningless and there is no point in believing anything.

I have never before encountered an "aC" dating system. A quick google shows the dates to line up with BC, but it's still new.
- heh, it's the ante christ

evil exists -> no
- Honestly that's probably the only way out of the problem of evil.
  That said you are on a path of ethical relativism, and from a practical standpoint it's fucked up beyond belief.
  Also so much of religion is founded on the good/ evil dynamic that if this was removed, everything else would crumble.

What if an almighty God created the universe without evil, but with free-will, and then one angel decided to challange the way God rules, so that God has to let him rules to show everyone whose way of rule is the best?
Simply killing that angel would not answer the challenge, on the contrary, killing that angel would demonstrate that God is a dictator.
Pasted from a reply to another user.
- God created angels. If God created an angel which challenges them and is "evil" (saying that about some angel dude who isn't a mass murderer like their creator according to bible records https://www.wired.com/2007/04/old-testament-m/ https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html ) then we arrive again at the Epicurean paradox.
- God is already a dictator by choosing the state of everything. Designing a chaotic system and letting it run also supports being a dictator. He designed the system. An omnipotent God is unable to escape His own designs. The rebellious angel was by design. His planning thereby is guile.
  
  If the rebellious angel was evil by design, then there is no free-will.
- Still wouldn't answer why god doesn't interfer with evil. Why doesn't he help us against this angel? Heals sicknesses? Stops wars? Saves victims of murder and rape?

There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.
It's a slightly more complicated version of whether God can create a rock so big he cannot lift it. Can God create a universe where I simultaneously have freewill and also don't have the ability to do anything outside his will (evil)? Can 0 equal 1? The answer to that question isn't yes/no, it's that the question is invalid. Freewill does not equal non-freewill. It'll confuse some unprepared Sunday School teacher, but that's it.
- I agree, this is not a good argument against the existence of god, but it seems to be a fine argument against certain models of god. To get out of the paradox, one must be willing to give up certain notions about god. Either:
  God isn't all knowing, so it's unaware of all the evil in the universe.
  God doesn't have infinite power, making god unable to create a universe without evil (perhaps due to limitations of what god can and cannot do.
  God is not entirely good or god's definition of good does not align with what us humans have been taught. God doesn't see evil where we see evil so it does not use its infinite power and knowledge to change it.
  I think there are a lot of theists who would have trouble accepting one of these notions, which would keep them stuck within this paradox.
  
  The Orthodox Christian God is all knowing. Evil is the absence of Good. (e.g. darkness is the absence of light)
  Similarly this God is all powerful and has already defeated evil through the sanctification of man's nature through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Faith and cooperation with the Holy Spirit is how man communes with God.
  Evil is the absence of good. So wherever people sin against God evil exists. Fallen beings exist as well because they too sinned against God but are eternally damned whereas man is redeemable.
  God is indescribable and inconceivable. He created a church on Earth so that we can worship him. Worshipping God is good for us not just because God is good to us but because he literally is "good". In a world without God good and evil don't exist.
- There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.
  It’s a slightly more complicated version of whether God can create a rock so big he cannot lift it.
  It's a very good argument against god, and your second statement is a great addition to it. Omnipotence in itself is impossible, as proven by the rock paradox. An omnipotent being can therefore not exist.
  Your free will idea however has a very easy counter argument: If free will is the problem, then god has nothing to offer us - since in the afterlife the same rules would apply. Either a world without suffering is possible, or it isn't. Since the afterlife isn't known to work by taking away our free will, suffering would therefore continue to prevail there as well. If the idea of an afterlife must be possible (as seen in most organized religions) than the idea of a world without suffering must be possible, without taking away something so valuable as our freedom.
  
  Omnipotence in itself is impossible
  The question of God isn't of perfect omnipotence but relative omnipotence. There's plenty of room for a "Godlike" being that does not resolve the paradox of omnipotence. Hell, a guy who sits on a cloud and flings lighting bolts has been sufficient to qualify for eons.
  Either a world without suffering is possible, or it isn’t
  Suffering without purpose. And that's where things get sticky. Because the argument from Evil needs to assume the recipients of suffering are innocent and undeserving. Otherwise it's not evil, just karma.
- In what way is this an argument against God? This is an argument against a god that is all-knowing all-powerful and all-benevolent.
  Also your idea of free will is coming loaded with some major baggage.
  
  My bad, that baggage is the capital G God primarily referring to Abrahamic tradition God. Zeus doesn't pass the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent religion check, but Yahweh and Allah definitely have those claimed tied pretty innately to their being.
- There are many good arguments against God. This is not one of them.
  That is because this isn't an argument against god. It is simply a question that resulted in a Paradox about the character of god as described by the Church
  Can 0 equal 1? The answer to that question isn’t yes/no, it’s that the question is invalid.
  What? the question is not invalid. it is a yes/no, the *implications" of that yes or no however can carry significant correlations
  Freewill does not equal non-freewill.
  yeah, nobody is making this crazy claim...
  
  Yeah, probably would have been better to use dividing by 0 instead of 0=1 as the example, but the point still stands.
  Yes/no isn't a valid answer to a paradox. Can God create a universe where there is freewill and there isn't freewill? Can God create a rock so large he can't lift it? Can he shit so big he can't flush it? All interesting, but in the end invalid questions. But shoehorning in a yes/no when the real answer is just undefined is incorrect.
  It's good fun for an internet comment section, or irritating some youth group leader, but in the end not a useful question.
- What's your logic with 0 = 1?
  Can you restate without math?
  
  It's similar to the "unstoppable force meets an immovable object" thought experiment.
  They can't both exist, just like 0 can't be the same as 1. If you somehow "forced" it to be true because an all powerful deity made it so, the logic breaks, and the answer is effectively useless to us.
  So then if a deity made freewill, there MUST be evil, or at least the capability of it. My metaphor is sorta inverted, but hopefully it makes sense.
  
  0 and 1 are not the same thing. Can an all powerful being make them the same thing? Yes, but doing so would destroy the very concept of logic and render this whole exercise that is existence pointless. The theoretical world in which 0 and 1 are the same thing (or true and false, or hot and cold) does not rely on the rules of logic that underpin all human thought. You are looking at a return to the Ginnungagap; the void before reality. The darkness that existed before the first day.
  Of course, the "free will" thingy doesn't explain away all the bad stuff in the world. It explains why we have adultery and murder and nazis. But it doesn't explain why babies get cancer. And the reason that babies get cancer is that the gods do not know everything, they can't fix everything, and besides, they wouldn't if they could because they don't care. The paradox of baby cancer only works on monotheistic religions, and even then only a tiny percentage of them.
- Alright so your argument about free will only really adds up if you are an absolutist about free will. Imagine a perfect utopian paradise of a world. All are free to do whatever they want so long as it is not "evil." Your definition of evil can vary but presumably an omniscient god would have a pretty good idea of what that means. Rhe mwans of prevention xouls be literally anything, because y'know omnipotent and omniscient, including just creating people that simply do not have the capacity for evil. Would the people in that world not have free will? Just because there are some things they cannot do does not mean that in my eye. I can't fly or bite my own finger off or perceive and manipulate the fabric of the universe, does that mean I don't have free will? IMO the only way your position here is logically consistant is if you do take the absolutist position that in order to have free will you must be omnipotent yourself, otherwise there will always be things you cannot do.
  
  I think I would say that the people living in that utopia do not have free will. Their will is not their own, it's God's will imposed on them. They can operate within its confines and limits, but it is externally, not internally defined.
  I think you have to separate out two things that are often conflated together, freedom of will and freedom of action. The difference is with freedom of will, I can want to fly, and with freedom of action, I can fly if I want to.
  It reminds me of the classic Henry Ford quote about having your car in any color you want, as long as it's black. If I want a black car, fine. If I want a white car, that's a problem.

What if I disagree with the premise?
- Replace with "bad stuff happens".
  
  "tree falls in a forest"
- I don't know, have you been to West Bank?

Wdyat about the answer that unsong gives to this? Which is roughly "God creates all unique universes that are on net good. This world has evil but is still on net good.".
- "I donated a million dollars to a charity for impoverished children and I also murdered a few people for funsies. Hey, they even out right?"
  No. That's stupid.

Evil is a privation of Good.

Fuck I all I want "ai" for is to filter out these stupid fucking posts that I see all the time from whatever screen I am viewing

Are you 16 and this is deep?
- It's actually a really important subject and very deep if you actually think about it. The problem of evil has challenged philosophers for centuries, and apologists have not been able to square the circle of evil, all knowing, all powerful and all loving.

We know paradoxes exist in the real world. Therefore proving that the existence of God is paradoxical does not prove that God doesn't exist. It simply proves that God is paradoxical. Which most people knew already.
- Paradoxes don't "exist" in the real world. Reality isn't paradoxical. Paradoxes are what we call problems we haven't found answers for yet. They point to unsolved questions, false correlations, and wrong premises - precisely because nothing in the real world can actually be paradoxical.
  
  We know of apparent paradoxes, like the conflict between quantum gravity and relativistic gravity
- You can't prove nor disprove that you're a big brain floating in the void just imagining the world around you. ( Boltzmann Brain)
  Proving a concept which is unverifiable by nature is impossible. On that level of argumentation everything is as valid as anything else if you label one of such concepts as "true". Either all religions are wrong or all are right. Either you are a Boltzmann brain or you are not and you are really here. Who knows, maybe you are a pink giant elephant, hopping around on the moon, imagining the world around you as it is. Why not believe in that?
  I see the Epicurean paradox as another a tool to unveil the unverifiable nature of christian fairy-tales. As if that were still necessary.

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