A cool guide to Epicurean paradox
A cool guide to Epicurean paradox
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174 comments
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Nope!
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So what are you saying? I really don't get it.
Bad stuff is happening to people. People suffer. Suffering exists. This is not the question.
Is this fact of our reality compatible with the existence of an all knowing, all loving, omnipotent god? Epicurus says no.
So assuming an all knowing, all loving, omnipotent god and our reality we've got ourselves a paradox. How do we solve it? Either one of the premises is wrong (so god could be two or less of those things, but not all three) or there's an entirely different explanation (haven't heard a good one so far tbh).
As a bonus we could now ask ourselves if an entity that is merely two of those original three things would be worthy of worship or would in another way justify the existence of organized religion.
It's a simple task in logical thinking. No idea where you were going with the tree metaphor.
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I personally think people suffer and suffering exists, but Epicurus's paradox is founded on a premise that suffering and evil must exist. Is that a safe premise? There's a few ways that that might be untrue:
- Would evil exist if humans stop existing? We probably don't expect evil to exist on Pluto or Alpha Centauri or any other place devoid of life.
- Are humans correct when they perceive evil? Every evil thing ever perceived could have actually not been an instance of evil.
- Given that we assume that humans should exist and are accurate when they think they're suffering: do humans have to suffer? Buddhism as a philosophy and religion is all about practices and beliefs that promise an end to suffering (the "four noble truths").
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I think you're misunderstanding Epicurus. The problem of evil directly refers to human suffering. Whether evil exists outside of our experience has nothing to do with the paradox.
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They're also misunderstanding Buddhism. Fair to assume they're probably misunderstanding quite a lot.
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Happy to hear your interpretation!
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That's alright, but then what about point #3, that perhaps suffering can be ended and, in particular, there are religions about humans living without suffering?
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You're describing part of the paradox: religion promises relief from suffering based on certain characteristics of god (in this case: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving), while suffering continues. The nature of the promise and the nature of our reality don't seem compatible. That's what the Epicurean paradox is about. Obviously something can't be right about the promise that god loves you, has exact knowledge of what must be done and is literally omnipotent. Because evidently he doesn't follow through with it.
I don't know how exactly other religions promise to alleviate suffering. Maybe those create their own paradoxes, who knows. We'd have to look at the actual claims of those religions. The Epicurean paradox very specifically criticises the idea of god as proposed by the abrahamic religions and in my opinion does so very convincingly.
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174 comments