Intro
ShakaUVM in his post “The Problem of Evil is Logically Incoherent”, claims that a “perfect world” (a world devoid of Moral and Natural evil, as well as suffering) is impossible. I want to see if I’m capable of determining whether or not it lies within logical possibility for such a world to exist.
This will not entail an attempt to turn the current universe into a “perfect world” or change its current inhabitants into the occupants of this “perfect world”, but whether or not it is possible for an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god to create such a world in similar fashion as he is assumed to have this one, and populate it with free willed agents.
Assumptions
The following things are assumed to be true for the sake of this exercise:
- God exists.
- God is all-powerful.
- God is all-knowing.
- God is all-good.
- God created this universe.
- God is ‘outside of’ time (timeless).
- Free will exists.
- Morality is objective.
- The bible is an accurate recording of some of gods capabilities.
What is meant by “God exists”.
ShakaUVM identifies as a Christian and so we will similarly assume that god in this argument is the Abrahamic god.
What is meant by “God is all-powerful and all-knowing
An important distinction has to be made between being able to do anything and being able to do anything that is logically possible. It is assumed in this exercise that god is capable of doing everything that is logically possible. Though one must keep in mind that much that is logically impossible to do from our point of view, is so because of the constraints of the universe(e.g. the natural laws), which god is outside of. This means that he can be constrained by the natural laws of this universe when effecting things within this universe. But constrained only by whatever laws reign in another universe or whatever is beyond the universe when acting there.
What is meant by “God is all-good”
It means that god cannot knowingly be, directly or indirectly, the cause of evil.
What is meant by “God is ‘outside of’ time (timeless)”.
Time is a physical property, a fundamental part of our universe. God is outside of the universe and therefore not subject to any of the universe’s natural laws. This means that god must be unchanging and would perceive all time (past, present and future) simultaneously. This creates two possibilities; A deterministic universe, where the future is completely set and god knows exactly what we’ll choose during any point in the future and where those choices will lead. Or, a non-deterministic universe in which god can’t know our future choices or where they will subsequently lead us before the moment that we make said choices.
Imagine a table, you can see its entire surface (time) from where you are standing, from the far edge (the past), to the surface up to the edge in front of you (the present). In a deterministic future you would stand in the middle part and would be able to see all the way up to the far right edge (the future) as well. You can see everything that is upon this surface. This is a simplistic idea of how god could then perceive time and everything in it up to the present. You would be able to fully examine any individual piece on the surface at any moment and you would have “unlimited time” to do so. This means that it’s unimportant whether or not the universe is deterministic or not. Directly (as in within a fraction of a fraction of a second) after each choice made god would be able to, with perfect accuracy, logically determine where any choice would lead, up to the moment of the next interceding choice (from either the individual or any other individual), if the universe was not deterministic, and would be able to react instantly and accordingly.
What is meant by “free will exists”.
There are reasons to doubt the existence of free will. However, we are going to assume that the agents occupying the ‘perfect world’ would have the power to choose between possible courses of action without being impeded by outside sources. A more comprehensive definition will follow later on.
What is meant by “morality is objective”.
There are reasons to doubt the existence of objective morality. However, we are going to assume that within the ‘perfect world’ there is a set of objective moralistic laws which have been defined by or come from god.
What is meant by “the bible is an accurate recording of some of gods capabilities.”
Everything that god is said to have done according to the bible is assumed to lie within the capabilities of god. But naturally he would be able to do more. No matter how big a book becomes it would never be able to describe all the capabilities of an infinite being that is all-powerful, all-knowing and not constrained by the natural laws of a physical universe.
Logical follow-ups
- God observes all time that can be observed simultaneously.
- Only god knows what the objective moral facts are.
- Humanity can only speculate what the objective moral facts are.
- Anything we can do or logically could one day do, god can do and can do better.
Criteria
ShakaUVM has set the following criteria for the “perfect world”: * There must be multiple agents occupying the “perfect world”. * The agents must have uncompromised free will. * The world must be physical. * There can be no moral evil. * There can be no natural evil. * There can be no physical or emotional suffering.
Definitions
- Moral evil: Acting in non-accordance with objective morality.
- Natural evil: Events, uncaused by conscious acts and choices/decisions, which lead to emotional and/or physical suffering.
- All-powerful/omnipotent: The power to do anything that is logically possible.
- All-knowing/omniscient: Knowing everything that is logically possible to know.
- All-good/omnibenevolent: incapacity to knowingly cause evil.
- Free will: The power to, unimpededly, choose between possible courses of actions.
- Suffering: enduring physical and/or emotional distress or loss.
- Agents: this is used to indicate the occupants of the ‘perfect world’ which are not necessarily human.
Looking closer at the different criteria and definitions
- There must be multiple agents occupying the “perfect world”.
The amount of agents should be no greater then what resources allows for, and preferably smaller so that each individual has ample resources at all time. Nor should the amount be greater then what would negatively impact future resources or the ability to gather/implement such resources (impact the environment to such a degree that food would eventually become harder to come by, for instance).
- The agents must have uncompromised free will.
Further explanation about the definition of free will is needed; The impossibility of the action that one decides upon through a free willed choice would initially seem to not be an impediment upon free will itself. For instance; you’re in a room with three doors. You know that each door is unlocked and usable. If someone on the other side, without your knowledge, locks one of the doors, your free will is not impeded since though the action itself of using the locked door turns out to be impossible, you still will have freely chosen that course of action without being compromised in choosing that action. So;
What we think/know is or isn’t a possible course of action is based upon the knowledge we possess at the moment of making the choice. Choosing a course of action we think/know is possible, but turns out to be impossible, is not a constraint upon free will.
Within the same room is another person. With a key you see him lock one of the doors. This is a constraint upon free will. The door was usable before and has now been rendered unusable. He has removed one of the possible courses of actions you knew you could have chosen. Even if, for instance, the lock is rigged so that it sounds authentic when the key is turned, but it doesn’t actually impede the door from opening, your free will is compromised, since you are now convinced that the door has been rendered unusable. So;
Our knowledge of what is or isn’t possible influences the choices we make and the manipulation of that knowledge by outside sources is a constraint upon one’s free will.
There is, in actuality, a fourth door within the room, it is unlocked but it is hidden. Since this fourth, hidden door is unlocked it is certainly possible to go through it, but your complete lack of knowledge of its existence makes it impossible for you to choose that door.
Two possibilities then arise; 1) By “possible course of action” it is meant what is logically possible to do in general, or 2) By “possible course of action” it is meant, what is logically possible to do by the free willed individual.
Let’s use this problem upon another example; flying a plane. It is certainly possible to fly a plane, but at this current moment it is impossible for me to fly a plane, because I lack the knowledge necessary to fly a plane.
From position (1) it is possible for me to fly a plane, planes are being flown all over after all. From position (2) it is currently an impossible course of action since I lack the necessary knowledge to do so. Interpretation (1), however, would make free will impossible. My lack of knowledge would impede my free willed choice of flying a plane. My lack of knowledge would impede my free will, and everyone lacks knowledge about something. Similarly, any physical handicap would impede my free will; If I was born or accidentally rendered blind, my physical handicap would impede my free willed choice to see or follow any course of action that needs sight to be done. Therefore the ‘possible’ refers to what is possible for the free willed agent and not to what is possible in general. So;
If we have a complete lack of knowledge about an existing course of action, how to accomplish the course of action or the capabilities to accomplish a course of action, it is not a possible course of action. This is not a constraint upon free will since one never had the power to choose that course of action to begin with.
You’re in a cell. You have the key to the cell. You lock the door and throw away the key so that you can’t reach it. Is this a constraint upon free will? You have impeded yourself by removing possible courses of actions, yet this cannot be an impediment of your own free will. The reason is that most of the free willed choices we make will remove other possible courses of actions. If you choose to exit the room through the far left door you remove the possible course of action to also leave the room through the central door at that same moment (you would first have choose to re-enter the room etc.) for instance, which would mean we have no free will. So;
Free willed choices made by an individual which remove possible courses of actions for that individual are not an impediment upon the free will of that individual. But known free willed choices made by individual A which remove free willed choices from individual B are a constraint upon free will of individual B.
This means that, if the agents where created within a universe in which it is physically impossible to follow an evil course of action, it would not be a constraint upon their free will, just like the inability of accomplishing courses of actions which are impossible because of the laws of our universe, is not a constraint on our free will. An evil free world is then quite easy.
It has been argued however that for free will to exist one must be able to choose to do evil, but that is not what the definition of free will shows. Perhaps someone can give a different definition of free will that doesn’t show an extremely compromised or total lack of free will in us, which does prevent a free willed agents occupied universe in which evil is impossible from being viable. Still, I would also like to see if I can also think of a “perfect world” in which it is physically possible to do evil, but in which the free willed agents lack the desire to do so.
- The world must be physical.
One could otherwise argue that Heaven is already this “perfect world” or that god creates it by creating a world which is stuck in a single, repeating period of time. So it must be a world that is at least somewhat like our own.
- There can be no moral evil.
This means that no one will act against objective morality. This creates two possibilities; A universe in which doing evil is physically impossible or create circumstances in which people could do evil, but completely lack the desire to do so.
- There can be no natural evil.
Now I will demonstrate that natural evil, according to this definition, cannot exist when we assume that god is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good.
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God is a conscious being.
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God caused the existence of the universe.
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The existence of the universe was a conscious choice.
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Natural evils are caused by the natural laws that govern the universe.
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God caused Natural evils.
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God is all-good.
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God cannot consciously cause evil.
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The events which are identified as being ‘Natural evil’ are not evil.
God has consciously caused the existence of the universe, therefore any event that has not been caused by any other free willed agent has been caused by the properties that god has knowingly given to the universe. God is all-good and can therefore not consciously cause evil, which means that these events are not evil.
This creates a problem however; Natural evil might not exist, but the suffering caused by the natural events often classified as such does, and one of the criteria is that there will be no suffering. This also shows that suffering is in and of itself not evil. The only thing that can then be identified as evil are the acts which are against objective morality or the agents that commit those acts.
- There can be no physical or emotional suffering.
We have no direct control over the physical sensation that is physical pain. It takes secondary measures to control, whether it’s by rubbing or shaking, or by using pain relief/killers. It’s similar with emotional suffering, stopping oneself from feeling at all is practically impossible and attempts cause their own suffering. Further distinction has to be made between feeling emotional/physical pain and actual suffering.
What is meant by “enduring physical and/or emotional distress or loss.”? Distress in this context is most commonly described as “extreme worry, sadness or pain” or something of the like. The key word is “extreme”. Stubbing one’s toe is painful, but not suffering, having your stomach growl because you missed breakfast is not suffering, etc. So;
Physical suffering is when there is injury or pain to the point where it either becomes dangerous for the health of the agent or when it is a significant, continuous hindrance to his capabilities or mind.
Similarly, being sad because a favourite TV-show is cancelled is not emotional suffering, nor is feeling frustrated because you don’t instantly succeed at something. So similarly to physical pain;
Emotional suffering is when there is emotional stress to the point where it either becomes dangerous for the health of the agent or when it is a significant, continuous hindrance to his capabilities or mind.
With physical loss is meant the loss of limbs or senses. With emotional loss is meant genetic or physical damage, or deformity which prevents a normal spectrum of emotions.
Some thoughts
Before I continue I would like to direct the reader towards the possible argument that god has already created the “perfect world”, namely; this one. Or to be more precise, Eden. One could state that if god had never put the tree of knowledge in Eden the world would have stayed that way. A counter argument is that one needs to be able to choose an evil course of action and the removal of the tree would stop that and so compromise free will. This is incorrect however. Adam and/or Eve would have been able to choose a different evil then choosing to eat from the tree. They could have chosen to hurt each other, the animals or needlessly destroy the plants of the garden, for instance. But up to the point Eve was tempted by the snake, neither Adam nor Eve had chosen to do any evil at all, presumably because they didn’t want to. Though a counter argument could be that the snake would have tempted Eve with another evil, it is only speculation however whether or not Eve would have been tempted in such circumstances.
Purely theoretically, communism is the best societal structure, assuming there are enough resources for every individual; Equal wealth would eliminate the many societal problems and biases that are created by financial and economic inequality. The two biggest problems that arise from communism in practice are the possible lack of motivation if one does not gain lesser or greater rewards for effort given, and the high probability of corruption amongst those who have the capability of getting away with it (typically the governing body). Possible solutions to the first problem could be an accurate understanding of the importance of the effort, joy from accomplishments made, and love for colleagues and agents benefiting from the effort given. Possible solutions to the second problem would be unearthly governance or non-human governance; god, or angels god knows won’t be corrupted, could govern this society or it could be left to an AI. Either one would be uninfluenced by the lure of power or personal biases.
Empathy is one of the most important factors by far for my proposed “perfect world” in which evil is physically possible. Our ability to feel a hint of the pain that someone else is going through or is potentially going to go through stops many actions that would have been chosen if not for our empathy for each other. Even when we are really angry at someone we love, under normal circumstances, we still don’t use physical violence towards that person. This can be distilled even further to knowledge. Empathy is the, generally, subconscious observation of minutia in behaviour and attitude (inflection, facial expressions, body language, etc.) which is subsequently used to imagine ourselves in that situation and thus imitating a fraction of the same emotion the observed person has, paired with our feelings towards the person. It’s this knowledge of how the other person feels and our feelings towards the person which is used in the subsequent decision of how to act.
Proposition for the ‘perfect world’ in which evil is physically impossible
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Evil will be physically impossible, this universe’s natural laws would prevent any of the free willed agents from acting against the objective moral laws. They will have a complete lack of knowledge of the possibility of evil.
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God will directly communicate with the free willed agents as he has done in the past according to the bible.
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God makes it so that the agents do not get, or are capable of curing/repairing, genetic and non-genetic deceases/damage at any moment. With the advent of CRISPR, medical science and medicine, as well as god curing all manner of deceases, this should lay well within the realm of possibility. This would mean that things like depressions, anxieties, psychoses, genetically transferred or conventional deceases, physical defects, etc. don’t exist in this world.
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The agents will have an exceptionally heightened sense of empathy which will accurately and strongly allow them to feel what any other agent near them is feeling and form a tight bond of comradery and love. Step two prevents any agent from having a deficient empathy through decease or damage, meaning that all agents will have this heightened sense of empathy.
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The agents will have emotions of an equal strength as we have. Point 4 prevents any emotional turmoil from getting out of hand to the point it becomes suffering since any agent in the vicinity would fully understand what the individual is emotionally going through and help to alleviate the turmoil due to their empathy towards each other. And point 2 prevents any deceases, damage or defects from creating a lack of or hyper emotional states.
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The agents will not physically age (there are several organism with this capability already) and any (mortal) injuries will be healed instantly by god. Even if an agent where to die in some way, god will resurrect the agent instantly and whole, as he is capable of doing according to the bible. Loss of loved ones will not exist.
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The agents will be incapable of procreation. This to preserve the available resources. This means that the agents will be sexless, which also eliminates conflicts because of hormonal imbalances or breeding rights.
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There will be one governmental body, one society and one religion lead by god. Any misinterpretation on behave of any agent upon the nature of god will be rectified by god himself through direct communication.
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Each agent will have an accurate eidetic memory. This will ensure that each agent will gain an ever growing well of knowledge and skills to give purpose by ever learning new things and gives them more capabilities for jobs in their rotation.
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Each agent will have access to equal amounts of recourses. With limitless time each agent will be able to gather a large amount of knowledge and skills. There will be a rotation of work between the agents capable of doing the work, e.g. the agents will have different jobs at different times to prevent boredom and prevent the onset of suffering because of long periods of unpleasant work. No financial gain will be had from the work done, instead it’s the interest, understanding of the necessity of the work and the love/comradery they feel for their colleagues and benefiting agents which will be the reward.
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The agents will be incapable of feeling physical pain in the same way we do. Their brains will register that there is damage and where, but it will not interpret it as the stressful and unpleasant sensation that we have. Reflexive responses will stay the same however to prevent further damage. This will also remove some of the reasons for people hurting each other or themselves (sadism, self-harm) since they have no knowledge of the stimuli.
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Animals will have no emotions and will feel no pain or suffering. They will be essentially “biological robots” with the sole purpose of supporting plant life and possibly as food source for the agents.
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God or his angels will prevent natural disasters, as he is capable of creating them as punishments, according to the bible, he is logically capable of preventing them.
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Their universe is equally large and filled with equal amounts of unknowns for the agents to wonder over and pursue understanding of. This will give them purpose, other than love and support each other and to please god through the rituals of their religion.
Proposition for the ‘perfect world’ in which evil is physically possible
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God will directly communicate with the free willed agents as he has done in the past according to the bible.
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God makes it so that the agents do not get, or are capable of curing/repairing, genetic and non-genetic deceases/damage at any moment. With the advent of CRISPR, medical science and medicine, as well as god curing all manner of deceases, this should lay well within the realm of possibility. This would mean that things like depressions, anxieties, psychoses, genetically transferred or conventional deceases, physical defects, etc. don’t exist in this world.
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The agents will have an exceptionally heightened sense of empathy which will accurately allow them to feel what any other agent near them is feeling and form a tight bond of comradery and love. Step two prevents any agent from having a deficient empathy through decease or damage, meaning that all agents will have this heightened sense of empathy. This means that even though the agents will have the capacity of doing harm and evil to one another, they will lack the motivation of doing so.
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The agents will have emotions of an equal strength as we have. Point 3 prevents any emotional turmoil from getting out of hand to the point it becomes suffering since any agent in the vicinity would fully understand what the individual is going through and help to alleviate the turmoil due to their empathy towards each other. And point 2 prevents any deceases, damage or defects from creating a lack of or hyper emotional states.
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The agents will know what the objective moral laws are, god will tell them. By far most of these laws, looking at the bible, will likely forbid instigating suffering in others, which is already something the agents won’t want to do because of point 3. The other laws most likely are to prevent suffering to oneself which they will not want to do since the strong empathic bond will insure that suffering one feels is suffering that others feel. Or to their surroundings, which will be unnecessary since there are ample resources for everyone and everyone gets an equal share.
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The agents will not physically age (there are several organism with this capability already) and any (mortal) injuries will be healed instantly by god. Even if an agent where to die in some way, god will resurrect the agent instantly and whole, as he is capable of doing according to the bible. Loss of loved ones will not exist.
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The agents will be incapable of procreation. This to preserve the available resources. This means that the agents will be sexless, which also eliminates conflicts because of hormonal imbalances or breeding rights.
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There will be one governmental body, one society and one religion lead by god. Any misinterpretation on behave of any agent upon the nature of god or the objective moral laws will be rectified by god himself through direct communication.
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Each agent will have an accurate eidetic memory. This will ensure that each agent will gain an ever growing well of knowledge and skills to give purpose by ever learning new things and gives them more capabilities for jobs in their rotation.
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Each agent will have access to equal amounts of recourses. With limitless time each agent will be able to gather a large amount of knowledge and skills. There will be a rotation of work between the agents capable of doing the work, e.g. the agents will have different jobs at different times to prevent boredom and prevent the onset of suffering because of long periods of unpleasant work. No financial gain will be had from the work done, instead it’s the interest, understanding of the necessity of the work and the love/comradery they feel for their colleagues which will be the reward.
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The agents will be incapable of feeling physical pain in the same way we do. Their brains will register that there is damage and where, but it will not interpret it as the stressful and unpleasant sensation that we have. Reflexive responses will stay the same however to prevent further damage. This will also remove some of the reasons for people hurting each other or themselves (sadism, masochism) since they have no knowledge of the stimuli.
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Animals will have no emotions and will feel no pain or suffering. They will be essentially “biological robots” with the sole purpose of supporting plant life and possibly as food source for the agents.
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God or his angels will prevent natural disasters, as he is capable of creating them as punishments, according to the bible, he is logically capable of preventing them.
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Their universe is equally large and filled with equal amounts of unknowns for the agents to wonder over and pursue understanding of. This will give them purpose, other than to please god through the rituals of their religion.
Responses
I’m interested in counterarguments and the (likely) oversights and mistakes I’ve made. I will down vote and further ignore blank statements, actually present arguments as to why you think/feel something is incorrect or missing.
Keep in mind that the agents in question are not us, they might not even be human. Arguing from our standpoint might not work; how a human would react, feel or think is not necessarily how one of the agents would.
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