I was at Philosophy on Tap last night (think philosophy lecture over beer) and I had some interesting thoughts, or perhaps consequences that I thought I’d share. This session is called ‘whence evil’ or something like that. It is essentially a tracing of the problem of evil to philosophy that includes God. This particular lecture covered Leibniz and Hume. My observations are mostly about Leibniz who is a believer.
Throughout this essay I use the term evil. In this context I am using it as a stand in for the dark side of the force in combination with pain. A more specific definition is possible, but I don’t think it is required for the purposes of this essay.
Leibniz believed that God existed and was omnipotent, omni-benevolent and (redundantly) omniscient. Based on the fact that God was omnipotent and omni-benevolent Leibniz concluded that this must be the best of all possible worlds. This would seem to be a valid conclusion based on the premises. Further any evil we encounter is required. Now this immediately leads to questions of what it is required for and similar questions. I don’t know that we (or Leibniz) can make any deductions based on the premises. All we can really say is that there is no less good way of doing what ever it is that requires evil.
This would seem to me to impinge on God’s omnipotence (or omni-benevolence), but as far as I can tell Leibniz didn’t come to this conclusion. If God is merely the most powerful thing ever then there may be restrictions on how it expresses its will, but once God is elevated to omnipotence such restrictions shouldn’t mean anything anymore.
People often seem unable to conceive of the consequences of omnipotence, however I find it strange that an inventor of calculus would be so constrained. It strikes me that if something is omnipotent, there can be nothing that is a necessary condition to the way that it expresses its will. Omnipotence would seem to require that any rules only be adhered to on a voluntary basis. With the premise that God is omni-benevolent it is unclear what excuse there could be for God expressing its will in such a away that includes evil.
The nature of omnipotence becomes key to my observation, but for the moment we will allow the discussion of omnipotence to lapse. For that sake of argument let us accept that the nature of God’s ‘omnipotence’ could require evil to exist in the world.
Allowing all that for sake of argument, it would seem that there must be evil in Heaven. If this is the best of all possible worlds, it is unclear how Heaven could be better than the best of all possible worlds.
If God’s omnipotence is limited in such a way that this is the best possible world he can create (as required by benevolence), then how can he create a better world and call it Heaven? To phrase it another way, how can Heaven be better than the best of all possible worlds?
Like I said earlier c2 seems to conflict with p2, but that didn’t seem to bother Leibniz. He of course ended with c2, but it seems c3 falls directly out of c1 and c2.
–Zafkiel
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback“How can Heaven be better than the best of all possible worlds?”
that's a great phrase & idea, consider it stolen (with all credit due)
I do not remember exactly who formulated it, but one refutation of Hume's problem with evil goes: “evil in the world is a test to allow people to better themselves”.
So it stands to be reasoned that heaven is a world without evil. We are tested by evil and experience evil so that we can identify heaven when we get there, and possibly so we will not be a source of evil when we are in heaven.
(http://livejournal.com/users/karlthepagan)
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