Old questions

If there is a God, and all is His creation, how do you reconcile evil and grace?

Recall that God created Lucifer already with the potential, that is, the will, to rebel.

So, what good is there in war, famine, and suffering?

Why would one even seek good in such things? To endeavor their end?
Given our world's present state, does it seem as if the only end to all such things is total eradication and, after a few eons, a renewal of life?

Do you convocate with "There is no God" or "God is dead?"

 

I'm just playing the devil's advocate here, I don't believe in any God.

You could have a God that has its own definition of good and evil, or could reconcile evil as being with the greater good..

One idea that I've heard from a few Biblical literalists is that such evils bring out the best in humans. This answer disgusts me, of course, but, it's a logically sound answer.

I don't believe in any God and I agree with Nietzsche's "God is dead" philsophy (which doesn't actually refer to the Biblical God being dead, just refers to a death of objective morality).

 

ok.

Isn't that already the case with at least the Abrahamic religions, with commandments and so forth?

You mean that evil would be for the greater good?

How so?

Where and when was morality objective?

 

As far as I know, yes. I was raised Catholic, but I never really paid any attention.

Exactly. This is the "best possible world" interpretation of the problem of evil: Best of all possible worlds - Wikipedia

The argument goes (again, not my argument) that evil gives humans a chance to shine. Natural disasters, for example, typically result in people rushing to help through donations of food, money, or labour.

It never was, I meant the end of society's belief in an objective morality.

 

I maybe should have been more explicit - I didn't mean to ask whether or not it's possible to reconcile good and evil; that matter I don't think is one of possibility - we realize that reconciliation (I think) without willing it. So, I really meant my question to be more personal; like, how do you (reading this thread) personally conceive and consolidate good and evil?

It's concerns much more than that. For instance, Giorgio Agamben has proposed that if God was once the name for language, then the death of God can mean only that there no longer is a name for language, and, as I've understood the argument, we therefore find ourselves amidst a stream of incoherent necessity, perpetually misunderstanding thought's particularity, misrecognizing it and taking it to be a whole, which used to be, but which now is something akin to an after-image; and that, again, as I understand it, is one sense in which to understand the death of God.

Whatever moral consequences follow therefrom, the matter is, in my view of the question, first and foremost one of the Word made flesh (cf. Nietzsche on Reading and Writing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

With my question, Do you convocate with "There is no God" or "God is dead?" I meant two propose two irreconcilable possibilities, one being a negation, the other affirmative. I presuppose that each perspective may be already inherent in anyone (at the very least those who are literate), that moral decisions are like a congregation of motives (fear, desire, and so forth) channeled into action. And so, as I said above, I really was looking for individual perspectives, not really anything to do with totality.

 

How can you actually determine what is good and what is bad?

 

Ah, okay. Personally, I think that good and evil are human interpretations of the world. I don't believe in any sort of God or divinity, so I believe that nature simply is as it is, without need for reconciliation.

That's definitely one sense - my mistake, I thought you were referring to Nietzsche.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this.

Just to clarify, when you say "two irreconcilable possibilities", you mean "God is dead" implies that there was a God, whereas "there is no God" implies that there never was one?

 

Hmm, I'll come back to that.

I was thinking of Nietzsche when I wrote the OP, and then of Agamben, who, now that I think about it, in the essay I refrenced, does not mention Nietzsche explicitly (although he does so in another essay of the same volume, Potentialities). In any case, a cursory look at the concept's Wikipedia (God is dead - Wikipedia) makes it pretty clear Nietzsche was not the first to propose the death of God - Hegel, and even Pascal preceded him in that.

I guess I could rephrase (if somewhat crudely) my stance as that of God-as-language, as in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Following Agamben (and I guess through him, the Platonic tradition), I take discourse to be the foundation of moral, ethical, political, and philosophical thought.

I realize my OP seems a little disjointed, presenting as I do first a question of good and evil, and then one of ontology; which, actually, is the reverse order of what I claim to be my stance...

Frankly, I just wanted to throw out there some more or less related questions and see where they go

Yeah.

The alternative is that the dead God never was, but, if we're staying within the Western/Aristotelian tradition, that is by definition a logical contradiction. Death necessarily follows existence. To die, a thing must have been.

There are of course traditions wherein a thing (even God) can be and not be at the same time; or more in line with our discussion, the thing can have been and not have been. Although I'm perhaps veering off into very minute linguistic details at this point.

 

If we're made to, by default have a carefree life, then what is different in the "gates of heaven"? In scripture, we are told that Heaven is a transcendent paradise that is only obtainable through living life in a certain way. If life itself is propsperous, what good is Heaven other than immortality (if you call that good). Logically speaking, it would make more sense for otherworldly interference to not exist in this world because of what I just touched on.

 

By made do you mean biologically or spiritually, God- or nature-made?

Am I understanding this your point: By "default" life is basically carefree, so whatever Heaven is (if it is at all) it ought to conform to that carefreeness?

What about the needs to be nourished, or to not be killed? I mean, I guess you could argue the latter at least isn't technically a "need;" but I think it's plausible that avoiding death is a pretty major care among most people.

I'd say, by living a number of different certain ways (depending on what doctrine we consider).

Ok, then going back to what I just expressed: what is Good, in much of the West (at least its Platonic tradition) is the Idea, which is what is eternal. But then, in, say, Taosim, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth is what is not good; or at least not the ultimate state: that would be transcending the eternal, attaining satori.

I think I see where you're coming from. It sounds aligned somewhat with Buddhist thought.

 

That's true, fair point.

If discourse is the foundation of moral, ethical, political, and philosophical thought, then yes, I would agree that the death of God (God-as-language) would imply the death of morality. I would, however, argue that there's a biological foundation to at least moral/ethical thought, a sort of in-built altruism that is reinforced by discourse, but not created by it.

Philosophy/politics, though, I agree are meaningless without commonly understood language.

Got it. I agree that that would be by definition a logical contradiction, so in this case I would take the position that there is no God, and there never was.

 

Built-in as in the way cell division and communication is 'built-in,' or what kind of evidence for that are you thinking of?

 

It's not quite so fundamental as that, but it is built into our behavioural tendencies. Historically (stretching back into prehistory, including the early days of human evolution), humans have always been cooperative. Since we lived in close-knit tribes up until ~3000-4000 B.C.E, evolution would tend to favour tribes where the members helped each other out.

This is a good read on the subject, but again, the biological basis for altruism doesn't make irrelevant philosophical discourse on the subject:

Biological Altruism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

@Shredderbeam I'll edit this post with a response (I do intend to do so soon!) as soon as I've read the article you cited

 

No worries, I can only log on once or twice a week, take your time .