Doubt & Faith - Evolution, Afterlife & History

Faith & Science Conversation
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I just wanted to offer some thoughts on a few issues.

[1] Animal suffering. A lot of talk about animal suffering in here. I think it is largely a projection of human value and meaning onto other, lower life forms. Maybe we have watched too many Disney movies and need to stop buying meat in cellophane packaging. We have turned animals into family members to the point of depravity. A dead human in a show often bothers many of us far less than a dead animal. Speaking rationally, if animals are incapable of moral crimes due to a lack of intellect and will in the same sense as humans with a rational soul, then they certainly don’t experience death or pain and suffering to the same extent we do. I am empathetic and emotional so I project my own feelings onto animals but I don’t find animal suffering to be a problem. it would be a bit odd if I did considering I just grilled chicken and hot dogs. I think @klw said it well:

My point is not to trivialize one’s treatment of animals, but to say that we often tend to “anthropomorphize” animal experience and assume things that may not be true.

Feser also wrote this and I think it is spot on in the inconsistent emotions many of us bring:

Second, the supposition that non-human animals constitute a good too great not to exist in Heaven seems to rest on sentimentality borne of contemplating too selective a diet of examples. One meditates on the beauty of a horse or the faithfulness of a Labrador and asks “How could these creatures not exist in Heaven?” But suppose instead we meditate on a fly as it nibbles on a pile of fecal matter, or a tapeworm as it works its way through an intestine, or a botfly larva pushing its breathing tube through the human skin in which it has embedded itself, or lice or ticks or bacteria or any of the many other repulsive creatures that occupy our world alongside horses, dogs, and the like. These creatures are, in their own ways, no less good than the ones we are prone to sentimentalize. But one suspects that those who insist that horses and dogs will exist in Heaven would be less certain that these other creatures will make it. Flies munching on feces just doesn’t seem heavenly. But what principled reason could one give for the judgment that there will be dogs but not flies in Heaven, if the purported reason for supposing that the former will be there is that they are good and God will forever preserve whatever is good?

Is it possible these serve a good valid purpose? As imagery or warnings meant to demonstrate to rational beings the real consequences of sin? Maybe suffering and predation aren’t arbitrary cruelties but act as a mirror that reflects the true, decaying nature of sin. How does one demonstrate the severity of moral rebellion in a painless, sanitized world?

Good is defined in natural law theory as that which leads to human flourishing given the ends or telos of our nature. Good is NOT defined in terms of animals. They have their own nature and it doesn’t include the rational soul. I’m not trying to trivialize the importance of animals. We had a cat for 15 years. I cried my butt off when I had to bring him to the vet to be put down. I still hurt. I know he didn’t have a rational soul but he was my pet and the most friendly cat you could want. He became a part of our lives but honestly, its disordered love to treat a pet like a human or to think that he was our child.

[2] Spiritual warfare. There is Biblical merit to the idea of spiritual battles going on behind the scenes. Per the Bible, cities have angels fighting for them, there are spirits in the winds, clouds, sea and so on. The devil is quite real from a scriptural point of view. He offered Jesus the world if you believe that story occurred. We could dismiss this all as pre-scientific but are we being premature here? Jesus absolutely exorcised demons and I looked at the Boyd link and skimmed it. I led a Bible study two days ago on the stilling of the storm and yes, it absolutely reads like an exorcism. That would be its first century context if you champion the historical-critical method. I know Jesus was surprised, parts of Scripture show Him with limited knowledge in places, but call me old fashioned if you must, but correcting my Lord and Savior --who also happened to be God incarnate-- feels really wrong. I’m a Christ-ian. Jesus isn’t a Vin-ian. If we take Jesus and the Biblical view seriously, spiritual warfare is real even if our belief in nothing but mindless atoms and mathematical models of the world makes us feel uncomfortable about them. Though that doesn’t mean there was an atemporal fall or that that spiritual beings are responsible for what we perceive as natural evil. Genesis describes the world as good so this point needs to be argued. But I recommend not just doubting these ancient stories of demons and spiritual beings as some of us are prone. Also doubt your doubts about them. Maybe as a post-enlightenment modernists drowning in mechanistic images of God, convinced everything consists of purposeless, mindless atoms acting in accordance with physical laws, we let the pendulum swing too far.

[3] Best possible world arguments are rejected by Thomists for a number of reasons. 1) We see them as a category error like asking God to tell me the highest possible number. We can always ask him to name one higher number since the math goes on to infinity. Any world God creates is going to be finite so you could imagine a better version of it with this type of thinking. A best possible world is like asking God to create the impossible (a round square). 2) God is perfect and creation adds nothing to that or takes away from it. This is where the category mistake of part one comes in. Creation is already gratuitous and the result of love overflowing. Creation was not necessary. Best possible world arguments are approaching from the wrong direction. 3) They are often entrenched in consequentialist or utilitarian thinking which a Thomist also rejects in favor or natural moral law based on the ends of telos intrinsic to our nature. Moral good is defined in terms of this. There is not an external standard of a good world based on some sort of eternal platonic truths outside of God that we can judge his creation based off of. A best possible world is inventing some outside platonic standard that strips good of its objective meaning and then asks God to make a number higher than infinity or asks him why the world isn’t the highest number.

I know I have seen you say this a hundred times and honestly, it always sounds intriguing. Would you say this analogy could describe your view:

It’s like saying God created chess, he made the board, pieces and the rules. He then lets life play the game and make its own moves in accordance with those rules?

I always wonder how mindless and purposeless atoms acting in accordance with brute spacetime laws self-actualize? This screams final causality to me as a start but scripture seems to give God a bit more control than this. I suppose you could say the latter against free will as well though. The Bible seems to be a mix of freedom and God controls everything.

Do you believe God freely created us? Did this add anything to God or complete Him in any way?

Vinnie

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Right. And it is not Deism because God is playing too.

Yeah I don’t believe in that – sounds like process philosophy/theology. The complexity of the universe allows for self-organizing processes, but the self-organization is in the process not in the components. How? It is a product of nonlinearity and chaotic dynamics. It is not quite life but a step in that direction. A standard example is the red spot on Jupiter. What causes it. Well to some degree it causes itself. A tiny bit like a living organism it absorbs energy from the surroundings to maintain itself (same idea with hurricanes but those are more short lived).

Ever heard of the game of life – a cellular automaton simulation? Basically a system of rules allows for the existence of formations which maintain themselves, move across the screen or perform other interesting actions. In other words there is a whole science/mathematics regarding these self-organizing phenomenon – its not just philosophy.

The process of life takes it one step further with the capability of learning and development usually with some means of storing information. This obviously supports the idea of abiogenesis, though the science clearly has some details to work out still.

Yes.

No.

At most you can say it is a natural motivation for God who has and is everything to seek to give of His abundance to others and to even create those others in order to do so.

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If the God of the Old Testament exists, creating a new set of creatures with free will (even though the last group had used free will to bring all of heaven into revolt), just because he felt like it, would be completely in keeping with his (alleged) behavior, as found in the Jewish Scriptures. But let’s discuss the concept of the Christian God. Let’s discuss the God whom Christians refer to as their “Heavenly Father”, a heavenly Father who loved each one of us so much that he sent his only begotten son to die on the cross for our sins. Do you see the Christian God as your “heavenly Father”?

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Most Mormons are wonderful people, but I’m sure you would agree that their good character has no correlation with the veracity of their supernatural beliefs, right? Good, kind, decent Mormons, by the millions, love and worship the God of their ancestors…a God who lives on planet Kolob and has copious sex with his thousands of wives.

Here is the question I would ask Mormons: How can Mormons love an all-powerful God who allows 8,000 little children to starve to death each and every day while he is lies around Kolob having copious sex with multiple women? How is that “good”? How is that “moral”?

And I would ask the same question of Muslims and their all-powerful God. So I am not picking on Christians. Question for you: Would you agree with me that if he exists, the Mormon God, is a real SOB for not helping those dying children when he is perfectly capable of doing so?

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Not my problem, I’m not a Mormon, and don’t live near enough to any to fret about what they believe theologically.

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But the Christian God has given free will twice now, to two different groups of created creatures, with disastrous consequences. He has foreknowledge! He knew, in both instances, that this was going to turn out badly. So why?? How is that loving? It sounds sadistic, to me.

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But your God, the Mormon God, and the Muslim God, all claim to be omnipotent and omniscient, yet all three sit on their thrones and do nothing to prevent 8,000 little children, each and every day, from starving to death. How can that be “good” by any definition of that word??

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You keep assuming that goodness requires the immediate elimination of all severe suffering. That is not a logical necessity — it is a moral premise you are asserting.

If God were to override every instance of famine, war, corruption, negligence, and natural vulnerability in real time, then human agency and stable natural order would not meaningfully exist. The world would function only by constant suspension of cause and effect.

You equate permission with endorsement. I do not.

The existence of starvation is morally horrific. The philosophical question is whether permitting a world with real freedom and stable causation is logically incompatible with goodness. You have not demonstrated that it is — you have asserted that it must be.