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I’ve been listening to this great podcast called Philosophize This by Stephen West. I highly recommend it. It’s very accessible and has its fair share of humor as well. Recently he did an episode on Leibniz and his views on the problem of how evil can exist if God is truly all powerful and all good. I found the ideas to be really interesting—enough that I’m having a really hard time picking anything to quote. But… here goes: Quote:He says that everything that happens in the world, good or evil CAN ultimately be tied back to God’s will. But that doesn’t mean he does it all with a smile on his face. This is the big difference to Leibniz: When god wills for good things to happen…he does so Leibniz says, “by decree” and when he wills evil things to happen, he’s just kind of letting them happen.
But why does god do this? Because he is doing his duty as god. “Just doing my job ma’am” and that job is to create the best possible world. See, originally, god contemplated all the possible ways the universe COULD have played out and he chose the best one. We humans may not understand all the ins and outs of WHY it is the best one….after all WHY its the best may have very little to do with us at all.
So evil, to Leibniz, is a necessary evil. He makes it very clear that we should make the distinction between the “best of all possible worlds” and a “perfect” world as we would perceive it. He has a whole section of his theodicy where he talks about how it is impossible for God to have created a “perfect” world…and that the presence of evil isn’t indicative of God not existing…it is a catalyst for some larger good.
So this is a huge point….evil is a necessary state of affairs to allow for some greater good. There is an example that Bertrand Russell gives in the history of western philosophy to illustrate this concept…he talks about how, as humans, we would perceive being thirsty or dehydrated as something bad or evil towards us. So when we arrive at a babbling brook up in the hills and drink some cold, clean water…the goodness of that water is greater than if we weren’t thirsty at all and drank some water out of an airport urinal. By the way…he didn’t say it in such glowing terms…I’m insulting the great Bertrand Russell by saying it this way..but you get my point.
Our thirst represents something we’d perceive to be an evil…maybe you could think that in a “perfect” world god wouldn’t ever allow you to get thirsty. But this world actually IS the best possible world because when you drink the water, you derive more GOODNESS from that drinking experience than you would if something like thirst never existed in the first place.
So its not that god doesn’t SEE this evil happening, maybe, Leibniz says, statistically speaking if you could play out every possible universe as god can…he realized that by allowing thirst to exist and therefore the augmented experience of drinking when you’re thirsty, the universe is overall a better universe. Not that it guarantees that no single human will ever die of thirst…but over the long run…it is a better universe.
Quote:This would have been a common argument leveraged against him: We live in the best of all possible worlds? Imagine the world without the holocaust…how isn’t it a better world if millions of people weren’t slaughtered?
Leibniz argues against this in a couple ways. First, he says, to give a modern example … let’s not pretend like we know for a fact that if 9/11 never happened, the world would be a better place. For example, maybe that attack prompted a response from the US that prevented some future attack where half a million people die. God could be allowing certain things to happen as damage control.
The second way he refutes it and the one I think is far more compelling, is that he would say…we live in the best of all possible worlds…how arrogant and short sighted is it for us to assume that HUMAN HAPPINESS is the metric that God uses to determine how GOOD the world is. This universe is BIGGER THAN YOU…human species. He talks about how it could be just as likely that God has us set up in the best of all possible worlds…but it is the best of all possible worlds for all sentient creatures. All the polar bears…all the dogs, cats…and maybe a few thousand humans dying is worth it if it makes the lives of these animals better. This is a really interesting argument…and it should be said that Leibniz gives several examples of how god measures “goodness” of the world…and it isn’t entirely clear which one Leibniz subscribes to.
Here’s a link to the transcript:
http://www.philosophizethis.org/leibniz-pt-2-transcript/ And here’s a link to the audio:
http://www.philosophizethis.org/the-best-of-all-possible-worlds/ Those are all interesting thoughts. I believe it was the greeks who believed the world revolves around humans. Leibniz seems to be refuting that premise. In the last quote above, the idea that “maybe, if this bad thing didn’t happen, something worse would have happened” is pure speculation. It’s possible that God allowed the holocaust to happen so the world would be motivated to get into the war before Hitler perfected the atomic bomb — which he surely would have used, creating even greater destruction. We know that it wasn’t American technology that spawned the A-Bomb — it was German technology that Americans scavenged after WWII.
But somehow, that argument isn’t satisfying. Doesn’t God have the power to also stop the A-Bomb, and wouldn’t it have been easier to knock off a few scientists rather than millions of innocent jews, poles, and other races (both men, women and children)? It’s not as if God has to allow lesser evil to happen to prevent greater evil from occurring…why not simply nip the greater evil before it happens?
These are questions that make me agnostic about so many things. We really don’t know. At one time, when I was younger, it was interesting to discuss all these items because I believed it may lead to enlightenment. I suppose these philosophies have a certain amount of persuasive value when people need to adopt new paradigms that direct behavior, or to restore hope. But in my view, I will never know the truth of these things.
That’s why I liked Ray’s orthoprax approach, which focuses on right living, with dogma and doctrine as a secondary motivator. And its why I liked the quote attributed (rightly or wrongly) to Marcus Aurelius:
Thanks for sharing…I don’t have any thoughts on this yet, but I am a Podcast junkie, so thank you for providing more fuel for the fire! SilentDawning wrote:Those are all interesting thoughts. I believe it was the greeks who believed the world revolves around humans. Leibniz seems to be refuting that premise.
It was actually Christianity that Leibniz was reacting against here. It was a pretty major teaching of the Catholic church that the object of all God’s creation, including the earth, was for humankind, and therefore the earth was the center of the universe. There were complicated theories devised to explain the movement of the planets and starts to support the idea. But around the time of Leibniz, the invention of the telescope started to provide evidence against the heliocentric (earth as center of the universe) model, and that conflict was a huge part of what Leibniz was dealing with.SilentDawning wrote:In the last quote above, the idea that “maybe, if this bad thing didn’t happen, something worse would have happened” is pure speculation. It’s possible that God allowed the holocaust to happen so the world would be motivated to get into the war before Hitler perfected the atomic bomb — which he surely would have used, creating even greater destruction. We know that it wasn’t American technology that spawned the A-Bomb — it was German technology that Americans scavenged after WWII.
But somehow, that argument isn’t satisfying. Doesn’t God have the power to also stop the A-Bomb, and wouldn’t it have been easier to knock off a few scientists rather than millions of innocent jews, poles, and other races (both men, women and children)? It’s not as if God has to allow lesser evil to happen to prevent greater evil from occurring…why not simply nip the greater evil before it happens?
Yeah, that’s actually part of Leibniz’s point, I think. That’s what the example of thirst is getting at. Sure, God could just stop the bad stuff from happening in the first place. He could stop people from being thirsty. He could stop ALL bad things from happening. But that wouldn’t necessarily produce the best possible world. It would be like Satan’s plan, where everyone is forced to do good, but nobody gets to experience real joy because there is no pain. That’s what I found so compelling about Leibniz’s ideas. He touches very closely on the whole “opposition in all things” argument from the Book of Mormon.And yes, it’s all speculation. But by explicitly pointing out that as mere humans, we can’t necessarily see the whole picture as God can, Leibniz forces the assumptions we tend to make into the open—the assumption that we can ever know as well as God can what’s actually best for God’s creation, and furthermore, the egocentric assumption that WE are most important. So speculate away. Just be aware of what assumptions you are making. If you want to speculate that we are in fact most important, and that God should be stopping genocide and mass disasters, fine—but you have to justify that.
SilentDawning wrote:These are questions that make me agnostic about so many things. We really don’t know. At one time, when I was younger, it was interesting to discuss all these items because I believed it may lead to enlightenment. I suppose these philosophies have a certain amount of persuasive value when people need to adopt new paradigms that direct behavior, or to restore hope. But in my view, I will never know the truth of these things.
I totally get this, and I’m with you. I was a philosophy major in college (well, it was my second major, and I didn’t quite finish it), and after a few years of reading philosophy intensely, I started to get jaded. It seemed to me that for any possible idea you could espouse, someone else had an argument that would refute it. It all started to feel like an exercise in futility to me. Science wasn’t much better—sure, it has made a lot of things possible, but we can never rely 100% on anything since new discoveries can happen at any time that reveal our previous ignorance. And religion/revelation didn’t seem reliable either, since everything seemed based on the Spirit, which I didn’t (and still don’t) understand or have any level of confidence in. I’m still a pretty entrenched skeptic.But I thought Leibniz’s ideas had some really interesting things in common with Mormon theology and thought others might enjoy reading about them.
Quote:Science wasn’t much better—sure, it has made a lot of things possible, but we can never rely 100% on anything since new discoveries can happen at any time that reveal our previous ignorance.
I have more faith in science now than religion — at least its’ capable of explaining, in an objective way, many phenomena. And it is capable of helping us create inventions that show, over and over again, there is truth. Take the example of the cell phone. Wireless communication is real, and our understanding of how it works is sound enough that we prove it over and over and over again that it works. Our society is based on it to some extent.
Although certain societies have been based on religious principles, there is no “proof” that the principles actually work beyond society’s collective belief in the principles. With cell phones, and wireless communication, the principles work and prove themselves in spite of lack of belief. They are not dependent on widespread belief for their effectiveness and impact — they are “self-evident” and “self-proving”.
So, I think there are certain scientific principles we can consider true given their constant proving and reliability, independent of faith.
SilentDawning wrote:I have more faith in science now than religion
One thing I do like about science is that it is almost assuming that it is wrong or incomplete. It invites people to prove that it is wrong (not all scientists, but science itself). Religions on the other hand want to generally say, “we have the truth.” The LDS church is no exception to that and I think it’s membership actually goes beyond the claims it makes on how much of the truth it has (with the help of some leaders saying such).
LookingHard wrote:SilentDawning wrote:I have more faith in science now than religion
One thing I do like about science is that it is almost assuming that it is wrong or incomplete. It invites people to prove that it is wrong (not all scientists, but science itself). Religions on the other hand want to generally say, “we have the truth.” The LDS church is no exception to that and I think it’s membership actually goes beyond the claims it makes on how much of the truth it has (with the help of some leaders saying such).
Even though the assumption is that it is wrong, and incomplete — it IS self-proving in certain respects. You can trust it to deliver what it promises, and if the science is false, it becomes clear almost immediately when you test it in the real world.
LookingHard wrote:SilentDawning wrote:I have more faith in science now than religion
One thing I do like about science is that it is almost assuming that it is wrong or incomplete. It invites people to prove that it is wrong (not all scientists, but science itself). Religions on the other hand want to generally say, “we have the truth.” The LDS church is no exception to that and I think it’s membership actually goes beyond the claims it makes on how much of the truth it has (with the help of some leaders saying such).
Comparing science and religion is in some ways apples and oranges. It makes more sense to me to compare religion to systems, art, or restaurants. Nobody takes you seriously when you advertise the best coffee in NYC.
Roy wrote:LookingHard wrote:SilentDawning wrote:I have more faith in science now than religion
One thing I do like about science is that it is almost assuming that it is wrong or incomplete. It invites people to prove that it is wrong (not all scientists, but science itself). Religions on the other hand want to generally say, “we have the truth.” The LDS church is no exception to that and I think it’s membership actually goes beyond the claims it makes on how much of the truth it has (with the help of some leaders saying such).
Comparing science and religion is in some ways apples and oranges. It makes more sense to me to compare religion to systems, art, or restaurants. Nobody takes you seriously when you advertise the best coffee in NYC.
I absolutely agree you can’t fully compare religion and science. I see since as explaining more of the how we are here and religion (trying to) explaining the why. But I was trying to just point out how much of the church it seems to feels like they already have all the truth needed – period. Science never says that.Amen, LookingHard – and the irony of that view in comparison to our Articles of Faith and actual history (just as two obvious examples) is staggering. We of all people ought to be open to limitations of knowledge and changes in perspective, even when they alter current doctrine and practice radically.
I was just listening to the latest “a thoughtful faith” podcast and at the end the person was asked about the articles of faith one by one. I thought about how they all talk about “we BELIEVE”, not “we KNOW”. You wouldn’t come to that conclusion listening to an average testimony meeting. Quote:
Comparing science and religion is in some ways apples and oranges.Here is where I see a one-to-one relationship between apples and oranges — truth. Cause, and effect. Principles upon which the world is successful, or not. Ohm’s law is truth. E=MC-squared actually describes relationships and allows you to understand truth of the universe.
I find religion is so much hearsay, it bothers me. I can’t determine whether assertions are true anymore….did JS really “marry” a lot of teenagers? Or was it just Fanny Alger? Is salvation dependent on receiving and staying true to temple ordinances? Does God respond to prayer and fasting? Are the words of the prophets the way to truth and life? Are the sacrifices expected of our church worth it eventually?
Very hard to determine that — but we can test and verify that relationships between actions, and effects are in fact real in the scientific world….
This is hard discussion to have without defining truth, which may not be as easy as it sounds. It’s been the subject of philosophy for thousands of years. We talk about objective truth, subjective truth, and I’m beginning to think there may even be a third type of truth that is either neither, or both. The way science and religion talk about truth is so different, I doubt they’re talking about the same thing.
Roy wrote:Nobody takes you seriously when you advertise the best coffee in NYC.
Well…almost nobody…
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