1) The experience of pain is morally evil.
2) To go against moral evil is morally good.
3) Therefore, it is morally good to do that which will alleviate the experience of pain.
However…
4) Stubbing one’s toe on a coffee table inflicts pain on the individual.
5) Therefore, it is morally good to do that which will ensure no one can ever stub his or her toe on a table.
Unfortunately…
6) There are more ways to inflict pain than stubbing one’s toe on a table.
7) It is impossible to ensure that all external ways of inflicting pain are incapable of doing so.
However…
8) Dead things experience no pain.
9) It is inevitable that living things will experience pain.
10) Therefore, it is morally better to be dead than to be alive.
Unfortunately…
11) There are those who will not kill themselves.
12) Those who are alive will experience pain.
13) Since it is a moral good to alleviate the experience of pain, it is morally justifiable to kill every other living thing.
And finally…
14) If you do not act to resist evil, you are evil yourself.
15) Therefore, if you do not kill everyone you are evil but
16) If you do kill everyone you are good.
Thank God atheists aren’t consistent.
Drew has just written a good summary of why the problem of evil is really a problem for the atheist:
ReplyDeletehttp://beginningwisdom.blogspot.com/2008/08/problem-of-evil-part-2.html
The experience of pain is morally evil.I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone, atheist or otherwise, that agrees with this first premise, which kind of makes everything else fall apart.
ReplyDeleteYou'll probably find a lot more people that agree that deliberately causing someone else pain is morally evil, with caveats for things like painful medical procedures required to cure disease or heal injury, self defense, etc.
LOL I love it.
ReplyDeleteMatt said:
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I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone, atheist or otherwise, that agrees with this first premise, which kind of makes everything else fall apart.
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My post was meant tongue-in-cheek because most atheists are not going to pursue this line of reasoning. However, this is indeed the position they are left with (including the first premise) when pressed. The link David gave to the post Drew wrote explains this quite well, IMO (as do other posts that Steve and others have posted here on the T-Blog). The reason it happens is related to your next comment.
You said:
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You'll probably find a lot more people that agree that deliberately causing someone else pain is morally evil, with caveats for things like painful medical procedures required to cure disease or heal injury, self defense, etc.
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But the atheist is going to argue (indeed, Loftus has many times) that an all good God should have created a world where there would be no need for painful medical procedures to cure diseases, where there will be no injury, where no one will need to defend themselves.
The atheist is on the horns of a real dilemma here. If he wishes to be consistent and say it's only the deliberate causing of pain that is at issue, then he has to assert that God is deliberately causing pain for individuals. But then we have to deal with the caveats you've listed, for it is not just the deliberate infliction of pain but it is the deliberate and pointless infliction of pain. But since theists assert that God has a purpose for allowing (and even causing) pain in the world, then this objection doesn't stand against the theist.
On the other hand, you have atheists such as Loftus who would claim that the pain inflicted is evil regardless of any reason God might have, which in fact ultimately ends up as the first premise I used in my satirical argument.
Finally, if the atheist is to argue that it is possible for God to have a purpose for the evil He causes and/or allows, and yet that purpose itself is evil then the atheist is left trying to defend a complete objective morality from atheistic principals. And those atheistic principals typically being with "We feel pain and don't like it; therefore, we ought to seek not to hurt others." This, too, boils down to my first premise because the experience of pain is itself objectively evil such that God cannot have a creation with pain in it without Himself being evil, regardless of the purpose for it.
So I do think that while most atheists will not couch their argument in blunt terms of the first premise, it is in essence what each of them MUST come to if they wish to invoke the problem of evil.
Causing pain to others is morally evil.
ReplyDeleteThe experience of pain is undesirable.
Big difference.
D said:
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Causing pain to others is morally evil.
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Of course that statement has to be justified. You can't just assert that it is so.
Furthermore, it lacks the qualifications that Matt (at least) saw earlier. Namely, doctors inflict pain on patients in order to cure them, etc.
Likewise, one must deal with the issue of "accidental" pain. That is, suppose that you stub your toe on your coffee table because your spouse moved it and it wasn't where you expected it to be. Was it morally evil of your wife to have moved the table?
Your simplistic "causing pain is evil" doesn't work, but it does display your naivete.
You said:
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The experience of pain is undesirable.
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How would the massochist respond to that?
Of course that statement has to be justified. You can't just assert that it is so.
ReplyDeleteMy point was to change the premises of the argument that was presented, in order to make them more accurately reflect reality, not to offer support that they are true. IOW, I was batting at a straw man argument.
Your simplistic "causing pain is evil" doesn't work, but it does display your naivete.
Intention obviously plays a role in consequentialist theories of ethics. If the pain is unintentional or a part of a healing process, this renders clarification.