Love this post! I agree that “soul binding” sounds cool. Thanks for taking the time to consider various theodicies. I definitely think the evidence for God’s existence is overwhelming in spite of evil. For all the evil, there is much more beauty. If children being brutally killed is evil, that’s only because the children had glory and beauty worth preserving. Before we try to solve evil, let’s make sure we’ve really reckoned with the good. Matthew exists, and Matthew is beautiful. If Matthew isn’t enough for you to know that a God of love and power exists, then a theodicy probably won’t help you.
Even the most free and unencumbered person though is still only free to do what they want to do (they can change their wants to varying degrees with effort, but first they have to want to do so (and so on)). If someone finds themself in God’s presence and decides they’d rather die instead, on what basis would they make that choice other than an existing aversion to or dislike for God? It would be similar to a case in which two people order the same meal at a restaurant but one of them finds it so disgusting they can’t finish it — it isn’t clear that either of them is more free than the other, but one of them seems to be much less lucky.
I think one of the biggest problems for theism is animal suffering, both human-inflicted and especially that inflicted by evolution. Evolution is just such a horrible, nasty and drawn-out way to create a sentient species if you are literally an omnipotent God who could create humanity with a snap of your fingers. Would love to see some argumentation about that specifically. If you wrote about this in previous posts, sorry, going to read those now.
"The soul-binding theodicy combined with plausible views about population ethics entails God would create every soul and make them into flourishing agents with valuable experiences who can learn things"
But only on the potentially circularity-producing premise that only humans have (are?) these things called "souls", right? Otherwise we might see that God has created lots and lots of short-lived insect souls, which apparently aren't flourishing agents, can't have very valuable experiences, and can't learn much.
What’s your credence in the existence of some Godlike being that is omnibenevolent and omnipotent?
I ask this because the language of your article on Harmony is quite strong save for the problem of evil. In this article you say that Evil is bad for theists, but use weaker language. It seems like you should have a fairly credence?
Love this post! I agree that “soul binding” sounds cool. Thanks for taking the time to consider various theodicies. I definitely think the evidence for God’s existence is overwhelming in spite of evil. For all the evil, there is much more beauty. If children being brutally killed is evil, that’s only because the children had glory and beauty worth preserving. Before we try to solve evil, let’s make sure we’ve really reckoned with the good. Matthew exists, and Matthew is beautiful. If Matthew isn’t enough for you to know that a God of love and power exists, then a theodicy probably won’t help you.
Even the most free and unencumbered person though is still only free to do what they want to do (they can change their wants to varying degrees with effort, but first they have to want to do so (and so on)). If someone finds themself in God’s presence and decides they’d rather die instead, on what basis would they make that choice other than an existing aversion to or dislike for God? It would be similar to a case in which two people order the same meal at a restaurant but one of them finds it so disgusting they can’t finish it — it isn’t clear that either of them is more free than the other, but one of them seems to be much less lucky.
I think one of the biggest problems for theism is animal suffering, both human-inflicted and especially that inflicted by evolution. Evolution is just such a horrible, nasty and drawn-out way to create a sentient species if you are literally an omnipotent God who could create humanity with a snap of your fingers. Would love to see some argumentation about that specifically. If you wrote about this in previous posts, sorry, going to read those now.
"The soul-binding theodicy combined with plausible views about population ethics entails God would create every soul and make them into flourishing agents with valuable experiences who can learn things"
But only on the potentially circularity-producing premise that only humans have (are?) these things called "souls", right? Otherwise we might see that God has created lots and lots of short-lived insect souls, which apparently aren't flourishing agents, can't have very valuable experiences, and can't learn much.
What’s your credence in the existence of some Godlike being that is omnibenevolent and omnipotent?
I ask this because the language of your article on Harmony is quite strong save for the problem of evil. In this article you say that Evil is bad for theists, but use weaker language. It seems like you should have a fairly credence?
And thanks for writing!