Is Anarcho-Capitalism Incompatible With Christianity?

[kunkmiester]

omnibenevolence

Odd word.  The Bible though makes quite clear however that God can be quite wrathful when He wants to be.  He advocated genocide more than once in the Old Testament, and was more then happy to let his "chosen people(Israel) to be taken into bondage when they were being too whiny.

If a child keeps reaching for the hot pan on the stove, you can't knock his hand away all the time--at some point you go ahead and let him get burned for his trouble.  If the play was scripted before the world was, then there would be no point in the show.  So, we are given free will, and some are allowed to choose evil, so that we may see it for what it is, and learn to avoid and fight against it.

[Script]

omnibenevolence

Odd word. 

Perhaps, but a real one.  I was going for alliteration. 

The Bible though makes quite clear however that God can be quite wrathful when He wants to be.  He advocated genocide more than once in the Old Testament, and was more then happy to let his "chosen people(Israel) to be taken into bondage when they were being too whiny.

If a child keeps reaching for the hot pan on the stove, you can't knock his hand away all the time--at some point you go ahead and let him get burned for his trouble.  If the play was scripted before the world was, then there would be no point in the show.  So, we are given free will, and some are allowed to choose evil, so that we may see it for what it is, and learn to avoid and fight against it.

Can an all-loving God commission genocide? 

Does a loving parent let the child burn her face off to prove a point?

The problem of evil is one of the hardest things for Christianity to overcome.  The idea that all the evil in the world is somehow absolutely necessary in order to further some unseeable and unknowable greater good is hard to stomach and impossible to prove. 

[kunkmiester]

The young child is perhaps a bit of an ad absurdum argument on both sides.  Your not going to let them burn their face off, but burning a hand on the stove, while a good example of learning by experience, allows for other argument like yours that don't quite mesh.

Should have gone ahead with the college metaphor.  You send a kid off to college, and if he works hard and does it right he comes out way ahead(ignoring issues with modern schooling).  At that point however, you have to realize you can't control a kid's life forever, and if he decides to get hooked on drugs and drop out and encourages others to do the same, there's only so much you can do to stop him--especially if we believe in nonaggression.  He'll end up encouraging others to mess up too, and what about that?  The college metaphor is more apt to the LDS view of the world, with us in a pre-existance prior to this one.

God doesn't commission evil, but how do you get rid of it without destroying free will?  We can't choose good unless there is a choice, and the flip side is evil.  If you can come up with a way for us to get life experiences and learn to tell good from evil without free will, and all that comes from that(including Hitler), then you can convince me there's something wrong.

[Script]

God doesn't commission evil, but how do you get rid of it without destroying free will?  We can't choose good unless there is a choice, and the flip side is evil.  If you can come up with a way for us to get life experiences and learn to tell good from evil without free will, and all that comes from that(including Hitler), then you can convince me there's something wrong.

Why do humans, when given free will, choose to do evil?

[Aegidius]

God doesn't commission evil, but how do you get rid of it without destroying free will?  We can't choose good unless there is a choice, and the flip side is evil.  If you can come up with a way for us to get life experiences and learn to tell good from evil without free will, and all that comes from that(including Hitler), then you can convince me there's something wrong.

A literally omnipotent being can do *whatever it wants*.  We don't need to come up with a "way".  Reality, nature itself, is at the whim of this hypothetical being.  With omnipotence, everything, -literally everything-, is exactly how you want it.  There are many paths to theodicy, but very few keep all three omni-s intact.

1.  Sacrifice omnipotence: The deity is all-knowing and all-loving, but works within certain limitations.  It does the best it can for us within the means available.

2.  Sacrifice omniscience: The deity is all-powerful and all-loving, but has limited or imperfect knowledge.  It does the best it can, but isn't always right about what is best.

3.  Sacrifice omnibenevolence: God is a jerk.

4.  Sacrifice free will: We are living in the best of all possible worlds, so quit complaining.  Anything and everything that ever happens is for the best, even if we can't see how.  "God works in mysterious ways."  Panglossianism.

5. Sacrifice involvement:  A potentially omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator exists, but it doesn't interfere with its creation.  Deism.

6. Sacrifice the deity:  There's no conscious entity behind the scenes; reality is what it is.  Atheism or (my brand of) pantheism.

Of all of these, I only find the deist's and atheist/pantheist's answers even remotely satisfying.  I'm sure, of course, that there are plenty more I haven't listed.  

Theodicy is an interesting and ancient theological problem.  There's no single, obvious answer.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

I'm remembering the argument. It came from Human Action.

Definitions:
Omnipotence-->Being able to do anything.
Omniscience-->Knowing everything that will happen.

Suppose an entity is omniscient. By definition, it knows all that will be. Now suppose further that it is omnipotent. It can do whatever it wants. But if it knows what will happen, then it can't do whatever it wants, because it would violate it's own knowledge of what was to occur....that is, if the future as you know it is correct, you can't deviate from it, meaning you're not omnipotent. Or if you can break the vision of the future, then you're not omniscient. It's a contradiction. No entity can have both properties. Therefore any god that supposedly has these properties is false. Therefore, the god you worship is false. QED.

[Script]

I'm remembering the argument. It came from Human Action.

Definitions:
Omnipotence-->Being able to do anything.
Omniscience-->Knowing everything that will happen.

Suppose an entity is omniscient. By definition, it knows all that will be. Now suppose further that it is omnipotent. It can do whatever it wants. But if it knows what will happen, then it can't do whatever it wants, because it would violate it's own knowledge of what was to occur....that is, if the future as you know it is correct, you can't deviate from it, meaning you're not omnipotent. Or if you can break the vision of the future, then you're not omniscient. It's a contradiction. No entity can have both properties. Therefore any god that supposedly has these properties is false. Therefore, the god you worship is false. QED.

That was it.  I've found out there are actually a bunch of angles on this.

If all morality comes from God's nature can God violate his own nature?  If he can, then morality is his arbitrary whim rather than being some absolute, and if he can't, then once again he is not omnipotent.

An omnipotent God should be able to alleviate evil without violating free will and without hindering the greater good.  If he can't, then he is not omnipotent. 

The concept of omnipotence leads to inherent logical contradictions almost anyway you approach it.  A defense many Christians will fall back to: "Well, God is above and beyond our human logic so it doesn't apply to him."  In that case, he is unknowable.  If we cannot apply human logic to him then we can never begin to understand or know him or his qualities.  God could be all-loving and all-hateful, or all-knowing and all-ignorant or any number of absurdities because human logic no longer applies.

[Aegidius]

Ah, you guys are taking  it a different direction than I thought.  The paradox of the stone shows the inherent problem with omnipotence pretty eleganty: "Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it?"

A clever play on the paradox: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1778#comic



I still find the elusiveness of theodicy more convincing, but they're both damn good.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

@Aedgidius:

I required the assumption of omnipotence and omniscience together to show a contradiction, but you have an example that requires only omnipotence. You make fewer assumptions, so your argument is better. *Tips hat*.

[MAM]

@Aedgidius:

I required the assumption of omnipotence and omniscience together to show a contradiction, but you have an example that requires only omnipotence. You make fewer assumptions, so your argument is better. *Tips hat*.

I'm sure you could use the same format of the stone paradox to demonstrate a similar inconsistency with omniscience. Perhaps something like 'Could an omniscient being create a piece of knowledge so esoteric that even he forgot it?' That's not very good but this idea just occurred to me so given time I'm sure it could be refined.

[kunkmiester]

You guys got me reading some interesting stuff.  Theodicy, paradoxes, etc.  A big problem with a paradox however, is the magic word we're attack with them--omnipotence.  Looking around, I found a good refutation for the stone--

Thomas Aquinas had a narrower conception of omnipotence. According to Aquinas, God is able to do anything possible; he can part the red sea, and he can restore the dead to life, but he cannot violate the laws of logic and mathematics in the way that Descartes thought that he could.http://www.existence-of-god.com/paradox-of-the-stone.html

I like Aquinas' definition better than Descartes, though the site does explain how that survives too.

I'll openly reject omnibenevolence.  God has clearly demonstrated he's willing to do very non-benevolent things, ordering genocide and such in the Old Testament, sending people to Hell, etc.  He is "all-loving" though.  As we are Children of God, he loves us like a father would, and wants the best for us.  There's not much he can do though if we decide we're going to flunk out of college, regardless of what influences there are to do so.

Why do humans, when given free will, choose to do evil?

Aside from the lecture of temptations of the devil, who knows?  Might as well ask how gravity works.  We might know someday, and some people now have some good ideas.

You cannot prove a negative.  I don't know if that's a proper logical thing, but I feel it valid.  I can't prove that God exists, but there is no logical argument against him, especially as my religion sees.  Now, if you accept that faith has power, then you can test that faith in a reasonably scientific way, and judge the outcome.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

Good article kunkmeister. Okay, so I retract my support for the stone argument, and fall back on the original one I put forward (borrowed from Mises). It doesn't depend upon omnibenevolence either. There is certainly a logical problem there.

[Script]

You guys got me reading some interesting stuff.  Theodicy, paradoxes, etc.  A big problem with a paradox however, is the magic word we're attack with them--omnipotence.  Looking around, I found a good refutation for the stone--

Thomas Aquinas had a narrower conception of omnipotence. According to Aquinas, God is able to do anything possible; he can part the red sea, and he can restore the dead to life, but he cannot violate the laws of logic and mathematics in the way that Descartes thought that he could.http://www.existence-of-god.com/paradox-of-the-stone.html

I like Aquinas' definition better than Descartes, though the site does explain how that survives too.

I actually just came across this today on another forum, interesting.  It does solve the rock argument which I have used before.  I would like to see how you respond to the problem of omnipotence combined with omniscience as put forth by JSNTS.  There's also the problem of action, but we can save that one for later.

I'll openly reject omnibenevolence.  God has clearly demonstrated he's willing to do very non-benevolent things, ordering genocide and such in the Old Testament, sending people to Hell, etc.  He is "all-loving" though.  As we are Children of God, he loves us like a father would, and wants the best for us.  There's not much he can do though if we decide we're going to flunk out of college, regardless of what influences there are to do so.

I don't want to get caught up in a semantics debate, but what exactly is the difference between "omnibenevolence" (literally: "all good") and "all-loving"?

Why do humans, when given free will, choose to do evil?

Aside from the lecture of temptations of the devil, who knows?  Might as well ask how gravity works.  We might know someday, and some people now have some good ideas.

The majority of Christians I've interacted with say it has to do with man's fallen nature.  Do you agree?

You cannot prove a negative.  I don't know if that's a proper logical thing, but I feel it valid.  I can't prove that God exists, but there is no logical argument against him, especially as my religion sees.

Maybe not, but we can examine the evidence for the claims your faith makes and make a decision based on high probability/improbability.  Isn't this why you are not a follower of the Almighty Thor?  You cannot prove he does not exist, but you are gambling on the very low probability that he does.  Is that fair to say?

[Hanzo]

Yes, it is, in the same way a car is compatible with a lake. Sure, you could put it in there, but you would much rather have a boat. Or a road.

[Script]

Yes, it is, in the same way a car is compatible with a lake. Sure, you could put it in there, but you would much rather have a boat. Or a road.

It took me a minute to figure out what you were talking about.  Then I realized you were actually answering the original question of the the thread.    Guess we've strayed off point a little.