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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
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    Perspectives
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    42
    Attributing world badness directly to God undermines God'... — Carmelics
    Home/Problem of Evil
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Attributing world badness directly to God undermines God's goodness

    Against an attribute of God
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Plato's Timaeus establishes that a perfectly good Demiurge cannot be the source of evil, making goodness and evil-causation logically incompatible in a divine being.
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    • 2.If God is the direct cause of natural evils like earthquakes and disease, God's goodness becomes indistinguishable from malevolence, collapsing the concept of divine goodness entirely.
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    • 3.Plutarch's dualist theology demonstrates that positing a separate principle for world badness is more coherent than attributing contradictory causal powers to a single good deity.
      ?

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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aquinas's privation theory holds that evil is an absence of good, meaning a perfectly good God can only produce being and goodness, never directly instantiate privation.
      ?

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    • 2.Direct divine causation of catastrophic natural evil would require God to intend privation, which contradicts the Anselmian conception of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.God is essentially good
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    • 2.Accidents, natural catastrophes, and disorder are bad
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    • 3.A wholly good being cannot be the ultimate cause of bad things
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    Topics

    Problem of EvilAgainst an attribute of God

    Connections

    2 topics

    Justice & Punishment1 linkedDivine Attributes1 linked

    Related

    A wholly good being cannot be the ultimate cause of bad thingsAccidents, natural catastrophes, and disorder are badAquinas's privation theory holds that evil is an absence of good, meaning a perf...Direct divine causation of catastrophic natural evil would require God to intend...
    +4 moreShow less
    God is essentially goodIf God is the direct cause of natural evils like earthquakes and disease, God's ...Plato's Timaeus establishes that a perfectly good Demiurge cannot be the source ...Plutarch's dualist theology demonstrates that positing a separate principle for ...

    Similar

    Matter is bad and is the source and cause of all badness and disorder ...79%What seems to be evil in the world of Appearance is, for all practical...79%Attributing world badness to uncaused events diminishes God's ruling p...78%Occurrences of badness such as accidents and natural catastrophes are ...77%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: plutarch
    View source passageHide passage
    Further, the existence of a pre-cosmic non-rational soul is suggested also if one considers the world soul and the human soul in conjunction. Already the Timaeus (34c, 41d-e, 69c) suggests a relation between the two. Plutarch takes the human soul to be derivative from the world soul, which means that their natures are similar (De an. procr. 1025A-D; see below, sect. 5). In Republic 4, in the Phaedrus and also in the Timaeus it is argued that the human soul has a rational and a non-rational asp
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit