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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Cleanthes' concession that happiness must exceed misery is fatal to the religious position

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.It will be difficult to prove that happiness exceeds misery in the world
      ?

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    • 2.Proving happiness exceeds misery is insufficient to vindicate God's moral attributes
      ?

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    • 3.Any degree of unnecessary evil, however small, is incompatible with the existence of an infinitely powerful and perfectly good God
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Cleanthes' concession operates within an analogical framework where God's attributes are inferred from observed effects, not stipulated a priori.
      ?

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    • 2.Within analogical theism, a God inferred from imperfect effects cannot coherently possess attributes exceeding what those effects warrant.
      ?

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    • 3.Therefore, conceding happiness merely exceeds misery caps the inferred God at finite, imperfect goodness, collapsing traditional theism on its own empirical terms.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rowe's internalist standard holds that a perfectly good being permits suffering only when no alternative would produce a better or equal outcome.
      ?

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    • 2.A world where happiness only marginally exceeds misery entails preventable suffering that an omnipotent being could have eliminated without net loss.
      ?

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    • 3.Cleanthes' concession thus implicitly acknowledges the existence of gratuitous evil, which is logically incompatible with classical perfect-being theology as articulated by Anselm and Aquinas.
      ?

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