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    If God is conceived in a purely metaphysical way with no ... — Carmelics
    Home/Problem of Evil
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    If God is conceived in a purely metaphysical way with no connection to significant power, knowledge, and goodness, then the problem of evil is irrelevant to that conception of God.

    Problem of Evil
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The problem of evil arises only when God is understood as possessing significant power, knowledge, and goodness.
      ?

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    • 2.A purely metaphysical conception of God that lacks connection to these properties does not generate the expectation that evils would be eliminated.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Purely metaphysical conceptions of God, such as Spinoza's Deus sive Natura or Tillich's 'Ground of Being,' still generate evaluative problems when creation contains suffering disproportionate to any coherent metaphysical principle.
      ?

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    • 2.A God identified with Being-itself or ultimate reality cannot be fully insulated from normative assessment, since existence-conferring relations carry implicit axiological commitments that evil disrupts.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The distinction between 'metaphysical' and 'morally robust' conceptions of God is historically unstable, as even neo-Platonic traditions like Plotinus tie the One's productive overflow to goodness, making evil a deviation requiring explanation.
      ?

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    • 2.If a purely metaphysical God is entirely disconnected from power, knowledge, and goodness, the resulting concept is functionally indistinguishable from atheism, rendering the original claim trivially true but philosophically uninteresting.
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    Topics

    Problem of Evil

    Key Terms

    Conception (of God)(as used in theology)
    A particular way of thinking about or defining what God is—the specific qualities and characteristics you believe God has.
    irrelevant(describing answers that shouldn't matter to the current topic)
    Information or answers that have nothing to do with the question being asked or the point being discussed.
    knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.)
    Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.
    metaphysical(Ayer's Logical Positivist usage)
    Language that purports to refer beyond the physical world and lacks empirical consequences, which Ayer classifies as not literally significant
    the problem of evil(Contemporary philosophical terminology)
    The family of issues raised by the question of why pain, moral wickedness, and varieties of imperfection exist if a perfectly good and all-powerful God alone created everything in the universe.

    Related

    A God identified with Being-itself or ultimate reality cannot be fully insulated...A purely metaphysical conception of God that lacks connection to these propertie...If a purely metaphysical God is entirely disconnected from power, knowledge, and...Purely metaphysical conceptions of God, such as Spinoza's Deus sive Natura or Ti...
    +2 moreShow less
    The distinction between 'metaphysical' and 'morally robust' conceptions of God i...

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: evil
    View source passageHide passage
    By contrast, if God is conceived of in a purely metaphysical way, and if no connection can be forged between the relevant metaphysical properties and the possession of significant power, knowledge, and goodness, then the problem of evil is irrelevant. But when that is the case, it would seem that God thereby ceases to be a being who is either an appropriate object of religious attitudes, or a ground for believing that fundamental human hopes are not in vain.
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The source passage explicitly states that if God is conceived purely metaphysically with no connection to significant power, knowledge, and goodness, then the problem of evil is irrelevant, and the extracted premises accurately capture the underlying reasoning that supports this conclusion.

    The problem of evil arises only when God is understood as possessing significant...

    Similar

    A purely metaphysical conception of God that lacks connection to these...89%The problem of evil arises only when God is understood as possessing s...87%Nevertheless, conceiving of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perf...83%Nevertheless, the conception of God as unlimited in power, knowledge, ...82%

    Confidence: Clearly stated conditional argument in the text.

    Details

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