BothAndBlog Forum

But supposing there was a god, can we all agree that this world is sufficiently evil enough to account for an evil god? — schopenhauer1

I don't know of any objective measurement of the good/evil ratio of the whole universe. On the whole, it seems that our local planet is the only part of the cosmic system with any claim to moral accounts. And, those reports of Good vs Evil are entirely subjective & personal. Except, of course, for the broadcast news of the world, which tends to paint a bleak picture of suffering humanity and blighted ecosystem. From the moralizing media we get a concentrated dose of downers.

So my question to you (generic "you") is this : do you --- locally & personally & subjectively --- find the world to be more Evil than Good? By that I mean, is your personal experience of the world mostly Pleasant or mostly Unpleasant, or on average, Tolerable? In this question, I'm discounting the News Media, which mainly reports on the Bad Stuff : "if it bleeds, it leads"*1. And I'm also ignoring all of the 99.9% of the universe that seems AFAIK to be insentient, hence amoral. In that case, is our (1/10 of 1%) feeling-part-of-the-whole, mostly bad or mostly good, or on average, good-enough to make life worth living?

Your answer to that question, may shed some light on your general view of the moral status of the planet Earth, and by extension to the non-Earth universe. The reason I make the whole/part distinction is to determine if Nature herself is Evil, or if the personal feelings of a few humans make it seem so *2. If the life of a mosquito is abruptly snuffed-out by the hand of an unfeeling human, is that a moral tragedy?

If the Universe (Nature) is mostly malevolent, then the Culpable Cause of this ongoing disaster could be construed as morally Evil. But, if Nature is mostly benign, and conducive to sentient human flourishing, then "Mother Nature" could be construed as sufficiently Good for a general moral gold-star. If Gaia is the "god" referred to in the OP, should we view Her as Good, or Evil, or Neutral?

If Nature is morally neutral though, then who do we have to blame for all the adverse aspects of life in this merciless world, "red in tooth & claw"? Who makes all the free-will moral choices in this vale of tears anyway? Do the smiles of a satiated baby offset any of the bloody stuff? How do all such tiny little local Goods add-up in the total scheme of things in an unfinished work of creation : goodish or badish?

The bottom line of the Moral Accounting seems to rest on the question of Agency & Moral Choice. If individual moral agents are free to act selfishly or altruistically, then where should the blame be placed : on the creator of Free Choice or on the Choosers? Is "God" the author of confusion, or of order? Is FreeWill*3 a defect in a world system? Would a cosmos of automatons, be sufficiently Good Enough to warrant a gold star for the designer of a perfectly balanced system of insentient mechanisms?

On the other hand, if know-nothing Nature-as-we-know-it is nothing more than an interlude in an eternal series of physical accidents, who are we to blame for the misfortunes that will-free human puppets call Evil? Is the god-postulate merely a hypothetical scapegoat for our individual measures (feelings) of Good vs Evil? Do robots have feelings, or gods? . . . . . Just asking.


*1. News Bias :
Basically, if there’s violence, conflict or death involved, it gets top billing. Nowhere is this more true than in television news, which coined the expression, “If it bleeds, it leads.”
https://newsliteracymatters.com/2019/11 ... eads-mean/

*2. Hamlet's Dungeon :
"Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me, it is a prison". -----Shakespeare, Hamlet
Note --- The phrase means that one's subjective perspective is locally & personally biased.

*3. FreeWill : The ability (or illusion) to make moral choices. Assuming that human animals are not totally determined by the laws of physics (hot vs cold), but also by metaphysical laws of morality (good vs evil).

First, this was a hypothetical "If there was a god". I am not sure "Gaia" as a standin for simply "Nature" counts. So that is a bit moving the target to an insentient non-intentional, phenomeon. — schopenhauer1

Sorry! I was just riffing on the God/Nature notion. :yikes:

Also the assumption that a utopian universe would be somehow itself "inauthentic" is also a bias to the situation we have now. I see two utopias really: — schopenhauer1

As I see it, both of those Utopias were anticipated by the late Jewish/ early Christian notions of Heaven. But why would God make the hopeful future Heaven contingent on winning a piety competition in the here & now Earth? Apparently, the current occupants of Heaven are the Angels, who function more like immaterial email clients for God than as freewill agents, who must constantly battle their material bodies for moral control. Which "world" is "inauthentic" (tantalizing illusion) : the tangible material terran abode, or the invisible immaterial angelic realm? Do your "two utopias" play each other in football?

Which then brings us back to the original question of what if god's morality is simply alien to ours? — schopenhauer1

I tried to address, in a blog post, that poor excuse for an argument in The Book of Job, that whatever God does is true & good, despite what fallible humans might feel about their plight*1. From that perspective, God is the moral native, and humans are the aliens.

*1. God's Inscrutable Plan : blog excerpt
A popular excuse for the Problem of Evil ─ that the world is unfolding according to God’s Plan, which is beyond human understanding ─ is merely a diversion, advising us to "suck it up" and accept the bad with the good, while hoping for a better deal in the next life*. Ironically, the old "mysterious ways" theory belies divine benevolence, implying that what’s good or bad for me is irrelevant to God. The faithful must accept the fact that they are pawns in the Lord’s chess match with Satan. The hidden meaning of the "my ways are not your ways" Plan is explained most clearly in Calvinism : The Creator intended for only a few “elect” humans to go to heaven; and the majority, including innocent babies, are destined to suffer & die & then burn in Hell for eternity. What kind of divine plan is that? . . . .
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page26.html

If you had the ability to create a universe without suffering, but you created it with suffering instead because "You want to see how the game works out", I would count that as immoral. — schopenhauer1

Some thinkers resolved that dilemma by dividing responsibility : Old Testament = Jehovah vs Satan ; Gnosticism = Sophia vs Demiurge. But that evades any satisfying ultimate buck-stopper. So, my initial tentative conclusion to that cosmic moral quandary was to assume that the First Cause of our temporary universe was not a moral agent, but more like an amoral Principle of Change (Prime Mover ; Cosmic Causal Energy?). However, since I cannot ignore the physical signs, revealed by Science, of an evolutionary tendency toward the gradual emergence of material complexity & mental sentience & moral ethics, I still have to assume that the Big-Bang-act-of-creation had some purpose behind it (LOGOS)*2. And maybe Humanity collectively can contribute to the improvement of the Game of Life. Therefore, lacking any direct revelation from the Prime Actor, I must admit that I have no idea what that end-game goal might be. Some have guessed that G*D is gestating little limited gods in He/r image. But why? Does G*D have a motherly instinct? All I can say right now, is that it's an open question --- ripe for philosophical exploration.

PS___My BothAnd philosophy advises us puzzling humans to just suck it up, and accept the good with the bad. But at the same time, still work toward a more moral Utopian culture on Earth. Ain't that what Morality is all about?

*2. God's Inscrutable Plan : Part Two
. . . . . But what if the sages of the past wove their fictional narratives from the wrong assumptions? Idealistic Priests imagined that a perfect deity could only create a perfect world. Ironically, with paradise at the beginning, the story could only develop downward into decay and decadence. Hence, cynical playwrights caricatured the gods as self-absorbed and indifferent to human suffering. To them, humans were pawns in a heavenly Game of Thrones. On the other hand, modern science has replaced the stagnant cycles of Greek Fate with a history of progress from Chaos to Cosmos in a logical series of steps. Current models of Evolution have constructed a plausible sequence of advancements from extreme simplicity to the amazing organic complexity we see today in our scopes and neighborhoods.
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page26.html

I'm not sure "complexity" has to equal "amazing". We love to pat ourselves on the back, don't we? — schopenhauer1

Actually, I was patting Nature (or nature's god) on the back. Ourselves may not yet be ready for prime time*1. "Amazing" is an expression of value judgement, based on personal values. And personally, I am impressed by the glacially slow natural methods of world creation, as compared to the instantaneous creation by fiat of the Bible. What's amazing is not just complexity, but the quality of the intricate & balanced organization of the cosmic organism that emerged from the chaos of an omnidirectional Big Bang beginning.

Nature's enigmatic "values" --- or criteria for computation (replication) --- seem to be the fuzzy logic of Fitness Functions, rather than the mythical magical logic of instant perfection (paradise), followed by degradation by its own internal intelligent agents. On the other hand, computer scientists have recognized that natural evolution functions like a computer program which works toward some ultimate output. Some even describe its creative process as "amazing"*2, and have begun to emulate its counter-intuitive ingenious methods.

Cosmologist Max Tegmark has based his Mathematical World theory on the notion of natural evolution as a goal-directed program*3. Likewise, in place of traditional god-as-magician myths of 7-day creation, I think of the First Cause as an intentional Programmer, who selects criteria and sets algorithms, and then leaves the computer world alone to do its work of creation via evolution. Let's hope "ourselves" don't screw it all up with our artificial un-natural meddling.

This novel way of thinking about the ups & downs (goods vs evils ; fit vs unfit) of the gradually emerging world-system is just the reverse of Genesis. In the Hebrew myth, the world started in a perfect state, but then was corrupted by wrong choices made by the upright creatures chosen as robotic caretakers of Paradise. Evil entered the world when those zombie-like proto-humans surprisingly gained the independent power of FreeWill, due to the intervention of an evil god. And the rest, as they say, is history, red in tooth & claw : the savage conflict of competition for goods.

Now that upstart homo sapiens are beginning to meddle with the well-honed program of Nature, we learn the hard way that it ain't as easy as it seems to reach perfection --- a man-made Utopia remains an elusive dream. For example, medical science can artificially increase health & lifespan for a few, but at the expense of allowing "unfit" humans to replicate. What effect that will have on future generations remains to be seen. On a much faster time-scale, antibiotics have saved some lives, but the rules of natural evolution have quickly produced antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Meanwhile, the successes of technological evolution have inspired some to aspire to a Utopia of fleshless Artificial Intelligences, with natural humans left behind in the dust.

So no, I was not patting wise apes on the back, for their attempts to create heaven on Earth. The "amazing complexity" created by heuristic natural processes requires a delicate balance of good vs evil in order to maintain its progression toward a "better" world. But who is qualified to judge its betterness, us still-evolving apes or the original Programmer? When humanity learns how to define "Good", then ourselves may become the little gods of a real paradise.



*1. Humanity's Awesome, Terrifying Takeover of Evolution :
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/opin ... acson.html
Note --- This article expresses some trepidation regarding the outcome of human-engineered linear evolution as compared to Nature's meandering methods. However, computer scientists have adopted the heuristic (trial & error) procedures of natural evolution in order to "design" solutions to problems that cannot be easily formulated into numerical values. In place of human selection of criteria it emulates the wisdom of natural selection.

*2. Amazing Evolution :
Amazing Evolution shines a light on this incredible process, from the beginnings of life around 3.8 billion years ago, to the millions of different species alive today, including the moon-walking, talking apes with super-powerful brains–human beings!
https://www.lindentreebooks.com/amazing-evolution.html

*3. Evolutionary Programming :
Special computer algorithms inspired by biological Natural Selection. It is similar to Genetic Programming in that it relies on internal competition between random alternative solutions to weed-out inferior results, and to pass-on superior answers to the next generation of algorithms. By means of such optimizing feedback loops, evolution is able to make progress toward the best possible solution – limited only by local restraints – to the original programmer’s goal or purpose. In Enformationism theory the Prime Programmer is portrayed as a creative principle (e.g. Logos), that uses bottom-up mechanisms, rather than top-down miracles, to produce a world with both freedom & determinism, order & meaning.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html