John Campbell and the Problem of evil part 3

I want to make a tribute to a great musician that the world never got to know because of the early death of blues ace John Campbell. John died at the age of 41 from a heartattack in his sleep which seemed a cruel way to go especially since he was just peaking. His life story has been very interesting for me read up about. When he was 16 he got into a tragic accident and then decided to drop out of college and spent the next couple of years of his life on the road. He slept in dirty places and only had his guitar as his real prime companion. But it was during his travels around the US that he got exposed to different styles of playing the blues such as piano style in Louisiana, banjo style in Texas and slide guitar in Mississippi. He was proficient in mixing the 3 up, with a beat. If i never make it to music school, i'm going to do what John did and travel around india probably to learn different styles of music with a guitar.

Check him out, i hope you'll be hungry for more...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpcE15tM2Eo&feature=related

Problem of evil goes like this. Conventional attributes that are given to God of monotheistic faiths include terms such as God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. So God is all powerful in the sense that there are no limits to what God can or cannot do and is wholly good in the sense that a good thing is always opposed to an evil thing and would seek to eliminate evil. So the argument works with the following three propositions

God is omnipotent
God is wholly good
Evil exists

If you accept that any of the above propositions is false the problem of evil is not applicable for you anymore. The existence of evil and an omnipotent wholly good being is incompatible. Well i've been reading a lengthy argument about the problem of evil from a guy named Mackie and it’s got me questioning my understanding of God intensely over the last couple of days. Well the argument is refuted in a number of ways but they all lead back to showing that God is actually either not omnipotent or wholly good. For example, one rebuttal from the theists is good and evil are necessary counterparts. So imagine a world without evil, where everything was good. Well then you would never be able to tell if something was evil or not and then you would be unable to make this distinction between a good and a bad deed. The rebuttal to the rebuttal is that well then it shows that God’s power is limited because God has to create evil in the face of good. God can’t create good without creating evil and hence this limits God’s power. Another argument is that God is not responsible for evil and its only humans that are responsible because God gave us freewill. This again limits God’s power if God has indeed given us freewill because God is no longer able to control our will. So God might have had the power to give us freewill but not necessarily command power to control our freewill. If God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?

Paradox of omnipotence: Can an omnipotent being make things which he cannot subsequently control? Or can an omnipotent being make rules which then bind himself?

Well my reply to the problem of evil is as follows. The problem of evil is not really a problem at all because who are we to judge the attributes of God? If you wouldn’t judge a stranger in a country you’ve never heard of, how can you pass judgment on what kind of attributes are characteristic of God, a being who could be considered as a stranger residing in a location that you can’t even conceive. So I claim that our understanding of God’s goodness, omnipotence and reasons for the existence of evil are poorly understood. However this reply led to more severe problems. It started to make me question what do I really know or believe about God and God’s characteristics. Because the presuppositions that you make can lead to a very different outcome of conclusions you make. So here are my presuppositions. The universe was caused by something that transcends the universe itself, called the transcendent cause or the creator. Typically only a being who posses all pure perfections can have the power to create, to this being we name God. I think an excellent argument for the existence of this being is the Kalam Cosmological Argument for God which was defended by professor Nowacki from SMU. It goes like this

Premise 1: Whatever comes to be has a cause of its coming to be
Premise 2: the universe came to be
Conclusion: The universe has a cause of its coming to be

I’m not going to explain the arguments that defend the premises (as it’s pretty long but its based on math and science), but the important inferences are, the argument shows that the universe did not exists eternally in the past. The universe has a finite past and came to be out of nothing. It’s not like there was some preexisting matter and then it formed after the preexisting matter. Big bang theory is empirical evidence that confirms this argument since it predicts that the universe’s past is finite. It’s not through this argument that I have started believing in God. I think truthful knowledge about God’s existence comes in the form of divine revelation is impossible to predict of when it happens. So my belief in God’s existence prior to this course was based on an “irrational” belief. Now my beliefs are based on irrational and logical reasoning. I was born into a Christian family and have up till a short while ago only ever believed in the principles of Christianity. Today I don’t subscribe to organized religion anymore. It doesn’t mean that I reject Christianity, it just means I don’t believe that by going to church or through living your life as a “good Christian” is the only means of knowing God. I propose that you can believe in God without subscribing to a religion. Someone asked me the other day then isn’t this subscribing to the belief that you have created your own God? I said not necessarily because for all you know all the monotheistic faiths pray to the same God but have different ways of naming God. Although I know I need to do a lot more reading before I make such radical claims, there are things I find hard to reconcile that make me feel as though organized religion is detrimental. For one it gives you guidelines as to how to live your life justifying the guidelines in the name of God. I think choosing guidelines for living your life comes about as you grow up and they form based on your experiences with the world. I feel as though subscribing to organized religion can limit the experiences you choose to engage in with your life. On the contrary, I think it’s important to try everything at least once and make up your mind for yourself on what works for you and what doesn’t.

Here are the major mind boggles that have plagued me over the past few days though. So I don’t subscribe to a religious faith. I believe God exists. What is the purpose now or what is the necessity for me to know of God’s existence? Christianity suggests that there is an afterlife and that the target would be to make it to heaven and not hell. I think Hinduism and Buddhism suggest reincarnation based on what kind of a person you are in the current life. But not subscribing to religion entails that I don’t neither accept nor reject the above propositions of the afterlife.

Do I live the rest of my days in adoration of God? Do I carry on knowing God exists and live my life as though there is no consequence of my actions in the eyes of God or as though there are consequences for my actions in the eyes of God? My questions seem to be a borderline between finding the meaning of life and finding meaning in life. The more questions I ask the more confused I become. My presuppositions also confuse me. For instance I believe that everything happens for a reason. Which I think is the same as saying all effects/events have a cause. God can/is responsible for all events/effects and causes. That means on some level I believe everything that happens in my life is caused by God. There is one presupposition that I strongly believe in. God can help people achieve a high level of mastery in whatever proficiency they choose to concentrate on in life. I’ve seen it twice recently. One was in Goa where I saw a singer/sitar player of a band called Kundalini Airport perform as though he was communicating on behalf of God to his audience. It was the way he performed and his connection to the music that made me think this person is spiritually enlightened and that’s why he is so damn good. The same with another musician I met who was a part time missionary and part time guitar player. He played with such unique technique and flair that I felt such knowledge must have been imparted on him from a higher being. It doesn’t just have to be music. It can be in any field. Thomas Aquinas for instance, a great theist philosopher was blessed with amazing knowledge. He had 5 secretaries to whom he would dictate 5 different topics. He would dictate a few things for the first secretary to write down say about astrology, then go to the second one about theism, the third about math….and so on in a circle and come back to the first secretary and continue from where he left off. He could do this while reading! And he had a photographic memory so all the references you see in his books are not like references where he had to go find which book which chapter said what. He just knew it and he was damn smart. This is someone whom I convinced was blessed with superior knowledge from God.