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The idiocies of theodicy + How an obscure oriental cult converted an empire

#1
C C Offline
Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
https://aeon.co/ideas/bad-things-happen-...f-theodicy

EXCERPT: The problem of evil is a classic dilemma in the philosophy of religion. [...] the world should be perfect, or at least free of undeserved suffering. Yet, a cursory glance reveals a world that clearly is not inherently just or free from undeserved suffering. Many solutions to the problem of evil – called ‘theodicies’ – have been proposed. [...] There is also a profound moral danger to certain types of theodicy. [...] Like any theodicy, it cannot simply unmake suffering, and so it instead tries to justify it. The claim that the universe is inherently just then implies that those who suffer deserve it. The existence of a just God and a moral universe is gained at the cost of condemning victims of misfortune as blameworthy. [...] Such a worldview conveniently scapegoats someone, usually whatever population someone wishes to demonise: women, homosexuals, the poor, etc. It also normalises social ills that could otherwise be addressed and meliorated. In a dark irony, holding that the universe is ultimately a just place ends up condoning the suffering and injustice that happens within it, often on the backs of those most in need....



How an obscure oriental cult converted a vast, pagan Roman empire
https://aeon.co/essays/how-an-obscure-or...man-empire

EXCERPT: The Roman empire became Christian during the fourth century CE. At the century’s start, Christians were – at most – a substantial minority of the population. By its end, Christians (or nominal Christians) indisputably constituted a majority in the empire. [...] Apart from the small and ethnically circumscribed exception of the Jews, the ancient world had never known an exclusivist faith, so the rapid success of early Christianity is a historical anomaly. [...] That a world religion should have emerged from an oriental cult in a tiny and peculiar corner of Roman Palestine is nothing short of extraordinary.

[...] When he was arrested as a threat to public order, his Jewish enemies having complained to the Romans, Paul needed only two words to change the balance of power – cives sum, ‘I am a citizen’ – a Roman citizen. The fact that he was a Roman citizen meant that, unlike Jesus, he could neither be handed over to the Jewish authorities for judgment nor summarily executed by an angry Roman governor. A Roman citizen could appeal to the emperor’s justice, and that is what Paul did. Paul was a Christian, perhaps indeed the first Christian, but he was also a Roman. That was new. Even if the occasional Jew gained Roman citizenship, Jews weren’t Romans.

As a religion, Judaism was ethnic, which gave Jews some privileged exemptions unavailable to any other Roman subjects, but it also meant they were perpetually aliens. In contrast, Christianity was not ethnic. Although Christian leaders were intent on separating themselves physically and ideologically from the Jewish communities out of which they’d grown, they also accepted newcomers to their congregations without regard for ethnic origin or social class. In the socially stratified world of antiquity, the egalitarianism of Christianity was unusual and, to many, appealing.

[...] The promise of salvation, vouchsafed in the miracles of Jesus and/or his divine father also drew in followers. [...] Christianity offered eternal life in exchange for belief – no complex initiation rituals, no hieratic pyramid of occult revelation. [...] On earth, Christianity offered community, and it offered support – dining, celebrating, working and playing together, people who would bury you if you died. In a cosmopolitan Roman empire, where cities sucked in expendable labour from the countryside, and where artisans and craftsmen had to travel a very long way from home, that kind of community could not be taken for granted or created casually. Christians would and did look after one another, sometimes exclusively so.

[...] The Jews had kept themselves separate for as long as anyone could remember, but Greeks and Romans were used to that. [...] Around the Mediterranean, people could look at Jews with a sort of tolerant, if uncomprehending, disdain. But Greeks and Romans sitting out the traditional cult of their own cities made no sense. Were these monotheist Christians pretty much the same as atheists, refusing to give the divine its due? What exactly did they get up to in their exclusive meetings?

[...] the tormented saints of a million works of Catholic art, were the loving harvest of later centuries, not any ancient reality. [...] Technically, for a time, Christianity was illegal [...] But a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was easier on everyone, not least the emperors. [...] By the third century, Christian communities had grown. One would have been hard-pressed to find even a modest town without a Christian household or three. From a fringe movement, Christianity had become a central fact of urban life.

Yet the religion’s normalisation made it suddenly vulnerable in the middle of the third century [...] The emperor Decius, with a shaky claim to a throne he’d won in an officers’ putsch, thought it prudent to assure himself of divine favour. In 249, he ordered every inhabitant of the empire to sacrifice to the gods of the state [...] Decius might not have actually meant to target Christians specifically, but his edict could not help but have that effect. [...] When Decius was killed on the battlefield in 251, Christians rejoiced that their god had protected them.

[...] A decade after Decius’s death, the emperor Valerian renewed religious persecution, this time targeting Christians explicitly. [...] in 260, Valerian was taken prisoner on the battlefield by the Persian king, going on to die in captivity. His son and successor Gallienus immediately ended persecution and restored the legal rights of Christian churches. That legal measure demonstrates something significant. Churches had become prosperous, socially integrated corporate entities, able to possess and dispose of property. Christianity was no longer a clandestine and minority religion.

The years between 260 and 300 offered little reprieve to those who wanted to become emperor and govern, but they did amount to the first golden age for Roman Christians. Although it is likely that we’ll never have sufficient evidence to tell just how many Christians there were at any one time, or just how fast the religion spread, we can say for certain that Christian numbers grew dramatically. By the 290s, there were Christians in the senate, at court, and even in the families of emperors....
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#2
Syne Offline
(Feb 1, 2017 04:23 AM)C C Wrote: Bad things happen for a reason, and other idiocies of theodicy
https://aeon.co/ideas/bad-things-happen-...f-theodicy

EXCERPT: The problem of evil is a classic dilemma in the philosophy of religion. [...] the world should be perfect, or at least free of undeserved suffering. Yet, a cursory glance reveals a world that clearly is not inherently just or free from undeserved suffering. Many solutions to the problem of evil – called ‘theodicies’ – have been proposed. [...] There is also a profound moral danger to certain types of theodicy. [...] Like any theodicy, it cannot simply unmake suffering, and so it instead tries to justify it. The claim that the universe is inherently just then implies that those who suffer deserve it. The existence of a just God and a moral universe is gained at the cost of condemning victims of misfortune as blameworthy. [...] Such a worldview conveniently scapegoats someone, usually whatever population someone wishes to demonise: women, homosexuals, the poor, etc. It also normalises social ills that could otherwise be addressed and meliorated. In a dark irony, holding that the universe is ultimately a just place ends up condoning the suffering and injustice that happens within it, often on the backs of those most in need....

Nonsense. A god can be just while a universe of men obviously is not. This seems to simply be conflating theodicy with cosmodicy (moral universe) and/or anthropodicy (wholly good men) to exploit their weaknesses to artificially undermine theodicy justifications for the problem of evil. It's just a transparent, intellectually dishonest attempt to completely dodge pure theodicy arguments.
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#3
C C Offline
As Voltaire did, many just evaluate / disparage Leibniz's "principle of the best" from a human perspective and our standards (what would be best for us). Rarely taking into account that he may have applied it in areas that outran just "problem of evil" affairs.

Instead of a paradise world for people being the preset goal to be met for "best / perfect", the criterion Leibniz attributed to God seemed more a matter of bringing a maximum diversity of things into a coherent co-existence with each other (whether they appeared concurrently with each other in space or relied on being distributed over different times). That this plenum of maximum possibilities would hang together well -- had consistency in terms of their relationships, including constituting a network of inter-dependent causes and origins (sufficient reasons / explanations).

Douglas Burnham : [...] In the mind of God are an infinite number of infinitely complex and complete concepts, all considered as possibly existent substances, none having any particular “right” to exist. There is just one constraint on this decision: it must not violate the other basic principle of Leibniz’s, the law of non-contradiction (also known as “the law of contradiction”). In other words, each substance may individually be possible, but they must all be possible together -- the universe forming a vast, consistent, non-contradictory system. For example, God could not create a universe in which there are both more sheep than cows and more cows than sheep. God could choose a universe in which there is the greatest possible quantity of pizza, or in which everything is purple, and so on. However, according to Leibniz, God chooses the universe that is the most perfect. This principle of perfection is not surprising since it is most consummate with the idea of God as an infinite being; to choose any other less perfect universe would be to choose a lesser universe. Thus, according to Leibniz, the actual world is the best of all possible worlds.

[...] To try to understand further this notion of perfection, Leibniz explores several concepts in various writings: notions of the best, the beautiful, the simply compossible, greatest variety or the greatest quantity of essence. The last of these is the explanation he continually comes back to: perfection simply means the greatest quantity of essence, which is to say the greatest richness and variety in each substance, compatible with the least number of basic laws, so as to exhibit an intelligible order that is “distinctly thinkable” in the variety.


[...] As Here, very briefly, are three of Leibniz’s main replies to the problem of evil:

(i) Human minds are only only aware of a small fraction of the universe. To judge it full of misery on this small fraction is presumptuous. Just as the true design–or, indeed, any design–of a painting is not visible from viewing a small corner of it, so the proper order of the universe exceeds one’s ability to judge it.

(ii) The best possible universe does not mean no evil, but that less overall evil is impossible.

(iii) Similarly to the previous argument, and in the best Neo-Platonist tradition, Leibniz claims that evil and sin are negations of positive reality. All created beings are limitations and imperfect; therefore evil and sin are necessary for created beings.
--Leibniz: Metaphysics ... IEP
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#4
Syne Offline
Yeah, I tend to agree with Leibniz on most matters he touched (including his provenance of the calculus). Like him, I think free will is sufficient reason for a universe where evil can exist.
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