Subject: (urth) Silk Takes A Stab At The 'Problem Of Evil'

From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:39:27 +0000

Any philosophy of religion or theology students out there?  Is Silk arguing
something of a 'freewill' theodicy here that still trades on a strong view
of divine sovereignty?

http://silkandhornheresy.blogspot.com/2011/04/silk-takes-stab-at-problem-of-evil.html

-DOJP
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From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:03:08 +0000

Silk is arguing that the Outsider is not an occasionalist God. He doesn't control everything, and permits Evil (as a concept and metaphysical whole) because in the end Evil serves his great Purpose (which Man might not know). Little evils (like tsunami that kill thousands) are because the Outsider does not intervene or even control all events - God does not authorize every event as if he is a foreman at a construction site - but rather lets things flow organically. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 12, 2011, at 6:39 PM, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Any philosophy of religion or theology students out there?  Is Silk arguing something of a 'freewill' theodicy here that still trades on a strong view of divine sovereignty?
> 
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:12:41 +0000

Elsewhere in tBotLS, Silk has an insight that strikes me heavily. I
can't recall where it is, but it occurs to him that the purpose of
free will is to give us the grace of consenting to what is going to
happen anyway.

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:
> Silk is arguing that the Outsider is not an occasionalist God. He doesn't
> control everything, and permits Evil (as a concept and metaphysical whole)
> because in the end Evil serves his great Purpose (which Man might not know).
> Little evils (like tsunami that kill thousands) are because the Outsider
> does not intervene or even control all events - God does not authorize every
> event as if he is a foreman at a construction site - but rather lets things
> flow organically.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 12, 2011, at 6:39 PM, Daniel Petersen
> <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Any philosophy of religion or theology students out there? “Is Silk arguing
> of divine sovereignty”

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 03:28:09 +0000

Much like consenting to be governed by a king.

On 4/12/2011 8:12 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Lane Haygood<lhaygood at gmail.com>  wrote:

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From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:30:25 +0000

> event as if he is a foreman at a construction site - but rather lets things

Ok, Lane, right, so Silk's conception of God (the Outsider) is not
'occasionalist' (i.e. God *directly* causes all things), but the fact that
God 'permits' evil and forces it to serve his purposes 'however unwillingly'
seems to fit in with Aquinas' scheme of primary and secondary causation.
 Evil is personified by Silk as *hating* God, yet it is 'harnessed' by God
so that it 'serves' him by pointing us who get hurt by evil back to God for
our true love and goodness and purpose.

I think I agree with you that he's arguing that the Outsider allows his
creation to 'flow organically', but I just want to point out that Silk is
still conceiving of a God very much 'in control' in that his 'permissive
will' is orchestrating (if you like) all things towards his desired ends
(which, though many are unknown as you point out, yet Silk takes a major
known end to be that of love between creature and Creator).

> free will is to give us the grace of consenting to what is going to

Dan'l, I vaguely recall that too.  It'd be good if we cold find the exact
quote.  I want to qualify that thought with the notion that those freewill
creatures are still somehow genuinely significant in their choices, that our
part in 'what is going to happen anyway' (or 'consenting to be governed by a
King' as David Stockhoff said) really 'makes a difference' somehow.
 However, I'm not sure whether that's Silk's or Wolfe's view.  Wolfe has
kept me guessing on this.  Sometimes he sounds pretty hard determinist
(especially, as I seem to recall, in certain passages of tBotNS).  Yet the
dramas he plays out sound more libertarian.  I know a compatibilist would
say that's just how things look but it's all causally determined even if our
'choices' are 'real' based on our desires (which are determined by all that
comes before us).  Is there any room for any kind of libertarian freewill in
Wolfe?

-DOJP

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From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:01:17 +0000

> ?Evil is personified by Silk as *hating* God, yet it is 'harnessed' by God

I would say rather that God, as the first cause of all things, is the
cause of evil as well as good, and while men are good at identifying
little-e evil (the bad things that happen) we are not always good at
identifying big-E Evil (the form of Evil, from which all little-e
evils are instances), but regardless, all evil/Evil is ultimately part
of God's plan.  This sounds a lot like the unknown purposes theodicy,
with bits of the soul-making thrown around.  It's a fairly standard
type of theodicy:  bad stuff happens but God is God and has some
reason for it all.

> known end to be that of love between creature and Creator).

Sure. I didn't mean to make Silk out to be a deist.  For Silk's God
(and presumably, Wolfe's) desire and control are the same thing;
remember, for the problem of evil to have any gravity at all God must
be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good.  Thus, what God
desires, is, and God would not, as perfectly good, desire that which
he could not do.

The problem of evil is an interesting logical exercise, but I have
never been ultimately convinced of its efficacy (even as a
non-believer).  It, like the ontological argument, comes laden with
value presuppositions that are rarely made explicit, and it is filled
with nonsensical logical wrangling such as whether God needs to be
able to do the impossible (create a round square, for example) to be
perfectly powerful.  I have an Orthodox friend who swears up and down
that perfect power need only encompass God's actions within the sphere
of what is possible (e.g., it is not a hit against God's perfect
potency to say that God cannot make a round square, because
omnipotence is limited to the set of all possible actions), but a
Protestant acquaintance that thinks that God can do the impossible
because no limits of human logic apply to God.  To make matters worse,
I have yet to (myself) come up with a satisfactory definition of evil
that is not question-begging or reduced to some sort of naturalist
handwaving that "it's evil because it is evil."  Certainly I can point
to actions that I think are evil (child abuse, for example) but I
wonder if I am focusing on the end result without any reference to the
motivation or mindset.  What about a parent that spanks their child
too hard?  The parent's motive is discipline, not injury, which ought
to make a difference, even though the end result is the same.
> Dan'l, I vaguely recall that too. ?It'd be good if we cold find the exact
> quote. ?I want to qualify that thought with the notion that those freewill
> ?However, I'm not sure whether that's Silk's or Wolfe's view. ?Wolfe has
> kept me guessing on this. ?Sometimes he sounds pretty hard determinist
> (especially, as I seem to recall, in certain passages of tBotNS). ?Yet the
> dramas he plays out sound more libertarian. “I know a compatibilist would
> comes before us). ?Is there any room for any kind of libertarian freewill in
> Wolfe”

The problem of free will is another tough nut because it comes laden
with lots of often-unanalyzed presuppositions, such as whether God's
foreknowledge entails determination of the result.  The same
aforementioned friends have divergent views, with one taking the
position that God does not need to know everything in order to be
omniscient, if, for example, the thing to be known (the result of a
coin flip) is a matter of probability rather than certainty.  Just
because, for example, I do not know the result of a coin toss you
wouldn't say that I am unknowledgable about coin tosses, the physics
involved, or probability calculations.  Even if I told you that given
my hand strength, the weight of the coin, and atmospheric conditions
the likelihood was greater that I would toss a heads, and I tossed a
tails, you would simply say, "well, he knew the probabilities."  The
other friend, predictably, takes the view that if God knows a thing,
because God is atemporal and perceives all events in time
simultaneously, God has perfect recollective knowledge of the result
of that coin toss.  Friend 1 often rejoins that this just makes God
the perfect historian rather than an intellective being capable of
free thought on his own.

For my own part, being that time is an integral part of my cognition
of the world around me, I cannot imagine what an atemporal being would
think... and yet my own views on philosophy say that a transcendent
being such as God must be unlimited in both space and time, and would
not be saddled with the same cognitive requirements for
intelligibility that I, a limited creature, am.   But because each
friend takes different presuppositions as his starting point (one a
very continental, Hegelian view of the world, and the other a much
more classic Protestant view) they arrive at different answers to
these questions.  So to answer whether we might freely desire a result
set in stone and that be "enough" for free will supposes that "will"
equates to our desires, which is itself a loaded proposition:  might
we not act contrary to our desires, or at some last moment before we
take a volitional action, do we always desire to engage in that
action?

For my own part, I do not think that the problem of freedom of the
will can be answered; how could we ever possibly determine whether our
own actions were free or determined, let alone those of others whose
psychology is closed to us.  We are constrained to act as if our
choices are our own, regardless of whether we are autonomous or merely
the pawns of divinity.

LH

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From: António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 14:55:40 +0000

Well, Lane, I must say I've seldom if ever seen such a well-wrought 
presentation of these questions, the more coming from a non-believer (we may 
discuss that if anyone wishes to). It's so good I'm fully quoting it below 
fully aware of the sacrifice of electricity.

---

From: Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:07:50 +0000

Well, the only way we could be talking about 'God' in any meaningful sense
(perfectly powerful and perfectly good as you later mention) is to carefully
qualify this notion of God as 'cause of evil'.  He can't *morally* be
e/Evil's cause without ceasing to be a 'holy' (morally perfect and just)
God.  So he must be the 'cause' of evil indirectly through creating freewill
creatures with the potential to 'twist away' from him (and Evil is thereby
conceived of as 'parasitic' in the Augustinian/Lutheran/Lewisian sense).
 There is certainly a 'soul-making' theme in Silk's theodicy, but I wonder
if 'loving purpose' would more accurately characterise his argument than
'unknown purpose' (going from Silk's actual words: 'His fear he is afraid
for our sake, not his own is that we may come to love other things more than
we love him... evil directs us back to the Outsider... because he is
better... Reach out to him').

[For convenience to any following along:
http://silkandhornheresy.blogspot.com/2011/04/silk-takes-stab-at-problem-of-evil.html
]

what God desires, is,
and God would not, as perfectly good, desire that which
he could not do.

Hm - 'what God desires, is' - well, not the Hebrew God in any case.  The
Bible is full of God talking about his desires for his world and how most of
the world, including his own chosen people, are living *against*,
*contrary*to what he desires.  This is where talk of more than one
sort of 'desire' or
'wish' within God comes in I guess.  And where concepts like divine
'self-limitation' come in also (so that the notion of his perfect power is
preserved even in a world where not all he wishes always comes to pass - not
whilst history unfolds anyway).  And I really think all that fits with your
initial comment about God letting the world 'flow organically' better than
what your describing here.  It's thorny, I admit, but I suspect Wolfe (and
characters like Silk) would want to let divine dynamism force us into
inexplicable mystery rather than strict logical tidiness bring us to accept
a rather austerely static notion of deity.  (And of course, mystics and
fideists and what have you will always helpfully remind us that at least
some important measure of mystery in the face of divinity is hugely rational
- we'd surely be inventing the god we could contain with our intellects!)

It's funny, I (a low-church Protestant) lean toward your Orthodox friend's
views rather than your Protestant friend's.  I'm guessing the latter is
rather Reformed/Calvinist?  I'm more classically Arminian myself (though I
like to call myself 'Calminian' as I want to stay close to the Calvinist
tradition of 'theocentricity' - and Reformed thinkers continue to be helpful
to me), so that might partly explain it.  As I say, I can't figure out where
Wolfe (or his characters) might be on this sort of spectrum.

I have yet to (myself) come up with a satisfactory definition of evil
that is not question-begging or reduced to some sort of naturalist
handwaving that "it's evil because it is evil."

I appreciate your frankness there.  It's hard enough to define (real) evil
from a theistic perspective - I just find it nigh on impossible from a
naturalistic basis.

So to answer whether we might freely desire a result

I think I'm with you 100% on that formulation of the question.  This is the
kind of thing I see explored in Wolfe's characters - choices made contrary
to desires, etc. - that mitigates against some statements that are
potentially determinist/compatibilist.  (Although I know there are
sophisticated formulations of compatibilism that try to account for this
seeming 'choice against desire' - a deeper desire, etc.  But I'm not
convinced this accounts for what really looks and feels like libertarian
choice-making.)

Yes.  But I still take that constraint as a huge hint toward the fact that
we really are free in some significant sense (ultimately, from my Christian
perspective, as imago Dei beings).  Also: 'autonomous or merely pawns of
divinity' - either a false dichotomy or causal reductionism or both.  The
Christian view wasy we're *dependent* beings (not autonomous) in *
relationship* to the divinity.  There is real responsibility and real limits
to that freedom.  We are neither autonomous nor mere pawns.  Again, this is
the mystery I see throughout Wolfe's writing.  Something common to all
fiction really.  Wolfe's fellow Catholic writer, Flannery O'Connor, deserves
to be quoted in this regard:

'Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?  I think that
it usually does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills
conflicting in one man.  Freedom cannot be conceived simply.  It is a
mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to
deepen.' (From her 'Author's Note' to her novel *Wise Blood*.)

It's worth noting too that Silk's God is revelatory, self-disclosing, and
this makes ALL the difference.  If God speaks to us, then we have an
authoritative (though not exhaustively so for our finite minds) voice on
these and all other matters he chooses to speak to us about (for our good,
on the Christian view, not merely our information or bafflement) - though of
course, that voice has to be humbly, wisely interpreted - as you can see in
Silk's own musings.

-DOJP

Good talking with you, Lane!

2011/4/13 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>

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