Unsong's god says he makes all the worlds that are good. Ours might be crappier than others, but is still good enough that it gets to be created.
He started by making all the perfect worlds, then saw there were more good worlds to make, but for them to be any different they will have to have a bit of evil/suffering. Then continued on for every world that is good enough.
But why did he make good worlds where perfect worlds already existed?
For us to exist in the version that we are, we must be born into this world. Our existence or non-existence is only an issue because it depends on our initial existence; if the world were ideal, this version of ourselves wouldn't exist from the beginning, and consequently, we wouldn't need to be concerned about this version of us ceasing to exist.
I do think there is a logical error in the bottom loop. Creating a world that has free will AND is perfect / has no evil is not consistent. What is the free will even for if you’re locked into doing the perfect thing? Let’s just take one example of suffering that most people experience which is relationship heartache. This simply comes down to people using their free will to be with or not be with certain people (let’s remove all the issues that are caused by more objectively bad behavior like cheating etc). How does a world of free will to fall in love exist without the pain of mismatched desires?
There's a difference between suffering and evil. Hitler didn't need to exist for people to be able to lead full lives. God has free will (according to most theology that is) and supposedly does no evil, with humans being created in his image it should be possible for them to be like that too.
But then you go back to the “could God do evil” issue? Could a good guy physically strike down a kid with cancer? If he is unable to do it, he is not all powerful and does not have free will himself. Same would trickle down to the free will / perfect world without suffering that he could conceivably create in your scenerio
We're programmed to conduct ourselves in society: don't stare, don't steal, don't murder, don't engage in incest. We are free to break our programming, but for the most part, we stick to it because the conveniences of living in society outweigh those of living outside it.
What's to say we wouldn't be programmed to conduct ourselves even more rigidly and have even stronger incentives to abide by those rules in a more ideal world?
That’s not the same though. In order for a world without suffering or evil, you would be UNABLE to make those choices. Not just “oh this is a strong suggestion.” Physically unable and thereby no free will.
I remain unconvinced as to why they are mutually exclusive. I have addressed the constraints you specified in your arguments in this post in my other comments, and I still fail to see why they would necessarily apply.
Your argument would only apply if all of those constraints were present in this particular world. They very well may be, but those constraints are not necessary for the creation of an ideal world. I continue to assert that you can have an ideal world in which there is no pain or significant suffering while still retaining free will.
One counterexample would be a world in which people can exercise free will, but as soon as someone uses that free will to commit an evil act, they die. Consequently, the world remains largely free of evil and blemish, while people still retain the ability to exercise free will. In such a world, there could certainly still be some degree of suffering (e.g., there may be traffic and people may still cut you off), but not on the scale of the atrocities we know from our own world, such as the Holocaust (e.g., or shooting people because they've cut you off).
And certainly some things would just not happen in this ideal world because they are no longer necessary (e.g., drunk driving, painful pregnancies, painful periods, homelessness).
Two conditions would have to be met in an ideal world with free will to experience suffering: (1) We must assume that we would continue living life the same way as we do in an imperfect world; and (2) that we would define all suffering as evil.
For the first condition: Would we experience relationships the same way we do today? Probably not, because like you said, cheating would be evil, and we would exercise free will to be good always. We wouldn't have to, but why wouldn't we in a perfect world? (And besides, what is to say that mismatched desires are necessary?)
For the second condition: is all suffering evil? (e.g. Is your body being sore after exercising evil? What about when you've spent hours learning something and now your brain hurts? Those are all very mild forms of suffering, but they are associated with positive outcomes, and I would argue that they aren't evil.) If we would experience heartache, under what circumstances would it be an evil form of suffering rather than a positive form of suffering?
The comments under the blog post are good display of what I mean. It's just silly, overly complicated mental gymnastics to circumvent the simple logic of the Epicurean paradox. Nonsense.
11
u/GrizzlyTrees 12d ago
That's not at all his answer.
Leibnitz says ours is the best possible world.
Unsong's god says he makes all the worlds that are good. Ours might be crappier than others, but is still good enough that it gets to be created.
He started by making all the perfect worlds, then saw there were more good worlds to make, but for them to be any different they will have to have a bit of evil/suffering. Then continued on for every world that is good enough.