Saturday, June 14, 2008

The Two World Theodicy for the Problem of Evil

Theistic philosopher David Wood had a debate with Atheist John W Loftus last year on the Problem of Evil.
This debate was an exchange,rather than a formal debate type.It was on the infidel guy radio show
and here is the link to listen to it.

Listen:


I think David Wood's Two- World theodicy was very well thought out.

What kind of world should we expect an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being to create? Wood handles the question by suggesting that a world in which human pleasure is maximized and human pain is minimized is not what would be expected of this type of Creator.

He posits a two-world theodicy in which ‘good’ is maximized: this world with its goods, eg Courage,Compassion,endurance etc, and the next world (heaven) with its goods.lack of suffering,and the full presence of God—the latter being the ultimate good.

Neither world can contain all of the goods (since some of them are mutually exclusive).Eg You can't have Courage in heaven since there is there are no threats that would compell an act of courageousness.

And therefore the best possible situation is one with both worlds, in which the world of greater goods is eternal and the world of lesser goods is a limited world.

Loftus asks why didnt God then just put us into heaven,if the ultimate goal is for humans to go to heaven.Wood says in order to maximize good, this world could not be by-passed, for there are goods in this world that cannot be achieved in the heavenly world in God’s full presence.Wood gives several examples of the goods of this world, including the choice of whether or not we will follow God, morality, and virtues such as courage and compassion.

Full review here

very intresting debate.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think David Wood nailed it on the head.

IS this similar to the soul building theodicy?

Oren_Licus said...

dude, the download is over 100 minutes long..did you listen to the whole thing?