The Good, The Bad, and ....

I have been fascinated by recent comments on Quora, which have, knowingly or not, rehearsed Catharism (two gods) and Leibniz (the problem of evil), without ever mentioning Tom Paine and the arguments put forward in his book “The Age of Reason”.

I do believe that, to a considerable extent, we are all products of our upbringing. Had it not been so, I would not have reached the age of sixty before becoming aware of the fact that so many of the questions I was left with had been asked, and answered, two hundred years ago. I considered myself an educated man, but all that meant was I had absorbed the things that western society wants us to think and not ventured into the Index of prohibited thought.

Having at long last become aware of my own shortcomings, I can hardly blame others who have accepted what society tells them, at face value, without adequate questioning.

When I did begin to think for myself, I decided that the existence of evil in the world was actually logical. A god who was perfect would be good, and capable of all types of goodness, except moral goodness.

Moral goodness is necessarily the prerogative of imperfect beings who are able, as a result of free will, to choose between good and evil.

A perfect being, by definition, cannot choose evil. An imperfect being, by contrast, can show moral goodness by choosing the right when he was able to choose the wrong.

A perfect (and omnipotent) god, seeking to maximise goodness, would therefore be obliged to create imperfect beings in order to allow moral goodness to exist.

An unfortunate side effect is that he also must allow moral badness to exist.

However, the total amount of goodness resulting, including moral goodness, minus the amount of moral badness, must exceed the amount of all goodness except moral goodness otherwise existing.

That’s my twopenn’orth.

My regards to Herr Leibniz.

Also, thank you, Tom. I couldn’t have got here without you.

And I have my tin hat on.