[lit-ideas] Re: The Problem of Evil

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:04:42 -0800

Teemu Pyyluoma wrote:

I beg to differ with Robert Paul on necessicity of
existence of pain or evil. In physics there is no such
thing as cold, only lack of heat. Or at least that is
what I keep telling myself waiting for the winter to
break (it's -15C outside right now.) Similarily,
hunger is abcense of food.

This isn't my view, Teemu. I was trying to make sense of the claim (made by certain philosophers and theologians that 'evil' was necessary if there is to be human freedom (free will).

The point I am trying to make is that feeling of
something and cause of something are not necessarily
the same. Pain, physical pain at least, is in someways
an abnormality. If I get a cut on my finger, it is the
result of my body being damaged and the pain will
cease once the cut heals, that is gets back to normal
condition.

No one, as far as I know, is putting forward the view that the cause of pain is identical with pain, or that in general the cause of x is identical with x. This would be an odd view: the cause of my anger is that someone stole my M & M's; her stealing them isn't my anger. It's what provoked it.

Robert Paul
Reed College
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