Episode 131, 'In Defence of God's Goodness' with Jack Symes (Part II - Further Analysis and Discussion)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 604 Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Birds sing joyfully, dogs smile as they fetch their sticks, and philosophers laugh at their own jokes on podcasts. It is a happy world after all. In fact, if we ponder upon such delights for long enough, it is possible to infer – even during our darkest days – that these are gifts bestowed by a benevolent creator, for these are not necessary for our survival but are gratuitous goods.
Yet, says another, what if these delights are no more proof of a benevolent creator than they are a malevolent one? What if these goods are given just to amplify our suffering when they are inevitably taken from us? And, what if, for every reason given for believing in a good-god, there was room for an evil-god to just as easily take his place?
In this episode, we’ll be exploring the evil-god challenge with Dr Jack Symes, teacher and researcher at Durham University and editor Bloomsbury’s popular book series, Talking about Philosophy. According to Symes, whilst the evil-god challenge has its merits, we should be sceptical about its attempts to draw parallel arguments to those in favour of god’s goodness. Ultimately, for Symes, there are enough asymmetries in these parallel arguments that we should consider the evil-god challenge defeated.
Contents
Part I. Defeating the Evil-God Challenge
Part II. Further Analysis and Discussion
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan |
| 0:04.9 | Scicast |
| 0:08.0 | Ryan's doing a roundtable instead isn't it? |
| 0:11.0 | Yeah |
| 0:12.0 | So Ron |
| 0:14.0 | Round table discussion |
| 0:17.0 | We're on 30 30 |
| 0:20.0 | So Jack we can all agree that the interview was a car crash. |
| 0:37.4 | Part two, further analysis and discussion. |
| 0:42.3 | Nice. |
| 0:42.9 | I've never heard it said like that before, Ollie. |
| 0:44.9 | Why are you saying it like that? |
| 0:46.4 | I literally have no idea. |
| 0:48.6 | In our last episode, we were discussing the evil God challenge. |
| 0:52.0 | The evil God challenge is reliant upon the idea of symmetries like we've discussed. |
| 0:56.5 | One such symmetry is about goods and evils in creation. And you suggest that there is actually an asymmetry when it comes to intrinsic goods and evils. |
| 1:05.7 | Do you mean, mind explaining why the evil God challenger has a problem if they try to parallel arguments about intrinsic goods |
| 1:11.6 | and you might want to explain to the listener what do we even mean by intrinsic goods in the first |
| 1:16.3 | place so in the book i speak about uh william payley who's probably the most famous proponent of |
| 1:21.6 | the view that happiness is the rule and misery is the exception he speaks about bees buzzing away |
| 1:27.2 | and spring is one of the most delightful sites you can see. |
| 1:30.0 | And I had to conclude a second one in the book, which is the shrimp dancing in the shore. |
... |
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