Category Archives: Moral harm

Basing the Reality of Satan on the Problem of evil

Booklet on Satan, Moral harm, On the Nature of Satan

This post begins the actual construction of a Conceptual Model of what it would be like for Satan to be a reality. We begin with a variation of the familiar problem of evil.

If God is all-good and all-powerful and the sole creator of reality as we experience reality and we do not deserve reality as we experience reality to have sin and suffering, then reality as we experience it would not have sin and suffering.

But: God is all good and all powerful.

And: Reality as we experience it has sin and suffering.

Hence, God is not the sole creator of reality as we experience it or we deserve reality as we experience it to have sin and suffering.

The disjunctive conclusion is an inclusive disjunction, viz., both disjuncts can be true. Here, it is plausible, as we shall see, that if both are true they are connected. First, though, we should note that a creator other than God is not equal to God. For, a creator equal to God would be God. So, the creator other than God is only a deputy creator created by God with the capability of acting against what God would have in reality as we experience it. In other words it has the greatest possible Free Will .

For the remainder of this post, I will not us the phrase “reality as we experience it” but only the word “reality.” I mean by “sin” choosing reality to be different from the way a perfect creator would have it be. Since, in another post, I interpret moral laws as Divine Commands , I use “sin” above to refer to the evil brought about by choices of beings capable of choosing to obey or disobey God, viz. beings with Agenct Causality,

If the deputy creator acted against God’s will in creating reality choosing it to be different from God’s way, then we could say this deputy creator, and our candidate for Satan, comitted a cosmic sin. Why, though, should the sin of the deputy creator, viz. Satan, be inflicted on humanity by having reality be so full of sin and suffering? Why should any sins of humans bring about such a cosmic catastrophe unless some original human sin is linked with Satan’s cosmic sin? The plausible link is that Satan led humans to choose to commit its sin. So, humans deserve what Satan deserves for its sin. (I prefer to use”it” to refer to Satan. The evil intentions of an agent cause seem more uncanny when it is simply some being capable of choosing evil. )

This linkage of Satan and humanity in a choice for reality not to be as God would have it be entails that reality with its sin, suffering and death is as it ought to be. For choices that what is good ought not be are choices that some harm ought to be. Hence, the cosmic choice of Satan and humanity that the highest possible created good, viz reality as God would have it, is a choice that harm, destruction of what is good ought to be in reality.

Put it this way. For the construction of my model I assume that the original choice for the deputy creator was binary: Choose the greatest good, which is what the Creator would have, or choose the greatest harm which is total annihilation of the greatest good. What Satan chooses is a condition contradictory to what god would choose; not merely contrary to it. Even if the deputy creator would have reality be a little bit different than God would have it, the deputy creator would first have to make the cosmic choice to set aside, to disobey, the plan of the creator. That choice to set aside the good of the creator is the choice of the cosmic harm that the good God wills be destroyed. Our Genesis Myth puts it well. First Satan tempted Adam & Eve to set aside God’s plan. That disobedience is Adam & Eve’s original sin which brings upon them the same cosmic curse as that upon Satan. The subsequent choices of Adam and Eve – choices of humanity- have not been for total annihilation. They have been choices of how reality ought to be according to human inclinations and desires. Satan, the deputy creator, had no choices beyond the first choice: To create as God wills or will for no creation at all.

Of course, the preceding requires justification of many assumptions. A major assumption is that God created a deputy creator. Some reasons for creating a deputy creator are in Rationality of Belief in Satan. Another major assumption is correctness of a Retribution Punishment. This is an assumptionthat choice of what is wrong is a creation of an ad hoc moral norm that some harm ought to be. It is an ad hoc norm because it was created by a choice and can be removed by some suffering of the harm that ought to be. I have called these ad hoc norms that some harm ought to be Moral Harm. I will now start to call a moral harm a curse.

But elaboration of this curse is for another post. Here I conclude by noting how the structure of my model for the reality of Satan is set by a way of “solving the problem of evil. The model is built by elaborating upon, although not fully justifying the many crucial assumptions in the above “solution.”

Moral Harm and Contrition

Contrition, Moral harm

I write this after the November 8, 2022 elections showed that a majority of the people in the USA do not think abortion is truly immoral. My goal is to make a small contribution to conceptual resources for leading people, including myself, to realize the immorality of abortion despite the fact that utilitarian, cost/benefit reasoning, or however we label moral evaluation by weighing consequences do not clearly show the immorality of abortion.

What I accomplish in this post may seem abstract and lifeless; disconnected from any complex of thought and feeling anyone would call “contrition.” But this post is only a phase in a conversation trying to articulate what it would be like to have contrition for abortion. If I could clearly articulate and communicate having contrition for abortion, I would have something worth saying in efforts to convince people that abortion is truly immoral. Bringing someone to have contrition or realize that contrition is needed for an action is to prove the immorality of the action.

This is conversational development of concepts. What is conversational development of a concept? I write by imagining that it is my turn in a conversation to propose theses and definitions. My line of thought is proposed for modification and correction by others. They are not intended to be the “last word.”

Here I should state a crucial assumption about conceptual development which I did not realize I make until after I had published this post. I have never had perfect contrition for offending God or morality. I believe that I ought to have such contrition. My crucial assumption is that if I can find “just the right words” for characterizing perfect contrition the proper sentiments of perfect contrition will come along with having the right words or thoughts.

See Moral harm for crucial background.on how and why I defined “moral harm” as I have defined it. Contrition here means perfect contrition.

This post, via logic, connects contrition with moral harm.

First premise: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by violation of a moral law.

Second premise: moral harm is the harm done simply by violation of a moral law .

These two premises yield a:

First conclusion: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by producing moral harm.

My detailed characterization of moral harm is used as the:

Third premise. Moral harm is the occurrence in human moral thought of a prescription that harm ought to occur because of a violation along with a stress in morality’s authority until the harm which ought to occur upon violation of a moral law actually occurs.

This characterization and the first conclusion permit derivation of:

Second conclusion: Contrition is sorrow over having offended the source of morality by producing the occurrence in human moral thought of a prescription that harm ought to occur because of a violation along with a stress in morality’s authority until the harm which ought to occur upon violation of a moral law actually occurs.

Contrition has been logically connected with enough other concepts to write a book about contrition. So conceptual development is now best served by sketching out informally the vision of morality and contrition with which I am working.

Human moral thinking is a creation of God, viz., the moral authority. In moral thinking we produce norms. Correct moral thinking is thinking the norms for human behavior which God knows aim at basic human goods. So, in correct moral thinking we think as God thinks about what ought to be. If no one ever chose against the moral norms which God thinks, there would be a beautiful system of norms all aiming at the production of basic human goods.

However, we do choose wrongly. Unfortunately, in our immoral choices, we produce norms for moral thinking is always normative thinking. But in the case of the norms put into moral thought by immoral choices there are norms that the human goods aimed at by the correct norms ought to be inhibited, viz. evil be brought about. Hence, immoral choices produce ad hoc norms that evil ought to be. These ad hoc norms defile the beautiful system of moral norms the source of morality would have as our moral thought.

I have connected satisfying and thereby removing, these ad hoc norms with retributive punishment .

Here I conclude by noting that contrition is at least sorrow over having defiled the creation of the moral order with norms that some non-moral harm ought to be.

But this post is only a prelude to showing that this abstract definition of contrition can be exemplified in genuine human thoughts and sentiments.