Problem of Evil The problem of evil has different forms, among them the 1) logical [LPOE]-, 2) evidential [EPOE] and 3) existential [XPOE]. Generally, these evoke different responses, respectively, 1) defenses, 2) theodicies and 3) practical, Not everyone agrees with these distinctions, but they make some sense. Summa Contra: 1) For starters, I interpret Frankl to be addressing the existential problem of evil. Marshalling his writings in favor of a given logical defense or evidential theodicy seems a misappropriation to me. 2) Most defenses seem to take the form of protesting innocence by claiming mistaken identity, ie. my client doesn't match the description of your suspect. In one way or another, an otherwise absolute omnipotence gets variously conditioned in different ways and degrees, in other words, suitably nuanced. This strategy raises questions regarding the degree of resemblance to any classical theistic notions thatany such revised God-conceptions might retain or lose. 2) If defenses often respond to the LPOE by suggesting that one's God-concepts are generally compatible with suffering, theodicies ordinarily respond to the EPOE by suggesting how this or that suffering, in particular-, might be justified by offering exculpatory motives. 3) If one relies on a defense, essentially grounded in an argument of mistaken identity, then it would be rather incoherent for one to also advance a theodicy, justifying actions one has already denied. 4) If one otherwise relies on a defense that suggests that the classical divine attributes are generally compatible with evil and suffering, citing only vague exculpatory motives, one may still invoke a theological skepticism regarding how this may be so in any given case of evil and suffering -in particular, thus eschewing theodicy attempts. 5) If one otherwise proceeds with both a defense anda theodicy, suggesting that- exculpatory motives operate, generally, further suggesting how they are playing out in particular situations, many believers will consider such an approach arrogant and blasphemous (for who could thus presume to know the mind of God?) and many people from all worldviews will be outraged, feeling that the enormity of human suffering and immensity of human pain has been facilely trivialized. 6) It can get worse than all that. While one might come upon a given scene of human suffering and understandably resist a priori labeling it a crime scene, or, even if so, reflexively asserting one's own or another's innocence, whether due to mistaken identity or exculpatory motives, most people of goodwill will nevertheless understandably find it positively abhorrent should anyone deny that what they're observing is truly tragic, whatever good might ever otherwise come of it. Honestly, I cannot definitively characterize the nature of what has been discussed in this thread per the above distinctions because I cannot not only notunravel the premises or discem the flow of the logic but I cannot even see where the very definitions of the concepts have been successfully negotiated out of their foggy semantic morass. Conservatives & Progressives, Moderates & Ideologues the certitudes of faith I would not deny the certainties of faith, for I enjoy them myself. However, I would characterize them foremost in interpersonal terms, as my realization of falling, being, growing and remaining in love, and in normative terms, per my realization of both practical and moral fruits, which flow from my experience of being loved and in love. And this entails such interpersonal value-realizations as trust, hope, fidelity, loyalty, surrender, sacrifice, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, self-transcendence and so on. In speculative terms, I would characterize thecertainties of faith as my realization of a deep inner satisfaction that there indeed exist eminently reasonable beliefs regarding reality's ultimacies. These ultimacies involve our uniquely human concerns and transcend our metaphysical heuristics. These beliefs are wholly consistent and perfectly harmonious with both my interpersonal and normative value-pursuits and value-realizations. Regarding those metaphysical heuristics, I remain decidedly agnostic, although my sneaking suspicions incline me toward the ways of the Angelic Doctor and Peirce's neglected argument for the reality of the Ens Necessarium. So, while the inductive testing of the natural sciences and the abductive-deductive interpretations of our philosophical inquiries have not delivered me from my reasonable metaphysical doubts, I'm still very deeply sympathetic to receiving any inventory of factors into a cumulative case-like framework, along with other converging and convincing arguments, which, evidentially and plausibly, ordinarily will allow for the waxing of my faith and the waning, but not extinguishment, of my doubt.Again, | am speaking of a speculative doubt and not an existential doubt vis a vis interpersonal, practical and moral realities. Now, regarding our human faculties, while we are certainly situated in a radical finitude, which conditions both our intellect and will, and which renders our natural reason ineluctably fallible and natural law at least somewhat obscure --- This anthropology suffices to explain how other people of large intelligence and profound goodwill might adopt a competing interpretive stance (both evidentially and existentially) regarding reality's ultimacies, wholly within their epistemic rights and in accord with suitable normative justifications, with no less illumination of their intellect and no more impairment of their will than my own? This is all to suggest, then, that the dueling ad hominem tautologies --- on one side coming from Feuerbach, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus, on the other side from apologists, all who pick and toss the low hanging fruit of opposing fundamentalisms —- might better engage ina moreauthentic dialogue that doesn't presuppose that an alternate worldview must necessarily be grounded in invincible ignorance, moral turpitude, anthropomorphic projection, wishful thinking and so on. re; process conceptions of the self These process conceptions remind me of some panentheist thoughts in the Indian spiritual tradition, where the no-self conception refers --- not to a denial of personhood, but --- to a a rejection of static, essentialistic, substantialist notions of self and an affirmation of self as more dynamical and processive. Below is a summary where I re-articulated what I thought my Eastern dialogue partner was saying. She said that she resonated with it. Aurobindo refers to a divine fractured self which perdures eternally, which might suggest that, even. while affirming an Immutable Self, he affirms individual streams of consciousness or karmic bundles, which even in the afterlife we would recognize as each other, as the individuals we knew,so to speak, on this side (notwithstanding Teincarnations and so on). The divine fractured "S"elf expressed in our "s"elves are individual peepholes on reality, individual seen by individual streams of consciousness, experienced as distinct karmic bundles, complementing and supplementing the singular, all seeing Self as discrete psychic perspectives, enriching the Immutable One's experience of Self precisely via this fracture into mutable souls. Such wholeness and fracture both perdure eternally in dialogue, the mutable and Immutable mutually enriching. This pan-entheism conceives the divine as a mereological whole, greater than the sum of its parts. The orthodox parsing, panen-theism, maintains more ontological discontinuity between creatures and Creator. A possible bridge between these conceptions might affirm an intra-objective identity of unitary being (process) with an intersubjective intimacy of our unitive strivings.In summary, I see deep analogies between some process metaphysics and various Eastern approaches that I've engaged. re: natural law The natural law approach, like natural theology, can help make reality more intelligible. In natural theology, metaphysics can be a great way to probe but not prove reality. So, too, the natural law approach raises important questions and offers suggestive but not conclusive answers regarding moral realities. But the human person is so fearfully and wondrously made and human experience is so richly textured and deeply contoured that we need to probe more deeply! So, we must complement the natural law with a personalist approach and a relationality- responsibility model. Consider the human faculty of speech, its nature or purpose or finality. We don't absolutize this faculty but place it in the service of persons in relationshipto one another, Not everyone will always have the right to the truth from us? We thus distinguish the physical act of false speech from the moral act of lying? So it is with human sexual acts. We don't absolutize them either but place them in the service of the good of persons and relationships, sometimes interfering with the procreative faculty, its nature or purpose or finality. As it is, the procreative, even when narrowly conceived in physicalistic, biologistic terms, needn't be realized in isolated acts but, instead, over the life of a relationship. But it really should be more broadly conceived to also include spiritual realities. I appreciate that people long for easy, formulaic answers and fear slippery slopes (the philosophic location where natural law appeals inevitably devolve) regarding both faith and morals. However, God is not a syllogism. Neither is love.Let me introduce a few more considerations. I have thought up a simplistic heuristic regarding 1) where one lies on the conservative-progressive spectrum and 2) where one lies on the epistemic humility- hubris continuum. It's all way more overdetermined, I know, but it's also way less facile than a lot of stuff I've seen in comboxes. While these stances are certainly partially influenced by formative influences and sociocultural conditioning (nurture), those have never, alone, seemed to me to be a reliable indicator of an individual's moral beliefs or political affiliations. For example, in your argument at hand, the moral and political stances of Roman Catholics in America, on a percentage basis, tend to mirror the population at large. Check out Pew & Gallup the past 40 years. Nature, in my view, might play a more influential role than many suspect. Where one lies on the conservative-progressive spectrum, per some studies, may be influenced to a great extent by our affectivedispositions, limbically conditioned by the degree of fear we ordinarily experience on a continuum from normal to neurotic to phobic. Conservatives may tend toward more fear-based perceptions. See, for example: http://www.scientificamerican..... Where one lies on the epistemic humility-hubris continuum (e.g. from moderately to radically ideological) may be greatly influenced by our intellectual predispositions, cortically conditioned by which brain quadrant we extrovert and whether it happens to be a judging or perceiving function (Jungian, MBTI or other inventories), the former more ready to rush to closure, dogmatically, the latter more readily lapsing into analysis paralysis, indecisively. It takes all kinds. If progressives are our pioneering spirits, traditionalists are our homesteaders. Some in each cohort practice such gifts toa fault, unfortunately. This could explain why we are more comfortable, socially, not so much with those who share ourparticular a/theological worldviews but moreso with those who share our moral and political stances (or amygdala hardwiring) and level of dogmatism (or cortical hardwiring), They say that the progressive and traditionalist cohorts tend to have much more in common - not just morally and politically, but - in their approach to creedal realities with their fellow progressives and traditionalists across different denominations than they do with their fellow coreligionists within any given denomination. That's certainly been my experience. I'd predict that, after a lively debate, the softcore progressives, whatever their worldviews, atheists, theists and agnostics, would head off to a pub to talk about 50 Shades of Tolkien, while the hardcore progressives and conservatives would remain in the back of the auditorium arguing about the principle of sufficient nothing. The softcore conservatives would've left early to channel surf between faux news and Walker, Texas Ranger.Of course, these nature (amygdalic & cortical predispositions) and nurture (formative influences) dynamics we've discussed are polar realities that present on a continuum and the population at large, thankfully, thus falls out, as per normal curves, mostly in between these softcore and hardcore extremes that I've presented. So, it appears that, while certainly socioculturally conditioned by early formative influences, moral and political stances also have deeply rooted limbic and cortical groundings that are very often eventually re-formed by developmental dynamics that appear to wholly transcend creedal affiliations, which aren't necessarily the cause of, often don't even correlate with, moral and political stances. Does this make sense? | think the sociologic metrics such as in Gallup polling and actual political affiliations and swing voting patterns combined with psychological studies back up my suspicion that religious formation and affiliation might have less influence on moral and political stances and the tenacity of same than we might first suspect? If you spent more time at Commonweal or NationalCatholic Reporter, you'd come away with a better grasp of how this all plays out? Part of the problem is the failure to distinguish the nature of the claims being made by any given individual or group. One can refer to religious claims in the sense of who supposedly made them, Also of interest, however, is the nature of the claims. And, by nature, I emphatically don't mean to introduce NOMA. By nature, I mean whether or not one probes reality with descriptive, evaluative, normative, interpretive or even meta-interpretive goals. Differently put, I mean whether one is seeking empirical, logical, aesthetical, moral, practical or interpersonal goals, advancing theories or meta- theoretic interpretations, aspiring to explanatory or, merely, descriptive adequacy. There's a reason that certain faith precepts of different religions don't enjoy the same level of consensus as our general moral precepts. They don't enjoy the same level of normative impetus. Why should they when our moral reasoning can rely on anthropological accounts that are explanatorilyadequate (via deliverances of science and philosophy) without the benefits of either special revelations (e.g. the world's scriptures) or meta-theoretic interpretations regarding primal or ultimate realities (e.g natural law or natural theology), which, at best, might be descriptively adequate? The latter don't and shouldn't enjoy the same normative impetus because they don't meet the same burden of proof. We have been somewhat fortunate to the extent the Supreme Court [SCOTUS] has at least implicitly recognized this when interpreting the free exercise and nonestablishment clauses of the Ist Amendment. Seldom have they interfered in what are a given religion's faith-based creedal expressions but, thankfully, often enough, they've precisely interfered with their essentially moral norms. re: dissonance I suppose the answer will largely depend on whether one grounds one's moral precepts in probabilistic theories (what we can all negotiate via science and philosophy) or plausibilistic meta-interpretations(natural law & theology) or even special revelation. Scenarios: 1) If, for example, one is taught that something is wrong because the Bible tells me so, then conflicting moral intuitions or common sensibilities will create one variety of dissonance. 2) If, however, one has been taught that all people can reason morally without needing to rely on scripture, then a moral precept won't have an essentially religious character, so wouldn't entail, as you described, a religious precept in conflict with a moral intuition. 3) This is not so simple a distinction, though. What happens when one claims that all can reason morally with no reference to special revelations BUT then claims, via a distinctly religious precept, that a given religious authority just so happens to also be an infallible moral teacher? That would bootstrap one back into Scenario | and its variety of cognitive dissonance.4) Yet those 3 scenarios invite another distinction. What if, although claiming to be an infallible moral teacher, a given religious authority has never characterized any given moral teaching as having been infallibly pronounced? And even in matters of faith has only made two infallible pronouncements? I think this is why Catholics end up all over the map, morally and politically, virtually indistinguishable from the population at large. I also suspect this is why traditionalist Catholics get into an ironic political alliance with Evangelical Protestants, both grounding their moral stances in what are essentially religious precepts (scenarios 1 & 3), even though drastically differing in the logic grounding their respective stances, i.e. natural law & personalism vs the Bible. I also suspect that those psychological dynamisms that I described previously explain how when many dogmatic believers and unbelievers convert in either direction, they don't lose their fundamentalism, dogmatism and rationalism, but just change what they're being fundamentalistic, dogmatistic and rationalistic about.certitudes of faith, natural law, natural theology, process metaphysics, logical problem of evil, evidential problem of evil, existential problem of evil, problem of evil, argument from evil, dogmatism, fundamentalism, rationalism,