This is similar to
Zeno's Paradox already assuming it's own falsification in its
antecendent, whereby the paradox is asserted because some fraction of
the A-to-B distance must already be traversed, a prior non-paradoxical
necessity which begs the question of the whole paradox's viability in
the first place, all in the attempt to help the conditional
successfully infer a self-eliminated consequent. "must" makes it a
strict implication of necessity, "If and only if..."
In other words, Zeno's Paradox assumes there is a contradiction to the "no traversals of x to y" consequent in order for it to be possible for the paradox to be stated at all.
That
prior necessity to go through partial segments is impossible because
it depends on the already-known success of partial segment traversing,
each of which is open to the same impossibility because of further
sub-segment necessities, and so on without end.
The prior
smaller-segment-traversal requirement gets a free ride of
non-paradoxicality in order to complete the conditional statement that
expresses the paradox.
In the same way,
"If Evil exists,
then there is no God
or no Goodness of God
or no Goodness per se.",
assumes that the antecedent "Evil exists" is problem-free.
Yet
it has to be true in order for the conditional itself to be considered
true. Whether one is a Christian, merely a theistic or deistic
believer in God, or an atheist, the assertion of any kind of objective
reality of Evil already begs all the same questions, since it requires a
non-problematic standard of Goodness according to which Evil can be
identified or asserted as real in the first place
Consequently,
there is no problem of Evil that does not assume non-problematic
background assumptions concerning Evil's meaning and reality.
If
Evil really did contradict Goodness, it's difficult to see how there
could be any surviving criteria to begin with, on which to base the
claim that Evil is real.
Comment: It seemed to me that your point is that the existence of evil presupposes the existence of God.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: I have actually changed my view on this one, in the process of editing it and rethinking it.]
My response:
The claim that Evil exists indirectly assumes belief in God. The
belief in Ultimate Goodness directly assumes belief in God because
Ultimate Goodness can exist only as an aspect of an Ultimate Mind. But
we do use different aspects of this Ultimate Mind Object by themselves
as well as in partial and approximative complete sets.
A belief in ultimate goodness must be assumed, to give meaning to the claim that evil exists.
Note
that I'm saying that the existence of God is -ultimately- presupposed,
not -immediate- or -directly- presupposed by the existence of evil,
because "God exists" is not the most direct conclusion or most direct
prior assumption of "Evil exists".
However, the claim
that evil exists does assume a non-problematic prior notion of good by
which evil can be identified as objectively real.
But
there cannot be a non-problematic notion of good if the existence of
evil somehow negates the good, yet it's required for evil to be a
reality that negates this same good that was used to recognize evil in
the first place.
One cannot have it both ways. If evil
exists as a negator of the good, then there never was the possibility
of knowing this, because there would in that case be no prior good as
the criterion for initially identifying evil.
Even if
this core problem is ignored, the existence of evil could inveigh
against the good only if evil could be shown to be unrectifiable in
principle, which it cannot without knowing the outcome of all possible
states of the total in advance, or apart from their obtaining.
However,
such rectifiability would raise the same issue as that of identifying
evil to begin with, since a rectified total, in the absence of which
evil is identified, would be indistinguishable from the good. A
rectified total is the same prior-notion-of-good assumption all over
again, but introduced through an implicit back door.
In
philosophical shop talk, there is a saying that "everyone has their
god-statements", and there's no exception to this in the problem of
evil's definitional self-exemption.
Every problem-of-evil
claimant has their goodness assumptions, just as every atheist has
their mind-god assumptions. Otherwise, there would be no basis for
universal construance rules and obligations concerning the total, which
are common to just about all objections to the existence or goodness
of God.
