CCC comments on My Wild and Reckless Youth - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 August 2007 01:52AM

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Comment author: CCC 09 October 2012 12:25:46PM 0 points [-]

You do raise a very good point here. Even if people in the past had all acted in the most perfect possible way, millions would have died of old age in any case during that time. If God (unpack: omnipotent, omniscient being) exists, therefore, then this must have been a design feature of the universe; or at least, one that He is unwilling to stop.

It's at this point that the question of whether an afterlife exists enters the debate. What death means, for the person who dies, changes pretty dramatically between the universe where an afterlife exists and the universe where an afterlife doesn't exist; and an omniscient being has access to this datum, and can plan according to it.

It is always possible, of course, that an omniscient, omnipotent being might not be good. I doubt the extreme of evil (life is too pleasant for me to believe that that is true), but there is certainly the possibility of indifference to consider.