I don't claim to be of a scientific mind, nor am I steeped in knowledge of philosophy, but, wasn't it Einstein who said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction?
It was Newton, actually, but your statement of the theory is correct. Well done! And while his theory was really only binding on the field of science (Physics, chemistry, biology, etc.), I imagine there could possibly be some philosophical implications.
And if that is true, couldn't it be argued that if good exists and is rewarded - and we know it does and is , evil must also exist and be punished?
SLE
This is a BRILLIANT question, SLE. I salute you, seriously.
This certainly could be argued, but it would first need a little tweaking to be logically sound. Before we get into the meat of it, though, we need to adjust some of the syntax to make it consistent.
"If good exists and good is rewarded, evil must exist and evil must be punished." There is an inconsistency here known as the "is-ought" fallacy. This happens when we make an observation on how something
is, and try to draw implications from that, about how they
ought or
must be. In order for us to get rid of this fallacy, you and I have two choices...we can reword the statement in two different ways.
- Holding Newton's third Law of Motion as a foundation, "If good exists and good is rewarded, then evil exists and evil is punished." You may not think this is a big change, but the differences matter. OR...
- Holding Newton's third Law of Motion as a foundation, "If good exists and good must be rewarded, then evil exists and evil must be punished. Do you see the changes? We have to be either all "is" or all "ought" in order to be logically consistent.
Now that we've got two syntactically sound arguments, we can look into the logical meat of it. I'll start with the
IS version.
Holding Newton's third Law of Motion as a foundation, "If good exists and good is rewarded, then evil exists and evil is rewarded." We start with a premise that is a conjunction (an "and" statement) of two assumptions..."Good exists," and "Good is rewarded." This leads to or implies a conclusion that is also a conjunction (an "and" statement) of two implications..."Evil exists," and "Evil is punished." Really quickly, let's look at "rewarded" and "punished," because they too are important. In this thread, "Eternity in Hell," I imagine we would focus on Heaven as the reward and Hell as the punishment.
Now, if our premise is false, you don't necessarily have a logical problem. The statement would still be valid, it just wouldn't be saying much.
You said that we know our premise to be true...but do we? I'll grant you that Good does exist; that part of the conjunction is True. However, do we actually know that Good is rewarded? I don't think we do know that. Even by Christian doctrine, being Good is not good enough for the reward we are talking about (Heaven).
In fact, according to Christian doctrine, even some Good people will end up being punished (in Hell) for having not known Christ as their Savior. So since this part of the conjunction is not necessarily true, the conjunction, "Good exists (True) and Good is rewarded (False)" gives us a false premise. Again, this does not make your argument invalid...it's still logically sound...it just doesn't say much, because we are now essentially starting with a hypothetical. Whether your conclusion, "Evil exists and evil is punished" be True or False, your argument will still make sense, but it doesn't mean anything because we have a false premise. You could have just as easily stated "If all dogs have 7 legs, then evil exists and evil is punished." Haha. See? Logically sound but purely hypothetical and meaningless.
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Now let's try the
must or
ought version.
Holding Newton's third Law of Motion as a foundation, "If good exists and good must be rewarded, then evil exists and evil must be punished." Again, we start with a premise that is a conjunction of two assumptions, "Good exists" and "Good must be rewarded." Which leads to or implies a conclusion that is also a conjunction, "Evil exists" and "Evil must be punished." Again, remember that in this discussion "rewarded" is Heaven, and "punished" is Hell.
Now, here's where I have to ask for your input, because in this argument I have had to tweak one of your original assumptions in order for us to avoid the "is-ought" fallacy. Again, we know Good exists, and you said that you knew that "Good
is rewarded" was true, but I don't want to speak for you here, so I'm asking...Do you believe "Good
must be rewarded" is true? If we know that "Good must be rewarded" is true, we would give your initial statement a chance to become a real meaningful argument! We would have a completely true premise..."Good exists (True) and Good must be rewarded (True)" would make the whole premise True, and we would be able to proceed to the implications and our conclusion.
So I guess my question before we can go on is, do you believe that "Good must be rewarded" is a true assumption in our premise? If not, then we again have a false premise, and the argument is hypothetical and meaningless. But if you do believe it's true, then let me know and we'll talk about it further.