Several friends have recommended Martin Gardner’s review of Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem in the New Criterion, the brilliant journal of principled culture criticism. Gardner, a math and science writer, lays out a Leibnizian explanation for life-destroying natural disasters: Any human-supportive universe which God created must obey physical laws in order to continue functioning; those laws cannot be suspended, even to prevent mass slaughter by earthquake or individual loss by car accident. “If God were obliged to prevent all accidents that kill or injure, he would have to be constantly poking his fingers into millions of events around the globe. History would turn into a chaos of endless miracles,” writes Gardner.
Perhaps this argument is a compelling answer to Ehrman’s argument for the irreconcilability of a benevolent God and human suffering (I haven’t read Ehrman’s book), but it strikes me almost irrelevant to actual religious practice and belief. The vast majority of Christians, guided by their priests and pastors, assume a loving God who intervenes regularly in human affairs. Christians pray to God to cure them from cancer or protect them from a plane crash. (Intermediaries are also useful: A soon-to-be closed Catholic school in Brooklyn is called Our Lady of Perpetual Help, presumably because She does provide perpetual help, but not in this case.) A politician and Baptist minister in Kentucky is promoting a law requiring the state’s office of homeland security to display a plaque that reads: “The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.” Apparently God is not just a co-founder of the United States but also a federalist, honoring state boundaries in his on again, off again solicitude for the country.
Gardner argues that were God to start preventing some deadly accidents, he would have to prevent all such accidents, resulting in chaos. The reality is far worse than that. Since believers give credit to God for answering their prayers when they are saved from catastrophe or illness, they have to explain why he answered their prayers and not those other people’s prayers, why he saved these children from a tsunami and not those other children. Any believer who today thanks God for making sure that his coronary bypass operation was successful has to explain why God allowed at least 37 peasants to be buried in a Guatemalan landslide on Sunday. Such an explanation requires either extraordinary narcissism on the believer’s part or positing capricious injustice on the part of God.
While I am more sympathetic to Gardner’s semi-stripped-down theism than to the full-blown Christian account of a loving, personal, prayer-answering God, the enterprise of trying to logically determine God’s intentions and actions by the use of reason strikes me as questionable, whatever its august pedigree. The gulf that surely yawns between a being that is self-created and that created all of reality (even if such causal concepts apply to God) and our feeble mentation precludes any confidence that what we deem as logically necessary and thus binding on God actually does bind him or has the slightest relevance to him. And why even posit as starting concepts goodness and justice? Those are human desires and values. They may be wholly irrelevant to something as massive and impenetrable as God. Gardner seems to embrace a logical argument for the afterlife (proposition three below), since it is more consistent with a good, omnipotent God than several alternative propositions:
1. God is unable to provide an afterlife, in which case his power seems unduly limited.
2. God can provide an afterlife but chooses not to, in which case his goodness is tarnished.
3. God is both able and willing to provide an afterlife.
If we’re going this far and attributing both will and ability to God, I see no reason why Gardner should not specify whether we get free will and justice in that afterlife, which he abjures doing.
Since believers give credit to God for answering their prayers when they are saved from catastrophe or illness, they have to explain why he answered their prayers and not those other people’s prayers, why he saved these children from a tsunami and not those other children.
Once you accept the framework of the Christian god, you accept that man is under a sentence of suffering in this world ending with death. Again, this is a given. If one wants to argue that that theology of Original Sin is wrong or injust, that’s fine, but for now, I’m arguing from a Christian POV.
So, since it is a given that we will suffer and die, there is no injustice in the deaths of tsunami or mudslide victims. They were going to die anyhow. It was just a matter of timing and means.
What you have in the case of people being cured is God taking pity and acting of charity for whatever reason He may have. He may provide a boon to one and not grant it to another, but He’s not punishing the one whom He didn’t respond to, as they were already under a sentence of death. In fact, those He has aided haven’t been spared altogether either. They’ve only been given a bit more time, since they’ll have to die as well.
Again, this all assumes that you buy into the theology of Original Sin. Meaning you have to (1) believe in it as a fact and (2) accept it as being just. Those are obviously quite large hurdles.
I guess I don’t get why God had to create a universe whose unalterable laws work to Man’s hurt.
Not to be flippant, but it appears observably true that:
Every living thing carries with it the certain promise of its eventual death.
-and-
“You get what everyone gets. You get a life time.” (Paraphrasing from a comic I read, many years ago.)
These thought experiments, where one attempts to force some theoretical divine being to act in accordance with logic neccesarily assume limits on an otherwise omnipotent power. That the result is absurd seems to follow from the contradiction in the initial assumptions.
On the other hand, assuming that the omnipotent power in question is not bound by logic leads to the inevitable conclusion that its actions can not be predicted. Thus, the efficacy of prayer, complying with religious dictates, adherance to ritual, and all the rest carries with it no guarantees of success…
I’m not fond of lotteries of uncertain rules and unpredictable results. It has been my habit to place my trust in systems whose results are more predictable. Gravity, Electromagnetism, and the like. Call it personal preference, if you like, but it has its comforts.
I guess I don’t get why God had to create a universe whose unalterable laws work to Man’s hurt.
Because the logical result of not making a world where men could be hurt would be a world of lotus-eaters.
As someone who never mentions (at least in mixed company) of graduating from the parish school (where I even served as an altar boy) of Our Lady of Perpetual Help — not the one in Brooklyn about to be closed, but another which is still (perpetually? ) open — I relate a potted version of my intellectual development:
Our Lady of Putative Help
Our Lady of Probable Help
Our Lady of Possible Help
Our Lady of Preposterously Unlikely Help
What about our lady of self help? (or help yourself?)
Polichinello, that’s a worthwhile point, but I don’t think that it entirely solves the problem. So perhaps it’s inaccurate to say that some amount of human suffering and death is unjust in itself, but it’s obviously still the case that the person God cures is better off than the person he wills dead (even though the cured person will also die eventually, you do recognize that the healing can be termed an act of charity), and so there’s still a prima facie case for injustice.
A minimum requirement for justice as most of us intuitively understand it is, more or less, to treat like cases the same. It may not be unjust in itself that there are starving children in Africa, and it may be an act of charity to fly over there and hand deliver a steak dinner to one of them while watching others die around him, but there’s a still a sense in which you’ve been unjust, since it would have taken no extra effort on your part to distribute much more food in a much more equitable fashion. What would you think of someone who did that? Personally, I’d think him worse than the average person who does nothing to help starving children – it would just take a tremendous bastard to do that, even if he’s making the world a marginally better place.
So I don’t see how original sin gets you out of the problem of evil. I think that Leibniz, among others, understood this – you really don’t see “they had it coming” offered as theodicy very often because, even so, others who had it coming were rewarded. Either some good people are killed unjustly or some evil people are saved unjustly. Either way there’s injustice.
I do think it’s true that there are many people, myself included, who think that the imposition of original sin is itself the act of an evil God, but that’s not what we mean when we talk about the problem of evil.
If history were a predictable series of “endless miracles,” repeatedly snatching victory from the jaws of impending accidents that would otherwise kill or injure, we would not have “chaos.” We would have a hollywood movie. I could live with that. C’mon God!
Pingback: Secular Right » Brother can you spare a bit of Arminianism?
Another lame attempt at theodicy. No point in taking it more seriously than it deserves, but let’s just note a couple things. A good, all-powerful God would prevent suffering when possible without making things worse. So what about animal suffering? Somewhere at this moment there’s an animal dying in prolonged agony (probably thousands actually, but one is enough). Why couldn’t God put it out of its misery? How would that impinge on human free will, morality etc.? In other words, a good, all-powerful God would be obliged to at least marginally reduce suffering, at least where free will is involved.
Second, Gardner’s whole theodicy seems contrary to the Bible. Maybe that doesn’t bother him, but it does mean that no believing Christian or Jew should take it seriously. In the Bible, God was not averse to interfering with miracles and suspending free will. His hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in order to teach the peoples of the world a lesson is the most egregious example. Gardner’s theodicy seems like a non-starter to me.
Correction, the last sentence in the first paragraph should read, “…at least where free will is not involved.”
And explain the problem with that.
A minimum requirement for justice as most of us intuitively understand it is, more or less, to treat like cases the same.
Well, that is the problem. Can we say every case is the same, especially in the light of eternity? If God is moved to intervene in case here and there, what difference does it really make when you consider how short our lives are supposed to be on this earth.
And explain the problem with that.
Because without pain, there’s no pleasure. Without loss there’s no gain. Life would simply be a blank. To me, at least, that seems pretty hellish.
And without sickness there’s no health. Somehow, I think we wouldn’t miss it.
You’d live at a steady hum.
If that’s your bag, fine. Personally, though, I don’t see the difference between that state and non-existence itself.
I’m always amazed at these obsessively human-centered discussions. Why should we assume the creator of the universe (an expert mathematician) even notices our existence. Imagine the universe as CitiBank HQ in Manhattan. The CEO & directors have very serious problems to worry about. I’m sure that the mice in the 3rd sub-basement are not on the agenda.
Then the Christian heaven must be a steady hum.
Because without pain, there’s no pleasure.
Plain wrong, pleasure stands over dullness not pain.
Without loss there’s no gain.
The thrill of competition may be yours, but not equally valuable for everyone.
Furthermore it is often the case that one’s gain is somebody else’s loss, they may not enjoy it that much and for good reason.
The Canadian philosopher John Leslie offers a cautious solution to the problem of evil. He suggests, in the Leibnizian spirit, that God perhaps creates the best possible ensemble of possible universes. As a result of the anthropic principle we are enabled to experience one of those that may be best for us.
Leslie proposes “…that God is real and/or there exist vastly many, very varied universes.”
Such a doctrine is doubtless not triumphalist enough for the imams of hyperreligiosity, but I suspect it’s as good as we can do at present.
To be specific, that’s Death: The High Cost of Living by Neil Gaiman.
On topic, I don’t see how constant miracles would be all that problematic, given that many people presume we already live in such a world. Certainly the medievals lived in a “demon-haunted world”, and yet were able to negotiate their lives fairly well.
I find the very subject of the thread risible.
Whenever things go wrong there must be a scapegoat somewhere, isn’t it?
God has just the infortunate position of being the “prime suspect”, what a f*cking nonsense!
Who’s guilty of human-centered discussions? Is there is a major religion that is not human-centered? If a discussion amoung skeptics is human-centered, it’s only because faith in a human-centered God is priciple to all major religions.
Why exactly couldn’t a supposedly-omnipotent God prevent all accidents and tragedies?
It’s not as though there’s a limited resource problem. God couldn’t even run out of processor time.
And why is God so dependent on this “natural law”? It seems to me that humans could exist quite comfortably in a completely ad hoc universe maintained solely by the Immanent Will.
“If a discussion amoung skeptics is human-centered, it’s only because faith in a human-centered God is priciple to all major religions.”
*cough* *Buddhism* *Taoism* *cough* *Oprahism* *cough*
Haha, yes I admit to error. Although, the Asian “religions” have always seemed less like religions to me than life philosophies. I was really just echoing a point Heather MacDonald made. That is of all the people who believe in an all powerful creator god, that god is intensely interested in the day to day activities of people.
Plain wrong, pleasure stands over dullness not pain.
Okay, and we’d probably have threads with people asking, “If God is good, then why must there be dullness in the world?”
Sorry if I screw up the format here:
Polichinello said: [i]Well, that is the problem. Can we say every case is the same, especially in the light of eternity? If God is moved to intervene in case here and there, what difference does it really make when you consider how short our lives are supposed to be on this earth.[/i]
We can’t, and this is basically the message of the Book of Job, but it’s not at all satisfying. Most religious people also feel that God is somehow also the source of their moral sense, and that this moral sense is reasonably accurate. Perhaps it’s true that we can’t possibly judge God’s actions, but that seems to imply that we really don’t have a good concept of justice, and thus consigns believers to a moral ambiguity beyond anything suffered by atheists. If we can’t determine whether or not it’s just or unjust for God to will that huge numbers of children be painfully killed while willing that many others never experience anything resembling hardship, we’ve got a problem. I think that most people, even most Christians, are unwilling to go quite that far; we firmly believe that we can make judgments about acts that are that ridiculously unfair on face. This ought to be one of the easy cases, and so it requires that God have a compelling reason for acting.
More generally, all you’re doing is pointing out that the existence of a nominally good God is consistent with the evidence. But an excuse (which is what theodicy is) requires more than mere possibility. It has to be plausible as well. The problem is that, on face, there’s a great deal of evil in the world. “Who are we to say what’s evil” is just the response of the philosophical skeptic – it’s knocking a baseball through someone’s window and then saying “maybe you never had a window”.
Martin Gardner is a great writer; I have several of his books in my collection. However, his deism has always seemed odd to me. Deism is, I expect, the minimum possible level of belief in God that a person of Gardner’s intelligence and scientific knowledge would be likely to subscribe to.
As far as I understand it, Gardner’s position is that God just set the parameters for the universe, pressed the Start button, and is now living in retirement somewhere, happy to let his Creation run without any further interference. This conception of God is at least intellectually consistent but it seems to me to violate Occam’s razor, since positing God as the First Cause recursively leads to the question “and who created God?”. If a universe without a Creator is unbelievable, how much more unbelievable is a magic being who goes around creating universes? Gardner knows this, of course, which is why his position puzzles me.
The mystery of creation is of course the great unanswered question, one which tantalizes everyone who spends any time at all thinking about it. Stephen Hawking muses “Why does the universe bother to exist?”. I suspect the answer may never be known, but it is probably the case that we are asking the question in a naive fashion. We think: How can something come out of nothing? We forget that -1 and +1 are both “contained” within 0 (and indeed particles and their anti-particles are indeed created out of the vacuum in this way).
My own personal belief is that the universe exists as a side effect of mathematical reality which I believe existed in a Platonic sense even before the universe itself was created. Before matter, energy, time or space it was already true that 1+1=2 and the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was Pi (though there were no circles yet in existence to verify that fact). Mathematical reality is eternal and unchanging and because of this, the universe existed in a virtual sense before it existed in actuality. My belief is that eternal mathematical reality in some sense generated the actual universe we find ourselves in. The process by which this was accomplished is, of course, a bit obscure as yet, but the 0=-1+1 mechanism seems a promising starting point.
What’s wrong with being a lotus-eater? The lotus eater, not knowing anything other, any more than human beings know anything other than what it is to be a human being,is no doubt as happy in his condition as at least one of the pontificators on this thread is with being human. Observing people debate such issues as are being debated here is like watching goldfish in a goldfish bowl, surrounded by a transparency of which they are mostly oblivious, from which they turn in incomprehension when they bump into it, and beyond which they can’t imagine going. Read some Darwin.
@Kevembuangga
If people insist on thanking God whenever something good happens, it seems only fair to blame God whenever something bad happens.
“The enterprise of trying to logically determine God’s intentions and actions by the use of reason strikes me as questionable, whatever its august pedigree.”
It was exactly that enterprise, that, undertaken by the likes of Descartes, Newton, Montaigne, etc., has lead to the dominance of “Reality and Reason” that has shaped the course of history since.
Yet all the reason we can muster managed to forget that we inhabit a living planet that prefers not to be paved, razed, raped, polluted, or otherwise shat upon.
Read some Lynn White.
Why do thinking people keep entering into this silly argument about “If there IS an (omnipotent) god, then why is there suffering?” or one of its corollaries? Believers will keep believing — either providing pseudological arguments in support of their belief, or saying (to their credit): “I’m gonna believe no matter what.” Non-believers will keep not believing — “knowing” there’s no REASON to believe in god’s existence.
No believer has done better in coming up with a reason to believe than to say: “I believe because I KNOW there’s god.” No non-believer has done better in coming up with a reason not to believe than to say: “I don’t need to believe, and I see no logical argument establishing god’s existence.” There can BE no conciliation of these two perspectives.
Yet, every few days, someone on one side or the other keeps imagining that the argument is capable of resolution, and that there can be a meeting of the minds.
Have you considered this:
God created man and then shortly thereafter, realized it was a failed experiment and abandoned it. He’she/it went on to create other life forms on other planets and is currently busy tending to their needs and cares not one whit about human beings. That explanation would satisfy the curious and random nature of its lack of affections — effectively it has no interest whatsoever in you, your suffering, or that of this planet — it has moved on and so should you.
There was a time when Anglicans believed that it was blasphemous to believe that God would intervene on behalf of an individual in response to prayer. Only Catholics, with their idolatrous worship of Mary and the saints, would indulge in such superstitions.
Pingback: Gods Problem « Gnomestrath - observations on being governed
@Matt B
You blame evil for the bad things, God for the good things and life is neatly packaged and explained for you.
The problem is that, on face, there’s a great deal of evil in the world. “Who are we to say what’s evil” is just the response of the philosophical skeptic – it’s knocking a baseball through someone’s window and then saying “maybe you never had a window”.
That we cannot judge God’s decision to intervene in one case and not another, doesn’t mean we can’t judge something as being an evil. A tsunami is an evil, but it’s inherent to this world (again, this assumes an acceptance of Original Sin). But is it metaphysically evil, or is it an evil like the pain caused by surgery? Is it something meant to bring about a greater good?
Let’s look at the baseball through the window example. Busting a window is an evil by itself, but it you’re busting the window to get in to save a chocking infant, a necessary evil. You still have good and evil, but now you have different information. That’s problem with a being like God, is that by definition we simply don’t have that further information.
Observing people debate such issues as are being debated here is like watching goldfish in a goldfish bowl, surrounded by a transparency of which they are mostly oblivious, from which they turn in incomprehension when they bump into it, and beyond which they can’t imagine going.
I’m sure that birds and rabbits look on baseball games with amazement, wondering why humans refuse to run beyond the little white things on the ground.
Polichinello: “So, since it is a given that we will suffer and die, there is no injustice in the deaths of tsunami or mudslide victims.”
This is always a nice try, but no dice: it lets God off the hook, but with the terrible price of utterly eviscerating morality.
If it is a given that we will suffer and die, and this state of affairs has no moral content (i.e. its not morally wrong that it is this way, and there is no obligation or goodness in lifting any portion of that sufferring, no moral distinction between a long happy life and being bashed against rocks as an infant in a storm) then there’s nothing morally wrong about anything we do either.
Moral obligations either fall on all moral actors or none. It can’t be that I’m a monster for casually pushing a toddler into the Grand Canyon, but God is just fine blowing him in with wind. None of the handwaving about the pushing wind being “inherent to this world” explains this whatsoever.
In reality, it’s WITH God that everything is permitted, because we are, after all, only following the big guy’s example. Sure, he might slap us around in the afterlife… but only for reasons that God himself seems to have declared are arbitrary and meaningless. There’s no moral content to this sort of judgment, only bullying.
When someone rescues a drowning child, it’s a good thing, period. It’s something that ought to be done. There’s simply nothing in evidence that establishes that God performing such a rescue, or indeed simply preventing all drownings right off the bat, couldn’t be done such that no other moral evils come from the act. None come, after all, from a human rescuer’s act, or an act of Congress requiring children to wear water wings, and they’re not even omnipotent for goodness sakes.
You seem to want to simply suspend moral duty whenever it’s theologically inconvenient, trying to slap together reasons for the suspension after the fact.
“Because the logical result of not making a world where men could be hurt would be a world of lotus-eaters.”
This is also nonsense. Just look at the world today, or indeed, nearly any comparison of past and present societies. There are people who live short lives of unbelievable suffering. And then there are those who live fairly comfortably and happily: are good, well adjusted people. There are horrible societies/environments/times to be born in, and then there are good ones. The question is never “why isn’t everyone’s life perfect” but rather “what exactly is the point of ever having the short suffering lives when other happier lives are both possible and just fine?”
“Moral obligations either fall on all moral actors or none. It can’t be that I’m a monster for casually pushing a toddler into the Grand Canyon, but God is just fine blowing him in with wind. None of the handwaving about the pushing wind being “inherent to this world” explains this whatsoever.”
Actually, the explanation is simple. He’s God. You’re not.
There’s a lot of interesting discussion and debate to be had on this subject, but I’m always amused at how adolescent petulance like this keeps comeing up.
Mike
Without further explication, that explains nothing. Does that mean that God is not bound by the same morality that humans are? If so, why should humans follow Him, or see Him as representative of the Good?
It means everything. He’s frickin’ God. By definition, God cannot be “bound” by morality because morality cannot exist independent of Him. He’s frickin’ God. Humans don’t follow Him because He’s good. It’s because he’s frickin’ God. He’s not your boss. He’s not the guy who lives down the street. He’s not the mailman. He’s the creator of all that was, is or every shall be.
Whether God exists of not, getting put out because He isn’t like you narcissistically misses the point. God (if He exists) isn’t like you or me or any other human being. Any attempt to judge him on that basis is silly.
Mike
Hello, MBunge. Welcome to Secular Right.
With that out of the way:
You cannot solve any problem by postulating a logically incoherent entity and then pointing to it. Saying that a thing “cannot have limitations” puts limitations upon it, and is self-contradictory.
Your ‘solution’ to Tulse’s question is invalidated by a trivially obvious argument that has traditionally been used to determine what aptitude someone has for philosophy. Your actions indicate that you have no aptitude whatsoever. I would recommend that you keep out of such discussions in the future, not only to avoid your own embarrassment but to spare others pain.
“Actually, the explanation is simple. He’s God. You’re not.”
Hmmm… maybe you already knew this, but that’s not really what people mean by “an explanation.”
The question has nothing at all to do with “who’s boss” or any sort of petulance. It’s just that “who’s boss” has nothing to do with, say, whether or not rape is good or evil, or whether or not a God as described by someone is good or evil. If we’re going to talk about morality at all, then we unavoidably have to deal with these questions, and if you’re going to toss God into the picture, then we cannot help but put God up against the weight of moral criteria.
Polichinello: “Let’s look at the baseball through the window example. Busting a window is an evil by itself, but it you’re busting the window to get in to save a chocking infant, a necessary evil. You still have good and evil, but now you have different information. That’s problem with a being like God, is that by definition we simply don’t have that further information.”
The problem isn’t that we don’t have further information on God, though. As you point out, it’s not something about me that makes breaking the window good or evil; what matters is whether or not something about the world excuses the breaking of the window. Breaking the window is a good thing (though I may not be behaving morally) if my breaking it causes a child’s life to be saved. My reasons for breaking the window are immaterial – they determine whether or not my action was moral, but the action produces good or evil independently of my reasons for acting. Of course, if I have perfect knowledge, then all of the effects were intended (or at least foreseen), and an action that produces good must have been moral.
But here’s the problem: The way that you’re trying to get God out of this bind requires that you say that we can’t possibly understand the world enough to know with any kind of certainty whether or not an action will produce good or evil. Knowing that, however, I fail to see how you could object to murder. For all we know, any given murder is a good thing because it prevents a greater evil. When we assume that natural disasters, as God’s killings, are always for the good, we have to conclude that we have no way of determining what makes a killing good or evil. What’s a little genocide next to the Black Plague?
That was a clearer way of putting it, Gotchaye. It’s a general problem with the theological retreat into ineffability. The less you claim to understand or that anyone can understand something, the worse you ultimately make things for your argument. The less you claim to know of God’s nature and purposes, the ever more dubious your own claims about God become. If God’s purposes are entirely hidden from man, for all we know they could equally well be magnificently… evil.
Mike, I presume you’re familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma, although the answer you give suggests not. If God defines morality, then morality is essentially arbitrary, and God could declare, for example, that genocide is moral (come to think of it, the Canaanites might have something to say about that…), or that infanticide is A-OK (again, I suppose there are Old Testament examples of that as well…). Do you really believe that morality is so unmoored, that it depends on the whim of God?
@Tulse “Do you really believe morality is so unmoored that it depends on the whim of God?”
What’s so weird about that? To a believer morality DERIVES from god. As a doubter, one will get nowhere questioning ANYTHING about a believer’s beliefs except the top belief: belief in god. If one allows a believer his belief in God, then he can legitimize anything: evil, suffering, weird reasoning — anything. It can all follow from an omnipotent god who can — Shazam! — take away the power of one’s logic.
When we assume that natural disasters, as God’s killings, are always for the good, we have to conclude that we have no way of determining what makes a killing good or evil.
See, this is why I point back to Original Sin. You have to accept that basis to make sense of the rest. To believing Christians, natural disasters are a consequence of Original Sin. We can’t live in a perfect world, so we must live in an imperfect world full of injustice. People will die. That’s the sentence we’re under. If you don’t accept that, then all your arguments are indeed correct.
Remember I entered this thread to answer Heather’s question of why Christians find it acceptable to credit God with answered prayers but not blame him for natural disasters. For them, death and illness are our just due. We have it coming. So what goodness we can find in this vale of tears, we should thank God for. Once you accept that premise (on pure faith), there is a logic to it.
(Admittedly, I let the argument digress a bit more than I should have, so I apologize.)
Now to intentional acts of murder, that’s another story. While we can’t always assess every nuance of motive, but you can more often than not demonstrate the extent of what motivated a murder. We are finite beings, so we can, more often than not, work out whether a killing was murder or justified homocide.