Month: August 2024

 

In discussing the ethics of trans athletes competing, some people have made the claim that trans athletes would be cheating if they competed against non-trans women. This requires sorting out the notion of cheating. One obvious approach is to a make a moral comparison between transition and obvious forms of cheating, such as using banned performance enhancing drugs.

Cheating, of the sort that can morally be condemned, requires an intention to cheat and action taken to that end. As such, for a trans athlete to be condemned as a cheater simply by transitioning and competing, it would need to be shown that they did so with the intention of gaining an unfair advantage. Whether they gain an advantage or not would be relevant to the effectiveness of the alleged cheating, but morally the intent to cheat and taking the action to cheat should be condemned whether successful or not. It seems unlikely that trans athletes are intending to cheat and the idea that they gain an unfair advantage can be questioned.

One reason is that if their motivation to transition is solely to gain an unfair advantage, there are easier ways to cheat, such as with performance enhancing drugs. It would be odd for a person to go through the process of transitioning when they could gain an advantage by much simpler means. After all, as noted in the previous essay, an athlete who would be a top competitor as a trans athlete would already need to be a very good athlete and performance enhancing methods might suffice. It could be argued that the advantage gained by transitioning would be greater, but this runs into problems.

There is also the obvious fact that the relative gain weighed against the cost shows that people would be unlikely to “cheat” by transitioning. Transitioning comes with a very high cost when considered solely as a method of “cheating” and sexism towards women’s sports means that the relative gain would be low. Women’s sports tend to have less prestige and less financial reward (although this is changing to some degree). To have a rational incentive to “cheat” by transitioning, a male athlete would need to be good enough to beat top female athletes to get the rewards they desire, but not good enough to get similar (or better) rewards by using some other means. For example, there is often a significant pay gap between men’s and women’s teams that has made being on a losing men’s team more profitable than being on a winning women’s team. To be fair, as women’s sports gain more equality in compensation and prestige, then the incentive to transition to “cheat” would increase; but this would still undergo radically altering one’s entire life to do this, including facing prejudice and abuse for doing so.  An athlete would also have to plan out this “cheating” well in advance, while also knowing that they will be a good enough athlete. As such, it seems unlikely that an athlete would decide to undergo transition solely to gain an advantage in sports, even if they were able to plan it all out. While athletes do sacrifice for their sport, the cost imposed on trans people by others seems far too high for someone to do this just to gain that alleged advantage. As such, it is unlikely that trans athletes are engaged in cheating.

It might be argued that even if someone is sincere in their transition, they could still be “cheating” if the advantage they are alleged to gain is a factor or if they are willing use that alleged advantage. This could be seen as like being sincerely someone’s friend, but also being their friend for the advantages they happen to provide and making use of them. But there is the question of how many athletes would not have transitioned but for thinking they would gain an advantage. If they transitioned and this was not a deciding factor, then they could not be justly accused of intending to “cheat.” The purest case would, of course, be someone who transitions with no interest or intent to gain an advantage and who is not good at sports. They could hardly be accused of cheating or intending to cheat.

In closing, the worry about trans athletes “cheating” is the result of the right’s culture war obsession with a vanishingly small number of trans athletes. And the number of trans athletes decrease as the performance requirements increase, since there are relatively few trans people and the number of athletes at each increasing tier of performance drops dramatically. There are, as noted in the previous essay, strict rules in place for trans athletes. It is most reasonable to see the worry as yet another culture war moral panic aimed at hurting people as part of a political game.

The culture war over trans athletes extended to the Paris Olympics when Imane Khelif was falsely claimed to be transgender. This claim arose because Khelif won her boxing match in 46 seconds by hitting her opponent so hard that she had to withdraw from the match. The claim might have been made as a cynical attack of opportunity to get the transgender culture war in the international spotlight. As there were no transgender athletes in the Paris Olympics, they had to be imagined. Or it might have been the result of the sexist view that an Olympic level woman athlete could not be strong enough to win a match in one punch. While sorting this out would be interesting, my philosophical concern is with two common factors that are used to fuel the trans culture war. These are the misconception that an athlete can simply declare their gender and a misconception or misunderstanding of the claim that men are stronger than women.

If it were true that a male athlete could simply declare themselves a female athlete, then this would be unfair. However, this is not true. Ben Shapiro wanted to make a documentary about having male basketball players declare themselves to be women so they could play against women’s teams, but he found out that this is not how it works. He ended up making the comedy Lady Ballers instead and reality undercuts its entire political premise. Sports governing bodies, such as the NCAA, have long had strict rules in place for transgender athletes and athletes cannot simply pick their gender and compete. But even if someone knows this, they might argue that allowing trans athletes to compete would be unfair because “men are stronger than women.”

The general claim that men are stronger than women is true, but it is commonly misunderstood. Some take it as meaning that almost any man will be stronger than almost any woman. For example, Lady Ballers is based on the idea that washed up former high school basketball players led by their former coach can easily beat world class women’s basketball teams.  This leads to the concern that trans athletes would unfairly steal places in competitions because men are stronger than women. For example, it might be worried that a trans athlete could unfairly win the mile and steal the win from the second-place runner. But is this something we should worry about? To answer this, we need to consider relative athletic performance. I will use the mile as an example.

Hobbs Kessler of Skyline Highschool ran a 3:57 mile, setting the high school record. The men’s record holder for the mile is Hicham El Guerrouj who ran 3:43 in 1999. The women’s record holder is Faith Kipyegon who ran a 4:07 in 2023. While this might be taken as showing that men are faster than women, we need to be more precise. These numbers show that elite male runners are faster than elite female runners. But it also shows just how good an elite female athlete can be: the overwhelming majority of men, even trained milers, cannot run a 4:07 mile. I was an All-Conference college cross country runner, and I could not run a 4:07 mile. This means that a trans athlete would need to be a very good athlete to compete against good non-trans female athletes, even if it was (contrary to fact) assumed that the transition to meet the requirements to compete would result in no loss of performance. As the number of trans athletes is incredibly low and the number of male athletes who would be good enough to beat top female athletes is relatively low, the odds of a really good male athlete deciding to transition to compete is extremely low. But it could be argued, the odds are not zero and this means that some woman could be “robbed” of a place.

Similar concerns have been expressed about women who perform exceptionally well in sports and have high testosterone levels, despite the link being disproven. The fact that male athletes are not subject to such “performance policing” suggests that sexism is at work here, that women who perform exceptionally well are looked at with suspicion of being men. This sexism also seems to play a role in the concerns expressed about trans athletes, that women athletes are weak and must be protected.

People also express concern that trans athletes might “steal” slots on teams. Many teams have limited numbers of athletes that are allowed, such as the number of runners who can compete as varsity in cross country. To “steal” a slot, a trans athlete would just need to be better than the worst athlete who would have made the team. This is a much lower bar than “stealing” places and it is more likely to occur. Of course, the worst athlete who would have made the team could also have been displaced if someone slightly better had showed up to try out, so the likelihood that a trans athlete will “steal” a spot is far less likely than the chance someone else could show up and “steal” that spot, perhaps deciding to try out on a whim, because they just moved to the area, or picked that college. As such, this fear of trans “theft” is overblown.

While true love is the subject of many tales, its metaphysical foundation is rarely addressed. A way to explore its metaphysics is by using possible worlds. Imagine, if you will, a bereaved lover seeking to replace their lost love by finding an exact counterpart in another world. This raises the issue of whether it is rational to love the metaphysical counterpart of someone you love. I will argue that This is as rational as loving the original person by using appeals to intuitions and analogies. In the interest of fairness, I will also consider and refute the transcendent argument for true love.

The metaphysics of the show Rick & Morty includes the existence of an infinite number of alternative worlds, each of which with its own Rick and Morty. The Rick and the Morty that are, one assumes, the actual stars of the show have been forced to abandon their original reality and various replacement realities. However, they always end up living with “their” family (Beth, Summer and sometimes Jerry). While Rick claims not to care, he loves “his” daughter Beth and granddaughter Summer. However, as he and Morty t know, the Beth and Summer of their adopted world are not their Beth and Summer. They are the daughter and granddaughter of the Rick of that world. A Rick who is (usually) dead.

CW’s The Flash show also makes use of the multiple world plot device as well, one that dates to the early days of comics. The DC comic universe features a multitude of different earths, most notably Earth 1 and Earth 2. Earth 2 was the home of the original Batman, Superman and other, it was used to maintain the timeline in which, for example, Superman was on earth in the 1930s. In a series of episodes of the TV show The Flash, Barry Allen (the Flash) travelled to Earth 2 and met counterparts of people he knew and loved on his world, such as his beloved Iris. On Earth 2, the non-Flash Barry Allen 2 was married to Iris and Barry Allen 1 (from Earth 1) pretended to be Barry Allen 2 and was obsessed with her and her father, despite being told the people of Earth 2 were not the same people as those of Earth 1.

While people tend to feel for no rational reason, there is an interesting question as to whether it makes sense to love someone because they are the counterpart of someone you love. While this would be an interesting matter for psychology, the metaphysical aspect of this case is a question of whether the counterparts are such that it is rational to love or care about them because they are metaphysical counterparts of someone you love or care about.

For the sake of the discussion that follows, consider the following sci-fi scenario: Sam and Kelly met in graduate school, fell madly in love and were married shortly after their graduation. They were both hired by Kalikrates Dimensional, a startup dedicated to developing portals to other dimensions.

During an experiment, Sam was pulled into the death blender dimension and ejected as a human smoothie. Unfortunately, he had neglected to keep up his premiums with Life Ensurance and had no personality backup to be loaded into a clone body. Distraught, Kelly considered cloning him anyway, but decided that without his memories and personality, it would not be Sam.

Driven by her loss, she developed a much safer portal system and then developed an Indexer that would scan and index the possible worlds. She programmed the Indexer to find a world just like her own, but where “she” rather than “Sam” would die in the portal accident. The Indexer labeled this world Earth 35765. Timing it perfectly, she popped through her portal just as the Kelly of 35765 would have returned, had she not been blended. The Kelly 35765 smoothie ended up in Kelly 1’s world, while Kelly 1 took over her life. Kelly 1 might have been happy with Sam 35765, but she was murdered and replaced a year later by the bereaved and insane Kelly 45765. Given this scenario, would it be rational for Kelly 1 to love Sam 35765?

One way to look at this matter is to use an analogy to counterparts in this world. To be specific, there are unrelated people who look exactly like other people in this world. And there are also identical twins. While a person might be fooled by a twin or look-alike, they would probably not love them simply because they looked like someone they loved. The same can be applied to counterparts in other worlds: they look like someone you love, but they are not the one you love.

I agree that it would be irrational to love someone simply because they looked like someone one already loves. After all, the look-alike could be utterly horrible or at least utterly incompatible. As such, it would be foolish to love such a twin solely based on appearance. That sort of shallow love would be irrational even in this world. But certainly possible.

However, it can be rational to love a counterpart that exactly resembles the original. Such a counterpart could have the qualities that would provide a rational foundation for love. For example, if Kelly 1 loved Sam 1 because of his personality, values, laughter, and such, then if Sam 35765 had the same qualities, then it would make sense for Kelly 1 to love him. After all, he has the same qualities. To use an analogy, if Kelly loves Cherry Breeze pie because of its qualities, then she is obviously not limited to loving the first Cherry Breeze pie she had and any adequately similar Cherry Breeze pie would suffice.

Now imagine that there was one Cherry Breeze pie that Kelly loved above all others and that this pie could be duplicated to such a degree that every aspect of the pie would be indistinguishable from her most beloved pie. In this case, Kelly would love that exactly resembling pie as much as the original.

There is the concern that there would be a fundamental difference between any counterpart and the original; namely that there would be no history or relationship with the counterpart. So, while Kelly 1 might love the qualities of Sam 35765, she has never done anything with him and thus has no history or relationship with him. She could develop a history and relationship over time, but that would be falling in love with a new person. While it is true that Kelly 1 has no past relationship with Sam 35765, she selected the world in which Kelly 35765 and Sam 35765 did everything that Kelly 1 and Sam 1 did and there would be no distinguishable difference. Kelly 1 knows everything that happened between the other Kelly and Sam and will act exactly as Kelly 1 would have.

Going back to the pie analogy, while Kelly would have no established relationship with the new pie, the fact that it is (by hypothesis) exactly like the original pie in every way (other than being new) would intuitively entail that Kelly would love the new pie as much as the original. Everything discernable about the relationships with the pies would be the same other than their bare difference. If Kelly declared that she loved the original but did not care for the new pie, her claim would seem to be utterly unfounded for she could point to no qualitative difference that would warrant her assertion.

It could even be contended that, in a way, Kelly does have a relationship with the pie. Since it is exactly like the original pie, it would fit seamlessly into the relationship she had with the original pie. As such, it would be rational to love the exact counterpart of someone one loves.

Since I made the error of referencing true love, I opened the portal to an obvious objection to my position. One basic element of true love is that one person (Kelly 1) loves another (Sam 1) and not that person’s qualities. This is because qualities change and can be possessed by others. Intuitively, true love will not fade and cannot be transferred to another person that simply has the same qualities.

For example, if Kelly loves Sam because of his brilliance and humor, then she would love someone else who had the same brilliance and humor. This sort of interchangeable love is not true love. If what is loved is not the qualities of a person, there is the question of what this might be.  What is wanted is something “beneath” all the qualities that makes the person the person they are and distinguished them from all other things. Fortunately, philosophy has just the thing: the metaphysical self. This, as should come as no surprise, takes the discussion into the realm of Kantian philosophy.

Kant split the world into noumena and phenomena. The phenomena are the things as they appear to us. This is what we experience-such how good a person looks in a swimsuit. We can have empirical knowledge of such things. The noumena are the things in themselves. Kant claimed the noumena cannot be known because they are beyond our experience.

On Kant’s view, it would be sensible to stick with the phenomena and not speculate about the noumena. But Kant claims that cannot resist the lure of the transcendent illusions of metaphysics.

The metaphysical self is the illusion that is needed here. Like David Hume, Kant thinks we have no impression of the metaphysical self. What we do have are impressions, via introspection, of the empirical self. The inner eye never sees that metaphysical self; it just encounters things like feelings and thoughts.

Unlike Hume, Kant argues that we must think of our experiences as if they occur within a unified self. This provides a frame of reference for thought and it is thus useful to accept a metaphysical self. Since it is useful and we need the metaphysical self to make sense of things, Kant concludes that we should accept it. While Kant did not take the step of arguing for true love, I will do this now.

Applying his method to true love, true love would be impossible without the metaphysical self. This makes it a necessary condition for true love. The metaphysical self is beyond the realm of scientific proof. However, true love is irresistible because it seems critical for our happiness and our conception of ourselves. As such, while Kelly 1 might feel that she loves Sam 35756, this would be irrational: Sam 35756 is not her true love. As would be imagined, in a tragically poignant Twilight Zone style sci-fi story, she would come to realize this. While true love is appealing, the objection can be countered. This should not be surprising, since the argument itself acknowledges that it is appealing to an illusion. But, of course, what is needed is a substantive reply.

While the idea of a metaphysical self behind all the qualities sounds fancy, it is merely a repainted bare particular. It is bare because it does not have any qualities of its own beneath all the qualities that it possesses. It is a particular because there is only one of each (and each one can only be in one location at a time). In the ideal love of the objection, one loves the bare particularity of another as opposed to qualities that can change or be duplicated.

Fortunately for my position, there is a serious problem with this notion of love. When we interact with the world we interact with various qualities. For example, Kelly can see Sam’s quirky smile and experience his keen intelligence. But it seems impossible for her to be aware of his bare particularity. Since it has no qualities there would be nothing to experience. It would  be impossible for Kelly to be aware of Sam’s bare particularity to love him. As such, love must be about detectable qualities.

While this is less romantic than the idea of metaphysical true love, it is more realistic and intuitively appealing. When one person talks about why they love another, they talk about the qualities of the person. Many dating app make claim to assess people for various qualities to us them to find compatibility and love. Scientists also talk about the emotion of love as being driven by genes in search of suitable genes to combine with. Given this evidence, it seems reasonable to conclude that when Kelly loves Sam, she loves his qualities. As such, if it was rational for Kelly 1 to love Sam 1, then it is just as rational for Kelly 1 to love Same 35756. There is, after all, no discernible difference between the Sams. Thus, love is not only possible, but also possible across worlds.

 

Cherry Breeze Pie Recipe

Ingredients

 

Crust

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1/3 cup butter or margarine — melted

or 1 pre-made graham cracker crust

 

Filling

1 package cream cheese — (8 ounces)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 can cherry pie filling — (1 pound, 5 ounces)

 

Directions

  1. Cook butter and sugar in saucepan over medium heat until mixture boils. Remove from heat and mix in graham cracker crumbs. Press mixture evenly and firmly into 9-inch pie plate to form a crust. Chill. (Or just buy a pre-made crust).

 

  1. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually mix in sweetened condensed milk, stir in lemon juice and vanilla. Spread in crust. Refrigerate 3-4 hours or until firm.

 

  1. Top with chilled cherry pie filling. To remove pie pieces easily, place hot wet towel around sides and bottom of pan before cutting.

 

Some years ago, I was firing my .357 magnum at an indoor range. It made a very satisfying “bang.” Then there was a much louder noise, and I felt a “whuummmp” in ribcage. My friend Ron was firing his .44 magnum in the next lane, close enough for me to feel the shockwave from the weapon.

While the .44 magnum is a powerful handgun, it is a peashooter compared to the Carl-Gustav M3, a shoulder fired heavy infantry weapon. When fired, this weapon generates a strong shockwave that might be causing brain injuries to the operators. Mortars and other weapons have also been linked to brain trauma. While some doubt that the shockwave can cause trauma, the shockwave from such weapons is analogous to that of other explosions, such as IEDs that have caused terrible injuries. While IEDs can inflict shrapnel wounds, their shockwaves can inflict brain damage without leaving a mark on the target.

The United States military had been gathering data using blast gauges worn by soldiers. However, their use was discontinued when it was claimed they could not consistently indicate when a soldier had been close enough to an explosion to suffer a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury. These gauges did provide a wealth of information including data that showed infantry operating heavy weapons were being repeatedly exposed to potentially dangerous levels of overpressure. Because the data could link such exposure to long term health issues in soldiers, it might be suspected that the Pentagon stopped collecting data to avoid taking responsibility for such harms. This can be seen as like the NFL’s approach to concussions. This leads to some moral concerns about monitoring the exposure of operators and the use of heavy infantry weapons.

While it might seem awful, a moral argument can be made for not gathering data on soldiers operating heavy weapons. As noted above, if it were shown that being exposed to the overpressure of such weapons can cause brain injuries, then this could cost the state money. Without such data, the state can claim there is no proof of a connection and avoid responsibility. From a utilitarian standpoint, if the financial savings outweighed the harm done to the soldiers, then this would be the right thing to do. However, intentionally evading responsibility for harm is morally problematic, at best. It can also be objected that the benefits of being aware of the damage being done outweigh the benefits of intentional ignorance. One obvious benefit is that such data could help mitigate or eliminate such damage and this seems morally superior to intentional evasion by willful ignorance.

While there are steps that could be taken to minimize the damage done to troops operating heavy weapons it is likely that such damage cannot be avoided altogether. One technological solution would be to remotely operate heavy weapons, thus allowing the operator to be out of the damage zone. Another technological solution would be to automate such heavy weapons, thus keeping humans safe. Well, some humans.  Either of these options would increase the cost of the weapon system and would require weighing this against the wellbeing of soldiers. But many who are fiscal conservatives about human wellbeing are fiscal liberals when it comes to corporate profits, so a way to sell these ideas is to ensure that it would be profitable to corporations. There is also a moral argument that can be made for using the weapons as they are, even if they are harmful to the operators. It is to this that I now turn.

From a utilitarian standpoint, the ethics of exposing operators to damage from their own weapons would be a matter of weighing the harm done to the operators against the benefits of using such heavy weapons in combat. Infantry operated heavy weapons are useful in combat. One benefit of such weapons is they allow infantry to engage vehicles, such as tanks and aircraft, with some chance of success. Taking on a tank or aircraft with light weapons generally goes badly for the infantry. As such, if the choice is between risking some overpressure damage or facing a greater risk of being killed by enemy vehicles, then the choice would be obvious. If the effectiveness of the weapon against the enemy outweighs the risk to the operator, then it would be morally acceptable for the operators to take that risk.  There is, however, still the question of the damage suffered during weapon training

The obvious way to argue that it is acceptable for troops to risk injury when training with heavy weapons is that they will need this practice to use the weapon effectively in combat. If they were to try to operate a heavy weapon without live practice, they would be less likely to be effective and more likely to fail and be injured or killed by the enemy (or their own weapon). As such, the harm of going into battle without proper training morally outweighs the harm suffered by the operators in learning the weapon. This, of course, assumes that they are likely to end up in battle. If the training risks are taken and the training is not used, then the injury would have been for nothing, which takes this into the realm of considering odds in the context of ethics. On approach would be to scale training based on the likelihood of combat, scaling up if action is anticipated and keeping a minimal level when action is unlikely.

Making rational choices about the risks does, obviously enough, require knowing the risks. As such, there must be a proper study done of the risks of operating such weapons. Otherwise, the moral and practical calculations would be essentially guessing, which is morally unacceptable

Many classic conservatives advocate a broad application of free market principle. This includes an opposition to regulation, or rather regulation that does not favor businesses. As health care is seen as a business in the United States, this view leads to concerns about health care cost regulation in the United States.

Because of the high cost of health care, there have been proposals to limit the cost of health care services. Those who oppose these regulations claim pricing should be set by free competition between health care providers and that consumers of health care should become savvy shoppers. The idea is that savvy shoppers will take their business to providers that offer better services or lower costs, which will force the competition to lower costs or improve quality. This is a stock free market argument.

There are serious problems with the idea of relying on savvy health care shoppers and competition to reign in prices and improve quality. The first is the challenge of finding the prices that health care providers charge. While it can be difficult to predict what services a consumer might need, health care providers often have a range of prices depending on who is paying for the services. For example, insurance companies negotiate prices, and these differ from what consumers without insurance would pay. Health care providers, although they always have a database of billing codes and costs, are often reluctant to provide this information in a readily accessible and comprehensible manner.

A second problem is that health care consumers usually lack the medical knowledge to make informed decisions about health care. While a person might face some challenge in picking the best phone or laptop, sorting out medical care is typically beyond the skill of most. That is why people go to medical professionals. As such, being a savvy shopper is difficult.

A third problem is that it is somewhat misleading to call a patient a consumer. While this might seem to be a mere difference in labels, the difference between consumer and patient is significant.

One difference is that a patient is typically in duress. They are injured or ill and not in a position to engage in savvy shopping practices. While an informed rational consumer will be looking for the best deal, a suffering patient is concerned with getting better. As people say to not go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, it would be best to not shop for health care when one is not healthy. But that is exactly when one needs health care. There are also the more extreme cases. For example, a person who is badly injured in a car crash is not going to be shopping in a savvy manner for emergency rooms during the ambulance ride.

It can be countered that there are cases that allow savvy shopping, such as elective surgeries and non-emergencies. This is a reasonable point and a person who is not in need can take the time to shop around and be a savvy consumer. However, this does not apply to cases in which a person is sick or injured enough to impede such savvy shopping.

Another important difference between consumer and patient is that the consumer often has a reasonable choice between buying a good or service and doing without. For example, while someone might want the latest and greatest iPhone, they can live just fine without it.      

 In contrast, patients usually have need treatment and doing without would be a real hardship or even fatal. When one must buy the good or service and the provider knows this, it makes it much harder to be a savvy shopper. This also provides a segue into the matter of regulating prices.

While free market pricing might work when consumers can easily do without the good or service, it runs into obvious problems for the consumer when the goods or services are necessities. To the degree that the patient cannot do without health, the patient is at the mercy of the provider. So, while a person can easily elect to do without the latest iPhone if they cannot afford it, it is much more difficult for a person to do without chemotherapy. As a personal example, when I was bitten by a dog in September 2023, I had to get rabies shots because if the dog had rabies, then I would die without the shots. And when I had a quadriceps tear, I had to get surgery if I wanted to be able to walk and run.  True, a consumer could do without liposuction or breast implants, but such elective surgery differs from non-elective treatments.

The stock counter to such concerns is that if a consumer finds the price of a good or service too high, they can go to a lower priced competitor. In the case of health care, the opportunity to find a lower priced competitor can be problematic. A patient might not have the time to shop around. In many places, there is not any local competition with lower prices that would allow a patient to engage in savvy shopping. Going back to my rabies shots, the only place I could get them was at an emergency room and I had to pay the emergency room prices each time. I checked with all the local pharmacies and my own doctor, so I did try to shop around. When I had my quadriceps tendon repair surgery, I also did not have an opportunity to shop around for a discount. As such, this free-market advice is not very helpful.

In the case of pharmaceuticals, patients often find that there is no competition. When a company has a patent on a medication, the United States’ government uses its coercive power to enforce that patent, ensuring the company retains its monopoly for the specified time. Because of this, a patient who needs the medication has two choices: do without or pay the price. There is no free market competition, so without regulation on the part of the state, the company can decide to charge whatever it wants. While this can result in bad press and public criticism, patients cannot rely on this to result in lower prices.  

This monopoly system does create a quandary for a principled proponent of the free market. On the one hand, without such state regulation a truly free market of drugs would make it irrational for for-profit companies to invest in costly research. As soon as the drug was developed, the competition would duplicate it and would be able to sell it cheaper because they would not need to recoup the cost of development. A solution, which would not be very free market, would be to have the state fund the expensive research and then provide the results to companies who would then compete without monopolies for consumer dollars. One could, of course, stick with a strict no regulation ideology and let the market be completely free of the state and hope medications would somehow be developed.

If the state steps in to regulate prices as part of the agreement for using its coercive power to protect patent monopolies, then there would also be no free market competition. But the state could see to it that the companies charged prices that allowed profits while not gouging patients.

My own view, as might be suspected, is that since patients are essentially a coerced market when it comes to health care and medication, the state should act to regulate prices. In the case of pharmaceutical companies, this should be part of the bargain with the state that allows them to maintain their monopolies. After all, if taxpayer dollars are to be used to protect monopolies, then they should get something in return and this should include reasonably priced medication. In the case of health care providers, while they do not usually have a monopoly, they do have a coerced market. Just as the state justly steps in to prevent price gouging during large scale natural disasters, it can justly do so regarding personal disasters in the cases of injury or illness.

I know health care providers and pharmaceutical companies want to make a profit and, as such, I would advocate that the regulations on pricing leave them a reasonable margin of profit. While it might be objected that a reasonable margin of profit is hard to define, my reply is that if price gouging can be recognized in other areas, it can (and is) be recognized in the realm of medicine.

Throughout American history it has been claimed that immigrants steal jobs, commit crimes and spread disease. Sometimes, such as with Ron DeSantis, some descendants of immigrants can go on to make the same accusations against current migrants. My focus in this essay is to address the claim that immigrants (and migrants) are stealing jobs from Americans.

One approach is to consider what it means for immigrants to steal jobs. To facilitate the discussion, I’ll offer an analogy to another type of alleged theft, that of stealing someone’s girlfriend (or boyfriend).

While I will change the names to protect the innocent and the guilty, when I was in college Dick was dating Jane.  Jane was at my school and Dick was attending a school in a different state. Jane started spending a lot of time with John, and eventually John started dating Jane. An angry Dick showed up to confront John about “stealing his woman.” Jane’s response that she was not stolen because she was not anyone’s property. She chose who she wanted to be with. In this case, John. For those who are wondering, I am not John, Dick or Jane. But thanks for asking. While there were moral concerns about what Jane and John did, Jane was right. She is not anyone’s property and could not be stolen. So, Dick’s charge of theft did not apply. If John had kidnapped Jane, then that would have been another matter entirely, but still not theft.

Like affection, a job is provided by someone else and not something that can (typically) be stolen. So, when an immigrant is hired by an American employer, the immigrant is not stealing the job. The American employer is choosing to hire the immigrant rather than hiring an American. Going back to the girlfriend analogy, the American worker would be like Dick, he thinks the job is rightfully his. But the employer is like Jane, she is the one deciding who gets her affection (in the case of the employer, the job). So, the American did not have their job stolen; the American employer decided to give it to someone else. The job, after all, belongs to the employer.

This argument could be countered by going back to the girlfriend analogy. Suppose that Dick and Jane are engaged and are committed, but John is willing to do more for Jane and asks far less in return and is much more appealing. It could be claimed that John is not playing fair: he should respect the special relationship between Dick and Jane and not outcompete poor Dick.

The easy and obvious reply is that it would clearly be morally problematic for John to intentionally make a play for Jane when she is in a committed relationship.  However, it is still Jane’s choice whether to stay with Dick or move on to John. As such, most of the responsibility would rest on Jane. It is fair to note that John did outcompete Dick, but Dick could have stepped up to compete if he really wanted Jane to stick with him.

In the case of the job, it is morally problematic for immigrants to cross the border illegally to seek jobs in America. However, the bulk of the moral responsibility lies with the employers. While immigrants might tempt them by being willing to work for far less, it is up to them to stick to their commitment to the law or to break it. As such, it is not the immigrants that are stealing jobs. Rather, employers are choosing to hire immigrants and if any wrong is being done to Americans who want those jobs, most of it lies on the employers.

Turning to the practical matter of immigration, if a political party wants to deter migrants from coming to the United States illegally in search of employment, it makes the most sense to focus on enforcing employment laws and punishing businesses that break these laws. While the border would still need to be secured, cracking down hard on employers breaking employment laws would reduce the number of people coming here to work illegally. But neither party has the will to do this, since they know a big chunk of the American economy depends on not policing illegal employment. But because of their rhetoric and the xenophobia baked into the political apple pie of America, they cannot support a sensible system of legal employment and documentation of workers. They thus get their pie (being able to rail against migrants) and eat it too (having large parts of the economy rest on the backs of migrant workers who are employed illegally). As a closing point, we should speak in terms of illegal employment rather than illegal immigrants; that would be more honest.

While most Americans are not hostile to transgender people and oppose discrimination against their fellow Americans, the Republican party has made them a major target in their endless culture war. While sports have become one of the newest battlefields in this fight, there is still a focus on the bathroom battles. While the legal issues will be addressed by judges, there are also the moral issues.

Utilitarianism provides one approach to the moral issue of whether transgender people should be able to choose which bathroom to use. This involves weighing the harms of denying this choice against the harms of granting it. In a democracy, this approach seems to be a reasonable one, at least if it is believed that a democratic state should aim at the general good of the people (and that America is a democracy).

A utilitarian assessment leads to an obvious conclusion: bathroom choice should be granted. The two main arguments against bathroom choice fail in the face of facts and logic. One argument is that allowing bathroom choice would put people in danger. Since some states have already allowed bathroom choice, there is data about the danger presented by such choice. Currently, the evidence shows that there is no meaningful danger. As some wits enjoy pointing out, more Republican lawmakers have been arrested for bathroom misconduct than transgender people. As such, Republicans worried about bathroom safety should focus on policing their own party.

The other argument is the privacy argument, which contends that allowing people in bathrooms based on their gender identification would violate the privacy of other people. While the focus is on women’s bathrooms, men’s bathrooms have the greater potential for privacy violations because of urinals. Sometimes there are not even dividers between them and someone could simply look down and across at another person engaged in urination. As women’s bathrooms lack urinals and have stalls, there is more privacy. However, someone could obviously peep under a stall. In this sense, bathrooms already lack some degree of privacy. But this could be addressed by enclosing urinals in stalls and making stalls peep proof in ways that would still allow ventilation and ease of cleaning. But making bathrooms peep proof has not been a focus of Republican law makers, so they are probably thinking of privacy in a different way. The most reasonable interpretation is privacy from members of the other sex, this could be called “gender privacy.”

Those favoring transgender rights would point out that allowing people to use facilities based on gender identity would not result in boys seeing girls or vice versa. It would just be the usual girls seeing girls in the girls bathroom and boys seeing boys in the boy’s bathroom. Since the main worry is transgender girls in girl’s bathrooms, I will focus on that. However, the same discussion could be made for transgender boys.

The obvious reply to this would be to assert that gender identification is not a real thing: a person’s gender is set by biological sex. So, a transgender girl would, in fact, be a boy and hence should not be allowed in the girls’ locker room. This is presumably, based on the assumption that a transgender girl is still sexually attracted to girls because they are still a boy. There seem to be three possibilities here.

The first is that transgender girls are straight boys and are sexually attracted to girls (that is, they are just faking) and this grounds the claim that a transgender girl would violate the privacy of other girls. This would entail that lesbian girls also violate the privacy of other girls and since about 10% of the population is gay, then any bathroom with ten or more girls probably has some privacy violation occurring. As such, those concerned with privacy would presumably need to address this as well. The worry that lesbians might be violating privacy could be addressed by making stalls peep proof, but then no transgender bans would be needed since privacy would be protected.  While this could prove expensive, if Republicans are truly dedicated to bathroom privacy, they could provide funding for this.

The second is that transgender girls are not automatically sexually attracted to other girls and hence do not violate their privacy: they are girls like other girls. It could be objected that what matters is the genetic makeup or gender past of the person: someone who was once a biological male seeing a girl in the locker room violates her privacy. Arguing for this requires showing how this matters in terms of privacy, that being seen by girls is not a privacy violation but being seen by a transgender girl who is just going about their business is a privacy violation. That is, if the person looking does not care about what is being seen, then how is it a privacy violation?

The third is that transgender girls are just girls. In which case, there is no privacy violation since it is just girls seeing girls.

While those advancing these arguments might honestly believe them, it might be suspected that the motivation for opposing bathroom choice is a dislike of transgender people. This is the “transgender people are icky and bad” argument. This “argument” has no merit on the face of it, which is why it usually is not advanced as a reason by opponents of bathroom choice. But now back to the utilitarian argument.

One stock problem with utilitarian arguments is that they can be used to justify violating rights. This problem typically arises in when the benefits received by a numerical majority come at the expense of harms done to a numerical minority. However, it can also arise in cases where the greater benefits to a numerical minority outweigh the lesser harms to a numerical majority. In the case at hand, those opposed to bathroom choice could argue that even if bathroom choice benefits transgender people far more than it hurts people who oppose bathroom choice, the rights of anti-choice people are being violated. This then makes the matter a question of competing rights.

In the case of public bathroom facilities, such as student bathrooms at schools, members of the public have the right to use them since that is the nature of public goods. There are, however, reasonable limits placed on access. For example, the bathrooms in public schools, courthouses and government buildings are generally not open to anyone to wander off the street to use. So, while there is a right to public bathrooms, like all rights, it does have its limits. It can thus be assumed that transgender people have bathroom rights just as people who oppose bathroom choice do. What is in dispute is whether the right of transgender people to choose their bathroom trumps the right of anti-choice people to not be forced to use bathrooms with transgender people.

Disputes over competing rights are often settled by utilitarian considerations, but the utilitarian argument already favors bathroom choice. As such, another approach is needed, and a reasonable one is the consideration of which right has priority. This approach assumes that there is a hierarchy of rights, and that one right can take precedent over another. Fortunately, this is intuitively appealing. For example, while people have a right to free expression, the right to not be unjustly harmed trumps it. This is why libel and slander are not protected by this right.

So, the bathroom issue comes down to this: does the right of a transgender person to choose their bathroom have priority over the right of an anti-choice person to not encounter transgender people in the bathroom? My inclination is that the right of the transgender person has priority over the anti-choice person. To support this, I will use an analogy to race.

Not so long ago, there were separate bathrooms for black and white people. When the bathrooms were to be integrated, there were dire warnings that terrible things would occur if bathrooms were integrated. This is a stock conservative approach against expanding rights: if these people get this right, then terrible things will happen. This argument was made in defense of the anti-miscegenation laws, against desegregation of schools and the military, and against same-sex marriage. So far, the claims of harm have turned out to be wrong.

In the specific case of desegregation of bathrooms, these terrible things obviously did not take place. Whites also have argued that they had a right to not be in the same bathroom as blacks. However, the alleged white right to not be in a bathroom with blacks does not trump the right of blacks to use the public bathroom. Likewise, the right of transgender people to choose their bathroom trumps the right of anti-choice people to exclude them.

It can be objected that if this argument is taken to its logical conclusion, then gender mixing will occur in the bathrooms. For example, one common sight at races (such as marathons) is long lines leading to the women’s bathrooms and short lines for the men’s bathrooms. Women runners might start going into the men’s room (they already sometimes do). Then terrible things might happen. Specifically, I might need to wait longer to pee before races. This is a case where my selfishness must outweigh my moral principles: though I have no moral objection to gender mixing of bathrooms, my selfish bladder says that I cannot give up my right to a shorter line. If men want to go to the women’s bathroom, my bladder approves since that means less wait for it.

 

I regularly use AI images in my game products, such as my D&D adventures. I also use such images as illustrations on my blog. This leads to the question of whether I am acting in an ethical manner using these images. As a side note, I use “images” rather than “art” intentionally. While they are clearly images, it is not clear if AI images are art in a meaningful way. But that is an issue for another time and my focus is on whether I am doing wrong by using these images. This question is linked to the broader question of whether AI image and text generators, such as Midjourney and Open AI’s products are ethical. I believe that they are not but need to make this case.

It is often claimed that AI systems were trained on stolen data, be the data images or text. The stock defense offered by AI defenders is that the AI systems “learned” in a manner analogous to that used by humans, by being trained on existing works. On the face of it, this has some appeal. When people learn to draw or write, they usually do so by copying existing works until they are able to produce their own works. But this argument is easy to counter, at least for the data that was stolen in an unambiguous sense. While a human learning how to draw by buying art books would not be theft, stealing books from a bookstore to learn to draw would be theft. And it seems that some AI training data includes commercial works acquired without purchasing copies. While this matter is being hashed out in lawsuits, the ethics of stealing works are clear, especially when the thieves are well funded and intend to use their stolen goods for their own profits. They cannot appeal to the usual arguments floated to justify piracy against corporations since they are corporations.

Many critics of AI go beyond these cases of unambiguous theft to argue that any use of data without consent and compensation is theft. Those holding this view do need to address the argument that AI is not stealing but merely learning as a human would. One reasonable reply is to counter by arguing that while we do not know exactly how humans engage in learning to be creative, AI systems are not replicating what humans do. The analogy also breaks down in various ways when comparing the situation of a human creator with an AI system. Some relevant differences include the fact that AI systems are owned by corporations and are “machines” for churning out products at an inhuman rate.

While not a great analogy, AI image generators are doing something like what I do when I use cartography software like Inkarnate and  Campaign Cartographer. These programs come with premade map symbols, such as trees, rocks, and castles. When I use them, I can combine premade assets to make maps. This does require creativity and some skill on my part, but I am mostly relying on the work of others. This is morally acceptable, since I paid for the software and the people creating the symbols gave their consent and received compensation for this use.

Even if it is assumed that the AI is being creative in a way analogous to my creativity in making maps, AI is working with a vast set of images that are being used without consent or compensation. That is, it would be like me using stolen symbols to create my maps while claiming that my creativity in combining the symbols means that I am not acting in an unethical manner. It could be countered that my analogy is flawed since AI is not creating collages of stolen pieces but is creating original works it learned to make through training. If someone looks at all the symbol sets for the maps and then creates their own maps using symbols that are different from what they learned from, then it would be hard to call that theft. That the symbols might look alike would not be surprising; after all symbols of rocks, castles and trees will all tend to look somewhat alike in that they will be of rocks, castles and trees. But in the case of AI, I suspect that the main reason to think that it must be theft is that the AI is believed to be engaged not in creation but recombination—that it is combing stolen pieces based on probabilities and algorithms that are also stolen.  This is probably true. But this is but one of the many moral crimes of AI.

Anyone familiar with how the modern economy works will not be surprised that AI is built upon underpaid and exploited labor, and this has been going on since before the latest AI surge. Amazon’s aptly named Mechanical Turk is a good example of how this works in that “people are paid pennies to train AI.” In some cases workers are never paid.

AI also unsurprisingly comes with a large environmental cost, much of which is a result of the energy required to train and maintain AI systems. This energy usage is expected to increase so dramatically that some are claiming that there will need to be breakthroughs in energy technology just to keep up with the demand. This environmental harm contributes to AI being unethical to use.

Given that I just argued about the evils of AI, it might be wondered how I can still use it. The unsatisfying answer here is that using AI is just one of a vast number of evils involved in my work. While those who dislike my views might see this as an admission, this is true of almost everyone. If you are reading this, you are also involved in evil. As a quick illustration, I use gaming books that were bought printed in China (using cheap labor) and shipped across the sea to be sold by Amazon, which exploits its workers. Shipping the books created pollution. I do my work on a computer that I built, but the parts were made by exploited workers and bought from corporations. My computer also uses energy. I am wearing clothing made by exploited workers and I eat food created in a horrible system that exploits and pollutes. And so on. This is not to say that my use of AI images in my work is good. Far from it, but it is but one of the many evils involved in creating and distributing anything. Now on to some more evil.

What people tend to talk about the most is how AI will take jobs, something that technology has been doing since the beginning. In the case of AI image generators, the concern is that it will take jobs from artists, and this is a reasonable concern. This problem arises because of capitalism and the need of artists to work to survive. After all, if people were free to create from their love of creation or just as a hobby, then AI image generation would be irrelevant. As such, AI image generation is just a specific problem of the current capitalist economy. It is here that I am probably doing the least evil.

Prior to AI image generators, I created my own images, used royalty free images and purchased stock images. The main problems with the free and stock images are that they generally did not match what I wanted, and they were obviously used by many other people. Over the years I have attempted to hire artists to create custom images for my works, but this has never worked out. In most cases they rightfully wanted to charge me more than I could ever hope to make on my works. When the price was affordable, the artists inevitably failed to deliver and dropped out of contact after a rough preliminary sketch or two. So my earlier works generally include few images and these are often only vaguely relevant to the content of the work. As such, I did not “fire” human artists and replace them with AI; for the most part where I use an AI image in my work there would have otherwise been no image.

When AI image generators became available, I tried them and found that they could rapidly generate relevant images that just needed a little work in Photoshop. Before the revelations about the evils of AI, I thought this was great. But after learning about the evils of AI, I realized that having unlimited relevant images came with a moral price. But I already knew, as noted above, that my work already came with a high moral price (think of the energy cost and pollution arising from the device you are using to view these words, from the device I used to type them, and so on). I did consider going back to works with just a few pieces of mostly irrelevant art but decided on another approach. My moral solution is to make my game products (and obviously my blog) available for free. Which is something I was already doing for Mike’s Free Encounters and Mike’s Free Maps.  I do have a “pay what you want” option for many of my works (which I was also doing before AI image generators) and this allows people who think that creators should be paid for their work to get my work without paying for it.

It might be objected that this is like giving away stolen property for free along with my own property, which is a fair point. But the economy is built on theft, so everything I create and distribute is grounded in something that involves theft from someone and is probably hurting people in some other way. This is not to say what I am doing is right, that would be absurd. All I can say is that I am minimizing the evil I do. To be honest, I could be convinced to abandon AI images and go back to reusing the same stock images and scouring the web for royalty free images.

In conclusion, my use of AI images is wrong, but it is one evil among many that are part of creating in the world as it is. But not what it could be or should be.

Trump seems likely to be re-elected president and he will certainly return to his support for religious freedom and is promising a harsh crackdown on immigrants.  This combination leads one to think about people protecting migrants due to their religious convictions and offering sanctuary. The idea of churches serving as sanctuary from the state was developed in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and is a part of Western culture. Of course, even if the Democrats win, they seem inclined to take a harsher stance on immigration.

Sanctuary is morally appealing when it is granted to protect a person from injustice on the part of the state. Judging who is worthy of sanctuary (as with any moral assessment) can be complicated, but the basic principle is clear enough. If our country’s immigration policies and practices are  unjust, I believe that immigrants who have committed no other crimes would be worthy of sanctuary. Since they typically lack the resources to defend themselves, church sanctuary can provide them with the protection they need to make their case and seek justice. Even if sanctuary proves ineffective for a particular immigrant, the granting of sanctuary can make a moral and political statement that might influence public perception. As a practical matter, the effectiveness of sanctuary depends on the reluctance of the state to use force to remove people. This reluctance might be grounded in many things, ranging from the power of the institution to the negative public reaction that might result from violating sanctuary. 

While the notion of sanctuary does enjoy the support of tradition, it could be argued that churches should not be be allowed a special exemption from the enforcement of the law. It should not matter whether migrants are seeking shelter in a church, a Starbuck or a private home. Law enforcement officials should be able to arrest and remove them because they are, by definition, breaking the law. This view is grounded on the idea that all institutions, religious or not, fall under the laws of the state and are not to be granted special exemptions. But, if exemptions from laws were granted to religious institutions in other areas, then this could be used to justify an exemption for sanctuary. 

In the United States religious institutions enjoy special exemptions from taxes and some laws. For example, the Catholic Church is not subject to certain anti-discrimination lawsuits despite restricting certain jobs to men. As another example, there is also an exemption for religious employers regarding coverage of contraceptive services. There has also been a push for new religious liberty laws that are aimed mainly at allowing people to discriminate against same-sex couples on religious grounds. Such laws grant exemptions based on religion and the arguments used to defend them could, in many cases, be pressed into service as arguments in favor of granting sanctuary to illegal immigrants. For example, if it is argued that exceptions to anti-discrimination laws should be granted to churches and businesses because of religious beliefs about gender and sex, then it would be challenging to argue that an exception to immigration laws should not be granted to churches because of religious beliefs.

The obvious challenge in using the religious liberty and exemption arguments to justify sanctuary is showing that the situations are analogous. This is super easy to do. Christians who oppose same-sex marriage usually cite Leviticus, but Exodus 22:21 is quite clear about how strangers should be treated: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Scholars also point to Matthew 25, especially Matthew 25:40 when justifying granting sanctuary to immigrants: “And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” As such, granting churches a sanctuary exemption to immigration laws seems at least as well founded as other cases of religious liberty. From a moral standpoint, an exemption for sanctuary would seem superior to exemptions for discrimination, for it is better to help people than to discriminate against them.

A way to counter this reasoning is to argue that there should not be religious exemptions to laws. While this would argue against a religious exemption to immigration laws, it would also apply to all other exemptions and is thus not an option for those who support those other exemptions. Since many of those who are anti-migrant do favor religious exemptions and religious liberty in general, this option is not open to them in a principled way. Fortunately for them, there seem to be no meaningful consequences for holding inconsistent views.

Another way to object is to contend that while religious exemptions should be allowed in other cases, it should not be allowed for granting sanctuary migrants. One approach would be a utilitarian argument: the harm done by allowing sanctuary would be sufficient to warrant imposing on religious liberty. As I have used this argument myself against “religious liberty” laws that make discrimination legal, I must give such an argument due consideration. So, if it can be shown that granting migrants sanctuary would create more harm than would violating the religious liberty of the sanctuary churches (and the harms done to the migrants) then religious liberty should be violated. But this approach would need to be applied in a consistent manner: those who argue against sanctuary on the grounds of harms must apply the same principle to all religious liberties.

My overall view of the matter is that since Congress and the President have consistently failed to create a just and rational immigration policy, then citizens have the moral right to offer protection to migrants who need protection from injustice. This must be done until our elected officials create a rational, realistic and ethical system. If Trump gets elected, then this will be especially important because his followers seem to  believe in themselves and America first but not that God was serious when He said, “this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.”

As discussed in the previous essays, Trump and some of his followers claimed that God intervened to save Trump from being killed. If this is true, then it would follow that God decided to let one person die and two others get critically injured when He could have intervened. This raises the classic problem of evil, a stock Atheism 101 argument.

The simple version of the argument is that if God is all good, all powerful and all knowing, then there should be no evil. But there is evil, so God does not exist. A slightly more sophisticated version concludes that either God does not exist, or He is lacking in at least one of those three attributes. Much more sophisticated versions consider, in depth, how to reconcile God’s qualities with the existence of evil. I will look at each of these three attributes and how they might be reconciled with evil.

Philosophers usually present God as being omnipotent, but there is debate about what it means to be all powerful. The famous question of whether God can create a rock He cannot lift is part of this discussion. Some philosophers, the Intellectualists, claim that God’s intellect is his primary quality and that He either will not or cannot do the impossible. On this view, God can do anything that is possible, but His omnipotence is thus limited.  For example, God cannot make a triangle that has 4 sides. Those accepting this view often try to use this logical limit to solve the problem of evil. For example, God cannot create a perfect world and hence the world must be imperfect. One version of this reasoning points out that if God created a second perfect being, that being would also be God. But there cannot be two perfect beings (because each being would lack what the other has and for various other reasons) and this is why there can only be one God and why the world must be imperfect. On this view, evil (imperfection) is a necessary part of the world and that is why God saved Trump but lets other people die. The usual response to this is to point out that the world is worse than imperfect, and God could make things better while the world remained imperfect.

People also try to explain evil by limiting God’s powers in other ways. A classic move is to embrace a form of polytheism and attribute evil to the Devil. But this requires accepting that God and the Devil are comparable in power or coming up with some explanation as to why God lets the Devil cause evil. Another classic gambit is to invoke free will and use that to explain human caused evil. Free will limits God’s power and that is how evil can occur. The challenge is explaining how free will works and then explaining why God could not allow free will but mitigate the evil it is alleged to cause. Others also speak of God’s plan; that the evil that occurs is necessary for His plan. This also postulates a limit on God’s power, since He cannot reach His goal without allowing evil.

 Reducing God’s power in various ways to explain evil is an option that can solve the problem of evil, but it comes with the obvious cost of diminishing God. On this view, God could save Trump, but because of whatever limits His omnipotence, He could not have prevented the other people from being shot.

There are other philosophers, the Voluntarists, who claim that God’s will is supreme and He can will anything, even the impossible. This means the logically impossible and not just things that are very difficult. For example, God could will that triangles have 4 sides while still being triangle. It is not that we would call squares triangles, it is that the necessarily three-sided figure would be four-sided but still a triangle. He could also make all contradictions true and all tautologies false. He could make it so that if A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then A is smaller than C. None of this makes any sense to our mortal minds, but a God that can do the impossible can do all that and infinitely more impossible things. It might initially seem that being a Voluntarist would make it more difficult to solve the problem of evil. After all, the Voluntarist would have to accept that God could create a perfect world. But one consequence of God being all powerful in this sense is that He also defines morality, so He can make anything good or evil, even if it made no sense to us. This moral view is called divine command theory, on this view what God commands is good and what He forbids is evil. People who like divine command theory tend to think that God commands what they themselves want and forbids what they dislike, but that is not how the theory works. God could, at any moment, chose anything to be good or bad and He can obviously lie about it. So, for all we know, God just decided that being a woke transgender vegan advocate of renewable energy is the very best thing to be. Or maybe it was that way all along. Given that God can change logic and truth at will, our reason is useless in sorting any of this out. Or anything at all, since God’s will also applies to physics, chemistry and so on.  On the plus side, the problem of evil is solved: whatever God wills is good, so everything that happens is good. On the minus side, reason is useless. On this view, God saved Trump, killed one person and let two people be critically injured. But maybe this is all good? We do not and cannot know. While most thinkers focus on God’s power, His knowledge can also be relevant to the problem.

As with God being all powerful, philosophers debate what it means for God to be all knowing. Does this mean that God has all possible knowledge or that He even has impossible knowledge? In terms of the problem of evil, it could be argued that evil occurs because God does not know that it is occurring. On this view, perhaps God suddenly knew that Trump was in danger and acted just in time to save him. As might be guessed, free will could also figure in here: because humans have free will, God does not know what we might do. So, God did not know that the shooter was going to shoot until he started shooting. God will also need to require time to gain knowledge and act on it, otherwise He could just intervene instantly, which would raise the question of why He did not act. While claiming that God has epistemic limitation would explain evil, it does create its own problems in terms of diminishing God and making prophecy more difficult to explain.

The easiest solution to the problem of evil is to abandon the idea that God is all good. The two usual options are to simply reject that God is all good or to argue that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong. Rejecting that God is all good, that evil also comes from God, solves the problem. Evil exists because God is not all good. For Trump’s followers, God did a good thing in saving Trump but letting the other people get shot is not a problem because God does or allows evil as well.

If it is argued that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong, then the problem is solved because we are wrong about there being any evil. On this view, everything that happens is good, but we might not realize this. This is sometimes explained in terms of God’s plan (which ties back to limiting God’s power) or the big picture argument. The big picture argument often uses an analogy to looking at a beautiful painting by pressing it against your face. It will look awful. But if you move back from the painting, you will see its beauty. So, while the person dying at Trump’s event seems bad, it would be seen as good once one sees the big picture. This view might also involve accepting that God has a limit on His power since His big picture must apparently be made with a lot of events that seem evil up close. This approach is appealing to many since it explains away any evil that occurs, which is the solution most look for.