Can Sport Exist Without Aggression? On a Certain Thought Experiment by Stanisław Lem

The main objective of the paper is to present and analyse a thought experiment concerning the existence and specifi city of sport in a society completely devoid of aggression. The experiment comes from the novel Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem, Polish writer and thinker. The article provides an explanation why sports, and boxing in particular, were included in Lem’s refl ections on the problem of evil and attempts to “improve the world”. Lem’s vision of sport in a society subjected to betrization – a procedure that eliminates aggression – is presented and commented on from the perspective of the contemporary philosophy of sport. The presented analysis of Lem’s considerations focuses on their relationships with currently debated issues. An illustration of this thread of considerations is tchoukball – a sport designed to minimise players’s aggression.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PROCREATION ANALOGY

A prominent Christian apologist suggests it is inconsistent for an atheist to have a favourable attitude towards procreating while maintaining that a loving God would not place vulnerable beings in such a harmful world. I put this analogy to the test with a series of thought experiments, revealing crucial disanalogies between God and procreators that absolve the atheist from the charge of inconsistency and draw the reader's attention to the central issues on the problem of evil as debated by contemporary philosophers.

Representing the Parent Analogy

I argue that Stephen Wykstra’s much discussed Parent Analogy is helpful in responding to the evidential problem of evil when it is expanded upon from a positive skeptical theist framework. This framework, defended by John Depoe, says that although we often remain in the dark about the first-order reasons that God allows particular instances of suffering, we can have positive second-order reasons that God would create a world with seemingly gratuitous evils. I respond to recent challenges to the Parent Analogy by arguing that God, like a good parent, wants a rightly ordered relationship of mutual love with created beings.

The Evil That Free Will Does: Plantinga’s Dubious Defense

Alvin Plantinga’s controversial free will defense (FWD) for the problem of evil is an important attempt to show with certainty that moral evils are compatible and justifiable with God’s omnipotence and omniscience. I agree with critics who argue that it is untenable and the FWD fails. This paper proposes new criticisms by analyzing Plantinga’s presuppositions and objectionable assumptions in God, Freedom and Evil. Notably, his limited concept of omnipotence, and possible worlds theory lack rigorous argument and are subjectively biased with irrelevant weak examples. My ontological possible worlds theory (Possible Conditional Timelines) shows that it is very likely that the omnipotent God exists of necessity in some worlds but perhaps not this one. Omnipotence is total and absolute, and should imply the freedom of will to actualize all worlds God chooses. Plantinga’s position regarding God’s omniscience of future counterfactuals is implausible based on modal logic conjecture.

Introduction

This Introduction sets the scene for the rest of the book by raising the problem of evil; a problem that for theist and atheist alike, makes us doubt the value of the world. To value the world requires that we find something of final positive value. When we experience final positive value we feel pleasure, however the intrinsic reward of pleasure cannot always satisfy us. We must find a value that works even when our lives are going badly. It is proposed that, while the quest for moral value cannot satisfy this requirement, aesthetic value can.