Yes, the thesis Plantinga defends is called 'the free will defense', what he shows, and I thinks shows quite convincingly, is that there is no inherent contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil....indeed, I think his argument is so 'convincing' that, as I said, I think he basically takes 'the problem of evil' off the table altogether....

You did indeed make a distinction between 'the logical problem of evil' and 'the evidential problem of evil', but the thing that I think is important is that the logical problem of evil is really the only argument in the atheist arsenal which attempts to show that God CANNOT exist. Every other argument attempts to show merely that belief in God is improbable, or unnecessary, or or confusing, or that it has dangerous implications, the only argument that claims God cannot exist is the logical problem of evil. Without that argument, the case for actual atheism, i.e. the actual non-existence of God, completely collapses.

I don't look for an answer to why there is suffering in the world because it's never occurred to me to ask that question. There is suffering, death and pain in the world. Whether God exists or whether he doesn't, it's there. Shouldn't the question be 'how should we approach suffering' and not 'why is there suffering'?

I suppose I would still maintain that his work isn't confused in philosophy of religion either, and that the logical problem of evil is also not considered past tense either.

Sorry if I misrepresented or misread you though! I still might not be clear on this.

[quote="gherkin"

So I can't call bad work "half-assed," but you can call me biased? Hm.

At any rate, in this case, the post in question was a reply to Doom, not to you, so I was making no attempt whatsoever to have a respectful conversation with you. I was talking to Doom. You're free to read the posts and even to reply if you like, but I'll thank you to keep your stylistic critiques to yourself.

If you continue to wish to claim some kind of authority based on your publishable articles, your finished dissertation, and your broad acquaintance with leading philosophers, I will feel obliged to ask you to provide some evidence that such claims are true. In fact, I already did once. We're interested in seeing your published articles. Would you post links to them for me? Thanks![/quote]

You said "half-assed juvenile nonsense" and I said "you were looking at things from a biased perspective." I hardly think the latter comment is an ad hominem, and I wouldn't take offense if you said I was 'biased in favor of materialism' or something like that. Can you see how I might take the former comment as more insulting?

Okay, well if you don't want to have a respectful conversation...

I am not a professional Philosopher, and have not published in philosophy, as I've said before. I've only published in nanotechnology to date.

What sort of proof would you like that I know these philosophers? Notes from class? E-mails from my Professors?

I can send you the syllabuses from philosophy courses taught this year if you really want to doubt me here...

FYI, I am wary to share personal information for safety reasons.

I would agree - Epicurus's original structure could be improved by saying "he is not omni-benevolent" or "he is not benevolent". This serves to prove the same point. This non-benevolent god is not the one theists believe in. So the challenge stands.





Okay, so I hope you can take this example from my perspective without getting offended. I'm not using these examples to trivialize your experiences and religious culture.

In our world, there are lots of theists. So people who don't learn about gods - are they atheists or agnostic? I'd say they are de facto atheists. Or non-theists.

Now consider an alternate world where our whole world is the minority, where theism is a popular belief. But in all the other world countries, people believe in the invisible fairies (or the force, or some other metaphysical construct). You, Nooj, are a theist who isn't even aware that Fairyism is a mainstream belief. The equivalent would be a Fairyist saying, "well, Nooj isn't an afairyist, he's just agnostic about fairies."

That is, I don't think everyone faces a question of God or no God, and is agnostic until they actively settle the question. I think people are born non-theists, and that this idea is taught. One god, many gods, many spirits, demons, fairies, ghosts and so on are all ideas that have been taught. Making God/no God the main question doesn't seem fair to our history of polytheism.

So it's not that I would get to atheism from the ground up. It's that I would never get to theism from the ground up, and thus non-theism or atheism would be the default position. The alternative would be "I don't see how you can not belief in fairies based on evidence. What sort of evidence do you have that suggests that fairies don't exist?"

So I have a different view about defaults and the burden of proof.

You could certainly defend those claims. You'd be wrong, of course, but that's OK. At any rate, my point in the post quoted above was simply that your reply failed to engage with the claims I was actually making. That's all. Which means that if you want to engage the claims I was actually making, you'd have to go back to the post where I originally made those claims, and try reading it again.

I could look for some polls, but I can tell you that my whole atheist group, my atheist friends, and the general view points of the mainstream organizations are not relativistic. American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Secular Student Alliance, and so on are all essentially consequentialist, egalitarian, humanitarian even loosely utilitarian I would say.

I don't know if this is enough, but what should be enough is the knowledge that many examined atheists become quasi-realists or adopt objective morality. Take a professional philosopher like Gideon Rosen, an atheist who argues for objective morality. It's not a fringe view at all - I hope that's sufficient proof for you.


Why would we need someone beyond us to determine that pain is bad? You're jumping too far ahead. Not all people do think that pain is bad. Some think that suffering can be good, in that it can be redemptive. I think Nietzsche wrote very well about how suffering is good.

Many people say that pain and suffering, though it is bad in some sense, does not constitute the standard for evil. Even if pain is bad, which I'm not convinced of, it may not be the Big Bad. What constitutes the Big Bad for religious people must be related to God.[/quote]

Well I don't know what to say to people who think suffering and pain are good. I think suffering can lead to good consequences, but does anyone argue that pain itself is good? Really?

What is the big bad then? Disobedience of the god? Lack of believing it exists? Lack of obeying certain commandments? I'm curious what you mean by this.

I am defining bad as a subjective feeling. We are the knowers and feelers, and we know what things are good or bad. That seems enough for me, and I don't know how one adds in abstract 'bads' that aren't readily apparent to us.

Sam Harris has an example. He imagines a universe where every sentient things suffers as much as possible for eternity. He says, could you imagine something worse than this?


"Imagine a universe devoid of the possibility of consciousness… entirely constituted of rocks… Value judgments don’t apply. For changes in the universe to matter, they have to matter… to some conscious system.

What about well-being? …Imagine a universe in which every conscious creature suffers as much as it possibly can for as long as it can… [This] is bad. If the word ‘bad’ applies anywhere, it applies here. Now if you think the worst possible suffering for everyone isn’t bad… [then] I don’t know what you’re talking about… And I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. The minimum standard of moral goodness is to avoid the worst possible suffering for everyone."

Or you could repeat them again and clarify them. Since you had the time and energy to respond to this post, I don't see why that would be a problem, Mr. Smarky.

From you: "The so-called logical problem of evil has been wholly refuted, and no philosopher who knows anything about the state of philosophy of religion since the 60's would disagree. "
Both counts are explicitly wrong for previously stated reasons. Many philosophers take this problem seriously still. This is not my claim, this is their claim. Mainstream philosophers.

"in fact the one who wants to claim that this problem is actually a "disproof" of theism bears the burden of proof here."
I made an argument. Unnecessary suffering, omnipotent and benevolent god. Contradiction.

Same point as before, Doom. This says suffering is good because of later consequences (you learn from it, or grow, or connect with god or something). That doesn't mean pain is good in itself.

Again, what is this argument going to show?

That an infant living in extreme pain for a few months until it dies really doesn't constitute a problem for an omni-potent, loving god because the pain the infant experiences is redemptive?

This attempt to save god from the unnecessary suffering doesn't convince me.
Let me put it in Hitchens' words, stronger than my own.

Watch it at the 30 second mark for the full rhetorical effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E0O6UICRF0

"What about Frauline Frissel in Austria? Whose father kept her in a dungeon where she didn't see daylight for 24 years, and came down most nights to rape and sodomize her. Often in front of the children who the victims of the previous tax offenses.
Imagine how she must have begged him. Imagine how she must have pleaded. Imagine for how long. Imagine how she must of prayed every day; how she must have beseached Heaven. Imagine. For 24 years. An no. No answer at all. Nothing. NOTHING! Imagine how those children must have felt. Imagine what they felt when they saw one them--one of their number, the dead twin, being born away from neglect on top of everything else.
Are you? I have to ask you if you can be morally or ethically serious and postulate such a question. No that had to happen! And heaven did watch it with indifference because it knows that score will later on be settled. So it was well worth the going through it. She'll have a better time next time. I don't see how you can look anyone, ANYone in the face or live with yourself and say anything so hideously, wickedly immoral as that or even imply it."

Actually, I didn't say "half-assed juvenile nonsense." You're conflating two quite distinct terms of abuse. There is absolutely nothing remotely ad hominem in my characterization of certain philosophical work as "half-assed." Indeed, it could not possibly be ad hominem to characterize the work as half-assed, precisely because it is a characterization of the work, not of the person who produced the work. In fact, you'll note that when I talked about the people who produced this work, I noted that they were generally intellectually somewhat capable. So my only characterization of the people was basically positive. My characterization of the work was negative. Spoken to Doom. As a way of explaining my view about that work. It couldn't be further from fallacious. Now, when I talked about Sam Harris, I did indeed include some stuff that one might view as directed at the man. I stand by what I said, but I have no time or interest in defending those claims to you. You may accordingly dismiss them as unsupported. (Of course, I was talking to Doom, who I happen to know agrees with me about Sam Harris. If I were interested in trying to convince someone to reject Harris's idiotic nonsense, then I'd have to do a little more work in offering evidence for my assessment. But I'm not interested.)


I don't blame you in the least for wanting to keep your personal information off the web. I follow the same rule myself. It's just good sense. But here's the thing. Because I am not willing to provide evidence for my educational background or other such stuff, I don't invoke it in arguments. Again, mentioning certain things to Doom, who already knows who I am and what I do, is one thing. But trying to impress you with my fancy credentials is foolishness if I'm unwilling to cough up the credentials when challenged. As such, no credentials get mentioned. I'd recommend the same course to you. Follow the "put up or shut up" rule. You know lots of fancy philosophers, huh? And you think that this claim gives your posts some credibility here? Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Sorry. Tell us who you know, and how you know them, and why we should think that your reports about what they believe are correct. If you're unwilling to produce the goods, don't mention the fancy philosophers that you're allegedly so chummy with. See how easy that is?

You seem to have found those original comments, and you seem to have maybe even understood them this time. So why would I need to repeat them?


Who? Where? When? Specifics, please. I'll need many names of course. A few won't get you what you just claimed. What counts as 'many' is, of course, strongly contextual. There are several thousand professional philosophers in the US. I'd say that in that context, 100 or so would maybe start to count as many.


Even Mackie backed off of that claim. A long time ago.

Long post.. This is getting messy. Any way we can clean up this overflowing discussion?

Of course my opinion doesn't entail truth or falsity. But reasserting your opinion doesn't help your case either.
I rejected the privation argument for logical reasons.

I don't care if evil is defined as the absence of good and it doesn't impress me because it doesn't affect the power of the problem of evil in refuting theism. A child is tortured to death, a baby is raped (these things happen). It was a "lack of good". God allows this "lack of good" to happen. Hence he is not omnipotent or not benevolent. Same argument stands.


How do you know?
[/quote]
How do I know? These are just claims, we can't prove this either way. How do you know there is a metaphysical reality of 'evilness' and that you aren't just making up words an attaching them to things you observe? My version works well with physics and how the natural world appears. Your version brings in complex, undetectable ontologies, moral fields or some such. Occam's razor tends towards my explanation. The person with the larger ontology has the burden of proof.


I don't buy original sin... Do you have any support for this other than ancient texts? Scientific evidence that we aren't just evolved from primates with animalistic tendencies, moderated by human rational behavior?


Actually, I am more of a Hobbesian. I am impressed by people's selfishness, cruelty and malevolence and have a more negative than positive view of human nature. For a simple reason - we are animals.

So it seems we share this in common.


Okay, I see this is your religious position. This doesn't jive with a deterministic world at all though. People don't choose to be born with bad souls or good souls, to bad families or situations. So, god doesn't intervene to save babies from being killed, but he did intervene to do some miracles thousands of years ago? He did intervene, right? That's how we know all this stuff about him... But he doesn't intervene any more. That entails the 'tyrant' position, strong language though.



Not without violating our nature. God is absolute Love as well as absolute Truth. These are one in Him because He is pure absolute Being("I Am He Who Is"). To put it simply if the gun misfired the will behind it simply would have looked for another gun. The misfire wouldn't change the will.
[/quote]
Ending malaria doesn't change our free will to sin or not.
Stopping babies from dying in hurricanes doesn't change our freedom to be good people or not.
Why doesn't god help these people?


This doesn't justify the death of innocents to me, or the allowance of that.

I wouldn't call us mindless robots, but it's not about it being valuable. It's about whether it's true. It's not a mindset. There is reality, and we learn about it and then accept it or do not.


You're referring to pre-history and the comment begs the question. "Suffering" is a subjective emotion that can't you are applying to creatures which you assume had emotions.
[/quote]
So I don't assume animals have emotions. I am absolutely confident that they do, and can back this up with biological research.
To quote Peter Singer:
"Nearly all the external signs that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species, especially the species most closely related to us –the species of mammals and birds. The behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on. In addition, we know that these animals have nervous systems very like ours, which respond physiologically as ours do when the animal is in circumstances in which we would feel pain: an initial rise of blood pressure, dilated pupils, perspiration, an increased pulse rate, and, if the stimulus continues, a fall in blood pressure. Although human beings have a more developed cerebral cortex than other animals, this part of the brain is concerned with thinking functions rather than with basic impulses, emotions, and feelings. These impulses, emotions, and feelings are located in the diencephalon, which is well developed in many other species of animals, especially mammals and birds. "


I don't even know what this means, to objectify the body?
I don't see how science can justify a soul.
Do you think only humans have souls and that animals don't?
At which point do you think the soul entered humans? A whole generation at the same time, or that each new 'sufficiently-human' creature was granted a soul?
Was it for:
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus africanus
Australopithecus garhi
Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Homo habilis
?



In your response you're assuming materialism and demanding proof while you have yet to prove that materialism is the only truth. IOW what you're really saying that in matters of thought and intellect there really is nothing for your science to abstract from. That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. And it is a false claim at that.

[/quote]
I am assuming materialism. I see no evidence of anything else. I see no reason for science of logic to extend to supernatural, non-material things, and no justification for doing so. If you think materialism is false, demonstrate the truth of supernatural, non-material things. (I don't know how you would do this, as I think you only live in a material world, only experience material things, and only have material evidence, by definition).


But your neglecting to ask the right questions and instead you place the blame on God because its an easy out for your atheism. Why are those children dying of starvation? Is it because of God, or because of a greedy warlord or tribal leader wanting to starve out another tribe who they have been at war with for centuries?

You ask, "why didn't God do anything"? I ask you, and God will ask all of us if we dare ask Him the same question you do, "why didn't [b]YOU (or me, or anyone else) do anything?"[/b] Why weren't WE his presence to the world? Why did we decide to sit on the sidelines and allow our cowardess and laziness to rule us even though we saw the evil, knew it was evil, and yet did nothing to stop it!?

All I can say is that God only permits the evil and suffering He does to bring about greater good. Its not an easy answer, it takes a lot of faith, but its the only answer we, or Job, or anyone else, will get.

[/quote]

So you tried to blame suffering on us. I've mentioned many other examples. Babies killed in hurricanes. Death during childbirth. Spina bifida. Autism. Cancer. We can't blame these all on humans, especially in the majority if our history, in the pre global politics, pre modern medicine era. God permits this. Why does letting an infant's brain appear outside the skull so it suffers horribly and dies bring about a greater good?

If you are going to just take it on faith... that's just admitting that you don't have a justification and will just will yourself to believe it despite the argument that speaks against it. I take an argument on faith as a concession, because you can believe anything on faith with no justification.


You cannot come up with any definition of omnibenevolent that you want.

Here's the common sense definition of God as "all-good". God is the source of all that we recognoze as good. In fact we say that God is the source of all Being. Therefore God cannot be evil in any way, for whether an evil is moral or physical, it is properly understood in terms of what should be there but is not. A thing is good of its kind(and the qualification is important) if it succeeds in being that kind to the fullest. It is bad if it fails.

Now there can be no question of failure on the part of the Creator; God is to the fullest. And insofar as goodness is oone with perfect being, God is therefore perfect good.

God is perfectly good in Himself. We are good only so far as we perfectly cooperate with that goodness that is in Him. God, because of His love for us and free will cannot force us to act contrary to our wills despite His desire for us to act in cooperation with His goodness. By doing so he would destroy our wills and in effect destroy how He created us, and act contrary to Love.

He can compell us no more than a parent can compell their drug-addicted son or daughter to go into rehab-through Love and understanding and by informing them of their self-destructive ways. It STILL boils down to free-will; the addict still has to make the choice to change(to repent and do the good they know they ought to do. God, as a loving Father, informs us the Bible. He informs us by showing us the mistakes our forerunners made and gives us the perfect example of self-giving love through the example of His perfect divine Son.

So we have demonstrated that "omnibenevolence" when referring to God means the perfect goodness of God in Himself.

[/quote]
So god is the source of good and perfect goodness. And allows children to die and suffer horribly. The problem of evil stands.



Which really means nothing. Protestant scholars even misunderstand because they read their theology into the text. How do you know that you aren't making the same mistake?

The most obvious mistake is that you keep referring to the "innocents" of the ancient times yet you seem to ignore the clear fact that the Bible describes that every generation from Adam on persisted and even grew in sin from one generation to the next. From fratracide and patricide, to incest, polygamy, and homosexuality, even human sacrifice(adults and infants), & ritual prostitution.
[/quote]
You think the infants of Amalek were sinners and deserved to be put to death? The children deserved to be wiped out in the flood? That none of the infants were innocent? I don't think this is morally sound.


I wasn't exactly trying to convince the whole generation of religious people to abandon their gods. But it is possible. People deconvert and become atheists all the time. Sometimes they have trouble coping, and sometimes they are much better and happier off! There are support groups for the former and great new things for the latter.

Instead, I would say that I see this world with a standard of evidence, as accurately as I can. That I think all gods are made up by men in their stories, and that we, collectively, have a responsibility to help each other and make the world a better and less evil place. This is a beautiful notion to me, not a despairing one.



As long as you disbelieve in "supernatural realms" while presupposing materialism you're begging the question. At best you can only assert a certitude for the non-existence of heaven, you cannot demonstrate or prove it.
[/quote]
Burden of proof is on you here. You claim heaven exists. Your evidence of this supernatural realm is a material book that you read with material eyes.
Consider: I have an invisible dragon in my garage. At best you can assert it doesn't exist, you cannot demonstrate it does not exist. Does this make it logical to believe in the dragon? Does it make it a sensible step? Why do you reject the dragon and not heaven?

If you accept it on faith, then you are not using evidence. You can use faith to accept any religion. This is as much as admitting that you can't logically support this position but must simply accept it is true despite a lack of convincing evidence.


If you think infants can be sinners, I don't know how to respond. Do you think beating babies is okay? Throwing them in jail? Of course not. They can't talk, they can't walk. They can't know any better. Blaming them is silly. It doesn't apply. You can't blame animals or babies without rational capacities. Similarly, calling them sinners is silly. Do you not think so?



I mean, I think heaven is a fabrication. Just like Valhalla and Hades and Elysium. People want to be immortal, so their respective cultures invent other worlds where they can do so.good

To quote you: "Standard criticisms of theism from atheistic philosophers are just so completely half-assed that it's kind of embarrassing. I'm not talking about the kind of juvenile nonsense that rabble rousers like Sam Harris write. (That generally is wholly un-assed.)"

You don't think that is an ad-hominem? You think that is polite? I absolutely feel compelled to respond to those claims. There is another irony, when people who believe in supernatural universe creators and supernatural realms based on ancient books tell me the atheistic challenges are "idiotic" and "juvenile". How would you feel if a scientologist said you were juvenile and idiotic for rejecting Lord Xenu? I know this comparison will offend you, because you think your beliefs are legitimate while scientology and mormonism are silly. But to people like me, they are the same.

I think Sam Harris is incredibly gifted, rational and has made compelling cases that disprove theism and challenge religious belief. I tend to think the Christian apologists are inventive and less logical. But I haven't called W.L. Craig "juvenile".




I don't need to produce fancy credentials (and if I did you'd find some way to denigrate them).

FYI, I studied philosophy at Princeton, with folks such as Peter Singer, Gideon Rosen, Gilbert Harman, Michael Smith, Frank Jackson, Hans Halvorson, and Kwame Appiah. It's arguably the first or second best philosophy department in the world. Of course, now I open myself up to all sorts of criticisms (this class was stupid, the teacher was wrong, oh this is a basic undergraduate course, how do we know he didn't just reject the problem of evil as silly when he introduced it, liberal bias and so on).

I'm attaching a syllabus of the intro philosophy course which addresses the problem of evil here. I can also produce e-mails from the above professors...

I did my independent work under Dan Garber about modern physics and theism (and their incompatibility). Garber worked under Hilary Putnam back in the day. I literally had a meeting yesterday with Hans Halvorson about modern physics and theism/atheism, regarding string cosmology, quantum loop cosmology and relativity.

There was a debate between Gideon Rosen and John Lennox (princeton philosopher and oxford mathematician) a few weeks ago hosted by Harvard's Veritas forum at Princeton. It was on the problem of evil. So your statement that the problem of evil (or the logical one) was ignored, not taken seriously, etc. is all not true, I'm afraid.

I can't demonstrate this any more clearly. Would it even matter if I were a famous, published philosopher? If I were say, Peter Singer, arguably the most influential and famous philosopher alive? No. You'd just say "Singer is stupid and wrong."

You want me to demonstrate authority and then you'll reject it. Whereas I've been advocating that ideas, not authority, should do the talking. Then you say you didn't invoke your authority, you just seconded someone who 'apparently' had authority about the state of philosophy of religion. Now you're doing anything possible to deny my claims to hold on to your belief that he was correct. Rosen/Lennox debate happened a few weeks ago. Refute that. Do you want the link?

Is that enough evidence? The Rosen/Lennox debate alone should be enough. But if the syllabus and the meeting with Halvorson yesterday doesn't do it (I can send you the poster of the event), I can send you an e-mail from any of the above names...

I'd appreciate if you'd take me at my word from now on.

Moral relativism is compatible with all these things you mentioned. For example, I've personally talked to atheists who said that they don't believe in objective morality, but are utilitarian, virtue ethicists or follow Rand for various reasons. I suspect if you asked them flat out whether there is such a thing as objective morality, they'll say that there isn't one.

No, it isn't I'm afraid. You flat out said that most atheists are not moral relativists. You can't get anywhere near close to proving that with one atheist - I could just as easily cite this one theist I met who was a moral nihilist. On the other hand, I have evidence for you that what you claimed isn't true: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/search? ... rict_sr=on

The amount of debate within the atheist community is significant, I'm sure you'll agree.

First of all, why is pain-in-and-of-itself as a feeling/sensation, not good? Second of all, if suffering and pain can lead to good consequences and you have any sympathies towards consequentialism, then I'm sure you'll agree that suffering and pain can be good.

You'll have to ask religious people.



First of all, this is a strange hypothetical and I would argue it's inappropriate. One could definitely argue that what's 'evil' here is the fact that this suffering goes on for eternity, not that suffering and pain exists at all. The length of time is at issue here. There are atheists who argue that heaven would be horrible, because heaven goes on for eternity, even though almost by definition heaven would be a pleasant and great place to be in. So it would seem that it is not pleasure or pain that determines good and bad for some people.

Second, note that he doesn't have the best response in the world to someone who thinks that 'the worst possible suffering for everyone isn't bad'. He simply asserts, and it is an assertion, that the opponent doesn't know what he's talking about and then presents his view of what moral goodness is. That's his opinion.

Third, the way he sets out the conditional is just bad, and almost misrepresents moral relativism. The point of moral relativism is that you can't just blithely say that this is good or bad, you have to say this is good or bad in relation to something e.g. individual opinion. It's not so much that moral relativists don't think pain and suffering is bad, it's that they don't think it's bad (or good) per se. They may well agree that pain and suffering is bad in every instance, but they'll do so with the caveat that it is a subjective judgement. It doesn't matter if everyone who ever existed, exists now or will exist, consider pain and suffering bad, that does not make suffering and pain objectively bad any more than slavery would be good if they held that opinion instead.

Even if we feel pain and suffering as 'bad', on an instinctual, feeling based-level, that does not make pain and suffering objectively bad for the same reason that suicide is not objectively bad, even though most people shy away from it. Biology is not objectivity. If we had evolved to welcome death, perhaps because we were plants who could best spread our genes by being eaten, then we would jump at the chance to die. And if we did not have any pain receptors at all, then I think it'd be meaningless to speak of pain as bad, if they was no one around to feel pain.

Finally, Sam Harris' hypothetical isn't really appropriate to questions of theodicy, although he probably wasn't think of theodicy when he said what he did. Theodicy applies to here and now, not an imaginary world where everyone is born into endless suffering of the worst kind. If it is somehow true that suffering the worst possible suffering forever is bad, it decides nothing. Because what we have here on Earth is not that sort of suffering.

Sorry, I didn't answer because I didn't see this before..... I apologize if I appeared dismissive. That is not my intention. It is simply that unlike the guys, who focus on the intellectual components of faith, I am more interested in psychology. Now the guys think you need some connections made for you intellectually. I think CKC is doing an excellent job of getting you to do that for yourself -- However, I think there are writers who have been given a grace that transcends the written material and so if I point you to them, it is not 'merely' the basic answers that I am pointing you to. I don't think I can explain that any more at this time.... Anyhow, carry on the good work.....

Again, you seem to be using the term "omnipotent" equivocally so lets define the term before we continue.

To say that God is omniscient or omnipotent mean that there can be no real barriers to God's knowing or acting. Apart from Himself, God has created everything there is to be known and sustains it in being. So it is impossible to think of something as thwarting God's will, that is and I can't say this any more clear,...
UNLESS GOD HIMSELF ALLOWS THE THWARTING-as in the human free choice to sin.

But that is a circumstance that requires omnipotence, and therefore is not an argument against it.

Yes, these things happen, but they happen because of the choices of people, not because of the choice of God. You're demanding that God act contrary to Himself and how He created us. You're demanding that God be a tyrant and thus act contrary to love and goodness in order to prove His goodness.

Basically you're demanding that God contradict Himself.


You're only asserting Occam's razor because you conveniently and a priori "shave away" God as a possibility. You also ignore contradictions in your assertions.

Lastly, the person who usually says "the burden of proof lies with" those who they oppose are usually the one with the weak position. You came here, to a Catholic forum, asserting your beliefs. So the fact is that the burden of proof lies with you because you are the one asserting your assumptions about the problem of evil.

Therefore the burden lies with you.

You see the evil in the world. You have no problem expounding this data as "proof" about God's supposed non-existence, yet you deny original sin and assert Darwinism?

So then would you also agree with the idea that you can get more from less? That you can get human rationalism from animalistic tendencies?


No, we are not animals. But we can, and do, succumb to base desires in mimmickry of animals and the fallen world. We were made ,and are called to, a higher degree of life that is evidence by our ability to reason and our desire for good.

In order to argue determinism you must prove materialism. You have yet to prove that materialism is true so essentially you're begging the question.

Secondly, I never said that people are born with good souls or bad souls. In fact I said that all people are created good, then they choose bad acts.

God's intervention into time does not either mean He's a tyrant because it presupposes His omniscience and omnipotence. He chose to intervene because He knew the dispositions and hearts of those He was intervening for and against. He knew what the response-their choices-would be to His intervention and he knew the consequences that would follow from that intervention and how all would follow according to His plan. That's the advantage of being a Divine Being in eternity-you see all times at once in their present as they happen.

You argue, that He doesn't intervene anymore? How do you know? Have you done a study, a survey?




Again, why don't you?

Hurricanes don't kill people. It's the people who know they live in an area of high risk for hurricanes who accept that a hurricane may or may not kill them. Its as rediculous as the person who lives in the shadow of a volcano and one morning wakes up surprised to find a lava flow in their back yard.

Basically, how do you know He doesn't? Or better, who are you to determine what is defined as "help"?

I find it funny that you think you're in the position to make a judgement on the matter. Or that God has an obligation to justify it to you. Seems to me that you have an inclination to put yourself in the place of God.

Again, you're presupposing materialism and begging the question.



Singer here is equivocating feelings and emotions. What he describes are things felt-external stimuli-and he is abstracting that those must translate to internal subjective emotions. He's making the mistake that similiarity necessarily implies descent. He makes these assumptions because he is a utilitarianist and a materialist. He's in effect reading his philosophy into his science.

BTW, this is the same utilitarianist-who unabashedly advocates abortion and euthanasia-who when his mother was sick with a supposedly terminal illness, elected to care for her rather than follow his philosophy and euthanize her.

His excuse? He didn't admit that his theory was wrong, he merely said, "that doesn't mean my rules are wrong, it only means that I disobeyed them in the case of my mother, and acted unethically."http://oldarchive.godspy.com/issues/WHATS-LOVE-GOT-TO-DO-WITH-IT-The-Ethical-Contradictions-of-Peter-Singer-by-Dr-Peter-J-Colosi.cfm.html

Yet Singer I guess forgot that he wrote on page 2 of his book Practical Ethics, where he asserts, "...ethics is not an ideal system that is noble in theory but no good in practice."


I'll start a thread in the Lyceum on it.

If by "science" you mean empiricism then you're not even raising an argument. You're merely recognizing the limits of the empirical.

No, I make a distinction bewteen the types of souls they have.

At which point do you think the soul entered humans? A whole generation at the same time, or that each new 'sufficiently-human' creature was granted a soul?
Was it for:
Australopithecus afarensis
Australopithecus africanus
Australopithecus garhi
Australopithecus bahrelghazali
Homo habilis
?[/quote]
Again, I don't deny the existence of a type of soul in animals. As far as "sufficiently human" you're assuming that these species are each and all "human" as we are which begs the question.

I'm not in the habit of interpreting data to suit my philosophy.



No, you're assuming empiricism, and it is an a priori and self-contradictory doctrine. It is not empirical enough.



Again, "babies killed in hurricanes"?-somebody made the choice to live there.

Death during childbirth? Spina bifida? Autism? Cancer? We can't blame these on humans? So my father who smoked all his life, did drugs, and got cancer is "innocent"? That he refused to take care of himself after receiving his stem-cell infusions and died from an infection isn't his fault?

I also watched my father die a peaceful and holy death despite all of his pain and suffering. And I believe that in some mysterious way what he endured in some way redeemed others as well as himself.

The bottom line is that all of your examples can and do trace back to human decisions, human free will, not God. So your argument fails.




Wrong. Your argument amounts to cutting off your head to stop a nosebleed. Your argument fails because without a good God then you have no way of making a judgement about what evil is or not.

Without Perfect Goodness good and evil are subjective and relative terms. By even calling evil "evil" you implicitly bear witness to a supreme Goodness.



There are two things I know for sure: there is a God, and I'm not Him. I make no assumptions, I go by what happened. What I think is morally sound is irrelevent.


You're running from the argument. We all know that, even in this time of the modern nuclear family, that when a grandfather was abused then it was that much harder for him not to abuse his son, and later for that father not to abuse his son. Sin always is proliferated from one generation to the next. Even more so when you have the families of the ancient times when multiple generations of families would live in the same house.


A "standard" that is false is not a standard.

Secondly, about your charge that man "made up" God, I'll say this: If God DID exist, we'd invent atheism anyway. And we did.

I don't know what you're like, but I know what I'm like. And I know what God is like-at elat the God I say I believe in. That God is infinite; and He's all-wise, so He knows everything about me. He's all-good, too, and all-righteous, and perfectly holy. And He commands me to be perfectly holy too. Since he's all-wise, He knows exactly when I'm not very holy or good, and He judges me based on what He knows. And He's immutable too, so He'll never change. He'll always be the way He is now; so He'll always hold me to the same standards; and He's going t ojudge me by every idle word I utter.

That kind of God threatens my present state of existence and my lifestyle. If I were going to invent a god, I'd probably make one more congenial to my whims. [b]And if I didn't have the sense to invent him that way in the first place, I'd at least invent a god who could change his mind.

The lesser gods-like those of the ancients like the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Greeks, even the Romans-they were invented gods. It was obvious because in the stories that proclaimed them they were essentially human: petty, jealous, lustful, greedy, etc. And all of these ancient cultures also espoused a form of your determinism; the people who believed in these gods believed that they had no control over their lives and were entirely subject to fate. That should tell you something.




As long as you disbelieve in "supernatural realms" while presupposing materialism you're begging the question. At best you can only assert a certitude for the non-existence of heaven, you cannot demonstrate or prove it.
[/quote]
Burden of proof is on you here. You claim heaven exists. Your evidence of this supernatural realm is a material book that you read with material eyes.[/quote]
Again, see above on this charge. Within this context, the burden is on you. You're the one making the assertions.

Secondly, that I have material eyes, while important, is not an argument against the existence of heaven. The material eyes do not produce the immaterial "I" the self. Yes, it is an argument based on authority. But there is ample evidence-such as the thousands of NDE's-that can amount to a convincing amount of converging clues.


The "wishful thinking" argument. Basically your saying that there is no scientific evidence for heaven so then there is no heaven.

There no scientific evidence for the notion that nothing exists except what is proved by scientific evidence. You assume that whatever there is no scientific evidence for, does not exist. But there is no scientific evidence for the assumption. It is simply an arbitrary decision to narrow the bounds of reality to the bounds of materialism and the scientific method. This is a decision of the will, not the intellect.

Nor for many other ideas that everyone admits are valid, even the scientist. When the scientist closes his laboratory and goes home and kisses his wife, he does not believe there is nothing there but hormones and neurons and molecules.

No, I'm making an argument based on authority. Not all arguments are accepted only on material evidence. Some are accepted on philisophical insight, some on authority, some on converging clues.

Naturally arguments based on authority are not as "powerful" as those based on evidence. But it doesn't mean that the argument is unproven. You have yet to show ANY evidence of its impossibility. All you have been able to say is that you see no (material) evidence. Which goes to the abouve reply.

All knowledge is based on faith in some sense, whether emotional, intellectual, or volitional. One demands proof when the one who he is trying to obtain knowledge from is untrustworthy. Naturally, if I were to say "I believe in God" and yet demand proof from that same God would be absurd. Because for God to be God by definition He must be Truth itself. And if He would lie He would be a contradiction and therefore not God.

My conclusion follows from the data I have and IS logical and valid. You burden is to prove that materialism is the only "game in town". Which you have not. And until you do, you're arguing in a circle.


I've already given the definition of what sin is, and it is that definition I go by when making the determination about infants being sinners. For the sake of breveity I suggest you go back and read it again. It is not a positive notion but a natural and inherent reality. So it is not "silly", in fact it a rather serious thing. Something that theists can take much more seriously that atheists.

You're other objections are as laughable as they are absurd. They're emotionally driven and inflammitory.


I have several replies to this one:
a) The heaven of the Bible does not correspond to our dreams or wishful thinking. It is selfless, self-forgetful love and saintliness, not the gratification of selfish desires; the death of egotism rather than its ratification; holiness rather than indulgence; adoration and self-forgetful worship of God rather than self-carressing autoeroticism; spiritual love rather than physical love.
b) Even the physical details or symbols of heaven do not correspond to the popular Bible picture. When you consider the details in the Bible or the details in the experiences of the saints or patients who have had NDE's the experience of heaven is always a surprise and a shock.
c) Even if there is a correspondence between our innate wishes and the idea of heaven, that correspondence could equally well be explained by God's having designed us for heaven rather than by our having designed heaven for ourselves. The glove could have been made for the hand, or the hand could have been made for the glove.
d) Your reasoning is fallacious. It argues: If there were no heaven, we would have to believe in one(because we need and want it so much); and we do(have to) believe in one; therefore there is no heaven. This is you affirming the consequent. You might as well say that if there were no earth, we would still have to believe in it(because it appears to our senses); and we do(have to) believe in it; therefore there is no earth.
e) If an effect cannot exceed its cause, how can the idea of heaven, perfect and beautiful as it is, be caused by our fallen, foolish, fallible, finite minds?

Do I think it is polite? Not particularly. Do I think it is ad hominem? Well, I already admitted that the bit about Harris includes some lines that could be taken as ad hominem, but it is absolutely and perfectly clear that the earlier bit just doesn't. You appear to be conflating impoliteness with ad hominem. If you are that confused about what ad hominem argumentation is, then that explains why you're having trouble properly characterizing my post.

If you think so, then this is evidence that you don't understand Christianity. That's no surprise.


I have already corrected you on this, yet you persist in your error. It shows you are not very teachable. I have clearly and repeatedly distinguished the logical from the evidential argument from evil, and I have pointed out that no philosopher who knows anything about post-1960's philosophy of religion really takes the logical problem of evil seriously anymore. But I have also repeatedly pointed out that lots of people take the evidential argument very seriously. Your response is to mention a debate about the problem of evil as though that somehow refuted my claim. But it's totally irrelevant, unless (1) they were, in the course of that debate, taking the logical problem of evil seriously and (2) they are knowledgeable about the literature in the philosophy of religion since the 60's. You have given no evidence to support either claim. And as it happens, Rosen doesn't even pretend to be especially knowledgeable about philosophy of religion. He doesn't publish in the area. He doesn't claim it as an AOS or even as an AOC on his CV. https://philosophy.princeton.edu/compon ... sen_cv.pdf (This is a bit outdated, but it's what he's got up.) Being a really smart guy--even a really smart guy who teaches philosophy at Princeton--doesn't make you an expert on philosophy of religion. Nor does being a smart mathematician, for that matter.



I want you to provide evidence to support the claims you make. (Like, for example, your repeated assertions about what I would say. What's your evidence for these counterfactuals you so gratuitously assert?) I assure you that I would not be talking to you about your alleged connections if you didn't keep trying to beat us up with them. You repeatedly insist on your close connections with fancy philosophers, because you appear to believe that this gives you some cache. I simply point out that if you want to throw your weight around due to your fancy associations, you need to give us some reason to believe that you have those associations. That leaves open entirely the question of whether those associations should matter. But that's a second question, and doesn't need to be addressed until the first is answered.


I mentioned Quentin Smith, an atheist philosopher of religion who very clearly is an authority about the state of that sub-discipline. I also mentioned William Alston, who is among the two or three most important philosophers of religion of the last half century. Apparently you don't recognize either name, which tells me a good deal about how well your fancy associations have taught you about recent philosophy of religion.

Anyway, I wasn't arguing from authority. I wasn't arguing at all. I was simply talking to Doom about that point. You can accept what I say or reject it as you wish. It's of no consequence to me. But I think you need to pay much closer attention to what's being said here (since you pretty consistently get that wrong) and to whom it is being said (since you seem to ignore that, as though it were irrelevant). If you try a bit harder to follow along, you'll find things go better for you.


Sorry, no, none of that matters in the very least. Not because I don't believe you (I do), but because having studied philosophy at Princeton or elsewhere doesn't make you an expert. Even if you get emails from your professors, that doesn't actually clothe you with their mantle. You're still just a joe schmoe. So let's just make it about the ideas--which is what you say you're interested in anyway--and leave all your fancy teachers out of it. Simple, huh? Here's how that would work. If you wanted to rebut my claim that people don't take the logical problem of evil seriously anymore, you could, instead of attempting to impress me with all the philosophers you know, provide some citations of philosophers actually knowledgeable about recent philosophy of religion who are pressing specifically the logical problem of evil. That would make it about the facts, not about your alleged expertise.

By all means, you can instead point out that I have provided no real evidence for my own claims about the logical problem of evil. And since I've made the assertion, the burden of proof falls to me. That would be a fair observation--provided you also bear in mind that, again, I wasn't arguing for my view, I was simply stating it, to Doom, not to you. And I decline to do the work I would have to do to support it. As such, you are welcome to simply dismiss it. That's fine. As I say, I wasn't talking to you about it in the first place. So your ignoring it doesn't hurt my feelings. But if you elect to try to rebut my claims, then I'd suggest you do so by way of some actual evidence, and not your reports about what your Princeton pals allegedly think.

Original sin is only the first mystery in dealing with the apparently unjust distribution of evil, the second is Vicarious Atonement. Just as the sins of the guilty harm the innocent, so can the sufferings and virtue of the innocent can help redeem the guilty.

The problem of evil is created by us and is solved by God because God took all of the world's evil and bore it Himself in Christ.

All of the sufferings that will ever exist in the world were also suffered by God in Christ.

He was not just a good man who died terribly. He was God who took upon Himself all of the world's evil while being perfectly innocent. He was God who became a man so as to lift the world's suffering from something that seems pointless to something that is not merely necessary but effectual and redemptive, becaue He lifted what He suffered into eternity and allowed us to unite our sufferings to His. For the Redeemer was literally our brother, and His suffering saved His whole family.

To a materialist, suffering is pointless. And it is pointless because you in your philosophy have eliminated God.

Sufferings do not automatically do anyone any good. They must be willed, accepted, believed, offered up, and joined to Christ's. Much suffering can be wasted, and is.

But any suffering can do someone good. God would not allow it otherwise.

dschiff, you do have the deepest form of atheism. Your problem is not with God per se, but with the world He created. It's too complex and mysterious for your rationalistic mind. Just as Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan's brother is found guilty of a murder he didn't commit, while Ivan is not punished for a murder he was responsible for, and he cannot accept this. Along with Dostoyevsky's Bothers Karamazov, I suggest you read Charles Williams's Descent into Hell, C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, & J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

A trilogy of winners, from three of my people.

GKC