Quote from: beejazzEvil as the absence of good is hardly mainstream religion.

Sorry mate, but it is. This is a fairly good start.  If you want I can also dig up stuff from the Roman Catholic Catechism

Here's one of Rowan's partial responses to the Problem of Evil

The problem we've all had with you, Akrasia can, and has been stated by a few of us, is that you are arguing an Atheism that is an 'anti-christianity'. This is flawed on two levels.

The first is that it presupposes that the belief structures of the Christians you've met are perfectly in line with what God must be, if He existed.  So, you are arguing about an infallible God from the perspectives of fallible human belief structures.

Second, and more importantly to me, is that  simply rejecting a single framework of beliefs does not somehow magically eliminate all beliefs.  I've pointed out two or three fairly large belief structures that are utterly beyond your 'problem of evil', and you've blown them off as irrelevant because you are not arguing atheism, you are arguing 'anti-christianity-as-I-Understand-it'...  And unassailable position, to be sure, just like my statement about the color of the sky.

Regretfully my internet time is limited during weekends for personal reasons, but it sounds like you won't be on either.   But I'll leave off with this: If you die and meet 'Doug' from the tone of your arguements you'd reject him even then as not meeting your stringent requirements for Diety-hood.  Convert to the worship of Doug, it's easy and so unstressful. Be content in the knowledge that your afterlife, for good or ill, will be short as Doug consumes your soul to make him stronger.  Maybe, if you are really really lucky, a part of your soul will be spit out and you'll reincarnate as a Pika

Spike, I have to get a train in a few hours, so here is a quick reply to something you said ...

Quote from: Spike...  simply rejecting a single framework of beliefs does not somehow magically eliminate all beliefs.  I've pointed out two or three fairly large belief structures that are utterly beyond your 'problem of evil', and you've blown them off as irrelevant because you are not arguing atheism, you are arguing 'anti-christianity-as-I-Understand-it'...

Well, as I've stated many times already, one can only take on so many positions at once.  

I agree that the 'problem of evil' argument is aimed at a very specific target, viz., the three main monotheistic religions (as traditionally understood).  Since atheism includes rejecting those religions, it makes sense that I, as an atheist, would want to explain why (i.e. what reasons I have) for rejecting Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

As for those other 'belief structures', tell me about them!    I'd be happy to critically evaluate those on a case-by-case basis.  A single argument (as I've been at pains to explain many times already) can only do so much.  Fortunately, so long as arguments are mutually consistent and compatible, there is no limit to the number of rational arguments we can make!

In short, your expectations for a single argument strike me as unrealistic.  But I'll happily critically evaluate whatever other 'belief structures' you like!

Quote from: Hastur T. Fannon... Here's one of Rowan's partial responses to the Problem of Evil

Thanks for the link.  I hope to read it once I get settled back in Dublin.  

QuoteRather, we should -- if we are responsible reasoners -- determine what to believe on the basis of the strength of the available evidence.

Right, except for your acceptance of the problem of evil, which assumes the existence of evidence (God's knowable motives). That evidence is not only not present, it's not available via induction because all the evidence points the opposite direction.

QuoteTo assert that a proposition needs an absolutely irrefutable argument (or ‘proof’, in your sense) in order to be a subject of justified belief or knowledge would render us with no beliefs about the external world at all.

I'm not talking about justified belief. Remember that bit about the English language? I'm using the English language to duscuss faith, not the Akrasian language to discuss it. If you insist on using your language can we get an online tranlator so I can run your posts through it?

QuoteNo, because according to established religion evil is the absence of goodness. (Sheesh, do I have to explain everything here?)

Source?

QuoteAnyhow, if God was truly completely incomprehensible to us, why would anyone possibly worship Him?

Nice straw man. Who said he was completely incomprehensible? Presumably we can understand those parts that He deigns to explain.

QuoteConsider this possible God: God in fact wants to be as evil as possible, and his commandments, actions, and statements in the Bible are all an elaborate practical joke.

Now, if you’re right, and God is truly completely incomprehensible, then we have no reason to believe that my ‘evil trickster God’ is any less possible than the traditional conception of God.

Barring the BS about me saying "completely" you're absolutely right. It's possible that God is indeed a bastard that wants to screw with us through religion. What does that have to do with the problem of evil?

QuoteHowever, you’re simply wrong in claiming that the established religions assert that God is wholly incomprehensible to us.

No matter how many times you repeat it, it won't put the words in my mouth.

QuoteIn Christianity and Judaism at least, God created Man in His Image. This suggests that we do resemble God in at least some limited ways.

An infant is "created" in the image of it's parents. do you claim that infants can know the minds of their parents?

QuoteMoreover, as I’ve already mentioned, the main monotheistic religions all make certain claims about God’s “state of mind”, namely, that He loves us, that He wants us to obey Him, that we have (at least some) knowledge of His moral law, etc.

True, but none of that says we can understand his motives. "God works in mysterious ways" is a tenet of many faiths. So while he may have created us in his image that doesn't give us insight into his mind.

QuoteSo, not only is your own argument implausible in its own right, it is directly contradicted by what the main monotheistic religions assert.

Evidence? Beyond "I say so" of course. I'll need to see some actual religous practices stating that we can completely understand the mind of god enough to make the problem of evil a good argument.

QuoteAgain, my argument doesn’t require me to ‘fully understand the mind of God and know his every idea and motive’. I simply do not understand why you think this is a plausible argument against my overall position.

Yes, it does. you're trying to assign motives to someone and use that assignment of motives as a basis for a logical argument. If it turns out your assignment of motives isn't valid then the entire argument crumbles.

QuoteI think I’ve already explained why this whole line of argument is not plausible.

Unfortunately you haven't. you've yet to see the simple fact that the problem of evil requires assignment of motives to a being whose motives cannot be understood. The religions that you say claim this even admit as much with saying such as "god works in myseterious ways" and "none can know the mind of God."

QuoteSee my earlier explanation regarding all of our beliefs about the external world.

See my earlier rebuttal where that doesn't matter.

QuoteIn contrast, faith requires belief inspite of evidence and reasoning (or positing something in the complete absence of evidence and reasoning).

There you go again, speaking Akrasian. The English dictionary disagrees with you. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to stick with the language I know on this one. If you need to change definitions to avoid thinking you've got faith then by all means do it, but you'll avoid a lot of confusion if you pick a commonly used language and use it instead.

QuoteLook, even religious people agree that some of the inductive beliefs that we have (e.g. ‘water is composed of H2O’) are very well justified -- and are fundamentally different from religious beliefs. I hear from religious people all the time that they have ‘faith’, and that this is different form their other beliefs. I’m willing to take them at their word: they assert that they hold beliefs that they cannot justify or rationally argue for. I agree. This is why I’m not religious -- I oppose adopting worldviews on the basis of faith.

I thought we were discussing the problem of evil and your faith? do you want to change the topic to the validity of physics instead? I'll have to abstain from that particular topic, as otherwise I'll make a fool of myself pretty quickly.

QuotePlease explain to me why my argument involves ‘faith’ in any form.

I already did. Over and over and over and over and over again. Here we go though. I'll first restate the problem so I can handle it one point at a time:

1. If God exists (as understood by the main monotheistic religions), he is omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent

-- I think we've shown that thatlast bit (omnibenevolent) is rubbish, but for argument's sake we'll leave it in.

2. If suffering exists, God cannot be omniscient & omnipotent & omnibenevolent (at most he can only be two of those things, e.g. he might be all-knowing and all-powerful, but not care about the existence of widespread suffering).

-- Here's where you draw on faith (by which I mean the English language version of belief without proof). You require faith because premise 2 has an unspoken premise attached to it.

2a. We can understand the universe and god's mind enough to know that suffering is never a requirement for the greater good.

3. We know suffering exists.

-- Agreed

4. Therefore God does not exist (i.e. any God that is omniscient & omnipotent & omnibenevolent).

-- Close. This should read "Therefore the God whose motives I believe in without proof does not exist."

QuoteThey are not the same thing!

Unless you use the English language. :lol

QuoteI have not idea what this means.

It means that if you can't answer my question then you have to admit you cannot understand God's motives. English troubles again?

QuoteNo that’s not the ‘exact same argument’. And yes, it is pretty stupid.

It's not? The problem of evil doesn't hinge on the fact that God allows suffering to come to his children? The Joe the Butcher argument doesn't hinge upon Joe allowing suffering to come to his child?

QuoteNothing in that definition is in contradiction to what I have stated and argued.

Except the parts where you fail to prove the premises of the problem of evil and then state your belief in it isn't faith. :lol

QuotePremises are not sound or unsound. Arguments are sound or unsound. Premises are true or false.

Nice dodge into semantics. You knew what I meant though. The premises in the problem of evil are unprovable, hence while the argument may be sound, using it as a basis for a world view requires belief without proof.

QuoteI don’t know why you think I need “some proven knowledge of what is best for you” or what that has to do with anything I’ve argued.

Because for the problem of evil to be a viable argument you have to be able to know what is nbest for everyone at all times. If you don't know that, then you don't know that suffering is never what's best for you. And if you don't know that then the leap from 3 to 4 is a bad one.

Quote from: SpikeThe problem we've all had with you, Akrasia can, and has been stated by a few of us, is that you are arguing an Atheism that is an 'anti-christianity'. This is flawed on two levels.

That's not my problem. I can see that the problem of evil is just one basis for the faith of atheism. My problem is the outright refusal to understand thhat the argument requires belief without proof in regards to God's motives, and is therefor an argument that is based on faith.

Akrasia, let me mirror Spike's comments that I find it deeply annoying that you seem to be equating "I can poke holes into certain very specific christian theologies" to meaning "I can prove God doesn't exist!!".

They're not the same thing, and it makes it seem like you either have a very personal beef in all this (some resentment from your mennonite childhood perhaps?) or like you're just woefully uneducated (which none of my previous experience with you would seem to imply). Its just bad rhetoric.

It also highlites my point that most self-titled "atheists" are really "anti-religionists" with a militant streak that are as dogmatic as the religionists they oppose.

RPGPundit

Quote from: James McMurrayRight, except for your acceptance of the problem of evil, which assumes the existence of evidence (God's knowable motives). That evidence is not only not present, it's not available via induction because all the evidence points the opposite direction.

Yes, Augustine expresses this very colourfully with his example; that a Father might hit a boy, and a pederast might kiss one, but the former hits him out of love, while the latter kisses him with sinful intent; but to an outsider merely seeing the two actions, they might misinterpret the first as an "evil" act and the second as a "good" act.

Of course, this from the guy who married a 10 year old girl. Ah, those crazy fathers o' the church...

RPGPundit

Quote from: AkrasiaAs for those other 'belief structures', tell me about them!    I'd be happy to critically evaluate those on a case-by-case basis.  A single argument (as I've been at pains to explain many times already) can only do so much.  Fortunately, so long as arguments are mutually consistent and compatible, there is no limit to the number of rational arguments we can make!

In short, your expectations for a single argument strike me as unrealistic.  But I'll happily critically evaluate whatever other 'belief structures' you like!

Well, I've already named them, but I'll do it again.

Buddism is most definitely NOT a J/C faith, yet it seems to dwell exactly on the 'problem of evil'... that is the belief structure seems to exist to explain and understand why suffering exists in the world. There isn't even a creator diety to point too, yet I would argue, and expect agreement from most everyone, that you could not be a believer of buddism AND an atheist. Yet, Buddism is the third largest faith in the world by most counts.  

You have lumped Islam into J/C faiths, yet according to the Quran, as I've stated before, God is is not benevolent, any more than old testament Jewish God was, perhaps less.   Allah causes it all to happen, and it isn't the believers place to understand why, only to accept that everything, even to their decision to accept it or not, is God's will.  If the faithful has doubts, God put those doubts there.  

That is just a literal reading of the Suras, of course, but it is a fact that many Muslims are incredibly fatalistic in their outlook. Inshallah, brother. God willing.  

The point is, such a perspective on God, Allah if you will, suggests that the creator is not the source of all that is Good and that evil exists some how despite Him, but rather that God is neither Good nor Evil, but GOD, and all things are His will. No problem of Evil there, it is Gods will that it exists, period.  It isn't even a debate from a traditionalist perspective.  Now, wether or not Islamic philosophers debated the reasons God allows for evil and suffering and non-believers is another matter, the belief structure, the written word of God makes it plain.  And while Jews and Christians may claim the bible is the word of God, Islam KNOWS it is, transmitted to the prophet verbatim by the Archangel Gabriel.   So, God Himself, in Islam, said 'I did it all, don't you never mind why' and that is the end of the story.  Now, we can debate the validity of various beliefs, but simply claiming the followers think God is benevolent doesn't touch on the.... er... facts of the case, as it were.

Then there comes the Hindu faith, where the 'Gods' are neither omnisecient nor omnipotent.  Now, I gather you would dismiss them as 'not godly enough', based on earlier comments about 'powerful aliens not worthy of worship', but to be honest, most of humanity worshipped similar gods long before monotheism ever popped into the scene, and even earlier takes on monotheism (including Old testament God) weren't always 'all powerful'. The God of the jews wasn't originally 'all powerful' meaning he could do anything and everything, he was 'All Powerful' becuase he could do all the things other Gods could by himself.  Need a love God? Not really, God can do it. Need a War God? Same deal.   Over time that evolved from 'general purpose God' to 'All powerful creator of everything'.   Hell, the way I read it, God never denies the existance of other Gods, he doesn't want HIS people worshipping them 'cause he is a Jealous God.  

Now, if I really REALLY wanted to, I'm sure I could frame an arguement based in rational thought that was an arguement for Atheism over irrational supersitious beliefs that wasn't dependent upon the Dogma's and Doctrines of any given church. Inclusive. I don't care enough to do so.  I just think that if you base your atheism purely on the rejection of a single faith it's a damned hollow atheism indeed.



As a post script:  If you really want to twist your head around on other belief structures that explain your 'problem of Evil' read up on Gnostic beliefs.   That is early Christian beliefs that were ousted by the dominant church, and they very handily discuss your issues as well.  To sum up? (and recall that there were many branches with different beliefs...)

God created everything, a pure, perfect realm of creation. Sophia (wisdom) bore a child and hid it from God, called the Demiurge. The Demiurge created the mortal world, but because he is not God, and not perfect, the world is flawed.  True spiritual enlightenment takes you from this flawed world of suffereing through Sophia (wisdom) into the pure spiritual realms of the true God.  

Mind you that is just a very rough outline (and the Pundit could probably assrape my description eight ways from sunday), and MY sample doesn't discuss why a perfect creator god allows the flawed Demiurge to exist.  But then, I'm not an expert on Gnostic beliefs either.  Now, if you suggest that a less than all knowing/allpowerful/all benevolent diety is unworthy of worship as a God, perhaps your standards are too high.

Even Christian belief structures (the honest ones anyway) don't claim that God is omnibenevolent (at least not in the way that would require suffering be abolished). The idea that God allowed suffering (Christ on the cross) for a greater good (salvation of mankind) shows that He believes suffering to be necessary at times.

Akrasia, I think my problem with the "argument of evil" is that it's an argument that exists in a philosophical vacuum.  Your perceptions of your God are this, if these are true, your God cannot exist.  It's an infallible argument with no objective evidence to support or detract from it.  Science is the application of logic that measures perception over time.  Science has not proven or disproven the existence of a God.  There is no conceivable way at this time that scientists can measure a definable attribute of a God.  It's hard for me to believe that a logical argument has proven the non-existence of a God when the Scientific Method which is an application of logic has not.  

Akrasia, please clarify if I'm misunderstanding the secondary argument.  You are an atheist.  You claim that atheism doesn't require faith.  Don't worry I won't define faith for the third time but I will define atheist because I had to look it up to make sure I hadn't been using it wrong the entire discussion.  

atheist - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

What I think me and others have been trying to say, it requires as much faith to not believe in a supreme being than to believe in one because they are still both valid theories.  With no evidence that discredits either theory you have to have faith that your belief is true.  The individual that cannot determine whether a supreme being exists or not, is not an atheist.  

Quote from: AkrasiaAnyway, James and Spike (and others!), I wanted to apologise for the frequently condescending and obnoxious tone of my posts. I sometimes get into a kind of 'snark mode' that isn't especially constructive.

No worries, I expect it from philosophers.  

Quote from: AkrasiaVery roughly, the 'problem of evil' argument states:

1. If God exists (as understood by the main monotheistic religions), he is omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent
2. If suffering exists, God cannot be omniscient & omnipotent & omnibenevolent (at most he can only be two of those things, e.g. he might be all-knowing and all-powerful, but not care about the existence of widespread suffering).
3. We know suffering exists.
4. Therefore God does not exist (i.e. any God that is omniscient & omnipotent & omnibenevolent).

It is clearly a valid argument (if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true). Whether it is sound depends on the truth of its premises. Presumably religious folk dispute the truth of premise 2.

No.

Because you missed a premise:

2.5: An omnibenevolent entity would, by their very nature, view the removal of suffering as a greater priority than any side-effect of said removal.

And that's where the strongest counter-argument lies; that a necessary side-effect of removing suffering might also be to remove meaningful choice, and that an omnibenevolent entity might actually value the capacity for meaningful choice to be vastly more than the value for a humanity that does not suffer.

See C.S. Lewis in "The Problem of Pain" for a much better-phrased version of this argument.

Yeah, what he said. Which is what I said, but phrased better.

Why all this talk about the hypothetical properties of a diety when none of it is testable and falsafiable?

Quote from: YamoWhy all this talk about the hypothetical properties of a diety when none of it is testable and falsafiable?

Many faiths do make testable claims, other alleged deity properties are testable in the realm of logic.

Quote from: YamoWhy all this talk about the hypothetical properties of a diety when none of it is testable and falsafiable?

Because Akrasia claims to have falsified one of those hypothetical deities.