“god”

and the problem of Evil

by Gaedhal

That nasty article that I linked to yesterday—which, unfortunately, is behind a paywall—confirms something that Sam Harris used to say:

‘Religion allows people to believe, in the billions, that which, if believed alone, would render one a lunatic.’

Forsooth, yea, and verily! Let us institute an International festival in honour of a mythical peasant preacher’s Jewishness. An insane idea. However, because it is in accord with the Zeitgeist of the world’s biggest religion, it is an idea that is taken seriously.

Let us call foreskin amputation—and especially the pain caused thereby—a “beautiful” thing. This is what the sicko, Margaret Hebblethwaite wrote yesterday.

There is a video of Christopher Hitchens and he was smoking a cigarette, and saying that Catholic lunatics such as John Paul 2, mother theresa—and I have no doubt that he would include Frankenpope and Hebblethwaite in this list were he still alive—are the ‘real enemy’.

And it brings us back to what John Loftus writes in Horrendous Suffering. Ironically, Christianity—it ideally should be called: ‘Judeochristianity’ as Christianity is merely a denomination of Judaism—has added, greatly to horrendous suffering.

Here we have Hebblethwaite, the Catholic, adding to the horrendous suffering of this world by advocating for this vampiric rite of child-abuse.

Ironically, the history of religion, and the horrendous harm caused by religion, is in and of itself an argument against the existence of god.

The logical problem of evil says that an Omni god would never have to resort to any sort of evil so as to accomplish his will. If God needs to resort to the allowance of evil, then he is either not all good, or not all powerful. Evil exists. QED. Quod erat demonstrandum: God does not exist. The logical problem of evil is a deductive argument for the non-existence of god. If the premises are true: an omni God would not need evil to accomplish his goals; evil exists; then the conclusion necessarily follows: God does not exist.

Despite Apologists showboating and saying that the logical problem of evil is dead, I think that it is sound. Even if an omni god did need to allow evil to accomplish his creative purposes, then he could always choose not to create. This, according to Doug is the true problem of evil. If God is a perfect and complete world unto himself, then why create a world at all, that He would know, with certainty, would bring about evil. In my view, such a god, faced with either creating a world with evil in it, or choosing not to create a world at all, would simply choose not to create.

However, the evidential problem of evil is an inductive argument. We collect data relating to horrendous suffering, of which there is a superabundance on this Hell-planet, and then we ask ourselves the question, which hypothesis best explains the data: the God hypothesis or the non-god hypothesis. And, in my view, to sincerely and honestly grapple with the problem of horrendous suffering as laid out in Horrendous Suffering by John Loftus is to arrive at the non-God hypothesis as the best explanation for the presence of so much horrendous suffering in our world.

‘James Sterba resurrected the logical problem of evil. It’s impossible that a theistic god exists. Look him up.’ —John Loftus

Yeah, apologists like to pretend that the logical problem of evil is no longer taken seriously in academic philosophy. This is just simply another lie of the apologetics’ profession.

In William Lane Craig’s debate with Christopher Hitchens, he reverses the burden of proof on the logical problem of evil: it was up to Christopher to prove that a god, whom he does not believe in, does not have morally sufficient reasons to permit evil. This is why I take the view of Venaloid, Carrier and Prophet of Zod in saying that William Lane Craig is a conman. A PhD philosopher should be able to wrap his brain around the logical problem of evil. In my view, the hypothesis that Craig is a conman is much more likely than the hypothesis that Craig is incompetent.

But even if a classically theistic god had morally sufficient reasons to allow evil, that same god, by virtue of his omnipotence, could achieve those same ends without allowing evil. The classically theistic god’s omnibenevolence would here kick in: I have two approaches available to me to achieve some end or goal. One approach allows for evil—which I supposedly hate—and another approach does not allow for evil. Well, my omnibenevolence kicks in and necessitates that I choose the approach that does not allow for the existence of evil to achieve my ends. However, evil exists. Thus, a classically theistic god does not exit. If gods there be, then that god is lacking in some omni property. That god is probably less than omniscient, or omnipotent, or omnibenevolent. QED. A deductive proof of the non-existence of a classically theistic god.

However, lest we drift into some sort of atheistic Thomism, or scholasticism, where we simply sit on our philosophical armchairs and a-priori reason all day, we also have the inductive argument against the existence of god from our gathering data as regards instances of horrendous suffering, in our world.

I am sure that William Lane Craig understands all of this very well… Indeed, better than I do. I only have a high-school/secondary-school education. Craig has two PhDs. However, Craig is a dishonest conman.

And thunderf00t—before Elon broke his brain—points this out: Craig isn’t really an academic philosopher, at all. He got two PhDs so as to employ them as props. In academic philosophy, he is a nobody.

Craig, in his own way, is as crazy and as dishonest as Ken Ham. Ken Ham similarly hires PhDs so as to deny evident reality.

Similarly with Wes Huff. Davis points out in that reality rules video, I linked in a previous email, that even though Huff is essentially a thesis and a viva voce away from a PhD, nevertheless, he spends all of his extracurricular time on apologetics, and not, you know, publishing in academic journals. Huff is the new apologetics superstar. However, it is the same modus operandi as Craig’s and Ham’s. Get a PhD. Use it as a prop so as to lie for Jaysus.