Evil is not a shot from God; the fact is if a women gets raped or a Priest rapes a child most of the time they will not lead spiritually happy lives afterwards. How is it in God’s plan that a Priest abusing a child turns said child into a staunch Anti-Catholic who dies hating the Church as his last breath?
To be frank, you appear to not have put very much effort into understanding my post and simply been eager to fire off a few smart-aleck remarks. This means you do not seem interested in fairly assessing the issue, just arguing.
The primary point of my post is thus:
There are several reasons that the existence of evil does not provide a reason to doubt the existence or goodness of God.
You keep trying to challenge me to explain individual instances of evil, but I do not not have ever professed to be able to do so. I am not claiming that I can make sense of every instance of evil in the world. I am only saying that there are reasons that evil does not provide a reason to doubt the existence of God. So, my remark you have quoted must be placed in that context.
Likewise with evil. You must consider all the evidence… Alvin Plantinga listed 26 such arguments (for the existence of God).
philofreligion.homestead.com/…arguments.html
So relative to all the evidence, God’s existence is still probable even with the existence of evil.
The only historical evidence present is the Bible and a account by Josephus which could easily be a fake created later on by Christians wanting to give the account of Jesus more authority. The fine-tuning of the universe could be created by the randomness of trillions of stars forming along side trillions of planets; I’m pretty sure out in the universe there is a planet that is habitable by Humans but is too far away to ever reach; does that mean God decided to make these habitable planets just to poke fun at us for ruining our own planet? Plus even if the way the universe was made seemed to imply it had a creator that doesn’t mean it was the Judeo-Christian God.
Those are poor reasons for rejecting those arguments, and you don’t even seem to understand what is meant by the fine-tuning of the universe for life, since in the absence of this fine-tuning there would be no life on other planets at all (if there even is). There would not even be atomic matter! For a brief introduction to these arguments see
reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5507. On the Resurrection, see NT Wright.
-My point here, though, was not to get into a debate about those arguments, but to simply make the point that if such arguments exist (and there are many good ones), then they must be considered along with the existence of evil. You did not challenge this point, only the arguments, so I gather you agree with me there.
In a society like that of the Canaanites perhaps raping a little girl isn’t evil; perhaps it’s a religious observance in some twisted pagan culture. Did God just choose not to give those people a sense of natural morality when creating them?
This is a red herring. Stop appealing to the OT when you get pressured (it’s the lazy way out) and deal with the argument. This does not prove objective moral values do not exist, only that the Canaanites were morally handicapped and chose to reject those moral values. You are confusing moral ontology (the existence of objective moral values) and moral epistemology (the perception or knowledge of moral values).
hence my argument still stands:
Moral evil actually provides a reason to think God exists.
- If God does not exist, humans are just animals and not moral agents. Our morality is simply the result of socio-biological conditioning. Dawkins says that “there is at bottom no good or evil,” “we are just machines for propagating DNA.”
-1. So if God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
- But some things (the rape of a little girl) are really evil (as you seem to admit).
- Since such things would not be evil if God did not exist (because objective good and evil would not exist), and since such things really are evil, then this is evidence that God exists.
Which premise of the argument do you disagree with? Is it objectively morally wrong to kill and rape a little girl? I would say it is. But then the existence of real moral evil actually provides a reason for thinking God does exist.
Your argument is essentially: we can’t see a good reason for God to allow this suffering, therefore there isn’t one.
This is just pure “Have faith, I’m sure there was a reason God let that rapist brutally kill your sister.”
Again, you did not understand my argument and your reply is just a quick, lazy cop-out. Analyze my argument and show where it is wrong. I am not claiming I can explain every instance of evil, only that
evil does not provide a reason for doubting God’s existence. Consider my analogies, including the one on aliens (if aliens existed, they would contact us; they have not; therefore they don’t exist) and the mathematician.
You raise a fair question on the existence of evil, but if you are not willing to fairly consider the responses then I wonder why you posted the question here in the first place. And it is discourteous to people who took the time to respond to you.
