Questions for Atheists and Agnostics

[Perplexity]

On what facts do you base this calculation? Where do you obtain your values?

Degrees of confidence. Much like if a doctor asked you to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10, you’d have no trouble representing pain numerically. Here, we just represent our degrees of confidence numerically. 1 = highest, .5 = equal, 0 = least.

But, I think theism has a terribly low explanatory power of the universe because I can’t think of a good reason to expect God to create anything at all, much less the universe. Now, it’s true that if God didn’t create anything he’d still be actualizing that possible world at which only God exists, but I distinguish between creating and actualizing.

Generally, folks appeal to the ol’ bonum diffusivum sui principle, but I’ve never seen a good reason to believe it. It’s just one of those first principles you either accept or deny, unfortunately, my intuitions lie elsewhere.

Evil is significant only if it is demonstrated to be unnecessary.

Supposing that evil is necessary in order for God to obtain some desired end, the question naturally arises: “What’s worse? A world without any evil whatsoever? Or, a world containing the evil which must necessarily exist in order for God to satisfy a particular desire?” I don’t think the latter is obvious at all, given God’s attributes.

However, if theism claims “God exists, and therefore, no evil whatsoever exists” and we observe evil, this would constitute reason to disbelieve theism. I’m not saying theism does claim this, but I’m trying to explicate the reasoning being used here. If your hypothesis doesn’t lead us to expect some observation, then that observation counts against your hypothesis. Bayesian reasoning etc.

You seem to define evil as “that which causes suffering”. If so you need to explain how all suffering could be prevented in an orderly universe. Even David Hume conceded that some evil is inevitable. He argued that it is excessive without producing any statistics to justify his conclusion (which is based on emotion rather than logic… )

hmm, I’m not sure where you got that. I haven’t indicated my understanding of evil. But, again, if suffering is inevitable for this creation, why would God create at all? 0_o Surely a world in which nothing but utter perfection existed is better than a world riddled with suffering?

Do you regard yourself as a biological machine incapable of controlling yourself?

Of course not.