The atheists best argument?

[Charlemagne_III]

Your objection overlooks the fact that the value of free will transcends every other consideration. It was an atheist, J.P.Sartre, who pointed out that we are not authentic persons until we commit ourselves. To do that we have to be capable of self-determination which violates the principle of the conservation of energy. It implies that we have supernatural power…

Incidentally, approaching his death Sartre turned to God for consolation.

This was an “authentic commitment” as all deathbed conversions are.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t agree that theistic societies are more moral. A secular society is a good defense against the excesses of Talibans and co.

All normal people share an abhorrence of child abuse, but it would seem all normal people don’t share an abhorrence of abortion. You talked about Christians so I looked for some statistics and am surprised to see that Catholic women in the USA are not less but more likely to have an abortion. - beliefnet.com/faiths/catholic/2001/01/the-catholic-abortion-paradox.aspx

Which came as a bit of a shock, although admittedly I know little of the subject. There seem to be a number of complicating factors, perhaps the explanation is in them.

How is this not merely doubling down by feigning “surprise” but making the same basic argument replacing “Christian” with “Catholic?” Again, if “Catholic” women are more likely to abort and the Catholic Church is against abortion, in what sense are these women “Catholic” when they do not follow what Catholic teaching is? Seems we have a bit of dissonance, no?

Using the word “Catholic” as applied to individuals who take on and endorse principles antithetical to Catholic teachings would seem to make that application of the word to them completely useless.

But the post I responded to wasn’t about any of that, and nor is the OP. Child abuse is morally very simple and all normal people agree it is evil. So the OP asks why, if God is all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful, doesn’t he prevent it. I don’t know a good answer, but that’s what the OP asks, so the rest is off-topic.

Perhaps because God doesn’t commit child abuse, human beings do? The answer is buried in the relationship between God as moral lawgiver and humans as autonomous moral agents. Merely because the answer isn’t obvious does not mean that the entire thread of explanation ought to be dismissed. If “preventing it” means simply snuffing out the life of anyone even contemplating child abuse, perhaps God has a different approach. I mean, if he is “all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful,” then our limitations and our ways of thinking are not necessarily his ways. He may have a different solution to the problem of child abuse.

 

[tonyrey]

Your objection overlooks the fact that the value of free will transcends every other consideration. It was an atheist, J.P.Sartre, who pointed out that we are not authentic persons until we commit ourselves. To do that we have to be capable of self-determination which violates the principle of the conservation of energy. It implies that we have supernatural power…

Why is this relevant to what I was talking about?
Me to Plato: It does not matter what color the car is.
You to me: You’ve just ignored the fact that the car is a V6!

I did mention the free will argument much earlier.The “evil” in the problem of evil is allowed to be defined however the arguer wishes. You can disagree with their definition, but unless you are actually going to argue that you have a definition of evil which suggests that evil doesn’t exist, attempting to fight out that semantic disagreement here is just an attempt to distract people from the fact that you don’t have a good answer to the problem of evil.

If you can’t define what evil is you obviously don’t know what you’re referring to or you believe it doesn’t exist except in human minds - and in either case it cannot be the atheist’s best argument.

There is a very good answer to the problem of evil in the Catechism:

385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil.

 

[truetofaith]

When you are in heaven, do you have the power to commit a mortal sin or to do bad?

Probably, but you won’t!

 

[Peter_Plato]

So it is possible to create an environment where people have free will, but will always choose the good? An atheist might ask why wouldn’t an all merciful and all loving God want that for his creatures on earth?

Simple answer: the all-loving God does want that for his creatures. The question is whether his autonomous creatures want it for themselves.

I suspect the pre-screening stage is what we are in on this earth. Those that do want it for themselves in an absolute sense will achieve it in a permanent sense. All others will require refining (purgatory) until they do or the other option if they don’t.

Very simply, God, who is all-knowing, will know when those who will be ready are ready.

And if you are contemplating bringing up the old saw that God would know before creating them which will or will not be ready. I disagree. This world is not only a refining process, it is also a self-forming process. In a profound sense, we autonomously create ourselves, at least the “self” which will endure through our choices and actions. God gives us full leeway to author our own beings as moral and spiritual agents, providing whatever we need to do so, but the choices and actions are ours and ours alone to determine.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t agree that theistic societies are more moral. A secular society is a good defense against the excesses of Talibans and co.

I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by “theistic societies.” Partly, I would submit, the reason you misunderstand is that you haven’t completely understood the concept of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God version of a theistic society is not one that merely acknowledges the possibility of the existence of God nor morally acts according to what it thinks are God-ordained laws. No, the Kingdom of God is a society where the people actually do the will of God. Jesus was quite clear that those who simply call out “Lord, Lord” or merely assent to the fact (believe) that God exists will not inherit the Kingdom. It is those who actually do the will of God which constitute a truly theistic society. I would argue, those are the individuals who can properly be called “Christian,” and which, ultimately, only God will properly determine whether or not they are, indeed, to be called Christian. Whether we ourselves claim to go by that word is neither here nor there.

A secular society is only a good defense against the excesses of the Taliban if it indeed is a fully moral society, which ultimately would mean it is doing the will of God, and therefore is under the moral rule or will of God – whether or not it consciously goes by that designation or views itself in those terms.

It is the truth which will count, not any self-designation that sycophantically insists it is doing the will of God as a matter of its own determination. After all, the Pharisees and Sadducees made all kinds of self-declarations about doing God’s will and obeying God’s Laws, but that didn’t seem to make a difference with regard to whether they actually were doing so.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If you can’t define what evil is you obviously don’t know what you’re referring to or you believe it doesn’t exist except in human minds - and in either case it cannot be the atheist’s best argument.

Of course it can be, because they can always just borrow the theist’s definition. Showing that the theistic view is logically inconsistent essentially IS a goal of the argument.

 

[Rosebud77]

Or, substitute any of the suffering we see around us that an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God could stop, but does not:
The rampant starvation…the droughts, epidemics, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If God answers prayers, they why not answer the prayers of the Jews during the Holocaust or the millions slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or in Rwanda…why would God allow a mudslide to kill 30,000 Columbians in their sleep in minutes? And, as per the OP’s initial post, why allow innocent children to be raped, tortured, beaten…murdered…when a God could intervene and stop it?

If God intervenes to help someone do well on their math test or find their car keys or get a job in answer to their prayers…why not intervene when a parent is praying for their lost child to be found alive…but, instead, they are found raped and murdered?

I surely don’t understand or much like this all-powerful, all-loving God that doesn’t help children in those circumstances…his children he supposedly created and loves.
Why create them for that?

Makes no sense.
It seems almost sadistic.

.

We have the power and the ability and the means to set right the effects of disasters and crimes… To heal and help.

If we fail to help then the blame is ours. Not God’s… Sitting carping at God is unspeakable and naive . Get out there and do something!!! Else the sadism etc is OURS .

Read the words of Jesus…or is that too simple?

 

[PumpkinCookie]

The tale of Sartre having a “deathbed conversion” tho, is a myth.

.

There is some evidence to suggest Sartre was considering the significance of Judaism shortly before his death. I am unaware of any evidence in support of his supposed deathbed conversion to Catholicism. You’d think it would be huge, well-documented news if he had actually renounced atheism.

 

[inocente]

You stated with reference to child abduction:

"It’s wrong because parents have a strong love for their children, and children a strong love for their parents, and the whole tribe feels a shared responsibility to protect children.

You’ve chosen one of the strongest most fundamental emotional responses we all share. It’s perhaps the strongest example against Lane Craig’s argument that we can’t be good without God (even without adding the complication of the Binding of Isaac)."

Since you haven’t given a reason why it’s wrong and now state:

“All normal people in the UK **know **with absolute certainty that child abuse is wrong”

my post is entirely relevant. You still haven’t explained why child abuse is wrong if we exist by chance. An emotional response is not an adequate reason as far as strange freaks of nature are concerned… :dts:

Who are you calling “strange freaks of nature”? Who do you think exists by chance?

Are you arguing that child abuse is good and virtuous until someone explains to you why it’s evil? If so then forget it, no one needs your rubber stamp to know it’s evil.

But mainly, what has any of this to do with the OP???

 

[inocente]

How is this not merely doubling down by feigning “surprise” but making the same basic argument replacing “Christian” with “Catholic?” Again, if “Catholic” women are more likely to abort and the Catholic Church is against abortion, in what sense are these women “Catholic” when they do not follow what Catholic teaching is? Seems we have a bit of dissonance, no?

Using the word “Catholic” as applied to individuals who take on and endorse principles antithetical to Catholic teachings would seem to make that application of the word to them completely useless.

I didn’t mentioned abortion until you raised it, and as I already told you, it’s off-topic.

Perhaps because God doesn’t commit child abuse, human beings do? The answer is buried in the relationship between God as moral lawgiver and humans as autonomous moral agents. Merely because the answer isn’t obvious does not mean that the entire thread of explanation ought to be dismissed. If “preventing it” means simply snuffing out the life of anyone even contemplating child abuse, perhaps God has a different approach. I mean, if he is “all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful,” then our limitations and our ways of thinking are not necessarily his ways. He may have a different solution to the problem of child abuse.

Then let’s hear it. Take the horror show painted by the OP, of a child who is abducted and then abused, perhaps for years. All normal people, seeing it, will want to stop it immediately. What solution to child abuse would allow it to continue so the abuser gets more kicks and the abused gets more damaged? As I said, I’ve never seen any good answers to the problem of evil, so by all means lay out your stall.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Why not?
Why is there no good without a God?

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Where there is no God, there is surely a devil in play.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Or, substitute any of the suffering we see around us that an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God could stop, but does not:
The rampant starvation…the droughts, epidemics, hurricanes, and earthquakes. If God answers prayers, they why not answer the prayers of the Jews during the Holocaust or the millions slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or in Rwanda…why would God allow a mudslide to kill 30,000 Columbians in their sleep in minutes? And, as per the OP’s initial post, why allow innocent children to be raped, tortured, beaten…murdered…when a God could intervene and stop it?

From the philosopher Voltaire:

“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic." (from Voltaire’s essay “On Atheism”).

 

[BobCatholic]

As soon as we know of a situation like that, everyone of us wants to step in and bring an end to that child’s suffering.

Well, that is because there are good people in the world, and there are good things in the world.

There are plenty of examples of people who grew up knowing nothing but evil.
Imagine that that bullied kid is in a isolated area where nobody else sees what is going on. There are people who grew up in a warzone. There are those who grow up in urban areas that have gangs doing evil and all they see every day is evil.

 

[BobCatholic]

How we describe it is all relative, Bob.

A good day for me might be meeting up with the family, having a good dinner with a nice bottle of wine ans watching my team win.

For someone else it might be avoiding being raped.

But I think we know enough about the world to know the difference.

I think that’s what I said.

If someone grew up knowing nothing but evil, they can’t know good. They see good as weird or can’t understand it.
If someone grew up knowing nothing but good, they can’t know evil. They see evilas weird or can’t understand it.

There are plenty of examples.

There are those born without the ability to feel pain. They will place their hand on a burning stove and burn their hands, but won’t feel a thing. This is an actual medical condition.

So, does that kid understand suffering and pain? No. Does this kid understand other people’s suffering and pain. No.

This is an example of “If someone grew up knowing nothing but good, they can’t know evil.”

That’s my point.

 

[tonyrey]

We have the power and the ability and the means to set right the effects of disasters and crimes… To heal and help.

If we fail to help then the blame is ours. Not God’s… Sitting carping at God is unspeakable and naive . Get out there and do something!!! Else the sadism etc is OURS .

Read the words of Jesus…or is that too simple?

Trenchant and true! The rosebud has a thorn to defend itself…

 

[tonyrey]

I think that’s what I said.

If someone grew up knowing nothing but evil, they can’t know good. They see good as weird or can’t understand it.
If someone grew up knowing nothing but good, they can’t know evil. They see evilas weird or can’t understand it.

There are plenty of examples.

There are those born without the ability to feel pain. They will place their hand on a burning stove and burn their hands, but won’t feel a thing. This is an actual medical condition.

So, does that kid understand suffering and pain? No. Does this kid understand other people’s suffering and pain. No.

This is an example of “If someone grew up knowing nothing but good, they can’t know evil.”

That’s my point.

Keats rightly believed the world is “a vale of soul-making”.

 

[tonyrey]

Why not?
Why is there no good without a God?

If everything consists of matter nothing matters!

 

[tonyrey]

Who are you calling “strange freaks of nature”? Who do you think exists by chance?

In a Godless universe there is no reason why anything exists.

Are you arguing that child abuse is good and virtuous until someone explains to you why it’s evil? If so then forget it, no one needs your rubber stamp to know it’s evil.

Your truculence is unseemly on a philosophy forum. A little courtesy would be refreshing…

Does everyone think child abuse should be a punishable offence? If not why not?

But mainly, what has any of this to do with the OP???

Your standard argument reappears once again!

The topic is "The **atheist’s **best argument…

 

[tonyrey]

Well, that is because there are good people in the world, and there are good things in the world.

There are plenty of examples of people who grew up knowing nothing but evil.
Imagine that that bullied kid is in a isolated area where nobody else sees what is going on. There are people who grew up in a warzone. There are those who grow up in urban areas that have gangs doing evil and all they see every day is evil.

Irrefutable. There is such a thing as invincible ignorance…