You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice’ tag.
Unfamiliar with the Logical Problem of Evil? Here’s a quick breakdown:
- There are events in our world — such as an animal’s dying an agonizing death in a forest fire, and a child’s undergo lingering suffering and eventual death due to cancer — such that the actions of allowing those events, when one could prevent them, both (a) have very serious, known wrongmaking characteristics, and (b) have no rightmaking characteristics of which we are aware that are sufficient to balance out the known wrongmaking properties.
Therefore it is likely that:
- For any such action, the totality of the wrongmaking properties, both known and unknown, outweighs the totality of the rightmaking properties, both known and unknown.
- Any action whose wrongmaking properties outweigh its rightmaking properties is morally wrong.
Therefore, from (2) and (3) :
- Such actions are morally wrong.
- For any action whatever, an omnipotent and omniscient being is capable of not performing that action.
Therefore, from (4) and (5):
- If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, then that being performs some morally wrong actions.
- A being that performs morally wrong actions is not morally perfect.
Therefore, from (6) and (7):
- If there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, that being is not morally perfect.
- God is by definition an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person.
Therefore, from (8) and (9):
- God does not exist.
And now the promised riff on said notion:
Hard choices for the believers. Not much to do but hand-wave away the pernicious conclusions one is forced to draw when looking at what God does.
The Religious and the anti-vaxxers.
bleatmop
The Intransigent One
Mystro
Your opinions…