What Evil? (The Problem of Evil on Empiricism)

This is my reply to an article by J.W Wartick entitled

What Evil? (The Problem of Evil on Empiricism)

Posted by J.W. Wartick ⋅ December 23, 2010

The problem of evil is often seen to be the greatest philosophical challenge to theistic belief.

Count me out.  Proving somebody evil doesn't prove they don't exist.  And while the bible-god is without a doubt as evil as humans could possibly be, I don't argue that this proves he doesn't exist.  I simply insist that it proves that the bible-god's self-serving statements about being "loving" are total bullshit.

The problem of evil is also most frequently raised by people who are ardent empiricists (which undergirds their atheism).  There are many versions of empiricism, but the one we will investigate at the moment is naturalistic, atheistic empiricism, which holds both that there is nothing but the natural world in the sense of the world which can be directly accessed via the senses and only sensory, empirical evidence is sufficient evidence for holding a proposition to be true.

Sure is funny that it was by use of your naturalistic senses that you believe you came across proof that more things exist than simply those that are physical.  Sounds like the abilities of our 5 physical senses are much closer to being infallible than you give them credit for.  Unless of course you qualify and say that prayer and telepathy were part of the way you confirmed the existence of any non-physical thing.

On this view, it seems extremely difficult to figure out what exactly evil is.

 Perhaps because you haven't debated me yet.  Evil is the word that people subjectively use to characterize situations and actions which they subjectively think tend to cause unnecessary harm.  One woman will call abortion evil, another woman calls it a blessing. 

Sam Harris is well known for trying to show that science is capable of dealing with moral issues (discussed here). The method basically involves finding out what makes people happy (which is “good”) and what makes them unhappy (which makes it “bad”) (see here). It remains totally unclear to me, however, how Harris makes the jump from “happy” to “objective good.” Measuring people’s happiness doesn’t mean measuring goodness. There are serial killers who are very happy to go about secretly killing as many people as possible. That doesn’t make their action “good”, unless you boil “good” down to a purely subjective basis, on which nothing can be decried as “evil” unless 100% of people agree it is indeed evil.

 Haven't read him recently, but the problem I see here is that you are automatically assuming "good" can be objectively defined (given your apparent eschewing of a subjective definition of the word).  But you theists have your own problems, for example, if everything your god does must necessarily be morally "good" without exception, then when God "stirs up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women in Isaiah 13:15-17, the fact that these men are doing the will of God logically requires that such rapes were morally good.  If God knew evil would happen should he step out of the way and allow evil men to act unrestrained, that's not morally different from you, knowing your dog will attack the jogger should you let go of the leash, letting go of the leash.  Nobody will listen to you carp about how the dog's nature caused the attack and not your choice to let go of the leash.  Accordingly, we don't listen when you "explain" that the Medes' evil nature to commit rape, not God's letting go the leash on their evil tendencies, was the cause of the rapes in Isaiah 13.  Furthermore, the fact that the text says God "stirred up" the Medes to commit rape makes it sound more like God was encouraging them or putting a rape-desire into their hearts...a lot more evil than merely "stepping out of the way and allowing evil people to do what they want".

You will ask how I can call rape evil when I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in objective morals.  I'm not using my own sense of morality to judge god, I'm using the fact that there's a contradiction in the bible between God's causing men to rape women, and God saying he "loves" everybody, to show that the bible-god doesn't even live up to his own standards, in which case, he is probably also lying about himself elsewhere in the bible, in which case it makes better sense to regard him as a sadistic lunatic (and on the basis of other arguments not relevant here, a fictional story character made in the continually evolving image of ancient barbaric tribes).

Returning to the problem of evil, then, it seems like theists can simply ask the atheists a question: “What evil?” Judging something as “evil” is necessarily a valuation of an action. How does one make an experiment which can make a value judgment?

That's the wrong question.  The truth is that our morals come from two empirical sources; our genetic predispositions (which is why some people are just more aggressive and selfish their whole lives than other people), and environmental conditioning (in which case you can warp a normal child's mind and turn them into a criminal).

Certainly, one can try to argue, as does Harris, that values are just [scientific] facts (note that the theist agrees that moral values are facts… but facts centered on the nature of God, not on empirical grounds).

 God's nature causes men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16, so apparently, the only reason you think rape is always evil, is because your god hasn't "stirred" you up to commit rape just yet.

But simply asserting something doesn’t make it so. I often say “God exists.” People don’t tend to take this as profound evidence that the statement is true. (Though, perhaps if I said “God exists is a fact.” I might win some over… at least those who take Harris seriously when he makes a similar claim about values in the video linked above.)

So the question remains: What evil?

 If you think God views rape as evil, then my criticism of God is that he makes people engage in the very actions that he himself calls "evil".  That is, your god is a hypocrite, thus justifying suspicion that he has more to do with being made in the image of mankind and less to do with inspiring people to write scripture.

And while he might not necessarily be "forcing" men to rape women in Isaiah 13, force is obviously present in Ezekiel 38:4 ff, where God boasts that his control over the freewill of future pagan armies is correctly analogous to putting a hook into their jaws.  Nothing spells force quite like putting a hook in somebody's jaws and drawing them along in whatever direction you want.  NOW your god isn't just "stirring" up people to do evil, he is forcing them to do the very acts that he himself views as evil.  And read those chapters of Ezekiel carefully, god will also punish those puppet nations for moving in the direction that he was pulling their strings in.  Sort of like the irrational fool who kicks you through his living room window, then charges you with destruction of property.

On an atheistic empirical standpoint, there doesn’t seem to be any way to judge actions or events as “evil” other than by saying “I don’t like that.”

 And there is no evidence that evil is anything more than an action that somebody or a group of people have expressed dislike for.

But perhaps I do like that same event/action. Who’s to judge between us? Bringing numbers into the mix won’t help either. Imagine a scenario in which 1,000,000 people thought some action (rape) was evil. On the other side there were 10,000 who thought the same action was perfectly reasonable, because, after all, that’s how our ancestors behaved. Who is right?

 I deny the legitimacy of the question.  If it is a moral issue, there is no objective "right" answer.  But there might be a lot of people who mistake their strong subjective feelings for objective truth. 

Well, on empiricism, perhaps one could argue that the 1,000,000 are right, but then we’re making a judgment on values simply because of a majority vote. Science doesn’t work that way. We don’t just vote on what is empirically correct.

Correct, but irrelevant.  You haven't demonstrated any logical or evidential flaws in moral relativism.

The only way to solve this problem would be to argue that in moral questions, the majority is correct. Yet I don’t see any way to argue in this matter other than metaphysically, which is exactly what the empiricist is trying to avoid. Therefore, on empiricism, there is no such thing as evil. Just good and bad feelings. And that’s not enough.

 Why not?

And so we get to my main argument.

1) One cannot rationally hold both to a proposition’s truth and falsehood.

2) On atheistic empiricism, there is no evil.

Correction, there is no "objective" evil.  That's because there's no objective standard for evaluating the morality of human actions, there's only human opinion.

3) Atheistic empiricists argue that evil disproves (or challenges) the existence of God [implicit premise: evil exists].

Then count me out, it's perfectly obvious that you cannot disprove Hitler's existence by showing he was evil, so it would be the same with God.  And personally, I find that the alternative position (i.e, your god's forcing people to do things that he himself thinks are evil, then blaming them for acting that way,  therefore, your god is a hypocrite) has much more force when dealing with apologists.  They don't like atheism, but they are much more offended by biblical proof that their God is a sadistic lunatic.

4) Therefore, atheistic empiricists hold that both evil does not exist, and that it does exist (2, 3).

5) Therefore, atheistic empiricism is irrational (1, 4).

 I've already admitted that yes, it doesn't make sense to say that a being doesn't exist, because the information allegedly showing his existence, shows him to be evil.

However, the evil nature of the OT god does indeed logically contradict John 3:16 and other passages that allege god "loves" us...unless the apologist is willing to redefine divine "love" so that it eventually looks suspiciously opposite of the only kind of "love" that we can agree exists, human love.  There would be little reason to call it "love", if it is supposed to be so broad and encompassing that it will allow even those acts that loving people would never allow to happen to each other.  If we can rightfully dispute that a father "loves" his daughter after finding out he stepped out of the way and allowed some other man to rape her, there is no compelling reason to reach a different conclusion if the "father" who allows rape happens to be the bible-god.  And since I correctly reject the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, no, I do not think that scriptural statements assuring us that God always does good, must be read into Isaiah 13:16 and other statements where God is obviously contradicting his own alleged values.

In order to avoid the argument, the atheistic empiricist can simply deny 3). However, this would disarm the strongest anti-theistic argument. I see no reason to feel threatened by the problem of evil when it is leveled by an empirical/naturalistic anti-theist. In fact, some have argued that:

1) If evil has meaning, then God exists.

 no, evil can have a meaning in the dictionary. that hardly implies that God exists.

2) Evil has meaning.

Subjective meaning.  The answer to whether Hitler was evil only seems "obvious" because Frank Turek's audiences are predominantly Christian, take place in the continental USA, and those who support Hitler usually don't attend.  But the truly objective analysis doesn't automatically conclude the majority American view on Hitler is correct, the analysis will give legitimate weight to all human opinion on the subject.  And I'm afraid that human opinion about human worth has radically changed over the centuries. 

3) God exists (1, 2, modus ponens).

This argument is a kind of reverse moral argument, and I think it works, though I doubt one will find many anti-theists who will accept premise 1). As is the case with the moral argument [1) If objective morals exist, then God exists; 2) Objective morals exist; 3) therefore God exists], I believe atheists will vary between denying 1) and 2) as they find convenient.

 We do.  You haven't demonstrated that any morals are "objective" in the sense of their basis transcending human opinion.

I leave it to the naturalistic/empirical atheist to show that science can, in fact, test for objective morality, rather than just measuring feelings.

I leave that to Sam Harris too, since I don't say objective morals exist any more than I say an objective value exists for a used dvd player at a garage sale.

Atheism’s Universe is Meaningless and Valueless? Ultimately, yes...so what?

This is my reply to an article by J.W. Wartick entitled

Atheism’s Universe is Meaningless and Valueless
Posted by J.W. Wartick ⋅ January 3, 2011    

“‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’

says the Teacher.

‘Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless.'” – Ecclesiastes 1:2

My most recent post on the problem of evil granting empirical atheism generated some thoughtful discussion. Most importantly, it lead me to the following argument:

1) On materialistic [I use materialism and physicalism interchangeably, as is common in philosophy today] atheism, all we are is matter in motion.

Correct.  Our sense of evil is no more ultimately significant than the sense of danger experienced by a gazelle being chased by a lion.  But lack of ultimate meaning doesn't imply lack of subjective purpose.

By the way, plenty of you Christians believe that God intended for carnivores to populate the earth before sin.  Read up on Hugh Ross.  Apparently, when your god said all he had created was "very good" before the Fall (Genesis 1:31), he was talking about a world which, before sin, was full of animals ripping each other apart.

2) There is no objective reason to value matter moving in way A over matter moving in way B

 Correct.  That doesn't mean it is unreasonable to identify certain bits of matter as moving in ways contrary to our personal subjective goals, and to fight back or avoid accordingly.  And by the way, your Frank Turek reductionism is unconvincing.  We might be nothing but atoms, but that doesn't mean all atomic structures share equal abilities and limits.  You may as well say that 9 is equal to 4, simply because they ultimately reduce to "numbers" or "signs".  Yes, that's ultimately what they are, but what they ultimately are doesn't tell you whether they have specific individual properties that distinguish them from each other.

3) Therefore, on materialistic atheism, there is no value or meaning

Ultimately?  Correct. You probably don't blink your eyes with the intent of laying up for yourselves treasures in heaven.  Doing things in life for reason not having jack shit to do with god or religion, is perfectly normal everyday reality even for fundamentalist Christians.

Premise 1 seems self-evident. Materialistic atheism, by definition, says that “everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The physical world is matter.

Premise 2 also seems like it should need little defense, yet atheists continually come up with ideas to try to get around it.

I disagree with Dan Barker and other atheists who think some morals can be objective.  I'm a really big problem for apologists like Frank Turek who push the objective morality bit.  I agree that if atheism is true, there would be no objective morality, only subjective opinions.  When such apologists debate me, they are debating somebody who agrees with them on more principles than most atheists agree with them on, making it much more difficult for them to refute my arguments.

For example, one may argue that the subjective suffering of persons should matter. Yet I fail to see how this argument succeeds. Pain and suffering, on materialism, at most supervenes upon neurons firing in the brain (along with chemical reactions and other physical phenomenon). My question for the materialist is: What reason can be provided for favoring matter moving in way A (call it, the way neurons fire when someone is in a state of bliss) over matter moving in way B (neurons firing in the way which causes pain)?

 The reason?  Personal subjective opinion.  And if you can find a bunch of people to agree with you, all the better.  Sorry, but physicalism being true doesn't suddenly make motives and desires irrational or pointless.  As living beings, we automatically like anything that tends to enhance our life without harming those we consider part of our group, and to correspondingly eschew anything that does the opposite.  To be alive is to naturally and automatically prefer anything that keeps you alive, and to naturally and automatically eschew anything that tends to suppress life.  That remains a solidly justified generalization despite the fact that exceptions, such as suicide, exist.  For to be alive is to also be imperfect and to perhaps one day find oneself in a completely hopeless situation.

By the way, your arguments would, if correct, prove that animals, reptiles and bugs have eternal "spirits", since they too find purpose in life and have preferences.  Yet your bible doesn't permit you to say these lower life forms were made in the image of god.  Ok...if the animals can be reasonable to see purpose in life without being made in the image of God, then humans can also possibly be reasonable to find purpose in life without crediting any of it to God.

One answer which may be forthcoming is that creatures and persons tend to try to get away from things which cause B. This argument fails to provide an answer to the question, because all it does is push the question back to a higher level. It would change to: Why should we favor physical observable phenomenon which don’t cause avoidance over those that do?

Because it is axiomatic that to be "alive" is to automatically and naturally favor anything that helps the group survive, and eschew anything that hinders the group from surviving.  You may as well pretend that asking "why should pain hurt" or "why should water require oxygen" are equally legitimate.  They are not.  You need to study up on axioms.  There really is a first rung in the ladder of reasoning, which, by its being FIRST, is exempt from the "why" question.

Again, the avoidance of B would simply be matter moving in a different way. In order to make a judgment between them, one would have to reach beyond the material world and into the world of objective meaning and value; this is, necessarily, a world which is nonexistent on materialism.

 No, once again, being alive automatically requires, at least for mammals, that anything tending to inhibit thriving of the self or group is to be avoided in most situations.  Since we aren't perfect, yes there will be exceptions like suicide and crime and duplicity, inconsistency and hypocrisy.  You do not keep skeptics over a barrel by simply pretending that materialism allows you to ask "but why...." ad infinitum.  When you ask why living things tend to eschew death, it's like asking why water is wet.  Once again, there are things that are axiomatic or foundational to the premise of "being alive". To be "alive" is to therefore be something more than merely "alive", it also implies putting forth some type of effort to STAY alive, even if the effort is de minimus.  If such traits aree axiomatic, then YOU are the one engaging in error by pretending that the "why" question can never be inappropriate in materialism.

Even if one could provide an answer to this second question, say “We tend to not like B. Things we don’t like are bad”, then we would have a purely subjective reality.

So?  Isn't that exactly what humans have proven to be in this world?  The legal world supplies abundant testimony that sometimes there is just no possible way to get two people to agree on what would be the morally good thing to do.

Do your shoelaces not exist because when and whether to tie them or not is an entirely subjective opinion that various shoe-wearers disagree on?

What of the serial killer who delights in torturing himself, causing things to B? What reason do we have for saying what he is doing is wrong, because, after all, he likes B?

Our axiomatic motive to automatically eschew anything that inhibits the survival or thriving of ourselves and those in our group. I already accounted for outliers like criminals and hypocrisy.  Individual people often change their ideas about the degree to which the good of the group should be prioritized in their subjective decision-making.  Should get something to eat on the way home from work because I'm hungry?  Or would it be better to wait so I can eat with the rest of the family at home?  Etc., etc.

Ultimately, on materialism, everything boils down to matter in motion.

Perhaps you've been listening too uncritically too often to Frank Turek's illogically extremist reductionism.

Sure, ultimately everything is just atoms.  But that doesn't mean materialism requires us to find that the collection of atoms we call "pillow" is equally capable of driving nails into wood, as is that collection of atoms we call "hammer". Materialism neither expresses nor implies that everything is equal.  Materialism fully acknowledges that some atomic structures are more efficient than others at achieving certain goals.

Making value judgments about matter in motion is meaningless.

Ultimately, yes, but not subjectively.  Once again, to be alive is to automatically imply that one will put forth some type and degree of effort to stay alive, therefore logically entailing that one will automatically eschew to some degree anything in the environment that does or appears to inhibit life.

But if everything is matter in motion, then there doesn’t seem to be any way to make value judgments.

Well not everything is matter in motion.  Some of that matter exists in specific configurations that give rise to consciousness and therefore the innate tendency to favor anything promoting life and eschew anything tending to hinder life.

And I could throw the same question back in your face:  You probably think that rape is objectively evil, but this contradicts that bible passage that says God "stirred up" the Medes to rape Babylonian women (Isaiah 13:15-17).  Apparently, the only reason you think rape is objectively evil is because God hasn't stirred up you to rape anybody just yet.  You get precisely nowhere by pretending that atheism cannot account for the human preference to make value-judgments.  Even if we admitted this is a mystery, your own alternative (i.e., a god who causes men to rape women) doesn't look much better.  And regardless, you Christians have no trouble saying the vast majority of your expanatory hypothesis (God) remains an inscrutable mystery, yet you don't think it's mysterious nature justifies the non-Christian to dismiss it. 

So, to be fair, since you don't think "we admit this is a mystery" constitutes defeat, then you cannot characterize atheism as false merely because there are realities that you think atheism cannot explain. 

How does one value a rock over a stick?

The rock might prove much more efficient at breaking open shells or other forms of food contained within hardened enclosures.  What are you going to ask now?  Why somebody would find the tool that is more efficient at attaining their goals, to be more desirable?

But then, on materialism, people are just stuff too; albeit more complex. However, if you were to break us down into our ultimately realities, we are no different than the rock. We are matter organized in a different way. Why value us?

You are simply repeating your questions.  Once again, to be alive is to therefore automatically evince some degree and type of preference for anything that promotes life and eschew anything that tends to inhibit life.  It comes with the territory.  You continue mischaracterizing the situation as one that needs a moral answer, when you ask the "why" question, but as I pointed out earlier, that's like asking "why" water is wet.  You are simply ignorant of what axioms are and why they are fully exempt from questioning.

There is no objective reason to do so.

There's no objective moral law that says what time kids must go to bed on a school night.  But the subjective law imposed by their respective parents, a law that differs wildly from house to house, seems to suffice.  Apparently ultimate subjectivity isn't as hopeless as you think.

Therefore, there is no objective meaning or value.

A problem for those who believe in a higher purpose, not a problem for those who accept the logical implications of their own mortality.

Life is purposeless, meaningless, valueless.

Ultimately?  Yes.  Subjectively?  No.  And one form of Christianity, Calvinism, would say that when atheists draw their incorrect conclusions, they do so because God infallibly predestined them to do so.  An atheist knowledgeable of Calvinism could make a reasonable biblical case that we are doing the will of God by denying any ultimate purpose to life. 

And that point you have to do the stupid thing and insist that we are wrong to fulfill the will of God.

Atheistic materialism demands this bleak view of the universe.

 It's only "bleak" to those who have been previously conditioned to believe that life involves something more glorious after physical death, or it is only bleak to those who fear death and are thus naturally inclined to give in to some after-world religious view.

I’m not saying it’s a good reason to abandon that [un]belief. I’m merely saying that those who hold such a view must be consistent.

You are correct that many atheists falsely aspire to objective morality and purpose.  If atheism is true, then no, there would be no ultimate or objective morality and purpose, only a morality and purpose of individuals living on some damp dus-tball lost in space.

“Now all has been heard;

here is the conclusion of the matter:

Fear God and keep his commandments,

for this is the duty of all mankind.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

including every hidden thing,

whether it is good or evil.” -Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

 That was about as productive as quoting something from the Koran.  Let's just say I'm not exactly shivering with fright over the question "what if Christianity is true?"

Cold Case Christianity: Is Heaven Reasonable? No, and thanks for asking

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled:

Cold Case Christianity: Is Heaven Reasonable? (Free BibleInsert)
Posted: 09 Nov 2018 01:00 AM PST

Humans have been thinking about life after death from the earliest of times. Heaven has been the topic of ancient authors and contemporary thinkers. Countless books, movies and television programs have been produced on the topic. This year’s entry, Heaven is for Real, continues the long tradition of fascination with the afterlife. But is Heaven reasonable? Are the any good reasons to believe there might be a life beyond the grave, aside from the very obvious teaching of the Bible? This week, I’ll spend some time examining the case for Heaven and we’ll look briefly at the nature of Heaven as described in Scripture. We’re also providing a Bible Insert for March 2014 summarizing this information.

As a theist, I obviously believe the evidence for God’s existence is strong. I didn’t always believe this to be the case, but having arrived at this conclusion, the following reasoning would incline me to consider the existence of Heaven, even if I didn’t have access to a Bible:

The Evidence Persuades Us a Good God Created Our World

There are good, reasonable arguments for the existence of a Creator God and the mere existence of a world in which love is possible (in spite of the presence of evil) is an indication this God is good.

Then the mere existence of a world in which hatred is possible (in spite of the presence of evil) is an indication that this 'god' is evil.  Same logic.

A Good God Would Not Create a World in Which Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Are Unattainable

If God is good, He wouldn’t create beings for whom justice, satisfaction and joy are elusive and unavailable.

 Speak for yourself.  There are millions of people today and in the past whose every waking moment was filled with undeserved misery and suffering.  Assuring us that justice will surely be served from another dimension is nothing but the hope of the hopeless, and irrational.  Atheism provides the only rational spark to give a shit about correcting injustices during a person's physical life.

Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Is Often Unattainable in This Temporal Earthly Life

Yet our common experience tells us justice is not always served here on Earth (bad people often get away with their crimes) and while we continually pursue satisfaction and joy, we find that it is fleeting and transient.

Therefore, If There is a Good God, It Is Reasonable to Believe He Has an Eternal, Heavenly Life Waiting for Us in Which Complete Justice, Satisfaction and Joy Will Be Realized

So where is justice, satisfaction and joy to be found? If God has designed us for eternity, and offers complete justice, satisfaction and joy in the next chapter of our existence, He will accomplish all we expect of Him and everything His nature demands.

 The ending of the Book of Revelation does not teach that evil will finally be eradicated, it only teaches there will come a day when god's heavenly city is on earth, and evil-doers will continue to live outside of it:

 10 And he said to me, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.
 11 "Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy."
 12 "Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.
 13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."
 14 Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.
 15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. (Rev. 22:10-15 NAU)

 Wallace continues:

If the case for God’s existence is reasonable, the case for Heaven’s existence is also reasonable.

 But the goodness of heaven doesn't necessarily follow.  You would never insist that the man who built a house was good merely because what he did will shield some people from rain and wind.  So it doesn't matter if there is a god and he created this world.  That doesn't get you to the "he is good" part.

Furthermore, your god "stirs up" the Medes to rape women in Isaiah 13:16, see context, so you need to stop with all of his luvy duvy god shit already...unless you suddenly discovered in the last few seconds that Isaiah isn't supposed to be part of the biblical canon?

Thoughtful consideration of this reality (in light of God’s nature) can also tell us something about the nature of Heaven. Even if I knew nothing about what Christian Scripture teaches about the afterlife, I would still be inclined to believe Heaven is a place of perfection:

If there is a Creator God, He created everything from nothing; matter from non-matter, life from non-life.

 No, there being a creator god does not automatically imply he created everything from nothing, that's just you importing biblical assumptions of creation ex nihilo into your comment here.

If God can do all that, he has unfathomable power

 Mafia bosses and dictators have unfathomable power too.  Not sure if they descended morally so far that they caused men to rape women, the way your god does in Isaiah 13:16.

If God has unfathomable power, he has the power to eliminate imperfection

No, the fact that his power is "unfathomable" doesn't mean it has no limits, it just means we humans would conclude god is very powerful.  The power to eliminate perfection is not something that logically follows from having great power.

Worse, if your god were perfect, then he'd have been perfectly content before creating anything, and by being so content would have no motive to create anything...just like if you are perfectly content after a big meal, you have no motive to eat.  So if there is a god and he created the universe, he cannot have been perfectly content, he must have been lonely, or he must have thought his existing righteousness could be surpassed by complicating his life and creating things that were not necessary to his own happiness.

If God has the power to eliminate imperfection, He can certainly eliminate it from the realm in which He exists

Then because you think God exists in the physical realm too and not just the spiritual realm, he can also elimitate imperfection from sinful humans, in which case you lose the "god gave Adam and Eve freewill" defense to the charge of evil.  God is clearly willing to have creatures serve him even when they are incapable of doing wrong (i.e., what the saints are doing who are dead, whose spirits are allegedly in heaven), so you can no longer say god's desire that we worship and love him authentically requires that he give us freewill.  The departed saints now in heaven are incapable of choosing evil, so apparently god himself thinks those who cannot possibly chose evil, can still authentically love and worship him.  Thus God could have given such constitution of the will to Adam and Eve, and they would have avoided making evil choices.

Therefore, Heaven is a place of perfection

Then lying must be a sign of perfection:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you."   (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Wallace continues:

Even from this simple line of reasoning, it’s easy to see why we might believe Heaven is a place of perfect justice, satisfaction and joy. This reality ought to give us reasons to rejoice and reasons to be concerned. While Heaven will certainly be a place of perfection, all of us should think earnestly about our own imperfection. Are any of us qualified, based on our own merit, to enter such a prefect, holy realm?

 Yes.  Aaron and the Levitical prieists were capable of entering the Holy of Holies into the presence of God, without becoming perfect.  So sinners can indeed dwell in the presence of God.  All this talk about how God is too righteous for our sinful selves to be around, is nothing but high and mighty systematic theology.

The case for Heaven’s existence and perfect nature should cause us to examine the nature of Salvation as offered through the sacrifice of Christ.

 The smarter Christian humbly follows the gospel that was taught by the very words of Christ alone, that is, the form of the gospel before Jesus died.  The fact that such is not sufficient for you, speaks volumes.

The reasonable existence of Heaven points to the reasonable necessity of Jesus’ death on the cross.

 That's just stupid, heaven was considered a reality by all pre-Christian Jews, most of whom shunned any idea that God would accept human sacrifice.

Steve Braude's Levitating Table

Steve Braude, author of "The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations" (University of Chicago Press, 2007), gets all excited when a table levitates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9mVoQFqR6o

here's my reply:




 Braude "explains" in this interview.

Sorry, but it doesn't matter if the spiritual realm is real, Christian apologists, who routinely cite to Braude's investigations as "good evidence" of the paranormal, cannot intellectually obligate atheists to give up materialism with such stuff.  Atheists are not "irrational" or "unreasonable" to point out the obvious flaws in this stuff as reasons to continue saying such evidence doesn't defeat materialism.

Demolishing Triablogue: Bad Christian apologetics bingo

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays and comments thereto from Epistle of Dude


Steve Hays mocks Genetically Modified Skeptic's newest video game:

The Triablogue villagers reply in kind, and I respond respectively:

Epistle of Dude11/03/2018 12:06 PM

Also:What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

It's better to say that you cannot intellectually obligate another person to give up their belief because you make unsupported comments about reality. 

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

 No, biology is the study of living things, period.  Conclusions about how life arose from non-life are part of biology, called abiogenesis.  Old earth creationists also believe God intended for animals to rip each other apart before sin (i.e., death before sin), which would mean he was characterizing this horrible carnivorous world as "very good" in Genesis 1:31.  See Hugh Ross and Kent Hovind duke this out on the John Ankerberg show.

Materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

 Yes, there might be Christian-hating atheists who are that prejudiced.  But the opposite of materialism is an exercise in sophistry, since all attempts to use empirical evidence to "prove" the existence of non-material things, must fail.  Frank Turek with his big bang spaceless timeless immaterial god is a fucking joke.  For example, even creationist think-tanks such as ICR deny the scientific validity of the big bang and insist it is unbiblical.   How can Turek seriously claim to intellectually obligate skeptics to his view, when other equally orthodox "born again" Christians, all of whom have a master's degree or greater in a scientific field find his position absurd.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

 That's exactly right.  You are an atheist with respect to every non-Christian religion's deities.  The difference between you and me is one single god, YHWH.

The God of the Bible is evil.

he doesn't just kill king David's baby, he needlessly causes it to suffer a horrible sickness for 7 days before killing it...thus proving that this bible-god desires to torture babies:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How then can we tell him that the child is dead, since he might do himself harm!" (2 Sam. 12:11-18 NAU)

God causes men to rape women in Isaiah 13:16, as I show in another post.

In Deuteronomy 28, God pushes the following threats on those who would dare disobey him:  He will cause their wives to be raped (v. 30), he will cause parental cannibalism (v. 53-57).  Then god assures them that he will take just as much "delight" to inflict these sufferings on the disobedient, that he took when bestowing blessings upon the faithful (v. 63).

Yes, your god is evil...unless you disagree with Frank Turek's moral argument and suddenly discover that rape can be morally good in certain circumstances?

 Epistle of Dude continues:

The Bible promotes slavery, genocide, sexism.

SLAVERY
In the biblical context, "slavery" was worse than the Antebellum South:  God gave the Hebrews permission to acquire slaves from the surrounding pagan nations:

45 'Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession.
 46 'You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another. (Lev. 25:45-46 NAU)

And apparently Moses, the alleged author of Leviticus, understood this to mean that they could make war against whoever they thought their god wanted them to kill, then keep the surviving little girls as slaves:

 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
 15 And Moses said to them, "Have you spared all the women?
 16 "Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
 17 "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately.
 18 "But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.   (Num. 31:14-18 NAU)

 (of course, "for yourselves" wasn't limited to merely working, it also meant "marry and have sex with", as even inerrantist Christian scholars admit:

Women who had known men sexually, whether Midianite or sinful Israelite men, were to be considered unclean, since they were the main instrument of Israel’s demise at Baal Peor. Only the young girls would be allowed to live so that they may be taken as wives or slaves by the Israelite men, according to the principles of holy war (Deut 20:13–14; 21:10–14).

Cole, R. D. (2001, c2000). Vol. 3B: Numbers (electronic ed.). Logos Library System;
The New American Commentary (Page 499). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

 Forcing little girls into marriage or slavery soon after kidnapping them and killing their parents, is clear from:

 10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
 13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
 14 "It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her. (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)

And don't even get me started on how this marriage rite necessarily ignores the desires of the female captive.  And that this marriage rite was prescribing rape is clear from the Good News Translation of v. 14:

¹⁴ Later, if you no longer want her, you are to let her go free. Since you forced her to have intercourse with you, you cannot treat her as a slave and sell her.

GENOCIDE
As far as "genocide", the average person doesn't give two shits about the technical definition: what we mean is that the ancient Hebrews went around killing thousands of people, no different than what the pagan tribes of those days did.  But for geeks who don't have a life and think the point of living is to act like a pretentious jailhouse lawyer, and pretend that technicalities are the only motive the brain has for continuing to function, "genocide" is legitimately defined as "the intentional killing of all of the people of a nation, religion, or racial group"

Genocide is a justifiable term where the point of killing was extermination of any group or nation.  The precise motive (i.e., racism, etc) is irrelevant.

Therefore, when Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan argue that the "genocide" charge against the ancient Hebrews is technically false, they are wrong.  Genocide does not require the victors to have any particular motive, only that they engage in large-scale massacre of certain people of any locality or identity.

So it is grammatically justified to characterize the divine command to the Hebrews for wholesale slaughter, to be a command to commit "genocide". The "fact" that the pagans victimized thereby were excessively corrupt (itself a false notion) is irrelevant:

 16 "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. (Deut. 20:16 NAU)

 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:2-3 NAU)

Indeed, you should read the entire chapter 15 of 1st Samuel, the point of the story was that God removed Saul as king of Israel because Saul did not carry out the extermination order as fully as God had required.

Copan's and Flannagan's attempts to get away from the obvious, show them to be struggling against reality in a quite vain and humiliating way.  Christian apologist Dr. Lydia McGrew (wife of bible scholar Timothy McGrew) does not find Copan's excuses the least bit convincing.

How can Christian apologists expect spiritually dead people to recognize such arguments as successful when spiritually alive people often find such arguments fallacious?  Can it be reasonable to suggest that because spiritually alive people cannot even agree on how disgusting god is, skeptics and atheists can be rational and reasonable to consider the biblical data fatally ambiguous and thus unworthy of seriously involved analysis?

SEXISM
As far as sexism, of course Paul was sexist, he thinks "worldly fables" are fit only for "old women":

 7 But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; (1 Tim. 4:7 NAU)

Epistle of Dude continues:

Teaching children religion is child abuse.

 I do not agree with the more radical atheists that this is so.  The average church-goer is not abusing their child by simply going to church and instilling a belief in spirituality in their child.  It only becomes "abusive" when the parent pushes that shit so much that Jesus ends up being every other word.  It is the "fundamentalist" form of Christian faith that is psychologically abusive.  There is nobody there to answer the child's prayers, but they are taught that silence only means god has chosen not to answer...sort of like the reason my coffee table didn't take away my desire to play the lottery when I prayed for this desire to depart,  is because my coffee table doesn't wish to answer me at this time.  FUCK YOU DREAMER.

    Epistle of Dude11/03/2018 12:14 PM

    ☍

    Why doesn't God heal amputees?

 There are several problems with the apologists who pretend that failure to heal amputees isn't a problem:

a) the apologists are always citing to Craig Keener's two-volume work "Miracles" as a game changer in favor of Christian apologetics, and therein, Keener mentions the miraculous regrowth of limbs, which forbids the apologist from pretending smugly that we never see regrown limbs because God never promised such ability.  The fools at Triablogue push Keener's amputee-healing stsories as if they are truth.

b)  the bible does promise that future Christians will do even "greater" miracles than Jesus:

  12 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.
 13 "Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (Jn. 14:12-13 NAU)

See the atheist perspective here.

----------------------------------------------------

snip-----------

    Jesse11/04/2018 1:02 AM

    ☍

    I think that the text of Psalm 103:8-14 (among others) debunks any notion of God in the Old Testament being cruel and hateful. Such a notion could not be further from the truth. Historical narratives are generally descriptive, not prescriptive, in nature. Context is key. All of the events that we may deem unpleasant in the Old Testament are ultimately a consequence of the Fall, and God has chosen to repair creation in the manner that He sees fit. Who are we to question Him? That would be my answer to Dawkins.

 Our being human is apparently sufficient to justify questioning God, it's what Moses did, and he apparently successfully knocked some sense into the divine head:

  9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
 10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."
 11 Then Moses entreated the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does Your anger burn against Your people whom You have brought out from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?
 12 "Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, 'With evil intent He brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy them from the face of the earth '? Turn from Your burning anger and change Your mind about doing harm to Your people.
 13 "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"
 14 So the LORD changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.  (Exod. 32:9-14 NAU)

God is such a liar...he gives a really strong impression of seriously intending to kill the Israelites.  And since bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, no, I justifiably refuse to read this story through the lens of "God infallibly foreknows what we'll do".

faith alchemist11/04/2018 1:39 AM

☍

Blah blah blah Apollonius of Tyana blah bling bloo Dying and Rising gods blimp blorp Ishtar boppa footnote citing Carrier blah.

 Blah blah blah Jesus of Nazareth blah bling bloo rising from the dead blimp blorp god works evil in a way that keeps him immune from culpability for it, boppa footnote citing Will Craig blah.

As you can see, I am very frightened of Christianity, and can only feel better about my atheism by simply turning away from Christian arguments and hoping they'll just go away.  Yeah right.

Why did I sue James Patrick Holding for libel?

All the reasons I sued James Patrick Holding can be found in the First Amended Complaint which I filed with the federal court in Florida.  download here.

After reading it, it won't be hard to guess why Holding played the part of a Pharisee and invoked a technicality to escape having to answer on the merits.  Yes, that's exactly what the god of the bible wants Christians to do; if they can exploit a technical trifle to avoid honestly admitting their slanders, then by all means, do exactly what the corrupt world does, and lawyer up.  Yeah, that's the more honest way to show that you are more honest about the facts than non-Christians. 

 

Cold Case Christianity: How the Philosophy of Infinite Regress Demonstrates the Universe Had a Beginning

This is my reply to a video by J. Warner Wallace:

How the Philosophy of Infinite Regress 

Demonstrates the Universe Had a Beginning (Video)

Posted: 16 Oct 2018 01:05 AM PDT

 In this clip from J. Warner Wallace’s longer talk on the existence of God from cosmological evidence (based on his book, God’s Crime Scene), J. Warner describes how the philosophy of infinite regress demonstrates that time had a beginning and, therefore, ads to the case for a universe with a beginning.

(Wallace is wising up to his inability to prove things: he has disabled comments for this video at YouTube.  Apparently, apologetics has more to do with unobstructed preaching to the choir and less to do with answering critics.  Wallace knows about my counter-apologtics blog, and to my knowledge has done precisely NOTHING to attempt any answers, or interact with me).
 
It wasn't necessary to watch this video, the underlined portion above, showing what Wallace was arguing for, constitutes a logically impossibility, which would remain a fatal flaw regardless of what Wallace had to say about the problems of infinite regression.  Such fatal flaw can be demonstrated by comparing the Christian truth claim with other normative truth claims that are couched in grammatically equivalent terms:

Billy played baseball

Dorothy ate cereral

God created time

Notice: all verbs, and therefore those here (i.e., played, ate, created) presuppose time to already be in existence before the action they describe takes place.  Hence:

There was a time before Billy played baseball.

There was a time before Dorothy ate cereal.

There was a time before God created time (!?)

Since all three sentences are grammatically the same, whatever is logically true of the verbs in the first two, must also be true of the verb in the third.

First, "time before time" is clearly illogical because it is question-begging.  You may as well talk about the water before water.

Second, every biblical description of heaven depicts events there as taking place in no less temporal progression than they do on earth, suggesting that the bible leaves plenty of room for the supposition that God was doing things, one after the other, before creating this universe. If he was, then 'time' also limits god.

Finally, 'time' is not a fundamental component of reality, it is merely a fictional measuring device we invented to record the fluctuating distances between planetary bodies.  That's why at the same moment it is 3 p.m. in California, it's not 3 p.m. in Paris.  There is no such thing as seconds, minutes or hours, the only place they exist is in clocks.  "time" is nothing but a word that we use to help express our contentions about things past, present and future.  The idea that "eternity" is some type of different dimension where God views past and present in some unfathomable all-at-once "now" is pure fundamentalist Christian hocus-pocus, it cannot be sustained from the bible anyway, and is thus a concept worthy of nothing but ridicule.

For all these reasons, the concept of creating time itself is sufficiently incoherent and problematic as to reasonably justify those atheists who laugh at the whole business, who also demand the creationist come up with something slightly less convoluted to 'explain' why a god is 'necessary' to explain reality.

 Of course, Wallace has jumped on the Big Bang bandwagon, and will thus pretend that God's creation of time is a completely different thing from actions we engage in on earth.  Not so.  The force of my rebuttal is contained in the grammatical realities that I pointed out.  If you wish to say God created time, you must either 

a)  accept that this is a logically contradictory idea, or 

b) insist that verbs for god's action are not governed by the grammatical realities that govern the verbs describing human action (but you'd have to justify that, and blind appeal to God being so much more wonderful and unlike anything is not going to suffice), or 

c)  insist that human language is incapable of coherently expressing this wonderful truth, in which case you just admitted that the language of Genesis 1:1 is equally incapable of expressing such alleged wondrous truth.