Bertrand Russell Makes a nice case that a Deity can not be good and uses his "teapot" analogy to demonstrate the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim.
I find it interesting that he uses the "add on" that it is too small to see - which is OK in this example as he is arguing that an inability to disprove something is not evidence that something exists. This however is the type of protective strategy that is often employed by religious apologists when their argument is destroyed. They keep adding things on to protect their conclusion when in fact, they should be arguing for their belief.
An example would be the morality argument - you know the one: there is good in the world, therefore god is good (if you allow for him to exist for the sake of argument). You point out gas chambers, genocide and cancer and claim that god is either evil or does not care about human welfare. They now claim god has a purpose, often involving phrases like "free will", so evil is allowed. This of course has no evidence to back it up. It's just an idea created to protect a pre-conceived conclusion. Instead of deriving something of the nature of god (again assuming he exists for the purpose of argument) it becomes a "justification" to protect their viewpoint. A viewpoint that does not stand up to scrutiny. You may then counter that "free will" (if we have it) has nothing to do with things like children being born deformed. A common response to this is that the whole universe is polluted by "sin". Again, this "protects" the belief that god is good, but provides no supporting evidence that "sin" (something I don't believe exists) has polluted everything. So, the believer just heaps more and more unsupported claims on top of each other to protect that which they already "know" to be true because that is what one interpretation of their "holy book" says must be so. The whole thing becomes a convoluted mess, The best that can be hoped for is a consistent theology - just like you can also have consistent fairy tales too.
I find it interesting that he uses the "add on" that it is too small to see - which is OK in this example as he is arguing that an inability to disprove something is not evidence that something exists. This however is the type of protective strategy that is often employed by religious apologists when their argument is destroyed. They keep adding things on to protect their conclusion when in fact, they should be arguing for their belief.
An example would be the morality argument - you know the one: there is good in the world, therefore god is good (if you allow for him to exist for the sake of argument). You point out gas chambers, genocide and cancer and claim that god is either evil or does not care about human welfare. They now claim god has a purpose, often involving phrases like "free will", so evil is allowed. This of course has no evidence to back it up. It's just an idea created to protect a pre-conceived conclusion. Instead of deriving something of the nature of god (again assuming he exists for the purpose of argument) it becomes a "justification" to protect their viewpoint. A viewpoint that does not stand up to scrutiny. You may then counter that "free will" (if we have it) has nothing to do with things like children being born deformed. A common response to this is that the whole universe is polluted by "sin". Again, this "protects" the belief that god is good, but provides no supporting evidence that "sin" (something I don't believe exists) has polluted everything. So, the believer just heaps more and more unsupported claims on top of each other to protect that which they already "know" to be true because that is what one interpretation of their "holy book" says must be so. The whole thing becomes a convoluted mess, The best that can be hoped for is a consistent theology - just like you can also have consistent fairy tales too.
(I had only intended to post the video and appear to have gone on a bit of theology bashing :-) )
I am aware there are other variations of these arguments. So, before anyone shouts"strawman", please explain your arguments and state why they are more grounded in reality and and evidentially supported than these common Christian arguments that you will find all over the Internet.
4 comments:
Merry Christmas to you too, Billy! ;)
Interesting. It is sad that so many theological arguments are utterly shite (c.f. the Trillemma argument that still get invoked today). I think , if you accept Christian frameworks (big 'if' of course), then 'reasons' for faith can at best be buttresses for conclusion necessarily reached via grace i.e. on supernatural grounds. That said, I was never that impressed by the idea that God being all-powerful and all-good means there can't be evil in the world. If you accept - for argument's sake - that there's a deity, then wouldn't One who denied human beings free will be more of a slavekeeper than a loving God, meaning that an 'interventionist' God is just as conceptually problematic as an 'allowing evil' one? If you say that God should have intervened to prevent the Holocaust then (to me) that raises further questions: why is there even one murder in the world? Given that an almighty God can (unlike Superman) be in more than one place at most, why would an all-powerful and all-loving God only intervene to stop especially significant evil like genocide? Why not common theft? It's a truism that, at some point, parents recognise that they have to allow children to make their own mistakes. The Holocaust especially did not occur in a vacuum. Some would rightly talk of the link between Christian antisemitism and the Final Solution (c.f. the blood libel) etc, but the moral culpability still lies with individual human beings ( hence why war with Germany was just and moral). I'd be curious if anyone could actually explain how a world with an all-powerful God who allows free will but simultaneously ensures there's no evil in the world would work. Most people would say that dictatorships and theocracies are essentially less reflective of human dignity and so less moral; this would be true even if a North Korea type society reduced 'evil' crime to zero. Typing this, I'm reminded of A Clockwork Orange :)
In some senses, apologetics all derive from a preconceived conclusion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that said conclusions are necessarily fallacious (oo-er ;)). Theology and philosophy have more in common with each other than philosophy has with actual science, but of course theology *is* predicated on something which is (in the non-pejorative sense) supernatural. It would be better for Christians to acknowledge instead of pretending to have 'proofs' of God in a bid to sound highfalutin'.
Merry Christmas to you too mr CB.
I agree that there are problems with all sorts of ideas about god. For example, the "slavekeeper" god could be "explained" away on the grounds that only he really knows what is best for us. However such a claim although protecting the hypothesis don't demonstrate it is true. One could even claim (like Stephen Law does in his "god of eth" model) that god is malevolently evil and that arguments that he is good can simply be mirrored - eg the existence of good. Good could be the price that is paid to allow maximum suffering in the universe.
It's because such statements only exist on paper and not in reality (or if they do, we can't prove them) that many folk reject theology as a "proper subject".
"I'd be curious if anyone could actually explain how a world with an all-powerful God who allows free will but simultaneously ensures there's no evil in the world would work".
This reminds me of a problem I have with the notion of a "sin free" heavean and leveling it with "free will".
"It would be better for Christians to acknowledge instead of pretending to have 'proofs'
I think when evil creationists try to force nonsence on people, it really does put folk off christianity.
It always strikes me as moral cowardice when ministers refuse to say what side they come down on. both options cant be right or equally valid theologically eg if god did send a flood killing everyone except a family and 2 of every animal (what about the hemaphrodites?) then it's not really a loving act. If the story is not intended to be literal, then it is interpreted as commenting on the loss of being separated from god.....
Come across any zoomers recently? :-)
I did read this by the way ages ago...!
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