Darren New wrote:
> Kevin Wampler wrote:
>> There's a further rather critical assumption in the article that's not 
>> explicitly stated: That the definition of "good" as it applies to God 
>> coincides with the definition of "good" as it applies to human actions.
> 
> Sure. And that's once again the "it isn't really evil, because then God 
> would be doing evil" justification.
> 
> In other words, that's exactly what
> """
> the bulk of the discussion then becomes a matter of theists arguing that 
> actually, the world’s pretty great, the evil things in it are perfectly 
> justified and necessary, and everything is for the best
> """
> is addressing in a nice concise way.

While that is a valid interpretation of what he said in that sentence, I 
don't see that the rest of his arguments addressed what I'm talking 
about, since there's a subtle distinction that he seems to be completely 
ignoring (see my next paragraph).


>> Of course this leaves open the issue of how we can coherently claim 
>> that God is "good" without being able to define what "good" means, but 
>> I can't see how he addresses this point.
> 
> He addresses it throughout the article. "Torturing and killing people is 
> good, by definition".

Not at all, see point 1) in the next paragraph.


>> Overall I was left with the distinct impression that he was arguing 
>> against straw-man versions to the resolutions to the problem of evil. 
> 
> I dunno. It seems that every rebuttal to the problem is essentially 
> either "you don't realize that the Holocaust was good and not evil" or 
> "everyone tortured to death during the Holocaust deserved it."  That's 
> what he's addressing, and that's what you're arguing as well.
> 

It's actually not what I'm arguing here.  I'll address the differences 
in turn:


1) "You don't realize that the Holocaust was good and not evil":

I'm instead pointing out that he ignores the viewpoint that might be 
most simply summed up "while the Holocaust was evil, creating a universe 
in which the holocaust could/would happen isn't necessarily".  Now, you 
could certainly attempt to make an argument against this point, but I 
don't see him doing it.

I should note, however, that such a God does come across as 
(potentially/probably) being rather unconcerned with our sufferings, but 
he bases his "moral repugnance" argument on assuming that this tell us 
something about human morality, which is not necessarily the case.


2) "Everyone tortured to death during the Holocaust deserved it.":

I don't see how "deserving it" factors into the points I was making, but 
if you think I'm actually making this argument I'd be interested to hear 
more specifically why that is.  Certainly he bases his particular 
example of this on original sin, which is not at all relevant to the 
points I was making.  I was actually quite surprised when he brought 
this up original sin as the "unifying principle" behind all the 
arguments, since that just seems to be a totally unjustified assertion 
unless you restrict yourself to very particular sorts Christian 
viewpoints (this is part of why why I see him as constructing straw-men).


Basically, I'm arguing that there's a version of the "moves in 
mysterious ways" argument which his points don't apply to.

Post a reply to this message