"Kevin Wampler" <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote in message
news:4aef81b4$1@news.povray.org...
> Darren New wrote:
> >> But there's an extra, assumed step:
> >> 1b) God is good.
> >
> > Well, it's not assumed by the article in the link. It's explicitly
> > stated. Obviously the same logic doesn't hold for Satan or Zeus, for
> > example.
>
>
> 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.

Indeed, there's the epistemological issues. As a kid, many of us might have
thought being forced, and sometimes tricked, into eating broccoli was
torture, and hence an evil act. The understanding changes with access to
higher knowledge, a wider perspective. Who's to say that the gap in
understanding between god and man is less than that of a toddler and a grown
up?

That said, a religion with a god or gods whose concept of good and evil are
as alien to us as a toddler's is to a grown ups, won't be either comforting
or convincing. So in the end, religions necessarily are hazy themselves on
the concepts of good and evil.

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