David Benfell, Ph.D. (he/him/his) on Nostr: Yet another addition to my pinned post: I do get very annoyed with atheists who have ...
Yet another addition to my pinned post: I do get very annoyed with atheists who have decided that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Sorry, no, doesn’t work that way.
That said, theodicy weighs heavily on me. For as long as I can remember, I have wondered why a supposedly good god would permit, let alone create, evil.
I have heard crappy explanations:
1) It’s “God’s plan.” Read the Old Testament and tell me there’s anything like a plan in that chaos. This is ad hoc as can be.
2) Evil exists so humans can have “free will.” First, it is not clear that humans actually have free will. The determinist argument is that social and environmental circumstances govern our choices, even without our being aware of them, and, as far as I know, the question is unresolved.
But second, “free will” depends not on evil but freedom of choice. The mapping of all choices as good or evil is flatly a false dichotomy. It projects a binary state in circumstances where the binary may not apply even one little bit. That particular dilemma should be familiar to a few folks around here.
My answer to the question of theodicy is that if a god or any superior beings exist, they are almost certainly not as portrayed. We do not know their motivations. We do not know their intentions. We, in fact, know nothing whatsoever about them.
But my speculation would be that such beings are unlikely to be “good” and it is awfully hard to excuse the Biblical account of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god.
That said, theodicy weighs heavily on me. For as long as I can remember, I have wondered why a supposedly good god would permit, let alone create, evil.
I have heard crappy explanations:
1) It’s “God’s plan.” Read the Old Testament and tell me there’s anything like a plan in that chaos. This is ad hoc as can be.
2) Evil exists so humans can have “free will.” First, it is not clear that humans actually have free will. The determinist argument is that social and environmental circumstances govern our choices, even without our being aware of them, and, as far as I know, the question is unresolved.
But second, “free will” depends not on evil but freedom of choice. The mapping of all choices as good or evil is flatly a false dichotomy. It projects a binary state in circumstances where the binary may not apply even one little bit. That particular dilemma should be familiar to a few folks around here.
My answer to the question of theodicy is that if a god or any superior beings exist, they are almost certainly not as portrayed. We do not know their motivations. We do not know their intentions. We, in fact, know nothing whatsoever about them.
But my speculation would be that such beings are unlikely to be “good” and it is awfully hard to excuse the Biblical account of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god.