On another blog, FideCogitActio, some theists of a "classical" stripe (that's to say, like Brian Davies, Edward Feser) are criticisng the Evil God Challenge (or I suppose, trying to show how it can be met, or sidestepped). The main post includes this: In book I, chapter 39 , Aquinas argues that “there cannot be evil in God” (in Deo non potest esse malum). Atheists like Law must face the fact that, if the words are to retain any sense, “God” simply cannot be “evil”. As my comments in the thread at Feser’s blog aimed to show, despite how much he mocks “the privation theory of evil,” Law himself cannot escape its logic: his entire argument requires that the world ought to appear less evil if it is to be taken as evidence of a good God. Even though he spurns the idea that evil is a privation of good, his account of an evil world is parasitic on a good ideal; this is no surprise, though, since all evil is parasitic on good ( SCG I, 11 ). Based on the conclusions of se...
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I had the pleasure to listen to your discussion on the problem of evil at Philosophy Bites. I think it was a good move to use Epicures as a steppingstone for your later comments on how the argument pro an al good, all knowing and omnipotent God mirrors the argument pro an al evil, all knowing and so forth God hereby displaying how utterly unconvincing the argument is. This also displays I dare say the peculiar phenomenon of faith and demonstrates how unreflective it is.
To use Harold Blooms words from Omens of the Millennium: “If you can accept a God who coexists with death camps, schizophrenia, and AIDS, yet remains all-powerful and somehow benign, then you have faith.” For the modern critical thinker faith at this level seems incomprehensible but hey. I guess one could view faith as love for the incomprehensible or impossible. Still the question remains what on earth motivates people to develop and rely on such a faith?
Jan B.W. Pedersen, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Jan B.W.P.
PS! I can conform that one can download the interview from iTunes
I find the problem of evil irrelevent. It's Ockham's razor that trumps the problem of evil, not the other way round as you suggest in
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1475.
I wanted to make a quick point, but it became a rant, so I've put it here:
http://ronmurp.blogspot.com/