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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"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French...and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' True Story. And so the devil said, 'Ok, it's a deal.'...Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other."
And that in itself is harmful to reason.
(Although it is true that some of the people that received the "award" are not above using such personal attacks themselves but it seems to me that this alone does not justify similar behavior on the part of their opponents.
It's like saying that since in countries under Islamic laws homosexuals are persecuted we should therefore persecute Muslims in our countries. It does not make much more sence than that...)