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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 was recently listening to a podcast of a lecture by Slavoj Zizek. He said that Sam Harris presents an argument justifying torture in one of his books.
I'll defend anyone's right to argue for things I don't agree with. But if Harris is really in favour of torturing people, I'm amazed other liberal atheists haven't pulled him up on this.
Do you know anything about this?
Then you can apply that to a case where someone knows where the terrorist bombs are planted, and torture is the only way of getting that information.
His argument turns on torture not being valued as an absolute wrong, and hence being capable of being surpassed in its importance by other considerations (like the preservation of the world).
/at least, that's what I recall his argument as having been...