Doing a bit of vanity-surfing and just noticed I was quoted here...
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 think the point of Dawkins writing the letter to his daughter when she was 10 is that she was old enough at that point to understand, for example, that there is no Santa Claus. Children at ages below that are hard wired (for good survival reasons) to instinctively believe whatever they are told by their parents. I see no harm in our kids believing in these things before they learn to critically evaluate things for themselves. I would be interested to know whether Dawkins feels there is any harm in children being led to believe in non-religious traditions such as the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa. My guess is that he would not have any objection to these traditions as long as a point came in the kids' lives where they learned that belief in anything without evidence (such as religion) is really no different than their belief in the tooth fairy during their tender years."
A nice article. It's good to see an article about 'Christmas without Christ'. Though, to tell you the truth, I'd rather see an article about 'Christmas without Turkey', as millions of turkeys are ruthlessly killed for our pleasure on a holiday about love.