Available from Michael Shermer 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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Brilliant point. But then again, isn't that our challenge?
How do we do that? What is the way to make the baloney detection kit accessible?
What an incredibly great question for philosophers and educators to take up. I hear a guy named Dewey had some ideas, but they never got fully accepted.
Any improvements out there based on recent and more comprehensive data?
Go for economy. For example, Schick and Vaugn's SEARCH formula is 6 steps simpler, and has the advantage of an acronym.
_S_tate the claim
_E_xamine the evidence
consider _A_lternatives
_R_ate, according to the _C_riteria of adequacy, each _H_ypothesis.