I will be on BBC1 Big Questions programme again next Sunday 10am (May 6th). This one was prerecorded yesterday. The whole programme was devoted to children and religion.
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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Thanks
Richard Cooper
On the whole, I found this to be an excellent and overdue episode of the Big Questions, and especially enjoyed yours and Andrew Copson's extremely considered contributions. However, the one point I would like to pick up on is your notion of teflon-coating belief (or non-belief) systems. (A useful metaphor I thought.)
I'm just not sure the late Hitchens (and colleagues) do attempt to teflon-coat the atheist position in response to challenges from history. My understanding is that he/they take issue with the use of Stalin and/or Pol Pot (etc.) as examples of how political systems/leaders fall down without the moral guidance/brakes of religion. If I have this right, Hitchens notes how the Stalinist system (for instance) could almost be considered 'religious' - or at least holds strong parallels - as it too demands unquestioned allegiance to a single (pseudo-divine) patriarch figure, and his moral/political system. It also flourishes on the condemnation of other, competing, belief systems, and discourages/punishes independent-thought/dissent. The cult of personality, and the promise of greater goodness - often illusions - could also be considered similar. In this sense (and only this sense) I see how this might be considered religious (or at least synonymous), albeit without any spiritual component. (To be 'like a religion' or 'religious' about something, doesn't always require literal religious beleif/practice.) I'd therefore argue this is different to an attempt at'teflon-coating'.
In fact, thinking about it now, some of these are parallels you yourself identify in 'Believing Bullshit', only you're perhaps more likely to connect Stalinist and religious systems as 'intellectual black holes', rather than being different versions of each other. Not sure...
Anyway, thanks for your time.
Adzcliff