Michael Egnor: Godless Theodicy
"... Atheism is a feeble ideology. Atheists don’t have answers; they don’t even have their own questions."
You'll want to read the whole thing, Gentle Reader.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
That's a good post, thanks for sharing it.
"Why care about the bereaved as long as your own genes are replicating — in fact, flourishing because of another’s loss?"
And in fact, why not aid the loss of others by killing them off, so that the strong can flourish. What is wrong with that, when there is no good or bad.
Perhaps i'm wrong, but i think the way to find God is to find evil. If we acknowledge that there is evil, then there must be God and good, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate, well at least for me.
MK: "That's a good post, thanks for sharing it."
You're most welcome.
Michael Egnor: "Why care about the bereaved as long as your own genes are replicating - in fact, flourishing because of another’s loss?"
MK: "And in fact, why not aid the loss of others by killing them off, so that the strong can flourish. What is wrong with that, when there is no good or bad."
Exactly. Hitler, and Stalin, and Lenin, and Mao, and Pol Pot, and Robespierre, and Napoleon, and on and on ... down to Roman Polanski's rape of the 13-year-old girl ... can be coherently condemned only from within a theistic framework.
MK: "Perhaps i'm wrong, but i think the way to find God is to find evil."
You're not wrong. The idea you're seeing a glimmer of might be better phrased once you've chased it down and looked at it from different angles (and you'll doubtless see even more implications of it by doing so); but you're not wrong.
MK: "If we acknowledge that there is evil, then there must be God and good, ... "
Yes, the concept 'evil' is meaningless by itself. 'Good' can exist absent 'evil,' but 'evil' doesn't and can't exist absent 'good.'
And, in fact, 'evil' doesn't really exist; or, to put it another way: 'evil' exists in the same manner that 'darkness' exists or that 'nothingness' exists -- 'darkness' is the absence of 'light,' and 'nothingness' is the absence of 'something,' and 'evil' is the absence of 'good.' None of these three things really exist; they are all merely the absence of their "opposite."
It seems to me that the *real* question isn't "the problem of evil," but rather it is "the problem of good" -- how do we account for the fact that 'good' does exist? And the a thorough examination of the question must always bring us back to the reality of God.
MK: "... the alternative is too horrible to contemplate, well at least for me."
The particular way you've phrased that opens you up to the charge of "wishful thinking" ... if you were talking to someone inclined to be uncharitable; if you were talking to someone *determined* to misunderstand you. Fortunately, it's just me, and I try to not be like that, even toward those with whom I disagree.
But just think of how many undergrads would have to give up their awesome angsty Walmart-bought persona if in fact they're shown that atheism is the new Santa Claus for the 21st Century. I mean, you'd not only have the new revolutionaries hitting a midlife crisis before their 21st birthday, you'd also have the Universities that these kids attend pulling their hair out while rewriting their lesson plans (yup; guess relativism and "abiogenesis" are about as tenable as alchemy if atheism isn't true). Plus! you'd have an entire Legion (where have we heard that term before?) of those who drive the media/entertainment machine having to rethink their role as virtual smack peddlers for the past several generations. (Awww, Marilyn Manson's record and t-shirt sales just dropped off, right behind Bill Maher's docudrama ode to Julius Streicher...) And let's not forget about those Marxists - guess world revolution isn't going to fly once we've deduced that mankind and culture can't be reduced to "an ape picked up a stone and here we are"....
So you can see how this would be way too much work, way too much inconvenience, for the modern revolutionary to have to wrap his/her mind around. I mean, after all, they're all too busy trying to universalize (bureaucratize) health care at the moment - why would they want to bother with placing their trust in anyone else besides their Anointed One and Big Brother?
Post a Comment