Refusing to see what's right in from of your face

William Vallicella: Does Evil Prove the Nonexistence of God? --

I'll grant you that it does if you grant me that truth, existence, order, conscience and twenty of so other phenomena prove the existence of God. And let's not leave out the moral heroism of Maximilian Kolbe.

You can reasonably ask how there could be a God given the fact of natural and moral evil. You can also reasonably ask how there could not be a God given the transcendent moral heroism and selflessness of Kolbe and others like him.

I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God. (Click on the first hyperlink and locate the argument from evil for the existence of God.)

My point is that there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God.

Whatever it may be, it is not his *point* that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

Consider -- "I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God."

What Vallicella is referring to here is that 'evil' is utterly meaningless if atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

IF there is no Creator (*) -- if the world just randomly happened -- THEN there can be no "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'good'. AND, if there is no "way things ought to be", then there can be no violation of the "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'evil'.

Contrary to all the confused (when not merely dishonest) bleating of 'atheists', far from being evidence against the reality of God, the reality is evil is evidence *for* the reality of God.

Now, Vallicella does actually know this, but he will not see it and he will not acknowledge it, because he has a prior commitment to the falsehood that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

In other words, the man is a fool.


(*) Not only must it be the case that there is some entity which may be called 'God', but this entity must be the cause of the world -- this 'God' cannot be an item in the world, but is rather "outside the world" -- this 'God' must be transcendent and immaterial and eternal. At the same time, it is not enough that 'God' be the cause of the world, 'God' must be the deliberate cause of the world -- this 'God' must be personal.

In other words, even before he can appeal to 'evil' as his rationale for denying the reality of God, the so-called atheist must make the logically prior appeal to a transcendent, eternal, immaterial and personal Creator-God.