(February 5, 2015 at 2:37 am)Harris Wrote:But no one would consider the loss of the leg to be a "good" thing. Necessary perhaps, and better than the alternative, but not good. And maybe it's time that we recognized that a god who creates something as terrible as gangrene is a pretty miserable person.(February 2, 2015 at 10:50 am)Tonus Wrote: If there is anything that can demonstrate the issue, it's that you seem to think that there is a necessary and proper amount of suffering that would somehow qualify as 'good.' In other words, you need to present suffering as some sort of virtue in order to argue against the problem of evil. Otherwise you'd be arguing that evil is necessary in some way.Unjustifiable pain and suffering are evil and if pain and suffering are justified then they are no more evil. For example cutting of leg due to threat of gangrene spread is a justifiable suffering therefore this loss of leg (suffering) is not considered as evil.
Harris Wrote:That doesn't have anything to do with my claim that he doesn't deserve our worship. Indeed, it shows that we are given the choice to worship or cease to exist. And even those who worship him suffer, and they accept it because they think it's better to let god kick you around than stomp on your skull. That's not a choice between a good option and a bad one, that's a decision on just how dearly you hold your personal dignity.(February 2, 2015 at 10:50 am)Tonus Wrote: This need to fit god into a container that he is ill-suited for leads to the creation and worship of beings who are unfit to be worshiped.God is not in need of any of our worships. On the contrary, we are in need to worship Him because our existence depends on His will.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould