The Problem of Natural Evil

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It doesn't matter if I'm being more incredulous, as I'm not making an argument from my personal incredulity, as you are.

Again, you're looking at this back-to-front. Personal incredulity is the position that something must be wrong because the denier and the denier alone has stated the s/he cannot and will not believe it. What I posited in the argument above is might be termed 'the reasonableness of disbelief'. In other words, it is possible that the everyone in the village is a murderer or a rapist or a blasphemer of truly epic proportions. It is possible, but is it reasonable to believe that such is the case? This is, in fact, what the term 'beggars belief' means.

But we can try with a more recent, real-world event. A little less than four years ago, Haiti was devastated by an earthquake. Reasonable, trustworthy estimates put the death toll at around 160 000, the majority in the Port-au-Prince metro area. Is it reasonable to assume that all of these people (mostly Christians, a significant number of infants and children) deserved to die? It is not. But this position doesn't mean I'm being incredulous. It is people who would state something like, 'Well, God wouldn't have allowed all those people to die unless they deserved it' who are succumbing to personal incredulity over the reasonableness of belief.

Boru