(September 14, 2020 at 3:43 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Did noah have all the children on the magic boat too?
At any rate, claims of moral subjectivity which arise as a consequence of excusing your god for evil are unlikely to sway very many people.
I disagree on the sentiment of persuasion.
People, in my experience, will be swayed more by actions than an equal sentiment put into words. It does not matter, in this regard, whatever you say - if they do not correlate into action. The same way we use the most common fallacy of attributing sufficient correlation between two events with causing a preceding event with a following one, without even using some sort of proof of mechanism to demonstrate this.
In the case of theists, I think it's due to a deficiency in critical thinking. Especially so in examining their own faith. I don't know where this deficiency, which I think is present, comes from but I speculate it's a result of indoctrination, particularly of surrendering their ability to reason and trusting an authority figure to decide for them (Sunday school teacher, priest, bishop, pope) on what to think.
The result is that no matter the behavior recorded by 'holy' texts of their god, they're unable to determine if it is evil or not. I know this intimately, from when I still believed in a god of the Christian conviction.
But really, it's a question of efficiency of persuasion. So far, the leading apologists are so convinced of their tactic that they're able to lie to themselves, thanks to compartmentalization. Yet, I wouldn't be surprised by the amount of theist authority figures who realized they were in error, but resorted to grifting thanks to the human capital, power & wealth their position grants them.
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P. Feynman
