Your personal take on “The Problem of Evil?”

[XK9_Knight]

Holy cats! Do I dare go off on a tangent… YES! I’ll keep it at the bottom and in a hidden tab, so it doesn’t detract too much from the main point of the thread (Although, I think it’s just Esq and I in here now… and maybe Michael?)
(Das... dass Michael rite dare, dats him.)

Absolutely not. Our society is in no way optimal, and the easiest way to demonstrate that is to show the gradual improvement and changes to morality over time; we had to learn that burning people as witches was wrong, we had to learn that slavery was wrong, etc etc. Our moral sense is constantly changing and improving with the input of new evidence: there is no presumption that we have it right, or even the best we could possibly make it.

My point is that the compulsion itself doesn't exist absent education by society at large. Even in your example with your nephew, he had to be taught not to perform an action via negative reinforcement. Now, though I do hope his moral upbringing consists of more than operant conditioning, the fact remains that your nephew didn't feel any compulsion to avoid the immoral act; there is no morality switch inside kids that gets flipped to "on" once they grow to a certain age, this stuff has to be imparted to them. Kids model behaviors and morals they are taught, they aren't just waiting for the moment their adult moral sense turns on. There's a vast library of child psychological study to verify this.

Uh, yeah, I knew that. I mean duh…


Lol! I would have to concede your point if only because this (what you’ve just stated) is the extent that I myself thought it through, but I still can’t shake “that” feeling; the feeling that these are nothing more than “just so” stories.

Mr. Scientist: “The reason you like blonde bombshells is because fair skin and blonde hair were indicators of sexual vitality and health.”

Me: “OH, THANK YOU MR. SCIENTIST! Thank you for that DEEP insight! I’ve got a hypothesis for you”

“The reason I like blonde bombshells is because they are fucking hot. Care for another ‘just so’ story?”


One last ironic thing, there was a tremendous amount of economic pressure to keep slavery. But it was the abolitionists, the Christians, who tore down that institution. I think your assumption that we are on a moral upward trend negates cultural pressures. I won’t say that Christianity isn’t without it’s ‘moral stains,’ but you have to admit that religion plays a significant role in morality.

*Warning Tangent!*

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Rather than have a messy “quote, then I say something, quote etc.” I’m just going to insert my comments in bold.

… [I find] presuppositionalism… to be the enemy of rational thought…

On your view, what is “rationality.”

It attempts to force a false dichotomy of solipsism or faith onto us all- either we ignore all our past experiences and don't assume anything will ever be the same as it was a moment before, or we all have faith in those things you listed.

I disagree profoundly, the only false thing here is this “dichotomy” you bring up. You believe science, right (of course you do!)? Science is steeped in presuppositions! The aims, methodologies and presuppositions of science cannot be verified by science. We have to accept that our senses are reliable and give us accurate mind-independent information about the world and not information about our own sense impressions.

Science must assume that mind is rational, and that the world itself is rational in such a way that we can know it. Science must assume uniformity of nature (as I mentioned earlier), science must assume one can infer from past cases to all such future unexamined cases.

I could go on along these lines for a while, but my point has been made that “presuppositions” are not a defeater of science or “rational thought.”

I recognize the utility of axioms, but listing god among them is attempting to slip in something that's not like the others.

Do explain?
I won’t pretend to know everything about “properly basic beliefs,” but I do have some grasp of Plantinga’s model, which basically states “man has an innate sense of ‘the divine,’ and there are proper circumstances that would lead him to the conclusion ‘God exists.’”

Seems how many people have come to accept God?

We all have some form of uniform idea of the past, we can measure the minds of others via technology, and nature has a long history of behaving as it behaves and not otherwise.

When you say things like “we all have some form of uniform idea of the past,” or “nature has a long history of behaving as it does,” these are “just so” stories; these aren’t things you’ve provide empirical evidence for; this is faith at it's finest. Secondly, this part about “measuring the mind” via technology is misleading. What scientists are measuring are “brainwaves,” not “minds.” So unless you hold to a materialistic view of the mind (which I would assume you do?) I would be inclined to disagree.

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Meanwhile, we have no kind of evidence for god that's anywhere near as clear as for the past, and we lose nothing by discarding it as an axiom.

That's funny, it would seem you didn’t provide any evidence of the past?
What will you count as “valid evidence of God?” I always hear atheists ask for “evidence” but I’ve never heard them define what they mean apart from materialistic standard which begs the question.

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