The Ultimate Why There Is Evil in the World Thread.

[Pyrrho]

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Really the ball is in the atheist court because it is up to them to show that a perfect world is even possible.

"A perfect world": what the hell is that?  ... it doesn't mean the non-chirpers need to respond.

The "Best of All Worlds" thing has been hammered to death by now, yet Chad's complaint has a tweet of merit. In particular, to knock omnibenevolence from its pedestal, the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one.

The only thing I see established in the omnibenevolence goings-on is that we humans can conceive of only limited benevolence. Things get problematic real fast if this quality starts existing in infinite measure.  

I can tell you how this will go, but first I will show that this is not the best of all possible worlds.  Let us consider penicillin.  When penicillin was introduced, that improved the world, as it reduced unnecessary suffering.  If there were a God, that being could have introduced penicillin in 1800 (and yes, earlier, and could also have created a world where penicillin was not needed, but let us keep this simple).  Since God did not do so, we know that this is not the best of all possible worlds.

Humans are constantly trying to improve the world, and they do occasionally succeed.  The fact that they are able to improve it proves that it was inferior, and consequently it could not have been the best it could have been, for every invention and improvement could have been provided by God beforehand.


Now, I will go back to what I was mentioning at first in my post, about how this will go.  The religionist refuses to accept any evidence of anything on this issue.  It does not matter what proofs one puts forth; they are rejected out of hand, with some bullshit like, "God's ways show infinite foresight, " etc.  Basically, they take a position in which there is nothing that they would accept as evidence against their position.  So it is a pretense to reason, as the reality is that they reject all reason on the matter and simply dogmatically assert that this is somehow best, in some mysterious, inscrutable way.


There is another point, though, which you are wrong about.  Specifically, "...the atheists need demonstrate the stronger result that God has failed to create the "best of all possible worlds," not merely that he has failed to create a perfect one."  The theist needs to prove that creating a universe is better than not creating one.  Creating a bad universe is worse than nothing, and we have no reason to suppose that this universe is, overall, better than nothing.  Think of all of the suffering in the world, of children starving to death, children being raped and brutalized, children burning in fires, children dying of all manner of painful diseases, etc., etc., etc.  The idea that this world is better than nothing is ridiculous.

Voltaire had the proper response to these issues with his Candide.  The idea that this is the best of all possible worlds is more worthy of ridicule than of argument.