Could A Good God Permit So Much Suffering?

[Cypress]

I think this is where you misunderstand atheism. You keep pointing to Dawkins, but Dawkins isn't all atheists. He's just one of the few who actually writes about what some think. And good on him. We've enjoyed two millennia of people forcing Christianity into every nook and cranny of our society, so at least give us a couple of people who say "The emperor has no clothes".

I don't read polemicists either of the religious variety or of the atheist variety.

Polemicists aren't convincing to me.

Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are mudslingers who have adopted a belligerent style to sell books, but their criticisms of religion is ultimately superficial and unconvincing.

I will never read anything from Joel Osteen or the Creation Science Museum Research Institute. Unless I need a laugh.

The most rational and compelling arguments for Christianity I've read are from the Oxford scholar CS Lewis and the American geneticist Francis Collins.

The most rational arguments for a non-relgious tradition I've read about are from Albert Einstein and the existentialist Albert Camus.

 

[gmark77]

Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are mudslingers who have adopted a belligerent style to sell books, but their criticisms of religion is ultimately superficial and unconvincing.

Hitchens pulled no punches but then why should he? He stood against the horrific excesses of some religious traditions which I think you and I would both agree are repulsive in the extreme. Dawkins isn't lambasting care for the poor. He's lambasting the role of religion in defining that which we are allowed to study and that which is forbidden.

I think by and large you probably agree with Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris when they are speaking in a role as atheist critic.

I will never read anything from Joel Osteen or the Creation Science Museum Research Institute. Unless I need a laugh.

But the Creation Science folks would gladly alter how science is taught and presented, just based on their BELIEFS. This isn't just a hypothetical, Creationists have been doing this for over a century in the US school systems.

That's the point. No one is saying Christians taking care of the poor is a bad thing. No, the reason atheists speak up is because faith-based things are far too often given a pass in our society while fact-based things are long-debated.

The most rational and compelling arguments for Christianity I've read are from the Oxford scholar CS Lewis and the American geneticist Francis Collins.

That's good. They clearly aren't compelling for everyone. That's probably because at their heart they cannot and never will be able to provide evidence for an objectively defined God. If that could be done it would have been done thousands of years ago.

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I think when you scratch beneath the surface, most garden-variety atheists are actually somewhere on the spectrum of Agnostic - Cultural Christian - or Pantheist.

Only the most militant are willing to live out the atheist project to it's logical conclusion consistently in real life: by embracing moral relativism, the subjectivity of values, and uncompromising physical materialism, and accepting that in the end it's all meaningless and ultimately there is nothing out there but the howling void. That's what Albert Camus was willing to do in his heyday.

Human behavior has a range of extremes. Extremists only see the Black and the White, but, IMHO, most people understand the greys. Politically, those who see the greys tend to be Independents. The 40% of American voters who feel neither party is supporting their values. Most of which seem to fall upon the dividing line of individual rights vs. public good. Pedophiles and traffickers like Ghislaine Maxwell given leniency plus the redactions in the Epstein Files to the point that all names point to Trump sooooo, no names. Complete redaction. You know. To protect the innocent. LOL

Should our society hold our leaders accountable? IMO, yes. Same for holding them to a higher standard. A value shared in the Spider-Man Rule:

With great power comes great responsibility - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

based upon this idea:

Damocles - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I think this is where you misunderstand atheism. You keep pointing to Dawkins, but Dawkins isn't all atheists. He's just one of the few who actually writes about what some think. And good on him. We've enjoyed two millennia of people forcing Christianity into every nook and cranny of our society, so at least give us a couple of people who say "The emperor has no clothes".

Most of us are just regular folks IRL and you wouldn't be able to tell that we don't believe as you do. Most of us are like most Christians and just keep quiet about who we are and what we believe.

What most defensors fides such as yourself seem to dislike is any overt atheism. Just like most of us hate hearing non-stop about Jesus this and Jesus that from the people selling us hamburgers and chicken sandwiches.

So yeah, I get it. You dislike hearing anything from atheists anywhere. But it's not a fair match. The Jesus folks way outnumber the atheist folks. So where's the harm in 4 or 5 books which question the faith when there are about a billion books which laud the faith and justify it.

By now you've stopped reading so I feel confident in saying this openly and loudly: yes there is good in the New Testament. There really honestly is. But that GOOD doesn't HAVE to be from the Bible. It's common sense to treat others well in a society. It's inherent in our species to find murder wrong etc. People didn't need Jesus to tell them to be decent just because Jesus did so.

What is problematic is that people make POLICY based on their imagination of what God is and what God wants. That's the problem. And people demand that SCIENCE back off when it touches onto things the religious don't like. It DENIES facts when they don't comport with the FAITH. And it is at the heart of countless fights and wars going on today.

We dislike fake Christians like the owners of Hobby Lobby who leverage their disingenuous belief in Jesus to deny women employees healthcare they don't like and then those same Hobby Lobbians turn around and steal priceless artifacts from around the world for their "Bible museum", or they partake of deceptive sales practices and get hammered by the Atty General of NY. We dislike our tax money going to overtly support religions we don't believe in.

Religion is also useful in human conflict. Not necessary but really useful. Just look at Israel for a moment: we have two people fighting over a plot of dusty land because one of them thinks God gave it to them millennia ago because it's in some book somewhere. And countless evangelicals in the USA DEMAND that the war continue so that it can lead to the END OF THE WORLD and the RETURN OF JESUS.

We make policy based on imagination and wishes. That is why some atheists speak out against religion.

NOT because all religion is ipso facto horrible, but because religion is unique in that it defies questioning and it can overcome "facts" by merit of the demands of the believer.

What's wrong with being 100% against imagination-based policy?

And please don't resort to your usual "Christianity is the basis of Western Civilization". That doesn't make Christianity necessarily TRUE nor necessarily GOOD all the time.

In fact the very fact that Christianity is the basis of Western Civilization is enough to convince one that Christianity carries ZERO weight when people want to do truly horrible and evil things. Often in the explicit name of their religion and their civilization. One cannot look at the modern world and say we are necessarily more moral than the ancients who did exactly the same shit we do.

Dawkins is simply proof that young atheists can be bilked as easily as young Christians. My guess is because "they're young". Our laws allow a lot more latitude for "doing business" with those 18 and older versus minors....although it seems the Party of Trump wants to reduce that designation to 13 years of age and older. You know. Like in the Bible.

 

[gmark77]

Dawkins is simply proof that young atheists can be bilked as easily as young Christians.

How is Dawkins "bilking" them?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

How is Dawkins "bilking" them?

The same way Trump did with Trump University. Promising them something that doesn't exist.

I was an atheist in my mid teens but changed for a more spiritual journey. Not a religious person, but I enjoy the idea of a spiritual existence beyond this mortal one. Alan Watts is much more enjoyable to me than Richard Dawkins. For one thing, Watts is more about "Us" and Dawkins is more about "Us vs. Them".

 

[Cypress]

Hitchens pulled no punches but then why should he? He stood against the horrific excesses of some religious traditions which I think you and I would both agree are repulsive in the extreme. Dawkins isn't lambasting care for the poor. He's lambasting the role of religion in defining that which we are allowed to study and that which is forbidden.

I think by and large you probably agree with Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris when they are speaking in a role as atheist critic.




But the Creation Science folks would gladly alter how science is taught and presented, just based on their BELIEFS. This isn't just a hypothetical, Creationists have been doing this for over a century in the US school systems.

That's the point. No one is saying Christians taking care of the poor is a bad thing. No, the reason atheists speak up is because faith-based things are far too often given a pass in our society while fact-based things are long-debated.



That's good. They clearly aren't compelling for everyone. That's probably because at their heart they cannot and never will be able to provide evidence for an objectively defined God. If that could be done it would have been done thousands of years ago.

I don't have the same respect and admiration for polemicists and bomb throwers that you do.

Dawkins and Hitchens merely have a litany of complaints about religion, largely about Jewish stories in the Hebrew Bible. They don't use reason, philosophy, or logic to explain why the atheist project is an attractive and compelling choice. And they don't even seem to understand the Bible or theology very well.

They are in the game to make money, throw bombs, and sell books.

Dawkins is a zoologist. He is not well versed at all in formal logic, theology, or philosophy. His books on religion are pretty superficial.

Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre were probably the last really important secular atheist thinkers.

So now you've moved the goal post marginally away from a rational argument for the existence of some type of gid, to evidence for an objectively defined God, whatever that means.

We can't explain at the objective and ontological level what causes gravity, even though humans have been investigating gravity at least Aristotle. We can't explain anything about the origin of the cosmos, and we still yell at each other about what freedom and justice really mean.

In light of our vast ignorance about many things we have been discussing for thousands of years, I don't think it's fair to expect to god to be described materialistically in terms of height, weight, physical dimension.

 

[Cypress]

The same way Trump did with Trump University. Promising them something that doesn't exist.

I was an atheist in my mid teens but changed for a more spiritual journey. Not a religious person, but I enjoy the idea of a spiritual existence beyond this mortal one. Alan Watts is much more enjoyable to me than Richard Dawkins. For one thing, Watts is more about "Us" and Dawkins is more about "Us vs. Them".

I hardly know anything about Watts. Did you read his stuff?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

I hardly know anything about Watts. Did you read his stuff?

Yes, but mostly listened to his lectures both by purchasing or on Youtube. The Way of Zen is one of a few books I have. "Out of your mind; the nature of consciousness" is an album I downloaded from Amazon.

Lots of stuff on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX5WbxWCSYimtC5F-f-M6djmMQzFilJNg