Religion's role in American foreign policy

Hi friend Schaum

If the organized religion hampers ethical and moral requirements; then its viewpoint should not be accommodated.

I am in favor of it that the State should hold all religions in equal status and should not get involved in the spiritual matters; it does not mean that State should be against the spiritual progress.

Thanks

I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim

Hello everyone,

I Had to take some time off of the old blog to enjoy the last few days of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games here in Vancouver. What a time. Congrats to the USA on your first place over all medal count. And Congrats to Canada on our world record setting Gold medal count. Not bad for a country of only 30 million.

Anyway, I have only skimmed the posts since my last visit. Much amusement I must say. Seems Daniel 12 has switched from being an earnest essayist to a comedic novelist. Or at least an idea generator for comedic novelists. Good luck in your new endeavor sir. Fiction has always been your strong suit.

NAVIN1,

I do not hate you, NAVIN1. I just don't believe your claim. No hate necessary. Just a lack of evidence. Nor do I hate the people who I think are delusional about God. I just find them to be lacking any evidence to support their belief. If you were under the impression that I hate you, I assure you that is not the case. I don't hate people who think they've seen Elvis either. I just don't believe them.

Then of course there's Daniel 12 the pointless ID preacher with no point except for the necessity of ID of course. He has no point according to him, except of course that morality without ID is impossible. Even though he has not criticized this particular point, it must be flawed because he claims to not have found any points of view that are not flawed. Since he will not point out the flaw in his point that Intelligence and morality are impossible without ID, I guess I will have to.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

A universal piece of wisdom with no God belief required. Logical, sensible, reasoned thinking, and even instinctual due to natural selection. Those who live this way do well for themselves and the world becomes a better place to live allowing people to thrive better than if they were continuously hostile towards one another. If there's one thing we can count on, it is the human instinct to survive and to thrive. And doing unto others.... is the best chance for survival and success any of us have.

No God belief necessary. Countries like Denmark, Sweden and Finland are majority atheist/agnostic and do not have any problems with intelligence and morality. One need not wonder about what will happen when people stop believing in God. The examples are plentiful in the here and now.

There are only three people on this blog who desperately try to point to Stalin as an example of the future of atheism. NAVIN1 who I think does it out of revenge for being called a fraud. Daniel 12 who also seems to have a vendetta against atheists even though he is one. And of course RoadRunnin who thinks that the edicts of a pagan dictator represent the secular way of thinking.

I'll not likely succeed in showing these three their errors in thinking. God knows I've tried. I'll just take comfort in the fact that no one who's opinion I respect honestly believes that. It is, and always will be the argument of those lashing out at those who criticize their religious beliefs.

Harium.

Parrsurrey:

"...that does not mean that it should not uphold ethical, moral and spiritual requirements of the people."

Ethical and moral "requirements" of the people do not require, and are often hampered by, organized religion. And as for the "spiritual requirements" of the people...there is an Amendment to the Constitution that expressly forbids the state from becoming involved the spiritual "requirements" of the people, aside from holding all religions in equal stature. The people are free to embrace or renounce whatever "spiritual" myths and superstitions they want.

Hi friends

I don’t subscribe to the views of our friend bpai_99 :

“The US should be an example of reason and freedom of thought. Religion is directly opposed to those ends.”

Religion is not opposed to reason and freedom of thought. The state should be secular in the temporal affairs; that does not mean that it should not uphold ethical, moral and spiritual requirements of the people.

Thanks

I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim

DITLD:

"And finally, regarding Daniel12's ideas for comic novels, why don't you write one?"

Because he can't. His inability to write, to manage grammar, to construct rational, logical thoughts and sentences would finally and ultimately be demonstrated even to himself if he ever attempted to write anything. His most important delusion, that he is a writer, would be ground to dust. He can't afford to take that risk.

Back to the topic and still waiting for answers to the following questions. (Where are the CCOGA task force members hiding?)

Considering that the task force had two members from the University of Chicago and the location of the topic group, why wasn't Professor Mearsheimer on the task force?

"John J. Mearsheimer, PhD is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an international relations theorist. Known for his book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, more recently Mearsheimer has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing the article The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which was subsequently published as a book, becoming a New York Times Best Seller."

What do the five directors of CCOGA do to earn on average $150,000/year per director in 2008?

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

The task force was not in complete aggreement with the report? Why and what points should the general public know about said disagreements?

A few comments:

It is repeated here often by many posters that "man has free will ... " as though it is a true assumption that everyone knows.

But that is just a plattitude, a tired old plattitude. Free will in what? in action? in reaction? in speaking? in thinking? in causing thoughts to appear or disappear? Just a little applied thought to this statement and all that it implies might cause hesitation in repeating it over and over again ... I don't want to go into all that now ... if people have free will, then they are free to find all this out for themselves, or not.

Do religious people have an easier time with morality and ethics because theirs is defined absolutely by God? Not really. Living a moral and ethical life is exactly the same for a religious person as an atheist, because the world is the same for both, and the absolute morliaty of a religious person is just as arbitraty as the morality of an atheist; absolute morality depends on the religion of the person stating it, and is arbitrary.

And about intelligent design or unintelligent desgin: such questions are variation on mind-games. If you descibe the world as being designed, or if you refer to the world as creation, then you are implying with your question what the answer must be, that there must be a designer or a creator. And then you observe the absurdity of the opposite, that of a world that is unintelligently designed ...

But those are all just words, words, words, that have no relevance to the nature of existence. If you ask, "what is the world?" or "what is existence?" the question is a little more neutral. Implied in the question "what is existence?" is the verb "to be" not the verbs create or design. It all has to do with the word you choose in asking the question.

We have impressions of order, and from that we discern patterns. That is all we know for sure, and nothing else beyond that regarding the nature of origin of existence do we know. All else is superfidcial working out of mentally posed puzzles.

Also, atheism is not a religon. There are no criteria for regarding it as a religion. Many things can have ism attahced as a suffix without being a religion, without being anything at all. What about relativism? what about evolutionism? what about nudism?

As opposed to Christianity, atheism is absence of belief in God. Only religious people call it a religion. If atheists say their atheism is not a religion, why not believe them? Wouldn't they know?People's beliefs are what they say they are, not what other people say.

And finally, regarding Daniel12's ideas for comic novels, why don't you write one? However I have a criticism: a clone of a person is not the original person. A clone of Jesus would not be Jesus. For the purposes of your book, you might suppose it is, but it is not. Also, if these clones of Jesus and Mohammed had supernatural powers delivered from God,why wouldn't atheists believe it? All they are saying is that they do not believe without proof.

Daniel12:

Another of your delusions: that I "owe" you an explanation! I owe you nothing.

I have explained in detail, as have Pamsm, Onofrio, Farnaz, Timmy2, Persiflage, and god knows how many others, exactly what is wrong with your "writing" and your suppositions that are based on nothing more than the illusions in your head. You offer no facts to prove any of the garbage you post. So it is YOU who owe the explanations, the proofs, of your claims, delusions, and an explanation of your immoral conniving, whining, and just plain BS.

You are a failed man, by your own choice.

Plot for a comic novel:

The body of Jesus is discovered in what is now Israel. The discoverers are Southern Baptists. Somehow they take this as purely positive although questions as to Christ's supposed resurrection can be made. The discoverers clone the body of Jesus (from DNA) and accelerate his development. They train him rigorously in God, guns and country and send him into battle in Afghanistan.

Atheists get wind of this and secretly work with the terrorists in an attempt to kill Jesus, thinking if Jesus dies--his clone--a remarkable thrust is made against religion. Jesus not only survives but wins the silver star and the atheist plot is discovered and Jesus comes home a hero and determined to stamp out atheism.

The terrorists get really angry with the atheists, thinking that Jesus has survived only because the Godless atheists have gotten into things and Jesus strikes a deal with the terrorists, promising that Mohammed will be cloned soon and Christ and Mohammed will reign together (but of course Jesus secretly plans to kill Mohammed).

Mohammed being cloned organizes all of Islam into a grand army and Jesus curses his own stupidity for striking a deal with the terrorists, for he cannot possibly live up to the war making powers of Mohammed. Jesus strikes a deal with the atheists and has them working with the Christians against the Islamic, and in order to fire up his base has himself crucified on television (CNN provides great coverage).

The atheists being in league with the Christians now sneak Jesus's body out of the morgue so the belief in resurrection takes hold. A pitched battle between Christiandom/atheism and Islam ensues and Mohammed is killed in battle. All seems favorable to the Western world. But then it leaks out that Christ's body was snuck out of the morgue by atheists. Islam and Christianity work together to stamp out atheism.

The atheists, desperate, clone Jesus and Mohammed and raise them (in accelerated development) in atheism. Jesus and Mohammed publish books on atheism superior to the leading atheist writers of the day. Their great powers are taken, despite their professed atheism, as proof of divine origin. They were supposed to help the atheists but the atheist plan has backfired.

Jesus and Mohammed insist their superior work in atheism is not the result of any divine power and help get Buddha cloned to prove that superior work can be done in atheism without having a divine origin (the Buddha of course has no God and if he can do superior work in atheism it would help Jesus and Mohammed's claim).

But the Buddha stinks at atheism despite having no professed belief in God! Everyone gets wind of Jesus and Mohammed's plot and Jesus gets crucified. Mohammed goes to Afghanistan and hides in a cave. The Buddha out of his great integrity turns the entire world to Buddhism. The comedy has a happy ending. The Buddha has his own television show which is the most popular and lasting of all time. Late night comedians recognize this and turn to Buddhism, hoping to succeed the Buddha as hosts on late night television. They succeed. The world laughs and meditates and all is well in the world and with man.

The animals are relieved and turn to Buddhism too. But the cows are a little too good at meditating and incur the jealousy of the human masses. There is no holy cow anymore. Everyone eats meat and meditates. Other small developments of like nature ensue, but these are for another story.

NAVIN1.

To enjoy some posters, it helps if one has spent a lifetime in show business -- everyone there thinks they know what they are doing.

Then, one retires and has time away from the lunches, cocktail hours and endless parties, turning to other matters.

I had heard of Jesus and Moses -- a few others -- and now have had the time to read Spinoza and Descartes. And, thanks to SCHAUM, read Alvin the Chip----, I mean Alvin Plantinga the Calvinist, and his critics.

All I can say is, "Thank evolution, or something, I stumbled into a life in, and of, Show Business -- there's nothing like it."

Schaum, I respectfully ask you why it is you criticize me for not making sense, logic, morality and so on when according to you there is exactly no intelligent design behind existence. Do I not correspond to the universe as you perceive it what with my writing, according to you, having no intelligence behind it at all? Also please tell me how it is you have determined I have no intelligence, sense, logic and so--and that you yourself do--when in the same breath you say there is no intelligent design behind existence. Show me that piece of logical reasoning. You atheists owe, yes, owe due to your day in day out assertions that atheism is superior to religion, all of us an explanation. Explain how it is you atheists make so much sense and the rest of us none in a universe with no intelligent design behind it at all. You owe us not least because your view opens up a whole new intellectual requirement in the educational system. In your atheist world teachers are forced to explain how sense is arrived at and separated from nonsense in a universe with no intelligent design behind it at all. A whole new pressure on logic exists. But you happen to be the expert in logic. Please explain this to us all.

No timmy, you have hate, superiority, anger all the usual neuroses of an ignorant soul. I don't hate you, I enjoy, I smile, I laugh, even at those who attack me like you. I know you are doing the best you can with the limitations of the ideology provided by you by your culture. Schaum is hiding behind empty arguments because he needs to feel he is right. You have never tried to grow out of your blinders. That is ok. As the Gita points out, some people want to have ideas given to them and never challenge what they believe. They have a tamasic religious attitude. The Gita, though, never condemns you. It is you who condemn yourself (and others who are trying to get past ignorance). It is you who need to read the hatefulness in your own posts, and Schaum. You see discussion as hate and superiority because you want to feel that way (hated and inferior) - it drives you ego.

I am aware of people who ignore arguments, who would rather attack than reason, who have more words than meaning, who choose to live their lives, semantically, in denial of the very mystical truth of their own lives. I know you are faced with the emptiness of your emotions, the emotions of you "loved" ones, as chemicals in your predetermined brain and then ask, why!

It comes down to this:
1) do you seek Truth (gyana)?
2) do you seek to be a better person (karma)?
3) do you act in accordance to your belief structure (bhakti)?
4) have you known the singularity that is differentiated in life (vidya)?

As to why Atheists, when they have had power kill: if someone's morality says they can do whatever they can get away with, some will do what is called good, some will do what is called evil. The christians and muslims by group membership are absolved of sin. Likewise, the atheist has no sin to suffer for unless they are caught. Morality is irrelevant, power is the source of what is called good. There are no safe guards on their behavior. The fact that 90% of members of these groups behave well is a sign of the greatness of human nature. The fact that 10% can kill millions of people (while less than 1% of Buddhists, Hindus, Hopi, Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, etc do so) is significant. Your santa claus argument, I am sure you know, is just rhetoric. They also breath O2, breath out CO2. But their ethics is informed by the way they see the world, morality, and reality - by their religion of truth, ethics, and epistemology.

Atheism, recognized by several atheist writers as an ism, christianity, and islam have adherents that are good and bad. The probability that given power, these will create problems for those they disagree with is high. The evidence is there. Each, in its own way, denies it. Each accuses the other by the very same argument they refuse to realize points to them.

It is your hate that drives the hate of a despot. It is your hate that drives the killing machines. It is you hate that drives the good from your own sight. And the human nature is such, that it is my hate as well that drives these things. And just as the speed of darkness, or the disbelief in Truth, or the self appointed scholar, the emptiness of hate can be replaced by turning away from chemicals, from materialism, from desires, etc and turning towards TruthConsciousnessandBliss - SatCitAnada.

But, I am not a guru. I can not take you there. That is up to you and Grace to decide when you are ready to face the fact that your love for your partner, your search for truth, your attempt to help your common man,...that these are not just a biochemical reaction. You do Love, you do Seek Truth, you do Care deeply for the soul of your common man. You do express the Divine in you even when you can not face it.

hariaum

Back to the topic and still waiting for even more answers to the following added questions. (Where are the CCOGA task force members hiding?)

Considering that the task force had two members from the University of Chicago and the location of the topic group, why wasn't Professor Mearsheimer on the task force?

"John J. Mearsheimer, PhD is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an international relations theorist. Known for his book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, more recently Mearsheimer has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing the article The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which was subsequently published as a book, becoming a New York Times Best Seller."

What do the five directors of CCOGA do to earn on average $150,000/year per director in 2008?

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

The task force was not in complete aggreement with the report? Why and what points should the general public know about said disagreements?

Daniel12:

Not only are you a lying, manipulative, conniving 'tard, you are now exposed as a whiner!

Believe me, any time -- which, for you, will always be always -- you publish your idiotic delusions as truth, you will be challenged by me, and I imagine by Timmy2.

You do not/cannot think: you react. You do not/cannot write: you create drivel. You cannot prove god or the moronic concept of intelligent design, yet you adopt and promote these concepts because they give you imagined and delusional strength to ignore the facts of life: you are born alone, you live alone, and you will die alone. You will not live eternally. Nor will your "writing". Except as the blatherings of an idiot with serious mental illnesses.

You do not understand or employ logic or reason. You employ superstition and denial to guide you through your life. You are pathetic, because you have deliberately chosen to be ignorant, to be "original"! The only "genius" you possess is for making a fool of yourself. You have no morals because you stand for and believe in nothing. You are a throwback to the dark ages.

Plot for a comic novel:

The president of the United States declares himself an atheist and asserts his opinion there is no intelligent design behind existence.

Osama Bin Laden releases a video declaring there is tremendous sense behind the universe by God and takes credit for a blast which kills several hundred people in India.

The president of the United States says Osama is deluded, there is no God, and even if there was it would be contrary to God to kill innocent people. Osama retorts "how is it exactly one knows delusion from non-delusion in a universe with no intelligent design behind it, and why object to terrorist attacks if one believes no intelligent design is behind things, for after all, what intelligent design can exist in a universe of no intelligent design?"

Osama after stating that realizes that no intelligent design behind things is an even greater excuse to kill people and decides to become an atheist. The president of the United States welcomes Osama's change of mind but declares that if no intelligent design is behind things one has no cause to kill innocent people, for there is no order from God or anything beyond human words for terrorist attacks.

Osama decides to become a believer again so he can continue having a cause to kill innocent people. The president of the United States is satisfied with his tactics with respect to Osama and declares religion one of the great scourges of the world. Osama says that even if he does believe in God and believes in terrorist attacks he can be useful to the president of the United States by helping to promote no intelligent design behind things by his irrational actions.

The president says that no intelligent design does not necessarily mean an irrational universe and that one should work as best as possible to benefit society. Osama questions how no intelligent design does not necessarily mean an irrational universe and the president responds by a vast promotion of secularism which succeeds in taking hold worldwide and religion is finally marginalized and irrelevant.

All people in the world become engaged in the great atheist project of creating an intelligent society in the universe of no intelligent design. Osama goes into the construction business back home in Saudi Arabia and tries to get into the swing of the secularism thing by designing houses of no apparent intelligent design. Osama of course loses a hell of a lot of money because all his atheist clientele accuse him of not only shoddy workmanship but deliberate subversion of construction.

Osama is puzzled, having been quite mad in the world intelligently designed by God, and now even worse in the one of no intelligent design. He again turns back to religion and decides to build only mosques. But the secularist society declares a building for only praying makes no sense and that only business buildings and private residences should be constructed. But gradually religion takes hold worldwide again because everyone, being told daily how unintelligent religion is, come to believe it the perfect expression in a universe of no intelligent design.

In fact everyone realizes that saying there is an intelligent design behind things is the most unintelligent, close to no design at all, thing one can say and worldwide it is believed that God is the perfect statement of no intelligent design behind existence. Osama gleefully begins to blow things up again. The president of the United States joins him, except against him, because the president too now believes in God and says God has a plan for society.

Everyone ends up believing in God and declaring there is no design behind existence. The battle between atheists and believers is finally over. Everyone has peace of mind--between explosions and until WMD holocaust. After the holocaust it comes to be believed that the rest of animal life makes more sense than man. Man deliberately reverts to the most animal of existences.

One day a grunting man invents a concept. He calls it God.

To summarize: whatever is one's agenda, one can find almost good arguments for it.

Schaum, I respectfully ask you and Timmy to keep from criticizing me, to stop asking me to make sense, demonstrate logic and so on when you constantly assert every chance you get that THERE IS EXACTLY NO INTELLIGENT DESIGN BEHIND EXISTENCE. I see no reason why I should have to conform to some sort of standard of logic and sense when according to you guys the universe has no design behind it or an unintelligent design or whatever. Whatever you might say about the universe you do say NO INTELLIGENT DESIGN and apparently a respectful number of other atheists believe the same thing. So stop criticizing me, and in fact anyone, who tries to demonstrate any worthwhile sense in the universe as you conceive it. We all know no sense is really possible in the universe as you conceive it--except it be personal prejudice. And of course stop trying to make sense yourselves. It is so ridiculous when in the same breath you say there is no intelligent design. Or is it you guys are so critical because you have discovered the big secret of how to make perfect sense in a universe with no intelligent design behind it? If so, please share this miracle with us, for it is a miracle. I respectfully await the joint essay by Schaum and Timmy titled "Logic and sense in the universe of no intelligent design".

Back to the topic and still waiting for even more answers to the following added questions. (Where are the CCOGA task force members hiding?)

What do the five directors of CCOGA do to earn on average $150,000/year per director in 2008?

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

The task force was not in complete aggreement with the report? Why and what points should the general public know about said disagreements?

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM BY DEDUCTION

The “orthodox” view of heaven poses the following significant challenges to Plantinga’s view:

(i) If heavenly dwellers do not possess morally significant free will and yet their existence is something of tremendous value, it is not clear that god was justified in creating persons here on Earth with the capacity for rape, murder, torture, sexual molestation, and nuclear war. It seems that god could have actualized whatever greater goods are made possible by the existence of persons without allowing horrible instances of evil and suffering to exist in this world.

(ii) If possessing morally significant free will is essential to human nature, it is not clear how the redeemed can lose their morally significant freedom when they get to heaven and still be the same people they were before.

(iii) If despite initial appearances heavenly dwellers do possess morally significant free will, then it seems that it is not impossible for god to create genuinely free creatures who always (of necessity) do what is right.

In other words, it appears that WORLD3 isn’t impossible after all. If WORLD3 is possible, an important plank in Plantinga’s Free Will Defense is removed. None of these challenges undermines the basic point established above that Plantinga’s Free Will Defense successfully rebuts the logical problem of evil. However, they reveal that some of the central claims of his defense conflict with other important theistic doctrines. Although Plantinga claimed that his Free Will Defense offered merely possible and not necessarily actual reasons god might have for allowing evil and suffering, it may be difficult for other theists to embrace his defense if it runs contrary to what theism says is actually the case in heaven.

B. Another problem facing Plantinga’s Free Will Defense concerns the question of god’s free will. god, it seems, is incapable of doing anything wrong. Thus, it does not appear that, with respect to any choice of morally good and morally bad options, god is free to choose a bad option. He seems constitutionally incapable of choosing (or even wanting) to do what is wrong. According to Plantinga’s description of morally significant free will, it does not seem that god would be significantly free. Plantinga suggests that morally significant freedom is necessary in order for one’s actions to be assessed as being morally good or bad. But then it seems that god’s actions could not carry any moral significance. They could never be praiseworthy. That certainly runs contrary to central doctrines of theism.

If, as theists must surely maintain, god does possess morally significant freedom, then perhaps this sort of freedom does not preclude an inability to choose what is wrong. But if it is possible for god to possess morally significant freedom and for him to be unable to do wrong, then WORLD3 once again appears to be possible after all. Originally, Plantinga claimed that WORLD3 is not a logically possible world because the description of that world is logically inconsistent. If WORLD3 is possible, then the complaint lodged that god could (and therefore should) have created a world full of creatures who always did what is right is not answered.

There may be ways for Plantinga to resolve the difficulties I have outlined, so that the Free Will Defense can be shown to be compatible with theistic doctrines about heaven and divine freedom. As it stands, however, some important challenges to the Free Will Defense remain unanswered. It is also important to note that, simply because Plantinga’s particular use of free will in fashioning a response to the problem of evil runs into certain difficulties, that does not mean that other theistic uses of free will in distinct kinds of defenses or theodicies would face the same difficulties.

I have shown that both deductive and inductive attempts to prove the existence of god fail, just as they fail to prove that evil and suffering are part of any “divine” plan…that they, in fact, originate anywhere except in the human mind. As someone has rightly said, ‘Nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so.’

Evil and suffering are not the same things. “Good” and “evil” are human constructs, as god is a human construct, to “explain” what is yet unexplainable. Physical suffering – all of it – is explicit in the experience of being a mortal human. Humans die, because we must. Without death, we would have endless disease, poverty, hunger, and god knows what all. Death is not brought about by any of the non-existent, unproven gods. It is entirely natural.

Psychological suffering, and suffering imposed on others by humans themselves are entirely different matters. They are what the christers love to call “evil”. Yet good and evil are nothing more than the result of human thought.

The buddhist philosophy is entirely correct: clarity of thinking is everything. To think clearly is to be good, see good, do good. To have clouded thinking is to be evil, see evil, do evil. There are no satanic manipulations to promote evil, any more than there is a god. There is only man, who is ultimately responsible for his “moral” values. He determines whether he will be good or evil.

Or both.

Ooo, fiction. I love fiction. Religiously, I always wanted to be Elmer Gantry, or Emler Angtry.

"Love is the morning and evening star. Of couuse, Sharon..., of course, Sharon..., of course, Sharon...."

Daniel12:

Of all the fantasies that you constantly write on this thread, this latest is the only one that actually has potential. Perhaps, if you work on it, you might have a story.

It would of course be a work of fiction. I could never be interested in you as a lover. There are too many obstacles. Aside from the fact that I already have a life partner, there is your lack of values, which you deliberately avoid by refusing to take a "position" -- that lack of values would be very worrisome. Added to that would be your annoying ignorance of English grammar, your conniving inconsistencies, and your inability to reason or to use logic. But even if these obstacles could be minimized or even overcome, there remains the fact that I would never be able to love someone who is intellectually inferior. Sorry -- I'm afraid you and Navinthemysticalseerscientist will have to comfort each other. Its probably best to stick to your own kind.

It is interesting, though, that the only time you have ever mentioned love is in the context of a work of fiction.

SCHAUM.

So, by all the powers of logic, using either or both the inductive and deductive, can it be shown that pain and suffering are the result of evolution? The "problem of evil" is the result of evolution?

Uh-oh, gods and religions might be proven to be the result of evolution?

Plot for a comic novel:

A character called Timmy, who is an atheist recovering from a stroke, is wheel chair bound and babbles garbled nonsense. His best friend is a physicist, wheel chair bound also and Timmy in mindless passion for all things evidential keeps grabbing at his friend's crotch.

A character called Schaum who figures as my jealous homosexual lover, desperately angry every time I say I think about God, and absolutely furious when I tease that God is so much sexier than him...

The character Timmy has a voluntary calling to visit maximum security prisons all over America, with the purpose of course of helping the prisoners get rehabilitated by turning them to atheism (for they of course at present are believers, engrossed every day with the Bible, using it to store drugs, shivs, etc.).

Schaum hears of Timmy's work and threatens to leave Daniel for a prisoner or maybe two which he plans to help turn to atheism by sexual favors. All the prisoners try to have sex with Schaum calling him that sucker fish who thinks he is having an effect. Schaum finds out what the prisoners think but feels better to have them enjoying the sucker fish than the Jesus fish.

Timmy of course is encouraging of Schaum's efforts, the perfectly atheistic state being quite hospital to homosexuality. The perfectly atheistic state being hospital to everyone actually, for medicine in all its aspects characterizes an existence with no God and threatened all round by the sheer hostilities of evolution (survival of the fittest).

Timmy and Schaum conceive a tremendous plan to turn all criminals to atheism and have them satisfied in the perfectly atheistic state: cut off their arms and legs and hook them on powerful narcotics. Religion may be the opium of the masses but opium is a nice replacement for mass. Timmy and Schaum print posters of Christ as a heroin addict.

The private parts of the prisoners are spared because it is found out that quite a few prisoners are well hung and Schaum appreciates that totally. All prisoners who refuse to become atheistic are left to rot in prison. All those out of prison who refuse to become atheistic are tossed into prison and of course lose arms and legs as well. However they are allowed to wear halos. (Timmy and Schaum gradually, and logically, gain more and more power in society by the sheer compulsion of the odd and celebratory in American life).

Daniel starts a secret cult dedicated to the proposition of attempting to have sex with God which infuriates the increasingly free sex and abortion favorable atheistic society. A division erupts--the no sex with God crowd versus the sex with God crowd. Certain movie stars and musicians assert they have been told by God to be his intermediaries and to have sex with as many people as possible to promote religion not to mention religious ecstasy.

Other movie stars and musicians declare their bodies free of God and for purely f*cking and oh, so many atheists take advantage. Gradually society becomes so sexed for and against God that the religious feel they are being f*cked so sinfully well and the atheists feel they are so ecstatic by God and no one knows what the hell is going on because they are all f*cked out of their minds.

In the end Schaum comes back to Daniel and neither speak but simply shoot up heroin and discuss the aesthetic possibilities of surgically removed limbs. Busts of people becomes the definitive human portrayal because so few people have limbs anymore. Talking heads truly dominate television.

Life goes on.

Some of the more nuanced discussions, like how many angels actually CAN dance on the head of a pin, will just have to continue forever.

Simpler issues are more easily addressed by fact, like that theocracies rule badly and don't play well with others because they begin the first act by absolving themselves of any accountability, or even the need to make good sense.

Alluding to a "god gap" in foreign affairs is analagous to demanding greater representation for arsonists on the board if the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Some of the more nuanced discussions, like how many angels actually CAN dance on the head of a pin, will just have to continue forever.

Simpler issues are more easily addressed by fact, like that theocracies rule badly and don't play well with others because they begin the first act by absolving themselves of any accountability, or even the need to make good sense.

Alluding to a "god gap" in foreign affairs is analagous to demanding greater representation for arsonists on the board if the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Again, it is obvious that the task force members who generated the topic report have wasted their time and ours allowing many bloggers to continue to waste more time and space debating the pros and cons of atheism and the power of deduction.

As for the point made by Navin:

"As atheists you are free to hate. As theists we are not. For an atheist to let hate come out is perfectly moral (as there is no perfect morality). For a theist, it is our failing when we hate. It is not a chemical bouncing in our brains, an evolutionary urge, a demand to win arguments, but a personal failing to express the divine love we feel in ourselves."

Navin makes perfect sense. The religious view--regardless of whether it is Eastern or Western--holds that perfect morality is possible, that one must strive for such, that salvation arrives with such. Whether escaping reincarnation and reaching Nibbana or becoming reconciled to God, the religious views posits as the overriding task of human life a moral existence--a moral existence certified by the possibility of eventual salvation.

The atheistic view has no such moral view of existence at all. In fact in the atheistic view neither perfect morality nor salvation by such is conceptualized at all. What is conceptualized is eventual failure of all things human and otherwise. Nothing behind existence. There is no reason to strive for perfect morality. Now some atheists might say it is heroic to strive for such even if such does not exist, and that it certainly benefits society, but that is a value of the few in an existence not characterized by the possibility of perfect morality and salvation by such. How many such heroic atheists can be expected to exist knowing as we do of the constant moral failure anyway of human beings?

No matter how the religious person actually behaves, no matter his evil, he has hanging over his head the possibility of perfect morality and salvation by such. He has this circumscribed view and his every moral failure is reflected in the light of it. In what light is the atheist's moral failure circumscribed? None, except it be for the atheists who insult him and tell him he should be striving to be moral anyway. Striving to be moral regardless of everything eventually coming to nothing. Just the opinion of another person telling him what to do. And all this in a world in which we are constantly told to think for ourselves, do our own thing, chart our own course--the course we prefer no matter what--for ourselves.

"If the universe has no design behind it then it cannot help but be seen as unintelligently designed"

How could something that had no designer be "designed". How could something that has just always been, be designed? I'm not asserting that the universe has no designer here, I'm just saying that if we are considering the option of no designer (always been) then we can not call it unintelligently designed. Because that would mean it was designed.

My reply: basic aesthetics and sense has it that something with no design, just disorder, chaos, is unintelligently designed. That is how humans see it. And trying to be purely objective and say we are just interpreting no design as unintelligently designed out of human prejudice gets one nowhere. It amounts to mere nitpicking, saying "no, Charlie, it is not unintelligently designed, it has no design". Helpful that. And what will one do with this "no design" one is faced with? Reply to it with intelligence as best one can--just as one would respond to unintelligent design...

"We interpret the universe from the perspective of what benefits humans"

Perhaps you do, but leave me out of that one. I do no such thing. I interpret the universe based on what is evidentiary about it. It is a religious idea that it was designed for humans. It is also a hubristic idea.

My reply: Why thank you Timmy for being so selfless and utterly different from all flora and fauna which by evolution seek advantage for themselves. But I suppose the theory of evolution does not apply to you--and it is true it does not necessarily apply to you, it could be one is exempt. So Timmy is exempt. How about the rest of you atheists? If the world becomes totally atheistic are humans going to avoid interpreting things to their advantage? How long can human life be expected to continue in that case? I dearly want to reply "indefinitely", like anyone who does not seek advantage for himself. And I hardly need point out that perfect objectivity is impossible, in fact we cannot at all tell if we are close to perfect objectivity or not for we do not know perfect objectivity to know difference--we are locked into subjective interpretation. But you of course defy this. Must be noble to not interpret to advantage. Must be noble to approach by the evidence. Whatever that means. Apparently the evidence does not at all say we approach things by advantage. No theory of evolution apparently exists.

"Now the argument for an intelligent design is obvious"

Not to me.

My reply: Why thank you Timmy. You have been saying for as long as I can remember that I make no sense. I am extremely proud to be in total agreement with the universe as you see it. I will strive further to make no sense, to continue with my unintelligent designs, or if you prefer, no design. skfjaeoieodggifsoisifiosfodjfj. Are we in agreement there?

"But some people say there are problems with this concept of an intelligent design"

Aren't you one of them? I thought you have found no positions without faults.

My reply: Timmy, are you really that much of a nitpicker? That ignorant of writing styles? No sense of the third person?

My reply on the subject of infinite regression of designer: Apparently some people--I guess atheists--think the universe cannot be intelligently designed because a designer must imply a designer and so on and we are stuck with an infinite regression that makes no sense, but that is just one interpretation of the problem. In fact, how the jump in logic from infinite regression of designer to no designer? How is infinite regression of design logically interpreted to mean no designer? There is no jump in logic there. That is sheer personal prejudice. Other people--I guess call them the more religious folk--see an infinite regression being totally consistent with the concept God, which is infinite, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being. And that too, if it really bothers you and you want me to admit it, is a supposition, for there is no logical process of arriving at that also. We simply observe that something designed must have had a designer, and that too a designer and so--and some people say that is an absurdity which means no designer, and others say that is the infinite path of God.

"In fact that the regression is infinite implies a totally extended and probably eternal process, which can be characterized, again, as God"

Or the universe itself. Why not?

'We can say all effect is traceable to a cause, and the ultimate cause is God"

Or the universe itself. Why not?

My reply: Call it the universe if you like Timmy rather than God. Semantics and nothing more. Pantheism says the universe is God and vice versa. Some people say the universe is not God and that God is outside the universe. Outside the universe? What outside? Can we even posit an outside to the universe? Some people say the universe had a beginning and has calculable extension, but that is nonsense by the simple fact that we are in it and do not know an outside to arrive at a calculation of circumscription. God, universe--same thing. Unless one wants to say the universe has no intelligent design, must specifically be designated as having no design. But then why characterize it as such? Why not characterize it as such? Right back to the beginning of discussing whether it is designed or not. No real progress by this strategy at all.

"Then we run up against the problem that what humans value most, reason and morality and aesthetics and so on, are mere human and futile constructs against a background of no design, or more clearly, chaos"

The human constructs of morality are not futile because they improve our lives and enjoyment of them. And how do you equate no design with chaos?

My reply: Are you serious Timmy? No design, unintelligent design, eventual futility. In fact reason and morality and so on if on background, foundation of no design or unintelligent design not even reliably reason and morality in the first place--what we think such to be--let alone capable of anything lasting. No design, unintelligent design, eventual nothing. Some people have a problem with nothing. But it would be presumptuous of me to speak of such people, right? God forbid I should speak of all the human race here when it is expressly designated by atheists that there is no design or unintelligent design or whatever. Whatever it is atheists hold it adds up to eventual nothing. One does not have to ask the entire human race if that is so. Anyone can arrive at such by basic logic.

"We have here humans telling themselves that reason and morality and so on exist"

No. You do this. I and others do not. You must stop speaking for all humans like this. The concepts of reason and morality exist but that is all they are. Concepts. They are not physical things. I have never told myself that reason and morality exist. I know that they are only human concepts.

My reply: Timmy, are you for real? I wrote "we have humans here telling themselves that reason and morality exist..." which is just what you declare in your reply to me, that they are constructs...I say something here and you say I do not say it then say what I have just said. Time to move on.

My reply to the entirety of the latter: Timmy, countless books and papers have been written on the problem explicated. More people than me have been speaking for the entire human race on this problem. If anyone is claiming to speak for the entire human race it is you, for your viewpoint, despite "everyone you know knowing it" is the superficial, surface view. The glib view. The view that declares no possible problem with atheism at all--which, and speaking of hubris, has got to qualify as one of the greatest pieces of hubris of all time. You know what life will be like for the human race without a belief in God. Tremendous knowledge you have. What, in your most famous words, evidence please? How is it you know what the future psychology and dilemmas of the human race will be as the universe comes increasingly to be seen as Godless? How is, ironically, I might add, you have come by your powers of prophecy? Do you at all realize you sound like any prophet of the Bible declaring what is to come? Your cocksure certainty? I suppose I should just take my questions as answered.

As if I can trust a person who tells me that the prison population of America is made up of believers in God rather than atheists...all those nihilistic, tattooed, drug addict, violent, perverse, last thing on their minds as night falls prayer convicts....

First things first Timmy. I came to on Faith to answer the topic of the week. I did not approach on faith with "a point". I approached from the perspective of improvising on a theme, the theme presented every week--much like a musician has an opportunity to make an interpretation. If you need another image, I approach a theme as if a tree a kid climbs. I just climb out on the theme and see which way the branches go, if this means that then that perhaps leads to this and so on. If anyone here has "a point", it has to be you and Schaum, the two guys who consistently appear with the same old thing every week and no attempt to answer the question of the week. What I like best is Schaum's accusation that I "merely react". That fits you and Schaum perfectly. Someone says something and there you two are reacting. Never having the courage to demonstrate your thought on the topic of the week in a developed essay, but rather just picking this sentence and that out and replying at best with a rebuttal sentence. Perhaps you and Schaum should officially declare yourselves philosophical deconstructionists because we all can see nothing is created. Next post I will try to follow entirely your approach--I will conform as best as possible to your style--to answer your recent stuff.

D 12

"Sorry Timmy, Navin has a clear point below"

Sorry D 12 but you both are wrong.

"As atheists you are free to hate. As theists we are not"

Since when to theists not have free will? Are you kidding me? The entire monotheistic god belief is rooted in the idea of free will. Christians are most certainly free to hate. They are advised to love, but free will is what allows priests to molest little boys.

"For an atheist to let hate come out is perfectly moral"

For a theist, to molest little boys is perfectly moral.

"For a theist, it is our failing when we hate"

I thought you weren't free to hate? How can you fail by hating if you are not free to hate. Do you see how dumb this sounds?

"Timmy, if there is no God, as Navin says perfect morality is impossible"

There is no God, and perfect morality is impossible because it is subjective not objective.

"Perfect morality being unattainable one cannot help in the end but accept the less than perfectly moral which amounts to the immoral rather than the moral"

As morality is subjective, it is certainly possible for a person to achieve perfect morality as they see it. What you are talking about is objective morality and it is not possible without God.

"With God one cannot accept a failure of morality"

Sure. But you need God to exist. You can not make God exist by believing in him. So you can not make perfect (objective) morality exist by believing in him. Only his actual existence can produce this perfect (objective) morality you speak of.

"There is no excuse for the believer in God to shirk morality"

And yet they do all day long 24/7/365.

"There is the perfect excuse for the atheist, because perfect morality is unattainable for the atheist and there is no God"

Wrong. Morality improves our lives. There is plenty of reason for the atheist to strive for morality.

I'm so so sorry. Really very very sorry. I am endlessly sorry that bot you and Navin are wrong.

Sorry.

Really, did I mention that I'm sorry? What I mean is, both you and Navin have my utmost sympathy for your wrongness.

One more time. Sorry.

RoadRunnin

"And what is evolution?"

A process that we discovered has been occurring since the beginning of life on earth.

"Out of superstitions came beliefs. Or did beliefs come out of superstitions?"

Was this an error? You have identical statements separated by the word "or". It doesn't make sense.

"Whichever way, it seems that evolution is the reason behind, and for, everything"

No, not everything. just the complexity of life on earth. As far as we know, the universe itself did not evolve by natural selection. Only organisms that reproduce are affected by natural selection.

"The universe is said to have started as one thing, and developed into what we see of it today -- it evolved?"

Developed is not synonymous with evolved. Everything evolves it seems, but not by natural selection. Only life evolves by natural selection.

"All human concepts seem to not have come into "existence" until long after evolution existed"

Humans did not even come into existence until they got that way by natural selection.

"Think, think, think"

Duh, duh, duh.

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM BY DEDUCTION (4)

It is important to note that (A) directly conflicts with a common assumption about what kind of world god could have created. Many atheologians believe that god could have created a world that was populated with free creatures and yet did not contain any evil or suffering. Since this is something that god could have done and since a world with free creatures and no evil is better than a world with free creatures and evil, this is something god should have done. Since he did not do so, god did something blameworthy by not preventing or eliminating evil and suffering (if indeed God exists at all). In response to this charge, Plantinga maintains that there are some worlds god cannot create. In particular, he cannot do the logically impossible. (A) claims that God cannot get rid of much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will. Is god’s omnipotence compatible with the claim that god cannot do the logically impossible?

Consider the following descriptions of various worlds. We need to determine which ones describe worlds that are logically possible and which ones describe impossible worlds. The worlds described will be possible if the descriptions of those worlds are logically consistent. If the descriptions of those worlds are inconsistent or contradictory, the worlds in question will be impossible.

WORLD1: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God does not causally determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is evil and suffering in W1.

WORLD2: (a) God does not create persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is no evil or suffering in W2.

WORLD3: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is no evil or suffering in W3.

WORLD4: (a) God creates persons with morally significant free will;
(b) God does not causally determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong; and
(c) There is no evil or suffering in W4.

Which of these worlds is/are possible. Is WORLD1 possible? Yes. In fact, on the assumption that god exists, it seems to describe the actual world. People have free will in this world and there is evil and suffering. god has obviously not causally determined people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong because there would be no evil or suffering if he had. So, WORLD1 is clearly possible.

What about WORLD2? Granting Plantinga’s assumption that human beings are genuinely free creatures, the first thing to notice about WORLD2 is that you and I would not exist in such a world. We are creatures with morally significant free will. If you took away our free will, we would no longer be the kinds of creatures we are. We would not be human in that world. Returning to the main issue, there does not seem to be anything impossible about god causally determining people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. It seems clearly possible that whatever creatures god were to make in such a world would not have morally significant free will and that there would be no evil or suffering. WORLD2, then, is also possible.

Consider, then, the philosophically more important world WORLD3 . Is it possible? Plantinga says, “No.” Parts (a) and (b) of the description of WORLD3 are, he claims, logically inconsistent. In WORLD3 god causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. People in this world couldn’t do morally bad things if they wanted to. And yet part of what it means for creatures to have morally significant free will is that they can do morally bad things whenever they want to. Think about what it would be like to live in WORLD3. If you wanted to tell a lie, you would not be able to do so. Causal forces beyond your control would make you tell the truth on every occasion. You would also be physically incapable of stealing your neighbor’s belongings. In fact, since WORLD3 is a world without evil of any kind and since merely wanting to lie or steal is itself a bad thing, the people in WORLD3 would not even be able to have morally bad thoughts or desires. If god is going to causally determine people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong in WORLD3, there is no way that he could allow them to be free in a morally significant sense.

If a person is free with respect to an action X, then god does not bring it about or cause it to be the case that he does X or refrains from doing X. If god brings it about or causes it to be the case in any manner whatsoever that the person either does X or does not do X, then that person is not really free.

god can’t have it both ways. He can create a world with free creatures or he can causally determine creatures to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong every time; but he can’t do both. god can forcibly eliminate evil and suffering (as in WORLD2 only at the cost of eliminating free will.

The fact that WORLD is impossible is important to Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. Atheologians, as I wrote above, claim that god is doing something morally blameworthy by allowing evil and suffering to exist in our world. They charge that a good god would and should eliminate all evil and suffering. The assumption behind this charge is that, in so doing, god could leave human free will untouched. Plantinga claims that when we think through what robust free will really amounts to, we can see that atheologians are asking god to do the logically impossible. Being upset that god has not done something that is logically impossible is, according to Plantinga, misguided. He might say, “Of course he hasn’t done that. It’s logically impossible!” Plantinga maintains that divine omnipotence involves an ability to do anything that is logically possible, but it does not include the ability to do the logically impossible.

Consider WORLD4. Is it possible? Yes! Most people are tempted to answer “No” when first exposed to this description, but think carefully about it. Although there is no evil and suffering in this world, it is not because god causally determines people in every situation to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. In this world god has given creatures morally significant free will without any strings attached. If there is nothing bad in this world, it can only be because the free creatures that inhabit this world have—by their own free will—always chosen to do the right thing. Is this kind of situation really possible? Yes. Something is logically possible just when it can be conceived without contradiction. There is nothing contradictory about supposing that there is a possible world where free creatures always make the right choices and never go wrong. Of course, it’s highly improbable, given what we know about human nature. But improbability and impossibility are two different things. In fact, according to the judeo-christer story of Adam and Eve, it was god’s will that significantly free human beings would live in the Garden of Eden and always obey God’s commands. If Adam and Eve had followed God’s plan, then WORLD4 would have been the actual world in which we now live.
.
Note similarities between WORLD1 and WORLD4. Both are populated by creatures with free will and in neither world does god causally determine people to always choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong. The only difference is that, in WORLD1, the free creatures choose to do wrong at least some of the time, and in WORLD4, the free creatures always make morally good decisions. In other words, whether there is immorality in either one of these worlds depends upon the persons living in these worlds—not upon god. According to Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, there is evil and suffering in this world because people do immoral things. People deserve the blame for the bad things that happen—not god. The essential point of the Free Will Defense is that the creation of a world containing moral good is a cooperative venture; it requires the uncoerced concurrence of significantly free creatures. But then the actualization of a world W containing moral good is not up to god alone; it also depends upon what the significantly free creatures of W would do.

Off topic but interesting:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091204033037AAtnWO7

"Is there such a phenomenon known as the speed of "dark" and is it slightly faster than the speed of light?
by Krash Member since:

"There is no speed of dark because darkness just means that light is absent. Moreover, modern physics says that nothing travels faster than the speed of light because it is the ultimate speed limit in the Universe."

"The speed of light is the presence of photons and the speed of dark is the absence of photons. Photons all travel at the speed of light. Therefore if you point a flashlight into the night sky and shine it for a second there will be a beam one second long continuing into space with darkness ahead and darkness behind (ignoring all other light). Only a laser will produce a beam that is not rapidly spread out due to lack of focus. A one second beam will be about 186,000 miles long (the distance light travels in one second).

"No, darkness is a psychological thing, it occurs when our brain receives no information from our eyes. This doesn't mean that there is no light, it means our brain isn't processing any visual information. It doesn't make sense to say that this has a speed.

Light is a physical thing. It travels at a certain speed."

Our foreign policy is very religious. Almost all our politicians who run for Congress, promise an unequivocal support for Israel as a fundamental principle of their foreign policy.

Prosperous migrants to Israel from United States believe it is their right to choke the Bedouins way of life, so that they can settle in this land to satisfy their religious beliefs.

Digging has been going on in Israel and the occupied lands to prove the existence of their god.

So, evolution gets the credit, and the blame. But then, "credit" and "blame" are human constructs. And what is evolution?

Whatever it is, out of it came humans. Out of humans came superstitions. Out of superstitions came beliefs. Or did beliefs come out of superstitions?

Whichever way, it seems that evolution is the reason behind, and for, everything.

The universe is said to have started as one thing, and developed into what we see of it today -- it evolved?

I guess so, and some of what we see of the universe today is said to have actually taken place millions, sometimes billions, of years, sometimes millions or billions of light-years, ago.

All human concepts seem to not have come into "existence" until long after evolution existed.

Think, think, think.

I liked the recent snark that asked, "What is the speed of dark?"

Wernher von Braun

Upon surrendering with his rocket team to the Americans in 1945: "We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.” David Wolper, television series, Biography (1961-64), Wherner von Braun, quoted in Wikipedia.

Timmy2:

You are ever-more-obviously correct in your assertion that D12 is a conniver. He has no interest in logical consistency -- may not even know what it is! -- and cannot keep track of his delusions from one post to the next. He does not think, he only reacts. It appears to me that he is deteriorating, mentally, under your seemingly effortless debunking of the garbage he writes. In some (small) way, I begin to feel pity for him and Navintheseermysticscientist -- the two most intellectually helpless individuals I have ever encountered.

survival of the species ,up gradeing human thought.

human thinking capacity can stretch and expand and excell human body only if it receive guidance from outside,(divine).

body inteligence (your brain is part of the body ,your maximum neurology is part of the body,your maximum mind and thinking ability is part of the body,your maximum genious psych is part of the body ,name it ,it still a body).

humanbeing can discover and explore the body and the environment around the body or in the reach of the body but is big no no, the unseen is beyond the body.

those who tryied to figure out the unseen useing their body inteligence or their max neurology intelgence in order to figure out this life they either gone insane out of their mind or on serious delusion if they are live.(plese read history).

the unseen and the job of guideing mankid need divine revelation ,
no human body culture no human inteligence ,no delusion, none but divine revelation.

human species are ^retarted^ not ^evoluted^ by nature (inductionly) human being body is on the reverse the more you get older the more you get weak in body and brain no matter how much advanced in health or inteligence or in civilization even if yor head expanded as the size of this planet earth no matter what you are going to die and come back to the same elments of this planet earth.

Obviously, the task force members who generated the topic report have wasted their time and ours allowing many bloggers to waste more time debating the pros and cons of atheism and the power of deduction.

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM, BY DEDUCTION (3)

How might a theist go about demonstrating that (16) is false? Some theists suggest that perhaps god has a good reason for allowing the evil and suffering that he does. Not just any old reason can justify god’s allowing all of the evil and suffering we see. Mass murderers and serial killers – many of whom are christers -- typically have reasons for why they commit horrible crimes, but they do not have good reasons. It’s only when people have morally good reasons that we excuse or condone their behavior. Philosophers of religion have called the kind of reason that could morally justify god’s allowing evil and suffering a “morally sufficient reason.”

Consider the following statement.

(17) It is possible that god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

If god were to have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, would it be possible for god to be omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and yet for there to be evil and suffering? Many theists answer “Yes.” If (17) were true, (9) through (12) would have to be modified to read:

(9′) If god knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good—unless he has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(10′) If god knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all-powerful—unless he has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(11′) If god is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it (that is, he must not be all-knowing)—unless he has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.
(12′) If evil and suffering exist, then either: a) god is not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good; or b) god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

From (9′) through (12′), it is not possible to conclude that god does not exist. The most that can be concluded is that either god does not exist or god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil. So, some theists suggest that the real question behind the logical problem of evil is whether (17) is true.

If it is possible that god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil and suffering to occur, then the logical problem of evil fails to prove the non-existence of god. If, however, it is not possible that god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, then it seems that (13) would be true: god is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.

An implicit assumption behind this part of the debate over the logical problem of evil is the following:

(18) It is not morally permissible for god to allow evil and suffering to occur unless he has a morally sufficient reason for doing so.

Is (18) correct? Many philosophers think so. It is difficult to see how a god who allowed bad things to happen just for the heck of it could be worthy of reverence, faith and worship. If god had no morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, then if we made it to the pearly gates some day and asked god why he allowed so many bad things to happen, he would simply have to shrug his shoulders and say “There was no reason or point to all of that suffering you endured. I just felt like letting it happen.” This callous image of god is difficult to reconcile with orthodox theism’s portrayal of god as a loving father who cares deeply about his creation. (18), combined with the assumption that god does not have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil, yields:

(19) god is doing something morally inappropriate or blameworthy in allowing evil to occur, and
(20) If god is doing something morally inappropriate or blameworthy, then god is not perfectly good.
If (19) and (20) are true, then the god of orthodox theism does not exist.

What would it look like for god to have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil? Let’s first consider a down-to-earth example of a morally sufficient reason a human being might have before moving on to the case of god. Suppose a gossipy neighbor were to tell you that Mrs. Jones just allowed someone to inflict unwanted pain upon her child. Your first reaction to this news might be one of horror. But once you find out that the pain was caused by a shot that immunized Mrs. Jones’ infant daughter against polio, you would no longer view Mrs. Jones as a danger to society. Generally, we believe the following moral principle to be true:

(21) Parents should not inflict unwanted pain upon their children.

In the immunization case, Mrs. Jones has a morally sufficient reason for overriding or suspending this principle. A higher moral duty—namely, the duty of protecting the long-term health of her child—trumps the lesser duty expressed by (21). If god has a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil and suffering, theists claim, it will probably look something like Mrs. Jones’.

What might god’s reason be for allowing evil and suffering to occur? Alvin Plantinga has given the most famous contemporary philosophical response to this question. He suggests the following as a possible morally sufficient reason:

(A) god’s creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. god could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are able to love one another and do good deeds.

(B) claims that god allows some evils to occur that are smaller in value than a greater good to which they are intimately connected. If god eliminated the evil, he would have to eliminate the greater good as well. god is pictured as being in a situation much like that of Mrs. Jones: she allowed a small evil (the pain of a needle) to be inflicted upon her child because that pain was necessary for bringing about a greater good (immunization against polio). Before we try to decide whether (A) can justify god in allowing evil and suffering to occur, some of its key terms need to be explained.

To begin with, (A) presupposes the view of free will known as “libertarianism”:

(22) Libertarianism: the view that a person is free with respect to a given action if and only if that person is both free to perform that action and free to refrain from performing that action; in other words, that person is not determined to perform or refrain from that action by any prior causal forces.

Although the term “libertarianism” isn’t exactly a frequently used word, the view it expresses is commonly taken to be the average person’s view of free will. It is the view that causal determinism is false, that—unlike robots or other machines—we can make choices that are genuinely free. According to Plantinga, libertarian free will is a morally significant kind of free will. An action is morally significant just when it is appropriate to evaluate that action from a moral perspective (for example, by ascribing moral praise or blame). Persons have morally significant free will if they are able to perform actions that are morally significant. Imagine a possible world where god creates creatures with a very limited kind of freedom. Suppose that the persons in this world can only choose good options and are incapable of choosing bad options. So, if one of them were faced with three possible courses of action—two of which were morally good and one of which was morally bad—this person would not be free with respect to the morally bad option. That is, that person would not be able to choose any bad option even if they wanted to. This hypothetical person does, however, have complete freedom to decide which of the two good courses of action to take. Plantinga would deny that any such person has morally significant free will. People in this world always perform morally good actions, but they deserve no credit for doing so. It is impossible for them to do wrong. So, when they do perform right actions, they should not be praised. It would be ridiculous to give moral praise to a robot for putting your soda can in the recycle bin rather than the trash can, if that is what it was programmed to do. Given the program running inside the robot and its exposure to an empty soda can, it’s going to take the can to the recycle bin. It has no choice about the matter. Similarly, the people in the possible world under consideration have no choice about being good. Since they are pre-programmed to be good, they deserve no praise for it.

According to Plantinga, people in the actual world are free in the most robust sense of that term. They are fully free and responsible for their actions and decisions. Because of this, when they do what is right, they can properly be praised. Moreover, when they do wrong, they can be rightly blamed or punished for their actions.

It is important to note that (A) directly conflicts with a common assumption about what kind of world god could have created. Many atheologians believe that god could have created a world that was populated with free creatures and yet did not contain any evil or suffering. Since this is something that god could have done and since a world with free creatures and no evil is better than a world with free creatures and evil, this is something god should have done. Since he did not do so, god did something blameworthy by not preventing or eliminating evil and suffering (if indeed God exists at all). In response to this charge, Plantinga maintains that there are some worlds god cannot create. In particular, he cannot do the logically impossible. (A) claims that God cannot get rid of much of the evil and suffering in the world without also getting rid of morally significant free will. Is god’s omnipotence compatible with the claim that god cannot do the logically impossible?

D 12

"If the universe has no design behind it then it cannot help but be seen as unintelligently designed"

How could something that had no designer be "designed". How could something that has just always been, be designed? I'm not asserting that the universe has no designer here, I'm just saying that if we are considering the option of no designer (always been) then we can not call it unintelligently designed. Because that would mean it was designed.

"We interpret the universe from the perspective of what benefits humans"

Perhaps you do, but leave me out of that one. I do no such thing. I interpret the universe based on what is evidentiary about it. It is a religious idea that it was designed for humans. It is also a hubristic idea.

"Now the argument for an intelligent design is obvious"

Not to me.

"Apparently we humans feel there is enough order and sense in what occurs apart from our actions not to mention through our actions to speak of intelligent design"

Again, please refrain from speaking for all humans here. I do not agree with this statement at all. Nor do most people I know.

"In fact everything seems to have been made by design not least because so much valuable in human life has been designed by humans"

This sentence makes no sense to me. Humans design things that are valuable for them, but how does that speak to the universe having been designed?

"But some people say there are problems with this concept of an intelligent design"

Aren't you one of them? I thought you have found no positions without faults.

"an infinite regression to some ultimate designer which can never exist apparently"

Infinity means forever and ever. Infinity can not mean until some ultimate designer and that's where it stops. An ultimate designer can exist, but not based on the logic that everything must have a designer, which is the logic used to propose a designer in the first place. If you are using the logic that everything must have a designer then so must the designer you posit.It is inconsistent logic to say that intelligence must come from intelligence except for the intelligent designer. If you accept that it is possible and even plausible that something could exist without a designer (god) then why not consider that the universe may not have a designer.

"But an argument such as this overlooks that the regression can find a terminus, and this terminus is called God"

No it is your argument that overlooks the fact that this terminus could well be the universe itself.

"In fact that the regression is infinite implies a totally extended and probably eternal process, which can be characterized, again, as God"

Or the universe itself. Why not?

'We can say all effect is traceable to a cause, and the ultimate cause is God"

Or the universe itself. Why not?

"Then we run up against the problem that what humans value most, reason and morality and aesthetics and so on, are mere human and futile constructs against a background of no design, or more clearly, chaos"

The human constructs of morality are not futile because they improve our lives and enjoyment of them. And how do you equate no design with chaos?

"We have here humans telling themselves that reason and morality and so on exist"

No. You do this. I and others do not. You must stop speaking for all humans like this. The concepts of reason and morality exist but that is al they are. Concepts. They are not physical things. I have never told myself that reason and morality exist. I know that they are only human concepts.

"With such knowledge how can one reliably build a civilization, how get citizens to aim toward greater reason and morality?"

Because it makes life better.

"but this is being good despite knowing that reason and morality, again, are as so many bubbles on the turbulent water of existence"

I do not see reason and morality as "so many bubbles on the turbulent water of existence". They are useful human constructs.

"So we have a problem whether we posit an intelligent design to existence or no design"

No you do. Stop using the word "we". You do not speak for the people of the world. I have no problem leaving it an open ended question with both options on the table.

"but if such is the case then how have reason and morality developed"

Evolution.

"not to mention how do we expect humans to actively engage in the process of developing such further when essentially we are faced with nihilism?"

You might be faced with nihilism? But my life has endless meaning regardless of the origin of the universe.

"but if God does not exist, if there is no intelligent design, then how can one reasonably expect the human race to create a civilization based on such knowledge?"

Self preservation and enjoyment of our lives is reason enough to create a livable desirable society. No?

"Perhaps an atheist here and there can not only preserve morality and reason despite holding there is no intelligent design but develop morality and reason further, but expect millions upon millions of humans to be not only moral and reasonable despite no intelligent design but develop such further?"

Yes. There is plenty of motivation for that without an intelligent designer. This is your disconnect.

"Is that not ridiculous? A civilization based on the fact that human life is ultimately futile because no intelligent design is behind things?"

There is nothing futile about my life. The absence of a designer makes no difference whatsoever to my enjoyment of life.

"Millions upon millions of people going to work every day of the week, year after year, believing no intelligent design is behind existence?"

Yes. This occurs every day. There are millions and millions of atheists who do this every day.

"Such people are not going to face a psychological problem no other age of humanity has ever faced?"

Millions and millions of atheists and agnostics face no psychological problems over this. In fact religious people seem to have more psychological problems that atheists in my experience. The concept of God has caused more psychological problems than anything else ever has in my view.

"Psychiatrists and psychologists are reliably going to determine the sane from the insane when everyone believes everything is futile anyway?"

You have this problem of speaking for the world. Millions and millions of atheists do not believe in an intelligent designer and do not see life as futile. Why do you try to speak for others like you do? I'm trying to lay off the "conniving" accusations but it's tough when you keep making these blanket statements on behalf of all humans.

"One thing we can say for certain: human consciousness is faced here with a dilemma that never really plagued other ages of man"

Nope. No dilemma here. And not for millions and millions of atheists.

"Let a few hundred more years pass and see the effects on humans"

You'll see more places like Denmark and Sweden and Canada. I'm cool with that.

Obviously, the task force members who generated the topic report have wasted their time and ours allowing many bloggers to waste more time debating the pros and cons of atheism and the power of deduction.

Sorry Timmy, Navin has a clear point below:

"As atheists you are free to hate. As theists we are not. For an atheist to let hate come out is perfectly moral (as there is no perfect morality). For a theist, it is our failing when we hate. It is not a chemical bouncing in our brains, an evolutionary urge, a demand to win arguments, but a personal failing to express the divine love we feel in ourselves."

Timmy, if there is no God, as Navin says perfect morality is impossible. Eventually one fails at morality. Perfect morality being unattainable one cannot help in the end but accept the less than perfectly moral which amounts to the immoral rather than the moral. With God one cannot accept a failure of morality. With God one must strive to be moral or fail before a perfect morality believed to exist (God). There is no excuse for the believer in God to shirk morality. There is the perfect excuse for the atheist, because perfect morality is unattainable for the atheist and there is no God.

NAVIN 1 says:

"some just arrogant comedians who find nothing better to do with their time than pretend to be superior"

Then in the very next paragraph he professes his superiority.

"It is ok. I am more radical than you can comprehend. My mysticism has opened my eyes to evidence that you are not able to grasp, just as my specialty in science has opened my eye to evidence that you are not able to grasp, just as my education has brought me to a different place in life than you. But unlike the atheist, I do not deem myself superior or inferior"

Uh, you just did. That's what makes you a hypocrite. And your obvious ego makes you a hindu seer fraud. Do you ever read your own posts.

"We could learn to hate from Schaum, Timmy, Yasser, etc, or we could learn moral lessons of loving as these great religious personalities have taught"

Oh yeah? Do you love me NAVIN? I think you have shown no love here at all. That is why you have been called a fraud. But you don't get it.

"As atheists you are free to hate"

I don't hate. I insult those who insult others. Such as you. But there is no hate.

"As theists we are not"

You love me? Sounds like you hate me by your posts. Do you ever read your own posts? Full of bruised ego, hatred and revenge.

"For an atheist to let hate come out is perfectly moral"

For the theist to molest children is perfectly moral.

"For a theist, it is our failing when we hate"

For the supposed seer, expressions of hatred such as you have shown are proof of fraudulence.

"Every time we claim an otherness, christian/nonchristian, muslim/infidel, hindu/non-hindu, buddhist/non-buddhist, atheist/theist, every time we divide ourselves into ego formed categories and then can harm / hate"

Said the Hindu seer who professes to grasp what the common man can not grasp.

"And, of course, every time we fail, we can try again to learn, to live, to love, to better express that divine love and truth within each of us"

Then you should try again. You have expressed no love on this forum. Not once that I have seen. Not to me. Not to anyone. You have failed. Try again.

Funny how Schuam, Timmy, Yasser, resort to insult when their argument fails. I guess these people value power and their own egos. That is the nature of evil. To value yourself so much as to have hate in your heart and not even know it.

Funny how atheists who don't believe in religion, god, etc. find so much passion in saying every one else is delusional and yet consider themselves the 500 years advanced thinkers amongst primitives. I will have to down grade my opinion of atheists.

Funny how an atheist can't do a bad thing for being an atheist, then I suppose they can't do a good thing either for being an atheist since there is a non-belief on which to base action. I guess atheists are talkers who really contribute nothing. Unless they are conniving liars and do inform their lives with ideologies of truth, love, justice, and all those things religious people talk about (but of course they can't see that - it is buried in their subconscious otherwise their inflated egos would collapse).

Well, I guess atheists are just human beings. Some have common sense, some have read so many books they have become confused about the argument and the conclusion. Some are honest seekers, some just arrogant comedians who find nothing better to do with their time than pretend to be superior.

It is ok. I am more radical than you can comprehend. My mysticism has opened my eyes to evidence that you are not able to grasp, just as my specialty in science has opened my eye to evidence that you are not able to grasp, just as my education has brought me to a different place in life than you. But unlike the atheist, I do not deem myself superior or inferior. I am an expression of purusha in prakriti - soul in nature. So are you. Your expression is as valuable as any other expression: no more no less.

Ramkrishna would walk the streets and say: this is God as a rich man, here as a poor man, here as a kind man, here as a cruel man... In this context: here as a theist, here as an atheist, here as an honest agnostic that admits he does not know... Ramakrishna was a vedic seer. His expertise is like that of Meera, Caitanya, Krishnamurti, Tiruvallukar, St John of the cross, the Masons, the shaamans, the Buddhas, ....

We could learn to hate from Schaum, Timmy, Yasser, etc, or we could learn moral lessons of loving as these great religious personalities have taught.

And of course, this is relevant to the current topic. As atheists you are free to hate. As theists we are not. For an atheist to let hate come out is perfectly moral (as there is no perfect morality). For a theist, it is our failing when we hate. It is not a chemical bouncing in our brains, an evolutionary urge, a demand to win arguments, but a personal failing to express the divine love we feel in ourselves. Of course we are not perfect in expressing that divine love, that is why avatars, saints, gurus, teachers, parents, lovers, children... come into our lives to help us become more perfect by expressing that divine love even when we don't know it. And so in the government we want to support, we want to express that divine love more perfectly.

But history teaches what rigid dogma can not and why we must be cautious about thinking we know divine love. When I was growing up, we always heard not to trust gurus and others who claimed to know god completely. For they will tell you that theirs is the one way while exploiting you. So this is true. Whether the guru you have wears a white collar, a suit, a saffron robe, an imams turban, or slovenly dress of the atheist professor (who conforms to his hubris) - their ego rises and interferes with your own personal vision of Truth. Dogma is secondary, the becoming is secondary to the Being, the Primary Being is the truth, and worship is the personal experience of truth. - no church, no mosque, no temple, no atheist literature and hubris, no guru - not this, not this, not this - yet all of it. And thus our enemies are not others but ourselves.

Every time we claim an otherness, christian/nonchristian, muslim/infidel, hindu/non-hindu, buddhist/non-buddhist, atheist/theist, every time we divide ourselves into ego formed categories and then can harm / hate. We fail. And, of course, every time we fail, we can try again to learn, to live, to love, to better express that divine love and truth within each of us.

Tat tvam asi That thou art

The eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind. The Soul of the Being. The Purusha and the Prakriti.

hariaum

On whether or not the universe--or more properly life--is intelligently designed, unintelligently designed or with no design period.

First, differentiating between unintelligent design and no design is at bottom a false differentiation even though the former can be characterized as evil and the latter indifferent. If the universe has no design behind it then it cannot help but be seen as unintelligently designed even if indifferent rather than evil because humans find it futile to ever give it a design to suit human purposes. Unintelligent design can be designated evil design, but a universe of no design can be designated evil as well because exactly a chaotic universe, one with no direction to it that humans find beneficial. Of course all these constructs "intelligent design", "unintelligent design", and "no design" are human constructs. We interpret the universe from the perspective of what benefits humans.

Now to make the discussion easier, we will avoid using the concept "unintelligent design". We will grant the universe is not unintelligently designed but simply has no design at all to avoid characterizing it as evil and to posit it rather as simply indifferent. So we have an indifferent universe, one with no design. And opposed to this indifferent universe we have the intelligently designed universe. These are the two conceptual schemes we will use in trying to determine whether the universe has an intelligent design or not. Now the argument for an intelligent design is obvious. Apparently we humans feel there is enough order and sense in what occurs apart from our actions not to mention through our actions to speak of intelligent design. A place apparently can be carved out where human life prospers. We speak of an intelligent design to existence. In fact everything seems to have been made by design not least because so much valuable in human life has been designed by humans.

But some people say there are problems with this concept of an intelligent design. Some people are puzzled by this concept because they believe it means what is designed has a designer, and that designer too must have been designed--and so on, an infinite regression to some ultimate designer which can never exist apparently. But an argument such as this overlooks that the regression can find a terminus, and this terminus is called God. In fact that the regression is infinite implies a totally extended and probably eternal process, which can be characterized, again, as God (though of course no particular God such as we find in this religion or that). The problem of an infinite regression does not seem the real problem at all. We can say all effect is traceable to a cause, and the ultimate cause is God.

The problem seems rather that an infinite regression which just becomes "God", all effect traceable backward to an ultimate cause, cannot help but include so much humans find indifferent if not evil. To say the universe is intelligently designed means to say all the universe, but if all the universe then how intelligently designed? Or rather how intelligently designed from the human perspective, for humans evidently find much which does not particularly help them if not outright hurting them. In other words, trying to say the universe is intelligently designed runs up against the problem that so much does not really demonstrate an intelligent design. The infinite regression which we would like to say just becomes "God" is a regression which necessarily includes every aspect of existence, which means "God" cannot help but be evil as well as good, or if that is too strong a word, indifferent as well as good.

Or to put it at its simplest, if the universe is intelligently designed then why so much tragedy in life, why so much pain for humans? It seems preposterous to say the universe is intelligently designed unless of course one wants to call intelligence all which does harm in life, but that would be perverse... So the simple matter is that the concept of intelligent design is refuted every day by design which does not seem particularly intelligent...

But what occurs if we say therefore that the universe has no particular design, or no design, if not an unintelligent design? Then we run up against the problem that what humans value most, reason and morality and aesthetics and so on, are mere human and futile constructs against a background of no design, or more clearly, chaos. We have here humans telling themselves that reason and morality and so on exist but of course this existence is that of a perfect little bubble on a turbulent and disordered water and destined to pop sometime. With such knowledge how can one reliably build a civilization, how get citizens to aim toward greater reason and morality?

Asking them to do so is like asking them to create one of those economic bubbles such as the expanding housing market which is destined to pop eventually. Here we have the famous "can one be moral without God"? So many answer yes,--or rather the atheists especially do--but this is being good despite knowing that reason and morality, again, are as so many bubbles on the turbulent water of existence. Certainly that one chooses to attempt to be good in such a situation does not mean one has any claim on the person who chooses otherwise. What becomes set up at best is a force of people determined to be good regardless of things against those who could not care less.

So we have a problem whether we posit an intelligent design to existence or no design if not unintelligent design. We have a paradoxical situation. On one hand we say there must be an intelligent design, but if such exists then why so much evidence of the contrary? On the other hand we say there is not so much evidence of intelligent design as no design if not unintelligent design, but if such is the case then how have reason and morality developed not to mention how do we expect humans to actively engage in the process of developing such further when essentially we are faced with nihilism?

Perhaps God does not exist, perhaps there is no intelligent design--for so much about existence demonstrates no design if not unintelligent design--but if God does not exist, if there is no intelligent design, then how can one reasonably expect the human race to create a civilization based on such knowledge? Perhaps an atheist here and there can not only preserve morality and reason despite holding there is no intelligent design but develop morality and reason further, but expect millions upon millions of humans to be not only moral and reasonable despite no intelligent design but develop such further? Is that not ridiculous? A civilization based on the fact that human life is ultimately futile because no intelligent design is behind things? Millions upon millions of people going to work every day of the week, year after year, believing no intelligent design is behind existence? Such people are not going to face a psychological problem no other age of humanity has ever faced? Psychiatrists and psychologists are reliably going to determine the sane from the insane when everyone believes everything is futile anyway? Can a civilization even be formed on such knowledge much less exist for any length of time?

One thing we can say for certain: human consciousness is faced here with a dilemma that never really plagued other ages of man. Humans here might not go so far as to say all is without design if not unintelligently designed, but a regression to an automatic and easy belief in intelligent design, God, is not possible either. One is faced here with a particular metaphysical/physical dilemma that has ramifications we have not even remotely arrived at yet. Let a few hundred more years pass and see the effects on humans. I believe we are faced here with something of the dilemma of Hamlet. There is no God and we have to decide if this will influence us toward not being rather than being. To be or not to be. And we all know how Hamlet ended.

No easy answer to the question of whether the universe is intelligently designed or not. But we all know for all scientific method and what remains of art over science that this will probably be the dominant theme in human consciousness in the coming time. Which is why philosophy despite all science relegating it to second degree status is actually, as it always was (despite many objections), the queen of the sciences. Only the proper philosophical attitude can sustain a man burdened with such knowledge.

CCNL1:

"forcing many bloggers"

Forcing? You are an idiot. No one forces me to do anything. I write what I please. That annoys you? Tough sh!t.

Obviously, the task force members who generated the topic report have wasted their time and ours forcing many bloggers to waste more time debating the pros and cons of atheism and the power of deduction.

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY DEDUCTION (2)

Atheologians claim that a contradiction can easily be deduced from (1) through (4) once we think through the implications of the divine attributes cited in (1) through (3). They reason as follows:

(6) If god is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
(7) If god is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know how to eliminate or prevent it.
(8) If god is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.

Statements (6) through (8) jointly imply that if the perfect god of theism really existed, there would not be any evil or suffering. Obviously, however our world is filled with a staggering amount of evil and suffering. Atheologians claim that, if we reflect upon (6) through (8) in light of the fact of evil and suffering in our world, we should be led to the following conclusions:

(9) If god knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good.
(10) If god knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all- powerful.
(11) If god is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it—that is, he must not be all-knowing.

From (9) through (11) we can infer:

(12) If evil and suffering exist, then god is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
Since evil and suffering obviously do exist, we get:
(13) god is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.

To phrase it bluntly, this line of argument suggests that—in light of the evil and suffering we find in our world—if god exists, he is either impotent, ignorant or wicked. It should be obvious that (13) conflicts with (1) through (3) above. To make the conflict more clear, we can combine (1), (2) and (3) into the following single statement:

(14) god is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good.

There is no way that (13) and (14) could both be true at the same time. These statements are logically inconsistent or contradictory.

Statement (14) is simply the conjunction of (1) through (3) and expresses the central belief of classical theism. However, atheologians claim that statement ( 13) can also be derived from (1) through (3). [Statements (6) through (12) purport to show how this is done.] (13) and (14), however, are logically contradictory. Because a contradiction can be deduced from statements (1) through (4) and because all theists believe (1) through (4), atheologians claim that theists have logically inconsistent beliefs. They note that philosophers have always believed it is never rational to believe something contradictory. So, the existence of evil and suffering makes theists’ belief in the existence of a perfect god.

Can the god-believer escape this dilemma? In his best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner offers the following escape route for the theist: deny the truth of (1). According to this proposal, god is not ignoring your suffering when he doesn’t act to prevent it because—as an all-knowing god—he knows about all of your suffering. As a perfectly good God, he also feels your pain. The problem is that he can’t do anything about it because he’s not omnipotent. According to Kushner’s portrayal, god is something of a kind-hearted wimp. He’d like to help, but he doesn’t have the power to do anything about evil and suffering. Denying the truth of either (1), (2), (3) or ( 4) is certainly one way for the theist to escape from the logical problem of evil, but it would not be a very palatable option to many theists. In the remainder of this essay, we will examine some theistic responses to the logical problem of evil that do not require the abandonment of any central tenet of theism.

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY DEDUCTION (5)

Theists who want to rebut the logical problem of evil need to find a way to show that (1) through (4)—perhaps despite initial appearances—are consistent after all. I said above that a set of statements is logically inconsistent if and only if that set includes a direct contradiction or a direct contradiction can be deduced from that set. That means that a set of statements is logically consistent if and only if that set does not include a direct contradiction and a direct contradiction cannot be deduced from that set. In other words:

(15) A set of statements is logically consistent if and only if it is possible for all of them to be true at the same time.

Notice that (15) does not say that consistent statements must actually be true at the same time. They may all be false or some may be true and others false. Consistency only requires that it be possible for all of the statements to be true (even if that possibility is never actualized). (15) also doesn’t say anything about plausibility. It does not require the joint of a consistent set of statements to be plausible. It may be exceedingly unlikely or improbable that a certain set of statements should all be true at the same time. But improbability is not the same thing as impossibility. As long as there is nothing contradictory about their conjunction, it will be possible (even if unlikely) for them all to be true at the same

The atheological claim that statements (1) through (4) are logically inconsistent is a rather strong one. The atheologian is maintaining that statements (1) through (4) couldn’t possibly all be true at the same time. In other words:

(16) It is not possible for God and evil to co-exist.

The logical problem of evil claims that god’s omnipotence, omniscience and supreme goodness would completely rule out the possibility of evil and that the existence of evil would do the same for the existence of a supreme being.

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY DEDUCTION (1)

Having dealt with the nature of evil/suffering by INDUCTION, I move on now to an examination of the same subject approached by DEDUCTION.

The existence of evil and suffering in our world seems to pose a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a perfect god. If god were all-knowing, it seems that god would know about all of the horrible things that happen in our world. If god were all-powerful, god would be able to do something about all of the evil and suffering.

Furthermore, if god were morally perfect, then surely god would want to do something about it. And yet we find that our world is filled with countless instances of evil and suffering. These facts about evil and suffering seem to conflict with the orthodox theist claim that there exists a perfectly good god. The challenged posed by this apparent conflict has come to be known as the problem of evil.

This post addresses one form of that problem that is prominent in recent philosophical discussions–that the conflict that exists between the claims of orthodox theism and the facts about evil and suffering in our world is a logical one. This is the “logical problem of evil.”

I will clarify the nature of the logical problem of evil and consider som theistic responses to the problem -- particularly the free will defense, which has been the most widely discussed theistic response to the logical problem of evil and suffering.

Journalist and author Lee Strobel commissioned a public-opinion pollster to conduct a nationwide survey. The survey included the question “If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?” The most common response, offered by 17% of those who could think of a question was “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”. If god is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good, why does he allow so much suffering, and let so many bad things happen? This question raises what philosophers call “the problem of evil.”

It would be one thing if the only people who suffered debilitating diseases or tragic losses were the likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Osama Bin Laden. As it is, however, thousands of good-hearted, innocent people experience the ravages of violent crime, pain, terminal disease, and other evils. Something is dreadfully wrong with our world. An earthquake kills hundreds of thousands in Haiti. A pancreatic cancer patient suffers prolonged, excruciating pain and dies. A pit bull attacks a two-year-old child, angrily ripping his flesh and killing him. Countless multitudes suffer the ravages of war in Somalia. A crazed cult leader pushes eighty-five people to their deaths in Waco, Texas. Millions starve and die in North Korea as famine ravages the land. Horrible things of all kinds happen in our world—and that has been true since the beginning of civilization.

Is the problem of evil and suffering a kind of “moral protest? In asking “How could god let this happen?” people are often claiming “It’s not fair that god has let this happen.” Many atheists try to turn the existence of evil and suffering into an argument against the existence of God. They claim that, since there is something morally problematic about a morally perfect God allowing all of the evil and suffering we see, there must not be a morally perfect God after all. This is a very popular argument, and the argument from evil has developed into “the logical problem of evil.”

The problem of logical inconsistency began to take root in the past fifty years, among people who attempt to prove the non-existence of god. The idea is not that religious beliefs lack rational support, but that they are positively irrational… that several parts of essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with one another.

Evil and suffering are problems, for the theist, in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil on the one hand and belief in the omnipotence and omniscience of God on the other. It is impossible for all of the following statements to be true at the same time:

(1) God is omnipotent (that is, all-powerful).
(2) God is omniscient (that is, all-knowing).
(3) God is perfectly good.
(4) Evil exists.

Any two or three of them might be true at the same time; but there is no way that all four can simultaneously: (1) through (4) form a logically inconsistent set. What does it mean to say that something is logically inconsistent?

(5) A set of statements is logically inconsistent if and only if: (a) that set includes a direct contradiction of the form “p & not-p”; or (b) a direct contradiction can be deduced from that set.

None of the statements in (1) through (4) directly contradicts any other, so if the set is logically inconsistent, it must be because we can deduce a contradiction from it. This is precisely what atheologians claim to be able to do.

D 12

1. You and I are similar in that we have not formed a solid belief about the nature of our existence. I believe as you do that no one knows the true nature of how our existence came to be. While there are some atheists who have formed a belief that
there is no creative force to our universe, I await further evidence of this notion before I will commit to it, but I must admit I lean towards it. The main reason is the problem of infinite regression which is one of the issues I see you avoiding. positing an intelligent designer based on the premise that "how could intelligence arise on it's own" does not answer the question of where intelligence came from because it only tells you where our intelligence came from. You still have the problem of where did the intelligence of the designer come from? By positing an intelligent designer for our universe, you have not answered the question of where intelligence came from . You have only raised more questions about the origin of "intelligence".

2. "Intelligence" and "morality" are human constructs. We made them up with our imagination which is one of the things that separate us from animals. We have imagination, they do not. You might want to concern yourself with more with "how did imagination arise" because that is where the concept of intelligence came from, our imagination. Are we more intelligent than animals? Are you more intelligent than a dolphin? I'm not so sure. Intelligence is relevant. So is morality. We created both of those concepts. They are not physical things that exist. They arose in our minds as concepts, not actual things. Without us thinking about them with our imagination, they do not exist. In this sense, we are their creator. I am not saying we created intelligence here. I am saying that the concept of intelligence is a human construct, and it is subjective. If an intelligent designer created these things, they would not be subjective but objective.

"Or perhaps even more clear, how can humans take reason and morality to be such"

We invented both of these concepts. They are not things that are in existence outside of our own minds or they would be objective and they are clearly subjective. Some see morality much different from others and the same goes for reason. In both of these cases, our view of them changes over time with new information. This would not be the case if they were an objective gift from an intelligent creator.

"Reason and morality have no certainty of even being such, cannot certainly be taken as such, if such arrive by a non intelligent design process"

I would have ended that sentence after the first "such". And I'm not sure why you think that the only other option to intelligent design is unintelligent design. There is a third option. No design period. This option alleviates you of having to assume that if there is no intelligent design, then there must be unintelligent design.

"And why should we even follow what we call reason and morality"

We do not follow these things. They are not like scriptures laid out in a book that we choose to follow. We created these concepts. And they are ever changing and subjective. We do not follow them. They follow us, because they are concepts created by us, not actual things.

"when without intelligent design such have arisen and should obviously bow to non intelligent design as a superior structuring process to any reasonable and moral process we can devise?"

Bow to? This is such a religious idea. This is why people assume that you are a religious person because you use terms like this. I do not see us bowing to the concepts of intelligence and morality, they are at our mercy. We can change, and do change, these concepts almost daily.

"Certainly without intelligent design as a basis for reason and morality such have no certainty of being such"

I cut off this sentence there because I think it should end there. Reason and morality have no certainty of being such. That is because they are not actual things that exist objectively but rather human constructs that we created.

"and have no value over any other way of acting and behaving"

Sure they do. The value is in having a desirable place to live. We have made decisions over time to live in such a manor as to maximize our success and enjoyment of life. In this process, we have created the terms morality and reason to describe the process by which we continuously attempt to live a life of success (continuing to live) and enjoyment.

"Without intelligent design human morality and reason have no foundation for claiming to be superior to any acting and behavior of other animals"

This sentence is why people have such a tough time with your posts. There is no sense to it. Read it again and note that you have "morality and reason" themselves claiming superiority. Reason and morality can not claim anything. What you mean is that humans claim that a reasoned and moral way of living are superior to an unreasoned and immoral way of living. But both of these concepts are subjective so each individual must decide for themselves what is moral and reasoned.

"All becomes not only relative but sheer semantics, something of an illusion"

Not "becomes", but rather IS.

"Or to put it more clearly to you, I find myself in a complication"

I think this is because you are confused about the fact that reason and morality are human constructs and not actually things that exist objectively. The other reason you are in a complication is because you are ignoring the third option of no design period. You seem to think the only options are intelligent design or unintelligent design. There is a third option, no design period.

"Neither the religious nor atheistic answer are satisfactory"

There is no "atheist" answer. "I do not believe in God" is not an answer. The answer of "bottom up" development is not an atheist answer. It is the answer of the individual who made that claim. Not all atheists believe "bottom up" development is the answer. You can disbelieve individual God posits without having a posit of your own to answer an unanswerable question. You can leave the question open, as I do.

"We have a true problem here"

Only if you see morality and reason as actual things that exist objectively as opposed to human constructs, which is what they are.

"This is all I am saying. It should not be that difficult to understand--unless one cannot stand the uncertainty of it all and insists a makeshift answer is a decisive answer"

That is what religious people do. They employ a makeshift answer because they cannot stand the uncertainty of it all. Some atheists also do this I guess, but I am not one of them. I do lean away from ID though because of the problem of infinite regression. It makes ID a pointless answer. A non answer.

"This is all I am saying. I have no satisfactory answer"

Me too. But it seems that you lean towards ID and I lean away from ID due to the problem of infinite regression. I would love it if you would put your essay writing efforts towards addressing the problem of infinite regression with regards to ID.

YEAL9.

No waste of time for me. I even enjoyed reading your research. After all, that's the point of my time here, enjoyment.

The only waste of time here, is ever reading the "official" panelists -- bunch of agenda driven idiots, if I may share a word used for me, often.

Obviously, the task force members who generated the topic report have wasted their time and ours forcing many bloggers to waste more time debating the virtues of atheism.

YEAL9.

The answers might be in the questions. Some of us got it good, some of us don't. Some of us got it corruptly good, some of us missed out on that opportunity.

Yeal9:

"Back to the topic and still waiting for answers to the following questions."

Haven't you figured it out YET, dumbbell?? NOBODY pays attention to you.

Back to the topic and still waiting for answers to the following questions. (Where are the CCOGA task force members hiding?)

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

The task force was not in complete aggreement with the report? Why and what points should the general public know about said disagreements?

Timmy, I did not read the post you insist I must have read. But I did look at your last two posts.

First, thank you for your feedback on my answer to the on faith question.

As for the discussion of intelligent design and so on, this is all I question, or rather reason:

If there is no intelligent design behind existence, if as so many atheists such as Dennett believe that life did not develop from a "top down" process (meaning divine of course) but rather a "bottom up" process, which is to say self-organized, then how can intelligence have developed or morality? Or perhaps even more clear, how can humans take reason and morality to be such, from what view, what angle, can such be determined to be such, if the very foundation of such is not intelligence and morality but rather some "bottom up" process with no foundation of reason and morality? Reason and morality have no certainty of even being such, cannot certainly be taken as such, if such arrive by a non intelligent design process. And why should we even follow what we call reason and morality when without intelligent design such have arisen and should obviously bow to non intelligent design as a superior structuring process to any reasonable and moral process we can devise?

Certainly without intelligent design as a basis for reason and morality such have no certainty of being such and have no value over any other way of acting and behaving. Without intelligent design human morality and reason have no foundation for claiming to be superior to any acting and behavior of other animals. All becomes not only relative but sheer semantics, something of an illusion. Reason and morality something with parameters which can be articulated when such have arrived by precisely no reasonable and moral process but rather merely "self-organization" from nothing?

Timmy, I am not arguing for intelligent design. I have no idea what the hell lies behind existence. Or to put it more clearly to you, I find myself in a complication. On one hand I observe that religious people argue for intelligent design, but if existence is intelligently designed then why so much tragedy, why constant frailty for all life, why so much evidence of the absurd, unintelligent design? On the other hand I hear from atheists that reason and morality can arrive by no intelligent design, that they can arrive by a "bottom up" process. But this of course begs the question of how reason and morality can reliably be taken as such when such have come into existence by precisely a process which is not intelligent and moral but simply blind development. Do you see the problem? Neither the religious nor atheistic answer are satisfactory. We have a true problem here. This is all I am saying. It should not be that difficult to understand--unless one cannot stand the uncertainty of it all and insists a makeshift answer is a decisive answer.

This is all I am saying. I have no satisfactory answer. I am working on it--have been working on it long before we ever got into heated discussion about it. I think I really started thinking about it some time in the early 1990's. Hope that makes things a bit clearer.

First of all, I want to thank SCHAUM for sharing his work with me. I would have said, "with us," but I have learned to not speak for others.

DANIEL12, I too have a cupbord full of journals. SCHAUM's work will go on top. It bares re-reading and comparison to Matt Ridley's, "The Origins of Virtue," a totally dispassionate and, for me, a connected work, although theism is not any part of Ridley's reporting.

Actually, I have enjoyed reading everyone's work here. I learned from some, and I was amused at others, my own posts among of the latter.

Again, SCHAUM, a marvelous work, especially so to find here, for free I'm glad I stayed with you. What a generous person you are, in spite of your impatience with some of us.

I am now more happy than ever that my daughter is a bonafide member in residence at the Zen Center, high in New Mexico's mountains. Though, she might have done that, and skipped the private women's college costs. Oh well....

D 12

Okay your latest essay was long but somewhat lucid at least. The only thing I would question is your claim that Islam can not survive outside of theocracy. As much as I wish that were true, Indonesia has the largest population of muslims and it is not a theocracy. Pakistan also is not a theocracy. Neither is Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

It seems that theocracy is not necessary for the survival of Islam, even though it suits it best. Islam is actually thriving in the US under freedom of religion. I agree with you that muslims who do not seek to overthrow any government that is not an islamic theocracy, are not following the Koran as written, but just like Christianity has altered it's dogma to keep pace with modernity, Islam seems to be capable of the same thing, although it is decades, perhaps centuries, behind Christianity in this regard. I agree that moderate muslims are not true to their book. But neither are moderate Christians. They changed their archaic ways and so will Islam eventually. It will not go away. It will moderate and modernize. It has already started this process in the US and elsewhere.

Religions such as Christianity have turned their backs on some of their original dogmas in order to survive and Islam will do the same. Just like a human, it will do anything to survive.

I wish I could stretch this out for 9 more paragraphs so you will respect it but I'm afraid that's all I have for now until I hear some feedback. That is what blogs are for. Long winded essays are not the norm on blogs. I'm not sure why you think it is the correct way to blog.

But your latest, as I said, was lucid and readable at least.

survival of the species should be religion or non religion.

the body of human species is one

the soul that is breathed in human species is one .

the one who breathed soul in human species is one .

no one is to survive without the above soul.

paying attention to the one who created the body and breathed the soul is a must for survival.

survival of the species should not be limited to the body (body culture) live eat multiply and then die ,it doesnot matter whether lived in highly tec advanced society whether made it to the other space whether advancement in health and sanitation still human body , never exceed human body culture and human body inteligence.

another fact human species should never cease to forget is the fact that the creator of human body and the breather of soul never left human species stranded on this planet earth with no guidance the evidence is right here on this planet earth ,the clock of the univers is perfect ,the sun is guided in its course the moon is perfect in its course the sky is raised perfectly ,the one who created and guided all this fast perfect universe is to creat a human species and drop him or here on this planet earth with no guidance???utter ignorance and utter retardation in thought and belief.

divine guidance is a must for human body and the integration of humanity.

those who trying to export their human obese body and obese retarded and backward human obese culture need to study simple facts of at least this life .

D 12

"Timmy, I did not read your last post.

lol. You just responded to my last post. You meant my second last post. And I doubt you didn't read it.

"OR DO YOU CLAIM TO PROPOSE TOUGHER QUESTIONS THAN ON FAITH DOES?"

Much tougher.

"If so propose your questions to the people of on Faith so they make it the question of the week"

Okay. Next week get ready for the On Faith Question: Why Does Daniel 12 claim to not have any positions without faults but asserts in the same breath that ID must be true or there could be no intelligence and morality?

That's a position, Daniel. Care to point out the flaws in it? Isn't that what you do? Point out flaws in positions? So have a go at ID why don't you? Or do you just point out flaws in the positions of others but not yours?

Here's another good question: Why does D 12 claim to not believe in ID but claims to have intelligence?

Is it possible to deny belief in ID while at the same time insisting that intelligence is impossible without it?

"ESSAYS, DEVELOPED PIECES IN WHICH I TRIED TO BE THOROUGH. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THAT FROM YOU"

You are correct that I have never posted anything resembling your long winded excruciatingly obtuse essays. In case you hadn't noticed, EVERYONE HERE ON THIS BLOG HAS COMPLAINED ABOUT YOUR LONG WINDED EXCRUCIATINGLY OBTUSE ESSAYS AND HAS BEGGED YOU TO BE SHORTER WINDED AND MORE CONCISE.

"Enjoy my latest post on the question of the week Timmy"

Like so many have said to you before, I'll try to get though it, but it's going to be a tough slog. So much illogical babble.

Timmy, I did not read your last post. I concede the field to you. You are the winner. Congratulations. I will try to take the easy course from now on. Avoid the tough questions as you say. ADDRESS THE TOPIC OF THE WEEK WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE DIFFICULT THAN YOUR PETTY QUESTIONS. OR DO YOU CLAIM TO PROPOSE TOUGHER QUESTIONS THAN ON FAITH DOES? If so propose your questions to the people of on Faith so they make it the question of the week. I will be sure to answer as I always do. I have never avoided a question put on on Faith. As for your great questions, just a few weeks ago you challenged me to write out what I think intuition is and some other question I now forget. I answered with ESSAYS, DEVELOPED PIECES IN WHICH I TRIED TO BE THOROUGH. WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THAT FROM YOU. Enjoy my latest post on the question of the week Timmy.

Should U.S Foreign policy get religion? Should the U.S. government develop a strategy to engage religious communities of all faiths to address foreign policy challenges?

Interesting that the recommendation that the U.S. government develop a strategy to engage religious communities of all faiths to address foreign policy challenges has come out of Chicago, for Chicago was where the great political philosopher Leo Strauss taught and provided lessons relevant to this very day.

First we should understand exactly what is meant by this strategy proposed to engage religious communities. What is meant is to engage the world--including the Islamic world--in an effort to curb the influence of radical Islam. And why this is so is not entirely obvious. But Leo Strauss provides one great answer.

Leo Strauss pointed out that not just radical Islam but Islam period is actually political philosophy rather than religion. This is not to say Islam is not a religion, but unlike all other religions Islam is strongly associated with a set of laws (Sharia) and these laws add up to a political philosophy. Therefore Islam unlike another religion, such as Buddhism, cannot ever be compatible with Western liberal democracy because it is a political philosophy set in opposition to not only the Western world, but any other type of political philosophy.

There seems to be a core to the major religions other than Islam which makes them at least somewhat compatible to changing political environments. But Islam is a religion which cannot adapt to changing political environments because it is identical to a political philosophy. Islam is the true theocratic society. The other major religions seem able to exist without imposing a theocracy, but Islam must be theocracy or cease to exist.

This is born out by a simple reading of the Koran. Before even having read Strauss I thought the Koran was a blueprint for a totalitarian society. Furthermore I reflected on a particular irony. I observed that the Western world has been developing communications technology which can provide the infrastructure for a totalitarian society but seems to be using this technology (despite quite a few abuses) to perpetuate and develop liberal democracy while the Islamic world has been lagging in such technology but has managed all but totalitarianism by a single book which on every page has sayings such as "God sees all you do!" and "God watches and knows!"

The Koran literally scares the hell out of a person. Sura after Sura adds up to the great theme of God watching and ready to punish if the laws are contraverted. We have warning after warning and law after law. Trying to bring the Islamic world into the modern age is prevented by the great difficulty that virtually Islam in total cannot be expected to survive in any other environment than the political environment it creates out of its own laws.

Bringing the Islamic world into the modern age is the destruction of Islam, the direct refutation of the Koran. The sad truth is that the terrorists are the true upholders of the Koran. The terrorists know the laws of the Koran are the teaching and that the teaching is backed by stern warnings. The sole originality of the Koran--what distinguishes it from the Bible from which it took so much--lies in its laws. This is not to say it does not make an attempt at originality--it does for example in its version of Christ's story--but it seems unable to place its weight in such areas and exist in changing political environments such as Christianity can do what with being able to survive on beliefs such as the trinity.

This is what comes of the Koran being a derivative work rather than an original such as the Bible. Islam is the great insecure monotheistic religion. It is extremely sensitive to slights because it had no great originality to begin with. Furthermore, it was born into a chaotic political environment, one of constant tribal warfare and lack of cohesion. Its great success was as political philosophy rather than dogma such as the trinity. There were laws from God by way of Mohammed and these laws were backed by ever increasing force.

It seems quite preposterous with such a history to expect Islam to survive with any of its original force in a liberal democracy. We are asking it to place its weight on dogma such as Christians do with the trinity rather than the laws it has enforced for centuries. But again, Islam lacks any substance apart from its laws. It has no history of prophets, miraculous events, the resurrection of Christ--it has come by such by hearsay. A religion cannot exist on hearsay. It has to have a core of its own.

Therefore the big foreign policy challenge the U.S. faces here is the literal refutation of a religion. Now of course we will hear day in day out the challenge of "separating the radicals from the moderates in the Islamic world", but eventually when it comes to pass that the laws of Islam are no longer to be expected to be enforced the reason for Islam itself will be lost. And of course one cannot tell a billion and some strong Islamic people that Islam will be as strong as ever without its laws being followed. Eventually the day of reckoning will arrive. So far the moderates in the Islamic world are actually hypocrites and/or cowards and/or weak for materialistic rewards.

In reconciling Islam to the modern world we actually seduce a civilization, turn it to the enticements of modern society. In fact it becomes hard to tell which civilization--or rather age--comes out worse in this regard. The modern world is turned into a crutch for a people losing its religion and in presenting itself as a crutch perverts its own people, among them we Westerners of today (I am assuming my readers here are Westerners). But I suppose that is the usual nastiness of foreign policy. Seek the lowest common denominator, for that will be sure to be agreed upon.

But perhaps the U.S. has some other strategy in engaging religious communities with the aim of addressing foreign policy challenges.

D 12

"Now the supposedly conniving Daniel12 will do exactly what he came to On Faith to do"

Avoid the tough questions put to you? Lie about what others believe without asking them what they believe? Display your well read retardation? Butcher logic? But most importantly, avoid the tough questions put to you.

You should run away from my last post to you D 12. You really should. Smartest thing you've ever done I suspect. Conniving and deceitful, but smart.

NAVIN1

"Of course, like the muslim and christian who says, "oh those guys, they are not true current versions of muslim" you still deny communists (in Nepal, India, China, and North Korea) are atheists"

Nope. No one has ever denied that they are atheists. They are also non Santa believers. So I guess we should be wary of both atheists and non Santa believers.

"Oh you're right, just because they say they don't believe in gods doesn't make them atheists"

You are a slug on the bottom of all our shoes. You have been told directly and reminded again and again that no one here ever denied that the communists were atheists. But you can not argue with our real arguments so you invent a foe who denies that communists are atheists. Slug seer fraud that you are.

"Psychological denial is a powerful force for self agrandizement"

Said the seer fraud.

"I am far more radical than you think"

You are far more retarded than I thought that's for sure, slug seer fraud.

"While you go on preaching about this or that right way to see the world that you are not even sure exists really, I am worshiping that which does exist"

Kuckoo. Kuckoo.

"I do not see you or Manson as an other in my spirit"

Manson is you. You are Manson. Delusional, fear monger out for revenge, Kuckoo, conniving, dishonest, Slug on my shoe.

Back to the topic with yet another question:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

The task force was not in complete aggreement with the report? Why and what points should the general public know about said disagreements?

Now the supposedly conniving Daniel12 will do exactly what he came to On Faith to do from the very beginning and which he consistently does every week: Apply himself to the topic at hand. This is what it always has been about for me. I pose questions to myself--have done so for years, before the internet in fact, fill notebooks--and took as a personal adventure and challenge the questions posed on On Faith. Unlike some other people who apparently have some other agenda, for they rarely make a concerted effort to answer the topic at hand at all.

When it comes to foreign policy , i think we should always listen to anything anyone has to to say. This is a fundamental element of communication and understanding which precede the actual ability to skillfully and truthfully and openly to all, lead others to a shared direction or cooperation or positive solution. The ignorant idea of just pretending people do not exist or pretending they do not think certain things i think is a formula for disaster proven in the real world maybe by the last administration. Now with the failure of the present administration to reform lobby laws which amount to big business bribing our representatives our government has shown its inability to listen to its own bosses.... the people of America. The fact of the matter is there are things called theocracies in the real world. One can debate whether it is wise or not to combine religion and government, but i think only a fool would try to debate thier existence in the real world. When you can't come up with the right question how can you possibly get the right answer. Perhaps we need a third party of..... the people of.... America that aren't ignorant. Most people can be educated, or trained the people in Washington d.c. now seem to be mentally retarded as the words are intended to be used as a scientific terms. Or crooks possibly if you can not be diplomatic with your own citizens how can you hope to be with foreign people in distant lands.

Timmy2:

Again, Navinseermysticscientist avoids answering your questions. Major surprise.

Sartre was right: hell IS other people seeing you for who you are.

Atheists:
christians don't believe in allah as god
muslims don't believe in Ganesha as god
christians don't believe in Zeus as god
...

"I am an atheist who believes in just one less god than you"

so which of these atheists were killers. All of them, by your own definitions.

Of course, like the muslim and christian who says, "oh those guys, they are not true current versions of muslim" you still deny communists (in Nepal, India, China, and North Korea) are atheists. Oh you're right, just because they say they don't believe in gods doesn't make them atheists. And the Reign of Terror, not atheists, certainly, just because they call themselves that, can you believe these evil people and their followers call themselves atheists while defiling people and temples. They are certainly atheists because I don't believe they are atheists even if they say they are, I want mommy.

Psychological denial is a powerful force for self agrandizement. You guys need therapy, sorry Schaum does not exist - it is too internally inconsistent to exist logically or probablistically.

I am far more radical than you think. The existence, Truth is my God. That means all of it (not Schuam as that does not exist) but the rest of it. That includes nature, that includes humans that suffer when they are children, that includes consciousness, that includes the totality of what I grasp and what I don't. You can come up with the most horrible people in the world, that too is part of this totality of truth. While you go on preaching about this or that right way to see the world that you are not even sure exists really, I am worshiping that which does exist.

The jestor runs away when a decision needs to be made but always passes comments.

My god is love. When you believe you have something other than a chemical reaction to the people you love, you believe in the god that I worship. When you believe that you love a child, and that it is not a mere chemical release of oxytocin that binds you to that bag of protoplasm, you too worship the god that I worship. When you write an essay that you think is well written that is several paragraphs to talk about the goodness of writing noted in the brevity, you worship the god that I worship. I do not see you or Manson as an other in my spirit.

Insult me, you show your arrogance. Avoid reason, you show you desire for ignorance. but that is ok.

I salute the divine that has being in you: Namaste - that is what that means. And I wish the mytic love that you share with your families to be great and revealing to you, not just a few predetermined chemicals bouncing off of each other pretending to be the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind... the purusha of the prakriti. (but alas, since I don't know you, you may be just so much more divine dust mixed with divine water)

hariaum

Timmy2:

"Why can't we just believe people who claim to know God?"

Because we are rational, non-delusional, and not influenced by unproven superstitions. In this way man has progressed.

Back to the topic with yet another question:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Did a Faith Intiative grant from the State Department help defray the cost of topic report?

Schaum,

I'm still waiting for Navin1 to tell us how we are supposed to tell who is lying about their claim to know God, and who is a real seer without using the concept of evidence?

If we acted as he would have us act, we would all believe that Charles Manson is God. For who are we to deny the unsubstantiated experiences of others? We can not know that Charles Manson is delusional and is lying about his experience with God. How could we? Why can't we just believe people who claim to know God?

Tiimmy2:

"But you keep on keepin on with the fear mongering. That's all you got to get back at those damn atheists who call you a fraud. The Hindu out for revenge. lol."

Exactly. Each Navin1theseermysticscientist post proves him a a liar and a fraud, just as each of Daniel12's posts proves him and his "genius" to be fraudulent and --as you have rightly said-- conniving. I admire you for your immense patience in bothering with either of them. Perhaps you should pursue a career in adult special education. Clearly any retiring of the word 'retard' is premature.

NAVIN 1

"any militant atheists out there?"

Let's see if anyone cops to that? I'm not a militant atheist. But I am pretty pushy with my agnosticism.

NAVIN 1

"It should even study atheism and see if subversives want to destroy the open society that America has become (any militant atheists out there?).

We would all love for you to give examples of Atheist groups who are interested in taking power and removing freedom of religion, but you have not been able to name any. I put this challenge directly to you and you chose to opt out of providing any examples. I can understand why.

I suspect you will continue to elude to such groups without naming any that currently exist. I know there are some out there and you will be able to provide examples if you look hard enough. But I want you to name them so we can see just how obscure and ostracized they are.

I Know of no atheists who want either power or the removal of freedom of religion. But you keep on keepin on with the fear mongering. That's all you got to get back at those damn atheists who call you a fraud. The Hindu out for revenge. lol.

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM BY INDUCTION (13)

Let’s suppose that Rowe’s evidential argument from evil succeeds in providing strong evidence in support of the claim that there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. What follows from this? In particular, would a theist who finds it impossible to fault Rowe’s argument be obliged to give up his theism? Not necessarily, for at least two further options would be available to such a theist.

Firstly, the theist may agree that Rowe’s argument provides some evidence against theism, but he may go on to argue that there is independent evidence in support of theism which outweighs the evidence against theism. In fact, if the theist thinks that the evidence in support of theism is quite strong, he may employ what Rowe calls “the G.E. Moore shift”. This involves turning the opponent’s argument on its head, so that one begins by denying the very conclusion of the opponent’s argument.

Secondly, the theist who accepts Rowe’s argument may claim that Rowe has only shown that one particular version of theism – rather than every version of theism – needs to be rejected. A process theist, for example, may agree with Rowe that there is no omnipotent being, but would add that god, properly understood, is not omnipotent, or that god’s power is not as unlimited as is usually thought. An even more radical approach would be to posit a “dark side” in god and thus deny that god is perfectly good. Theists who adopt this approach would also have no qualms with the conclusion of Rowe’s argument.

There are at least two problems with this second strategy. Firstly, Rowe’s argument is only concerned with the god of orthodox theism as described above, not the god of some other version of theism. And so objections drawn from non-orthodox forms of theism fail to engage with Rowe’s argument (although such objections may be useful in getting us to reconsider the traditional understanding of god). A second problem concerns the worship-worthiness of the sort of deity being proposed. For example, would someone who is not wholly good and capable of evil be fit to be the object of our worship, total devotion and unconditional commitment? Similarly, why place complete trust in a god who is not all-powerful and hence not in full control of the world?

To be sure, even orthodox theists will place limits on god’s power, and such limits on divine power may go some way towards explaining the presence of evil in the world. But if god’s power, or lack thereof, is offered as the solution to the problem of evil – so that the reason why god allows evil is because he doesn’t have the power to prevent it from coming into being – then we are faced with a highly impotent god who, insofar as he is aware of the limitations in his power, may be considered reckless for proceeding with creation.

Conclusion

Evidential arguments from evil, such as those developed by William Rowe, purport to show that, grounds for belief in god aside, the existence of evil renders atheism more reasonable than theism. What verdict, then, can be reached regarding such arguments?

Firstly, theists response to Rowe’s theological premise either run the risk of diminishing confidence in god or else is entirely compatible with the theological premise. Secondly, theist objection to Rowe’s inference from inscrutable evil to pointless evil was, as I showed, inadequately supported. Thirdly, various theodical options were examined as a possible way of refuting Rowe’s factual premise, and I showed that a theodicy may go some distance in accounting for the existence of moral evil. Such a theodicy, however, raises many further questions relating to the existence of natural evil and the existence of so much horrendous moral evil. On the basis of these arguments, it can be seen that Rowe’s argument has a strongly resilient character, successfully withstanding many of the objections raised against it. Much more, of course, can be said both in support of and against Rowe’s case for atheism.

It can be concluded that, at the very least, Rowe’s evidential argument is not as easy to refute as is often presumed.

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM BY INDUCTION (12)

Theism, particularly as expressed within the christer and islamic religions, has always emphasized the inscrutability of the ways of god. It is in the context of this tradition that Stephen Wykstra developed his well-known CORNEA critique of Rowe’s evidential argument. The heart of Wykstra’s critique is that, given our cognitive limitations, we are in no position to judge as improbable the statement that there are goods beyond our ken secured by god’s permission of many of the evils we find in the world. This position – sometimes labelled “skeptical theism” or “defensive skepticism” – has generated a great deal of discussion, leading some to conclude that “the inductive argument from evil is in no better shape than its lamented deductive cousin”. In my opinion, this is a true conclusion. If there are goods justifying god’s permission of horrendous evil, it is likely that we would discern or be cognizant of such goods.

Being finite beings we can’t expect to know all the goods god would know, any more than an amateur at chess should expect to know all the reasons for a particular move that Kasparov makes in a game. But, unlike Kasparov who in a chess match has a good reason not to tell us how a particular move fits into his plan to win the game, god, if he exists, isn’t playing chess with our lives. In fact, since understanding the goods for the sake of which he permits terrible evils to befall us would itself enable us to better bear our suffering, god has a strong reason to help us understand those goods and how they require his permission of the terrible evils that befall us.

There appears, then, to be an obligation on the part of a perfect being to not keep his intentions entirely hidden from us. Such an obligation, however, does not attach to a gifted chess player or physicist – Kasparov cannot be expected to reveal his game plan, while a physics professor cannot be expected to make his mathematical demonstration in support of quantum theory comprehensible to a high school physics student.

Most critics of Rowe’s evidential argument have thought that the problem with the argument lies with its factual premise. But what, exactly, is wrong with this premise? According to one popular line of thought, the factual premise can be shown to be false by identifying goods that we know of that would justify god in permitting evil. To do this is to develop a theodicy.

What is a theodicy? The primary aim of is to “justify the ways of god to men.” If that sounds like John Milton, that is only because it is. A theodicy aims to vindicate the justice or goodness of god in the face of the evil found in the world, and it attempts to do this by offering a reasonable explanation as to why god allows evil to abound in his creation. A theodicy may be thought of as a story told by the theist explaining why god permits evil.

Thus, the story of the Fall (understood in a literalist christer fashion) could not be offered as a theodicy. Considering the doubtful historicity of Adam and Eve, and given the problem of harmonizing the Fall with evolutionary theory, such an account of the origin of evil cannot reasonably held to be plausible. A similar point could be made about stories that attempt to explain evil as the work of “satan” and his cohorts.

A theodicy is intended to be a plausible or reasonable explanation as to why god permits evil. A defense, by contrast, is only intended as a possible explanation as to why god permits evil. A theodicy, moreover, is offered as a solution to the evidential problem of evil, whereas a defense is offered as a solution to the logical problem of evil. Here is an example of a defense, which may clarify this distinction:

According to Mackie, it is logically impossible for the following two propositions to be jointly true:
1. god is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good,
2. Evil exists.
3.
Now, consider the following proposition:
1. Every person goes wrong in every possible world.

In other words, every free person created by god would misuse their free will on at least one occasion, no matter which world (or what circumstances) they were placed in. This may be highly implausible, or even downright false – but it is, at least, logically possible. Then there is this proposition:
1. It was not within god’s power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil.

In other words, it is possible that any world created by god that contains some moral good will also contain some moral evil. Therefore, it is possible for both (1) and (2) to be jointly true, at least when (2) is said to refer to “moral evil.” But what about “natural evil”? Well, consider this proposition:
1. All so-called “natural evil” is brought about by the devious activities of satan and his cohorts.

In other words, what we call “natural evil” is actually “moral evil” since it results from the misuse of someone’s free will (in this case, the free will of some evil demon). Again, this may be highly implausible, or even downright false – but it is, at least, possibly true.

Obviously Mackie was wrong to think that it is logically impossible for both (1) and (2) to be true. This, of course, is the very famous free will defense proposed by Alvin Plantinga in 1977. (“God, Freedom, and Evil”. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.) Notice that the central claims of this defense are only held to be possibly true. That’s what makes this a defense. One could not get away with this in a theodicy, for a theodicy must be more than merely possibly true.

THE NATURE OF ATHEISM BY INDUCTION (11)

A second idea, often called “the theological premise”, expresses a belief about what god as a perfectly good being would do under certain circumstances. In particular, this premise states that if such a being knew of some intense suffering that was about to take place and was in a position to prevent its occurrence, then it would prevent it unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. Put otherwise, an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good god would not permit any gratuitous evil, evil that is, so to speak, avoidable, pointless, or unnecessary with respect to the fulfillment of god’s purposes.

Rowe takes the theological premise to be the least controversial aspect of his argument. And he is right – the theological premise, or a version thereof that is immune from some minor problems in the original formulation, is usually thought to be indisputable, self-evident, necessarily true, or something of that ilk, that: “on the face of it, the idea that god may well permit gratuitous evil is absurd. After all, if god can get what he wants without permitting some particular horror (or anything comparably bad), why on earth would he permit it?”

To a large number of god-believers, christers for the most part, question Rowe’s theological premise. This way of responding to the evidential problem of evil has been described by Rowe as “radical, if not revolutionary, but it is seen by many theists as the only way to remain faithful to the common human experience of evil, according to which utterly gratuitous evil not only exists but is abundant

Although many theists accept the orthodox conception of god, they offer a distinct account of some of the properties that are constitutive of the orthodox god. Most importantly, open theists interpret god’s omniscience in such a way that it does not include either foreknowledge (or, more specifically, knowledge of what free agents other than god will do) or middle knowledge (that is, knowledge of what every possible free creature would freely choose to do in any possible situation in which that creature might find itself). This view is usually contrasted with Calvinism or theological determinism, according to which god determines or predestines all that happens, thus leaving us with either no morally relevant free will at all, or free will of the compatibilist sort only. As has been asked, “Could one trust such a god with one’s child, one’s life?” The answer may in large part depend on the degree to which the world is thought to be imbued with indeterminacy or chance. Many theists postulate a dark and risky universe subject to the forces of blind chance, and that it is difficult to imagine a personal god—that is, a god who seeks to be personally related to us and hence wants us to develop attitudes of love and trust towards him – providing us with such a habitat. To paraphrase Einstein, god does not play dice with our lives.

This does not mean that god does not play dice at all. It is not impossible, in other words, to accommodate chance within a theistic world-view. To see this, consider a particular instance of moral evil: Jon Benet Ramsey (the rape and murder of a little girl). It seems plausible that no explanation is available as to why god would permit this specific evil (or, more precisely, why god would permit this girl to suffer then and there and in that way), since any such explanation that is offered will inevitably recapitulate the explanation offered for at least one of the major evil-kinds that subsumes the particular evil in question (e.g., the class of moral evils). It is therefore unreasonable to request a reason (even a possible reason) for god’s permission of a particular event that is specific to this event and that goes beyond some general policy or plan god might have for permitting events of that kind. If this is correct, then there is room for theists to accept the view that at least some evils are chancy or gratuitous in the sense that there is no specific reason as to why these evils are permitted by god. However, this kind of commitment to gratuitous evil is entirely innocuous, for one can simply modify this premise so that it ranges either over particular instances of evil or (to accommodate cases where particular evils include no divine justification) over broadly defined evils or evil-kinds under which the relevant particular evils can be subsumed. And so a world created by god may be replete with gratuitous evil, as many theists imagine.

This is an Eastern cultural approach to the nature of god, good and evil. Not saying I fully accept it but it presents a different point of view.
Let’s assume for argument that nothing exist except for “god”. No matter, no energy, no heaven, hells, good, evil, no life or death. God, or creation, existed as a singularity, nothing but Itself coming into consciousness of Itself. Imagine that It become ‘lonely’. If It created creatures with awareness of It and no self awareness, they would just be extensions of It. If it wanted to create creatures It could commune with, it had to separate them from the knowledge of themselves as part of It, then give them an environment where they could develop consciousness of themselves, then It. The physical world represents that place of opportunity.
God dreamed and the cosmos unfolded. Humans evolved to a point where they could be learn to love their children, then family, tribe and self. This is Hell, there is no eternal punishment. No sin, just cause and effect. No good or evil, just thought and deed that cause the human soul to feel some connection to the more eternal self, or IT. It has provided prophets and shamans and guides and caring souls that help point the way. The soul cannot be fully itself until it is aware of that piece of it that is IT. Likewise, IT cannot be all of Itself until all of the pieces it separated return to that consciousness. Of course once given, those hints usually get polluted by humans that don’t have that knowledge for personal gain. In every generation there are always a few ‘enlightened souls’ that reach a epiphany leading to separation from self as mind, body and emotion and to an understanding of self as an atom of IT. If as the Buddha says, this is all illusion, then suffering, however bad is a temporary condition offering opportunity to advance.
I have had experiences in meditation and in life that lead me to believe this is true. But not enough belief I would proselytize or even expect anyone that hadn’t shared similar experiences to believe it for one second. And doing so would be interfering with another’s path.

I am shocked to think that our government is so stupid as to not take religion into consideration of the long term development of American interests. How stupid can you be?

Any sense of efficacy would impel one to understand all of the forces that drive behavior, certainly those that work on mass levels. Like religion, marketing, economic trends, family dynasties, wealth allocation (sequestration), must be just as well understood as military and espionage systems. We should know what buttons to push to bring our enemies to their knees - whether those buttons are guns, germs, or steel (to borrow a phrase) or how to cause infighting within the social structures that maintain groups.

Empowering our military and diplomatic core is fundamental to foreign policy. To pretend that things don't exist or impact upon the choices people make is to blind oneself. What else has the government forgotten to take into account!!

On a more academic side, let us pretend that the world is good and no one really wants to harm us. Then we can call for restraint of our powers. That is nice. That is also the way of demise of empires.

That demise, though, is from attacks from without and within. That is one of the reasons why treason is the only crime defined in the constitution. That crime is a real threat to the nation. All others are just cultural.

Thus our government should be studying the christian attempt to overthrow the constitution. It should be studying the ideology of Islam so oft stated: it is a political and religious theology (and the muslims are saying this!)(Hello, pay attention here US Govt). It should be studying the ideology of communism. It should be studying the role of capitalism and capital flight in weakening the power of the US... (Frankly it would be nice but not particularly relevant to study the political forces in Buddhism and Hinduism, but again more as a way to disrupt those societies if we need to).

It should even study atheism and see if subversives want to destroy the open society that America has become (any militant atheists out there?).

Should government send out missions to convert people? Well, yes, to secularism to open societies, to human freedom, to the idea that all wo/men are created equal and carry with them the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And if you don't like those ideals of ours, sell your oil elsewhere. But, like all ideal moral values, we don't even do that.

This nation has so much to offer the world. It has wealth, it has stability, it has power. But more than that, it has an open society dedicated to human freedoms (even to being silly about it). When we fail to propagate that ideal (in ourselves and in others) we invite disaster (or the need to use that poor tool of diplomacy - power - to protect ourselves). And yes, those theologies or ideologies that oppose human freedoms will want to destroy us (for we give their citizens hope (funny thing is, they know we wiped out the natives, we continued slavery later than much of Europe, we tried to prevent women from voting, that we have fundamentalist voting for a president that speaks to god... and still we are the beacon)) and yes our government should know who and why.

hariaum

NAVIN 1

"The taoist perspective is very much in line with this understanding. Karma, also without eternal damnation, also goes along with this line. Neither are nihilistic that we can't improve things, but both caution us no to be simplistic thinkers that we are not harming at the same time we are helping"

Common sense also tells us this.

NAVIN 1

"I believe I have valid evidence of God's existence, you believe you do not"

I believe you do not.

"The straw man argument of the proof against against god assumes that our experience of evil is 1)accurate, 2) meaningful, 3) undesirable. It also anthropomorphsizes god into human categories"

The definition of evil we use in this argument comes from the same Bible with the definition of God. God as described in the Bible, which also includes the description of evil, can not exist.

This of course only refers to God of the Holy Bible and the Koran and the original hebrew bible.

You define God as something else for some bizarre reason even though it confuses this entire argument. I Can't figure out why you do that, but I'll just have to assume you have good reasons.

The problem of evil is based on values. Evil is a posteriori to ideas of goodness and badness. The straw man argument of the proof against against god assumes that our experience of evil is 1)accurate, 2) meaningful, 3) undesirable. It also anthropomorphsizes god into human categories. Thus we conclude: as man conceives god, as man conceive evil, both can not co-exist, therefore god does not exists. Its a foolish argument.

The clear problem is the ideology of man conception of good and evil, man's conception of Being as god, and the a priori position of the establishment of good and evil. - muddled thinking to prove a rhetorical point.

I can't say I agree with the buddhist argument that suffering is due to our constructs. I've seen plenty of people suffering for nothing they thought about. On a deeper lever, the level of attachment to say good health, certainly this is a reasonable argument.

The problem is not a simple syllogism of choice words. Modern medicine has lengthened lives (doubled in 100 years). In doubling lives have we then doubled the suffering of living? Have we made bad people live longer and thus increased the suffering they bring into society? Is the doubling of human freedom worth the billions of rats sacrificed to make those advances and then of course the Nazi and US experiments on humans that predated modern ethical thinking? We can improve lives (nuclear energy) and at the same time harm lives.

The taoist perspective is very much in line with this understanding. Karma, also without eternal damnation, also goes along with this line. Neither are nihilistic that we can't improve things, but both caution us no to be simplistic thinkers that we are not harming at the same time we are helping. The totality is that we are doing both at the same time. Logical distinctions are empty.

hariaum.

Back to the topic with yet another question:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

Did Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Corps work for Obama's election campaign as we see Eboo is not only on the topic task force but also on Obama's Faith advisory council?

Timmy, don't take things so personally. I am glad you have beliefs. As to evidence, I suspect you have beliefs of what is valid evidence and what is not. You might even say that some one else's valid may be validly different than your valid. And the logical next step would be: to each their own constructs of valid evidence and thus their own conclusions - I believe I have valid evidence of God's existence, you believe you not. Peace be upon us.

hariaum

D 12

"No thinker worth his salt can explain in a matter of paragraphs what he believes"

Every thinker here on this blog but you has articulated their belief on the Abrahamic God with no problem. And I find all of them to be far more intelligent that yourself. I guess you are special.

"Oh, so we have here that my finding that no position is without flaws equals my having no position on anything? Right Timmy. Perfect logic and conclusion"

I just asked. So now I am to conclude that you have a position but it would take too long to articulate it? Is that right?

"One needs a position from which to point out flaws? That is total BS Timmy"

If you say so.

"The fact is no person has a certain understanding of existence. No one"

That's my line. And congratulations you just articulated a belief in one sentence. See? It can be done. You believe that no one has a certain understanding of existence. No one. That is a belief and you just articulated it in one sentence. See how easy that was. It is also a position from which to point out flaws in other's thinking. And it's the same position I have. Scary.

"Furthermore people being incapable of grasping existence--the mystery of it--quite logically have no sound position on such a thing"

But you can have a sound position on the existence of the Abrahamic God as described in the Bible can you not?

"No position on existence has been satisfactory. Not a single one"

Wow we are really on the same page now. You are sounding like a true atheist/agnostic now. If no one can have a sound position on existence then all religions that claim to have such must be false. From this position you must also agree with me that NAVIN1 is a fraud.

"Timmy, you honestly cannot recognize the contradiction of saying a person can be reasonable and moral when existence itself supposedly has no intelligent design behind things?"

I honestly see no contradiction. Can you point out the contradiction for me? Remember that intelligence and morality mean two different things. And remember that morality is an human invented concept.

"That there is no intelligent design behind things automatically makes all reason and morality suspect"

This sounds like you are articulating another belief that there must be intelligent design behind our existence. Is that correct? Sorry to assume, but it sounds like you think it's impossible for us to exist without intelligent design. This sounds like you are articulating your belief in ID. If that is not true and you do not believe in ID then you must accept that intelligence and morality can come from no ID. Which is it?

"one cannot take reason and morality to be such if such exist on a background of precisely nothing of which we declare such to be. Basic logic"

So intelligent design is certain then? You believe in intelligent design.

"Intelligence itself if there is no intelligent design is merely derivative, cannot make the slightest argument as to its worth"

So ID must be true? It really sounds like this is what you are saying. It really sounds like you are articulating a belief here. Please correct me if I am wrong.

"Now if you want to say the above is my position go ahead. This does not mean I will not change it tomorrow"

I was only ever after your current belief. All of my beliefs are also temporary until new information arrives. I currently do not have enough information to assume that intelligence can not arise without an intelligent designer. Plus this only raises the problem of infinite regression. God's intelligence would have to have a designer and so on and so on to infinity.

"But what really gets me about you Timmy is you act like I must be pleased or something that no matter which way I turn I see a flawed, unsatisfactory explanation of existence"

I certainly did not mean to act as though you are pleased that you can not find a satisfactory position. I have found a position that is satisfactory to me, and I have nothing but sympathy for those who can not do the same. I apologize if I came off as assuming that you are pleased about your situation.

"As for your reading, it would be nice if you put more of it into your posts"

I'll do my best.

"I will write an essay on such for myself"

I've got news for you. Every essay you write is for yourself.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (10)

In presenting his evidential argument from evil in his famous paper, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism”, WilliamRowe thinks it best to focus on a particular kind of evil that is found in our world in abundance. He therefore selects “intense human and animal suffering” as this occurs on a daily basis, is in abundance in our world, and is a clear case of evil. More precisely, it is a case of intrinsic evil: it is bad in and of itself, even though it sometimes is part of, or leads to, some good. Rowe then proceeds to state his argument for atheism as follows:

1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.
4. This argument, as Rowe said, is clearly valid, and so if there are rational grounds for accepting its premises, to that extent there are rational grounds for accepting the conclusion, that is to say, atheism.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (9)

Evidential arguments purport to show that evil counts against theism in the sense that the existence of evil lowers the probability that god exists. The strategy here is to begin by putting aside any positive evidence we might think there is in support of theism (e.g., the fine-tuning argument) as well as any negative evidence we might think there is against theism (that is, any negative evidence other than the evidence of evil). We therefore begin with a “level playing field” by setting the probability of god’s existing at 0.5 and the probability of god’s not existing at 0.5. The aim is to then determine what happens to the probability value of “god exists” once we consider the evidence generated by our observations of the various evils in our world. The central question, therefore, is: Grounds for belief in god aside, does evil render the truth of atheism more likely than the truth of theism. Proponents of evidential arguments are only making the weaker claim that, if we temporarily set aside such positive reasons, then it can be shown that the evils that occur in our world push the probability of god’s existence significantly downward.

But if evil counts against theism by driving down the probability value of “god exists” then evil constitutes evidence against the existence of god. Evidential arguments, therefore, claim that there are certain facts about evil that cannot be adequately explained in a theistic account of the world. Theism is thus treated as a large-scale hypothesis or explanatory theory which aims to make sense of some pertinent facts, and to the extent that it fails to do so it is disconfirmed.

In evidential arguments, however, the evidence only “probabilifies” its conclusion, rather than conclusively verifying it. The probabilistic nature of such arguments manifests itself in the form of a premise to the effect that “It is probably the case that some instance (or type, or amount, or pattern) of evil is gratuitous.” This probability judgment is usually built on the claim that, even after careful reflection, we can see no good reason for god’s permission of evil. The inference from this claim to the judgment that there exists gratuitous evil is inductive in nature, and it is this inductive step that sets the evidential argument apart from the logical argument.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (8)
1. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
2. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
3. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
4. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.

From this set of auxiliary propositions, it clearly follows that

1. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists.

It is not difficult to see how the addition of such propositions will produce an explicit contradiction, namely,

1. Evil exists and evil does not exist.

If such an argument is sound, theism will not so much lack evidential support, but would rather be, as Mackie phrases it, “positively irrational.”

The subject of this post, however, is the evidential version of the problem of evil (also called the a posteriori version and the inductive version), which seeks to show that the existence evil, although logically consistent with the existence of god, counts against the truth of theism. As with the logical problem, evidential formulations may be based on the sheer existence of evil, or certain instances, types, amounts, or distributions of evil. Evidential arguments from evil may also be classified according to whether they employ (i) a direct inductive approach, which aims at showing that evil counts against theism, but without comparing theism to some alternative hypothesis; or (ii) an indirect inductive approach, which attempts to show that some significant set of facts about evil counts against theism, and it does this by identifying an alternative hypothesis that explains these facts far more adequately than the theistic hypothesis.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (7)

Similarly, H.J. McCloskey says about evil:

“Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil, on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence and perfection of God on the other.”

Atheologians like Mackie and McCloskey, in maintaining that the logical problem of evil provides conclusive evidence against theism, are claiming that theists are committed to an inconsistent set of beliefs and thus that theism is necessarily false. More precisely, it is claimed that theists commonly accept the following propositions:

1. God exists
2. God is omnipotent
3. God is omniscient
4. God is perfectly good
5. Evil exists.

These propositions are an essential part of the orthodox conception of god. But theists typically believe that the world contains evil. Such a claim is incompatible with the theist’s commitment to the proposition that god is as described in 1-5 above. Of course, “evil” can be specified in a number of ways (and is frequently done so by such “theologians” as Pat Robertson), i.e. it may refer to the existence of any evil at all, or a certain amount of evil, or particular kinds of evil, or some strange distributions of evil. In each case, a different version of the logical problem of evil, and hence a distinct charge of logical incompatibility, will be generated.

Those who advance logical arguments from evil must therefore add one or more necessary truths to the above set of five propositions in order to generate the fatal contradiction. By way of illustration, consider the following additional propositions that may be offered:

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY INDUCTION (6)

The inductive approach to the “problem of evil” may be described as the problem of reconciling belief in god with the existence of evil. But the problem of evil, like evil itself, has many versions. It may, for example, be expressed either as an experiential problem or as a theoretical problem. In the former case, the problem is the difficulty of adopting or maintaining an attitude of love and trust toward God when confronted by evil that is deeply perplexing and disturbing. Alvin Plantinga (1977: 63-64) provides an eloquent account of this problem:

The theist may find a religious problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against god, to shake his fist in god’s face, or even to give up belief in god altogether… Such a problem calls, not for philosophical enlightenment, but for pastoral care.

By contrast, the theoretical problem of evil is the purely “intellectual” matter of determining what impact, if any, the existence of evil has on the truth-value, or the epistemic status, of theistic belief. To be sure, these two problems are interconnected – theoretical considerations, for example, may color one’s actual experience of evil, as happens when suffering that is better comprehended becomes easier to bear. In this post, however, I focus exclusively on the theoretical dimension. This aspect of the problem of evil comes in two broad varieties: the logical problem and the evidential problem.

The logical version of the problem of evil (also known as the a priori version and the deductive version) is the problem of removing an alleged logical inconsistency between certain claims about god and certain claims about evil. I quote J.L. Mackie’s succinct statement of this problem:

“In its simplest form the problem is this: god is omnipotent; god is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian, it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.”

Absolutely not. The US should be an example of reason and freedom of thought. Religion is directly opposed to those ends.

"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men." - Robert Green Ingersoll

Alltheroadrunnin:

"On this "evil" problem, I don't think a better explanation has been offered, since some Buddhists concluded it's all in our minds -- evil actions have to be first thought up, and chosen to be acted out. And they found a way to avoid having such thoughts, no god necessary."

This is exactly my position. Clarity is everything. "Evil" is nothing more than clouded thinking; "good" is the opposite: it is clear thinking. It is all in our minds. Inductive and deductive approaches to the manufactured "problem of evil" are, respectively, the approaches used by god-believers, and by non-god believers.

Back to the topic with an added question:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Why aren't the "sacred" but very flawed books of the contemporary religions noted in the CCOGA report mentioned in their report? The report was obviously prepared by task force members well-versed in these books but are they??

the 2 ideological masters of mother america.

1-
juchristianity says,
for so god love the world he nailed his only begotten son to the cross for the sin and sake of mankind
sony is the way the truth and life.

2-
secular renaissance says,(please study the french revolution),

man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

the above 2 think tanks are so primitive so hole-y so rusty so rotten .

america need to import different ideology in order to get back in global businees.

Timmy, I can only conclude you are a liar. It is a logical impossibility one can be well read (as you claim by your listing of books) and conclude that I am conniving, that I have no passion for ideas. Oh, wait, now we will nitpick and you will say you never said I have no passion for ideas, right?

But we will let you have your say. Go ahead Timmy, tell me what you believe. But then again, why should I insult you Timmy? No thinker worth his salt can explain in a matter of paragraphs what he believes. Certainly I cannot. And you know I cannot (or maybe not). I treat each topic on on Faith as it is. My beliefs cannot be separated from the total project of thinking.

But why not reply to some of your statements in recent posts? I say:

"I HAVE NEVER FOUND A POSITION THAT DID NOT HAVE OBVIOUS AND EASILY ARTICULATED FLAWS"

You say:

So you have no position on anything? Wow.

I say:

Oh, so we have here that my finding that no position is without flaws equals my having no position on anything? Right Timmy. Perfect logic and conclusion.

I say:

"But let me put the proof on the table--which I have done countless times--demonstrating that I will seek out the flaws in any position and clearly state them"

You say:

One needs a position from which to point out flaws. So what's your position?

I say:

One needs a position from which to point out flaws? That is total BS Timmy. The fact is no person has a certain understanding of existence. No one. Furthermore people being incapable of grasping existence--the mystery of it--quite logically have no sound position on such a thing. Humans being humans we cannot help but have a faulty understanding of existence. No position on existence has been satisfactory. Not a single one. There are always flaws, always problems, never is there the ability to "tie things up soundly". I need have no position to recognize that every position I take is unsatisfactory. That is just life. We die not really knowing whether we are right about this or that. We might think we know in instances, but...

I say:

"holding there is no intelligent design behind existence which of course begs the question of how a person can be reasonable and moral in the first place let alone become more reasonable and moral"

You say:

I do not see how being reasonable and moral has anything to do with being intelligently designed. Is this a position of yours, that it is impossible to be moral and reasonable without intelligent design? It seems like this is your position, but you claim to have none so I just wanted clarification.

I say:

Timmy, you honestly cannot recognize the contradiction of saying a person can be reasonable and moral when existence itself supposedly has no intelligent design behind things? That there is no intelligent design behind things automatically makes all reason and morality suspect--one cannot take reason and morality to be such if such exist on a background of precisely nothing of which we declare such to be. Basic logic.

I say:

"Hell, if no intelligent design is behind things we should arguably work toward the unintelligent because everything, including human intelligence, arose without the slightest bit of intelligence behind things"

You say:

So if intelligence arises with no help from an intelligent designer, then we should work towards the unintelligent? Is this a position of yours? A belief? Why do you say such things if you do not hold this position?

Timmy, if everything arose without the slightest bit of intelligence behind things then precisely the unintelligent has a greater claim to anything positive (according to humans) which exists, because quite logically even intelligence arose by it. Intelligence itself if there is no intelligent design is merely derivative, cannot make the slightest argument as to its worth. Unless of course one wants to declare a human worth to something which is founded on precisely what humans find worthless, precisely lack of intelligent design...

Now if you want to say the above is my position go ahead. This does not mean I will not change it tomorrow.

But what really gets me about you Timmy is you act like I must be pleased or something that no matter which way I turn I see a flawed, unsatisfactory explanation of existence. I would love to have things tied up neatly--I would be considered the greatest genius that ever lived. But unfortunately basic integrity dictates that everything is provisional. Such it is. As for your reading, it would be nice if you put more of it into your posts, an observation for example such as the catcher in the rye, the red badge of courage, the great gatsby and the old man and the sea being probably the four American novels every American should read in order to understand possibilities of style, methods of compression and wealth of treatment of subject.

You read Outliers? Tell me Timmy, do you think you would recognize an outlier if you came across one (one unknown)? If so, why? If not, why not? Actually, no need to reply to that. That I happen to have asked such questions does not mean you have to answer. I however do have to answer (curiousity compels me to). I will write an essay on such for myself. But if you want you can explain how Gladwell himself would recognize an outlier if he came across one. I bet though Gladwell never took the trouble to explain such in his book. That would have been a real book, one worth something.

While Mr. Meacham may have bona fides and panel members as well for points of view, I wonder if Ms. Quinn shouldn't remove herself from this forum. A suggestion. I think "On Faith" can be a legitimate discussion of views, but I wonder if it now isn't just a Sally Quinn vehicle for her personal agenda. Like her other column. Welcome other thoughts.

SCHAUM.

Uh, OK. Induction, and 4 helps. And you are probably correct, I am not following each of your posts as well as I might, if they were all one piece. Considering that, I retract the "blaming others" accusation.

In fact, I am starting to think, if the Buddhists are right and I am going to live a bunch of more existences (because I didn't get it "right" in prior ones), eventually finding myself in your classes would be more fun than in any of my past classes. You are tough, sometimes insulting (when the insult is deserved), but fair. I imagine you look a bit like the late John Houseman.

On this "evil" problem, I don't think a better explanation has been offered, since some Buddhists concluded it's all in our minds -- evil actions have to be first thought up, and chosen to be acted out. And they found a way to avoid having such thoughts, no god necessary.

But then, that "way" precludes much of the drama, and hysteria, modern humans seem to love, or thrive on, or something.

Sorry Daniel, I forgot the books list that you keep asking for.

For the last year and a half I have spent much time studying and reading both The Holy Bible and the Koran. During that time I have also read several novels including To Kill A Mockingbird (2nd reading) and The Catcher In The Rye which I had not read yet and loved.

I also just finished reading Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" and Malcolm Gladwell's "The Outliers". I also spend much time reading and researching on the internet. Most notably I have been studying Buddhism and Hinduism on various on line sources.

But does this prove anything or even indicate anything? I'm not sure why you keep putting this challenge to people? Seems like you think most books read = most intelligence or something. Maybe you have read more books than me, and maybe you haven't. It's not really relevant to anything we have been discussing.

One thing is for sure. You could read a hundred million books on atheism and religion and you still will not understand what I believe until you ask me. But that would be uncharacteristic for you. It would be too honest and not conniving enough for you.

D 12,

"Then you have atheism being "nothing", or what amounts to such because apparently according to you I cannot understand what that position is no matter how much reading I do and cannot therefore criticize it at all"

You can criticize "atheism" all you want. I just don't know what that is, nor do I belong to any such belief system. So go ahead and criticize this thing you call "atheism", just leave me out of it because based on your description of it, I have no belief in it whatsoever.

"I have never heard you admit being wrong about anything"

When I find out that I am wrong about something I admit it. Do not confuse your inability to catch me being wrong about anything with my inability to admit that I am wrong about anything.

"I write something and I receive the perfect Timmy reply which whatever it is amounts to atheism"

Says you. I belong to no belief system called Atheism.

"My mind is flexible, has not hardened into any particular position"

Mine too.

"I HAVE NEVER FOUND A POSITION THAT DID NOT HAVE OBVIOUS AND EASILY ARTICULATED FLAWS"

So you have no position on anything? Wow.

"But let me put the proof on the table--which I have done countless times--demonstrating that I will seek out the flaws in any position and clearly state them"

One needs a position from which to point out flaws. So what's your position?

"And now a flaw of atheism"

I belong to no such belief system called "atheism" so you may point out as many flaws in it as you like. I really don't know anything about this thing called atheism as you describe it so I shall not bother with your criticism of it.

"holding there is no intelligent design behind existence which of course begs the question of how a person can be reasonable and moral in the first place let alone become more reasonable and moral"

I do not see how being reasonable and moral has anything to do with being intelligently designed. Is this a position of yours, that it is impossible to be moral and reasonable without intelligent design? It seems like this is your position, but you claim to have none so I just wanted clarification.

"Hell, if no intelligent design is behind things we should arguably work toward the unintelligent because everything, including human intelligence, arose without the slightest bit of intelligence behind things"

So if intelligence arrises with no help from an intelligent designer, then we should work towards the unintelligent? Is this a position of yours? A belief? Why do you say such things if you do not hold this position.

"Therefore it cannot even be said that atheists hold that there is no intelligent design behind things"

You should ask each individual atheist what he or she believes on the matter. I am an atheist, and I do not personally hold the belief that there is no intelligent design behind things. I hold the belief that the Abrahamic God does not exist. You inferred that I then believe that there is no intelligent design behind existence but you are wrong about me as usual. This is what I've been telling you all along. All atheists are people who do not believe in God. But not all atheists are people who believe that there is no intelligent design behind existence.

I do not believe that there is intelligent design behind existence because there is no evidence that there is. I do not believe that there is no intelligent design behind existence because there is no evidence that there is no intelligent design behind existence. So I don't believe that. because there is no evidence to support that belief. But there is a mountain of evidence to support my belief that Yahweh does not exist. So I do hold that belief.

You see Daniel, you can not lump all atheists into this thing you call atheism because we all have different beliefs besides the one common belief that God does not exist. If there is such a thing as "atheism" I do not know of it. I do not practice it. I do not belong to it. I am not a believer in it. I do not follow or revere it. I am not a member of it. And I do not support it.

Why don't you ever once ask me what I believe, and go from there with your judgements of me? Why not? Aren;t you tired of being wrong about what I believe? Why do you not care what I actually believe? Why do you insist on telling me what I and all atheists believe? Why be so conniving?

Just ask me what I believe and I will tell you. Then you can point out any flaws in my beliefs you like from your completely neutral non position.

It really does sound like you have a very strong position. But you won't clarify what it is. How can you point out flawed thinking and beliefs if you have no position to point from?

NAVIN 1

"It is a belief that some one can know what someone else experiences better than them"

Indeed. All of those people who deny Charles Manson's experience that he is Jesus have a belief that is just like any other religious belief. We should believe people when they say they know God personally. Who are we to say they don't.

"It is a belief to say what exists or does not exist"

Yes it is. I have many beliefs. All come with evidence. I have no beliefs that come with no evidence because that would be delusion.

"Of course if you deny you have any beliefs"

Never have i ever done this nor has anyone on this blog ever denied having beliefs. I have many many many beliefs.

"If it is not a fact that can be proven, and still you believe it, you are delusional"

Proof has no bearing. If you hold a belief with absolutely no evidence for that belief, I believe that is delusional. For example if I believed that Angelina Jolie loved me, that would be delusional. Not because I can not prove it, but because there is not 1 iota of evidence for this belief.

"How silly, to believe what you can't prove.

I can not prove evolution. But I believe it. Evidence is all it takes for a belief to not be delusional. It doesn't have to be scientific evidence, just some evidence. Any evidence.

As usual you must change my argument to have one against it. I have never denied having beliefs. I believe in all kinds of things that I can not prove. Love and evolution are just a few examples.

Beliefs with evidence are rational. Beliefs without evidence are irrational. I have evidence that you are not a seer in the form of posts that you have made. The type of seer you claim to be would not act as you have acted. Just like an omniscient perfect all good God can not have created a world with so much suffering, a seer of monism can not show a bruised ego so quickly and easily. Combine that with a complete lack of any scrap of evidence that you are a seer, and we can be pretty sure that you are a fraud. But of course not 100% certain.

You would have us believe Charles Manson and Joseph Smith. Or at the very least, you would admonish us for calling them frauds. You fall into the very same category as them.

Back to the topic:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of the book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

Back to the topic:

Questions about the Chicago Council of Global Affairs-

Is its previous association with Michelle Obama affect what it is doing and what areas it reviews? Mrs. Obama was once a director of CCOGA(and making over $100,000/yr?).

Why does it have such a large investment portfolio (over $6 million)? Does CCOGA note this in their donation drives? i.e. give us some more of your money so we can invest in the risky stock and bond market?

In 2007, why did the CCOGA cancel the visit and talk by the authors of book "Israel's Lobby and US Foreign Policy"?

You don't have to evoke intelligent design to explain why there is a benefit to intelligence or social behavior. Just evoke Darwin. Intelligent behavior is better for survival of individuals and groups than stupid behavior. People who would vote for George Bush multiple times are really bound to become extinct, and hopefully they will not drag the rest of us down with them. Really, how many times do you put your hand on a hot stove before learning that you are bound to get burned. IT seems some people never learn.

Timmy, what you say is garbled nonsense. You say I cannot state what I believe in that I am being conniving which at the least implies you have something clearly believed in and which can be articulated. Then you have atheism being "nothing", or what amounts to such because apparently according to you I cannot understand what that position is no matter how much reading I do and cannot therefore criticize it at all...Ah, why go on Timmy? I have never heard you admit being wrong about anything. I write something and I receive the perfect Timmy reply which whatever it is amounts to atheism and there is not the slightest bit of flaw with this atheism of yours and of course in your words I do not even understand it let alone have the ability to criticize it. (I obviously repeat myself here).

Again, why go on?

But one thing I will say is that every week a topic is proposed. I attempt to answer the question of the week. I never have a particular position to defend and which I attempt to press into operation every week. My mind is flexible, has not hardened into any particular position. And one reason why--and let me state this clearly to separate me from you and propose a direct challenge to you--IS BECAUSE I HAVE NEVER FOUND A POSITION THAT DID NOT HAVE OBVIOUS AND EASILY ARTICULATED FLAWS. NOT A SINGLE ONE.

But tomorrow I might criticize atheism and with predictable regularity from you Timmy an answer will arrive which often amounts to me not understanding atheism in the first place let alone having the ability to criticize it. What a monster of talent and wide reading you must be Timmy. Please name the last five books read so I can have the privilege of entering your great and perfect mind, the mind of the perfect atheism which is perfection itself. The book I am reading now is Gadamer's Truth and Method.

But let me put the proof on the table--which I have done countless times--demonstrating that I will seek out the flaws in any position and clearly state them. Let us take the controversy of religion versus atheism, or rather Christianity versus atheism.

1) Christianity has the preposterous notion that God is not evil even though of course if God exists, has the qualities attributed to him, omniscience, omnipotence, etc. he had to have created the evil in the world. Either he created the evil in the world or he is less than God, coexists with another being so powerful as to create evil and rival him. What makes it even worse for Christianity is it tries to lay the blame at the feet of man! The notion of original sin when man was created by God as a being less than God and therefore was not perfect and had to have sinned! No need to go on.

2) And now a flaw of atheism: holding there is no intelligent design behind existence which of course begs the question of how a person can be reasonable and moral in the first place let alone become more reasonable and moral. Hell, if no intelligent design is behind things we should arguably work toward the unintelligent because everything, including human intelligence, arose without the slightest bit of intelligence behind things. No God, no intelligent design behind existence. No intelligent design, not even a claim that intelligence is superior to ignorance--which perhaps is why you are ignorant Timmy. Oh, wait, I apologize: atheism is "nothing", therefore it cannot even be said that atheists hold that there is no intelligent design behind things...right Timmy? Or do you have some other predictably perfect reply?

Of course you do. You always have the perfect rebuttal which amounts every time to atheism being a flawless position, even though you somehow say atheism is a "nothing". Or a something or a nothing. Or whatever.

The Founding Fathers were right. We can only get ourselves into more trouble by interjecting religious mumbo jumbo into our foreign policy.

Part 4 of Induction was evidently deleted because, among the list of horrific evils, I included the "r@pe and brutal murder of a woman" and "ch!ld p0rnograph". When I removed them, it was accepted.

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY INDUCTION (4)

Another kind of evil, horrendous evil, I will define as: the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it), be a great good to him/her on the whole. Examples of horrendous evil, therefore, would be the rape of a woman and brutally murdering her, psycho-physical torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, betrayal of one’s deepest loyalties, child abuse of the sort recently seen in among the Roman Catholic Clergy in Ireland, slow death by starvation, the explosion of nuclear devices in populated areas.

A horrendous evil could, therefore, be either a moral evil (e.g., the Holocaust) or a natural evil (e.g., Haiti earthquake). It is my impression that it is the idea of “horrendous moral evil” that is consistent with the everyday usage of the word “evil” by English speakers: we do not use that word to describe something that is merely bad or very wrong (e.g., a burglary), nor to refer to the death and destruction brought about by purely natural processes (we do not, for example, consider a tsunami as “evil. Instead, the word “evil” is reserved in common usage for events and people that have an especially horrific moral quality or character.

So, the problem of evil is most difficult when stated in terms of horrendous evil (whether of the moral or natural variety), and as will be argued in other posts in this argument, this is how the evidential problem of evil is formulated.

Finally, these ideas of “good” and “evil” suggest that true evil is closely associated with ethics; Therefore an underlying underlying ethical theory may have a bearing on any approach to the problem of evil in at least two ways:.

Alltheroadrunning:

" You had it going there, for a while, but you became a "blamer," like so many."

As usual, you are a day late and a dollar short. This is an explanation of the nature of evil by those who use inductive logic. A second explanation will follow, as I plainly said in earlier posts, of the nature of evil as perceived by those who use deductive logic. My own perception of the nature of evil, which has also been explained before (do you not read?) is entirely different from both.

SCHAUM.

You were doing pretty well, until you got to global warming, earthquakes and city planners. Gawd, why did you go there?

(And what happened to "4?" It's missing, on my version of the "On Faith" website).

But then, you already had separated man from nature. Fine, blame the city planner, give God some relief.

(Maybe you explain yourself in part 4).

Accordingly, SCHAUM, I am so disappointed. You had it going there, for a while, but you became a "blamer," like so many.

Why is the world, including whatever god, or something, and all of you, not doing enough to make me happy?

Whatever you answer, THAT is what seeps through. That doesn't make you bad, it makes you like all of us -- with the human nature I fight against, with as much humor as I can muster.

You want evidence, I know. Hysteria, that's my evidence. The hysteria of our new, all information, all the time, world. Did you get swine flu?

I didn't either. (No vaccine flu shot, either).

Did a "terrorist" get you?

Me neither.

Do you need health care?

Me neither. (Lucky me).

Do I care about health care?

No, at 72, what's to care?

Does the earth warm, cool off, warm, cool off, during its billions of years?

Me too, I do that, merely a shorter time of doing it.

Did you get AIDs from a female?

Me neither.

More hysterias upon request.

Fear, baby, that's all I'm against. It is the cause of anger, some anger is warrented, most of it not.

I tell ya, SCHAUM, I really like you. You are educated, very well educated -- "A's" in spelling, grammar, syntax, and all that, but you fall into the traps of your indoctrinations. (I don't count typos, either).

See, SCAHUM, even if humans destroy themselves, by their own hand, that's Nature -- with a capital "N."

Aw, crap, I guess the "rules" here are that I have to state what I believe. OK, as to evil, I believe what some Buddhist's say -- all evil comes from each individual's mind. To some, earthquakes are not a bad thing. There is no mention of earthquakes in American indian lore. Their minds decided against building two-story teepees.

The communist Chinese believe (or say they do) that their people should not have democracy because they couldn't handle it. It really isn't different to say that people need religion because they couldn't be good people or get along without it. In either case, there is no moving forward until the the false argument is rejected. Sticking to these arguments dooms us to the status quo.

Navin1:

"So people who live in words are called sophists."

People who deceptively call themselves seers, mystics and scientists are called liars and frauds.

It is a belief that some one can know what someone else experiences better than them. It is a belief to say what exists or does not exist. It is a belief that logical consistency is sufficient evidence. It is a belief that atoms exist. It is a belief that atoms can not be split. It is a belief that waves and particles are not the same thing...

It is a belief that all the mystics are liars, connivers, misleaders saying they see things that no one else see. It is a belief that the only thing that is real is what I have personal evidence for. It is a belief that my ideas are better at establishing what is belief and what is not than yours.

Of course if you deny you have any beliefs, that too is a belief - it is not, after all, provable with certainty that you don't have a belief. So it can't be a fact that is provable, undeniably. If it is not a fact that can be proven, and still you believe it, you are delusional. How silly, to believe what you can't prove. Oh wait, sorry, you may be a mystic of disbelief.

hariuam

So people who live in words are called sophists.

hariaum

Is it a "belief" not to believe in something that never existed? No wonder the world is so messed up.

But of course giving the Santa talk immediately puts you into a category of those who have a belief system that there is no Santa. In fact non belief in Santa is just like any other religion. It is the same because you both think your so damn right.

I would be concerned about what the non Santa believers might do in the future if they ever gain power as we know they would like to. Remember, Stalin and Mao are non santa believers and look what they did. It seems that every time non Santa believers gain power, as they are want to do, they become a totalitarian state. It seems as though non Santa believers are every bit as crazy and dangerous as the believers in Santa.

Further the non Santa believer can not even prove that he exists let alone that Santa does not exist. Non Santa believers must of course project a reality created in their own mind about what reality is, so when they claim that there is no Santa, they are clearly deluded as they can not even prove their own existence.

Bu most importantly, we should all be wary of the Non Santa Believer religion for it is a religion like any other, and it has been proven that when Non Santa Believers get into power, they become totalitarian. The proof of this of course is that Stalin was a Non Santa Believer. Of course Non Santa believers will try to deny that Stalin was one of them, but it is undeniable. Stalin did not believe in Santa. All of Stalin's actions can be presented as evidence of how the Non Santa Believer reacts when in power.

There is no evidence other than Stalin, for what the Non Santa believer might do when he gains power, for we only have Stalin as an example of what happens when Non Santa Believer is in power.

But the main point is that Non Santa Belief is a religion just like any other. Belief in God. Non Belief in Santa. They are the very same kind of thing. Both sides think they are right and neither side can prove their claim. Therefore they are the same.

The Non Santa Believers simply have to admit that Non Santa Belief is a religion in itself. No Santaism. It is prevalent particularly among the adult population.

There is breaking news from the Washington Post’s ‘On Faith’ section. Religious people think we need more religion in our foreign policy. This week they ask: Should U.S. foreign policy “get” religion?

There is little doubt that we live in a world ravaged by religious mythologies. Almost ever part of the globe features a religious conflict of some sort in which two or more religions are either on the brink of war or in open conflict with each other. Then there are the moral concerns within particular religions such as the Muslim oppression of women, the Hindu cast system, and the Catholic war on contraception. The list goes on quite a bit.

You can read the rest of my response to this topic:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8928-Philadelphia-Atheism-Examiner~y2010m2d24-Should-religion-have-a-role-be-in-US-foreign-affairs

I will be responding to every issue posted in the 'On Faith' section. If you would like to be notified when my new response is up, please subscribe.

JimZ1

Very very very very well put.

It's time to give the world the Santa Claus talk. Only then will we be able to come to the realization that we are all the same people, sharing the same delicate planet.

Back to the topic:

Past criticism of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:

"August 5, 2007

[Addressed, individually, to board members of the Council, and to members of Council committees]

We are writing to bring to your attention a troubling incident involving the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. We do so reluctantly, as we have both enjoyed our prior associations with the Council and we have great respect for its aims and accomplishments. Nonetheless, we felt this was an episode that should not pass without comment.

On September 4, 2007, our book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the most highly respected publishers in the United States. Through our publisher, the Council issued an invitation for both of us to speak at a session on September 27, 2007. We were delighted to accept, as each of us had spoken at the Council on several occasions in the past and knew we would attract a diverse and well-informed audience that would engage us in a lively and productive discussion.

On July 19, while discussing the details of our visit with Sharon Houtkamp, who was handling the arrangements at the Council, we learned that the Council had already received a number of communications protesting our appearance. We were not particularly surprised by this news, as we had seen a similar pattern of behavior after our original article on “The Israel Lobby” appeared in the London Review of Books in March 2006. We were still looking forward to the event, however, especially because it gave us an opportunity to engage these issues in an open forum.

Then, on July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was cancelling the event. He said he felt “extremely uncomfortable making this call” and that his decision did not reflect his personal views on the subject of our book. Instead, he explained that his decision was based on the need “to protect the institution.” He said that he had a serious “political problem,” because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the Council. “This one is so hot,” Marshall maintained, that he could not present it at a Council session unless someone from “the other side”—such as Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League—was on stage with us. At the very least, he needed to present “contending viewpoints.” But he said it was too late to try to change the format, as the fall schedule was being finalized and there would not be sufficient time to arrange an alternate date. He showed little interest in doing anything with us in 2008 or beyond.

Several comments are in order regarding this situation.

First, since the publication of our original article on the Israel lobby, we have appeared either singly or together at a number of different venues, including Brown University, the Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University, Cornell University, Emerson College, the Great Hall at Cooper Union, Georgetown University, the National Press Club, the Nieman Fellows Program at Harvard University, the University of Montana, the Jewish Community Center in Newton, Massachusetts, and Congregation Kam Isaiah Israel in Chicago. In all but one of these venues we appeared on our own, i.e., without someone from the “other side.” As one would expect, we often faced vigorous questions from members of the audience, which invariably included individuals who disagreed in fundamental ways with some of our arguments. Nevertheless, the back-and-forth at each of these events was always civil, and quite a few participants said that they benefited from listening to us and to our interlocutors.

Second, the Council has recently welcomed speakers who do represent a “contending viewpoint,” and they have appeared on their own. Consider the case of Michael Oren, an Israeli-American author, who appeared at the Council on February 8, 2007, to talk about “The Middle East and the United States: A Long and Complicated Relationship.” Oren has a different view of U.S. Middle East policy than we do; indeed, he gave a keynote address at AIPAC’s annual policy conference this past spring that directly challenged our perspective. We believe it was entirely appropriate for the Council to have invited him to speak, and without having a representative from an opposing group there to debate him. The Council has also welcomed a number of other speakers on this general topic in recent years, such as Dennis Ross, Max Boot and Rashid Khalidi, and none of their appearances included someone representing a “contending view.”

One might argue that our views are too controversial to be presented on their own. However, they are seen as controversial only because some of the groups and individuals that we criticized in our original article have misrepresented what we said or leveled unjustified charges at us personally—such as the baseless claim that we (or our views) are anti-Semitic. The purpose of these charges, of course, is to discourage respected organizations like the Council from giving us an audience, or to create conditions where they feel compelled to include “contending views” in order to preserve “balance” and to insulate themselves from external criticism.

In fact, our views are not extreme. Our book does not question Israel’s right to exist and does not portray pro-Israel groups in the United States as some sort of conspiracy to “control” U.S. foreign policy. Rather, it describes these groups and individuals—both Jewish and gentile—as simply an effective special interest group whose activities are not substantially different from groups like the NRA, the farm lobby, the AARP, or other ethnic lobbies. Its activities, in other words, are as American as apple pie, although we argue that its influence has helped produce policies that are not in the U.S. national interest. We also suggest that these policies have been unintentionally harmful to Israel as well, and that a different course of action would be better for both countries. It is not obvious to us why such views could not be included in the Council’s schedule.

Although we find it somewhat unseemly to refer to our own careers, it is perhaps worth noting that we are both well-established figures with solid mainstream credentials. We are fortunate to occupy chaired professorships at distinguished universities, and to have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We have both held important leadership positions at Chicago or Harvard, each of us serves on the editorial boards of several leading foreign policy journals (such as Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy), and we have both done consulting work for U.S. government agencies. Given our backgrounds, the idea that it would be inappropriate for us to appear on our own at a Council session seems far-fetched.

Finally, and most importantly, we believe that the decision to cancel our appearance is antithetical to the principle of open discussion that underpins American democracy, and that is so essential for maximizing the prospects that our country pursues a wise foreign policy. In essence, we believe this is a case in which a handful of people who disagree with our views have used their influence to intimidate Marshall into rescinding the Council’s invitation to us, so as to insure that interested members will not hear what we have to say about Israeli policy, the U.S. relationship with Israel, and the lobby itself. This is not the way we are supposed to address important issues of public policy in the United States, and it is surely not the way the Council normally conducts its business. This is undoubtedly why Marshall, who is a very smart and decent man, felt so uncomfortable calling us to say that the event had been cancelled. He knew this decision was contrary to everything that the Council is supposed to represent.

The Chicago Council is obviously under no obligation to grant us a venue, and we are not writing in an attempt to reverse this decision. But given the importance of the issues that are raised in our book, we are genuinely disappointed that we will not have the benefit of open exchange with the Council’s members, including those who might want to challenge our arguments or conclusions. The United States and its allies—including Israel—face many challenging problems in the Middle East, and our country will not be able to address them intelligently if we cannot have an open and civilized discussion about U.S. interests in the region, and the various factors that shape American policy there. Regrettably, the decision to cancel our appearance has made that much-needed conversation more difficult.

Sincerely,

John J. Mearsheimer

R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science

University of Chicago "

SCHAUM.

Thanks, again. Boy, one can learn something here -- compliment, complement (and pay attention).

Now, I have to stay after class, and read your latest. Well, your stuff hasn't been bad, pretty good, in fact.

At 5 PM, I will have a martini, assuming your permission.

Alltheroadrunnin:

"another "thank you" for complementing me on my skill at triteness"

I suspect you meant "complimenting". "Complements" and "complementing" are math functions. I'm sure you are familiar with twos complements and threes complement.

I also suspect more about you is explained by alcohol than by choice of profession.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (5)

Firstly, one who accepts either a divine command theory of ethics or non-realism in ethics is in no position to raise the problem of evil, that is, to offer the existence of evil as at least a prima facie good reason for rejecting theism. This is because a divine command theory, in taking morality to be dependent upon the will of god, already assumes the truth of that which is in dispute, namely, the existence of god. On the other hand, the error-theories of ethics state that there are no objectively true moral judgments. But then a non-theist who also happens to be a non-realist in ethics, such as atheologians David Hume, Bertrand Russell and J.L. Mackie (each of whom supported non-realism in ethics), were contradicting their own meta-ethics when raising arguments from evil – at least if their intentions were only to show up a contradiction in the theist’s set of beliefs.

Secondly, the particular normative ethical theory one adopts (e.g., consequentialism, virtue ethics) may influence the way in which one formulates or responds to an argument from evil. But even if this is not so, it seems that the adoption of a particular theory in normative ethics may render the problem of evil easier or harder, or at least delimit the range of solutions available.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (3)

Paralleling the above analysis of evil, the categorization of “good” may be any event which involves any of the following:

some improvement (whether it be minor or great) in the physical and/or psychological well-being of a sentient creature;

the just treatment of some sentient creature;

anything that advances the degree of fulfillment and virtue in an I individual’s life;

a person doing that which is “morally” right;

the optimal functioning of some person or thing, so that it does not lack the full measure of being and goodness that ought to belong to it.

In defining the many varieties of evil, the following have become standard in the literature:

Moral evil: This is evil that results from the misuse of free will on the part of some moral agent in such a way that the agent thereby becomes morally blameworthy for the resultant evil. Moral evil therefore includes specific acts of intentional wrongdoing such as lying and murdering, as well as defects in character such as dishonesty and greed.

Natural evil: In contrast to moral evil, natural evil is evil that results from the operation of natural processes, in which case no human being can be held morally accountable for the resultant evil. Classic examples of natural evil are natural disasters such as cyclones and earthquakes that result in enormous suffering and loss of life, illnesses such as leukemia and Alzheimer’s, and disabilities such as blindness and deafness.

But here, an important distinction must be made: a great deal of what normally passes as natural evil is brought about by human wrongdoing or negligence. For example, lung cancer may be caused by heavy smoking; global warming; the loss of life caused by some earthquakes may be largely due to irresponsible city planners locating their creations on faults that will ultimately heave and split; and some droughts and floods may have been prevented if not for the careless way we have treated our planet.

As it is the misuse of free will that has caused these evils or contributed to their occurrence, it seems more appropriate to consider them as moral evils and not natural evils. For the purposes of this post, I will define natural evil as any evil resulting solely or chiefly from the operation of the laws of nature. Alternatively, and perhaps more precisely, I will deem an evil to be a natural evil only if no non-divine agent can be held morally responsible for its event. So, a flood caused by human pollution of the environment will be categorized a natural evil as long as the agents involved could not be held morally responsible for the resultant evil, which would be the case if, for instance, they could not reasonably be expected to have foreseen the consequences of their behavior.

THE NATURE OF EVIL BY INDUCTION (2)

The God of traditional theism is also typically accorded a further attribute, one that he is thought to possess only contingently:

1. creator and sustainer of the world: God brought the (physical and non-physical) world into existence, and also keeps the world and every object within it in existence. Thus, no created thing could exist at a given moment unless it were at that moment held in existence by God. Further, no created thing could have the causal powers and liabilities it has at a given moment unless it were at that moment supplied with those powers and liabilities by God.

According to orthodox theism, God was free not to create a world. In other words, there is at least one possible world in which God creates nothing at all. But then God is a creator only contingently, not necessarily. (For a more comprehensive account of the properties of the God of orthodox theism, see Swinburne 1977, Quinn & Taliaferro 1997: 223-319, and Hoffman & Rosenkrantz 2002.)

Clarifying the underlying conception of God is but the first step in clarifying the nature of the problem of evil. To arrive at a more complete understanding of this vexing problem, it is necessary to unpack further some of its philosophical baggage. I turn, therefore, to some important concepts and distinctions associated with the problem of evil, beginning with the ideas of “good” and “evil.”

The terms “good” and “evil” are, if nothing else, notoriously difficult to define. Some account, however, can be given of these terms as they are employed in discussions of the problem of evil. Beginning with the notion of evil, this is normally given a very wide extension so as to cover everything that is negative and destructive in life. The ambit of evil will therefore include such categories as the bad, the unjust, the immoral, and the painful. An analysis of evil in this broad sense may proceed as follows:

An event may be categorized as evil if it involves any of the following:

some harm (whether it be minor or great) being done to the physical and/or psychological well-being of a sentient creature;

the unjust treatment of some sentient creature;

loss of opportunity resulting from premature death;

anything that prevents an individual from leading a fulfilling and virtuous
life;
a person doing that which is morally wrong;

the “privation of good.”

Evil, then, can capture one or several conditions, which normally fall under the rubric of pain as a physical state ( the sensation you feel when you have a toothache or broken jaw); suffering as a mental state in which we wish that our situation were otherwise (the experience of anxiety or despair); the idea of injustice, so that the prosperity of the wicked, the demise of the virtuous, and the denial of voting rights or employment opportunities to women and blacks would count as evils; cases of untimely death, meaning death not brought about by the ageing process alone (death of this kind may result in loss of opportunity either in the sense that one is unable to fulfill one’s potential, dreams or goals, or merely in the sense that one is prevented from living out the full term of their natural life (This is partly why some consider it a great evil if an infant were killed after impacting with a train at full speed, even if the infant experienced no pain or suffering in the process.); anything that inhibits one from leading a life that is both fulfilling and virtuous – poverty and prostitution would be cases in point; anything relating to or associated with “immoral” choices or acts; and the idea, prominently featured by Augustine and Aquinas,, that evil is not a substance or entity in its own right, but a privatio boni: the absence or lack of some good power or quality which a thing by its nature ought to possess.

THE NATURE OF EVIL, BY INDUCTION (1)

The evidential problem of evil is the problem of determining whether and, if so, to what extent the existence of evil (or certain instances, kinds, quantities, or distributions of evil) constitutes evidence against the existence of God, that is to say, a being perfect in power, knowledge and goodness. Evidential arguments from evil attempt to show that, once we put aside any evidence there might be in support of the existence of God, it becomes unlikely, if not highly unlikely, that the world was created and is governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good being. Such arguments are not to be confused with logical arguments from evil, which have the more ambitious aim of showing that, in a world in which there is evil, it is logically impossible—and not just unlikely—that God exists.

I will begin this post by clarifying some important concepts and distinctions associated with the problem of evil, before providing an outline of one of the more forceful and influential evidential arguments developed in contemporary times, namely, the evidential argument advanced by William Rowe. Rowe’s argument has occasioned a range of responses from theists, including the so-called “skeptical theist” critique (according to which God’s ways are too mysterious for us to comprehend) and the construction of various theodicies, that is, explanations as to why God permits evil. I will consider these, and other, responses to the evidential problem of evil by assessment.

Before delving into the deep waters of the problem of evil, it will be helpful to provide some philosophical background to this subject. The first and perhaps most important step of this process will be to identify and clarify the conception of God that is normally presupposed in contemporary debates (at least within the Anglo-American analytic tradition) on the problem of evil. The next step will involve providing an outline of some important concepts and distinctions, in particular the distinction between “good” and “evil,” and the more recent distinction between the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil.

Orthodox Theism: The predominant conception of God within the western world, and hence the kind of deity that is normally the subject of debate in discussions on the problem of evil in most western philosophical circles, is the God of “orthodox theism.” According to orthodox theism, there exists just one God, this God being a person or person-like. The operative notion, however, behind this form of theism is that God is perfect, where to be perfect is to be the greatest being possible or, to borrow Anselm’s well-known phrase, the being than which none greater can be conceived. (Such a conception of God forms the starting-point in what has come to be known as “perfect being theology”; see Morris 1987, 1991, and Rogers 2000). On this view, God, as an absolutely perfect being, must possess the following perfections or great-making qualities:
1. omnipotence: This refers to God’s ability to bring about any state of affairs that is logically possible in itself as well as logically consistent with his other essential attributes.
2. omniscience: God is omniscient in that he knows all truths or knows all that is logically possible to know.
3. perfect goodness: God is the source of moral norms (as in divine command ethics) or always acts in complete accordance with moral norms.
4. aseity: God has aseity (literally, being from oneself, a se esse) – that is to say, he is self-existent or ontologically independent, for he does not depend either for his existence or for his characteristics on anything outside himself.
5. incorporeality: God has no body; he is a non-physical spirit but is capable of affecting physical things.
6. eternity: Traditionally, God is thought to be eternal in an atemporal sense—that is, God is timeless or exists outside of time (a view upheld by Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas). On an alternative view, God’s eternality is held to be temporal in nature, so that God is everlasting or exists in time, having infinite temporal duration in both of the two temporal directions.
7. omnipresence: God is wholly present in all space and time. This is often interpreted metaphorically to mean that God can bring about an event immediately at any place and time, and knows what is happening at every place and time in the same immediate manner.
8. perfectly free: God is absolutely free either in the sense that nothing outside him can determine him to perform a particular action, or in the sense that it is always within his power not to do what he does.
9. alone worthy of worship and unconditional commitment: God, being the greatest being possible, is the only being fit to be worshipped and the only being to whom one may commit one’s life without reservation.

SCHAUM.

Thank you for not bothering, and another "thank you" for complementing me on my skill at triteness -- I learned it working in the entertainment industry. This website fits that skill very well, as it does your skill for comedy. It must be fun for you to finally be out of school, if you are finally out of school.

D 12

Nice to know Timmy your atheism is a belief. That helps me understand you a bit better"

I have never referred to my belief as "atheism." I don't even know what "atheism" is? I belong to no such group.

"What do I believe in Timmy? Thinking."

This is not evident from your posts.

"I have no idea whether God exists"

Really? None? You've put so much thought and research into it and you come up with no clue? You can't even lean one way or another on the subject? is it 50/50 to you? You have no belief on the matter whatsoever? It's just odd if that's the case.

"He might exist, he might not"

He? You seem to have enough belief on the matter to give God a sex but still can't lean in one direction or the other? No belief on God's existence whatsoever? It's just so odd. Everyone has beliefs about this but you have none huh? Interesting.

"I find it stupid to waste my life arguing as if I know, propping up a position with this piece of nonsense or that"

Wow. That is exactly what you do. With every post.

"I want my legacy to be complete thinking. Not being a religious or atheistic ass"

And yet you comment on what "the atheist" believes when you clearly have no clue and have not done the research.

"I still await A SINGLE modern atheist who will admit perhaps atheism has some flaws as to reasoning or that it might have some negative consequences"

You still await a single atheist who subscribes to this belief system you call "atheism."

As for my personal reasoning and beliefs, I'll admit it. It might have some flaws or consequences. But I have not found any thus far. Have you? Could you mention a single flaw to my personal reasoning on the matter? If there are any I'd sure like to know. That way I can correct my flawed thinking. That's what open minded people do. So simply point out with a rational argument which part of my reasoning is flawed or has negative consequences.

But if you want to have a discussion with me, ask me what I believe first. I will tell you exactly what I believe and why I believe it. This way you won't have to assume what I believe, and you wont make an ASS out of U and ME.

"You modern atheists are even more ridiculous than the religious"

See there's an example. "You modern atheists". We are not a group of like minded thinkers. We are individuals. We follow no atheist scripture. So if you want to have a discussion with me, you need to ask what I believe first, and then we go from there. But do not assume what I believe Daniel. You get it wrong every time. And unlike you I am more than willing to state exactly what I believe and why.

"You argue how reasonable you are, but any flaw to atheism? No, of course not. No different than a dogmatic religious person"

Daniel, I have told you time and time again that I do not believe in anything called atheism. Only a conniver would continue to argue with someone over beliefs that they have denied having. I do not believe in atheism Daniel. Please get that through your thick skull. I do not defend "atheism" Daniel. I do not belong to this belief system and I do not defend it as perfect or anything else for that matter. Only a conniver would put a belief on someone that they have denied.

"You claim not to be a conniver because you have a position and state it? What about the flaws of the position?"

What about them? Can you name any? Remember, first you need to ask what I believe, because you clearly do not know. You get it wrong every time.

"Do I have to run down the list again and again?"

I guess because I have no idea what list you are talking about.

"How can you be anything but a conniver Timmy when you cannot admit even a single problem that might exist with atheism?"

I do not know what you mean when you refer to atheism. I know of no such religion and certainly do not belong to it.

"I have never taken a position and acted like it was perfect, utterly flawless"

You have never taken a position period. This is a blog about God and you just admitted that you have no position (belief) on the matter. Or if you have one, you will not reveal.

Most important, Daniel, you must ask me what I believe before you assume. You can not argue against this thing called "atheism" and put it upon me because I subscribe to no such belief system. I've never even heard of such a belief system.

I do not believe in God or gods. That i the definition of an atheist so if you want to call me an atheist then you may. But you may not assume that I belong to a religion or belief system called "atheism" because I do not. This thing you call "atheism" might be flawed, but I could not comment on that because I know nothing about this thing you call "atheism".

My beliefs are my own and I only answer for them.

From the Chicago Council on Global Affairs IRS Form 990:

http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2008/362/181/2008-362181969-04c66f22-9.pdf

Investment holdings in publicly-traded securities, 2007-2008 tax period, $6, 145, 612. Dividends and interest from these investment for the same period, $705,970. Again, non-profit organizations pay no federal taxes on dividends, interest or capital gains. With such large investment holdings, are many non-profits simply a way to beat the system by the directors of these groups?

Director Josephine Heindel’s salary, (in round figures) is $184,000 including savings plans. VP of Finance, Robert Cordes’ salary is $159,000 to include savings plans. Three other directors each make in the range of $140,000/year.

By the way, Michelle Obama was previously a director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Council_on_Global_Affairs

The Form 990 does not list what the task force members of the CCOGA are paid. Maybe Eboo Patel and/or Katherine Marshall, task force members for the topic document and On Faith panel members will tell us?

Schaum - excellent writing tips for all of us. Much appreciated!

My last post addresses CCNL's perpetual advice to expunge the superstition of religion from world affairs, while continuing to be observantly religious himself.

Apparently all sense of irony is lost when one finally achieves the correct 'religious' balance.... :^)

look at the esseys

ALLTHEROADRUNNIN:

"(Gawd, now that teacher's going to come along and bust me for syntax, grammar, sentence structure, everything in his books -- maybe the spelling's OK, though)."

No, I wouldn't bother. You spoke of employing the trite, and then proved your skill at it.

Religion minus superstition = no religion.

Why imagine that one follows a religion after they've expurgated the superstition??

This is no more logical than claiming that one is religious without following the rites, rituals, and assorted beliefs/dogma of a given faith.

Religion = beliefs and dogma. They are not separable.

Logic 101........

Daniel12:

I will instruct you now in writing. If you really wish to avoid looking like a conniving idiot, learn to write.

"When beginners complete a first draft, they consider the job of writing done. When professional writers complete the first draft, they usually feel they are at the start of the writing process. When the draft is completed, the job of writing can begin."
-- Donald Murray

1. Research: Begin the essay writing process by researching your topic, making yourself an expert. Utilize the internet, the academic databases, and the library. Take notes and immerse yourself in the words of real thinkers.

2. Analysis: Once you develop a good KNOWLEDGE base, start analyzing the arguments of the essays you're reading. Clearly define the claims, write out the reasons, the EVIDENCE. Look for weaknesses of logic, and also strengths. Learning how to write an essay begins by learning how to analyze essays written by others.

3. Brainstorming: Your essay will require insight. Ask yourself a dozen questions and answer them. Meditate with a pen in your hand. Take walks and think and think until you come up with original insights to write about.

4. Thesis: Pick your best idea and pin it down in a clear assertion that you can write your entire essay around. Your thesis is your main point, summed up in a concise sentence that lets the reader know where you're going, and why. It's practically impossible to write a good essay without a clear thesis.

5. Outline: Sketch out your essay before straightway writing it out. Use one-line sentences to describe paragraphs, and bullet points to describe what each paragraph will contain. Play with the essay's order. Map out the structure of your argument, and make sure each paragraph is unified.

6. Introduction: Now sit down and write the essay. The introduction should grab the reader's attention, set up the issue, and lead in to your thesis. Your intro is merely a buildup of the issue, a stage of bringing your reader into the essay's argument.

(Note: The first paragraph is probably the most important element in your essay. This is an essay-writing point that doesn't always sink in those who consider themselves to be essayists. In the first paragraph you either hook the reader's interest or lose it. In the real world, readers make up their minds about whether or not to read your essay by glancing at the first paragraph alone.)

7. Paragraphs: Each individual paragraph should be focused on a single, factual and demonstrable idea that supports your thesis. Begin paragraphs with topic sentences, support assertions with evidence, and expound your ideas in the clearest, most sensible way you can. Speak to your reader as if he or she were sitting in front of you. In other words, instead of writing the essay, try talking the essay.

8. Conclusion: Gracefully exit your essay by making a quick wrap-up sentence, and then end on some memorable thought, perhaps a quotation, or an interesting twist of logic, or some call to action. Is there something you want the reader to walk away and do? Let him or her know exactly what.

9. Language: You're not done writing your essay until you've polished your language by correcting the grammar, making sentences flow, incoporating rhythm, emphasis, adjusting the formality, giving it a level-headed tone, and making other intuitive edits. Proofread until it reads just how you want it to sound. Your writing style suggests that you find writing to be tedious and consequently you frequently bungle your essay by leaving a few slippy misppallings and pourly wordedd phrazies..

Something else the Chicago Council on Global Affairs forgot in their 99 page report:

The founders of most religions recognized that an angelic connection to heaven/God/Allah/Yahweh was a necessary ingredient for success.

e.g.

Mohammed and the Moslems have Gabriel. Jesus and his family of Christians created/borrowed Michael, Gabriel, and Satan. The Abraham-Moses-Judaism group created their Angel of Death and other anonymous slayers of the night. Joseph Smith and his Mormons have their Moroni. Charles Russell and his Jehovah Witnesses created Jesus /Michael the archangel, the first angelic being made by God.

Contemporary biblical and scriptural exegetes have relegated these creations to the myth pile. We should do the same!!!

Imagine what an angel/satan-free world could do for world peace e.g. it would cut the connection for the male followers of Islam to their 40 heavenly virgins!! That objective should be number one on our State Department's list of things to do.

Daniel12:

"Thinking."

Hallucinating is also "thinking". Delusions are "thinking". Mere "thinking" is not reasoning, as you prove with each post.

To Timmy.

So I return to the computer and find according to you that I am deceitful and a conniver because I will not reveal what I believe in. Nice to know Timmy your atheism is a belief. That helps me understand you a bit better. Atheism a belief with no flaw, unlike that flawed old religion, right?

What do I believe in Timmy? Thinking. I have no idea whether God exists. He might exist, he might not. I find it stupid to waste my life arguing as if I know, propping up a position with this piece of nonsense or that. I examine all positions, seeing if a successful argument can be made now one way and now another. I want my legacy to be complete thinking. Not being a religious or atheistic ass.

Conniver Timmy? I still await A SINGLE modern atheist who will admit perhaps atheism has some flaws as to reasoning or that it might have some negative consequences. You modern atheists are even more ridiculous than the religious. You argue how reasonable you are, but any flaw to atheism? No, of course not. No different than a dogmatic religious person.

You claim not to be a conniver because you have a position and state it? What about the flaws of the position? Where is the statement of those facts? Do I have to run down the list again and again? How can you be anything but a conniver Timmy when you cannot admit even a single problem that might exist with atheism?

I can tell you one thing, one thing no one here can deny me: I have never taken a position and acted like it was perfect, utterly flawless. Every time I have taken a position an example of my criticism of that position can be found. I examine strengths and weaknesses of positions.

Thinking.

As former member of USAID's Office of General Counsel, I have pushed for years to enlighten our attitude that prayers and foreign aid are not necessarily "excessive entanglement" with religion. These days, when we are already entangled with extreme versions of at one religion, this is a matter of national security. Religion is one of the most powerful forces in the third world, and our reluctance to help the moderates within Islam (for fear of violating our own 1st amendment) is simply nuts. And for that matter it was never a concern of our founders in any event. They were only concerned with the establishment of a state religion in the US.

YEAL9.

Yes, indeed, just a wee bit of research, thanks. And your comment is the kind of thing I might say, but why Obama needs a "council" to advise him on this might be troubling.

Except:

Our foreign policy should be using every trick in the books, every card in the deck, and all those other trite sayings. That's why a Secretary of State is hired, isn't it?

But, really, wasn't the USA a more pleasant place to live, back when religions were basically ignored? Well, yeah, they were "put up with," but I don't remember FDR having to deal with religious influence, nor Harry Truman, or Ike, either. Then, even when the Catholic got in, we got away with that because we noted he didn't practice much of his religion's dictates -- actually, he didn't practice any of them.

Jeez, while I'm remembering, one never got any idea Lyndon Baines had anything to do with religion, nor did Tricky Dick -- then that Carter fella came along. Carter didn't seem to understand the policy of presidents merely using, rather mildly, the various religious persuasions. And then my friend, "The Gov" (we called him, as I repped some of his kids in their show biz endeavors), was never heard to utter a religious word, until he stumbled onto that "Silent Majority" thing. Well, ya can't blame him -- it takes what it takes.

The first Bush is a good family man, and that's about it, for his religion. Then, we got really lucky and got WJC, who lived up to the religion of his middle name's sake.

Then look waht happened?

But, we're back. Obama is following the great tradition of our presidents, most of whom ignored religions. I conclude that the Chicago Council on Global Affairs appears as mere window dressing -- a thing Obama is excelling at.

(Gawd, now that teacher's going to come along and bust me for syntax, grammar, sentence structure, everything in his books -- maybe the spelling's OK, though).

The topic report is posted at:

http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/UserFiles/File/Task%20Force%20Reports/2010%20Religion%20Task%20Force_Full%20Report.pd

One almost unbelievable observation about this document is that the holy books that guide all the major religions are not mentioned i.e. no mention of the Bible, Old Testament/Torah, New Testament or the Koran/Qur'an. How is this possible in a document generated by the following?

R. Scott Appleby
Director, Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame
Richard Cizik

President
New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good

Task Force Members

Michael Barnett
Harold Stassen Chair of International Relations, Humphrey Institute
of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota

Henry Bienen
President Emeritus
Northwestern University

José Casanova
Professor of Sociology and Senior Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion,
Peace, & World Affairs
Georgetown University

Bob Edgar
President and Chief Executive Officer
Common Cause

Virgil Elizondo
Professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology and Fellow, Institute for
Latino Studies and Kellogg Institute
University of Notre Dame

Jean Bethke Elshtain
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Thomas F. Farr
Visiting Associate Professor and Senior Fellow, Berkley Center for
Religion, Peace, & World Affairs
Georgetown University

Frederick Mark Gedicks
Guy Anderson Chair and Professor of Law
Brigham Young University

Kent Greenawalt
University Professor
Columbia Law School

Ken Hackett
President
Catholic Relief Services

William Inboden
Senior Vice President
Legatum Institute

Martin Indyk
Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy
The Brookings Institution

Douglas Johnston
President
International Center for Religion and Diplomacy

Katherine Marshall
Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor, Berkley Center for Religion,
Peace, & World Affairs
Georgetown University

Radwan A. Masmoudi
President
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy

Ruth Messinger
Executive Director
American Jewish World Service

Abner J. Mikva
Schwartz Lecturer Emeritus and Former Senior Director, Mandel
Legal Aid Clinic
The University of Chicago Law School

Dalia Mogahed
Senior Analyst and Executive Director
Gallup Center for Muslim Studies

Emile Nakhleh
Independent Consultant

David Neff
Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Vice President
Christianity Today International

Eboo Patel
Founder and Executive Director
Interfaith Youth Core

Edward Perkins
William J. Crowe Chair in Geopolitics, Emeritus
University of Oklahoma

Gerard Powers
Director of Catholic Peacebuilding Studies, Kroc Institute for
International Peace Studies
University of Notre Dame

Asifa Quraishi
Assistant Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School

George Rupp
President and Chief Executive Officer
International Rescue Committee

Rabbi David Saperstein
Director
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

Father Donald Senior
President
Catholic Theological Union

Timothy Samuel Shah
Senior Research Scholar, Institute on Culture, Religion, and
World Affairs, Boston University

Joseph R. Crapa Fellow, U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom

Peter Steinfels
Codirector
Center on Religion and Culture, Fordham University

Karin von Hippel
Codirector, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and Senior Fellow,
International Security Program
Center for Strategic and International Studies

It appears these religion "experts" will not take on the basic problems of today's religions and want the US goverment to bow before these outdated but still dangerous documents that claim keys to heaven, death to all infidels and subjugation of women.

BO should simply send the document back to this group with a "thanks but no thanks and in the future, please address the problems with your religions in any future communications. "

Our attitude should be that we do not care if those communities around the world worship stones, as long as they do not throw them at us or at those others who do not share their belief system and at the same time respect human dignity everywhere

Don't forget the Christian bible in Exodus 21:7 says, "And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.".

Don't go looking ot change other's religion until you have fixed your own. Many, many Muslims know this was written 2 thousand years ago and certainly does not apply to today, as do many Christians.

A major point in this foreign policy must be the deletion of all passages in the Koran that dictate Muslim males should control not only all females but also all the world.

"Should U.S. foreign policy get religion?"

No