Questionable Work in Philosophy of Religion
8 February 2008 by The Uncredible Hallq
(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)
I’ve found out via Prosblogion that there’s a philosophy of religion conference happening this weekend, and the papers are posted online. The first one that caught my eye was “Is Atheism Reasonable?” by Ted Poston, and well… um… let me start by just outlining the paper.
The paper could be divided up into two sections, one on “sympathetic atheism” and another on “unsympathetic atheism.” Sympathetic atheism is defined as follows:
(i) the concept of God is coherent, (ii) there‟s no God because there‟s gratuitous evil, and (iii) were there a God the world might not be all that different than it actually is.
Unsympathetic atheism is more vaguely described as involving a rejection of (iii). Sympathetic atheism is alleged to be incoherent, while unsympathetic atheism is alleged to have been refuted by Plantinga.
There is something puzzling about the section on sympathetic atheism: it’s treated as something worth discussing, even though there’s no evidence anyone’s actually held it as defined. There’s a citation of William L. Rowe’s advocacy of “friendly atheism,” but Rowe characterized his position in terms of thinking religious belief isn’t always irrational, and it was a somewhat weak thesis given that he was thinking along the lines of people who aren’t aware of the reasons for atheism, or aren’t aware of the problems with the reasons for their religious beliefs (I read Rowe’s essay over winter break, and again in preparation for writing this post). Poston obviously thinks there’s some connection between the two, but the actual arguments for this point are very sketchy. He may well be right about “sympathetic atheism” as he defines it, but that doesn’t mean he’s refuted a position which anyone’s actually held.
With “unsympathetic atheism,” the careless shift from the stated definition and thinking in terms of rationality is particularly pronounced. The suggestion is that if the atheist claims to have strong justification for thinking they’ve gotten something right that believers get wrong, they have to think believers are irrational. Might they establish this by appeal to the arguments for atheism. No. Why? Because Alvin Plantinga has shown otherwise.
The claim that “for any proposition P, if S has shown that P, where S is Alvin Plantinga, then P is true” is certainly widely held in philosophy of religion. But what arguments are there for it? Of course, “show” here might take an analysis paralleling popular analyses of “know,” in that the truth of the claim is supposed to be an integral part of what it means to say it is known (or, perhaps, shown). This, though, only shifts the issue to how one can so effortlessly gain justification for thinking Plantinga has shown something. On the proposed reading of the word “show,” one has to conclude that many philosophers of religion hold to something along the following lines: the fact that Plantinga has argued something, and one can find the appropriate citation, this constitutes at least strong evidence that Plantinga has shown the thing. Yet I don’t know of any arguments for this position either. If anyone could point me to a relevant journal article, it would be much appreciated.
*Sigh* The one upshot of all the bad philosophy papers out there is that if I become a professional philosopher and am feeling tempted to advance my tenure case by publishing a paper with dubious claims, I resist the urge by going out and finding some really lousy papers, write critiques, and publish those critiques in place of the dubious paper I was tempted to submit. Then I can sleep easy at night knowing even if I really have no idea what’s going on with that philosophical issue, I have reason to be confident I was right to say that the particular approaches critiqued don’t work.
8 February 2008, on 1:06 pm
The appeal to Plantinga is not really surprising, considering the type of conference. Many people have had serious problems with Plantinga — one good source can be found here.
Another is a paper from Michael Ruse from FSU. I can’t remember the title, but I don’t think it’d be that hard to find. Both Ruse and Sober are good, but Ruse is much more scathing.
I recently saw someone present a paper actually trying to undermine our (moral) judgments of gratuitousness. So, regardless of the amount and distribution of both physical and natural evils, our human judgment was forever limited to prevent us from ever claiming that any individual evil was gratuitous.
The problem with doing that, of course, is that you have to draw the epistemological boundaries in such a way that you get what you want — i.e., refraining from judging something as gratuitous — while avoiding stuff that you don’t want — i.e., any other judgment about the world.
And this guy ended up drawing the lines so that many other judgments also couldn’t be made — which was kinda bad.
But the methodology is always the same: “Yeah, I know what you mean — but this is different.”
Ummm, Sparky, no. It’s not.
And nice Hick-Pic. Gotta respect the person who came right out and said:
Yes, it makes no sense — but that in itself proves our case!
Check, please.
8 February 2008, on 1:14 pm
(i) the concept of God is coherent
Wow, that’s a bold claim. Not even Christians can all agree on just what their god is. My experience is that most atheists who really think about “god” basically come to the conclusion that it doesn’t make sense, is logically inconsistent, hence, incoherent.
(ii) there‟s no God because there’s gratuitous evil
Well, if people define their god as “good” and “loving”, then yes, this would be one argument against such a god. But my primary reason for not believing in any type of god is because I have seen no evidence to support such an idea. I hardly ever refer to the problem of evil unless someone else brings it up first.
(iii) were there a God the world might not be all that different than it actually is.
I don’t think we can have an opinion on this either way. If there were a god, how the hell do we know what it would be like? It could be the nicest superbeing in (or outside of) the Universe or it could be a complete asshole who likes to mess with us. People today merely assume that a god must be some completely beneficent entity but the Greeks and Romans didn’t make this assumption about all of their gods. If we are truly made in God’s image then doesn’t that mean that God has all of the traits that we find here on earth?
8 February 2008, on 1:33 pm
Maybe they’re out there, but I’ve yet to see someone who praises and worships a being that happens to be completely apathetic or a supernatural asshole. At least historically, traditional religions completely embrace a being who’s good and loving.
Would there even be a reason to care otherwise?
It’s pretty cool, though, to cut to the chase, and nail them right away with the POE stuff. I mean, even if design is suggested as evidence, the critiques of that claim fall essentially on (1) the stupidity of design all over the place, or (2) the “design” that results in smallpox, earthquakes, and the like.
I like pushing them to the nihilism right away — and then take a drink, of course.
8 February 2008, on 1:53 pm
How is it possible to be an atheist and believe in “good” and “evil?” These concepts depend on an ultimate arbiter that defines what belongs in each category. No universal arbiter, no good or evil. Therefore, his initial thesis is beyond junk and should be treated as such.
That aside, the audacity of defining what a “god” is or thinks smacks of an ultimate arrogance. As if any human with their extremely limited view of the universe could even comprehend of a being of such magnitude, let alone know how to please it.
8 February 2008, on 2:25 pm
Uncredible Hallq…May I call you “Hallq”?
Here we go again on the same old merry-go-round!
My first observation is that ‘atheism’ isn’t a Philosophy, religion…or even really a “belief”. It’s simply the denial OF a belief…that of the Theists irrational and delusional claim that there IS a god. It all goes back to childhood brainwashing; being taught…FIRST…to believe, with NO evidence; and to respect belief no matter how ridiculous and illogical the basis for it. “Tradition”, for that matter, trumps the evolution of knowledge; Scientific, or any…”otherwise”.
[Name the god, of course...the SUN, Zeusie, Thor, Apollo, FSM, zama, zama! It matters not!]
Like, I think, Sam Harris and others argue; the word ‘atheism’ is, perhaps, a rather unwise choice of a moniker…?
Whateva…
With no modern Scientific, observable evidence whatsoever, theism is totally based on arguing endlessly…quasi-philosophically…with the pretense of logic…dancing around their main ASSUMPTION of an invisible Sky-Daddy, which is TOTALLY, in actuality, based on the irrational acceptance of mythological, anecdotal, fantastical…story telling.
“The Scripture, as it were, in the wings”…offstage-like! Or ala…
“Pay no attention to that group of old, invisible (magic mushroom eating?) Prophets; standing in the corner of the room!”
One might as well rehash Aquinas, and all the rest of the medieval churchmen “Philosopher/Theologians”…followed by all the Enlightenment Philosophers, Post-Moderners, Existentialists, yada, yada.
It’s a total waste of time, in my opinion.
You’ll argue on…ad infinitum…with believers; banging your head against the wall. I pretty much gave up on that pursuit back in the late 1960s when I was in graduate school at DePaul U.; toying with the idea of going for a Masters degree in…oh-so-impractical for finding a useful job(?)…Philosophy.
[I finally quit to go play music with a lounge group in 1969...never to return to academia again!
(Yeah..."My...how wise!)
Hey...I KNOW "Bonkerdom" [Bonkersville?] pretty well; as I’ve referred to elsewhere on this Site!]
Like the other recent post’s discussion with “Maggie”; one can dig up tons of material to refute a believer’s claims…all, pretty much, for naught. Many of us atheists (or, if one prefers: “anti-religionists”, “secularists”, “Scientific Rationalists”, “Freethinkers”, “Materialists”, etcetera, etcetera…) have, long before the Internet, struggled ALONE in our various quests for answers to the old universal questions; and arrived at our conclusions…almost totally on our own. No non-believing proselytizers knock on our door! WITH the Internet, there’s an amazing plethora of material available at the click of a mouse. I prefer directing a contentious believer to articles and books; and ‘wishing’ the “wishful thinker” “Good Luck” on their quest.
“Hostile la vista…Baby!”
“Oh…and by the way…WHAT is your favorite color?” [a little Bridge keeper humor?]
Bottom-line, in a sense, for my part…GOOD LUCK trying to do constant battling with brainwashed believers.
I DO support being totally out of the closet as an “atheist” using whatever moniker; as Dawkins et. al. recommend.
And there are many excellent books and Sites with articles to point the adversarial believer to.
I stick around GifS more for the feeling of the freedom I get, being amongst like minded people…and being able to joke, blab, & rant without fear…as well as learn a lot from other extremely “Bright” sympathizers.
I’ll shut up now. This typing gets tedious without using Dragon9 “Naturally Speaking”!…especially after only one cup of coffee!
Erm…”Go in Peace, dear brethren…
the Rant is ended!”
“Et cum Spiri-2-2-0h?”
8 February 2008, on 4:30 pm
Well, philosophers say “evil” just to denote the problem of unnecessary suffering — or, to be fair, what “seems to be” unnecessary suffering. Aside from that, you don’t need to use the word “evil” to get the point across. The word “bad” would work just as well (as Uncle Freddie has taught us).
Why do these concepts depend on an “ultimate arbiter?” And what would that mean, exactly?
If you’re going to be that skeptical about values, no concept of “ultimate arbiter” is going to answer your skepticism. We learned that much from the Euthyphro.
8 February 2008, on 6:02 pm
“the concept of God is coherent”
“Coherent” how? As a myth, symbol, literary device, logo, what? If it means as an empirical, material, natural fact, then no, this description of an atheist doesn’t apply to me. Which kind of makes the rest of the piece irrelevant – at least to me.
8 February 2008, on 6:55 pm
Bob, I could see where you were leading before the Uncle Freddy reference. To further the point, Freddy explained that originally “good” and “bad” meant the opposition between the “haves” and the “have nots”. In other words, it was between the aristocracy and the commoners. “Bad” was referring to things “common”. So it was the ruling class that decided what was “good” or “evil”.
Roughly that is it, though it has been many years since I read Freddy’s works.
8 February 2008, on 7:25 pm
Bob and bernarda,
I agree that these terms are fully semantic in nature. I was using the typically religious idea of G&E. This concept DOES require an ultimate being that declares what is right and wrong. There is no gray area. Pick a religion. All of them have a constant linear system concerning proper behavior. They also have a specific punishment for disobeying said restrictions.
As we all know, individual societies dictate what is right and wrong within their own society and these definitions change with time. What I was attempting to say, however poorly, is there are no good/evil or right/wrong contents anywhere and never will be. These definitions change from person to person and century to century. Therefore, I’ve always hated the terms good, bad, right, wrong and evil. They are far too subjective and useless as descriptive terms.
8 February 2008, on 9:24 pm
I guess I would put things differently, but only slightly.
Roughly, the slaves were related to value judgments, but they were on the receiving end of morality, and the term “evil” was actually used by the slaves through a notion of resentment of the Masters.
The Masters, by contrast, created morality, and the words “good” and “bad” did indeed have meaning for them as well, but only in relation to themselves through a notion of nobility. (Hence the reference to the section “What is Noble?” in my link.)
So, historically, the “deadly sin” of pride (say) was actually embraced by the Masters, but condemned by the slaves.
N. goes into further detail in the Genealogy (and these are just rough and general observations), but the point about “evil” is that we need to get around this concept if we’re going to complete the “revaluation of values,” as N. put it. He puts this quite well in Daybreak (I think it’s #103) when he mentions how we’re supposed to “feel differently” and “think differently” about the actions that we presently consider “moral.”
9 February 2008, on 5:20 am
If what you were talking about was morality in relation to traditional religions, then, yes, I’d say that’s about right. There might be a problem with the word “religion” — i.e., if Buddhism or Jainism are to be counted as religions — but, for the traditional monotheistic beliefs, that makes sense.
I guess I’m not sure what to do with this. I mean, I see what you’re saying about change, but I’d be hesitant to throw the concepts out completely. Values seem to be vital to our existence (especially as parents, just as one example), and a denial of these values would result in nihilism.
Also, the word “subjective” seems to be misplaced here. Are the concepts of “good” and “bad” really subjective, and do they really change from person to person? When I think of “subjective” things, I think of which ice cream flavor is best, or which style of music is best. So, as an example: I’m a chocolate freak, but I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be. I like chocolate, you might like vanilla, and we leave it at that. (The fact that we don’t ask for any further explanations on these subjects is important here, but leave that aside for now.)
Now, is this the proper analogy for morality and value? If it was, then actions like rape, murder, and child abuse would be just as acceptable as these concepts, and would change from person to person in these ways. But they aren’t, and they don’t — or, more important, we don’t think that they should be.
In the end, I think it’s more plausible to completely reject the theistic game. The theistic game is flawed conceptually and needs to go away. The game is: without God, there’s no morality, no value, no worth — and, insofar as one thinks value concepts to be “subjective” and “useless” in the absence of an arbiter, one is still playing on the theistic field, and by their rules.
Better to simply leave the field, or change the rules.
How to do that? Well, here are roughly two ways: either create some other notion of value, or admit the value but deny the source. (Nietzsche, for the record, ends up doing both things — which is some really cool shit.)
9 February 2008, on 5:48 am
For those who are interested, a really good paper on this can be found here.
9 February 2008, on 2:16 pm
Bob, I linked your paper, but haven’t read it yet. I may have posted this article from Stephen Gould before, but it is always pertinent.
“First, nature (no matter how cruel in human terms) provides no basis for our moral values. (Evolution might, at most, help to explain why we have moral feelings, but nature can never decide for us whether any particular action is right or wrong.) Second, Darwin’s “struggle for existence” is an abstract metaphor, not an explicit statement about bloody battle. Reproductive success, the criterion of natural selection, works in many modes: Victory in battle may be one pathway, but cooperation, symbiosis, and mutual aid may also secure success in other times and contexts. In a famous passage, Darwin explained his concept of evolutionary struggle”
- at the end, Gould continues,
“There are no shortcuts to moral insight. Nature is not intrinsically anything that can offer comfort or solace in human terms – if only because our species is such an insignificant latecomer in a world not constructed for us. So much the better. The answers to moral dilemmas are not lying out there, waiting to be discovered. They reside, like the kingdom of God, within us – the most difficult and inaccessible spot for any discovery or consensus.”
- of course some idiot jesus freaks who don’t understand metaphor will think that the ending means that Gould believed in gawd.
http://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/kropotkin.htm
10 February 2008, on 3:29 am
Bob, I guess it would be more appropriate for me to say that I hate the common usages of these words. People are far too prone to declare something as good or evil when they have only a simple grasp of the actual morality of it. People call George W evil but I would hardly go so far as to say that he did what he did to maliciously cause harm. Somewhere in that warped little head of his he feels like he is doing the right thing.
I’ll put it this way, is drawing a picture of a specific prophet evil? How about abortions? These are rhetorical questions of course but surely evil has to be somewhat subjective? If evil is somewhat subjective then so too must be good as they are polar opposites. Take murder for example. I’m not suggesting that murder is subjective. Good and evil refer to intent of the act not the act itself. There is no good murder or evil murder, murder is murder. All murder is detrimental to society and therefore “bad” for society. The same goes for rape, theft and a few other crimes. However, intent can be argued as to being good or evil and often is. This is the type of subjectivity that I was think of.
10 February 2008, on 4:44 am
Bob, I should have mentioned earlier this blog about Nietzsche.
http://www.brianleiternietzsche.blogspot.com/
10 February 2008, on 5:44 pm
There are a few real winners there. I have printed out this paper (”The Problem of Evil and the Grammar of Goodness”). It starts out with this whopper:
“The Problem of Evil poses the greatest trouble for the
Theist. Traditional arguments for the existence of God may
fail, and yet there remains room for rationally believing
in God only if there are not any sound arguments concluding
that God does not exist.”
Umm – Nope! There is no rational reason for believing in any god unless there is evidence for it. Why is that simple concept so hard to get? I guess it is reational to believe in Pixies, then. And Chthulhu, that goes without saying.
I am interested to see how he comes to his conclusion, but I like this line:
“Still, I have suggested a way Theists can defang The
Problem of Evil, a way to block the argument that God does
not exist. The solution is heterodox in so far as I do not
maintain that God is good. But I am still entitled to say
that God is free of defect. God is without flaw. God is
in no way bad. Maybe that is all the orthodoxy we need.”
Basically, he seems to drop the omnibenevolence, which is not a bad idea, but then he tries to straightjacket his god into a “he’s not good, but he’s not bad either, but we should still worship him”. I wonder how he justifies the genocide, slavery, and rape given favorable billing in the bible – are these not bad? Obviously, slavery is bad to the slaves, but good for the slave-holders, so maybe it is neither good nor bad? (I am not saying that he would say this, I am just trying out this “neutrality” concept to see how it may work). I will look forward to reading his views on the problem of evil (or maybe, the “wording of the problem of ‘evil’” might be better.
10 February 2008, on 5:49 pm
Dang – putting the pages in order to staple them, and I see he answered one question
“I also have no solution to the question of why we should worship a being who does not alleviate avoidable suffering…There may be a good answer to this question, but I have nothing on offer here.”
10 February 2008, on 8:54 pm
Hang on a second, I’m not following you here. I thought we were talking about morality — but now we’ve narrowed the discussion to only intentions? (The two things can’t be substituted for each other.)
I’m following you on the murder-bad and rape-bad stuff, but the role of intentions is still a little fuzzy to me. Intentions can be good, yes — and, yes, intentions can be really nasty — but if we’re talking about morality and value (it might not be, and I could be missing something) then intentions, subjective as they might be in this context, aren’t the be-all-end-all for morality. (I’m not saying you said this; I’m just saying it because it’s important.)
10 February 2008, on 9:06 pm
Hey, Badge, thanks for the quotes…
Yeah, like you, I found this to be a little strange. I just don’t get this.
The interesting attempt here is to try to get around problems in the concept of God by detaching characterizations of God from moral characterizations.
Disconnecting God from morality, at least historically, is not all that easy to do. It might get you out of the POE, sure, but at a significant price — i.e., one ends up either rejecting God’s goodness (bad), or one embraces a kind of nihilism about human value judgments (also bad).
I mean, who cares if God is “free from defect” — if such a concept has nothing to do with morality? Why even bother?
The attempt to do this doesn’t solve the POE. It just ends up ignoring it and talking about something else. So, either the POE is worth the conversation, or it’s not. If it isn’t, then you need an argument as to why — and if it is, claiming “free from defect” doesn’t do anything for the discussion.
Anyhoo, my two cents.
10 February 2008, on 9:20 pm
This was actually the point of the CORNEA principle, i.e., to reject any human judgments of gratuitous pain and suffering.
The questions that remain, of course, are: what should one think of this principle, and, more important, what would happen to other judgments if I granted it as a good epistemic principle? What would embracing this principle actually get you?
10 February 2008, on 10:41 pm
I dunno, GifSters…
all those philosophical references reminded me of one of the more obscure (to my memory) Python skits…
“Monty Python – International Philosophy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU
Alas…Was it Nietzsche who also said (muttered in his sleep)?:
“Football (Soccer?)…like Existence…
is TOTALLY absurd!”…?
11 February 2008, on 11:25 am
Quite by accident, I stumbled upon this BBC program about Nietzsche.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghebQcqAT-U
I haven’t viewed it all yet so I can’t give a judgement about the quality.
11 February 2008, on 12:37 pm
I view morality and intention as being both part of the same social construct. The why behind a persons actions is dictated by their intentions. Intentions are greatly influenced by personal morality. If we polled 100 people on whether or not they viewed killing as morally wrong we would probably get 100 yes votes. However, no two answers as to why they think it is wrong will be the same. So, in essence, I’m saying that the reasoning or logic behind a specific moral stance varies a great deal from person to person. Our society as a group has rightly decided that killing (except for justice, oil, political gain, etc.) is morally wrong but each member of that group has their own reasons for doing so. This is the subjective nature of morality that I’m thinking of.
Let me put it another way, group morality is consistent but individual morality varies. Group morality is decided by the largest number of similar individual morals. If 90% of any given population agrees that any one act is immoral then the society as a whole will find the act immoral regardless as to the 10%’s opinion. Take marijuana for example. In the 20’s and 30’s the majority of people felt that it was immoral to smoke it or at the very least only the “colored” should smoke it. Now people are fighting to re-legalize it and only the minority of people see it as being immoral. All of this occurred in less then 100 years. Our social morality changed and constantly changes with time. Morality is defined by the people. Therefore, it is impossible to have any clear cut rules to morality. It cannot be a constant. The only way for morality to be a constant is if an outside force/entity is acting upon society to maintain their morality. Otherwise, nothing is absolute.
11 February 2008, on 3:33 pm
Yes, I’d agree with this much, i.e., actions are associated with intentions because humans perform them. They’re not spasmodic bursts or brainfarts. In this sense, I’d agree that morality is intimately connected to intentions (as would a host of other things that humans do, like use language, start businesses, and so on).
I think I’m seeing where we disagree, and I think it has something to do with simply calling individual points of view “moral,” but let me first take your thought experiment.
I like it because I, too, would like to see the reasons for those 100 (1,000? 1,000,000?) persons when asked. But, at this point, given what I’ve seen already (in the classroom and out), there’s a lot more overlap and agreement than you think. Agreement seems to be the rule, not the exception.
I mean, keep in mind what you’re claiming here. You’re claiming hundreds (thousands?) of different kinds of “reasons” for why someone does something, and that’s kind of a tall bill to fill. (Note that one need not claim that everyone’s answer here will be identical.) Not only that, but there are also many times when we just don’t have any reasons for the things we’re doing at the moment. We might come up with something after thinking it over, an interesting fact about humans, but otherwise it’s not clear that we have this reason-action behavior up front in our minds all the time.
I think here’s where I’m missing something, and I think you do a better job with the example of marijuana in the second paragraph. I’d agree with most of what you say there.
That is, saying that one has a particular perspective doesn’t automatically mean that perspective is a moral one. It might be just a perspective — and if that’s all that you meant by “subjective,” I don’t think I’d have a problem with it, so long as the context is clear.
11 February 2008, on 4:57 pm
bernarda?…ummm…
Nice ‘accidental’ stumbling!
In other words, thanks for that BBC Friedrich Nietzsche series link.
The other BBC series on Sartre, and Heidegger (as posted so far), also look very interesting (to me).
11 February 2008, on 6:21 pm
Yes, thanks much for the link…
Saw all six parts, and essentially walked away a little lukewarm. It sounded as if they were trying either to connect N.’s madness to his “looking into the abyss” (or other things), or about how N. never really completed his task of the revaluation. I found both insinuations to be pretty implausible, at least given from the letters people have analyzed over these many years.
I would suggest the following book for consideration. Reginster seems to argue his point rather well.
11 February 2008, on 7:12 pm
Valid points Bob. What if I explained my view this way? Morality is a group perspective whereas intent contains an individual’s morals. I really wish the English language had a better term then intent. It does not quite express with I mean because, as you pointed out, intent can be without any moral implication. Mainly, I feel that group morality is way different than individual morality.
My parenthetical was a weak attempt at humor. I was trying to use that as an example of how even something as grotesque as killing can have no definitive/universal stance. Each case must be looked at individually. Self-defense is certainly different then Islamic honor killing. Christians look at honor killing as immoral but clearly many of the Muslim sects do not. I find them reprehensible but for entirely different reasons then Christians because they don’t seem to mind killing for 2000 year old stupid rules.
By the way, I read the paper you linked to and thank you. That is why I’ve never liked the argument. Too many assumptions. Also, would you consider the birthing process as gratuitous suffering? I would and don’t consider it evil.
12 February 2008, on 1:55 pm
It depends, and I think the question needs to be unpacked.
Also keep in mind that we’re not just talking about “pain and suffering” in childbirth, since many women have actually died during the process. (It’s actually one of the most dangerous times in a women’s life.)
Now, to the question. Are we talking with God or without? If with God, then yes, of course it’s both gratuitous and evil, since other ways could have been designed but weren’t. If without God, then it’s still gratuitous (in which case we have drugs or whatever), even though one might go ahead with the suffering anyway for some other reason. But in either case without God, “evil” is obviously misplaced here.
12 February 2008, on 4:33 pm
ChuckA, it was completely accidental. I was looking for something else, which I don’t remember, and there was a reference to this.
Bob, I think the second three parts were rather good, but I agree with you about the re-evaluation part. After all, it was only an hour program.
For those who might find our discussion a bit arcane, may I suggest the book “The Consolations of Philosophy” by Alain de Botton. You will learn about a few other philosophers as well as Nietzsche.