Today Mung claimed of TSZ that
I see mocking of Christianity, what I don’t see are arguments that Christianity is false.
As the regulars here (including Mung) know, this is bollocks. There have been many such arguments, and Mung has fled from a number of them.
I replied:
You see plenty of them [arguments against Christianity], but you’re in denial.
Want to test that hypothesis? Start a thread asking for arguments against Christianity. You’ll get an earful.
He got cold feet, so I am starting the thread for him. I’ll provide some arguments in the comments. Feel free to add your own or to cross-post or link to old OPs and comments, if you can’t be arsed to reinvent the wheel for Mung’s trollish sake.
Mung’s fellow Christians are welcome to come to his aid. He’ll need all the help he can get.
Widely read and cited Christian apologists and philosophers are still to this day writing publications in the philosophy of religion, blog-posts, articles and indeed entire books on the subject.
Here’s famous Christian apologist William Lane Craig writing on the subject: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-problem-of-evil
Craig goes on to detail lots of reasons for why he thinks the problem of Evil fails of course. But if this was so soundly defeated “decades ago” and “not taken seriously”, one wonders why Craig begins his very article by affirming the opposite.
There’s virtually no end to the apologetic output of Christian philosophers and apologists concerning the problem of evil. I dare say, what you are expressing is merely a rhetorical trick to try to diminish the argument’s force and continued relevance.
fifth:
No, it wasn’t defeated, and yes, it is taken seriously by philosophers, including Christian philosophers.
You actually didn’t know that?
When you’re ignorant of philosophy, fifth, it’s best not to try to use philosophy in your arguments.
ETA: Ninja’d by Rumraket.
If Christianity were true–couldn’t God come up with better defenders?
Glen Davidson
Or help them out a little, instead of watching them faceplant over and over?
A summary of where things stand in this thread:
1) Colewd is hopelessly confused and thinks that “2 billion people can’t be wrong” is a valid, persuasive argument.
2) Mung is still in denial about the existence of the problem. To him, it’s just fine that God stands by, doing nothing, while a dog eats a living baby’s head, or when hundreds of thousands of people drown in a tsunami, or millions die in the gas chambers of Europe. Problem? What problem? Good will overcome evil.
3) fifth is trying to invoke philosophy, but he has no idea what the philosophers are saying and gets it completely wrong. He is so confused that he actually supplies a quote that supports my position and contradicts his own.
Three displays of comic ineptitude and, at least in Mung’s case, dishonesty. Are there any honest, ‘ept’ Christians out there who want to weigh in?
If by “the subject” you mean the problem of evil, then yes. If you mean keiths’ version of it, then no.
This thread is supposed to be about arguments that Christianity is false and in that context no Philosophers take the problem of evil seriously. That is the context of my statement
Philosophers do take the problem seriously as an argument that God’s existence is improbable.
Being improbable is not remotely the same thing as being false.
You actually did not know that?
peace
Are you really this dense?
Repeat after me “apparently improbable does not equal false”.
If it did then all IDists would have to do was show that the bacterial flagellum seems to be improbable to falsify Darwinism.
Do you really want to go down that road.
peace
If God’s existence is improbable, the falsity of Christianity is probable.
Unless, of course, you’re one of those Christian Atheists. LOL
It doesn’t need to equal false, it implies false.
If it is improbable, or unlikely, is to say it is unlikely to be true, or unlikely to be the case. Which directly entails it is probably false.
An argument can conclude “there probably is no God” and that would entail “Christianity is, by corollary, probably false”, for example.
LoL! As if God needs defenders from straw men attackes
Christians have acknowledged that evil exists and they have answered the question as to why it exists.
All one has to do is google “what do christians say about evil” and you will find m,any answers. That keiths and others choose to be willfully ignorant of those answers just exposes them for what they are- desperate.
fifth:
LOL. That question will come back to haunt you.
Is God infinitely powerful? (Yes)
Is God infinitely loving? (Yes)
Is God the sustainer of all things, evil included? (Yes)
So God has the means, the motivation and privileged access to evil’s ‘off switch’….and yet still evil remains.
It’s Epicurus all the way down.
Rumraket:
And the less probable the Christian God’s existence, the more probable it is that Christianity is false. It’s obvious, yet fifth can’t see it.
Are you really this dense, fifth?
fifth: The Christian God exists.
keiths: No. If you look at the evidence, it’s extremely improbable that the Christian God exists.
fifth: Well, disregard the evidence, then.
Should we believe every proposition that cannot be disproved with absolute, 100.0% certainty, fifth?
It’s not impossible that the earth is flat. Just overwhelmingly improbable, given the evidence. Well, that settles it. The earth must be flat, by Fifth Logic™.
One might ask: Are you really this dense, fifth?
fifth,
Has it occurred to you to ask why the evidential problem of evil is called “the evidential problem of evil”?
Do you think it might have something to do with evidence?
Do you think that evidence is something that should be taken into account, or should we just ignore it, especially when it leads to conclusions that we don’t like?
In other words, should we be rational, or should we instead be Christians?
Then what would be the need for faith?
Speaking of which – the Merseyside Skeptics recently interviewed Mark Sergant, a neo-flat-earther. It’s interesting in that it gives another take on the ‘prison of belief’ whereby every bit of evidence that the Earth is a sphere is recast into some grand conspiracy to deceive the masses.
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/2017/01/be-reasonable-episode-038-mark-sergant/
And it has been explained. Strange how non-christians refuse to understand that explanation.
What evidence? The evidence for evil is not evidence against the existence of the Christian God. Obviously you are confused.
Can’t you see a difference here. In the first instance there are people who call themselves Christian because they are inspired by Christ. How closely they follow the teachings of Christ I cannot judge because I do not know. i know nothing about these people except that they call themselves Christian. In the second instance I do know that if people wish to call themselves Christian then Christ must be included in their thinking, the clue is in the name.
There are so many Christian denominations with a wide variation of beliefs among their members. They cannot all be correct in every belief they hold. But do you think that people should be judged on their beliefs or should they be judged on their actions and motives for these actions?
And if God truly isn’t omnipotent then that would contradict the beliefs of many Christians. But we know that Christians hold a wide range of beliefs anyway, so in what way would this falsify Christianity? In what way is it false to love one another, love your neighbour and even love your enemies?
So what? Implausibility is in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion the existence of things that are objectively evil makes Christianity more plausible and falsifies atheism.
Regardless of your feelings the existence of evil is just one piece of evidence among with every thing else in the universe. It needs to be weighed along with the rest of our experience it does not stand alone.
By no means is the existence of evil an argument that Christianity is false
peace
It has every thing to do with evidence.
Evidence is cumulative and not definitive.
“X makes Y less likely” is not the same thing as “X exists therefor Y is false”.
Surely even you can understand this,
Peace
This does not in anyway follow from your premises and is irrelevant. Even if God has the access to evil’s off switch that does not mean that he should flip it.
You need to demonstrate that there can be no possible reason that would warrant not God not flipping the switch.
You have not even come close to doing so and serious philosophers have granted that given our current state of information it would be impossible for you to do such a thing.
peace
Do you doubt that god is Omnipotent?
Omnipotence does not entail the ability to do what is impossible.
You have yet to demonstrate that the existence of evil is not a necessary part of any physical existence. You need to do so before you can say that God has the ability to flip the evil switch.
peace
If?
If he is incapable of removing evil then he is not omnipotent.
Then he is malevolent.
No, I don’t.
I’m quite happy to condemn psychopaths (even omniscient ones) without ever demonstrating they had no possible justification for their evil deeds.
Sadly for some people there’s no atrocity base enough to shake their conviction that Jesus really is the best thing ever. Ignore the butchery – Jesus loves ME!
fifthmonarchyman,
Can you elaborate on this?
Quickly.
1) The existence of objective evil is incompatible with the notion that there is no objective source of morality.
2) The existence of objective evil would tend to make a worldview that address the cause and solution to evil more plausible.
peace
Only if it is possible to remove evil.
Is it?
You certainly have not demonstrated that to be the case
Only if it is not a bad thing to remove evil.
Or that in removing evil God would not eliminate some greater good.
You certainly have not demonstrated that to be the case
1) A psychopath has no possible justification for what he does. You can condemn some one as a psychopath with out knowing the reasons for their actions if you like but you risk accusing someone falsely.
2) you have not demonstrated that God has ever done anything evil only that he did not flip the evil switch.
Again this tangent is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Whether there are terrible atrocities in the world has nothing to do with whether “Jesus is the best thing ever”
I for one think the world is a pretty good place over all.
I wish it was better but it clearly it could be a lot worse
peace
Um, I thought God has a plan to remove evil?
‘Greater good’ arguments only work with actors of limited knowledge and power. The greater good argument fails when the actor is omnipotent. God does not need to perform X in order to bring about Y. He is free to do so, obviously, but it is not a necessity.
Well….we’ll never know if Hitler had a good reason to murder 6,000,000 – so best not to condemn him; we wouldn’t want to risk falsely accusing the Fuhrer.
If the traditional view of hell is correct then it’s not about removing but about segregating.
You certainly have not demonstrated this to be the case and it directly contradicts the teaching of Christianity.
Remember Jesus had to die to bring salvation to his people.
We already know he had no good reason to do these things.
That is because Hitler was a human being, since he was we have a good Idea of the options and choices available to him.
We have no such point of reference when it comes to God.
peace
We’re talking keiths here. His questions are rhetorical.
fifth:
Having “a good idea” isn’t enough, according to you. It can’t merely be improbable that Hitler had a good reason for murdering 6,000,000 Jews. We need certainty:
So according to Fifth Logic™, Woodbine got it exactly right. We mustn’t risk falsely accusing der Führer.
LMAO at Fifth Logic™.
Mung:
Mung Logic:
Someone at some point asks a rhetorical question. Therefore all his questions are rhetorical.
Sure, but then they might start thinking it was their own doing.
keiths, is there some particular reason you’re avoiding answering my responses to your argument?
We do have certainty in this case. Since Hitler was a human being he had no good reason.
That is unless you want to provide evidence that he was not a human being
Mung:
So the reason God is allowing the Christians to get shellacked in this thread is to keep their egos in check?
This has been addressed up thread. Still waiting for keiths to respond. Instead he prefers to pretend that he hasn’t been answered.
Priceless.
I never cease to be amazed at the power of confirmation bias
😉
You’re confused. You mean absence of evidence. As in absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That’s your argument in a nutshell. It’s been addressed.
fifth:
So you, FMM, know every reason Hitler had, and you know, with absolute certainty, that they were all bad.
I realize that it’s a bit much to ask you to think two steps ahead, but could you at least try for one?
Rumraket:
Mung:
Link, please.
Is that a rhetorical question?
start here
If directly addresses the “totality of the amount of evidence” argument that you’re now relying on.
There’s far more evidence for the existence of God than there is evidence against the existence of God.
Faith is evidence. It’s just evidence that keiths wants to leave out of the equation. 🙂
I’ve heard it said that some Christians believe that God does not know the future. What then of the keiths “omnigod”? I think keiths needs his “omnigod” more than Christians do.
Those aren’t essential Christian beliefs. 😉