Re: 16 out of 17 bishops will ignore evidence of gay relationships

Ken Down wrote:

> In message <87zmp4nhhe.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaughan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> So do you now agree that the present apparently-unsatisfactory
>> state of the world gives plausibility to the "argument from
>> evil" against the existence, power and/or goodness of God?
>
> I don't think I have ever disagreed. What I don't agree is that the
> conclusion is the necessary outcome of the argument.

My claim was only ever that the bad state of the world
"gives credibility to atheism", not that it proves
atheism to be correct. And I think even most atheists
would agree that the nonexistence or imperfection
of God isn't a *necessary* outcome of the argument,
only a very probable one. (In some suitable sense
of "probable".)

> Indeed - but I think the key is in your word "inclined". Certainly the
> argument from evil can bolster one's disbelief - if one wants to disbelieve.

I think it goes further; plenty of Christians (who don't
disbelieve, and typically don't *want* to disbelieve either)
are troubled by the argument from evil, and find that
their belief is (at least sometimes and to some extent)
shaken by it.

> On the other hand, evil is rather necessary to the Christian religion, for
> the death of Christ would be fairly pointless if there was no evil!

True but (so far as I can see) irrelevant.

>> I think they regard it as such only because the present
>> world is in many respects unsatisfactory, and they hope
>> that death will be their route to a better one. Which
>> isn't so far from what our hypothetical skeptic is saying,
>> though of course he typically doesn't share that hope
>> of a better existence after death.
>
> Undoubtedly, but what puzzles me is that so many Christians appear to think
> that even before sin entered the world, death was part of God's plan.

Doesn't Revelation refer to "the Lamb slain before the
foundation of the world"?

But I take it you're talking about evolution and all that.
I don't see what's puzzling to you; many Christians believe
that (in so far as they do; see below) because they believe,
for excellent reasons, that the human race is a fairly late
arrival on the scene and that death has been around for much
longer. If there are difficulties reconciling that with
(some varieties of) Christian theology, well, too bad. There
are difficulties reconciling the existence of suffering
with (some varieties of) Christian theology too, but that
isn't grounds for not believing in suffering.

I'm not sure that your description of what "so many Christians"
believe is a good one, anyway. Not all death is equally bad;
the death of a bacterium is generally no tragedy. It's at least
arguable that the badness of a creature's death is pretty much
proportionate to that creature's existence as something like
a moral agent (note: that doesn't necessarily apply only to humans,
as witness phrases like "Bad dog!"), in which case the emergence
of (proto-)sin and morally significant death would have been
parallel. Of course this doesn't fit with any remotely historical
account of "the Fall".

> (The
> alternative is that somehow we are better off because we will die and become
> spirits [aka ghosts] whereas before the Fall we had to remain as humans.
> Both views seem odd to me.)

I'm not sure what that last notion is meant to be an alternative
to, but in any case it isn't one I've ever heard.

>>> It is much more
>>> clear that unnatural death is a Bad Thing, but even if you include disease
>>> in that category it could still be argued that humans are responsible for
>>> most of the disease that afflicts them.
>
>> Not very credibly, I think.
>
> Hmmmm. There are certainly some diseases which have no human input, but not
> very many.

There is a difference between "most diseases that affect humans
have some human behaviour among their causes" and "humans are
responsible for most of the disease that afflicts them".

> When I lived in India it was common knowledge that people who
> died of "natural causes" were burned, but those who died of infectious
> diseases were dumped into the nearest river (preferably the Ganges) in the
> belief that Holy Gunga, to which all rivers are linked by invisible
> channels, would purify the corpse and nullify the disease. Oddly, villages
> downstream who drew their drinking water from the river, usually suffered an
> outbreak of the disease soon after!

I don't think that ignorance (or even stupidity) deserves the
death penalty.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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