Religions have succeeded

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

FFS. No I don’t. I don’t “keep missing” that at all. In fact I agree with it: the moral standards of 1st century Palestine felt right to them, and the moral standards of the 21st century West especially feel right to us.

Please tell me that you can see that I acknowledge this, and have done so throughout?

OK, good. Once again: THAT’S NOT THE BLOODY POINT THOUGH!!!

The point isn’t about a comparison of two different time- and place-specific moral positions at all; it’s about a comparison between one time-and place-specific moral position (ours) AND THE ACTIONS OF A MORALLY PERFECT GOD CHARACTER.

Please though. Seriously. I can’t be expected to correct you on this again. This is a plainly as I can explain the point to you – if you fail to grasp it again, I just can’t help you.                         

Just wanted to pick up on this point of the comparison between one time-and place-specific moral position (ours) AND THE ACTIONS OF A MORALLY PERFECT GOD CHARACTER. Are you suggesting that if the god character is morally perfect, all moral rules from the god character related to humans and the rules they live by must never change over time?

Or are you suggesting that any action by a morally perfect entity should be considered equally moral for a human to do? 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

No I don’t. I just have to deduce it from the context, and even if the deduction is “wrong” the other grounds for non-consent remain.

Where?

Not true. By current ethical standards valid consent would have been impossible.

Very funny.

Wrong again. Being unfaithful to your spouse for example is generally considered immoral, but there’s no law against it.

What?

As far as I’m aware a divorce can be legally obtained on the grounds of infidelity.
How can you deduce immorality on the grounds of competing sociologies rather than referral to the text and then for some unexplained reason deduce a modern western unified morality as a reference when we live in a time when thousands can be sacrificed to a virus and schoolboys act as drug mules on county lines?And that’s before we start on the bonkers caricatures you invoke vis drug spiking head teachers.
Your deduction is more like the application of a sus law.

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Happy Christmas everyone!

I guess everyone is convinced that religions have indeed succeeded which is why the discussion has digressed into an elaborate one about consent and such other....

Hi Sriram

Hope you had a good Christmas. I agree with you that it doesn't really make sense to critique consent and power dynamics in a story about God, who according to the concept can pretty much do anything, so the story would be focused on what God did rather than focusing on whether the necessary elements of consent had been established in the nativity story. It's going to get rather tedious if BHS is going to critique God on not obtaining the consent of humans in relation to every Bible story e.g. consent in the Noah's Ark story to flooding the earth etc. After all, what's interesting about a story of humans not moderating their excesses and not following certain moral values, leading to a disastrous impact on the climate and widespread flooding? BHS seems to find it far more interesting to focus on whether humans can consent to a flood and if causing or allowing a flood was a morally perfect action on the part of the god character. Each to their own I suppose.

Regarding your assertion about religions succeeding. Humans seem to organise social systems and assert moral values, which they try to impose on others to regulate human interaction, as can be seen in the current transgender debate and in the discussions on here about what is morally right or wrong.

Everyone has their opinion and pass judgements on others about what is a morally good or bad action/ perspective/ value or thought. It doesn't seem like religion is necessary for this - but religion can be a useful way to organise and disseminate ideas to mass audiences and to try to create cohesive productive units to work towards a common goal, especially in times of uncertainty and danger. I can certainly see it would be useful to leaders trying to organise societies to have a system or concept with a supernatural entity that was all the omnis and also benevolent, merciful and just. I think it helped speed the process of organising hierarchies in society, and perhaps made the process more ruthlessly efficient than without the gods.

   

[bluehillside Retd.]

VG,

It seems my playtime coincides with your playtime. What a coincidence. Isn't it time for your milk-break?

The point being that your habit of just reflecting back the criticisms you receive is juvenile. It does you no credit. 

Again, as I have said before, not seeing the problem with what the God character did. No matter how many times you explain it, we'll have to agree to disagree on whether the God character's morals were wrong.

You’re really struggling for comprehension again here. I didn’t say that the god character’s behaviour was morally wrong – what I said was that either the god character’s behaviour was morally wrong (and current sensibilities are better), or it’s the other way around (or, both are wrong). This must be the case because the behaviour of the god character on the Bible story and current sensibilities are misaligned. I was asking you therefore which of the options on the table you thought to be morally better.                           

If you find discussion impossible because other people do not interpret language the same way you do, I guess that means you are going to find some discussions on here are going to be impossible for you.

Wrong again. You’re not “interpreting” anything. You’re just finding one term with a plain meaning (“will”) to be discommodious, so you’ve decided that your get out of jail free card will be to say you “interpret” it differently. Doesn’t work though. If you want to interpret a term differently from its standard meaning, then you need to reason to justify the revision – some scholarship about later usage for example. Without that you're lost in the territory of, say, you saying the earth orbits the sun, and me telling you that you’re wrong about that because I “interpret” “orbits” differently from you (and therefore “If you find discussion impossible because other people do not interpret language the same way you do, I guess that means you are going to find some discussions on here are going to be impossible for you”.)

And no, before you return to your previous rabbit hole, just pointing out that the meanings of some words have changed over time doesn’t for one moment justify the blanket application of that phenomenon to any word that you happen to find inconvenient for your thesis. If you think the “will” of the Bible story doesn’t mean “will” after all, then you need to justify that claim on its own terms, or try a different tack.

You are the person making the claim that "will" can only mean the God character is unable or unwilling to change course. You're welcome to assert that but why not support it with evidence?

Especially when an “angel” assures the Mary character that god’s word cannot fail, yes. The “evidence” is in any dictionary - that’s what the word means. If you want to claim it to mean something else, then you need to stop shifting the burden of proof and provide evidence of your own of different usage. So far, all you’ve done is to assert it to mean something else – is that really all you have?           

You were going to provide evidence that an employer cannot have a relationship with an employee because consent will always automatically be invalid.

And I did. I even emboldened the relevant part. Did you not read it, or do you just find it inconvenient so now you’re asking for something else? 

One link to an organisation making an assertion on the internet is not convincing evidence. Do you have any evidence of an actual moral consensus relating to a sexual or non-sexual act where consent is not valid because of an employer- employee relationship? And I am not talking about supernatural pregnancies. I just said a non-sexual act.

“Convincing” to whom? Why not? So when you don’t like the evidence you’re given you do indeed just keep asking for more right? It’s not just “an organisation making an assertion on the internet” – interpersonal ethics are an evolving field that’s developing all the time. There are guidelines, books, academic articles about this wherever you look (try googling “structural coercion” for example), and you know full well that this thinking is already pretty much embedded in real world life – the headmaster in the example for instance would be fired, either the employer or the employee (or both) would be let go or at least the managerial line would be broken. That’s what the evidence for “moral consensus” in practice looks like, and it’s all around you.     

It's your argument that an employer-employee sexual or non-sexual relationship is automatically structural coercion - it's up to you to provide the evidence that this is the current Western moral standard. No point telling me to look it up - why would I?

I already have. I was merely telling you that you’re as capable of looking it up as I am.

You need to provide evidence of what the moral zeitgeist is. One link to someone else's assertion isn't evidence of a modern Western moral zeitgeist on structural coercion.

How many links to how many sets of guidelines all saying pretty much the same thing would constitute evidence to your mind? 10? 100? 1,000? How about the number of times people have lost their jobs because the power relationship with the employee/pupil etc was deemed to mean valid consent wasn’t possible – 1,000? 100,000? What you’re actually saying here is that no amount of evidence will be enough when it’s troublesome for you thesis so you’ll just keep demanding more until the problem goes away.       

I did not mention supernatural pregnancies.

So other type did you have in mind?     

I did read your link. It contained an unevidenced assertion about consent in the case of a sexual relationship with an employee. Posting someone else's unevidenced assertion about having sex with an employee is no different to posting your own unevidenced assertion. Do you have any actual evidence of a moral consensus on structural coercion whereby consent is invalidated in a sexual relationship between employer and employee?

FFS. To a large extent, moral statements are “unevidenced assertions”. You think murder is wrong? Fine – where’s you evidence for that? You seem to be lost in a world of endlessly demanding “evidence” (and then demanding more when it doesn’t suit you). Ethics though isn’t evidence-apt – it concerns the rational justifications for judgments about what’s morally right or wrong, just or unjust. The only evidence I need to show (and have shown, and could show many times over) is that these position exist at all, and that they they’ve been broadly incorporated into human interactions – a trivially simple thing to do – just open a newspaper for example.

And that’s called the Zeitgeist.         

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

As far as I’m aware a divorce can be legally obtained on the grounds of infidelity.

But no-one can be convicted for infidelity, which is the mistake both you and VG keep making – demanding examples of jury convictions as evidence of immorality when there are countless acts considered immoral that have nothing to do with the law.   
 

How can you deduce immorality on the grounds of competing sociologies rather than referral to the text and then for some unexplained reason deduce a modern western unified morality as a reference when we live in a time when thousands can be sacrificed to a virus and schoolboys act as drug mules on county lines?

What are you even trying to say here?

And that’s before we start on the bonkers caricatures you invoke vis drug spiking head teachers.

Except there’s nothing bonkers about it at all as a means of detonating your “but non-consensual impregnation would be fine provided there’s no sex involved” attempt.

Your deduction is more like the application of a sus law.

Wrong again. The deduction at issue here is just a deduction about the likely age of the Mary character given the time and place in which the Bible story is set. That’s all. 

[Sriram]

Hi Sriram

Hope you had a good Christmas. I agree with you that it doesn't really make sense to critique consent and power dynamics in a story about God, who according to the concept can pretty much do anything, so the story would be focused on what God did rather than focusing on whether the necessary elements of consent had been established in the nativity story. It's going to get rather tedious if BHS is going to critique God on not obtaining the consent of humans in relation to every Bible story e.g. consent in the Noah's Ark story to flooding the earth etc. After all, what's interesting about a story of humans not moderating their excesses and not following certain moral values, leading to a disastrous impact on the climate and widespread flooding? BHS seems to find it far more interesting to focus on whether humans can consent to a flood and if causing or allowing a flood was a morally perfect action on the part of the god character. Each to their own I suppose.

Regarding your assertion about religions succeeding. Humans seem to organise social systems and assert moral values, which they try to impose on others to regulate human interaction, as can be seen in the current transgender debate and in the discussions on here about what is morally right or wrong.

Everyone has their opinion and pass judgements on others about what is a morally good or bad action/ perspective/ value or thought. It doesn't seem like religion is necessary for this - but religion can be a useful way to organise and disseminate ideas to mass audiences and to try to create cohesive productive units to work towards a common goal, especially in times of uncertainty and danger. I can certainly see it would be useful to leaders trying to organise societies to have a system or concept with a supernatural entity that was all the omnis and also benevolent, merciful and just. I think it helped speed the process of organising hierarchies in society, and perhaps made the process more ruthlessly efficient than without the gods.

   

Yes VG...we took my grandson to a mall to see the lights and to meet Santa.  Hope you had a good time too.

I think the discussion about consent is pointless because it is about the behavior of someone who is (by definition) above morality and ethics. Whose consent does God take before earthquakes and tsunamis and pandemics...?  His actions are believed to be inscrutable and beyond understanding.

[bluehillside Retd.]

VG,

Hope you had a good Christmas. I agree with you that it doesn't really make sense to critique consent and power dynamics in a story about God, who according to the concept can pretty much do anything, so the story would be focused on what God did rather than focusing on whether the necessary elements of consent had been established in the nativity story.

Except of course many Christians precisely do focus on the supposed moral perfection of their god as the exemplar for how they too should behave. You could try I suppose to persuade all of Christendom to look instead just at what the god character of the Bible supposedly did because he could “do anything”, but you’d have a tough job I think.     

It's going to get rather tedious if BHS is going to critique God on not obtaining the consent of humans in relation to every Bible story e.g. consent in the Noah's Ark story to flooding the earth etc. After all, what's interesting about a story of humans not moderating their excesses and not following certain moral values, leading to a disastrous impact on the climate and widespread flooding? BHS seems to find it far more interesting to focus on whether humans can consent to a flood and if causing or allowing a flood was a morally perfect action on the part of the god character. Each to their own I suppose.

Would you mind not misrepresenting me quite to egregiously. I’ve neither said nor implied any such thing, as I suspect you well know.   

Regarding your assertion about religions succeeding. Humans seem to organise social systems and assert moral values, which they try to impose on others to regulate human interaction, as can be seen in the current transgender debate and in the discussions on here about what is morally right or wrong.

Everyone has their opinion and pass judgements on others about what is a morally good or bad action/ perspective/ value or thought. It doesn't seem like religion is necessary for this - but religion can be a useful way to organise and disseminate ideas to mass audiences and to try to create cohesive productive units to work towards a common goal, especially in times of uncertainty and danger. I can certainly see it would be useful to leaders trying to organise societies to have a system or concept with a supernatural entity that was all the omnis and also benevolent, merciful and just. I think it helped speed the process of organising hierarchies in society, and perhaps made the process more ruthlessly efficient than without the gods.

Except of course blurring the lines from “these myths have useful social functions” to “these myths aren’t just myths. They’re factually true” has arguably led to far more “ruthless efficiency” in appalling ways than would otherwise have been the case.   
 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

I think the discussion about consent is pointless because it is about the behavior of someone who is (by definition) above morality and ethics. Whose consent does God take before earthquakes and tsunamis and pandemics...?  His actions are believed to be inscrutable and beyond understanding.

If you want to argue for an amoral god "above morality and ethics" – ie, who could be behave morally well, morally appallingly or morally anything else in between by our standards – that's up to you, but you'd have a huge amount of Christian theology against you that as I understand it prefers instead the idea of a god who's only morally perfect.   

Good luck with it though.   

[Sriram]

Sriram,

If you want to argue for an amoral god "above morality and ethics" – ie, who could be behave morally well, morally appallingly or morally anything else in between by our standards – that's up to you, but you'd have a huge amount of Christian theology against you that as I understand it prefers instead the idea of a god who's only morally perfect.   

Good luck with it though.

I am sure that even devout Christians will not be able to explain natural disasters, children developing serious illnesses, being born retarded, children getting molested and murdered....etc.etc. They will only attribute it to God's infinite wisdom. They will not judge God....   

We all live in society as equals...God doesn't.    Morality as it applies to us, is irrelevant to God.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

I am sure that even devout Christians will not be able to explain natural disasters, children developing serious illnesses, being born retarded, children getting molested and murdered....etc.etc. They will only attribute it to God's infinite wisdom. They will not judge God....   

We all live in society as equals...God doesn't.    Morality as it applies to us, is irrelevant to God.

Christians (and other theists with gods of their own) have a huge challenge with “the problem of evil” – ie, how to explain bad things happening to innocent people when there’s a god of the omnis in charge. That’s why they have to tie themselves in such knots (“god knows best”, “it’s a mystery”, “that way the babies with brain cancer meet god even sooner” etc). It’s the apologetics of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin so far as I can see, but in any case it’s not a problem atheists have to address (let alone to finesse).     

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG,

The point being that your habit of just reflecting back the criticisms you receive is juvenile. It does you no credit.

And my point being that the way you word your criticisms is juvenile and they deserve the response I am giving them. Any credit it does me is a mirror reflection of the credit your juvenile remarks do you. So if you want to play, sure let's play.

You’re really struggling for comprehension again here. I didn’t say that the god character’s behaviour was morally wrong – what I said was that either the god character’s behaviour was morally wrong (and current sensibilities are better), or it’s the other way around (or, both are wrong). This must be the case because the behaviour of the god character on the Bible story and current sensibilities are misaligned. I was asking you therefore which of the options on the table you thought to be morally better.   

And I responded that god's behaviour could have been morally right for that situation, and our behaviour could be morally right for now. I also asked you the question as to why you thought that the morals of the god character in that story need to be aligned with the morals of humans today. Unless you are claiming that morals should not change depending on the situation and circumstances and/or that human moral behaviour in their interactions with other humans should be the same as the morality of the god character.   

Wrong again. You’re not “interpreting” anything. You’re just finding one term with a plain meaning (“will”)

You can assert that it has a plain meaning but others disagree with you. You have provided no evidence to show that your meaning is the only possible meaning. Oh well. Guess we'll have to keep agreeing to disagree.

Especially when an “angel” assures the Mary character that god’s word cannot fail, yes.

The angel has not said God cannot change course. So once again we just have your interpretation of the meaning of the words in the story that is different from the meanings other people have interpreted. You have provided no evidence to show that your meaning is the only possible meaning. Oh well. Guess we'll have to keep agreeing to disagree.
           

And I did. I even emboldened the relevant part. Did you not read it, or do you just find it inconvenient so now you’re asking for something else? 

All you put in bold was someone else's assertion on the internet, which is no more convincing than if you asserted it. If one organisation's assertion from the internet is your idea of evidence of a currently accepted moral standard, I can see why you are struggling to make your case. There are so many surveys online where people say that they not only had relationships with employees, but think work is the place where many people meet their partners, that I can't even be bothered to link to them. The advice online is that employers should have policies in relation to relationships in order to protect the business in case it gets sued for sexual harassment or discrimination if things go wrong or the relationship creates a conflict of interest. Not sure what policy civil servants are required to follow in terms of relationships with colleagues or their managers. As you are so focused on the word "servant" it might be worth you checking if any civil servants have consented to relationships that, according to you, it is impossible to give valid consent for. 

“Convincing” to whom? Why not? So when you don’t like the evidence you’re given you do indeed just keep asking for more right? It’s not just “an organisation making an assertion on the internet” – interpersonal ethics are an evolving field that’s developing all the time. There are guidelines, books, academic articles about this wherever you look (try googling “structural coercion” for example), and you know full well that this thinking is already pretty much embedded in real world life – the headmaster in the example for instance would be fired, either the employer or the employee (or both) would be let go or at least the managerial line would be broken. That’s what the evidence for “moral consensus” in practice looks like, and it’s all around you.

No I don't know full well - in fact I completely disagree with you that employees are routinely let go for dating in the workplace. There are some companies that have this as a rule, but not a lot of companies. And the reason for these rules are to protect the business from a lawsuit.

What is not convincing, is you asserting there is a moral consensus but not being able to provide evidence of a moral consensus.

We're not talking about a headmaster as you said the moral standard applied even when people were not under-age.     

I already have. I was merely telling you that you’re as capable of looking it up as I am.

No you haven't - you linked to one organisation online that made an assertion and told me to Google structural coercion. That's rubbish in terms of evidence to support your assertions. You spend lots of time on here telling other people how evidence works, I suggest you school yourself on the basics of evidence. 

How many links to how many sets of guidelines all saying pretty much the same thing would constitute evidence to your mind? 10? 100? 1,000? How about the number of times people have lost their jobs because the power relationship with the employee/pupil etc was deemed to mean valid consent wasn’t possible – 1,000? 100,000? What you’re actually saying here is that no amount of evidence will be enough when it’s troublesome for you thesis so you’ll just keep demanding more until the problem goes away.

What you're doing here is misrepresenting me because you can't come up with evidence that there is an accepted moral standard that you will be fired for dating in the workplace. If there were so many links to so many guidelines and so much evidence of people losing their jobs merely for dating, you presumably could have done better than linking to one US organisation that just asserted the same claim as you. And as I keep saying, if there were a few companies that have terminated employment just for dating, it was to protect the business from potential future lawsuits.   

So other type did you have in mind?

Why even look at pregnancies at all - it isn't illegal or exploitative to get pregnant. The issue that might make a pregnancy problematic is the issue of consent. Why not come up with any act that isn't intrinsically illegal or exploitative to demonstrate your claims about valid consent in an employer / employee relationship.     

FFS. To a large extent, moral statements are “unevidenced assertions”. You think murder is wrong? Fine – where’s you evidence for that? You seem to be lost in a world of endlessly demanding “evidence” (and then demanding more when it doesn’t suit you). Ethics though isn’t evidence-apt – it concerns the rational justifications for judgments about what’s morally right or wrong, just or unjust. The only evidence I need to show (and have shown, and could show many times over) is that these position exist at all, and that they they’ve been broadly incorporated into human interactions – a trivially simple thing to do – just open a newspaper for example.

And that’s called the Zeitgeist.       

Not true. I was asking for evidence for the Western standard you claimed existed about consent. Especially the one that you linked to which said "Unequal power dynamics, such as engaging in sexual activity with an employee... also mean that consent cannot be freely given." All I see when I look at media reports is lots of discussion and disagreement about consent - was there valid consent to puberty blockers or other medical procedures or relationships, discussions about children consenting to non-therapeutic circumcision, whether the age of consent should be lowered etc etc

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

VG,

Except of course many Christians precisely do focus on the supposed moral perfection of their god as the exemplar for how they too should behave. You could try I suppose to persuade all of Christendom to look instead just at what the god character of the Bible supposedly did because he could “do anything”, but you’d have a tough job I think.

No doubt we have various examples of Christians who claim the role of God as the judge of what is morally acceptable, and even kill people who they think have sinned, because religious texts have stories of God killing people. There are also Christians who believe, based on their interpretation of their religious texts and traditions, that only God can take another person's life - so just because Chritians believe as a faith claim that God is morally perfect, they certainly aren't advocating that humans can do whatever God does.

Given there are societies with death penalties and societies that have abolished that punishment, no matter how horrendous the crime, it seems people disagree on the morality of killing people - no requirement for gods to be involved.   

Except of course blurring the lines from “these myths have useful social functions” to “these myths aren’t just myths. They’re factually true” has arguably led to far more “ruthless efficiency” in appalling ways than would otherwise have been the case.   

I'm pretty sure religion has a greater influence on our behaviour if we believe it's more than a myth, so I would think if we want to increase the social usefulness of religion we would have to have more faith in it than just believing it to be a myth. I guess we'll never know, since there are so many other variables apart from religion that would have influenced people's behaviour.

[Sriram]

Sriram,

Christians (and other theists with gods of their own) have a huge challenge with “the problem of evil” – ie, how to explain bad things happening to innocent people when there’s a god of the omnis in charge. That’s why they have to tie themselves in such knots (“god knows best”, “it’s a mystery”, “that way the babies with brain cancer meet god even sooner” etc). It’s the apologetics of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin so far as I can see, but in any case it’s not a problem atheists have to address (let alone to finesse).   

The issue is the inscrutable nature of life itself...not just evil. To understand evil...we must understand life.  No one understands the purpose or meaning of life. It really is a mystery...whether we attribute it to a God or otherwise. 

Scientists might brush it all off as randomness or chance or having no purpose. That doesn't mean it is true. For most people that sort of nonchalance is not enough. They would rather believe in a God (with all its baggage) than accept it all as just chance. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Sriram,

Christians (and other theists with gods of their own) have a huge challenge with “the problem of evil” – ie, how to explain bad things happening to innocent people when there’s a god of the omnis in charge. That’s why they have to tie themselves in such knots (“god knows best”, “it’s a mystery”, “that way the babies with brain cancer meet god even sooner” etc). It’s the apologetics of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin so far as I can see, but in any case it’s not a problem atheists have to address (let alone to finesse).   

Until evil doesn't exist it is a problem for everyone and only simpletons have the excuse of stearing clear of the questions what and why it seems to me.

You seem to be claiming comfortable agnosticism for atheists and denying that for everybody else.

Fry seems to be eliminating man made environmental causes in the case of juvenile cancers. Presumably when challenged he uses his dramatic skills and patrician tone to counteract challenge.
Like everything else we are entitled to ask atheists, what is the non religious explanation of evil?

[The Accountant, OBE, KC]

Sriram,

Christians (and other theists with gods of their own) have a huge challenge with “the problem of evil” – ie, how to explain bad things happening to innocent people when there’s a god of the omnis in charge. That’s why they have to tie themselves in such knots (“god knows best”, “it’s a mystery”, “that way the babies with brain cancer meet god even sooner” etc). It’s the apologetics of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin so far as I can see, but in any case it’s not a problem atheists have to address (let alone to finesse).   

Seems reasonable to me to say "it's a mystery why bad things happen to innocent people". Believing in an omniscient god does not mean theists become omniscient too.

Cancer is a biological issue - not sure I would describe something that has no moral capacity as evil. Humans fulfil many of their basic needs for food, shelter, protection, emotional connections etc through interaction with other humans Most humans seem to have the capacity to make moral choices. Many humans have questions about their place in the universe, their purpose, what is good and evil in this context of human interaction. Religion is one way for humans to explore and regulate that capacity for moral choice on an individual level as well as a family / community / society level.

[Enki]

Vlad,

Atheists don't have to address the problem of explaining why 'evil' exists when there is supposed to be a god of the omnis for obvious reasons.

However Your question  'Like everything else we are entitled to ask atheists, what is the non religious explanation of evil?' has been answered many times by the atheists on this forum. So, I would have thought that you would have been aware of their responses. Here is one of the later discussions on the subject.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=18734.0

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Atheists don't have to address the problem of explaining why 'evil' exists when there is supposed to be a god of the omnis for obvious reasons.

If atheists are saying there is something wrong with theist explanations on the problem of evil then we are entitled to ask why and how atheists think theists are wrong. In terms of making a challenge on the grounds of God of the Omnis there is a clear category error made by atheists when they use the same methodology for all loving as they do for say omniscience or omnipresence. I wonder if you can spot the issue here.

However Your question  'Like everything else we are entitled to ask atheists, what is the non religious explanation of evil?' has been answered many times by the atheists on this forum. So, I would have thought that you would have been aware of their responses. Here is one of the later discussions on the subject.

http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=18734.0

If atheists have accepted the challenge then the claim we don’t have to....seems like a bit of arrogant bravado. Until atheists tackle the aforementioned category issue they have answered nothing.

[Maeght]

If atheists are saying there is something wrong with theist explanations on the problem of evil then we are entitled to ask why and how atheists think theists are wrong. In terms of making a challenge on the grounds of God of the Omnis there is a clear category error made by atheists when they use the same methodology for all loving as they do for say omniscience or omnipresence. I wonder if you can spot the issue here.If atheists have accepted the challenge then the claim we don’t have to....seems like a bit of arrogant bravado. Until atheists tackle the aforementioned category issue they have answered nothing.

There are lots of reasons why people do bad things. Self interest, lack of empathy, bad upbringing, mental illness etc etc

The point some atheists make is why does God allow bad things to happen to people if he has the power to intervene and prevent those things?

[Enki]

If atheists are saying there is something wrong with theist explanations on the problem of evil then we are entitled to ask why and how atheists think theists are wrong. In terms of making a challenge on the grounds of God of the Omnis there is a clear category error made by atheists when they use the same methodology for all loving as they do for say omniscience or omnipresence. I wonder if you can spot the issue here.If atheists have accepted the challenge then the claim we don’t have to....seems like a bit of arrogant bravado. Until atheists tackle the aforementioned category issue they have answered nothing.

If one believes in a god of the omnis then it's up to that person to explain how or why this god allows bad things to happen in the world, not me. So far I've not seen any convincing explanation. If you are one of those people then it's your problem, not mine.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If one believes in a god of the omnis then it's up to that person to explain how or why this god allows bad things to happen in the world, not me. So far I've not seen any convincing explanation. If you are one of those people then it's your problem, not mine.

No I think it is incumbent on the person making the assertion “Bad things happen” to complete that picture first.

[Maeght]

No I think it is incumbent on the person making the assertion “Bad things happen” to complete that picture first.

If you say bad things happen all you need to do to complete the picture is to show bad things happen. We all know they do. What is needed beyond that? Are you talking about defining bad?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

If you say bad things happen all you need to do to complete the picture is to show bad things happen. We all know they do. What is needed beyond that? Are you talking about defining bad?

But surely it is here that we run into the various atheist views of what is bad. Is evil not a thing, is evil in the opinion of the beholder or what? A similar problem occurs with what we mean by love in the term all loving, where it is clear that it’s not clear cut like defining say,  omnipresence.

[Nearly Sane]

But surely it is here that we run into the various atheist views of what is bad. Is evil not a thing, is evil in the opinion of the beholder or what? A similar problem occurs with what we mean by love in the term all loving, where it is clear that it’s not clear cut like defining say,  omnipresence.

What's clear cut about defining omnipresence?

[Enki]

No I think it is incumbent on the person making the assertion “Bad things happen” to complete that picture first.

I'll give you several examples.

The 2004 tsunami. Killed many thousands. Why did a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

Childhood leukemia. Why does a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

Persons born with serious incapacities. Why does a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

The Moors murderers. Why did a a god of the omnis not protect the innocent?

All these, I would suggest, are 'bad things' and all these things happen or have happened, and many people would call them 'evil' be they either natural or moral evils.

Over to you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I'll give you several examples.

The 2004 tsunami. Killed many thousands. Why did a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

He allows the natural forces which shape us without continual intervention. There is no malice about this 0n the part of nature and human error. The root of us considering these things to be bad is what i’d Call the separation of communion...with selves, with life, with loved ones, with community and with God. Before the fall this separation was not a thing merely a transition.

Childhood leukemia. Why does a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

Persons born with serious incapacities. Why does a god of the omnis allow it to happen?

For reasons given above. These are often down to the workings of natural forces although leukaemia and berth defects have also been down to man made sources.

The Moors murderers. Why did a a god of the omnis not protect the innocent?

And here we get on to real evil and where moral realism and stories of the fall are imho a better explanatory than moral relativism. In this respect then Humanists have a harder time justifying the intrinsic goodness of mankind

All these, I would suggest, are 'bad things' and all these things happen or have happened, and many people would call them 'evil' be they either natural or moral evils.

It looks as though I am more apt to distinguish deliberate human evil and natural evil and human error than your bundling of all evil.