The Problem of Evil (PoE)

To open, let us clarify an issue regarding the nature of this argument. It first needs to be said that it is an argument against God not one used for a theist to argue for God's existence. While this seems trivial on the outset as it is called the problem of evil not the solution of evil, it needs to be clarified that in regard to the burden of proof that Unitedandy has to fully show as he has noted in his opening post : "... the existence of gratuitous evils present what most recognise as a very powerful argument against the existence of God" Note very clearly that Unitedandy does not attempt to defend the logical problem of evil which notes it is impossible for there to be evil if an omni-max God exists. The reason this argument is rarely presently advocated is that it was soundly refuted by Plantinga[1]. Thus what Unitedandy is actually asserting is that the existence of evil does not make God impossible it just makes it unlikely, implausable, etc. . The first point I would make in refutation is thus one of clarification : C1) What exactly is the resolution being very specific, noting that something is an argument against something is rather vague. What exactly are we talking about, is it that observations of evil makes God's existence improbable? Second, as noted in the above, while Unitedandy clearly has the burden of proof, in each of his assertions he has done just that, made assertions and thus it is demanded now that for each of them he is to provide actual warrant. P1) To defend this premise Unitedandy notes "on the face of it, the idea that God may well permit gratuitous evil is absurd". There is little to say in this regard except to note on the face of it much of what we know to be true is absurd from any point of view of common sense and intuition. Do I really need to generate a list of examples from modern physics in which matter behaves in ways that does not make sense even to the people who have discovered it. I will be a bit indulgent here as it is a field close to my heart and quote from a few people I have great respect for : "...the "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be." - Richard Feynman" "For those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." - Niels Bohr and probably the most telling : "If that turns out to be true, I'll quit physics." - Max von Laue The latter quote had von Laue talking about duality in physics which is commonly introduced to undergraduate students in that an electron behaves one way if you look at it in one way, it behaves another way if you look at it another way and if you don't look at it then it behaves in both ways in all places/times. At which point the students have no choice but to say "What you talkin' bout Willis?" Note all of the above were Nobel Laurates in Physics, the highest honor given and for each of them the ideas that modern physics revealed were completely shocking, baffling and in Laue's case simply appalling. I have left out the famous case of Einstein simply because it is well known, but I will present it because the followup it relevant. "God does not play dice with the cosmos." - Albert Einstein and to wit Bohr replied after hearing Einstein keep saying this finally retorted : "Einstein, do not presume to tell God what to do." - Niels Bohr My point, humor aside is that it is simply not an argument to say something appears to be absurd that it must be false. I would have thought it is absurd that "Friday's" would be so popular but here we are with approaching 150 million people being apparently fascinated by such drivel, "they, they so excited" obviously. P2) Again, Unitedandy's defense of this premise is "... evil exists in our world - that much is obvious". Now it has to be stated here is we are talking about a very specific argument, and the argument, in its most general form, is akin to stating there are things we can observe which we should not observe if an omni-max God exists. Ok, fine, but that needs justification it can not simply be stated and then advocated as an argument again simply because "it is obvious". P3) To affirm this premise Unitedandy uses the argument that there is no obvious or conceivable reason why a God who could stop such observables would not stop them and thus concludes that is an argument against God. Now again as noted earlier we need to clarify exactly the nature of the resolution as "argument against" is fairly vague, but in any case the conclusion seems to affirm something akin to "this makes it unlikely God exists". Now as a comment here I make the following comment, our current understanding of gravity is fairly problematic. We can not account for effects which lead us to postulate such things as dark matter (which is matter which we can not observe, hence is it "dark" to our eyes, but still has gravitational effects). We are also at a complete loss to try to apply gravity at small distances and time scales and thus the early universe is a blank as we can not model it, and this is also why black holes create singularities (points at which physics breaks down as the equations contain unnormalized infinities). At this time we simply do not have solutions to these problems, in fact it is not even known if these will have solutions - does this mean then we could say that gravity does not exist? In closing, to clarify I do actually have arguments to oppose the above premises, but I will demand very strongly that Unitedandy actually first provide an argument for each premise first and not simply retreat to - it is obvious, or it is absurd not to accept it. Quite frankly, if these were all obvious and it was absurd not to challenge them then this would be a closed matter in theology and philosophy and it is obvious that is not the case and absurd to make such a claim(*). [1] http://www.public.iastate.edu... [2] http://horizonspeaks.wordpress.com... (*yeah this is irony, this should be obvious**) (**so was that, Alanis Morissette eat your heart out)