{"id":801,"date":"2008-08-07T03:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/08\/07\/sye-on-the-god-of-eth\/"},"modified":"2008-08-07T03:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T03:39:00","slug":"sye-on-the-god-of-eth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/08\/07\/sye-on-the-god-of-eth\/","title":{"rendered":"Sye on “The God of Eth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sye has read “The God of Eth” <\/a>– thanks Sye, for doing that – and here’s his response:<\/p>\n

Alright, I read your \u201cGod of Eth.\u201d My conclusion, it is entirely irrelevant to our discussion. Both debaters in your story are arguing evidentially, and I am a presuppositionalist, not an evidentialist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their debate presupposes the laws of logic, which cannot be accounted for outside of God\u2019s revelation. That same God also reveals that He is all good. There is no logical contradiction with God\u2019s being all good, and the presence of evil, as you cannot show that God does not have a morally sufficient reason for the evil in this world. You can\u2019t even tell us what evil is, apart from an absolute standard of morality (God).<\/span><\/p>\n

ME Sye, quoting from your website, I see you say:<\/p>\n

“Don’t get me wrong, I think evidential arguments are wonderful – for Christians”<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet now, when I give you evidence against what you believe, you say you are “not an evidentialist”. Does this mean you will consider and discuss evidence for<\/span> the existence of God with Christians<\/span>, but not evidence against<\/span> the existence of God with us<\/span>?<\/p>\n

SYE Their debate presupposes the laws of logic, which cannot be accounted for outside of God\u2019s revelation.<\/p>\n

<\/span>ME This is neither established by you, nor even true.<\/p>\n

SYE That same God also reveals that He is all good.
<\/span>
ME By giving sweet, lovely people horrendous diseases? By burying tend of thousands of children alive, to die alone in the dark over days or weeks, in the Pakistan earthquake? Good grief, God’s even a petty, jealous, genocidal maniac in the Old Testament. As Alexander Waugh relates in his book God – The Biography<\/span>. <\/p>\n

Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, had been annoying his friends by talking too much. They wagered he could not keep quiet for a week. Churchill, a keen gambler, thought he could win the bet by reading the Bible. But he didn’t last long. After a few pages, he was heard to exclaim, “God! God’s a shit!”
<\/span><\/span>
SYE: There is no logical contradiction with God\u2019s being all good, and the presence of evil, as you cannot show that God does not have a morally sufficient reason for the evil in this world.<\/p>\n

<\/span>ME: Like many Christians, you seem to be confusing here the logical and evidential problems of evil. I am not saying God’s existence is logically<\/span> incompatible with the existence of evil. I am saying the sheer quantity<\/span> of suffering heaped on sentient beings is very powerful evidence<\/span> that there’s no such all-powerful all-good God. We can show it’s extraordinarily unlikely that there’s an all-powerful all-good God in just the same way that we can show it’s extraordinarily unlikely there’s an evil God. And we can show that. After all, you do think it’s extremely unlikely there’s an evil God, don’t you, and for just such reasons<\/span>? Well, there are much the same sort of reasons for supposing there’s no all-powerful all-good God.<\/p>\n

<\/span>SYE: You can\u2019t even tell us what evil is, apart from an absolute standard of morality (God).
<\/span>
ME: Another common misunderstanding, Sye. The problem can be rejigged without reference to evil at all. Let’s just talk about pain and suffering. I can, as an atheist, know what that is. So now explain why an all-powerful and all-good god would unleash literally unimaginable quantities of pain and suffering on sentient creatures over hundreds of millions of years (or do you think the entire universe is 6,000 years old?)
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sye has read “The God of Eth” – thanks Sye, for doing that – and here’s his response: Alright, I read your \u201cGod of Eth.\u201d My conclusion, it is entirely irrelevant to our discussion. Both debaters in your story are arguing evidentially, and I am a presuppositionalist, not an evidentialist. Their debate presupposes the laws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sinner-ministries-proof-of-the-existence-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}