I posted one of my SIN posts over at Debunking Christianity recently, and this comment was posted which I found pretty insightful:
“And, of course, such suffering, in light of an all-loving God, must be seen as necessary for some greater good.”
Theists often claim their gods have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evils that often reference a greater good. But it makes no sense to allege a perfectly good being uses evils to bring about its desired ends when it’s also claimed such a being is the source and standard of morality.
Dawson Bethrick of the Incinerating Presuppositionalism blog nailed it. >>>
“According to Bahnsen and many other Christians, the Christian god is characterized as actually using evil to achieve its goals. And yet we are told that this being which uses evil to achieve its goals is the origin of morality, the “standard” of the good, an “all-good” being which does no evil and is not contaminated by any guilt, etc.
No one has been able to explain to me how a being which chooses to employ evil means to achieve its ends can be rightly and coherently considered “good.” (In fact, I don’t think any Christian has really tried to explain this to me, once I put the matter in these terms.) How is it “good” to use evil means to achieve one’s ends? (Of course, this doesn’t even begin to raise the question of whether it’s coherent to suppose that an immortal, indestructible and perfect being could have any goals or ends in the first place!)”
– http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/proof-that-christian-god-does-not-exist.html
Here we have a clear criticism of consequentialist ethics in the manner of Kant, such that using people as means to an end, and more exactly, using evils as a way of getting good, is problematic.
