Posted in atheism, tagged Adam and Eve, Bible, Book of Job, Dalai Lama, Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer, Evil, evolution, faith, Free will, Garden of Eden, Genesis, God, Harlequin babies, Job, Karma, Law of karma, natural selection, Original sin, Problem of evil, Problem of suffering, Punishment, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Sin, Suffering, Theodicy, Todd Allen Gates, ToddAllenGates, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Zoroastrian, Zoroastrianism on January 25, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Of the following eight explanations for suffering:
I. THE SUPERNATURAL EXPLANATIONS
I. A: In the “Big Picture,” everything is for the best because …
A.1 – suffering is punishment for wrong-doing
A.2 – suffering benefits us
A.3 – suffering must exist for the greater good of Free Will
A.4 – it’s beyond our understanding
A.5 – the perceived world is just an illusion, hence suffering, too, is just an illusion
I. B: The Divine is not All-Powerful
I. C: The Divine is not All-Good
II. THE NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION: the natural world is indifferent to creature suffering
—which explanation (or combination of explanations) can most accurately describe and predict a wide set of observations?
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Posted in atheism, tagged Adam and Eve, Bible, Book of Job, Dalai Lama, Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer, Evil, evolution, faith, Free will, Garden of Eden, Genesis, God, Harlequin babies, Job, Karma, Law of karma, natural selection, Original sin, Problem of evil, Problem of suffering, Punishment, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Sin, Suffering, Theodicy, Todd Allen Gates, ToddAllenGates, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Zoroastrian, Zoroastrianism on January 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Of the following eight explanations for suffering:
I. THE SUPERNATURAL EXPLANATIONS
I. A: In the “Big Picture,” everything is for the best because …
A.1 – suffering is punishment for wrong-doing
A.2 – suffering benefits us
A.3 – suffering must exist for the greater good of Free Will
A.4 – it’s beyond our understanding
A.5 – the perceived world is just an illusion, hence suffering, too, is just an illusion
I. B: The Divine is not All-Powerful
I. C: The Divine is not All-Good
II. THE NATURALISTIC EXPLANATION: the natural world is indifferent to creature suffering
—which explanation (or combination of explanations) can most accurately describe and predict a wide set of observations?
Read Full Post »
Posted in atheism, tagged altruism, atheist, Bible, Binti Jua, bonobo, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzee, Christian, compassion, conflict resolution, cooperation, Creator, Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer, empathy, equality, ethics, evolution, fairness, faith, Frans De Waal, God, inequality, Jainism, Jesus Christ, Morality, natural selection, Our Inner Ape, Primatologist, reproductive success, Sarah Brosnan, social animals, Socratic Method, struggle for survival on January 20, 2009 | 3 Comments »
PRE-FACE
The main body of my book, Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer, is a Socratic dialogue between two characters: a Christian proselytizer and a skeptic. The skeptic does not discuss atheism, but instead tentatively accepts—for argument’s sake—the Christian’s premises that there is a Creator of sorts, that this said-Creator has made some sort of communication [...]
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