Those are again just the facts about the world we live in. Howard Kainz. Just as people have taken the presence of evil as a reason to question the validity of Christianity, so also people have seen the presence of good as inconsistent with Christianity’s message. But even now the light is beginning to shine and I am surrounded by so much goodness. Yep. The Problem of Good: When the World Seems Fine Without God [D. Marion Clark, D. Marion Clark] on Amazon.com. It causes a problem for ultimate justice and morality, and ultimate meaningfulness for morality. . Regardless, the author is right that for many/most atheists, they believe that there are no (known) gods, no (known) Heaven, no eternal (a billion years from now) happiness that some humans here today will experience. The theist must rise to the challenge, to be sure. Morality is fundamentally about values, which often differ. They are not even rational arguments. No doubt you are familiar with how it goes. The Problem of Good. The kind atheist can try to persuade (I’ll give you donuts if you are kind! They made these women suffer in the worst ways possible. DA claims that the atheism will result in something that is “incoherent and morally objectionable”. The Problem of Good. The ability to find beauty everywhere. But what if one could defeat death? Overarching statements like this prove nothing. I will set my mind on good. The issue here is whether atheism is false. Beauty. A story in the Washington Post said “20 years ago globalization was pitched as a strategy that would raise all boats in poor and rich countries alike. But DA wants to know how atheists can show “why and how the other person should be “bound” to the moral observations”. No evidence shows this (other than that the kind people want you to be kind. ‎The problem of evil is one we’re all familiar with . It is also painfully obvious that the police took much longer to... To a Baby, "Abortion" vs. "Infanticide" is Hair-Splitting... Topic change, but hardly a breather. But if creation is healed and evil exiled then God is the victor. This problem is generally phrased in the form of a question, "why does God allow evil?" DA then wrongly says “their behavior proves it.” That is, when atheists say “I like kindness” and say “you ought to be kind!” DA thinks this proves that God exists. If “objective” means something like “godly” or “supernatural” then DA is right. If you didn’t, the force of your EPOE argument against God would be weakened to almost nil. The problem of good is that it unravels the argument raised by the problem of evil. The problem of good Will not stop confronting me, Even when I want it to. Goodness In man is not a mere passive quality, but the deliberate preference of right to wrong, the firm and persistent resistance of all moral evil, and the choosing and following of all moral good. (what he called the Tao). But that’s an altogether separate argument (or separate large set of arguments). That is, nothing about existing morality disproves atheism or proves theism. But the atheist must also take his turn offering his own explanation, and his task faces a complication the theist does not encounter. Of course they do, but that has no bearing upon my argument. I’m simply stating my position on that,m since you keep bringing it up, for some odd reason. But nothing about that disproves atheism. . It does not. DA says, “why and how [should] the other person…be “bound” to the moral observations”. And perhaps this argument has entered your head without the help of an antagonistic atheist, especially when you have faced a time of tragedy or pain in your own life. What is the measure? Justice. It has no such thing, and cannot, by definition. I will look for good. Let me explain. Even though there is no god, atheists can hope for mean people to be punishing “in the end”, and for kind people to be rewarded “in the end”. The atheist who challenges Christianity by asking how God can exist in a world with evil faces a bigger problem than the theist. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. , unless he meant, “at rock bottom” and was just repeating the point I just made. Are there problems (“shortcomings”) with atheism? It may be true that some atheists “feel” themselves to be the measure of all things. J.L. Joy. This ain’t rocket science. It’s one of the issues in the “long run” but not primarily in my mind (if at all) when making the problem of good argument. It has no bearing on my overall argument. (Romans 8:18f). If God is all powerful – omnipotent, all knowing – omniscient, and all good – omnibenevolent, how can that same God allow evil to exist and for bad things to happen to good people? What is true is that if one continues to ask questions about things we will always get to an arbitrary point (the point in which we don’t have an answer for something). If it means something “godly” then yes, atheists don’t have godly/objective morality (and neither does anyone else). Nothing shows that God exists, or “put” in (ALL of) us a “sense” of “right and wrong” (knowledge? That’s a statement of sociology (my major), not philosophy. Today, Professor Howard Kainz puts things into a Catholic perspective that both enlightens and provokes … On what basis can we absolutely condemn anything as evil (e.g. Atheists do actually value things. That remains to be shown.DA says that atheists have 5 problems: 1) Can’t really consistently define “evil” in the first place;2) Has no hope of eventual eschatological justice;3) Has no objective basis of condemning evil;4) Has no belief in a heaven of everlasting bliss;5) Has to believe in an ultimately absolutely hopeless and meaningless universe.”. If there is no God and there are rapes, then we live in a world that is “morally objectionable” if one means by that “frustrating to kind people”. THE PROBLEM OF GOOD FAITH. I was saying, in effect, “you say we have a problem? What one person has a reason to do often doesn’t apply to a different person with different values/desires. Truth. . If you really believed this, you couldn’t use rape as your “silver bullet” example to try to condemn God with: in your EPOE arguments. So, those who are kind live in a difficult world: mean people live here too! In the end, the deciding factor in God’s judgment will still be Christian or non-Christian, and it is only by this grace that that decision has not been made yet. So, we can try to persuade or threaten them, or run from them. But this is false. Nothing shows this to be true. The theists mistake is in thinking that everyone really does have to be kind (and some atheists say this, which doesn’t help), regardless of anything. (I’ve yet to see anyone come close to refuting the EPOE, but that’s for another day). : In the mere six weeks during which the Japanese perpetrated the Nanking Massacre starting on Dec. 13, 1937, an estimated 20,000-80,000 Chinese women were brutally raped and sexually assaulted by the invading soldiers. What is true is that if one continues to ask questions about things we will always get to an arbitrary point (the point in which we don’t have an answer for something). Friends. To hear it told you would think that evil is so ubiquitous that goodness cannot be found. Yep. Even if that were true (which it isn’t), for those who became mean people (which the author indicated exist), it would be false to say, out of nowhere (automatically, necessarily, regardless of your strongest desires) “you OUGHT to be kind!” This is just a form of intellectual bullying. A smiling face and a warm embrace. And we probably would throw unkind atheists (like rapists) in jail. An essay or paper on Mencius: The Problem of Good and Evil. Nothing about the lack of a perfectly evil being fails to disprove the EPOE [evidential problem of evil], which rightly shows that a perfectly good being probably doesn’t exist. We can get to that in due course. The Problem of Good: When the World Seems Fine Without God Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! C. S. Lewis in fact did this at the end of his book, The Abolition of Man. Those are just facts, truths, likelihoods. So far the author hasn’t done anything to show that this atheistic “relativistic” morality leads to any absurdity that falsifies it. but what about the problem of good ? I think you would agree with me, on the other hand that the nuclear bombing of Japan was immoral insofar as it killed innocent civilians (the US then became as evil as their enemy). It’s no solution at all. (But it is!) This amounts to saying (to paraphrase your words): “All people do not have to refrain from rape. The dialogue could have been about that, but DA indicates it will be about the nature of morality. “Objective” in this context means a binding, non-arbitrary standard of absolute morals within the framework of atheism. DA is right about one thing: “morality” is relative in one sense: people exist, and they often desire/prefer/like/want different things. But that’s false. . DA says, “according to the atheist’s presuppositions, taken to their ultimate logical (and above all, practical, in concrete, real-world, human terms) consequences, cannot be carried through in a non-arbitrary manner, and will always end up incoherent and morally objectionable. So this curious claim will have to be unpacked and elaborated upon. How can a loving and all-powerful God allow so much evil and suffering? Culture or society 3. The word good means different things to different people. 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