Stephen Law´s Evil God Hypothesis Is An Exquisite Red Herring. Or Straw Man. For an Atheist!

Stephen Law Went Up Against William Lane Craig back in 2011: ...So, just to reiterate, "Evil God" is not argument that the entirety of evidence is against a good god's existence, or that there can't be good reasons why god would allow suffering, but that such responses aren't good enough. There may well be good biblical or historical reasons to prefer a good god, but remember that we're exclusively asking which kind of god, if any, best fits the data of natural suffering. Isolating this data of suffering in the world and examining it through a philosophically neutral lens brings the conclusion that a good god is not a good explanation, despite appeals to free will, conception etc. Remember, we already agree that such appeals don't work for an evil god, a missing planet, or anything else. Sorry that was so long. It was meant to be short. Haha! Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 0 seconds ago @L.E.V.I Interesting how fallacy can serve presuppositions. The "evil anti-God" argues that "such responses aren´t good enough"? The ploy is exquisite fallacious maneuvering, the ultimate red herring for an atheist anti-theist. Talk about ideological neo-scholasticism. At least the "evil anti-God" didn´t "dance on the head of a pin." The data of "natural suffering" is now empirically part of biological and related perspectives, first of all. Any ad hoc attribution of "evil" has underlying presuppositions in the first place. Who cares about "evil" or an "evil God" unless you have had the concept presented in a context of significance? That is the sociohistorical context of the issue itself. The speculative assertion of an "Evil God" is imaginatively, but fallaciously raised under the assumptions of a scientific context that presumes to reject the sociohistorical context of Jesus´ very source of the sociocultural heritage community of Western Civilization. It places "Natural Suffering" as the reified mysterious God that is unexplained, when the scientific materialist view has summarily and rather prejudicially, but rather illiterately, rejected all relevant sociocultural and historical contextual cues and contexts. Fallacy. In short, it´s a false equivalence, indulgently in philosophical expansiveness and intricacy no less, among other things. Probably philosophical scientific materialist reductionism, more exotically. "The Universe has a cause?" Ans: "I don´t know, but if evil exists...it´s an Evil God.....!" Those are non-sequitors, and incoherent without admitting that those very concepts are being raised in the context of Christian-based Western Civilization, because Jesus was incredibly important. The amazing efforts of the Apostles after Jesus´ Resurrection isn´t just a detail, it has lead to the University-based British Empire of the UK´s past and the US-UN community of human rights and sustainability. That is all in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity with the problems of human bio-psychosocial tendencies, hypocrisy, and other related issues, some horrible. Once the presupposition of naturalism is exposed, and "evil" eliminated. You can´t use "evil" for anything unless you acknowledge the cause of the standard of good, which is Jesus of Nazareth´s integrity of life, mission, and teachings, and Resurrection, and legacy community. That starts as simply history. Emperor Constantine I didn´t legitimize his mom´s knitting. He legitimized her apparent love for Jesus´ legacy that he appreciated in his own military-imperial way as her son, for example. At that same time, Christian monasticism was beginning, which led to Christian-based modern Universities and scientific philosophy itself. Scientists didn´t start with mostly overspecialized atheist radicals and free riders. They were Christians who knew where their standards were coming from and were presented with increasing opportunities to explore intellectually. The University of Paris preceded and ignited the U´s of Cambridge and Oxford with educated monks and bishop types. Thomas of Aquinas in the 1200s at U Paris wasn´t a giant intellect because he trashed God for naturalism. He salvaged Aristotle´s rejected First Cause argument as a Christian with the notion of a Creator God who issued Commandment moral laws. Bishop R Grosseteste in the UK was a protoscientist. He and others got some boosts when Aristotle was being idolized, when Aquinas´ work made clear how God´s lawful omnipotence was coherent. Aristotle thought things didn´t move in curved lines. A cannonball just went straight out, then straight down. He had thought the Universe was eternal, so there was no First Cause, just a heady Unmoved Mover so straight lines had to be all there was. The best Christian monastics had the spiritual practice to balance their metaphysics and fix that. And then came the Reformation, sparked by scientists and atheists, right? Uh, no. The monk Luther with his doctorate, a mix of his times but brilliant and courageous enough where it counted, sparked the incredible, and unwhitewashed and painful Reformation. And so on, as human bio-psychosocial tendencies and real world demands had to be dealt with in the real world social constructivism that is history. That takes literacy in the social studies disciplines, and that´s where legitimate contexts of good and evil, and the sufficiently multidisciplinary empirical contexts philosophical speculation can be established. Not merely simplistically juxtaposing philosophy with naturalism and the ultimate red herring of the "evil anti-God." &&& punnet2 Highlighted reply punnet2 4 hours ago (edited) @Green Peacemst Craig didn't simply argue for theism in some broad sense, but specifically for a "good" god. To refute Craig's moral argument is sufficient to refute the specific god he is arguing for. Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 16 minutes ago (edited) ​ @punnet2 Craig made a multi-pointed argument, and for objective morality, which he presented as "good," implicitly reflecting a characteristically Christian argument. Law´s argument jumps into a whole soup mix with presumptions, presupposing that suffering equates with evil, and that lots of good exists, etc. What, who, where? It´s stimulating, but second-rate, since it´s founded on flimsy equivalence of scholastic disembodied metaphor and without sufficient empirical foundations, all in presuppositionalism, which is unexamined and fallacious, and he tries to feign its legitimacy following up with one fallacy after another, ad hom, projection, ad hoc, ad populum are some that I recognize pretty quickly. Moreover, the question of debate was if God exists, not even the exact kind of God Craig is arguing for. You´re a little unclear of the need to balance the forest and the trees, or the tree for all its parts, roots, trunk, branches, and leaves (and evolution of terrestrial autotrophs, no less, back to the Cause of the Universe, etc lol). In any event, the moral argument is ultimately intertwined with underlying premises that Craig can pull out of his utility belt. Law, and you all, are doing Platonic shadow boxing. I was just getting at the appropriate manner of examining the objective moral argument. Incest (usually child sexual abuse) taboos and laws against child abuse,don´t mean that violators don´t still perpetrate the act, or try to. In a related way, but with a twist, certain religious laws (Islamic Sharia Law) legislate the death penalty for rape victims, not the rape perpetrators. Objective morality needs to distinguish between the natural reality of cultural relativism and the Judeo-Christian standard that now juxtaposes human rights with national sovereignty and religious freedom. The achievement of UN human rights is a Christian-derived pluralistic achievement that can be analyzed. All people would prefer to have all their babies grow up in an ideal world without "either-or" and other competing demands that have caused infanticide. Human rights establishes that kind of general goal derived from Christian foundations, and maternal anthropology by the likes of John Bowlby. Meanwhile, UN national sovereignty allows cultural relativism, and variations on human rights accord law enforcement includes embargoes, maybe boycotts, etc. That accounts for the Islamic nations that have refused to sign the UN UD of human rights conventions. The US itself has refused to sign one, demonstrating its own compromising issues related to national sovereignty. Where there is choice or not within a context of national sovereignty then also occurs. In some Islamic nations, democracy activists have been jailed or worse. In the EU, one or more countries has issued Intl Ct of Justice warrants for the arrest of American officials in the GW Bush administration for the invasion of Iraq. The EU is preparing to charge carbon fees on imports from places like the US. Moral objectivity can be pursued despite differing views among individuals and groups, based on Christian-derived natural law legal and scientific principles now globalized in the Christian University-based principles of the pluralistic UN community of nations. It´s a little complex if someone is not adequately literate in social studies disciplines.