Good song. Sadly it answers nothing for me really.
Thanks for your honesty Randy. But if you haf to guess(even if you dont know) what could possibly be the answer? Just a speculation
Could God have a two sided character? One evil one bad? Since we know satan didnt always existed then the cosmic evil mustve come from God right?
For me the problem of evil is the most important driving factor to move others from the faith.
Why would someone believe in a beign who doesnt care about you,doesnt interfere with you,doesnt provide you with any sort of help in real life,let others step on you and use you in the worst way or even worse pshysically abuse you and doesnt even guarantee you eternal life. Im not writing these as to bash Christianity. These are just my thoughts which to me seems so logical to drive away someone from the faith
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The comment section was informative:
Steve Baughman: Randal, can you give us your nutshell view on how you reconcile horrendous evil with God’s existence? I know it’s in the atheist bar book but I am curious about current view.
Randal: Greater goods, free will, skeptical theism, eternal compensation, hopeful universalism.
I like everything I’ve read from him so far. Need to go for a few books I think!
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I think there are several things in play.
The first as others have mentioned is the evil done by humans to other humans, other animals and to them planet directly and indirectly. This evil is not a byproduct of some created being but is the result of what we choose. It’s a byproduct of free will. God allows all of us to make choices. Cain did not kill Abel because of sin, but because he choose to sin. Same as Adam and Eve made the choice to sin and was not forced into it. Gos could have stripped free will from Cain and made Cain like a lifeless robot that just follows coding and can’t do anything else. But he gave him free will. So when we see nowadays of something like a mass shooting happening we know it’s not because God created it but because he did not take away our free will.
Another part of evil that happens by us us neglect. That’s when something happens because others choose to not pay attention. A single father flirting with a woman at a tiki bar while his 2 year old drowns. 10 minutes later he is like “ oh man where is my kid “ and immediately runs to the pool and finds the corpse. That happened not because God orchestrated it but because the kid had free will to wander away into the pool and the dad had free will to place his focus elsewhere while in a dangerous position. Another type of neglect is where we do something silly and get harmed because of it. In 2011 a Japanese exchange student at Niagara Falls was leaning over band on a ledge after going over the fence, like many have, to get a picture showcasing her bravery. She slipped and fell and died. She was not being evil, and she was not trying to harm anyone but she ignored all the warning signs and decided to do it and unfortunately her complacency resulted in her dying.
Another form of evil is the form of apathy. That’s when we know something bad is happening and we choose to ignore or it. A example of this is “ not my problem not my issue” mentality that we all deal with. We see a homeless guy and he tries to just have a conversation with us. He’s just trying to share something he witnessed. But he’s a “ dirty stinking bum” and so we just walk right past him. Thousands of others do the same. Eventually he takes his life. Now I one here forced him to. But no one here tried to keep him from it.
Another issue of why evil happens is fear. We see something bad happening and we are afraid to speak up. It’s all the jocks on the high school football team mocking a gay kid and bullying him. One of the players see it and is angered by it but ultimately decides to do nothing because they are his friends and he’s worried that speaking up will make him a target or worse, make him someone they choose to cut out of their life.
All of the above examples was not because God made it happen. It’s all byproducts of our free will and the choices we make. We see this happening to both humans and animals.
Likewise the alternative in all those stories can happen. We can choose wisdom and love. We can choose to speak up against evil, we can choose to give someone respect and we can choose to not react hatefully and violently and we can choose to not ignore safety precautions.
As for natural evil ( which is not a term I use ) I don’t have time to discuss it at the moment.
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Me either. But it sez how some think
The principle problem here seems to be magical thinking. By many theists to be sure, but also in atheists for equating theism to magical thinking. But the fact is that not all theists think in that way. Sure many theists think of God giving life, free will, or help in some magical way with no explanation necessary. But scientists can become theists because magical thinking is NOT a necessary component of believing there is a God. They understand that life and free will are explainable physical processes/phenomenon rather than magical components. Life exists (can only exist) on the basis of a fixed set of rules defined by natural law operating according to quantities (measurable because of those natural laws). And whether one is naughty or nice is not one of those measurable physical quantities. Conclusion? God cannot do whatever you care to dictate by whatever means you care to demand. There are constraints of both logical self-consistency and (by extension) consistency with those fixed rules which makes life possible.
Did. Perhaps you could elaborate a distinction between being good and being smart in a world where bad things only happen to bad people.
Well… I can add this… Your proposed world would make moral law a part of the natural law. The natural law is defined by written procedures which give the same result no matter what we want or believe. And your proposed world would add to those written procedures. And it would simply add to the things we must learn to survive.
Oh yeah, I remember… from your comments in previous discussion, you seem to think the necessities for survival should be all that matters and you resent that God should judge things according to a different standard. phew… that sounds like something I will not name…
This suggests to me a different line of inquiry. I never thought the distinction between theists and atheists was very important. I wonder if drawing the line in the wrong place is a big part of the problem and what we should really be asking is whether people believe in a distinction between right and wrong – moral nihilists instead of atheists, moral skeptics instead of agnostics, but what is the opposite of moral nihilism? Albert Camus said the opposite of moral nihilism is existentialism, which tickles me to complete hilarity! I guess according to Camus, the existentialist is someone who believes in a distinction between good and evil regardless of whether one believes in the existence of a God. But then I must confess, the existentialism of Camus is precisely what led me to theism and Christianity. It is not that one must believe in a God for there to be any morality. I have nothing but contempt for that argument. But by the above discussion it does seem to be one of the key issues which contributes to the ability to believe God exists – a necessary but not sufficient condition.
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Why do bad things happen to good people? For the same reason that good things happen to bad people; and for the same reason that good things happen to good people and that bad things happen to bad people which, according to Sam Harris, is “luck.” 
How is it magical thinking to note the magical thinking of belief in god?
As for scientists, engineers, detectives, etc etc who are religious-
Magical thinking in one compartment automatically translates
into all areas.
Isnt that a tinge of magical thinking to suggest it does?
People who cannot reconcile a perfect god with a painful world have to spend endless hours trying to reconcile when the reason is obvious.
Its not. I never said any such thing.
I said it is wrong to equate theism with magical thinking. They are not the same thing. The God one believes isn’t necessarily a magical God, and I have always opposed magical interpretations of scripture and magical understandings of God and miracles – i.e. doing anything which is contrary to the laws of nature.
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That is a pretty good example of magical thinking or is there some causal mechanism behind this error leakage? I suspect it is only your worldview which supports your claim. Would your worldview likewise result necessarily in error if you worked in science?
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How ate your first two lines anything but.
“Magical thinking…also atheists…for thimking”.
Religion, " god " is about the supernatural,
unless one wishes to go deep into equivocation
and abandon mdaning in words.
Magical thinking required.
Ah, a mistypo on my part. " does NOT"
We suspect you did not read on to see
the next line, deleted in your post why ?
How about including it now so its clear i
didnt mean what you claim.
Because of being raised by two psychology majors I have understood what magical thinking was from early childhood. Other people haven’t quite mastered the concept possibly because they are too busy grasping for rhetoric to prop up their ideological world view.
magical thinking , the belief that one’s ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world. Magical thinking presumes a causal link between one’s inner, personal experience and the external physical world. Encyclopedia Britannica
Hmmm… a parenthetical should be added after “causal link” which says “apart from the actions of the person (with this inner personal experience) affecting those events.”
Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them Wikipedia
Magical thinking is defined as believing that one event happens as a result of another without a plausible link of causation. Psychology Today
This has nothing whatsoever to do with believing in God or in believing that there is more to reality than what the methods of science can discover. Naturalism (equating reality to the scientific worldview) is NOT the antonym of “magical thinking.” One can indulge in magical thinking regardless of whether one believes in God or gods or not, or even whether one buys into the ideology of naturalism. One of the key issues with God is whether you believe God accomplishes things by magic (will alone) or by rational method, ability, and know how – the dreamer god versus the creator God.
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So you can believe in God, but not pray.
Obviously. Many many people believe in God but do not pray.
But does not follow that if you do pray you are indulging in magical thinking for a number of reasons.
- At the very least it would depend on the content of your prayers. For a lot of people, prayer is about having a conversation with God which is nothing to do with magical thinking.
- And even if you do pray for things, it doesn’t mean that you think you will automatically get those things apart from your own actions and natural physical causes. Most religious people I have talked to do not think in this manner.
- One can even believe God acts in the world without believing that God in any way suspends the laws of nature.
Basicaly, its believe but if you pray you are getting into magic.
Magic words
Ftm, belief in magical powers seems real close to magical thinking.
What psych term would you apply if not " magical thinking"
Perhaps this is a discussion you should have with a psychiatrist. Ask them how they draw the line in discussions with their patients between prayer and magical thinking. But I suspect it is something like the following…
- compulsively turning to prayer while doing none of the things obviously needed for accomplishing what they want to happen.
- feelings of anger that the things they asked for in their prayers have not happened.
In other words, it is only magical thinking if you believe prayer accomplishes things apart from your own actions directly connected to the events you are seeking to influence (i.e. if you think prayer is sufficient). The point here is not that the religious do not indulge in magical thinking. Obviously many of them do. As do many people who are not religious, frankly. The point is that there is nothing logically necessitating that theists or religious people indulge in magical thinking.
I think the problem is that many atheists cannot see a point in believing in God unless this has some utility. But that is precisely where I think people should not believe in God. For theists this means that God is not someone you can use and if you are thinking of God in that way then it is a false god. And for those atheists, this means they are limiting reality to what they can control and use, which is also unrealistic.
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Atheists limit reality to what they can use?
Many do that?
How did you get that info? Its a weird thing to think.
I doubt anyone prays, thinking it is useless.
From the way those particular atheists have evaluated the merits of believing in God in their discussions with me.
“Useless” is a different word with a more inclusive meaning than not being able to be used (especially when “use” is conjoined with control).