Lecture 07 Notes
Document Actions
—
filed under:
Introduction to Philosophy,
Philosophy
The Argument Against Western Theism: Reason to Doubt that a Christian
God Exists
- Christianity assumes God is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, and loves us.
- Massive evil exists.
- Moral Evil=Suffering caused by us (e.g., murder)
- Natural Evil=Suffering caused by nature (e.g., hurricanes)
- Both of these kinds of evil clearly exist.
- God and evil are inconsistent.
- Unpacking the Premise:
- God would know about suffering (omniscient).
- God could have prevented suffering (omnipotent).
- God would want to prevent suffering (loving, perfectly good).
- Therefore, it seems that the existence of God is inconsistent with the existence of suffering.
- What sort of inconsistency?
- Strong: Logical Inconsistency--It is not possible that God and evil coexist. (Problematic--It is difficult to support this strong of a claim.)
- Weak: Evidential Inconsistency--It is not likely that God and evil coexist.
- Unpacking the Premise:
- Therefore, either God or evil doesn't exist.
- The existence of evil is indisputable.
- Suffering of both forms clearly exists.
- If we know anything, we know that evil exists.
- Therefore, the God of Christianity does not exist.
- Like the teleological argument for God, this argument is based on the nature of the world.
- This is in contrast with the ontological argument which is based on a priori knowledge.
Copyright 2008,
by the Contributing Authors.
Cite/attribute Resource.
administrator. (2006, September 19). Lecture 07 Notes. Retrieved August 30, 2008, from Notre Dame OpenCourseWare Web site: http://ocw.nd.edu/philosophy/introduction-to-philosophy-2/Lecture%2007%20Notes.html.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
