Evil « Conversational Atheist

Can God do evil? — Tough question…

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

I’ve posted a new article. Atheists can ask a number of tough questions in the course of a conversation or debate with a theist that quickly lead to some interesting conclusions. The following question can be very effective:

Can God do evil?

It’s important to get the types of questions straight. A few entries ago I mentioned that an atheist should focus on asking a theist to explain his own actions rather than God’s — Why worship an apparently evil God? Rather than: Why does God allow evil?

It’s another matter all together to ask whether God is actually capable of doing evil. If He cannot do evil (for whatever reason), His omnipotence and praiseworthyness become highly suspect. If He can do evil, then there are some very interesting problems that arise for the theist.

Anyway, I entertain this question in a new article: Tough Questions: Can God do evil?

Let me know what you think!

Tags: atheism, Evil, God, Omnipotence
Posted in Announcements, Religious Interaction, Theology, debate | 10723 Comments »Can+God+do+evil%3F+--+Tough+question...2009-06-25+10%3A57%3A15Conversational+Atheist

God is the Source of Morality

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

: Image via Wikipedia

There are many different issues that come up with how people can discover what is good and what is evil.

I find that arguments regarding this topic circle around some fairly… unproductive lines of argument from both the theistic and atheistic sides.

I will eventually write up a few arguments that I’ve found to be useful; but I just posted an argument that I’ve had some success with here: Response to: God is the Source of Morality.

Essentially, it directly tackles the epistemic question of how a person gains knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Either there are good reasons to think that certain actions are wrong, or there are not. A theist who thinks that humans cannot discover this on their own will have a hard time in justifying how he came to believe that God Himself is good. Specifically, how does he choose to follow God and reject Lucifer? He read God’s book first? What if he had read Satan’s book first? What would that say?

If you do not think that he would have a hard time, and you think you could make the case for him, I’d love to hear someone give the defense a try.

Any other feedback is welcome, as always!

- Conversational Atheist