Continuing on from last week I’m listing some of the more common reasons why many people fail to believe in gods or God. So far I’ve talked about different kinds of atheism, about how evidence and how it does not lead to God, about how God isn’t necessary to living, about how some of the common argument for God are not convincing for me and about the old classic the Problem of Evil. We’ve touched on science as a “way of knowing” about the real world and this week I want to compare and contrast this with other “ways of knowing” that existed before the rise of science.
I want to stress at the outset that science and religion are not mutually exclusive. I know that some consider the two to be contradictory but I believe that is because they are placing them on the same scale. Science is a way of knowing. Religion is a belief system. It might be fair to compare how they benefit or limit people but comparing them directly is unfair to both. By doing so you’re setting a false dichotomy and buying in to the sort of thinking that creationists are keen to promote. Science and religion don’t operate on the same scale. Having said that I’m now going to write about how faith has been used in the place of science and how, in my view, it fails to be convincing.
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Over at the Friendly Atheist Hemant has given some space for Lee Strobel to answer some questions. In his list of arguments that might plant the seeds of faith in atheists Lee mentions Philosopher Paul Copan’s second point:
And, second, granted that the major objection to belief in God is the problem of evil, does the concept of evil itself not suggest a standard of goodness or a design plan from which things deviate, so that if things ought to be a certain way (rather than just happening to be the way they are in nature), don’t such ‘injustices’ or ‘evils’ seem to suggest a moral/design plan independent of nature?
It’s an interesting twist on the old argument posed even before Epicurus wrote his famous riddle. The argument goes like this: If God is believed to be wholly good and omnipotent and omniscient in his power and knowledge then the existence of evil that is evident in the world creates an inconsistency.
Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then is he impotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then is he malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Whence then is evil?
Or possibly some combination of these. Whatever the combination though we are left with a being that is not wholly good, all knowing and all powerful. Plenty of such beings exist. I am not all good, all knowing or all powerful. Nor am I a god.
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