At the triablogue, I’ve been discussing with Steve Hays issues arising from this quote from Richard Dawkins:
I have never found the problem of evil very persuasive as an argument against deities. There seems no obvious reason to presume that your God will be good. … Most of the Greek pantheon sported very human vices, and the ‘jealous God’ of the Old Testament is surely one of the nastiest, most truly evil characters in all fiction.
Hays opines that “The problem of evil is an abject failure,” which I take to mean a wrongheaded, flailing objection which doesn’t deserve a serious answer.
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@ Dale
As already seen at “podcast episode 64 – Dr. Mark C. Murphy on Anselmianism about God”, there is no way that from the Anselmian concept of id quo nihil maius cogitari potest one can deduce the existence of God.
Looking at the OT, there is no doubt that some of YHWH’s commands (see, for example, the orders given to King Saul through Samuel for the extermination of “man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike” of the Amalekites – 1 Sam 15:3) are rather hard to reconcile with the a priori, rational notion of an “omnivenevolent” being.
If you insisted (trying to reconcile), affirming that the YHWH presented by the OT is “omnivenevolent”, I believe you would find yourself confronting an apologetic “mission impossible” …
… let’s see if you are as good as Ethan Hunt … 😉
Me thinks that Mr. Dawkins is fooling himself. Someone who is as obsessed with God as he is must know – deep down in places he tries to hide from his own consciousness – that that God exists.
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