Brent meeker writes:
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> >
> > Tom,
> >
> > The question I am interested in is not whether it would be a *good thing* for a
> > personal God to exist, but whether it is *the case* that a personal God exists.
> > There are all sorts of things that people would like to be true, but that does not
> > make them true.
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> In fact "the problem of evil" is that things people don't like, such as cancer, AIDS, tsunamis,..., exist in spite of the supposed existence of a loving, personal God.
>
> If the world is impersonal, then there is no reason to suppose that it is all good or all evil, but a mixture - which is the way it seems to be.
>
> Brent Meeker
It could be argued that not even God could create a world in which there are no accidents,
conflicts of interest, disappointments, and so on, at least not without severely limiting
his creatures' freedom. However, it would have been possible for God to limit the capacity
for suffering, favouring pleasure rather than avoidance of pain as a motivating factor.
Philosopher David Pearce in "The Hedonistic Imperative" gives an account of how this might
be done, arguing that it is our duty to abolish all suffering at its final common pathway in the
brain. Evolution doesn't care how much we suffer, but a God who did care about us could
have designed us differently.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sun Dec 10 2006 - 00:00:32 PST