There is no God (and you know it)

[archerships]

Sam Harris ( http://www.samharris.org/ ) posted a refreshingly blunt anti-religious essay on the HuffPost blog. It's an excerpt from An Atheist Manifesto, to be published at www.truthdig.com in December.

"Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most.

Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/there-is-no-god-and-you-_b_8459.html

Comments

[tupelo.livejournal.com]

I kind of agree. I don't want to, but it makes more sense than believing.

And I was hoping it was somehow by this Sam Harris, just for weirdness value.

[jonathankaplan.livejournal.com]

I don't find the argument that evil and tragedy exists to be an argument against there being a G-d. Any G-d worth believing in would certainly want a complex universe to be omnipotent in. What kind of world would exist without the conflict between good/evil? That world is impossible for me to conceive.

I also think that it is good that most of those who believe in G-d do so. Many of them would have way too much difficulty reconciling their existence otherwise.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the argument that God can't exist or he wouldn't allow so much evil is called theodicy, and believe it not this has actually occurred to religious people and there are reams of theology addressing it.

Some believers I know believe God has chosen to work according to unbreakable physical laws and therefore can't go intervening on Earth all the time, but loves us no less.

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

If those laws are "unbreakable" only through God's choice, then they're actually not unbreakable. If you're going to use the same words the rest of us use, make sure they mean the same things.

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

The problem of evil is only an argument against *morally good* Gods.

The existence of evil can easily be explained by the existence of a God who enjoys witnessing suffering and anguish. If that's the kind of God you believe in, knock yourself out.

What kind of world would exist without the conflict between good/evil?

Christianity refers to that sort of environment as "Heaven." No child rapists or burn injuries or cataclysmic earthquakes there, I'm led to understand.

[bigleeh.livejournal.com]

The faithful believe God speaks to them.

He has not yet spoken to the agnostics.

Nor does He speak to the athiests who, oddly, take this as a personal affront.