Heaving Dead Cats » logic

Advertisements and Logical Fallacies Part 1

Neece — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:18:38 +0000

Lately I’ve been thinking about logical fallacies used in advertising and marketing. The argument from authority when someone in a lab coat tells you what to buy, argumentum ad populum which is “appeal to the people” because everyone else is buying this product so you should too.

One of my pet peeves is multigrain labels emblazoned on foods lately. Technically the food has more than one grain in it, but they are touting the product as something healthy when they have still stripped all fiber and goodness out, so the health benefits are still lacking. This is very popular in cereals, and unless you read the label you’d think you were buying something healthy, when really it’s just as junky as cocoa puffs.

The “no sugar added” label is another one I find quite vague. There are several different iterations of this one. No sugar added, sugar free, the list goes on. What do they all mean? Again, you have to carefully read the nutrition facts and ingredients to get a better picture of what you’ll be buying.

I guess it’s basically the idea that advertisers must follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of it. So for something like Airborne (which I’ve ranted about before), they can make vague claims that basically say nothing to skirt the issue that there is no science behind their product. Then, to make it worse, they strategically make sure it’s placed near the pharmacy to appeal to authority. I think in some places they have signs saying that pharmacists recommend Airborne. But really, to make that claim you only have to pay two pharmacists to say what you want to be truthful.

I find it all incredibly frustrating and discouraging. And the only solution is to be aggressively proactive about shopping and watching ads or commercials. Be skeptical!

This is part one of tackling this topic for three reasons.

One, I don’t think we can do it justice in one post.
Two, I really want your feedback. What are your pet peeves in advertising? What examples stand out for you? What logical fallacies do you see in advertising and marketing?
And three, I just got the new parts for my computer and have to build my newer, better, faster computer today (with the help of my geek friend, Gary. Thanks Gary!). This is my birthday present from my sweetie. Thanks, my love!

Ok, I’m off to go fiddle with my new computer parts. Hopefully it all goes well. I look forward to hearing from you about fallacies in advertising!

The New Ten Commandments

Neece — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:45:59 +0000

Awhile ago I wrote about the 10 commandments. I then rewrote them for my personal moral code, calling them Neece’s Principles. No need to have anyone commanding anyone.

Christopher Hitchens just wrote a 3 page piece for Vanity Fair about the 10 commandments titled The New Commandments. He goes through the KJV version and talks about where they are good and where they are not so good. Here is his summation:

What emerges from the first review is this: the Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate. And this, too, is important because at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil).

So here is a rundown of how he fixes them:

One to Three can go, “since they have nothing to do with morality and are no more than a long, rasping throat clearing by an admittedly touchy dictator. Mere fear of unseen authority is not a sound basis for ethics.” (the invisible sky daddy flexes his muscles and demands worship.).
He also says we don’t have to ban sculpture and art (idols).
Four. Gone. Pointless. (don’t work on the sabbath, except black sabbath, of course!)
Five, respect elders, sure. But also ban child abuse. What a concept! (I’d add that parents should only get respect like anyone else, when they earn it.)
Six, taken care of by modern law. Don’t murder. (Don’t kill under almost all circumstances.) (although I think assisted suicide for terminally ill people should be legal)
Seven, he seems to destroy too. (adultery) (and yeah, what about saying rape is bad? especially pedophilia and that kind of stuff?)
Eight, ok. This one is good. Don’t steal. (stealing)
Nine, don’t lie. Also basically good. (lying about your neighbor)
Ten, women aren’t property. This one is pointless and harmful in that it makes you a sinner just from your thoughts. (don’t lust after your neighbor’s goods or wife)

Other evils of human society that should be denounced, according to Hitchens:

genocide
slavery
rape
child abuse
sexual repression
white-collar crime
wanton destruction of the natural world
people who talk on cell phones in restaurants (and movie theatres, or who talk on the phone or text while driving!)
people who blow themselves up while shouting ‘god is great!’ (and any other kind of jihadism or crusade)
racism
using people as private property
condemning people for their inborn nature (like homosexuality, etc)

And this is how he finishes:

“Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.”

Good advice! I think I stand by the principles I came up with for myself. What are yours? Do you agree with Christopher Hitchens?

Logical Fallacy Theater in 4 Acts

Neece — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:23:33 +0000

Butch, my awesome husband, found the following 4 act play with lobsters in trees. I have added a bit of information for your edumacation enjoyment. Who knew some lobsters were so daft?

Act 1: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (after this, therefore because of this). Since the event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one.

Act 2: Appeal to Authority. Something is true just because a person of perceived authority says it’s true. (McCain? Srsly? Oh, Lobsters, you can do better!)

Act 3: Appeal to Ignorance. Something is true because we don’t know it isn’t true.

Act 4: Ad Hominem. Attacking the person instead of the argument.

Found here, thanks!

Logical Fallacy 10: The Slippery Slope

Neece — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:57:46 +0000

The logical fallacy known as The Slippery Slope wrongly assumes that one thing must lead to another, and another and before you know it you get to something awful. Therefore you can’t do the first thing. This is a very common fallacy. It’s also known as the Fallacy of the Beard.

In an argument, it is the situation where acceptance of a minor detail of the opposing position will greatly weaken your position.

This is Part 10 in a series about Logical Fallacies. We are going through one fallacy at a time. There are many types of fallacious arguments. I’m going to try to explain them with examples then find ways to help you refute those arguments when they occur. Please comment or email if there’s a particular fallacy you want me to tackle, or if you have success with refuting an argument using a good technique you can share.

Formula:

If A happens, B will happen. If B happens, C, D, E, … Z will happen! (oh noes!)
We don’t want Z to happen.
Therefore A can’t happen.

Example 1:

If I take aspirin, I’ll start taking Oxycontin for headaches. If I take Oxycontin, I’ll start buying it on the street. If I do that, I’ll start looking for heroine to shoot up. If I start shooting up heroine, I’ll get a dirty needle and get HIV, then die of AIDS….
I don’t want to do heroine and die of AIDS.
Therefore I can’t take anything for my headaches.

Of course this is not logical. For most people we have the ability to moderate and restrain ourselves to some degree. It is possible to stop after the first step and not go down the slippery slope.

Example 2:

Man: Will you have sex with me for a million dollars?
Woman: Sure!
Man: How about for ten dollars?
Woman: What kind of woman do you think I am?
Man: We’ve established that, now we’re just arguing over price.

The woman has lost her argument over what seemed like a minor concession.

The Fallacy of the Beard term comes because what constitutes a beard? If you see a man and he has a beard, if he had one less whisker would it still be a beard? Two less? A thousand whiskers less? There is no clear cut line. Just because the difference between beard and no beard is vague (or bald versus hairy, etc), doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the two. The difference is in degree. A big enough difference in degree can amount to a difference in kind.

How to Refute the Slippery Slope Fallacy?

My first suggestion is to state the fallacy and explain it. I think that’s important in most circumstances. I think often people don’t realize they are falling into fallacious arguments.

Once you’ve briefly explained it, I would recommend talking about moderation and how people every day all over the world restrain themselves thousands of times more often than not. Maybe even bring up how the person you’re talking to has restrained themselves in some way recently, perhaps by restricting how much they ate or drank, etc (might not work if they are obese or an alcoholic, but you get my point). For instance, I really love coffee, but I only drank 2 cups for breakfast instead of the 5 I could have easily consumed.

Sources used:

Arguments For God’s Existence Are Wrong – Teleological Argument

Neece — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 06:39:23 +0000

Recently, the Morgantown Atheists hosted a satirical night of (re)Conversion where our Brights friend Rachel tried all the arguments she could think of to convince us to turn back to god. No one took her up on her offer. But she did go through a bunch of classical arguments that I thought I might share with you. It’s good to hear what people use as excuses for believing in god, and it’s good to have sound arguments against those beliefs.

Let’s start out with the Teleological Argument.

Teleology: the philosophical study of design and purpose. The supposition that there is purpose or direction in the works and processes of nature.

Teleological Argument: the Argument from Design: argues for the existence of god or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, design or direction in nature.

Here’s the basic argument:

The universe is too complex, orderly, adaptive, apparently purposeful or beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidentally.
Therefore the universe must have been created by a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.
god is a sentient, intelligent, wise or purposeful being.
Therefore god exists.

You can substitute just about anything in for the universe. The eye, humans, the fundamental constants of the universe, etc.

Many great men have used this argument over the centuries, but that doesn’t make it valid. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Cicero to name a few. Cicero started the Watchmaker Analogy:

“When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, ii. 34)

Even Charles Darwin found the Watchmaker Analogy compelling, which he got from William Paley who wrote about it in his book titled Natural Theology in 1802. But his theory of evolution was an alternative explanation for the complexity of nature. In his autobiography, Darwin wrote,

Although I did not think much about the existence of a personal God until a considerably later period of my life, I will here give the vague conclusions to which I have been driven. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. (Charles Darwin’s Autobiography, page 87)

And of course, proponents of intelligent design find this idea compelling. They make up complicated sounding concepts like irreducible complexity (variation of the watchmaker analogy where you can’t have half an eye, you need it fully developed for it to be effective, etc) and other such nonsense.

Just Because It’s Complex Does Not Imply A Designer

There are systems in nature that are non-random or orderly simply because they follow natural physical processes. Diamonds and snowflakes are examples.

Just because it’s not understood (argument from ignorance) doesn’t mean god did it. In many cases its simply the ignorance of the person arguing that god did it. For instance, the eye is seen in many different stages of evolution throughout the animal kingdom today and throughout natural history. All are relevant, all show irreducible complexity to be completely nonsensical.

Listen to Richard Dawkins or Neil deGrasse Tyson and you’ll start to see the unsoundness of such arguments. In fact, Dr. Tyson did a 6 minute video about “bad design” which you can find here: By god He’s a Bad Designer. This is an interesting angle. If everything was designed by god, why are there so many screwy ways that nature does things? Why are there so many bad designs, like eating and breathing out of the same hole?

Evolution, as Darwin laid out and science has refined, is a better explanation with more supporting evidence than intelligent design could ever hope to be.

Does Not Prove The Existence Of God

Even if, by some twisted perversity everything is designed by a god, it doesn’t mean that it is the one god that the christians, jews or muslims follow. It doesn’t mean, by that logic that there is just one god at all, or that the designer(s) are omnipotent, benevolent, or even interested in earth.

Voltaire and David Hume came up with those ideas.

If Everything is Designed, Who Designed the Designer?

Or as Richard Dawkins suggests, the teleological argument would apply to the designer in question. So that designer would have to be at least as complex and purposeful as the designed objects. You would need many designers, all even more complex than the previous, to design the designers.

Some say that god is outside of the natural laws of the universe, so that he doesn’t need a designer. But this is nonsensical. If he was outside of nature, he would be unable to interact with nature. If you moved the goalposts again to say that he could magically mess with nature even though he is outside of the laws of nature, wouldn’t there be some trace of nature being messed with each time? (Just a thought.)

I’m no philosopher. I’m just trying to simply explain this theological argument that we all come across in our travels. Feel free to add to my explanations, give examples, and show counter arguments to help us all understand some of these philosophical concepts.

Conversation With Anne About Religion, Truth, Science and History

Neece — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:50:35 +0000

The other day I got an email from Anne which I will post below. She asked some basic questions and I thought I’d share my answers with you (with her permission, under a pseudonym for her privacy). So here is her email:

Well I am new to religion totally as neither of my parents knew what to believe so they taught me nothing. I have so many questions and not nearly enough hours to google! lol jk

If you dont believe in a higher being such as God like the Christians what do you believe? (***Now please dont think I am questioning your beliefs I simply need a better understanding of what you hold to be true in this world.***) Do you believe that things happen simply because we choose that is how it should or is there a force behind events? I have gathered you believe in evolution but how were monkeys first placed on earth? And then how was earth created? I believe it is truely unknown to begin with but do you have a theory?

My reply:

First, question everything. Don’t take my word for it. Research everything yourself.

I have a couple of questions for you.

Your parents taught you nothing about religion? So you picked up bits and pieces as you grew up from other people? That’s interesting. Are they atheists then? Or do they just never talk about religion? Perhaps it just doesn’t seem like an issue to them? I am curious if they’ve said anything to you at all. What kind of school did you go to? Did you go to public, private or home school? In which state? And how old are you?

Raising a child without teaching them anything is not what I’d consider ideal. My idea of a great foundation for a child is to teach her how to think critically, to think for herself. I recommend teaching a child about all religions from around the world and throughout human history, then asking questions to help the child form her own understanding about it. I would also share my personal opinion on the subject. But most people don’t raise their kids to think for themselves.

It sounds like you’re searching for something to believe in, but I would ask why you need to believe in anything that isn’t real?

I will speak for myself only, as I’m sure other atheists have come to their lack of belief in different ways.

I grew up as a christian. I went to church and believed jesus died for my sins. I was terrified of burning in hell and got baptized 3 times in 3 different churches to try to make sure I’d get into heaven and not burn for all eternity after I died. Looking back I think it was a horrible burden as a child, to be so afraid of a god that was supposed to be loving. It made no sense.

I studied the three major religions (judaism, christianity and islam) in my 20’s and realized after several years that is was all created by man. It hit me about 10 years ago that I no longer believed in gods of any sort and I was actually an atheist. A more detailed history of my deconversion can be found here.

Your question is incorrect. You asked if I no longer believe in a god (or any gods for that matter) then what do I believe in. The answer is I go out of my way to avoid beliefs as a general rule. You see, I don’t want to believe, I want to know (Carl Sagan said that). I want evidence and reality. I prefer facts to fantasy or wishful thinking. I have no need of beliefs that are not based in reality.

What do I hold to be true in this world? That’s a different question. I guess the answer to that is what has been observed in our brief human history. I value the accomplishments of humans, the amazing wonders of nature in all its forms, the cosmos in its vast scale. I look at history and see how far humans have come. I see how we’ve evolved our culture and societies, how we’ve learned great, amazing technologies and thought deep, profound concepts that have advanced us tremendously in a relatively short period of time. These are all real things that we can look at and examine and understand to the best of our abilities. Something else I hold true is that I am fully responsible for my own actions, as well as my inactions. I can’t pawn that off on some fantasy being. Actions and inactions have consequences.

Do I believe things happen simply because we choose that is how it should be or is there a force behind events? No. Neither of those has any basis in reality. The first is wishful thinking and the power of suggestion. The second is looking for a supernatural god to explain things you don’t understand. Neither is real.

Something happens because of cause and effect. I hit a key on my keyboard and a letter pops up on my monitor. A thousand things happened to make it show up. Just thinking and wishing for the words to appear on the screen does nothing. Your thoughts do not leave your head and transform the universe. This is a common false belief in the new age worldview. It is completely bogus nonsense without any basis in fact. If you have a thought and then you take that thought and turn it into some kind of action, that’s when things start happening.

In all of science there is zero evidence of anything supernatural in the universe. Everything that has been explained is natural. While we don’t have all the answers (and probably never will) about the beginning of the universe as we know it, or how it will end, if it will, and other questions, we know an awful lot now and it’s all completely natural. There is no evidence of any sort of god needed to make it all work as it does. What we call the laws of nature work just fine without any kind of divine force.

So I guess what I trust is cause and effect, physics, and human interaction with the material world. No need for a god or a creator. It all works just fine on its own.

Yes, I accept evolution as a fact, as most scientists do. Your next statement is also quite wrong. Monkeys were never placed on earth. This would say that some divine being put monkeys on the planet like a child placing dolls in a toy house. Did you learn the prevailing theories of how the earth was formed through natural cosmic events 4.6 billion years ago (or thereabouts) in school?

To go back in time, and again this is my rough explanation (you really need to read up on the specifics as I am not a cosmologist or a geologist and I’m doing this from memory) about 14 billion years ago (roughly) there was the Big Bang. All of matter expanded from a singular source (called a singularity) outwards, and even now it continues to expand. Swirling gases condensed to form stars and crashed together and cooled to form planets. I guess you could say, after the Big Bang, the rest of the formation of stars and planets has been the effect of that event.
I recommend Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson as a great astrophysicist. He’s easy to understand and very interesting. Here’s a 5 minute video you might like.

Also, PBS has a timeline of the universe here.

These are rough and simple explanations of prevailing theories as I know them. As I’ve mentioned, no one knows how exactly the Big Bang happened, what the universe was before the Big Bang, or how exactly life on earth first formed. The thing about science is we never stop asking questions. Usually asking a question brings up a dozen more that are unanswered, but it’s all so exciting and thrilling to observe the universe in all its intricate and natural majesty, and to try to understand it. And again, there is no evidence of any sort of god or supernatural being. Everything so far discovered and understood is all natural.

While no one knows exactly how life first started on earth billions of years ago, we are coming up with interesting ideas for how amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) were first able to form in the primordial soup that was on the planet. It was a very different environment, and little one-celled organisms most likely formed bio-films on the ocean floor and probably in volcanic steam vents. (Again, this is my understanding. I am getting this from memory, not a science text, but I recommend you study it yourself so that you know a bit about it straight from different scientists)

Through natural selection and adaptation, the little bacteria evolved over billions of years, branching off, adapting to different environments and through different environmental pressures. We are not evolved from monkeys. But we share a common ancestor from long ago. In fact, I should make it clear, we now know that all of life is connected genetically. You have billions of bacteria living on you right now, and you share a common ancestor with that bacteria, your pet cat, the fish you ate for dinner, and the whales that live in the ocean. I recommend watching a great video and playing with an interactive tree of life here. Here is a link to the video with David Attenborough. It’s 6 and a half minutes long, basically just a rough overview but it will get you started. Here is another great tree of life video (10 minutes).

I hope that makes sense. Please consider looking into learning a basic understanding of biology and maybe some other science. It will help you understand so much more about the world. Get some good books on evolutionary biology, cosmology and astronomy. You might find it amazing and interesting. Look up the show Cosmos and Carl Sagan. He was so awesome at explaining the universe.

Look up David Attenborough. He’s a naturalist and explains natural history quite well. Try a museum of natural history. You could check out the NY Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian in D.C., and look to your local library in the science section. Look for scientists who are peer reviewed and stick to subjects they are experts in. Follow up with other sources to verify what you read. Never take anything at face value.

I have to ask, why do you feel you have a need for a god and a religion? You were lucky not to be brainwashed into believing something false to control you. Why do you feel the need to grasp onto one now? Religion is about controlling how people think, feel and live through fear, guilt and promise of a reward after death, which can never be tested or proven.

Oh, and because it is often a reason people think they need religion, I will say that being a good person is its own reward and there is ample evidence that morals are evolutionary, not directed by a supreme being who likes the smell of burning goat-flesh. Millions of atheists are moral and happy without such delusional beliefs based on iron age goat-herders.

I hope I answered your questions. I hope you are now asking many more and that those questions will become a lifelong quest for information and knowledge about the world and the universe, and our humble place within it.

If you would like to add to what I have said, I would love links to great videos, sites or books that might be helpful in explaining the Tree of Life, evolution and the Big Bang, etc. Please don’t resort to ad hominem attacks. We all start somewhere. Let’s give Anne the benefit of the doubt and encourage her to ask questions and seek answers.

Religion’s Problem of Evil: The Top 15 Excuses Religious People Give For Their god

Neece — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:34:31 +0000

I think Epicurus said it best and most succinctly:

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him god?

Epicurus 341-270 BCE

But August Berkshire gives 15 excuses religious people give for the horrible behavior of their god, which I thought you might enjoy. You can also read this article as a trifold pdf.

If a god exists who is all-powerful and all-loving, then why is there evil in the world? For the sake of this argument, let’s concede that the harm that humans do is a misuse of our free will, for which a god cannot be blamed. That still leaves us with genetic birth defects, genetic and acquired diseases, predators, and natural disasters.

These things seem like wanton cruelty on the part of this god. Without them, we could still be left to struggle with good and evil in terms of moral dilemmas and human actions, and be judged accordingly.

Here are “The Top 15 Excuses” religious people give in an attempt to explain away the horrible behavior of the all-powerful, all-loving god they believe exists.

1. Unknown greater good.
God must commit or allow some evil to accomplish an unknown greater good.

But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power? Doesn’t that say that God couldn’t think of a better way to accomplish his goals other than by torturing innocent people? Until this “greater good” is revealed to us, we are not obliged to accept this argument.

2. God had to create Earth this way.
Natural disasters and diseases are an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of life-sustaining forces. A planet without natural disasters and diseases could not operate in a way that would support human life.

But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power? Since God was creating humans from scratch, couldn’t he create us so that we could survive on a disaster-free and disease-free planet?

3. Blame the ancestors and blame the victim.
All evil that happens to us is our fault, either directly because of something we did, or indirectly because of our ancestors, such as “Adam and Eve.”

This is known as “blaming the victim.” Typically, a victim of abuse believes that the more he or she is punished, the more he or she is loved.

But what did an innocent baby ever do to deserve a birth defect? And what kind of justice punishes children for the sins of their long-dead ancestors?

Also, how does this explain why animals suffer? Did they “sin” too?

For those of you who believe it is okay to punish people for the sins of their ancestors, why aren’t you in prison right now? Each of us has some ancestor who was a murderer. Human justice is obviously superior to God’s justice.

4. The devil did it.
God isn’t really responsible for evil in the world, a devil is.

But who created this devil? And isn’t God supposed to be all-powerful? Can’t he stop this devil?

5. God is testing our faith.
Evil is God’s way of testing our faith, like Job was tested in the Old Testament.

If this is true, what sense does it make to impose a “loyalty test” on an infant who dies from disease or natural disaster?

6. Evil is really God’s love.
What we perceive as “evil” is really an example of “God’s love.”

However, this is a definition of love that we cannot comprehend because it is exactly the opposite of what we define love to be. Therefore, we can’t know that “God’s love” is really love – we have to take someone’s unconvincing word for it.

If disease is an example of God’s love, shouldn’t we all try to get as sick as possible? Are doctors violating “God’s will” when they try to cure disease?

7. Evil is necessary for free will.
Without evil we would have no free will and we would be “robots.”

But what do birth defects, disease, and natural disasters have to do with free will? Do sick people have more free will than healthy people?

God has supposedly created a heaven where there are no diseases or disasters. Are the people in heaven robots?

8. Evil doesn’t last very long.
Any misery that occurs to us on Earth is brief compared to an eternity in a wonderful heaven.

Any amount of evil is still evil and is contrary to the definition of “all-loving.”

9. Evil is needed to appreciate the good.
Without the contrast of evil we wouldn’t appreciate what’s good.

But couldn’t God just give us an appreciation of what’s good? Why should we have to be tortured to appreciate the good?

10. Evil is necessary for compassion.
We are born as self-centered people and evil is necessary for us to learn compassion.

But if God wanted us to be compassionate, why didn’t he just make us that way? Why this sadistic scheme of torturing innocent babies to instill compassion in their parents? What about suffering and death that occurs where there are no witnesses?

11. Suffering builds character.
Humans are imperfect/fallen/sinful beings and suffering helps build character.

While building character may sometimes require effort – such as helping others, studying, and sportsmanship – none of these things tend to make us suffer.

And what kind of character is a baby supposed to be developing, who is born with a birth defect so severe that she will only live a few days?

12. The Creator is always justified.
God is morally justified in tormenting people because he created them.

But this confuses the power to torture someone with the right to torture someone.

Do the parents who create a child have a right to torture that child? Does might make right?

13. Without evil, life would be boring.
Humans like a sense of adventure and life wouldn’t be as interesting without the challenge of evil.

There is a difference between a welcome challenge and an unwelcome challenge.

People who enjoy a sense of adventure are free to choose which risks they wish to take. If a reporter deliberately approaches a hurricane, he has only himself or herself to blame for any negative consequences. But what about the people in the path of the hurricane who don’t wish to experience it?

14. Evil brings us closer to God.
Evil is justified because suffering makes us turn to God for comfort.

But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power? Couldn’t he think of a better way to entice us without torturing us first? How much gratitude, for example, should we show to a doctor for curing us from a disease he inflicted upon us in the first place?

15. Evil is necessary to prove God’s existence.
The existence of evil proves the existence of God because without a God-given sense of good and bad we would not be able to identify some things as evil in the first place.

But can’t an all-powerful and all-loving god come up with a better way to prove his existence other than by torturing us? Why not just reveal himself?

Conclusion
God has run out of excuses. He is either incompetent, indifferent, or cruel. Another way to reconcile the facts is to conclude that an all-powerful, all-loving god doesn’t exist.

Additional comments

If you had the knowledge and power of a god, would you have created birth defects, disease, and natural disasters? If not, then you are nicer than the god you believe in. This god should be praying to you for moral advice, rather than the other way around.

Would you take a syringe full of malaria and inject it into someone you love? Yet that’s exactly what God does to people he claims to love, using a mosquito as a syringe.

We humans spend a lot of time mopping up after God’s mistakes. Some say that God works through us. But the reason we have to do “the Lord’s work” is because “the Lord” isn’t doing it himself. And if we’re doing the work, shouldn’t we take the credit?

Yes, many religious people do kind acts of charity. But why? Too often the answer seems to fall into one of three categories, which turn out not to be altruistic at all:
1) To use the recipient of aid as a pawn to bribe the helper’s way into heaven or avoid hell (or to achieve a higher reincarnation).
2) To use kindness to convert more people to the helper’s religion, because religions cannot be sustained by evidence and thus need as many like-minded people as possible to prop them up and quash self-doubt.
3) To attempt to maintain the credibility of their religion by covering up the embarrassingly poor job done by their god, by claiming they are agents of God.

For those religious people who are kind for the sake of kindness, without reference to a god, that’s exactly what secular humanism is.

Bible Quotes

“I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”   (Isaiah 45:7)

“Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?”   (Lamentations 3:38)

“When disaster comes to a city, has the Lord not caused it?”   (Amos 3:6)

Qur’an Quote

“Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak [Allah] from the evil of that which He created…”   (Surah 113:1-2)

Atheist Quote

“I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.” (actress Katharine Hepburn, interview in the Ladies’ Home Journal magazine, October 1991, p. 215.)

© 2005-2009 August Berkshire

What other excuses have you heard for god’s evil?

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