Is it good because it is God’s nature? or is it God’s nature because it is good?

The Euthyphro Dilemma is a Theology 101 problem, without a satisfactory answer. Posed in Plato’s dialogues, it is often formulated like this: “Does God command something is good because it is good, or is it good because God commands it”. Plato was writing from a polytheistic culture, so this is a variation (and translation) on…

God’s utter lacking in compassion

Andy Rhea commented on my post about whether I'd worship God if I believed in Him. The comments followed a theme inspired by Fourat Janabi’s post about God as a Narc; I had said that God does not show compassion, and that the story of the fall to account for that lack of compassion doesn’t…

A Challenge to Christians and Atheists

The problem of evil is ubiquitous. However, this argument only works against certain definitions of a god. If you believe in a particular God that is incompatible with the nature of suffering then you should throw out the definition of God. Normally this is not what happens. People either cut their definitions of God or…

God looks a lot like no God

We are willing to claim things don’t exist. I don’t mean atheists; I mean thinkers in general. Do you believe in unicorns, Santa, leprechauns, the tooth fairy or the Flying Spaghetti monster? I know they’re cliché examples, but that is intentional: I want you to realise these arguments aren’t new, but apologists have been ignoring…

Do I really have to answer such absurd depictions of my view? Enlightenment values help discover morality and let it flourish

In a recent conversation with oldschoolcontemporary (OSC) about objective morality, we ran into many stumbling blocks to our ability to properly communicate with each other. So far as I could tell, OSC had immovable metrics in place by which to measure objective morality that were almost necessarily religious (redemption, salvation and infallible imposable authority) which…

Why is God good?

I have heard many times from apologists and blogosphere theologians that God must be good. I am then given some variety of bad reasoning: circular arguments about God’s nature being good because goodness is defined by God’s nature, brute force arguments about God being either “Perfect” or the Creator and this is therefore just the…

Freewill and human moral evils

Human moral evils1 are things intentionally done by people who cause suffering. If a god capable of altering our will prioritises our freedom to commit these evils over our wellbeing, such evils—like child abuse—must be fostered so long some people will to do it2. Alternatively, human moral evils are part of a god’s toolkit for…

Happy and Ignorant or Miserable and Knowledgeable

In my last post I said I would choose happiness and ignorance over misery and knowledge, if somehow those were my options, almost without hesitation. But it wasn’t without hesitation. I took many years to overcome my sense of pride that I associate with knowledge and to recognise the true bliss of just being happy.…

Does Studying Science Make You a Better Person?

I thought I’d take two minutes (I’ll add a footnote telling how long this really took to write) out of my uneventful morning to answer a question I just found in my WordPress feed: “Does studying science make you a better person?” The answer is no. That might sound weird coming from me, as I…

Epicurus and The Problem of Evil

The Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened the other day has sparked the blogosphere—or at least the part of the blogosphere that I frequent—into a frenzy of conversation about God, Heaven and evil. I don’t want to talk about the shooting; I find it disrespectful to tie the shooting up in a theological discussion. The only…