As a teenage conflicted Catholic kid, and then as hurt by loss early twentysomething, I never became agnostic. (I have to walk evangelical friends through this one all time. They tend to think I rejected God after the loss of someone close to me. And I have to explain that I didn't reject him as God, but more as sort of a "reliable parent.")
Anyway . . . one of the things that continually lead me to belief as as teenager, were books and movies like the Exorcist. And ghost hunters and demonologies. Catholics, even wayward Catholics, take this stuff seriously. And if you take darkness, evil seriously, then you can only conclude it's the opposite, adversarial force to all that is light and good. No agnosticism.
I would probably follow the pattern of Abraham Heschel in Man is Not Alone; that existence carries with it a moral obligation to give account. In his case, that s the ineffable, the sheer wonder at the edge of perception, that is at once real and being real demands some sort of accounting.
So too with evil. As Evil exists across cultures, times etc. it asks for an explanation, some sort of moral accounting. We don’t get the option of ignoring it. So the question arises as to what is violated and why this matters. This I think is the middle step in your argument.
Agree and this is a dangerous situation. Without a guide that is beyond ourselves, we are lost. Violence, abuse, greed, and other actions that hurt people cannot really be judged as good or bad.... except when we get together to decide these things. At this point it becomes relative and arguably a weak measure to build a society. It is the house on sand that we have built and we are seeing the erosion daily in this country.
I like this argument, as rather than just problem, Christians have to deal with, it pushes back and clarifies that evil is a problem for everyone.
The corollary is that atheists also have a problem with "good/goodness". People want to say things or people are good, but their is not concept of goodness in the world described by your Dawkins' quote.
The problem I see with your argument is that evil is not perceived as an objective thing. Of course I believe there is objective evil, but the very fact that there are things I would see as objectively evil that someone else would not see as evil at all is an indicator that it is in fact subjective. And if evil is subjective then the entire argument falls down.
Now, that being said, just because someone might disagree with what I may believe to be objective evil doesn’t mean automatically that objective evil doesn’t exist, but I suppose it does put it into doubt.
Related to this . . .
As a teenage conflicted Catholic kid, and then as hurt by loss early twentysomething, I never became agnostic. (I have to walk evangelical friends through this one all time. They tend to think I rejected God after the loss of someone close to me. And I have to explain that I didn't reject him as God, but more as sort of a "reliable parent.")
Anyway . . . one of the things that continually lead me to belief as as teenager, were books and movies like the Exorcist. And ghost hunters and demonologies. Catholics, even wayward Catholics, take this stuff seriously. And if you take darkness, evil seriously, then you can only conclude it's the opposite, adversarial force to all that is light and good. No agnosticism.
I would probably follow the pattern of Abraham Heschel in Man is Not Alone; that existence carries with it a moral obligation to give account. In his case, that s the ineffable, the sheer wonder at the edge of perception, that is at once real and being real demands some sort of accounting.
So too with evil. As Evil exists across cultures, times etc. it asks for an explanation, some sort of moral accounting. We don’t get the option of ignoring it. So the question arises as to what is violated and why this matters. This I think is the middle step in your argument.
Agree and this is a dangerous situation. Without a guide that is beyond ourselves, we are lost. Violence, abuse, greed, and other actions that hurt people cannot really be judged as good or bad.... except when we get together to decide these things. At this point it becomes relative and arguably a weak measure to build a society. It is the house on sand that we have built and we are seeing the erosion daily in this country.
I like this argument, as rather than just problem, Christians have to deal with, it pushes back and clarifies that evil is a problem for everyone.
The corollary is that atheists also have a problem with "good/goodness". People want to say things or people are good, but their is not concept of goodness in the world described by your Dawkins' quote.
The problem I see with your argument is that evil is not perceived as an objective thing. Of course I believe there is objective evil, but the very fact that there are things I would see as objectively evil that someone else would not see as evil at all is an indicator that it is in fact subjective. And if evil is subjective then the entire argument falls down.
Now, that being said, just because someone might disagree with what I may believe to be objective evil doesn’t mean automatically that objective evil doesn’t exist, but I suppose it does put it into doubt.
Great fuel for discussion though. I enjoy it.
And complicating this, is that we live in a time where we're quick to call things "evil." People who hold different social-political views, etc.