Atheism: Our experience of evil argues against the existence of God

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Atheism Our experience of evil argues against
the existence of God

• Reply 1 evil is simply the absence of the good
  or real it follows from being imperfect
  (Augustine)
• Response why, then, does God create at all?
• Reply 2 evil is defined from our perspective
• Response this makes evil ( good) unreal
• Reply 3 evil is necessary to appreciate the
  good it allows us to become moral beings
• Response why cant God produce good without
  causing evil? Is evil then ultimately good? And
  why so much evil? What does a dying infant learn
  through suffering?
• Reply 4 evil results from free choices
• Response this doesnt explain natural evil
  (e.g., storms)

2
Agnosticism We dont know if God exists. So why
do people believe in God?

• Freud religion provides us with the delusion of
  a father figure who protects us from the
  anxieties of life

• Kant morality requires the coincidence of virtue
  and happiness, which can be accomplished only by
  God

• Marx religion is our opium to com-pensate for
  socio-political alienation

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Volitional Arguments for Religious Belief

• William James Our question should not be is
  there a God? but should I believe in God? Such
  belief does not

• depend on dispassionate reason but on the
  practical difference it makes in our life
• We are justified in belief based on insufficient
  evidence only when options are genuine
  (forced, momentous, and live)

• Pascals Wager given the odds and rewards, it is
  more reasonable to believe

Blaise Pascal (1623-62)
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Religious Mysticism

• The experience of the numinous (holy) is
  ineffable (cannot be expressed) though
  informative (noetic). In a mystical experience, a
  person is united with an Other in a feeling of
  bliss in which all sense of personal identity is
  lost

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-82)

• Objections How can finite beings experience an
  infinite God? and how do we know that such
  experiences are not simply wish fulfillments,
  illusions, or hallucinations?

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Non-Traditional Religious Experience
Tillich
Kierkegaard

• Radical Theology religious life is based on a
  leap of faith (subjective experience), not
  knowledge of objective facts (Kierkegaard) or an
  all-knowing being who deprives us of subjectivity
  and meaning but the be-ing of our ultimate
  concern (Tillich)

• Feminist Theology the power/authority model of a
  male God should be replaced by either a Goddess
  of shared power recog-nition (Daly) or a God
  with no gender

Mary Daly
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Eastern Religious Traditions

• Hinduism through meditation we learn that
  reality (Brahman) is one and all individuals are
  illusory. Enlightenment releases us from the
  cycle of rebirth regulated by the law of karma
  (reap what you sow)
• Buddhism inner peace (nirvana) and release from
  suffering are achieved by not craving to satisfy
  the self (which is a creation of desire) and not
  being judgmental, greedy, or fearful of losing
  things
• Zen Buddhism reality (the divine) is experienced
  in learning not to think (e.g., in subject-object
  or means-ends terms) but to know it not as
  different