One of the websites I provide content for has a forum for writers to post off topic threads. There has been a long history of people posting requests for prayers and whatnot, along with the occasional atheist or agnostic themed discussion. Recently one of the writers started a thread regarding a four year old boy being murdered and then disfigured by his father in Utah. The discussion was titled “Agnostic leaning atheist” and the writer expressed his disgust at the idea of a loving deity, who is also all-powerful, leaving this child to his fate. This idea is best summed up in the following famous quote, which has been attributed to several different philosophers:

“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?”

Of course there were immediately a long string of responses from religious folk giving their explanations on why they think their deity can be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and still let exceedingly terrible things happen. As would be expected, there was a good deal of mental gymnastics going on. Before getting to these responses, there should be a few words on the original argument itself. This can actually be a very effective argument against the traditional Christian idea of an all-powerful, supernatural force that created everything, and has some sort of grand plan for everyone. A potential issue that can arise from the idea, however. It is a very emotional argument, and while that isn’t necessarily bad itself, it allows for equally emotional responses that have less grounding in logic or reason. It also leads to [insert irrelevant personal anecdote here], which was seen in many of the comments.

This is an issue I constantly harp on: personal anecdotes have absolutely no place in any argument for the existence of the supernatural. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to prove the existence of unicorns, magic spells, leprechauns, or the Christian deity. Personal anecdotes are simply never a valid arguing tool when dealing with these issues that require serious substantiation. The problem with personal anecdotes is that we have no way to verify them. For example, say a Christian explains that they know God is real because a family member miraculously recovered from cancer (we’ll push aside for the moment the counter argument about people who are otherwise healthy suddenly dropping dead). In all likelihood this claim of magical healing is an exaggeration, a misunderstanding, or an outright lie. I have no way to contact this person’s doctor and ask just how “miraculous” this recovery was. I don’t know how many rounds of chemo they went through that the Christian is just conveniently ignoring so they can believe in miracles instead. I don’t even know if this family member exists. It’s virtually guaranteed that any serious inquiry into the matter will reveal a non-supernatural conclusion. A concise, calm, and rational video explaining why personal anecdotes have no place in any attempt to prove the existence of the paranormal can be viewed below.



I’ll now cover some of the specific responses to the original post. Quotes from other people are in red.

“Think of God the way you think of a human parent. We create our children and, as they grow up, we let 'em play out in the yard. Being good parents we build a fence and all, but we don't supervise their every single move as they grow. At some point, humanity is responsible for its own misdeeds.”

This quote makes what might appear to be a reasoned argument, and it even uses a fun little analogy that even the most simple minded can follow along with. The problem is that it completely ignores the fact that this analogy in no way applies to any God. Comparing parents to a deity doesn’t work, because parents are not omniscient and omnipotent beings. That’s the entire point of the original argument. Were parents to have the attributes of God, they wouldn’t let terrible things happen to their children. The analogy only further proves the point of the argument. They can’t have God be both all-powerful and not all-powerful. It’s one or the other, and it can’t just change whenever convenient so people can keep their supernatural world views working in their heads.

“For me it is better to believe there is a God, one who is just, and a gentleman. Part of being a gentleman is not forcing yourself on others, and allowing them to have free will to make their own choices good or bad. I have to believe that there is a Heaven beyond this otherwise as a mother I don't think I could have made it through those first months without my son. I have to believe there will be a judgment for my own personal monster and the role he played in my sons death otherwise I would have killed the SOB myself. Lastly, I have to believe there was some reason for me to go through the pain and anguish that I did. Some plan or direction even though I may not ever know what it was. For me, if there isn't a God there would be no reason to hope.”

This second quote falls prey to a common pitfall of a great many arguments for the existence of God – they aren’t arguments at all. The entire quote is an explanation of why this person wants God to exist, not an actual argument for why that God exists. Take for example, the statement that “I have to believe there was some reason for me to go through the pain and anguish that I did. Some plan or direction even though I may not ever know what it was. For me, if there isn't a God there would be no reason to hope.” The fact that this person doesn’t like the idea of an uncaring universe without a loving sky daddy doesn’t somehow make it more likely that such a loving sky daddy exists. Reality is reality, regardless of how much any given person doesn’t like it. Yes, the universe is an amoral entity. Deal with it. There are plenty of reasons to continue existing and continue having hope for the future that have nothing to do with big invisible men in the sky.

There is something in the second quote that also brings up some serious morality issues that are beyond the scope of this post, but I’d like to briefly touch on them. Notice how this person stated “I have to believe there will be a judgment for my own personal monster and the role he played in my sons death otherwise I would have killed the SOB myself.” Why do religious folk require a deity’s commands and the threat of an afterlife to keep them in line? I don’t believe there will be any punishment at all for evil people when they die, and yet I would never kill anyone. Morality is in fact more meaningful when it’s freely chosen without the threat of hell behind it.

“Questioning the existence of God reminds me of a discussion the Dali Lhama once had with Carl Sagan: Carl Sagan asked him, ‘If we could prove that reincarnation is false, what would you do?’ The Dali Lhama replied, ‘Well, then we'd cancel it.....But how are you going to prove it.’"

The third quote about Carl Sagan brings us to one of the biggest problems with any supernatural belief system. Carl Sagan absolutely does not have to disprove reincarnation to the Dhalai Lhama – the Dhalai Lhama has to prove reincarnation to Carl Sagan. That’s how the burden of proof works.

When someone makes an absurd claim (say for instance, “Zeus is real” or “I believe in faeries”), the burden of proof falls on the person making the claim to then prove that claim. The burden of proof absolutely does not fall on the person hearing the claim to disprove the claim. Christians insist that a big invisible man in the sky wants us to telepathically affirm our allegiance to His zombie son (who is also Him), because of the actions of a talking snake. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and to be blunt, there quite simply is no evidence to suggest that a zombie savior and his talking snake nemesis are battling for some invisible part of me.

“Well, we kicked God out of the school system and our courts, but somehow we think He's required to intervene for each atrocity. We've given Him the message that we want Him to leave us alone and stay out of our lives. Well, He gave us just what we asked for. And like it or not, He can't MAKE us behave without messing with free will. And guess what. If He did stop us from acting out, we'd accuse Him of being a puppeteer. Am I wrong? We'd accuse Him of MAKING people act however HE wanted them to act, and we'd take issue with that. So He gives us a choice, at which point we blame Him for not stopping people.”

If I had a nickel for every time I’d read this absurd notion about God being kicked out of the school system… As someone who has attended both public school and a private Christian school, I can assure you that no one’s deity has been kicked out. The public high school I attended had a Bible club. My sophomore French teacher taught us Christian hymns in French at Christmas time. Our principal said a prayer before the ceremonies at graduation. They just don’t FORCE kids to pray or read the Bible, and that’s what this person is really peeved about. The idea that public schools should spread one particular kind of religion is absurd when you consider the sheer number of religions out there. The same person who wrote that quote would absolutely throw a fit if public schools forced kids to read the Koran and pray towards Mecca.

This poster also seems to be dropping the “loving” aspect of God. Shouldn’t God want to stop atrocities regardless of whether we like him? It also brings up some interesting counter issues. For instance maybe if God came down and stopped atrocities, then people might not be so inclined to ask him to leave, eh? The second part of that quote just rehashes the idea of the first quote - that somehow God is omnipotent and omniscient, but he gave us free will so he’d be off the hook for not stopping terrible things from happening. Now first of all, if he were a puppeteer that controlled everything, we wouldn’t be able to accuse him of anything, so that’s a moot point. But moving past that, Christians seem to keep forgetting that they made their God all-powerful. Since he created reality and all its rules, he easily could have made a reality in which he doesn’t allow evil to happen, and yet we still have free will. If God can break other contradictory rules of reality (for example, Christians claim that a “clock cannot exist without a clock maker,” and yet they will freely state that God exists without a God maker), then there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to reconcile the two ideas without resorting to using his own kid as a blood sacrifice.

Please feel free to weigh in on the argument in the comments below!