Pharyngula

good lesson, horrible spelling.

if you can find the original, I'd be happy to fix it.

Posted by: Ichthyic | December 2, 2007 4:46 PM

I'm not sure if "athiests" is better or worse than "athieists, which I have also seen a few times. Usually it's the other side that can't spell, though.

Oh well. Way to go, Epicurus!

Posted by: Kevin L. | December 2, 2007 4:51 PM

This comment from the My Confined Space site just made my day. Never thought of atheism as the optimistic choice.

he word "evil" is a bad translation. Replace that with "suffering" and the quote is a much stronger statement. Why doesn't God prevent earthquakes and tsunamis? Those have nothing to do with free will.
And the free will is still a weak argument. windrider and Geko are basically saying that God has to choose between preventing evil and some worse alternative. But a truly omnipotent being would not have to make such decisions.
You really have 3 options:
1) God doesn't care about us
2) God is insane
3) God doesn't exist.
Atheism is optimistic."

Posted by: Casey | December 2, 2007 4:51 PM

fixed:

http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/atheists1.jpg

half size:

http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/atheists2.jpg

Posted by: Ichthyic | December 2, 2007 4:58 PM

There are many better arguments for atheism than this one.

Because any believer that is not philosophically challenged can shoot it down without effort. ( one example would be declaring that omnipotence does not require to be capable of doing logically impossible things, and asserting that universe without any evil is logically impossible )
But watching the dumber ones trying to wriggle out of the tight spot is fun anyway...

Posted by: T_U_T | December 2, 2007 5:00 PM

Date is off by several centuries.

yes, have to fix that too, but there IS no specific date attributable to the specific quote.

how 'bout modding the last sentence to read:

"Winning since 300 BC"

as a still rough, but more at least more temporally accurate, statement?

Posted by: Ichthyic | December 2, 2007 5:10 PM

"Athiest?"

I think not. I am much athier.

Posted by: Milo Johnson | December 2, 2007 5:17 PM

one example would be declaring that omnipotence does not require to be capable of doing logically impossible things, and asserting that universe without any evil is logically impossible

Wow, that's considered philosophically sophisticated? "I'm right because I have added a question-begging premise to my argument."

Posted by: Zarquon | December 2, 2007 5:25 PM

for those who at least want to attach the argument to the era it came from:

http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/atheists2b.jpg

http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/atheists1b.jpg

whee! lots of versions to spread about the web now.

Posted by: Ichthyic | December 2, 2007 5:34 PM

Interesting that the atheist chose to use A.D. (Anno Domini -- In the Year of our Lord) rather than the more scholarly C.E. (Common Era). Ditto if you want to date from Epicurus and use B.C (Before Christ) vs. BCE (Before the Common Era).

Just another nit to pick...

Posted by: Sastra, OM | December 2, 2007 5:45 PM

better than diesm.

Posted by: alex | December 2, 2007 5:49 PM

"Because any believer that is not philosophically challenged can shoot it down without effort. ( one example would be declaring that omnipotence does not require to be capable of doing logically impossible things, and asserting that universe without any evil is logically impossible )"

How about Heaven? Isn't Heaven supposed to be evil-free? If your god can create one evil-free world, why could he not create another one?

And btw, omnipotency is by definition the capacity to do _anything_. So by definition, any being who is incapable of doing some things is not omnipotent. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You cannot make up your own definitions because what you believe in makes no sense.

Posted by: Robert | December 2, 2007 5:57 PM

The athiest spelling always makes me think of that fine phrase, "I can outgrabe any mome raths". Why yes, I do have a twisted maze of a mind.

Posted by: Ted D | December 2, 2007 6:01 PM

Shouldn't there be a question mark at the end, as well?

Posted by: Gary | December 2, 2007 6:04 PM

"I can outgrabe any mome raths"

Posted by: Gregory Kusnick | December 2, 2007 6:08 PM

I never understood the counter-arguments.

The most common one I see is that God cannot do something which is logically inconsistent (So, giving people complete free will while preventing them from sinning.) To me this seems to say that God simply is not omnipotent. In addition, it doesn't address heaven, which is a place where people have free will but cannot sin.

The next most common one was brought up here: A universe without evil cannot exist.

The very idea of heaven refutes this utterly, as does the garden of eden, both of which were sans-evil yet, supposedly, exist(ed).

This style of argument really seems more like what I like to call the "myopia" defence. Namely: I can assert two contradictory things to both be true, so long as I don't assert them both at the same time.

A surprising number of people seem to do this.

Posted by: GDwarf | December 2, 2007 6:17 PM

it would go like "imagine a novel, story, or a fairytale without any villain, and you will find out that it would lack any plot, and would be thus absolutely boring and meaningless"

Last I checked, being "absolutely boring and meaningless" and manifestly lacking a plot has been no obstacle to millions of "romance" novels being sold, nor to some of them (*cough*Jane Austen*cough*) being considered great literary classics.

Posted by: Azkyroth | December 2, 2007 6:20 PM

If the spelling is wrong (or was the word "atheist" the only misspelling; I readily admit my spelling sucks donkey balls... ) and the date isn't from the time of Epicurus, are we sure the statement is Epicurus'? Did Epicurus espouse such sentiment.

To be honest, I've always found this argument rather tepid. I don't see any reason why a belief in God should include that he is nice. I noticed in the conclussions: 1) God doesn't care about us
2) God is insane
3) God doesn't exist.

overlooks the obvious 4) God is mean, 5) Natural disasters are good for us (build character?) Even given a religion where God is "good" (that wasn't a Hellenistic tenet, was it?) I don't see any reason why "good" should mean "nice" rather than "making things work the way they should for an ultimate meaningful experience". It's down-right easy to argue that death and human evil is "good" for us and although sickness and earthquakes are harder to argue for they aren't impossible. To snicker and say, "if I gave you pox and dropped a piano on your head the town would hang me as an asshole, so when God does it he's an asshole just like me and if God was at all nice he'd give us all ice cream trees and mink back rubs but he doesn't so he's just a poopy-headed meanie". Strikes me as deliberate sophomoric simpering solipsism at best. Even the most dim-witted believer can counter with no effort "Well, you aren't God, asshole!"

(and to be honest part of me will be cheering him on. This "why isn't there beer trees and lollipops argument" is pretty much on sophisticated par with "If people came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys" and "what's the use of half an eye")

Posted by: woozy | December 2, 2007 6:28 PM

are we sure the statement is Epicurus'?

there is some debate on that, as the specific quote cannot be tied down to a place or date. It is attributed to him by early historians, however.

Did Epicurus espouse such sentiment.

Oh yes, that is without doubt.

Posted by: Ichthyic | December 2, 2007 6:35 PM

Wouldn't that need to be 270 BCE? What does Epicurus have to do with the crucifixion? ::puzzled::

Posted by: octopod | December 2, 2007 6:16 PM

Epicurus was one of the, for lack of a detailed explanation, Greek founders of the scientific method (not that it was just him or just the Greeks, like in real-life, these things are really complicated). He also taught that the gods don't involve themselves in, or concern themselves with, the affairs of men, for good or evil, at all.

You might consider him a deist, if anything at all. Possibly an atheist who payed lip-service to the gods.

Posted by: Moses | December 2, 2007 6:45 PM

"The only place I've ever seen BCE/CE used before this thread is in my religious education classes at school. The school chaplain used it."

First time I saw it used was in a PBS documentary about the history of the Jewish people. Since then it seems quite common in "History Channel" (and related channels)documentaries.

As for free will in Heaven; it is not people living in the clouds like in most common depictions. Supposedly Heaven is the pure joy of being in the presense of God, sort of like an everlasting heroin high. So whether you have free will or not, you wouldn't want to use it anyway.

Posted by: SteveM | December 2, 2007 6:50 PM

I have heard about those dyslexic atheists........

They don't believe in Dog.

Posted by: Tony Popple | December 2, 2007 7:01 PM

Azkyroth:

The quality of perfect moral goodness is built into most if not all definitions of big-G "God." [...] "Good" manifestly excludes abject sadism or cold-blooded indifference to human life.

All that may be true, but it is not necessarily the case that "perfect moral goodness" will correspond to our human understanding of it. Thus saying that "god works in mysterious ways" is not necessarily a cop-out. If god indeed defines perfect moral goodness, then the alternate response to the problem of evil is simply that we limited humans don't have "evil" defined properly. (This is similar to Leibniz's argument that this is the "best of all possible worlds".) This option also becomes more powerful when the existence of heaven and hell are taken into account, in that "good" and "evil" don't have to be worked out in this world and in an individual's finite mortal existence, but can also impact on their afterlife (if heaven really existed, wouldn't a literal infinity of perfect happiness make up for a few years of painful cancer?).

[Austen] uniformly fails to engage my interest and I find myself wanting to strangle the characters

Posted by: Tulse | December 2, 2007 7:10 PM

...it is not necessarily the case that "perfect moral goodness" will correspond to our human understanding of it.

Actually it is. Otherwise this is simply equivocation, describing God as (normal definition) "good" when arguing about His existence, but changing to (ineffable) "good" when the implications of the evidence are being discussed.

Posted by: Zarquon | December 2, 2007 7:23 PM

asserting that universe without any evil is logically impossible

An intelligently designed universe wouldn't have any evil in it, would it? I mean, if god created the universe, he created the evil. Indeed, a creator would have to bear the moral responsibility for its creation.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | December 2, 2007 7:35 PM

Wouldn't that need to be 270 BCE? What does Epicurus have to do with the crucifixion? ::puzzled::

IMHO, that's supposedly when Jesus ("God") died. Because human beings killed him.

Get it? Get it?

Posted by: Kristine | December 2, 2007 7:36 PM

basically because one could make an argument that an universe with good bud without evil is rather absurd ( it would go like "imagine a novel, story, or a fairytale without any villain, and you will find out that it would lack any plot, and would be thus absolutely boring and meaningless" )

This is teh stupid. A block of a whitish, greasy substance. I want to set it on fire.

Whoever argues like that has neither read Carl Zimmer's At the Water's Edge nor Jennifer Clack's Gaining Ground, and these are just the examples that I can cite off the top of my head. No villains, no plot whatsoever, and yet the books are fascinating. And what exactly does "meaning" mean?

Then there are books like Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World or Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow. They contain the occasional villain, but there's still no plot, and these books are fascinating, too.

</holy wrath>

<evil grin> <spark of pyromania in eyes>

<sing voice="shout">WE DON' NEED NO WADR, LET THE MOTHRFUCKR BRN -- BRN, MOTHRFUCKR, BRN.</sing>

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | December 2, 2007 7:39 PM

The quality of perfect moral goodness is built into most if not all definitions of big-G "God." Do you understand what the term "good" actually means?

Actually, no, I don't. Nor am I sure the users of the argument "god allows bad things to happen so he can't be good" do either.

5) Natural disasters are good for us (build character?)
This is so manifestly untrue as to be outright idiotic.

It was a joke? Seriously though, justifications for tragedy have been argued time and time again. None of them satisfy me, personally, and as I've always been an atheist for other reasons (it's just silly; isn't it?) I've never had a great need to debate or evaluate them. As there is always suffering, arbitrary or humanly deliberate, in life and over the eons all billions of humans die I just can't get on my high-horse and say "In the long view of things and the history of the universe, the black plague/ the Lisbon Earthquake/ etc. is unquestionable a 'bad' thing" Yes, this is Panglossian but I see no reason to believe a "good" god, couldn't also be a Machievallian bastard. I, personally, find this idea repugnant but as we as scientists say, reality has nothing to do with what we personally want to be true. Ultimately, I simply find "With all the suffering God must be a bastard and bastards can't ever be 'good'" to be unconvincing.

Part of this might be because I *don't* know what good means. I *don't* want to die. Ever. Even pleasantly. Not even if there is a paradise afterlife. I want to live *forever* *here* on earth in good health. God says no. Can I conclude that God is a big meanie and not 'good'? I don't think that's the definition of 'good'. But then again I don't think "Okay, death to allow new people to experience and human evil for free will but no guenia worms and make sure the earthquakes only kill the wicked" is a good definition of 'good' either.

"Good" manifestly excludes abject sadism or cold-blooded indifference to human life.

Why? That's good for people. And governments. But for a being in control and responsible for the whole of human history *and* the whole of human meaning? Basically, I find 'good' to be meaningless or undefinable in whatever force or scope of this. That's why I don't see any reason one should expect a God to be "good" in any human sense of the world and why I don't find this argument convincing. (On the other hand, I also can't see that shouting "God! You are a cold-blooded fucking bastard!" to in any way hurting God, either.)

So, in other words, you are asserting that it is valid to claim that God is good while excusing him from meeting the actual prerequisites inherent in the definition of the term? This is called "special pleading" and you're compounding it by begging the question.

What question am I begging? I believe it is valid to claim god is 'good' in the meaning that the universe runs the way it should for a meaningful human experience. I admit this definition is weak and tepid, probably so watered down to have no meaning, and very debatable as the universe runs in a method that very likely isn't they way it "should" but debating whether things are "good" or not at this level is so abstract, so far from the individual human level such statements are probably meaningless. At any rate to argue that there is no God because God *has* to be good, just doesn't cut it for me. Admittedly, my objection is more that "God is good" is a stupid and/or meaningless to say, than that "Gee, I think leukemia and guinea worms are a good thing!".

A person who equates the "why are there guinea worms, leukemia, and tsunamis" argument with "why isn't there beer trees and lollipops" calling anything else sophomoric is an irony of epic proportions.

Point taken. But they both boil done to "Why is life sometimes bad if God can make it good". I don't find that argument convincing or sophisticated. Bear in mind, I'm not arguing that God, whom I don't believe exists, *is* good, but that his inherent *lack* of goodness is a strong argument against his existence. To interpret "God is good" takes a huge grain of salt and can be taken to mean tsunamis and guinea worms are 'good' and that certainly can't be the 'good' of "That Jim; he sure is a good guy!" but such a grain of salt isn't entirely impossible. It's 'good' for bio-diversity that guinea worms exist (and *very* good for the worms themselves) and it's 'good' for geology that tsunamis exist. I'm not crazy about leukemia or e-bola but it's 'good' that biological methods that allow them to arise are the biological methods of this planet.

Posted by: woozy | December 2, 2007 7:57 PM

All that may be true, but it is not necessarily the case that "perfect moral goodness" will correspond to our human understanding of it.

But this creates problems for religions that exhort people to "imitate God", as Mark Twain observed...

(if heaven really existed, wouldn't a literal infinity of perfect happiness make up for a few years of painful cancer?)

Not unless everyone was guaranteed infinite happiness. But in that case, what would be the point of the initial suffering? If someone punched me in the nose and then gave me a million dollars, that would probably "make up" for the discomfort as far as I was concerned, but the nose-puncher's motives would still be questionable. And what about the pointless suffering of non-human life?

Posted by: windy | December 2, 2007 8:05 PM

Although, I've heard in obscure references that only humans have free will; angels don't.
That would raise the problem, in some people's version of Christianity (etc), of how Satan/Lucifer could possibly be a fallen angel (or anything of the same non-human ilk) without the god being entirely complicit in the fit-up job (creating evil, framing his agent and blaming the victims).
Well, my reference was Sandman comic books...

Didn't God create the laws of logic and physics? If he can't violate such laws, doesn't that indicate that they must have existed prior to him, or binds him in some fashion?
Didn't God create himself? Wouldn't God obey his own laws? Did God make physical laws? Probably (hypothetically, I am an athiest). Logical laws? Absolutely not! Logical laws would be a result of interpreting the laws of universe afterward. Also once created, why should he *later* be able to break them. Square circles are a symantic impossibility. Not a physical (or theological) limitation.
If God can only act within the laws of physics, how is he different from some very powerful non-supernatural being?

He created the universe, consciously watches over every action within it, he effects and intervenes in it and is aware and has a relationship with every human being.

Wouldn't any very powerful non-supernatural being that does all that be deserving of the name God?

(Isn't the word "supernatural" a logical oxymoron just as "omnipotent" is also a logical oxymoron? After all, everything that exists is natural? And "omni" implies the "impossible" as well as the possible. Would anything be actually limited if "omnipotent" only included the possible, and "natural" includes everything that can possibly exist (including the existence or non-existance of God, Angels, and ghosts)?

Posted by: woozy | December 2, 2007 8:12 PM

Maybe he followed the I before E except after C rule to far.

Posted by: Chris | December 2, 2007 8:23 PM

The arguments against it I've heard, like Woozy's, amount to a Panglossian view that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Now, even if we except that evil/suffering exists, then we can ask, yeah, but exactly this much?

If the world was as good as it could ever possibly be right now, then there would be no sense in us trying to make it better, yes? So obviously it's not at the optimal level right now.

Which means to argue that the epicurean philosophy is untrue, you have to argue that the best possible universe has to have started with exactly as much evil as this one, and that said evil can be mitigated only at the rate evil is currently mitigated in this universe.

Which is to say that if God had, say, made the planet less prone to Earthquakes, it would not have allowed more people to live.

Which... I guess I can't disprove it, but that requires a number of obscure assumptions I see no reason to believe.

One could also argue that the events of this physical universe are ultimately so trivial that while they seem horrible to us, they really aren't. Perhaps when we die we'll arrive at some higher consciousness and see everything as a game.

But again, you're making a lot of assumptions about the way things work.

Ultimately, in order to go against Epicurus, you have to believe in a number of unproven assumptions about the universe, for no real reason at all.

I kind of think Occam's Razor makes any of Epicurus' ideas much more likely; God being a dick or being impotent doesn't really require us to make any assumptions about the universe working in some strange way we can't observe.

I'm kind of a weird Atheist; I don't care if god exists or not, because if he did i still wouldn't like him.

Here's two things we know:
1. Bad stuff happens.
2. It happens for no readily apparent reason.

Suppose somebody walked up behind you on the street, and kicked me in the butt. Then he walked away without saying anything.

Would you start spinning elaborate scenarios explaining why he NEEDED to kick you in the butt for the good of all mankind?

Or would you just say, "Man, what a jerk."

Me, I'd go for the second one, and that's why I'm not religious.

Posted by: Christopher | December 2, 2007 8:46 PM

I have heard about those dyslexic atheists . . .

Not to mention the dyslexic agnostic insomniacs, who lie awake all night wondering whether there's a Dog or not.

Posted by: noncarborundum | December 2, 2007 9:10 PM

Ichthyic, quit bogarting that bud, Bud, and pass on down this way!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | December 2, 2007 9:14 PM

I can see why an atheist might be unconvinced by Epicurus' argument for the existence of God, but the last line isn't, Why say he exists? it is Why call him God?.

This is the sort of quote that brings in frantic track switching in Christians. God is GOOD because of X Y and Z at the same time that there is no way we can know if something is good or not. If its true that God is that inscrutable, then God could be a right mean bastard playing a joke and gets his jollies by coming down to earth in incarnated forms and starting new religions. We couldn't tell -- his ways are mysterious. And, in fact, that's a way more plausible view of God to me than the story Christians peddle.

So, I can totally understand why a philosophically-minded atheists could sniff at Epicurus... but christians who think their entity is worthy of worship have a real problem.

Posted by: inkadu | December 2, 2007 9:45 PM

Phew, what a long thread!

Re. much of the above: can we just accept that it's not possible to use logic to prove or disprove the existence of gods?

If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Posted by: JoeZ | December 2, 2007 9:54 PM

Hmm,

Arguably, the quote seems like a good argument for the
Jesus = God/Crucifixion paradox.

Posted by: Tony Jeremiah | December 2, 2007 10:14 PM

The only place I've ever seen BCE/CE used before this thread is in my religious education classes at school.

I first saw it in James Michener's novel The Source (1965), which my mother had on a bookshelf somewhere when I was a youngster.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | December 2, 2007 10:20 PM

It seems that someone has invited the grammar McCarthyist's. (Look, I invented a new word in an attempt to not invoke Godwin's Law!)

Oh, and I expect all you grammarians to start using shoppe, colour, and ye in place of shop, color, and the. Having the spelling of a word change due to popular usage is unacceptable and completely unheard of historically. As such, I expect you to use proper English!

After all, English was created exactly the way we use it today. Everyone knows that!

Posted by: Sil-chan | December 2, 2007 10:38 PM

Omnipotent? Can god change Pi? No? Thought not. Change the fact that 2+2=4? No? OK then. Not omnipotent. Game over. Mathematics constrains god. Can we go home now?

Posted by: Amenhotep | December 2, 2007 6:17 PM

If Big Brother Sky Daddy says 2+2=4, it is in your own best interest to truly believe it is so. And no, you may not go home. We are behind in production. We must make sure that 2+2=4.

Posted by: Janine | December 2, 2007 10:55 PM

The simpsons tonight (rerun, i missed the intro before) had a sweet evolution of homer sequence to open. complete with moe meeting homer at homer erectus stage and going the other direction.
thatsa nice.

Posted by: garth | December 2, 2007 11:04 PM