This is an answer to some issues raised by a friend of my colleague's son (a high school student). Though not all the background is here the answers given here may help you and/ or provoke you to find the sources mentioned.
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Thanks, David, for taking the time to answer systematically and seriously. I apologize for not posting my reply on Sunday, but life intervened. I take you very seriously and so have answered seriously.
RE: Macroevolution and George Bush
If macroevolution was true there should be millions (at least) of transitional forms / fossils. We may have three. I’m not asking for all however many millions. I’m asking if this is true, why do we have only three? If we do, the data can be interpreted differently by scientists. See Darwin’s Black Box by Michael J. Behe or Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton.
Your argument about the morphology (likeness) of George Bush at 20 with George Bush at 50 doesn’t apply to macroevolution. At best it is a case of microevolution, but even that is questionable. The individual remains the same. If you were arguing the similarity of George H W Bush with George W Bush you would be closer to an argument for microevolution. There is no evidence or at least scant evidence in light of how much there ought to be for macroevolution. No one is arguing against microevolution, i.e. within a species. Macroevolution has to tell us how an amphibian became George Bush and should have thousands of transitional forms.
On no evidence for God
I gave you several arguments which you haven’t yet answered (maybe below you answer): the cosmological argument (how did the contingent universe come to be? Or where did eternal matter (contingent) come from?), the teleological argument (There is good. There must be a standard of good). I also gave you two arguments for God’s existence from the Virgin Birth and the Trinity.
You assail the historical veracity of the Bible. Have you done any reading on it? Aside from your favorite atheist blogger?
See The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? By FF Bruce. See The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. I could go on, but I’d wager I’ve read more Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche and Heidegger than you have read Christian writers. Are you objective?
On your understanding of Genesis 1 & 2
You malign the Bible, but you confuse some interpretations of the Bible with what the Bible intends to say. There are indeed arguments even among Christians about how to understand these chapters. You should look at the link to Hugh Ross’ site.
Back to evolution and lack of evidence
Face it. Evolution requires millions of transitional forms/ fossils. They aren’t there. It’s not a small thing. It’s a major issue/ problem which has led even some biologists to change their viewpoints, e.g. Michael Behe, Michael Denton and Dr. Dean Kenyon.
I highly recommend this DVD http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Mystery-Life-Michael-Behe/dp/B00007KLDW
You can watch it in installments on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWvS1UfXl8k
“The science is solid and the computer animations are superb. Unlocking is a great film.” --Philip S. Skell, Ph.D., Member, National Academy of Sciences, Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University
It’s not Christians alone who rule out evolution as merely unusual. The inventor of the Steady State theory of the universe Dr. Fred Hoyle has said that Evolution is a greater miracle than the Virgin Birth. He said this during a lecture at Cambridge.
"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect DELIBERATE... It is therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligences.. even to the limit of God." (Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, co-authors of "Evolution from Space," after acknowledging that they had been atheists all their lives)
"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein... I am at a loss to understand biologists' widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious." (Sir Fred Hoyle)
"I don't know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the earth. Astronomers will have a little difficulty in understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The 'others' are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles... It is quite otherwise, however, with the modern miracle workers, who are always to be found living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics." (Sir Fred Hoyle)
(These "mathematical miracles" that must have occurred are summarized in my paper "The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Evolution")
http://www.aboundingjoy.com/scientists.htm
Though a Christian has assembled these quotes I have the original lecture if you find it hard to believe Hoyle said these things. In fact Hoyle is not a Christian (far from it). He is a panentheist (everything-in-God), not a theist. The point, though, is that he sees that non-rational, non-personal forces cannot create intelligent life.
You getting a 10 is not like the universe springing into being from nothing with no cause. You are a cause. You are a demiurge. You are not God. You cannot create something from nothing. However, you are intelligent and with discipline you can learn and perform well on an exam. A clump of dirt can’t turn itself into amino acids. Even pools of amino acids can’t organize themselves into life. They are not personal agents and they have no goals. If they are inanimate and directed by some other agent, who or what is that agent? Again if you do not have a personal agent you can’t explain intelligence.
On God creating us freely and many suffering forever in hell
You have now (in my opinion) finally come to THE issue that really gripes most non-Christians. It is known in philosophy as the problem of theodicy. Theodicy is from the Greek which means God and Justice, i.e. How can a Just and Loving God exist in the face of human suffering?
Briefly the argument can be construed as follows (I paraphrase Anthony Flew, again NO Christian; he professes now to be a deist, i.e. he believes in a creator God who created and designed the universe to run without his interference.)
God has created man.
Man is finite.
No sin man could possibly commit could deserve eternal punishment, but God will so punish many.
Therefore, God cannot exist (or he is a monster).
OK let’s look at it. The first premise is true. The second premise is true. The third is the one we disagree about.
The question to be addressed is: Can a finite being (man) do something which is worthy of eternal punishment?
Briefly, yes. That thing is to reject ones creator and ones creator’s love.
This sounds very harsh. OK let’s follow the argument.
Who says what the rules are? Obviously the finite, created being does not make the rules. God makes the rules.
Again you don’t like Genesis, but Genesis 3 explains the origin of evil. Man and woman chose to disobey God and the result was catastrophic for all humankind. They knew what the consequences were when they chose, but they chose what they thought was worth more.
If it were just that God said, “Don’t eat from that tree!” and they did, that would seem extreme, but that’s not the end of story. God was not willing to let everyone suffer eternal punishment. So he sent his son to die for them (to pay the penalty for them). All they need to do now is accept that sacrifice and they are forgiven and live eternally in happiness, not punishment.
BUT many choose to spurn God’s offer, which results in eternal punishment. Yes, man can so disobey and affront God that his judgment is eternal punishment.
However, when God saw the predicament He himself came to make it possible to avoid that punishment.
You could and some have argued that God shouldn’t have created us if he had known we would sin and so deserve eternal punishment.
You could argue that your parents are unloving in that they brought you into a world where you will die. Would you do that? Is there not joy and hope in living?
God created us for love, for fellowship with Him and with each other, for eternity. He didn’t have too, but he gave us being, life. My philosophical mentor uses the phrase “Given to be with a promise”. God has created all of us and given us talents and skills that are a promise of what we can become.
I read about half of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. After having read half I just decided he wasn’t worth the time. However, he really didn’t have an argument against God’s existence. He thought he did, but mainly he argued that we just know there is no God and we are in “bad faith” if we believe in God. His experience wasn’t mine.
On the other hand he had a perhaps more forceful argument. It’s an argument from freedom. Basically if a Creator existed we would not be free.
If we were created we would be en soi, in itself, determined, having no freedom, no ability to self-determination. He argues that we are pour soi, for itself. Clearly we have some sense of being able to make a difference, to have some freedom.
He argues similarly to Nietzsche that we make value and that we must make value. I understood what he wanted to say, but as with Nietzsche I don’t see how his basic views support his view. Existentialism says there is no God and no inherent meaning in the universe. Goodness isn’t somehow hard-wired into the universe. It is something we make. For Nietzsche the Superman makes meaning, or might makes right. What he says is right is right until he’s too weak to hold his position and then the next Superman decides what’s good. The problem with Nietzsche’s view is that there is no standard of “good”. It ends up in a sort of nonsense universe of the battle of the strongest. In his view the Nazis wouldn’t be wrong they were just too weak. In Sartre’s view the discussion is mute; there is no “good” metaphysically. But again his system belies the altruism he champions. Why help anyone if again it’s only the strong who survive and rule? Why not just revert to Nietzsche and seek to be the Blond Beast?
For me these discussions have underlined some confusions about freedom. No one, except God, has absolute freedom (freedom to contra). All of us are creatures and contingent beings and have limited freedom. It’s pointless to argue that we should be completely free. We are not and cannot be completely free. We can’t live on the moon without space suits. We must breathe. Fish can’t live on land and we can’t live in the sea (outside of some sort of suit or vessel which provides us air pressure and oxygen).
God’s not condemning anyone for a choice they couldn’t make. God is judging them for a choice they can make and one for which he has provided plenty of evidence.
You will once again say that the Bible is not a trustworthy document, but I’d wager you have not really investigated that claim for yourself. You parrot what someone else has said and have not examined the claim yourself. First examine the evidence then make pronouncements.
If you feel I am being unfair I have studied both sides of these arguments (the veracity and trustworthiness of the Bible and evolution vs creation). I have a theological degree and two degrees in philosophy. When I was doing my MA in philosophy I read everything. I read many, many non-Christians, mostly non-Christians, and an awful lot of anti-creationist diatribe (Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins). If you really claim to think, you need to read the opposition and answer it.
On defining perfection and goodness
DW - You are just asserting that Good is perfect and evil is imperfect. Very simple terms to go by because everything does something it considers itself is the right , good choice.
PAG - Did you mean God is perfect? Or Good is perfect? In any event it doesn’t matter.
It’s not a question about someone saying X is good and thereby defining it. You make Nietzsche’s mistake. He defined Good as what Nobles did, conquer, rape, pillage. He felt that Christians redefined Good to mean being nice to weaklings. Therefore he hated Christianity (the old woman’s religion) as weak. Well, his ideas are fine as long as you are strong.
Still he is wrong. You must define God. God by definition is a perfect being. To define God in any other way is to define some other being, but not God. God is in a class by himself, because there are no other necessary beings. That the necessary being must be perfect is demonstrable from the argument from gradations by Thomas Aquinas. http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/aquinasfiveways_argumentanalysis.htm
I have two responses to your comment about evil being imperfect.
First how could evil be perfect? Perfectly evil? Would you consider the Death Camps of the Nazis as perfect evil? They were very efficient. They had it down to a science how long a person could be starved, revived, starved and worked to death.
Secondly evil is not really a thing at all. Evil can be either an absence of something, e.g. someone starves for lack of food. Or evil can be a perversion of something good.
On this latter point take this example: Can there be a good thief? I know a “good thief” is an oxymoron, but the real question is “Can I teach someone to be a good thief, to thieve better?” Well, of course I can teach someone to be a more effective thief: how to disarm alarm systems, how to move silently, how to program computers and get information… However, I cannot produce a good thief. The goals of the thief are wrong. Do you want him to steal your iPad? Of course not. His goals are wrong, stealing. As well there is no “good thieving skills”, i.e. he can learn how to disarm the alarm, but the skill he uses his mind, his muscles, etc are good things. However, they are good things misused.
I recall a story Francis Schaeffer included in one of his books. He had a chalet in the Swiss Alps and students came to debate him there. One evening they had a campfire and an Indian student was waxing eloquent about how good and evil are all one when you come to a correct understanding of Being. There was a pot of hot water on the fire and another student reached down took the pot and motioned as if to pour the boiling water on the Indian student. Immediately the Indian student said, “Hey, you’ll hurt me!” to which the other student said, “It’s all the same.”
We don’t really believe good and evil are relative. Mention the Holocaust and see if anyone really believes it was good or even irrelevant, of not moral good or ill. I doubt it. We have a sense of right and wrong. It’s usually called a conscience, if we haven’t numbed it by constant abuse.
Again you really should read CS Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity. He starts out by explaining why good and evil are the key to understanding the universe.
You wrote:
If there is no god there should be nothing
DW - This still doesn't prove the judeo-christian god, nor a personal god, nor heavens or hell, nothing divine i should fear. I don't know what happened before the big bang (which was a short time after the beginning of the universe) but neither do you. And your bible doesn't prove anything.
PAG - You’re correct philosophical arguments will not get us to the Biblical God.
Philosophical arguments, if you mean a priori arguments, which I think you do, cannot prove more than a theistic god. That is actually probably a lot more than you realize, since it proves God is an all powerful, all good, all knowing, infinite, personal being. So, the cosmological argument and the theological arguments (examples would be Thomas Aquinas’ three and fifth ways) prove only that a theistic God exists.
To decide between types of theisms (Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Theravada Buddhist) we must apply other tests. In general these are of two types: internal consistency and external consistency. Internal consistency means that all of the propositions or truth claims made fit together. If propositions of a worldview contradict themselves that worldview is false. If trying to live out the propositions of a worldview are contradictory that worldview is false. So, since Buddhism claims that we are only maya (illusion) it is inconsistent for us to eat, which Buddhists continue to do. That is external inconsistency.
If you are seriously interested in following this up you can have a look at No Doubt About It by Win Corduan or if you are up to it you can look at Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics.
The two arguments I gave you about why the Virgin Birth was necessary (and substitutionary atonement – Anselm of Canterbury Why the God Man?) and the argument for the existence of God from the Trinity (Francis Schaeffer) are the types of arguments (a posteriori – after experience or revelation) which show whether a type of theism is true or not. Arguments for the veracity (trustworthiness and accuracy of the Bible) would also fit into this type of proof for a type of theism.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks, David, for taking the time to answer systematically and seriously. I apologize for not posting my reply on Sunday, but life intervened. I take you very seriously and so have answered seriously.
RE: Macroevolution and George Bush
If macroevolution was true there should be millions (at least) of transitional forms / fossils. We may have three. I’m not asking for all however many millions. I’m asking if this is true, why do we have only three? If we do, the data can be interpreted differently by scientists. See Darwin’s Black Box by Michael J. Behe or Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton.
Your argument about the morphology (likeness) of George Bush at 20 with George Bush at 50 doesn’t apply to macroevolution. At best it is a case of microevolution, but even that is questionable. The individual remains the same. If you were arguing the similarity of George H W Bush with George W Bush you would be closer to an argument for microevolution. There is no evidence or at least scant evidence in light of how much there ought to be for macroevolution. No one is arguing against microevolution, i.e. within a species. Macroevolution has to tell us how an amphibian became George Bush and should have thousands of transitional forms.
On no evidence for God
I gave you several arguments which you haven’t yet answered (maybe below you answer): the cosmological argument (how did the contingent universe come to be? Or where did eternal matter (contingent) come from?), the teleological argument (There is good. There must be a standard of good). I also gave you two arguments for God’s existence from the Virgin Birth and the Trinity.
You assail the historical veracity of the Bible. Have you done any reading on it? Aside from your favorite atheist blogger?
See The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? By FF Bruce. See The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. I could go on, but I’d wager I’ve read more Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche and Heidegger than you have read Christian writers. Are you objective?
On your understanding of Genesis 1 & 2
You malign the Bible, but you confuse some interpretations of the Bible with what the Bible intends to say. There are indeed arguments even among Christians about how to understand these chapters. You should look at the link to Hugh Ross’ site.
Back to evolution and lack of evidence
Face it. Evolution requires millions of transitional forms/ fossils. They aren’t there. It’s not a small thing. It’s a major issue/ problem which has led even some biologists to change their viewpoints, e.g. Michael Behe, Michael Denton and Dr. Dean Kenyon.
I highly recommend this DVD http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Mystery-Life-Michael-Behe/dp/B00007KLDW
You can watch it in installments on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWvS1UfXl8k
“The science is solid and the computer animations are superb. Unlocking is a great film.” --Philip S. Skell, Ph.D., Member, National Academy of Sciences, Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University
It’s not Christians alone who rule out evolution as merely unusual. The inventor of the Steady State theory of the universe Dr. Fred Hoyle has said that Evolution is a greater miracle than the Virgin Birth. He said this during a lecture at Cambridge.
"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect DELIBERATE... It is therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligences.. even to the limit of God." (Sir Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, co-authors of "Evolution from Space," after acknowledging that they had been atheists all their lives)
"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein... I am at a loss to understand biologists' widespread compulsion to deny what seems to me to be obvious." (Sir Fred Hoyle)
"I don't know how long it is going to be before astronomers generally recognize that the combinatorial arrangement of not even one among the many thousands of biopolymers on which life depends could have been arrived at by natural processes here on the earth. Astronomers will have a little difficulty in understanding this because they will be assured by biologists that it is not so, the biologists having been assured in their turn by others that it is not so. The 'others' are a group of persons who believe, quite openly, in mathematical miracles. They advocate the belief that tucked away in nature, outside of normal physics, there is a law which performs miracles (provided the miracles are in the aid of biology). This curious situation sits oddly on a profession that for long has been dedicated to coming up with logical explanations of biblical miracles... It is quite otherwise, however, with the modern miracle workers, who are always to be found living in the twilight fringes of thermodynamics." (Sir Fred Hoyle)
(These "mathematical miracles" that must have occurred are summarized in my paper "The Second Law of Thermodynamics and Evolution")
http://www.aboundingjoy.com/scientists.htm
Though a Christian has assembled these quotes I have the original lecture if you find it hard to believe Hoyle said these things. In fact Hoyle is not a Christian (far from it). He is a panentheist (everything-in-God), not a theist. The point, though, is that he sees that non-rational, non-personal forces cannot create intelligent life.
You getting a 10 is not like the universe springing into being from nothing with no cause. You are a cause. You are a demiurge. You are not God. You cannot create something from nothing. However, you are intelligent and with discipline you can learn and perform well on an exam. A clump of dirt can’t turn itself into amino acids. Even pools of amino acids can’t organize themselves into life. They are not personal agents and they have no goals. If they are inanimate and directed by some other agent, who or what is that agent? Again if you do not have a personal agent you can’t explain intelligence.
On God creating us freely and many suffering forever in hell
You have now (in my opinion) finally come to THE issue that really gripes most non-Christians. It is known in philosophy as the problem of theodicy. Theodicy is from the Greek which means God and Justice, i.e. How can a Just and Loving God exist in the face of human suffering?
Briefly the argument can be construed as follows (I paraphrase Anthony Flew, again NO Christian; he professes now to be a deist, i.e. he believes in a creator God who created and designed the universe to run without his interference.)
God has created man.
Man is finite.
No sin man could possibly commit could deserve eternal punishment, but God will so punish many.
Therefore, God cannot exist (or he is a monster).
OK let’s look at it. The first premise is true. The second premise is true. The third is the one we disagree about.
The question to be addressed is: Can a finite being (man) do something which is worthy of eternal punishment?
Briefly, yes. That thing is to reject ones creator and ones creator’s love.
This sounds very harsh. OK let’s follow the argument.
Who says what the rules are? Obviously the finite, created being does not make the rules. God makes the rules.
Again you don’t like Genesis, but Genesis 3 explains the origin of evil. Man and woman chose to disobey God and the result was catastrophic for all humankind. They knew what the consequences were when they chose, but they chose what they thought was worth more.
If it were just that God said, “Don’t eat from that tree!” and they did, that would seem extreme, but that’s not the end of story. God was not willing to let everyone suffer eternal punishment. So he sent his son to die for them (to pay the penalty for them). All they need to do now is accept that sacrifice and they are forgiven and live eternally in happiness, not punishment.
BUT many choose to spurn God’s offer, which results in eternal punishment. Yes, man can so disobey and affront God that his judgment is eternal punishment.
However, when God saw the predicament He himself came to make it possible to avoid that punishment.
You could and some have argued that God shouldn’t have created us if he had known we would sin and so deserve eternal punishment.
You could argue that your parents are unloving in that they brought you into a world where you will die. Would you do that? Is there not joy and hope in living?
God created us for love, for fellowship with Him and with each other, for eternity. He didn’t have too, but he gave us being, life. My philosophical mentor uses the phrase “Given to be with a promise”. God has created all of us and given us talents and skills that are a promise of what we can become.
I read about half of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. After having read half I just decided he wasn’t worth the time. However, he really didn’t have an argument against God’s existence. He thought he did, but mainly he argued that we just know there is no God and we are in “bad faith” if we believe in God. His experience wasn’t mine.
On the other hand he had a perhaps more forceful argument. It’s an argument from freedom. Basically if a Creator existed we would not be free.
If we were created we would be en soi, in itself, determined, having no freedom, no ability to self-determination. He argues that we are pour soi, for itself. Clearly we have some sense of being able to make a difference, to have some freedom.
He argues similarly to Nietzsche that we make value and that we must make value. I understood what he wanted to say, but as with Nietzsche I don’t see how his basic views support his view. Existentialism says there is no God and no inherent meaning in the universe. Goodness isn’t somehow hard-wired into the universe. It is something we make. For Nietzsche the Superman makes meaning, or might makes right. What he says is right is right until he’s too weak to hold his position and then the next Superman decides what’s good. The problem with Nietzsche’s view is that there is no standard of “good”. It ends up in a sort of nonsense universe of the battle of the strongest. In his view the Nazis wouldn’t be wrong they were just too weak. In Sartre’s view the discussion is mute; there is no “good” metaphysically. But again his system belies the altruism he champions. Why help anyone if again it’s only the strong who survive and rule? Why not just revert to Nietzsche and seek to be the Blond Beast?
For me these discussions have underlined some confusions about freedom. No one, except God, has absolute freedom (freedom to contra). All of us are creatures and contingent beings and have limited freedom. It’s pointless to argue that we should be completely free. We are not and cannot be completely free. We can’t live on the moon without space suits. We must breathe. Fish can’t live on land and we can’t live in the sea (outside of some sort of suit or vessel which provides us air pressure and oxygen).
God’s not condemning anyone for a choice they couldn’t make. God is judging them for a choice they can make and one for which he has provided plenty of evidence.
You will once again say that the Bible is not a trustworthy document, but I’d wager you have not really investigated that claim for yourself. You parrot what someone else has said and have not examined the claim yourself. First examine the evidence then make pronouncements.
If you feel I am being unfair I have studied both sides of these arguments (the veracity and trustworthiness of the Bible and evolution vs creation). I have a theological degree and two degrees in philosophy. When I was doing my MA in philosophy I read everything. I read many, many non-Christians, mostly non-Christians, and an awful lot of anti-creationist diatribe (Michael Ruse and Richard Dawkins). If you really claim to think, you need to read the opposition and answer it.
On defining perfection and goodness
DW - You are just asserting that Good is perfect and evil is imperfect. Very simple terms to go by because everything does something it considers itself is the right , good choice.
PAG - Did you mean God is perfect? Or Good is perfect? In any event it doesn’t matter.
It’s not a question about someone saying X is good and thereby defining it. You make Nietzsche’s mistake. He defined Good as what Nobles did, conquer, rape, pillage. He felt that Christians redefined Good to mean being nice to weaklings. Therefore he hated Christianity (the old woman’s religion) as weak. Well, his ideas are fine as long as you are strong.
Still he is wrong. You must define God. God by definition is a perfect being. To define God in any other way is to define some other being, but not God. God is in a class by himself, because there are no other necessary beings. That the necessary being must be perfect is demonstrable from the argument from gradations by Thomas Aquinas. http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/web%20publishing/aquinasfiveways_argumentanalysis.htm
I have two responses to your comment about evil being imperfect.
First how could evil be perfect? Perfectly evil? Would you consider the Death Camps of the Nazis as perfect evil? They were very efficient. They had it down to a science how long a person could be starved, revived, starved and worked to death.
Secondly evil is not really a thing at all. Evil can be either an absence of something, e.g. someone starves for lack of food. Or evil can be a perversion of something good.
On this latter point take this example: Can there be a good thief? I know a “good thief” is an oxymoron, but the real question is “Can I teach someone to be a good thief, to thieve better?” Well, of course I can teach someone to be a more effective thief: how to disarm alarm systems, how to move silently, how to program computers and get information… However, I cannot produce a good thief. The goals of the thief are wrong. Do you want him to steal your iPad? Of course not. His goals are wrong, stealing. As well there is no “good thieving skills”, i.e. he can learn how to disarm the alarm, but the skill he uses his mind, his muscles, etc are good things. However, they are good things misused.
I recall a story Francis Schaeffer included in one of his books. He had a chalet in the Swiss Alps and students came to debate him there. One evening they had a campfire and an Indian student was waxing eloquent about how good and evil are all one when you come to a correct understanding of Being. There was a pot of hot water on the fire and another student reached down took the pot and motioned as if to pour the boiling water on the Indian student. Immediately the Indian student said, “Hey, you’ll hurt me!” to which the other student said, “It’s all the same.”
We don’t really believe good and evil are relative. Mention the Holocaust and see if anyone really believes it was good or even irrelevant, of not moral good or ill. I doubt it. We have a sense of right and wrong. It’s usually called a conscience, if we haven’t numbed it by constant abuse.
Again you really should read CS Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity. He starts out by explaining why good and evil are the key to understanding the universe.
You wrote:
If there is no god there should be nothing
DW - This still doesn't prove the judeo-christian god, nor a personal god, nor heavens or hell, nothing divine i should fear. I don't know what happened before the big bang (which was a short time after the beginning of the universe) but neither do you. And your bible doesn't prove anything.
PAG - You’re correct philosophical arguments will not get us to the Biblical God.
Philosophical arguments, if you mean a priori arguments, which I think you do, cannot prove more than a theistic god. That is actually probably a lot more than you realize, since it proves God is an all powerful, all good, all knowing, infinite, personal being. So, the cosmological argument and the theological arguments (examples would be Thomas Aquinas’ three and fifth ways) prove only that a theistic God exists.
To decide between types of theisms (Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Theravada Buddhist) we must apply other tests. In general these are of two types: internal consistency and external consistency. Internal consistency means that all of the propositions or truth claims made fit together. If propositions of a worldview contradict themselves that worldview is false. If trying to live out the propositions of a worldview are contradictory that worldview is false. So, since Buddhism claims that we are only maya (illusion) it is inconsistent for us to eat, which Buddhists continue to do. That is external inconsistency.
If you are seriously interested in following this up you can have a look at No Doubt About It by Win Corduan or if you are up to it you can look at Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics.
The two arguments I gave you about why the Virgin Birth was necessary (and substitutionary atonement – Anselm of Canterbury Why the God Man?) and the argument for the existence of God from the Trinity (Francis Schaeffer) are the types of arguments (a posteriori – after experience or revelation) which show whether a type of theism is true or not. Arguments for the veracity (trustworthiness and accuracy of the Bible) would also fit into this type of proof for a type of theism.
