In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Forrest Valkai and Jim Barrows dive in Limbo with the problem of evil and travel back to our own births to see whether or not we are born with the concept of god.
Tommi in Portugal perceives the problem of suffering and the problem of evil are together the greatest challenge to the Christian faith. To make an argument against this problem, you must first prove that evil is real along with your tri omni god. The problem of evil is allowing evil to exist, as an omi-being. Why do god’s limits conflict with his moral judgements? What are the responsibilities of the moral actors? The tri-omni god can not exist in the world that we know. Why does god not choose to do the benevolent thing and tell people he himself exists to at least give them a choice? Why is the free will of the rapist more important than the victim?
Benjamin in AL puts forth a hypothetical about how it would blow a hole in god’s existence if Lucifer stepped in to do good things to save humanity and is pondering whether he is an atheist. We don’t believe in Lucifer or god so you are asking the wrong people. If you have been to Limbo, how do you know it was not chemicals in your brain that happen with the near death experiences? Is personal experience a good enough reason to call yourself a theist and believe in these things?
Cameron in Canada believes that humans yearn for god naturally and does not know why we would keep this if religion is false or harmful. Humans are good at deriving meaning from meaningless data, and ascribing agency to things we do not understand by finding patterns. This is the fundamental reason for the belief in god. This does not give any credibility to these beliefs, but describes their evolution. How do you explain some tribal belief systems, Buddhism, and Shinto if all humans are supposed to have been born with a concept of god? Our first attempt to explain the universe is also our worst attempt, and unfortunately is still with us today.
Mike in SC accuses Forrest of being paid to make comments about immigrants and ICE since he is an influencer. Forrest sets the record straight and sends the caller to his channel to get a membership to his channel. Why is the richest man in the world receiving so many huge government contracts? Why has he not made good on his promise to end world hunger? It is easy to believe someone else’s opinion is bought when all the politicians you worship opinions are bought.
Patrick in MO thinks that logic is a flawed method of finding truth just like faith is. How do you get from an justified belief (faith) to logic that has the rigor of mathematics? As a process, faith is unreliable when logic always accounts for a true value. You can’t use a logical statement to arrive at something that is untrue, but you can use something that sounds like logic to get there.
Thank you for tuning in this week! Jamie the Blind Limey, our backup host joins us to close out the show and remind us that he has seen things that people would not believe.
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