The whole “ridiculousness” argument is putting the cart before the horse, methinks.
I’m not an atheist because religion is ridiculous, and as a downstream effect reject the religious world model.
Rather, I cannot square the religious world model with my understanding of science and history, or indeed logical coherence. And it is this empirical discrepancy that leads me to consider the supernatural ridiculous, downstream of belief.
I can admit a Deist clockmaker, but anything beyond that I’ve found incoherent, and I don’t need the clockmaker to explain anything. “I don’t know” is the correct and intellectually humble response to what started the Big Bang, not hand waving some supernatural fella into existence.
The other thing that I didn’t mention in the body of the piece, but in a footnote, is that there’s a difference between thinking an idea is incoherent or unsubstantiated and ridiculous. The stem word of ridiculous is ridicule! You can think an idea is bad and not up to par and also not worthy of ridicule! Of course many atheists openly think religious arguments aren’t up to par, but that’s different from saying they think religion is ridiculous.
BB is one of the top examples of someone taking their feelings and writing a gazillion words arguing whey they are "objectively" right (and everyone else is basically an idiot).
(And in my 12 years of Catholic school, and my decades-long friendship with a religious writer, I've read lots on theodicy. There isn't, IMHO, an actual coherent argument out there that the writers I've read just happened to miss. I also think - again, IMO - that people who try to explain away evil are really underestimating the amount and severity of "evil" in the world.)
My take on theodicy is that people believe in God for various reasons, often personal. In some ways we believe or have affinity with ideas that are not factual. Theodicies are just our personal attempt to reconcile the cognitive dissonance. We have so many theodicies because there are that many people.
When I say their ideas are not-factual, I don’t mean stupid or uninformed or at conflict with reality, but that facts are not really primary for these beliefs. It’s true for things outside of religion too. For instance, I love my college football team and you literally cannot talk me out of it, even though I know all of the ways they are objectively horrible. I know, cognitively, that they will likely lose most of the rest of their games this season. But I still tune into watch as if they have a chance! I still get mad, as if I should rationally expect them to be better! I think of my own theodicies for this. I’m reconciling the part of me that observes reality and inconvenient/painful information with the part of me that loves this thing due to habituation, valuing it, etc.
"Very clever people, over the years, have thought of many theodicies, some of almost unfathomable complexity"
I would very much like to see Bentham or anyone else provide a *single* good argument explaining the problem of evil. It's a problem I've been trying and failing to steelman recently.
The whole “ridiculousness” argument is putting the cart before the horse, methinks.
I’m not an atheist because religion is ridiculous, and as a downstream effect reject the religious world model.
Rather, I cannot square the religious world model with my understanding of science and history, or indeed logical coherence. And it is this empirical discrepancy that leads me to consider the supernatural ridiculous, downstream of belief.
I can admit a Deist clockmaker, but anything beyond that I’ve found incoherent, and I don’t need the clockmaker to explain anything. “I don’t know” is the correct and intellectually humble response to what started the Big Bang, not hand waving some supernatural fella into existence.
The other thing that I didn’t mention in the body of the piece, but in a footnote, is that there’s a difference between thinking an idea is incoherent or unsubstantiated and ridiculous. The stem word of ridiculous is ridicule! You can think an idea is bad and not up to par and also not worthy of ridicule! Of course many atheists openly think religious arguments aren’t up to par, but that’s different from saying they think religion is ridiculous.
This is fantastic. Thanks.
BB is one of the top examples of someone taking their feelings and writing a gazillion words arguing whey they are "objectively" right (and everyone else is basically an idiot).
(And in my 12 years of Catholic school, and my decades-long friendship with a religious writer, I've read lots on theodicy. There isn't, IMHO, an actual coherent argument out there that the writers I've read just happened to miss. I also think - again, IMO - that people who try to explain away evil are really underestimating the amount and severity of "evil" in the world.)
My take on theodicy is that people believe in God for various reasons, often personal. In some ways we believe or have affinity with ideas that are not factual. Theodicies are just our personal attempt to reconcile the cognitive dissonance. We have so many theodicies because there are that many people.
When I say their ideas are not-factual, I don’t mean stupid or uninformed or at conflict with reality, but that facts are not really primary for these beliefs. It’s true for things outside of religion too. For instance, I love my college football team and you literally cannot talk me out of it, even though I know all of the ways they are objectively horrible. I know, cognitively, that they will likely lose most of the rest of their games this season. But I still tune into watch as if they have a chance! I still get mad, as if I should rationally expect them to be better! I think of my own theodicies for this. I’m reconciling the part of me that observes reality and inconvenient/painful information with the part of me that loves this thing due to habituation, valuing it, etc.
"Very clever people, over the years, have thought of many theodicies, some of almost unfathomable complexity"
I would very much like to see Bentham or anyone else provide a *single* good argument explaining the problem of evil. It's a problem I've been trying and failing to steelman recently.