Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God, intending to produce men, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; with the simplest organism that can be imagined and, during immeasurable periods of time, slowly and almost imperceptibly, improve upon the rude beginning, until man was evolved? Can the intelligence of man discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping horrors that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world that all animals devour animals; so that every mouth is a slaughterhouse and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage? What would we think of a father who should give a farm to his children but before allowing them to take possession should plant upon it deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with ferocious beasts and poisonous reptiles, and take pains to put a few swamps in the neighbourhood to breed malaria? Yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done...

The argument is logically valid, but might be able to be disproven by denying one of its premises, as the essay notes.

Under selection pressures, the concept and conception of god is bound to change as the human race's morality and technology evolve. So, this "disproof" has a shelf-life for its relevance.
An analogy would be bacteria (not that I'm calling believers infected). We think we've found a cure, but all they do is mutate to accomodate the new environment until we develop more anti-biotics then they'll adapt to those and so on, probably forever. [actually, the resistant population is already present in smll numbers and we simply wipe out their competition]

In society, carriers of outmoded conceptions of god either "get well" and lose faith, or they are marginalized even within theistic traditions. The new generation will start out small (and probably persecuted) but eventually will grow to outnumber the those holding to the original paradigm and become dominant.

"If you believe that logic and science can prove or disprove metaphysics okay, but I come from a very secular university and was taught that this is not an appropriate view anymore."

Science, that branch of epistemology which deals with learning the outside world through the analysis of evidence, doesn't prove anything; as Jack so ably stated, science is always contingent. It cannot therefore disprove god. For all we know god might show up tomorrow taking a bath in my home.

Logic, however, can grapple with certain metaphysical concepts, as Lynet's excellent example shows. The critical factor seems to be the definitions involved. As Lynet's proof shows, given a certain number of definitions, we can decide whther god, or any other metaphysical concept, is internally coherent. Lynet's post is one of the most basic and crucial reasons why I reject an Abrahamic god.

You agreed that your belief in God has its basis in emotion, not logic, so much of what follows is irrelevant, really. I know that such things can be highly personal, so you might not want to share the details on this blog. But consider this: if your feelings or emotional experience is what has convinced you of the reality of God, what would it mean if it could be determined that those emotions have a completely natural, biological origin, rather than the supernatural origin you assume?

If you believe that logic and science can prove or disprove metaphysics okay, but I come from a very secular university and was taught that this is not an appropriate view anymore. Look at what you said, "we have seen no evidence to indicate". You didn't say we have seen no evidence to prove.

If by "metaphysics" you mean something that is outside the natural universe, something that has no effect on the natural universe, something unobservable, unmeasurable and undetectable, then yes, science cannot test the existence of such a thing. The existence of a God that has these attributes cannot be tested by science. But such a God is indistinguishable from a God that does not exist, and such a God is not one that would garner many worshippers.

In a sense, science does not really "prove" anything. Science works by formulating tentative explanations (hypotheses) for how some aspect of the natural world works. We try to think of as many alternative explanations as possible to explain that aspect. We try to make them as specific as possible, so that we can specify the different consequences of each alternative explanation. Then we do experiments to see which of the these consequences (i.e., predictions) actually occur in the real world. The hypotheses whose predictions are not confirmed are disproved. The ones whose predictions are confirmed are elevated to the status of theories. This does not mean they are proved, only that they have been tested and have not been disproved, and so are the best approximation to the truth we have at present. Better experimental techniques, new hypotheses and new observations may cause some theories to be discarded in the future. In this way science asymptotically approaches, but never reaches, The Truth. Some theories are supported by such vast quantities of evidence (i.e. so many of their predictions have been confirmed), that the chance that they will be discarded is essentially zero, although they may undergo minor refinement. The theory of evolution by natural selection is one of these.

Way back near the start of this thread, Damian commented:

…On the other hand, this is a really bizarre example to use, if you want to disprove the existence of God through theodicy. What's the tragedy here? What finally (momentarily) broke the preacher's faith? Not that the lady died — at this point, our protagonist had seen God kill dozens of people, and he was dealing with it — but that God didn't let her finish her needlepoint before He took her.

Why is it that the "denied needlepoint" is what broke the preacher? I suggest it is because the request for a few extra days to finish the needlepoint is just the kind of 'miracle' that both the patient and preacher had learned, from experience, that God is willing to do. God doesn't restore the severed limbs of amputees. He doesn't bring the dead back to life. He doesn't resurrect skyscrapers that have been reduced to rubble by ten fanatics with knives. He doesn't even find some way to keep them off the planes beforehand to prevent the disaster. But, every once in a while, if you pray for a pay raise or for your child's measles to get better, what you pray for happens, and you can convince yourself you have witnessed a 'miracle'.

Russ,

Thanks for the pointer to the essay by Carrier; most interersting!

Camile,
What Jack said about intercessory prayer was correct. We've seen no evidence to indicate that it has any affect on healing. We should see something if god does interact in our world and supposedly answers our prayers. It's not the case where we find a cancer that goes into remission on its own and try to determine whether prayer did it or not. It's more like a large study involving groups of cancer patients that undergo different treatments and have different groups either pray for them or not in a double-blind manner. These studies show no effect inherent to prayer.

Thanks, I scrolled over that. I was looking for a proof in symbolic logic. I am not used to proofs looking like that.

I scrolled through All Possible Worlds, and didn't see a logical proof in it anywhere.

It's at the beginning of Part 2, Camile:

Assumption (1): God exists.
Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.
Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.
Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.
Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.
Premise (2): Evil exists.
Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.
Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.
Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.
Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))
Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))
Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))
Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d))

The argument is logically valid, but might be able to be disproven by denying one of its premises, as the essay notes.

You were saying there were no results to the prayer studies. In science just because you get no results from an experiment doesn't prove anything. Science is based on testing theories that can be disproven, anything else is pseudoscience.