Earlier this month, Greta Christina published a piece on AlterNet, based on my essay "The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists", that listed things that would convince her of God's existence. She also repeated the challenge I posed to theists - prove that your beliefs are falsifiable by posting a corresponding list of things that would convince you to become an atheist.

The AlterNet post got hundreds of comments, and netted a total of two responses. In this post, I'll briefly analyze them both.

First, there's this essay from Verbose Stoic. I left a comment on his site which is reprinted below, with minor edits:

I've reviewed this list, and I think that rather than meeting my challenge, it emphasizes the point I sought to make by raising it: for most theists, belief in God is a deliberately unfalsifiable construct that bears no relation to the real world.

Your first criterion is that you would accept it if your definition of God was shown to be self-contradictory – but you've more or less said that in that case, you would just change your definition and continue believing. Also, it's not clear to me why mere logical consistency should be your standard for believing. There's an infinite number of self-consistent, non-contradictory entities that nevertheless don't actually exist – unicorns, leprechauns, minotaurs, mermaids, and so on. Why should God be treated according to a different standard?

Meanwhile, your second criterion is so vague as to be useless. You just say "prove that there exists something that is incompatible with the existence of God", without any explanation of what that thing might be or how one would go about proving that it exists. You cite the problem of evil as one potential example, but clearly you're already aware of the problem of evil and don't consider it a persuasive disproof of God, and you don't explain why not or how it would have to be different for you to accept it as such.

Ultimately, you conclude that probably nothing would ever convince you of God's nonexistence ("The qualities of God are such that such disproofs just don’t work", and "my agnosticism makes me skeptical that they would ever work"). That, of course, is exactly the point I wanted to make by writing my essay in the first place. Belief in God is unfalsifiable, not dependent on any evidence in the world, which means, as Sam Harris has said, it's not really a belief about the world at all.

There's also this post, from "allthedeadheroes". My reply, originally sent via e-mail:

I have a couple of comments on this:

1. You said you would give up your belief if you received "Objective evidence that contradicts my theory of God." But you also said that your belief can explicitly accommodate everything science discovers about the world. Would you therefore agree that this criterion is impossible to meet? If not, what sort of evidence would qualify as contradicting your theory of God?

2. You also listed, "Proof that my subjective beliefs were in some way bad for me or the people around me." Would you consider it harmful to encourage people to come to conclusions about what exists in objective reality based on their subjective feelings and sensations? Because I certainly do. That same method of decision-making is what results in people believing that God wants holy war and theocracy, that he commands the oppression of women and gays, that he condones faith-based opposition to science - all because they "feel" strongly that this is what he wants of them. To put it another way, how would you address the issue of people using your same method - that of subjective feeling and experience - to come to entirely different, and undeniably harmful, conclusions?

What's notable about both these replies, which I think stands in sharp contrast to Greta's essay and mine, is how noticeably they avoid contact with the evidence. They're based on definitions, subjective experiences, moral beliefs, philosophies - anything but the facts of the world. They'll go to almost any length rather than make a clear evidentiary commitment to give up belief in God if some concrete, objective criterion is satisfied.

This is all the more noteworthy because, if these beliefs are rationally founded in the first place, it ought to be very easy for a theist to explain what would convince him to give them up. It ought to be a straightforward matter of applying the argument to the best explanation, as I explained in a further comment on Verbose Stoic:

...it is relatively easy for an atheist to say 'If this happens, I’d believe in God' because they can point to an event and use it as a positive proof. That doesn't happen for the negative side of the ledger."

I don't agree that theists have a harder time than atheists in outlining what would change their minds. If you agree that evidence is the link to truth, then it seems to me that this task could be accomplished fairly easily: explain what evidence convinced you to believe in God, and then explain what further evidence would overturn your initial conclusions.

As an analogy, let's say I believe in Bigfoot. Let's also say my belief is premised on several different lines of evidence: videos of hairy man-shaped creatures in the woods, plaster casts of giant footprints in mud, and the testimonies of several eyewitnesses who claim that they saw an anthropoid beast lumber out of the forest and into their backyard.

Now let's say the man who shot that video came forward to confess it was a hoax, created with the help of a friend, and produces a receipt for a costume shop dated the day the video was taken. Let's say he produces clay sculptures of feet that fit the casts that were earlier produced. And let's also say the house where the eyewitnesses live is proven to have been contaminated with ergot mold that would have produced vivid hallucinations in anyone living within.

Clearly, in this case, I no longer have reason to believe in Bigfoot. Every strand of evidence that links my belief to objective reality has been severed, and new evidence points to a better explanation that accounts for the prior evidence more convincingly than my former belief did. Now, I might continue to believe in Bigfoot regardless, asserting that the creature could still exist despite the failure of all the evidence. But, I hope we can agree, that would be irrational at that point.

I'm not suggesting that belief in God could only be overturned by the discovery of a deliberate conspiracy to deceive humanity. But I can readily conceive of the discovery of lines of evidence - in fact, I would argue that such evidence has already been discovered - which adds up to the same result. If you think the theist has the harder task here, I'd venture to say that it's merely because theists, having constructed their beliefs so as to make them immune to disproof, are naturally at a loss when asked what would in fact disprove them.

One of the downsides of giving money to charity is that some of the groups I give to resell their donors' names and addresses. As a result, I get an amazing quantity of mail, most from groups I've never heard of, begging for money. It comes from an incredible range of organizations - symphonies, museums, political campaigns, environmental groups, humanitarian groups, animal rights groups, and more. Since I plan my giving in advance and don't respond to random solicitations, I throw these all out. I feel bad about it, especially since most of them are groups I'd like to support, and I deplore the waste of money that goes into sending all this junk mail - but I can't possibly respond to so many.

That said, I'm not upset about having cost the sender of this letter the price of postage:

Obviously, they had no way to know who they were reaching. Equally obviously, the assumption that the recipient is Christian is just a marketing tactic, designed to make the strongest possible impression on people who do fit that description. I'm not offended by that. (Although I think the "angel medallion" - a cheap plastic trinket - suggests that they're targeting the less educated and more superstitious among their potential donors who'd be more likely to believe it has magic powers, similar to the classic Jesus prayer rug scam.)

What offends me more isn't the message, but the organization behind it. Whatever humanitarian work CRS performs, it's more than counterbalanced by the real and serious harm that Catholic teachings do: teaching medieval, misogynist notions of female inferiority; exacerbating poverty, overpopulation and AIDS by opposing contraception; opposing abortion even for raped children, or when the alternative is the near-certain death of the mother; battling tenaciously against civil rights for gay and lesbian couples; trying to dictate to parishioners how they should vote; trying to stifle life-saving stem-cell research; and last but certainly not least, the conspiracy of silence among the hierarchy to protect and shelter child rapists and abusers worldwide. There are plenty of secular groups that do just as much good for the needy without spreading these poisonous memes.

It goes without saying that the Catholic church won't get any money from me. But since they took the time to contact me, I think I owe them the courtesy of a reply. Although the envelope is postage-paid, I'm not going to do anything immature like mailing it back attached to a heavy object. But since the letter specifically invites a response, I am going to send it back with a message explaining why I'm not enclosing a donation. My only dilemma is what to write in the limited space provided. Ideally, it should be irreverent, memorable, and to the point. Any suggestions?

I've received another response to my essay on Ebon Musings, "The Theist's Guide to Converting Atheists", which challenges theists to explain what they would accept as proof that their religious beliefs were mistaken. For the record, I'll point out that this essay has been publicly available since June 2001, almost nine years, and in that time - counting the response just received - I've gotten a total of three replies.

What's ironic is that this latest response underscores, rather than contradicts, the point I originally made in my essay which explains why I posed this challenge:

Many theists, by their own admission, structure their beliefs so that no evidence could possibly disprove them. In short, they are closed-minded, and have been taught to be closed-minded.

This is a perfect description of the latest response. Its author, though he puts on a pretense of open-mindedness, has offered terms that are purposefully designed to be impossible to fulfill. His response is therefore made in bad faith and is not a serious answer to my challenge, but I'll analyze it anyway, the better to show how the theist mindset works.

Here is how he begins:

To convince me that God doesn't exist, please come up with an alternate explanation for the existence of every single physical particle in the universe. Everything - down to the minutest sub-atomic particle known or surmised presently, to everything yet to be discovered in the future - must be accounted for up-front each with its own individual explanation. Since we can not assume that an agent that has one address, so to speak, like a Supreme Being, will organize and order our material universe, so any convincing explanation of existence must, out of necessity, account for each individual particle in the universe separately and distinctly, each one by itself.

The observable universe has on the order of 10⁸⁰ - that is, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - subatomic particles. For each one of these, this person demands an individual, separate and distinct explanation. Obviously, this task could not be accomplished in the lifetime of a human, or, for that matter, in the lifetime of the universe. And even if we somehow had the resources to attempt this, most of the explanations this person demands would require historical facts that are irretrievably lost to us. Atoms don't accumulate evidence about their past history; how in principle could you ever find out that iron atom #7,128,462,971,394 originated in the supernova of this star and not that star?

My respondent has numerous other demands, most of which are equally unreasonable, but I won't belabor the point. His entire lengthy essay was a waste of his time to write; it's just a roundabout way of saying, "Nothing could ever change my mind about the existence of God." Why he didn't just say that, I don't know - unless it makes him feel better, soothes his cognitive dissonance, to be able to tell himself that he's offered an "answer" to my challenge and therefore isn't closed-minded. His essay suggests as much:

Now Mr. Atheist has noted that some people have rigged the conditions under which they would give up religion to be so impossible that, of course, their beliefs could not be touched. Now I'm not into those kinds of games.

Needless to say, I don't intend to permit him that false comfort, which is why I'm calling his sophistry what it is. His "challenge" is designed to be impossible, and he's well aware of this. He's dishonestly playing the very same kind of game he claims to deride. Too bad for him that I don't intend to indulge him in it.

It's no surprise, also, that his ludicrous standard of proof for atheism is not one he ever applies to his own beliefs. Does he require an individual, separate and distinct explanation of how and why God manufactured every proton, electron, photon, quark and graviton in the cosmos? Of course not. For him, as for most believers, "Goddidit" is a perfectly sufficient explanation that requires no further detail or supporting evidence. Of course, when dealing with scientists, they demand meticulous proof, every step checked and triple-checked, every single bit of relevant data unearthed and supplied, every possible alternative hypothesis conclusively disproven with mathematical certainty. If they applied anything near this level of scrutiny and hyperskepticism to their own faith, they'd long since have become atheists!

My correspondent also thinks he has something to offer that would satisfy one entry on my list of convincing proofs for theism. I'll consider his evidence in a followup post to appear shortly.

Every so often, I get a letter I just have to share - whether because it's so eloquent and insightful that I want more people to read it, or because the author deserves to be roundly mocked by as many people as possible. Here's an example of the latter.

I got this e-mail the other day. It starts out as seemingly thoughtful praise from someone who's obviously taken the time to read my website; then it abruptly takes a different turn:

Dear Ebon Musings:

Your front page essay is beautifully evocative; thank you. (You might want to change the word "miniscule" to "minuscule," however.)

Your passage "From the sky at night, our planet is covered by a spiderweb of glowing lights, testament to our ability to invent and innovate...." was particularly thought-provoking. There are places on the planet, semi-continental in scale, where the human population is quite high, yet the face of the land is almost bereft of light. Satellite imagery makes this quite clear. It is very dark there. The inescapable conclusion is that human evolution has not proceeded equally on every continent.

Of course, it's very "politically incorrect" to notice this fact, as James Watson discovered. But I suppose I can discuss it with you, since you, as the author of the Ninth New Commandment, would find the very concept of "political correctness" to be repugnant.

With all good wishes,

Kevin Alfred Strom.

OK, here's all you need to know about Kevin Alfred Strom: He's a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semite, and the former head of a now-defunct white supremacist group called National Vanguard. He's also served time in prison after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography. (If you read his website, which I won't link to, you'll find a long screed in which he vehemently asserts his innocence and blames the charges on a vast conspiracy of enemies who've persecuted him for no good reason.)

So much for Mr. Strom's résumé. The only question I've got is: What makes this Nazi cretin think I want to be his friend? Seriously, is there anything on my website that might have had even the slightest possibility of giving him the mistaken idea that I have any sympathy whatsoever for his ideas? Or is it just that racists are so desperate to find support for their views that they can delude themselves into seeing it even where it doesn't exist?

In a way, it almost makes me feel sorry for him. (Note: I said "almost".) I'd imagine that most racists are deeply miserable and desperately lonely people - and Strom's child-porn conviction has probably alienated him even from other racists. Reaching out to some random stranger on the internet, in the hope that he'll be sympathetic to you, is the kind of thing a person might do under those circumstances. But I must admit that, given the circumstances, I enjoy dashing those hopes. I view all racists as beneath contempt, and I have special scorn for the ones, like this one, that lie and distort evolution in the vain hope of finding scientific validation for their bigotry. Nothing pleases me more than the knowledge that Mr. Strom and his kind are a dying breed.

As much effort as we freethinkers put into making atheism a viable and socially accepted option, it's important to remember that it's still a difficult feat to extricate oneself from religion when one's family and social life are bound up with church attendance. Consider this e-mail I received a few days ago, whose author's personal information I've omitted:

I just wanted to say thanks for your sites, which I've been reading for about a year now. I'm a 49 year old former Salvation Army minister from the UK, who was a devout Christian for most of my life. Not a fundamentalist, happy with evolution, a 15 billion year old universe and a bible that was not inerrant, but still a Christian.

I had a bout of mental illness a couple of years ago, and after coming through it started to question some of the religious feelings I'd had and the 'inner certainty' that God was speaking to me. The religious awe that had convinced me of the existence of God just seemed to be the other side of the depressive state I had been in, and the voice of God nothing different to the delusions that had told me to commit suicide.

Once I started to question things, the compartmentalisation that had enabled me to retain my faith began to collapse. The questioning led me to your Ebon Musings, and both the essays you have written yourself and the links and references to other authors have helped immensely in developing my new view of the world.

I guess I'm not what you'd call a fully fledged atheist in that although I no longer believe in a God, Christ or any other religious doctrine I still go to church most Sundays, mainly for the social interaction. It's hard to give everything up when all your friends are there, your social life is there, your kids are involved etc. Maybe one day I'll feel able to give it all up, but not just yet.

In the meantime I'll content myself with authors like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor Stengler etc, and of course your own Daylight Atheism. That, and knowing that after nearly 50 years I've finally worked things out.

I wrote back to this person to find out whether the other members of his church knew his beliefs had changed, and this was his reply:

I've been (and still am in many cases) a fairly active member; I used to take meetings and open air services (although I've now stopped doing those, ostensibly due to the effects of my breakdown a couple of years ago), but I still wear the uniform, play in the band and take part in other church events and appear to be a 'good soldier'. No-one knows of my change in beliefs except my wife; to come out and say publicly that I no longer believe in god would mean that I'd have to put off the uniform, stop playing (which I love) and wouldn't be able to take part in some events. I'd still be able to go to the meetings with my friends, but it wouldn't be the same.

The core of my difficulties is probably simply that extracting myself from a belief system that I've held for over 40 years was never going to be easy, given the family and social implications that would involve. I'm moved a fair distance in the last couple of years, and maybe I need a few more before I can finally move away completely.

Of all the strings that religion places upon its adherents, social connections can be the most difficult to break. Of course, a church has every incentive to make their followers' entire lives revolve around its events - it increases their obligation and raises the costs of backing out. I think this person is probably wise to bide his time and keep his deconversion a secret until he's ready to announce it on his own terms.

But we out-of-the-closet atheists should keep stories like this one in mind. How many secret atheists are there among the church ranks - or even among the clergy - people who would be open about their atheism if they could, but feel constrained by circumstance to stay silent and go along with the crowd? It seems entirely plausible to me that there are as many closeted atheists as there are open ones, and possibly even more.

The more we do to establish atheism as a positive and accepted alternative to religion, though public advocacy and political activism, the easier we make it for people such as these to come out. We stand to benefit from a positive feedback spiral, a snowballing effect, if we can be successful in our activism. Keep that in mind the next time some pious accommodationist demands we stop voicing our opinions, and think of what that would mean for the people who still don't feel able to fully express themselves.

About two weeks ago, the following comment was posted on the thread "The Aura of Infallibility" by one of the Christians whom I originally quoted in that post.

There were some other discussions going on at the time and it fell off the recent comments list before it could attract any replies, and I thought it deserved some. So, I'm promoting it to its own thread. I'll write my own response to it (and I'll contact Matt to let him know about this post) - but readers, what say you?

Hi all,

I am the Matt discussed in the original article. I found this to be quite interesting, as it was an approach to the theistic approach to epistemology that I hadn't heard, at least not put quite that way. The specious argument that I am making a claim to infallibility myself when I claim to believe in the Bible's infallibility is really quite stunning when I think about it. The only logical conclusion of such a claim, and the resultant claim that "all knowledge must be provisional" is that none of you know anything at all, in which case why take such an arrogant absolutist tone with those with whom you disagree?

Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, "...I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice." Pilate's response is, "What is truth?" This exchange reveals perfectly the two different epistemological approaches here. You said all truth must be provisional. But that means that there is no truth, or at least no way for us to ever know that truth. And if so, then there is no right and wrong, no such thing as evil. There is only what works for me as an individual.

And yet you all know full well that that isn't true. You know full well that there are things that are evil, regardless of evolutionary processes or survival needs. You demonstrate that over and over in this thread. You act as absolutist as any Pharisee ever did, insulting the intelligence of those who disagree with you, even casting aspersions on our moral character, describing our perspective as "scary" and the like, in direct contradiction to your insistence that all knowledge must be provisional (which sounds like a pretty absolutist statement itself).

Science is not the only source of knowledge. It's not even the most important one. Within its proper role, science is wonderful, a gift from God to be used to understand His beautiful creation. But each of you have souls, whether you acknowledge that or not, and the image of God within you which teaches you right and wrong, is far more important than science. A good but scientifically illiterate man is a far better man than a scientifically knowledgeable but cruel and deceptive man.

I do not claim infallibility. My views on many subjects have changed. Your arguments on this point are circular. If there is truly a God, and He truly revealed Himself to mankind infallibly, then He can do so in a way which is compelling, and it is no claim of infallibility on my part to say that I have recognized His infallible revelation and submit to it. You say that I am wrong about many things. Why is it somehow different when I say that you are wrong about many things?

Pilate's statement, "What is truth?" was immediately followed by his order for the crucifixion of a man he himself knew to be innocent, because he felt compelled to do so for his own survival. Was he wrong to do it?

Hello Quixote,

Considering your last letter to me was some time ago, I apologize for the lateness of my reply. To tell the truth, this was the hardest one for me to write. It's not that I couldn't think of anything to say. Much the opposite: If I had said everything I wanted to say, this post would have been too long! Cutting it down to a reasonable length was more of a struggle than writing it. I've endeavored to edit in a way that does justice to your points and to mine.

I also want to say at the outset that this will be my last reply. I've enjoyed our conversation these past few months; I think we've both had ample opportunity to speak our minds and I'm glad for that. If you'd like to offer some final thoughts in reply to this letter, you're welcome to do so.

While you good folk may connect these observances, and they are real world observances, with logical arguments or rationale for unbelief, most do not. In ministry, we engage believers and unbelievers continuously, and it's a rare bird that cites any of the philosophic staples in my first paragraph, or others like them. The ones who do generally do not exhibit even a serviceable grasp of the attendant issues. This is my overwhelming and consistent experience firsthand.

That may be one of those points where we'll have to differ. In my experience, most atheists, even if they aren't experts in theology, come to atheism because they've decided that something about religious belief doesn't rationally add up. This may, of course, be self-selection bias - it's likely that most of the people who visit Daylight Atheism come here because they like to give thought to these issues.

However, I maintain that since there isn't (yet!) a thriving, real-world atheist community in the same way that there are religious communities, very few people are going to become atheists just because it's the default option in their peer group. Most people who become atheists do so as the result of a conscious decision on their part and an intentional effort to seek out the advocates of that philosophy. Granted, if we're as successful as I'd hope, that may change in a few generations. Greta Christina wrote a very thoughtful post about this (link), about how every social movement needs must start with the most independently-minded, committed people, and how that inevitably diminishes as its goals are accomplished and it becomes a more widely accepted position.

An insulating factor actively laboring against this realization is immersion. I define immersion as a progressive group dynamic which isolates and subsequently reinforces cognitive structures, mores, and peculiar linguistics — and a host of other things — among individuals sharing (un)beliefs and community. We're all guilty of it, and I can't speak for y'all, but one thing accomplished by this dialogue is the weakening of this exclusive immersive web by the coupling of new strands to existing ones.

I couldn't agree more! Why do you think I wanted to do this in the first place?

Lastly, I might also ask you a related question: to what degree is your atheism dependent upon your birth in a western culture steeped in secularism? Would that influence your estimation of the reasonableness of your atheism? I'd also like to hear to what degree you believe your birth into a Judeo-Christian culture has imported tenets from those religions into your atheism, whether consciously or subconsciously.

I don't accept that Western culture, particularly American culture, is steeped in secularism. On the contrary, I'd say that being an atheist where I live requires swimming upstream against an overwhelming tide of public opinion: opinion treating belief in God not just as the expected, but the only moral position. Look at the money in your wallet if you don't think that's true. There may be some places where your remark about our secularism-steeped culture has a degree of truth. But in vast swathes of this country, nonbelief in public life, or even in private life, is all but impossible unless carefully concealed.

I'll grant that living in this culture does make atheism possible - in the sense that, as god-saturated as our society is, we've still managed to carve out some breathing room between religion and government, creating a small space where nonbelief can exist. In many cultures of the past and the present, even that wouldn't have existed, and outspoken atheism would not be an option at all. In those cultures I'd have been imprisoned or worse for saying the kind of things I say nearly every day on this blog.

As for importing Judeo-Christian tenets into my atheism - I don't know, which tenets do you have in mind? There are many moral principles, like the Golden Rule, that find expression in every culture. In our culture, which is heavily influenced by Christian thinking, these universals naturally find expression in a Christian context. In that sense, I'll concede that my worldview has been influenced by these beliefs; it would be virtually impossible for anyone who grew up in 20th-century America to say otherwise. On the other hand, the Bible and historic Christianity have promoted many principles that are antithetical to my worldview, and many social reform movements to whose ideals I subscribe - separation of church and state, women's equality, secular public schools, birth control, GLBT rights - were and often still are viciously attacked for being anti-Christian.

I've never lived a moment without out it that I can recall. There's definitely times when it's stronger, though. After absorbing so much heat for this admission, I'm figuring I should just go ahead and claim it as an evidence for God — I've got nothing to lose! I'd enjoy hearing of your comparable experience...

Well, now you've asked me a hard question! Trying to do justice to experiences like this is like trying to describe the experience of listening to a symphony. But I'll give it my best shot.

This kind of experience tends to come upon me suddenly at my happiest moments, though it sometimes wells up for no apparent reason. (Maybe it's from a little trickle of current in my temporal lobes.) The most salient aspect is a sense of heightened awareness - a feeling that all the world has suddenly become much richer in detail, that everything has become immeasurably more significant. Always accompanying this is a sense of great affection, of love for all the beauty of the world and my fellow living things. And lastly, there's a feeling I can only describe as oceanic: like the boundaries of my self dissolving, being opened up to all the unimaginable vastness of the world, and experiencing it as a source of bliss. In those few perfect moments, it feels as if the world is full of magic, and I've only briefly gained the ability to see it.

I won't say that this state, this awareness, is present in my life every waking moment. But when it does emerge, it's like the sun breaking through clouds, and I wonder how anyone ever does without it.

When I read your commentary and essays, I sense that you consider some things to be right, and others wrong, in a manner that equates them with objective moral values — in a manner that you would consider them right and wrong if you and every other human had never existed; simply put: more than only the natural functioning of a human cortex, a deliverance of human reason, or an emergent consciousness. I'm not convinced yet that your and your commentator's actions match your beliefs. Where is my misstep here?

I do consider that some things are objectively right and others are objectively wrong. However, I do not consider that this is mutually exclusive with the natural functioning of the cortex. I think these explanations are complementary: the existence of conscious, reasoning beings brings right and wrong into the world, just as it brings in a whole host of other abstract concepts - democracy, for example, or money, or science, or music. It wouldn't make sense to say that those things aren't "real", that they're just tricks of the cerebral cortex. We make them real by participating in them.

How can you prove that the only reason God would permit evil to occur is to bring about some other end?

Truthfully, I think that's the only defense a Christian could possibly offer, even as unsatisfactory as it is (a point you seem to agree with, if I read you correctly). For if God did not create evil as a means to some other end, there's only one other logically possible option: that God created evil as an end in itself. In other words, he created evil for its own sake. That's the definition of what an evil being is, and that creates an irreconcilable contradiction with the core tenet of Christianity that God is good.

If a genuine free will exists, not every possible world is feasible for God to create, and the one we know may just be the possible world feasible for God to create that contains the most good with the least amount of evil given the counterfactuals of creaturely free action. As I think I'm on the side of reason here, I'll endure the Panglossian taunts happily.

I really doubt that very strongly. When you look out at this world, you can't think of any way it could be improved? We wouldn't stand to gain by making human beings more empathetic, less prone to resort to violence to settle their disagreements? We couldn't gain by making free agents who are more inclined to take the long view, less inclined to value immediate short-term gain? By making people who are more courageous and morally steadfast, less willing to compromise their principles for material benefit?

These are all contingent parameters of human behavior that could hypothetically be altered; a creator could twiddle those knobs without depriving us of free will. If you really think this world is unimprovable, that's your right. All I can say, though, is that if God turned things over to me, it wouldn't take long to draw up a list of fixes.

Put yourself in my shoes for a moment: if you were convinced there existed an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful being, wouldn't you trust in Him with regard to evil?

If I was convinced of the exact statement you gave, yes, I'd pretty much have to. However, that's because your conclusion is contained in your premise: if there existed an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful being, it follows as a matter of logic that there can be no unnecessary evil in the world. But that's putting the cart before the horse. I see no rational way to draw such an inference, given the fact that unnecessary evil manifestly does exist. How anyone could look at this world and infer that supreme moral goodness intended it all to be this way, that's a conclusion I simply can't see any way to justify.

As I've said before, to infer moral goodness, one has to have at least some understanding of the actor's motives. But you say we should treat God's plan as a mystery, that we can't know he doesn't have good reasons of his own and therefore should trust him. Again, this is putting the cart before the horse. If God's motives are unknown to us, to be consistent, you'd have to say that his moral status, good or bad, is also an unknown quantity. Believing that God is absolutely good and that he has a motive for all the evil he causes is an argument that goes straight from premise to conclusion without any intervening steps.

To my friend Ebonmuse,

Offered with genuine respect to the readership and commentators of DA,

The presumption of atheism, the hiddenness of God, the Problem of Evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, epistemic warrant, Pascal's wager, NOMA, Hume's critique of the miraculous, the Kalam cosmological argument...

I'm near concluding that I've interacted with far more atheists — or perhaps far more atheists and agnostics of a different type than those who frequent internet blogs — than many here at DA. The man on the street who doubts God's existence, or flat out denies Him, usually does so because his wife passed away unexpectedly, or because his neighbor attends church, presenting a holier-than-thou exterior while sleeping with another neighbor's wife.

While you good folk may connect these observances, and they are real world observances, with logical arguments or rationale for unbelief, most do not. In ministry, we engage believers and unbelievers continuously, and it's a rare bird that cites any of the philosophic staples in my first paragraph, or others like them. The ones who do generally do not exhibit even a serviceable grasp of the attendant issues. This is my overwhelming and consistent experience firsthand. It's not at all likely to be mistaken, but I'm willing to listen...

In my experience, people prove more irrational than rational — not necessarily in an epistemological sense — in all matters of life, including their beliefs about God. I count myself among their number, admittedly. Hence, Ebon, we may have to ultimately disagree with regard to the primary reasons people believe or disbelieve.

I could very well be wrong, but I think this disagreement may stem from the premium placed upon rationality here. I applaud y'all for your single-mindedness aimed at Reason; however, I think the reasonable should acknowledge their frequent unreasonableness. It's a human condition, not to mention the noetic effects of sin.

An insulating factor actively laboring against this realization is immersion. I define immersion as a progressive group dynamic which isolates and subsequently reinforces cognitive structures, mores, and peculiar linguistics — and a host of other things — among individuals sharing (un)beliefs and community. We're all guilty of it, and I can't speak for y'all, but one thing accomplished by this dialogue is the weakening of this exclusive immersive web by the coupling of new strands to existing ones.

People do convert in adulthood, but we both know that that's relatively rare. For the most part, the things that people were raised to believe are the ones that they end up believing for the rest of their lives.

Would you agree with that? If so, I'm curious how it influences your belief in the reasonableness of your faith... Do you think that should mean anything to people who live in a largely Christian country and are Christians themselves?

Statistically, it's an unavoidable conclusion that the older one becomes the less likely s/he will believe. I assume it's the same with belief deconverting, but I'm not aware of any studies. I comprehend how the cultural particularism you cite supports your unbelief, and, in fact, now that I think about it, it's another common reason for unbelief. We should incorporate it into the list.

But I don't feel the weight of the objection. I prefer Calvinistic, and to a lesser degree, Molinistic theologies relating to the Christian God. Both of these systems do not posit that God calls every person in the same manner, nor do they posit that He is obligated to do so, for a variety of plausible reasons from both compatibilistic and libertarian viewpoints, respectively. For like and similar rationale, the hiddenness of God objection does not weigh heavily upon me.

Moreover, I'm pleased to report that Christianity is currently exploding worldwide. It is growing faster than at any time in its history. It is experiencing historic, unprecedented growth in Asia, Africa, and other places not normally associated with Christianity, as well as in Latin America. If current trends hold, the locus of Christianity may no longer reside as it traditionally has within Europe or North America. Thus, it may just turn out that all cultures are equally represented when it's all said and done. I suspect we may already be nearing that balance right now.

Lastly, I might also ask you a related question: to what degree is your atheism dependent upon your birth in a western culture steeped in secularism? Would that influence your estimation of the reasonableness of your atheism? I'd also like to hear to what degree you believe your birth into a Judeo-Christian culture has imported tenets from those religions into your atheism, whether consciously or subconsciously.

Is this sensation a continual awareness, or are there moments when it's absent and others when it's especially intense?

I've never lived a moment without out it that I can recall. There's definitely times when it's stronger, though. After absorbing so much heat for this admission, I'm figuring I should just go ahead and claim it as an evidence for God — I've got nothing to lose! I'd enjoy hearing of your comparable experience...

But human beings are conscious, rational creatures who can explicitly reflect on and compare reasons in order to steer our own behavior. That makes us moral agents who bear real responsibility for the actions we undertake.

I quite agree, Ebon, in spite of your usage of the word "rational," and please believe me when I say that in the event there is no God, you've created as healthy an ethical system as I've encountered, and I'll gladly sign the social contract with you. However, and I suspect you will agree with me, we still have significant differences here: objective moral values, ultimate responsibility, etc. I will say this, though, and I hope you accept it in the manner it's intended: after reading you, and your commentators, for more than a year, it's my distinct impression that you are more moral than "conscious, rational creatures who can explicitly reflect on and compare reasons in order to steer [your] own behavior." When I read your commentary and essays, I sense that you consider some things to be right, and others wrong, in a manner that equates them with objective moral values — in a manner that you would consider them right and wrong if you and every other human had never existed; simply put: more than only the natural functioning of a human cortex, a deliverance of human reason, or an emergent consciousness. I'm not convinced yet that your and your commentator's actions match your beliefs. Where is my misstep here?

the only reason God would permit evil to occur is to bring about some other end, some other goal that he desires...What grounds can there be for reaching a different conclusion in the case of evil?

To borrow your quite clever phrase, my friend, you've answered your own question. This illustrates the reason you've reached your conclusion inductively, rather than deductively. It's simply too heavy a burden to prove that God cannot have a morally sufficient reason for so doing. How can you prove that the only reason God would permit evil to occur is to bring about some other end? Certainly you wouldn't claim to know everything God knows. I'm not certain you could successfully support this premiss with respect to an infinitely closer, finite authority to yourself, say, the US President — much less God.

Furthermore, I'd quibble a bit with your definition of omnipotence, and the ramifications thereof. I'd define omnipotence, non-technically, as God's ability to execute or accomplish His holy will. It seems false to me to claim that God can directly actualize any logically possible state of affairs: for instance, it is a logically possible state of affairs that God does not exist!

When we entertain possible world semantics and modal logic, you're correct in noting that the normative Christian answer revolves around free will. If a genuine free will exists, not every possible world is feasible for God to create, and the one we know may just be the possible world feasible for God to create that contains the most good with the least amount of evil given the counterfactuals of creaturely free action. As I think I'm on the side of reason here, I'll endure the Panglossian taunts happily.

But as you've noted, I've expressed concerns with the free will defense. I'm just not convinced libertarian freedom of the will is true. If it is, then the free will defense is widely accepted as successful by atheist and theist alike, as I noted in the last post. If not, then obviously I'll have a more difficult time handling the POE.

So, I'll be honest, and consider the POE without resorting to free will, even if it costs me some points. Evil is a great mystery—its origin, much more so than the POE itself, actually. This, I think, is related to Erika's most thoughtful comment:

Quixote addressed the technical question of whether or not the problem of evil disproved God, but he never addressed the more interesting question of how goodness could provide evidence for God without evil presenting equally compelling evidence against God.

As I said in the beginning, it would be unreasonable for either of you to analyze every point made by the other, but if either you or Quixote find this asymmetry in the treatment of observations interesting, I would request that it be brought up again.

I do find it interesting, and would say in response that, to me, evil presents compelling evidence for God, rather than against Him:

P1 If God did not exist, then objective moral values would not exist.

P2 Evil exists.

P3 Therefore, objective moral values exist (from P2)

C Therefore, God exists (MT, P1, P3)

To me then, the existence of evil deductively requires the conclusion that God exists. I readily acknowledge that this argument, though valid, is not sound for every rational agent. But for those of us who find the existence of objective moral values compelling, and their sole ground to be in God, the conclusion follows necessarily. Stated another way, for those of us to whom the premisses of this argument are even more plausible than their denials, the conclusion follows necessarily.

• Furthermore, the background knowledge of Christianity blunts the force of the POE.
• There's always the possibility that a libertarian free will does in fact exist, thus explaining the existence of evil.

Christianity asserts that none of us are innocent, and, in actuality, we deserve any evil that comes our way. If Christianity is true, we don't have much valid complaining available to us with regard to evil.

• If Christianity is true, God in some sense became a sharer in the experience of evil in the person of Christ. Not only that, Christ experienced more evil bearing the sins of the world than any of us could hope to claim.
• God could certainly choose to rid the world of evil; however, He'd have to remove all of us from the world to achieve that aim. Presumably, this is not the solution everyone wishes for.
• Christianity provides answers for evil that do not obtain in naturalistic philosophies: 1) God will one day settle all scores; under naturalism, evil often prevails. 2) Evil may be viewed as true evil, and thus I can speak out against it and resist/fight it in an ultimate sense; under naturalism it is a human conception, or as I believe has been claimed, a random event, which does not lessen an atheist's success in fighting against it, it just lessens what s/he is fighting against. 3) Even if we appeal to nescience, the existence of God provides the assurance that one day the mystery will be laid bare; under naturalism, no meaning for evil is forthcoming. 4) As pendens noted, temporal evil considered in the light of eternity staggeringly reduces its impact; no so under naturalism. 5) If Christianity is true, evil, though truly evil, is understood as a part of an overall good brought about by God, even if we see through the glass darkly at this point. 6) If Christianity is true, there are malevolent forces at work as well, which accounts for some of the evil in this world.

Truly, I think most Christians are troubled by evil, just as most atheists are, and just as I am. Nevertheless, I don't think most Christians are that troubled by the POE. I'm not. Put yourself in my shoes for a moment: if you were convinced there existed an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful being, wouldn't you trust in Him with regard to evil? I can only think your honest answer would be yes, if you adopted the presuppositions, but be sure to let me know if I'm wrong. At any rate, it affords Christians a way to embrace the problem of the existence of evil in a manner unavailable to atheists. What do you think?

Respectfully,

MS Quixote

I'd like to add a few words in response to the logical positivist/verificationists from the last thread as well. As far as I've seen, Ebon, you're not a part of this group, as you accept knowledge that is not delivered by testable science.

If testable science is posited as the only source of knowledge, then the claim that testable science is the only source of knowledge is self-refuting.

Moreover, the claim is demonstrably false. I'll pit one of your own poets' works, Shelley's Ozymandias, against any deliverance of science of your choosing: there's no scientific fact that delivers knowledge any more reliable or any more valuable than that delivered in Ozymandias. An inexhaustible supply of examples remains at our disposal.

Furthermore, consider this excellent comment of Greta's that actually, and deservedly, won its thread—thanks for this one Greta, it hadn't occurred to me previously:

Emphasis added, to make this point:

He is, in fact, ruling out a hypothesis at the outset. He is ruling out the hypothesis that the natural/ material world is all there is. By seeking out consultants who don't limit themselves to the natural/ material world, he is essentially refusing to talk to anyone who doesn't already agree that the supernatural world exists.

The hypothesis that naturalism is all there is is valid, as far as I'm concerned. But not to the verificationists...it doesn't meet their standard, nor do forty or so of their own comments from the last thread. The only thing I've been able to conclude from this, and I've waited all this time to ensure that I wasn't chiming in prematurely, is that this is only a mechanism designed to preclude belief in God, and what I had in mind from my original post when I mentioned a walling off of what can be known...

After all is said and done, theism's empirically verifiable, naturalism's not. Naturalism's falsifiable, theism's not. And, in my view, life is one grandiose experiment: the living is the hypothesis and experimentation set-up phase...the results come in four score and ten, on average.

Hello Quixote,

In reference to your list of reasons why people become atheists or theists, I have to disagree. I don't think most of those are the initial reasons why people choose one or the other. Many of them are common causes that are frequently taken up by people on one side or the other, or are shared aspects of membership in those communities, it's true. But I don't think people become atheists because they have more fun than theists (although, if true, that might be a reason why people stay atheists), or that people become theists because of the sense of community they get from attending church (although, again, that might be a reason why they stay theists).

However, I would zero in one item of your second list, the first item: Most people who are theists were taught from childhood to believe that way. People do convert in adulthood, but we both know that that's relatively rare. For the most part, the things that people were raised to believe are the ones that they end up believing for the rest of their lives.

Would you agree with that? If so, I'm curious how it influences your belief in the reasonableness of your faith. If you (or I) were raised in a predominantly Muslim country, we'd almost certainly be Muslims; if in a Buddhist country, we'd more likely be Buddhists. Do you think that should mean anything to people who live in a largely Christian country and are Christians themselves?

That this particular portion of my initial post would have garnered the interest it has baffles me, to be honest. I inserted it as almost an afterthought, because I suspect many theists use this awareness as a basis for God's existence. I do not, nor am I the charismatic type Christian who would be prone to such experiences.

It doesn't surprise me at all. I think that many atheists find this the most novel claim in the theist's arsenal, as well as the one they're personally least familiar with. And notwithstanding the fact that you don't rely on it as the primary basis for your belief, I think most theists do. In fact, for many of them, I think it's the first reason they would give.

From what you've said so far, this is a hard thing to describe. I accept that, but I'd like to explore it a little more, with your permission. I've had experiences that strike me as comparable, but maybe if we talk it over a bit more, we can see if we're talking about the same thing. Here's the most important thing I'm curious about: Is this sensation a continual awareness, or are there moments when it's absent and others when it's especially intense?

...how you would ever conclude that there is evil and injustice. If these things come about by accident, as you say, why would we consider them good? If they come about by random chance, where's the injustice or the evil? Certainly you don't conclude that there's evil and injustice in the insect world, yet if we're the same product of naturalism that the insect kingdom is, and there's no higher authority overseeing our existence, why would we presume that there's actual injustice or evil simply because we're a more highly evolved lifeform with an emergent consciousness?

You've answered your own question, my friend. Insects are programmed by genes and instinct, and cannot choose in any meaningful way how to live their lives. But human beings are conscious, rational creatures who can explicitly reflect on and compare reasons in order to steer our own behavior. That makes us moral agents who bear real responsibility for the actions we undertake. If we suffer harm that is not merited by our actions, then an injustice is done, even if it's not done by someone. Similarly, a natural event may be good for us, in accordance with our reasons and desires, even if it was not caused by a conscious being. Our quest for justice is really the quest to impose a rational pattern on an irrational world, to bring the world into alignment with what a consideration of our reasons would suggest.

The primary cause of this wholesale withdrawal has been the inability for philosophers to demonstrate that God cannot possess a morally sufficient reason to permit evil.

With respect to the philosophers you cite, I don't agree. Assuming evil is not an end in itself, the only reason God would permit evil to occur is to bring about some other end, some other goal that he desires. But if God is omnipotent, that can never be necessary. That's what omnipotence means: an omnipotent being can directly actualize any logically possible state of affairs, and is not bound, as we are, by the necessity to use tools or contrivances.

If God wants to cross a river, he doesn't need to create stepping stones in the water; he can just teleport to the other side. If God wants to start a fire, he doesn't need matches or tinder; he just creates fire. I don't think you would disagree with either of those statements. What grounds can there be for reaching a different conclusion in the case of evil?

I know the usual Christian response to this question is that true free will requires the ability to do wrong. But - not to preempt your reply - I don't think that's the one you'll go for, unless I've misunderstood your views on the nature of humanity's relationship to God. Of course, I await your reply to see I've gone astray!

Hello Ebon,

To approach your larger question, what are the real reasons people believe or disbelieve, I've offered a bulletized list for anyone who's interested in pursuing this question:

• Some people do not believe in God for a variety of honestly considered reasons.
• Some people resent the Christian church's involvement in politics, usually the Christian right's involvement in the Republican Party. Atheism provides a natural outlet for this resentment, and becomes an attractive choice on that basis.
• Some people who value science highly find religion's involvement in the public school science class, and with science at large, deplorable. Atheism, though not formal in a creedal sense, shares this concern.
• Some people desire to drink beer on Saturday night, and the current religion in this culture meets on Sunday morning.
• Some people desire to resist authority structures. As a confederation of freethinkers, atheism provides a natural haven for this desire. This may occur against parents, churches, the government, mainstream culture, societal tradition, and other societal structures. The counterculture of the 1960's contributes to these phenomena.
• Atheism appears more fun than theism.
• An increasing number of once traditional societal structures, universities for instance, have increasingly taught atheism as a viable philosophic and lifestyle option. This has translated into a greater number of atheists.
• The notion on the street that science has disproved theism has contributed to the spread of atheism.
• The widespread belief that science, education, technology, and economics will lead to a humanistic utopia has disenfranchised the need for God in many people's minds, thus leading to atheism.
• Some people consider religion an evil, therefore atheism is a natural option.
• Some people hate, distrust, or have lost faith in God over bad events which occurred in their lives.
• The publicity campaign of the New Atheism.

For theists, then:

• Some people were raised to believe, and therefore believe.
• Some people choose to believe, therefore they believe.
• Some people revere the Bible, or another holy text, as the word of God.
• A sense of community is important to some people, therefore they attend church. Moreover, some seek influence or networks from a local community.
• Some people sincerely believe for a variety of honestly considered reasons.
• Some people feel God, therefore they believe.
• Some people have experiences they attribute to God, therefore they believe.
• Some people consider authority structures their duty to uphold. This is increasingly rare, I think, and descriptive of older generations.
• Some people consider atheism an evil, therefore belief is a natural option.
• Some people turned to faith in God over bad events which occurred in their lives.
• Some people look at a sunset or the stars, and find atheism a difficult option.
• Some people find a sense of hope in God, therefore they believe.

These, and probably more could be added, are reasons for belief and unbelief. Faith and unbelief, in my experience with people, is generally caught and not taught. The well-considered reasons generally follow; there are notable exceptions, I'm sure, but it's not normative for the well-considered reasons to lead. If you like, we can add, delete, unpack, and/or expand these.

To your specific questions, then:

"That said, I am interested to know more about this feeling you speak of, and I'd like to hear you describe it in more detail, if you can. Is it a unique quale, something indescribable through other sensory modalities, or is it an awareness that comes through the usual five senses?"

That this particular portion of my initial post would have garnered the interest it has baffles me, to be honest. I inserted it as almost an afterthought, because I suspect many theists use this awareness as a basis for God's existence. I do not, nor am I the charismatic type Christian who would be prone to such experiences. I suspect my temperament mirrors yours in many respects.

Nevertheless, we imagine ourselves separated by a gulf of experience, so let's press on the best we can. Can I describe this awareness to you in more detail? I doubt it. The closest I might bring you to the experience is your encounter with the sublime or perhaps the numinous, so let's take a quick look at both.

Certainly you've encountered the sublime: a gaze at a sunset, a fascination with the stars, a sense of something greater than yourself. In fact, I believe I recall your exposition of the sublime from an atheist's perspective in one of your essays. I'd not suggest to you that your confrontation with the sublime is equivalent to the awareness I've mentioned. It's not; however, theists tend to meld the two in their minds, so perhaps that experience of the stars at night is as close as I can guide you to my personal experience. I suspect it is.

But, perhaps the numinous, a term coined by Rudolf Otto as far as I know, is more fertile ground. Otto described the sense of contact with a being wholly other as the numinous. While I would not describe God as wholly other — there must be some common frame of reference for contact with God if we were to know him — the conception of a being similar to the attributes customarily ascribed to the Christian God should engender a sensation of the numinous. The feeling produced by the holy God described by Christianity may cause this aspect of Otto's numinous: the mysterium tremendum, an unsettling awareness, one perhaps of fear. Moreover, there's the mysterium fascinas: as the phrase suggests, an awareness of a being so infinitely wonderful that it's irresistible in its allure.

Hopefully, that gives you an inkling of the experience. It's an odd situation. I have no doubt of your honesty when you claim to possess no like experience, yet I'm certain that billions of theists would report similar experiences. They'll know what I'm talking about, but collectively we won't be able to adequately explain it to you.

In that manner, it does resemble a quale, doesn't it? But I hesitate to term it such, for it ushers in a host of philosophic associations that may or may not be helpful, and they may very well prove misleading. I also hesitate to utilize the conceptions of sensory modality and the usual five senses. An historic theological phrase, the sensus divinitatis, is more than likely the best descriptive vehicle, but it carries baggage when used around atheists that I'd rather not unearth, as I've stated previously on DA. What I can say — for myself, that is — is that it appears to be part of an epistemic cognitive function capable of apprehending this awareness.

But, of course, this last statement is contingent upon the de facto consideration of whether God exists. If He does not in reality exist, then your (and mine, actually) likely conclusion that I have a God gene or some other neurological peculiarity, as you put it, seems almost certain. That, or I'm simply deluded. Either way, it would seem that here I stand, I can do no other, unless of course you are successful in convincing me that God does not in fact exist, which may not prevent the awareness, but only provide me a better explanation for the phenomenon. Naturally, another option is that God actually exists, and this awareness somehow is reflective of an actual presence. And, if we care at all to logic, it would appear that there may be other possibilities available to us as well: perhaps God exists and this awareness is in no way related to him. Whatever the case may be, the question is bound inexorably to the de facto question of existence, so while it may be interesting to ponder, it seems to me it has to be tabled until the time that question is actually settled. Until that time, if there is one, the theist and atheist are likely to proceed with their thinking in relation to this question based upon their current beliefs.

So, then to your second concern:

"Why is it the case that justice, consciousness and the like raise the odds in favor of a world-with-God hypothesis over those of a world-without-God hypothesis?"

As you well know, this question, and any subsequent answer by a Christian, will mire us in the invariable discussions endlessly volleyed by Christians and atheists. And it leads the theist inexorably into an axiological argument for God's existence. For example, I'd be interested to know based on your description of the world as you see it:

"It's easy to see how those good things you mention could come about by accident, at least some of the time, in a world with no higher authority; random chance will sometimes turn out in our favor, sometimes not. But I think it's a lot more challenging to explain how evil and injustice could come to be in a world overseen by a deity that does not desire such things."

how you would ever conclude that there is evil and injustice. If these things come about by accident, as you say, why would we consider them good? If they come about by random chance, where's the injustice or the evil? Certainly you don't conclude that there's evil and injustice in the insect world, yet if we're the same product of naturalism that the insect kingdom is, and there's no higher authority overseeing our existence, why would we presume that there's actual injustice or evil simply because we're a more highly evolved lifeform with an emergent consciousness? Did we awaken in this world as Gregor Samsa, as monstrous vermin?

But before we do all that, let me address the greater question of the problem of evil:

"But I think it's a lot more challenging to explain how evil and injustice could come to be in a world overseen by a deity that does not desire such things."

We need to frame this question before delving into it. Many atheists, not to suggest yourself, are unaware that the logical problem of evil is now, I'm pleased to report, widely abandoned. The logical, or deductive form of the problem of evil attempts to demonstrate that the propositions "God exists" and "evil exists" are contradictories. The primary cause of this wholesale withdrawal has been the inability for philosophers to demonstrate that God cannot possess a morally sufficient reason to permit evil. Hence, there exists no persuasive deductive path to demonstrate successfully a contradiction between the existence of God and the existence of evil.

For instance, the highly esteemed atheist philosopher, and former DA poster, I believe, Dr. Michael Martin has stated "Most philosophers now believe that there is good reason why the Deductive Argument from Evil fails: it is logically possible that evil can exist even if God exists if God has good moral reasons for allowing it." Moreover, atheist philosopher William Rowe states "Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of the theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim. Indeed, granted incompatibilism, there is a fairly compelling argument for the view that the existence of evil is logically consistent with the existence of God."

While this is inconclusive in itself with regard to whether the problem of evil is a true defeater for God's existence, I think it is important to note that there's no logical or deductive path between the existence of God and the existence of evil that impedes belief or founds unbelief. Thus, the problem of evil is relegated to inductive or abductive arguments.

In fairness, then, I would expect every atheist to approach the POE with the same level of skepticism they showed with my hinted at inductive arguments for the existence of God; that is, I would expect them to accuse themselves of the very things they accuse me of — appeals to ignorance, personal incredulity, and the like — before accepting the POE as evidence against God. For every atheist that truly applies this skepticism to his own argument, I take no exception to their rejection of God.

Moreover, inductive arguments often fall prey to emotionalism, and this fact is exacerbated with subjects such as evil. Very often an atheist's rejection of God is based on emotionalism combined with the problem of evil. I think this is self-evident with regard to your greater question as to why some people disbelieve, and I would guess that it is a common path trodden by those deconverting from theism to atheism. Again, if any of your readers have taken the intellectual steps to ensure this is not the case with their thought process, and still remain convinced, I take no exception. In general, I take no exception to honest, well-thought through belief or unbelief.

So, properly framed, let's see where the discussion leads. The POE, the axiological argument, or perhaps "And Now for Something Completely Different."