Disprove God [Magickyleo101 vs. PureInfantryWins]

[magickyleo101]

PureInfantryWins has challenged me to "disprove God," and I've set about the beginnings of that task in this post. Ordinarily I don't bother getting involved with "existence of God" arguments on message boards because they tend to repeat each other, but this debate should actually let us talk about interest issues surrounding the concept of proof, so I'm looking forward to it.

What follows begins with a section "framing" the challenge so that PureInfantryWins and I can agree on what I have to do to "win" the debate. Obviously I'm going to be giving arguments against the existence of God here, but in order for us to turn those arguments into conclusions about who's won we need some way to tell which argument count as "proof." Part A lays out machinery to let us do that.

Part B, then, goes on to give the actual "meat" of the arguments. It consists mostly of an atypical version of the problem of evil plus tie-ins from PART A.

PART A:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The wording of the challenge clearly puts the burden on me to "disprove God," but it doesn't do much to to clarify which of the various meanings of "prove" is intended. This makes it necessary to quickly clarify some important facts about the concept of "proof" that are central to the debate:

First, it should be fairly clear from the outset that the kind of "proof" I'll be giving here won't be anything akin to a mathematical one. Even most die-hard atheists think that God's non-existence is a contingent fact about the world (that is, they think that although God doesn't exist in this world there are still logically possible worlds in which God exists). Since a logical proof is designed to show that there are no possible worlds in which the conclusion is false, a logical proof is an inappropriate form of reasoning towards a contingent fact.

Thus, any proof I give will inevitably appeal to certain contingent and empirical facts about the world (e.g. that some pain exists). While I understand that it's my obligation to provide support for these facts, the support clearly won't come in the form that various theists at times seem to demand (i.e. a math proof).

Second, we should distinguish between two understandings of the word "proof":

• First, we can say something "proves" a conclusion in the formal and technical sense that we talk of a "proof" in math or formal logic. What we mean here that we've taken a set of well formed formulas and properly applied inferential rules like modus ponens until we've reached a conclusion. As noted above, that's not the kind of thing we're doing here.
• Second, there's normative sense of "proof" in which we mean that proof of a conclusion creates a certain intellectual obligation to believe the conclusion of the proof.

It's the second, normative sense of proof that's really relevant here. In other words, my task here is to provide the level of argument such that no reasonable person could, in good faith, hold on to a belief in God. As the words suggest, the precise point at which arguments reach that strength is a normative fact about the world, and something we'll likely dispute.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE DEBATE:

All of this means that our discussion will actually range over two different types of argument: On the one hand, we'll have so-called "first-order" arguments like the well-known problem of evil. At the same time, however, we'll have "second-order" arguments about the conditions under which somebody ought to believe something (e.g. "you shouldn't believe contradictions" or "you should trust your senses"). These second order arguments aren't themselves part of the "proof" that God doesn't exist, but they're important to determining whether the first order arguments are proof, and thus deserve to be discussed here.

PART B:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The content here will have two parts: First, I give a fairly straightforward, inductive version of the problem of evil. After that, I link in the material from PART A to show that, although my argument is inductive, it's still strong enough to count as "proof."

So here's the initial argument:

(1) If God existed he would be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.
(2) If an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being existed, there would be no unnecessary suffering.
(3) But it's really, really, really, really, really, likely that unnecessary suffering exists.
(4) So it's really, really, really, really, really, likely that no omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being exists.
(C1): It's really, really, really, really, really, likely that God doesn't exist.

Note that by "unnecessary suffering" in (2) and (3) I mean suffering that doesn't accomplish some greater end. In other words, a case of suffering will be an "unnecessary" case of suffering if an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being could "swoop in" and fix the problem without leaving

This is where the stuff from PART A comes in. I'll admit that there are some examples of horrible suffering which we might be able to link to some higher good. So we can say stuff like "Yeah, the holocaust was really bad, but God had to allow it in order for us to have free will." But there are other examples of which we won't be able to find an easy purpose for (e.g. childhood leukemia) and (2) and (3) are worded so that I only need one example of that.

So once we have such an example, PART A makes it so that I only have to show that it's really, really, really, really, unlikely that God's serving a higher purpose with childhood leukemia. That part of the argument goes like this:

(5) People are intellectually obligated to believe conclusions that the available evidence suggests are really, really, really, really, really, likely to be true.
(6) People are intellectually obligated not to believe things that the the available evidence suggests are really, really, really, really, really, likely not to be true.
(7) The available evidence suggests that it's really, really, really, really, really, likely that God doesn't exist.
(C2) So people are intellectually obligated to believe that God does not exist and not to believe that God does exist.

Finally, to complete the last leg of the journey, as discussed in PART A, and obligation like the one in (C2) is enough to count as "proof." So we have proof that God doesn't exist. Q.E.D.

Looking forward to the reply,
-Kyle

[CLARIFICATION FOR READERS: We've agreed that we're talking about the traditional personified all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. concept of God. Not necessarily the Christian God, but certainly not some weird impersonal/mechanical/pantheism concept either.]

[Imperator Romani]

Childhood leukemia.

1-God says you are innocent until you know the difference between good and evil. Children are innocent. If they have leukemia and die, they will go to Heaven. So no loss to them.
2-Parents. Of course they will go through pain from the loss. But this pain is a great opportunity to find comfort in God. It's basically God giving you a chance to come to him. If they are already Christians, you can never stop growing closer to God. He's just making the relationship stronger.
3-Friends,family. Same

And what proof are you speaking of. So far the aforementioned is all the proof you have.

[magickyleo101]

Childhood leukemia.

1-God says you are innocent until you know the difference between good and evil. Children are innocent. If they have leukemia and die, they will go to Heaven. So no loss to them.
2-Parents. Of course they will go through pain from the loss. But this pain is a great opportunity to find comfort in God. It's basically God giving you a chance to come to him. If they are already Christians, you can never stop growing closer to God. He's just making the relationship stronger.
3-Friends,family. Same

And what proof are you speaking of. So far the aforementioned is all the proof you have.

Is that really the whole response? I mean, if we agree about everything else that's fine but I thought there would be a bit more clash. Also, just this is a bit easy for me to respond to...

In any case, remember that the test here isn't "can we think of something good that comes from the suffering;" rather, it's whether we can think of a way that God could achieve the same good with less suffering. The leukemia case is a clear example of a situation in which God could do that:

CHILDREN - If Leukemia only killed you and nothing else, then your response might get some traction. But it doesn't do that - it subjects the people it kills to years of suffering (and often financial ruin) before it kills them. And that right there is all I need to make my problem of evil argument go forward - God doesn't have to let leukemia inflict a slow, lingering death on kids. He could make it a slightly faster, less painful death AND he could have the kids go to heaven. That he doesn't do so makes this an example of unnecessary suffering which is enough for my argument.

Parents/Friends - The same reasoning is going to apply here. The death of a child might well indeed bring the parent closer to God, but the relevant question is once again whether this could be accomplished with less suffering. It clearly could. Leukemia could be a slightly less painful death and the parents would still probably be just as close to God. Alternatively, God could pursue other, child-death-free avenues to build a relationship with the parents (like talking to them directly).

Finally, even if the leukemia case wasn't enough, there's a whole world of other cases I can look to. For example, puppies who accidentally fall into wells and drown alone. Or animals who die in forest fires.

In any case, I don't think you're going to get very far if you just take the theodicy approach alone. Since you're presumably agreeing to (or at least not responding to) my claim that I only need one case of unnecessary suffering, the standard theodicies are really easy for me to work around. You should feel free to expand your response if you want. The nice thing about philosophy is that you're never stuck with your initial position.

[Imperator Romani]

Is that really the whole response? I mean, if we agree about everything else that's fine but I thought there would be a bit more clash. Also, just this is a bit easy for me to respond to...

In any case, remember that the test here isn't "can we think of something good that comes from the suffering;" rather, it's whether we can think of a way that God could achieve the same good with less suffering. The leukemia case is a clear example of a situation in which God could do that:

CHILDREN - If Leukemia only killed you and nothing else, then your response might get some traction. But it doesn't do that - it subjects the people it kills to years of suffering (and often financial ruin) before it kills them. And that right there is all I need to make my problem of evil argument go forward - God doesn't have to let leukemia inflict a slow, lingering death on kids. He could make it a slightly faster, less painful death AND he could have the kids go to heaven. That he doesn't do so makes this an example of unnecessary suffering which is enough for my argument.

Parents/Friends - The same reasoning is going to apply here. The death of a child might well indeed bring the parent closer to God, but the relevant question is once again whether this could be accomplished with less suffering. It clearly could. Leukemia could be a slightly less painful death and the parents would still probably be just as close to God. Alternatively, God could pursue other, child-death-free avenues to build a relationship with the parents (like talking to them directly).

Finally, even if the leukemia case wasn't enough, there's a whole world of other cases I can look to. For example, puppies who accidentally fall into wells and drown alone. Or animals who die in forest fires.

In any case, I don't think you're going to get very far if you just take the theodicy approach alone. Since you're presumably agreeing to (or at least not responding to) my claim that I only need one case of unnecessary suffering, the standard theodicies are really easy for me to work around. You should feel free to expand your response if you want. The nice thing about philosophy is that you're never stuck with your initial position.

1st P- yea, really don't have much to argue about on what proof is and what reason is.
2nd P-You don't seem to know that God gave Satan free rule over Earth(within limits-shown in the story of Job). So it's not really God here. But in a way it is, and this is my point. Think it covers the rest of your argument. This isn't our world, it's not where we belong. This is a testing ground. Suffering people will have the 'most' in Heaven according to what God said "may the first be last and the last be first." There will also be crowns in Heaven, 4 crowns for 4 different things, for what you did or went through on Earth. So God won't say to you "O, sorry bout that, tough luck." But remember, Heaven is where we belong, not here. What we encounter here in the way of suffering is completely irrevelant on our existence unless it deals with our religious decisions.

Animals aren't God's children, they aren't as important, and accidents happen. It's not God's fault. He gave us the blessing of free will. If you want to walk in front of a bullet you can, God's given you the choice to turn around. So you can't use that argument with this debate, it just won't work.

[magickyleo101]

Again, it's important to remember what we're looking for here: a single case where God could stop or reduce suffering without cost and doesn't. That's going to give us the obvious answer to each of your points.

2nd P-You don't seem to know that God gave Satan free rule over Earth(within limits-shown in the story of Job). So it's not really God here.

Since we're looking for a case where God allows suffering that's unnecessary we're not really concerned with whether he's causing the suffering directly or whether he merely lets someone or something else inflict it.

This isn't our world, it's not where we belong. This is a testing ground. Suffering people will have the 'most' in Heaven according to what God said "may the first be last and the last be first." There will also be crowns in Heaven, 4 crowns for 4 different things, for what you did or went through on Earth. So God won't say to you "O, sorry bout that, tough luck." But remember, Heaven is where we belong, not here. What we encounter here in the way of suffering is completely irrevelant on our existence unless it deals with our religious decisions.

So this could be a variation on a couple of fairly common arguments, all of which fail:

ONE: You could be saying that because God compensates you for your suffering in heaven the suffering on earth isn't really a cost and thus God isn't allowing unnecessary bad stuff. In other words, the argument says "there is no evil because everyone at least breaks even once they get to heaven."

There are three problems with the argument:

First, God doesn't have to make whatever he's giving you in heaven contingent on your suffering on earth. He could both give you the crowns (or whatever else he's giving you) and lessen your suffering. Since you're worse off if you suffer and get compensated than if you just get the benefits that make up the compensation, the extra suffering makes you needlessly worse off and still does the work of this argument.

Second, and in a similar vein, suffering is bad not just because of the total sum of pleasures of and pains that a person undergoes. It may be worth undergoing some immediate pain in order to avoid some later pain or gain some later pleasure, but the pain there is justified by its causal relation to the later experience. Since here the pain isn't necessary for any reward in heaven (again, God could lessen your pain and give you the same treatment in heaven) the pain is still an unnecessary evil.

Third, the argument doesn't do anything to explain the fact that animals needlessly suffer (since presumably they don't get any kind of compensation in heaven). Even if, as you insist, animals "aren't as important" as people are, their needless suffering still counts as suffering that God could stop. That he doesn't do so, then, is enough for the argument.

TWO: You could also be making some kind of "suffering on earth paves the way for spiritual growth/a relationship with God/etc." argument.

This again has several well established problems:

First, if suffering was some how God's method of producing spiritual growth we would expect that the amount of suffering someone underwent would be proportional to the amount of spiritual growth needed (either everyone would undergo similar amounts or people with worse spiritual health would suffer more). But that's not what we see. Often people who seem to need spiritual growth the least suffer the most (Job is an example) while people with bad spiritual health seem to be deprived of the suffering that would help them.

Second, this argument too doesn't do anything to explain the unnecessary suffering of animals. Animals can't undergo spiritual growth and thus won't benefit from the suffering. Nonetheless, they suffer.

THREE: Finally, you could just be saying something really extreme like "suffering on earth just doesn't matter at all." I don't think this is what you're saying, but if it is the response if pretty obvious: If suffering on earth didn't matter at all, then those on earth would have no reason to worry about the suffering of others at all. It wouldn't be a bad thing; you wouldn't be making the world any better by preventing it. Thus, I wouldn't have any reason to change my behavior to avoid inflicting pain on others (i.e. no reason to worry about the effects of my behavior on others) and I also wouldn't have reason to do things like giving to charity.

He gave us the blessing of free will. If you want to walk in front of a bullet you can, God's given you the choice to turn around. So you can't use that argument with this debate, it just won't work.

The free will stuff doesn't matter here because none of the examples of suffering are caused by individual choices. The human suffering is the product of childhood diseases and the animal suffering happens to animals alone in the woods (e.g. a forest fire started by lightning).

[Imperator Romani]

Since we're looking for a case where God allows suffering that's unnecessary we're not really concerned with whether he's causing the suffering directly or whether he merely lets someone or something else inflict it.

O, that is actually the most important part of this argument. Yes, it is VERY IMPORTANT which one it is. This world is Satan's domain. It's a testing ground. God gave him control over the earth within certain limits to test us. He wants people in Heaven with Him forever who deserve to be there, not robots. That's Satan's job basically, not really a job, but you can definetly look at it that way. SO it's not God's fault, it's Satans. Satan loves to watch others suffer as he will for all eternity eventually. And what do you know. He has free reign. What do you think he will do? Cause suffering.


And I am using 2.

Sometimes suffering is what brings a person to God. Without it they would never accept Him. So they are saved from Hell if there child dies, and because of the pain, they become a Christian.

Ok, you bring up a good point that needs to be discussed. Some people with good spiritual health suffer more. This is covered by top point.

Some people with bad health suffer little. Ok, good point, but easily explained. God has said many times that there is a hole in your heart that only He can fill. Everyone tries to fill that hole. They try everything from money to pain, from sex to abstincy, from love to hate. But eventually some will see that none of that is working and try God. Then that hole is filled.

Animals. Again, why would Satan just make us suffer. He is pure evil by the way. God keeps him from making every animal suffer, but as God said, Satan has free rule within limits(the limit being the number of animals here) so he gets to make some suffer.

[Imperator Romani]

Ah, but He decided to do it His way. This life isn't perfect, He said that. This life is a hole compared to Heaven. This life isn't our real life. Suffering here doesn't matter, so why does it matter how much you suffer.

Pain isn't needed for spiritual growth, nor suffering.

I think these explanations hardly deal with the deeply erratic way in which pain is actually distributed. It gives us no explanation of how children benefit when they die young after lots of suffering

Ok, let me explain something. This life isn't life in the biblical sense. This is a hole that's sole purpose, one and only purpose, is to decide if you go to Heaven of Hell. That's the one and only purpose of this life. So, if a child dies, he is considered innocent by biblical standards. So the child is dead, he is sinless, he goes to Heaven. He has accomplished the one and only purpose of this life. He has a get out of jail free card. How is this bad? This is a blessing.

or how people who never suffer but get hit by a bus in their late teens are expected to grow spiritually, or how someone who suffers to the point that they're driven from God is helped.

Ok. It can be said here that God is happy with the accomplishments with their lives, He knows that there will be no chance for them and just takes their lives. They have failed at life basically. This can also be said to help their parents come to God.

So? That's the point. The one point is to get to God, no matter what it takes.

The picture you paint God doing spiritual healing with suffering sounds a lot like a doctor casting handfuls of pills down a hospital hallway with little concern for whether the right person gets the right cure (or anything at all).

Well if God knows who the pills will help...

Last sentence- God knows who will come to Him because of pain. If it takes an arm to get chopped off, then fine chop it off, you'll get it back in some odd years. You will get to Heaven for losing an arm. Or would you rather keep the arm and go to Hell. For the last group God let's them keep their arm. For the first group he takes it away. For an inbetween person, like myself, who found God without having to lose my arm, I get to keep my arm.

But this leaves good people who lose their arm and bad people who lose their arm. Well this can be considered punishment.

[magickyleo101]

It seems you've shifted positions to a "suffering isn't a bad thing" argument:

Suffering here doesn't matter, so why does it matter how much you suffer.

which means we should stop and deal with this before going any further. I actually already dealt with this argument, so I'll just repost my response here:

THREE: Finally, you could just be saying something really extreme like "suffering on earth just doesn't matter at all." I don't think this is what you're saying, but if it is the response is pretty obvious: If suffering on earth didn't matter at all, then those on earth would have no reason to worry about the suffering of others at all. It wouldn't be a bad thing; you wouldn't be making the world any better by preventing it. Thus, I wouldn't have any reason to change my behavior to avoid inflicting pain on others (i.e. no reason to worry about the effects of my behavior on others) and I also wouldn't have reason to do things like giving to charity.

Let's give two concrete examples:

Let's say I'm walking along the road and I see a person who's just had their arm crushed by a falling boulder. I could call for help, but I doing so is going to cost me some cellphone minutes. So I reason, there's some cost to calling for help and there's no cost to leaving them there or benefit to helping (since suffering isn't a bad thing) so why waste resources fixing something that isn't broken?

Alternatively, say I'm a geologist studying some volcano. Below the volcano is a village of 500 people. In the course of my studies I realize there's some significant chance (say 40%) that the volcano is going to explode and I think to myself that I should probably tell people so they can get out of the area. But then I reason: If I tell people the volcano is going to explode and I'm wrong it's going to be embarrassing, and I certainly don't want that. And since death and suffering isn't a bad thing, there's no real point in me trying to stop it.

Since you're saying that suffering doesn't matter, is the reasoning in both examples correct? If not, why not?

[Imperator Romani]

It seems you've shifted positions to a "suffering isn't a bad thing" argument:



which means we should stop and deal with this before going any further. I actually already dealt with this argument, so I'll just repost my response here:



Let's give two concrete examples:

Let's say I'm walking along the road and I see a person who's just had their arm crushed by a falling boulder. I could call for help, but I doing so is going to cost me some cellphone minutes. So I reason, there's some cost to calling for help and there's no cost to leaving them there or benefit to helping (since suffering isn't a bad thing) so why waste resources fixing something that isn't broken?

Alternatively, say I'm a geologist studying some volcano. Below the volcano is a village of 500 people. In the course of my studies I realize there's some significant chance (say 40%) that the volcano is going to explode and I think to myself that I should probably tell people so they can get out of the area. But then I reason: If I tell people the volcano is going to explode and I'm wrong it's going to be embarrassing, and I certainly don't want that. And since death and suffering isn't a bad thing, there's no real point in me trying to stop it.

Since you're saying that suffering doesn't matter, is the reasoning in both examples correct? If not, why not?

Just because suffering has no impact after this life(besides determining where we go) is over doesn't mean that it's not bad. We should still help to ease it. Jesus helped suffering people all the time, and this brought them to God. Easing suffering can accomplish the same thing as suffering. There are many variables here though.

2nd argument. I think that this is easily explained. Death isn't bad if you're right with God. And theres going to be suffering there, but it will lead to death. So basically the suffering will have no impact on their spiritual life. If they are all converted, still save them. Just because this life isn't the life we are meant for doesn't mean God didn't make it enjoyable. This is the only time in eternity to have sex, to be married, to have special connections. Surely they don't want to give those up yet.

[magickyleo101]

OK. So now that we've gone back to saying that suffering is a bad thing we can return to asking whether God's allowed more of it than he had to. Before we went on the pain-isn't-bad tangent we were asking whether it made sense for God to give control over Earth to Satan if he's trying to avoid useless pain. Just so that we're clear, are you once again saying that pain is necessary for spiritual growth or are you saying that it's allowed for another reason?

[Imperator Romani]

if he's trying to avoid useless pain.

Like I said, it's not useless.

To answer your last question both are correct. Pain is sometimes needed for spiritual growth. Sometimes there are other reasons, such as people doing stupid things that cause pain.

[magickyleo101]

Good. So we're back at looking at whether giving Earth to Satan creates needless pain. We can single out the cases where free will won't be the explanation by looking at the example of an animal burning to death in a forest fire (started by lightning).

Now, you've said that God gave earth to Satan subject to some limitations (you mention the number of animals as the limitation on animal suffering). Presumably God could have chosen other limitations. For example, he could have allowed Satan to inflict all the pain that's inflicted in the actual world and EXCEPT for when the animal's suffering wouldn't further any goal.

If an animal dies alone in a forest fire, then, is that an example of needless suffering? If not, why not?



A second example that avoids the issues of free will: the 2004 tsunami. Now, the explanations you've given so far have pointed out that 3rd parties might benefit from a person's suffering by seeing the suffering and coming closer to God. So, for example, parents might come closer to God if they see their kid die of cancer.

My guess, though, is that you think that God is sending some people to hell in order to convert the others, because in the two examples we've talked about the kid who died you said was going to heaven and the adult who died (the guy hit by the bus) you said had no chance of going to heaven anyways. So we have two ways that God can allow someone to die without treating them as a "sacrifice" to convert others: 1) The person who dies can be going to heaven (child case); or 2) the person who dies might have no chance of avoiding hell anyways.

However, that means that when a person dies they need either to be going to heaven or need to have no chance of going to heaven. So let's look at the 2004 tsunami: There we had something like 225,000 people die within the course of a few hours. In order for the explanations you've given to work, each of those people would either need to be going to heaven or have no chance of going to heaven. But whether a given person died or not was determined by their physical location and not by their spiritual health. So there's really no reason to believe that that all 225,000 people fit one status or the other.

So same question with this example: Given that the "bringing people closer to God" explanation doesn't seem to work here, were those deaths needless suffering? If not, why not?

[Imperator Romani]

Got a migrane from an aquatic center. I'll answer ASAP. Terribly sorry.

[magickyleo101]

Got a migrane from an aquatic center. I'll answer ASAP. Terribly sorry.

No prob. Web forums are for fun.

[Imperator Romani]

Well, if the animal died alone, surely there was a way out. How did a whole forest full of animals get out but him? Bad decisions can't be blamed on God.

And on the tsunami example you are wrong. Do you know the record for church attendance? The 9/11 disaster. Disaters have the same affect. It seems that people not killed or injured in 9/11 went to church when they had never been before or just didn't go. The tsunami did the same thing.

[magickyleo101]

Well, if the animal died alone, surely there was a way out. How did a whole forest full of animals get out but him? Bad decisions can't be blamed on God.

Wait... Animals have free will now? We're blaming the animal for making bad decisions? I mean if God's going to blame an animal for getting itself killed the least he could do would be to give the animal some brains....

And on the tsunami example you are wrong. Do you know the record for church attendance? The 9/11 disaster. Disaters have the same affect. It seems that people not killed or injured in 9/11 went to church when they had never been before or just didn't go. The tsunami did the same thing.

As for this: you're saying that God is killing 225,000 people in Asia to convince other people in America to go to church? I just want to make sure I'm clear on this before I jump on you for it...

[Imperator Romani]

You can't tell me that animals don't make choices. You can't tell me they can't choose to run right or left. You might as well drop that argument because we both know animals are smart.

If killing 225,000 people saves millions, sure.

[magickyleo101]

<DOUBLE POST>

[magickyleo101]

You can't tell me that animals don't make choices. You can't tell me they can't choose to run right or left. You might as well drop that argument because we both know animals are smart.

Even if animals have some limited decision making ability under normal conditions, it's pretty obvious that if you put them under any kind of stress their brains overload and they just flip out. I doubt very seriously that if animals were making decisions they would decide to launch themselves in front of cars like they do. When they're acting like that it's pretty clear they're controlled by instinct.

Moreover, making decisions isn't enough by itself to escape a fire. For example, birds aren't able to fly until they reach a certain age and if a fire comes by before that they're going to burn to death no matter what decisions they make. The same thing for younger instances of other animals (e.g. baby deer).

So I think an argument which tries to get God out from being responsible by saying "it's the animals fault" is always going to be pretty weak.

If killing 225,000 people saves millions, sure.

Do you have any evidence that millions of people were actually saved? All you've given so far is some anecdotal evidence that church attendance went up temporarily. That hardly seem to justify the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives.

What's more, if God's really as bloodthirsty and callous as you say, shouldn't we see more natural disasters that kill hundreds of thousands? After all, church attendance has declining for years in America and the picture you paint of God suggests that he should be willing to kill as many people as it takes to get America to go back to church.

Finally, I'm just going to go out and say that an all loving God simply wouldn't kill hundreds of thousands to make other people go to church for a few weeks. It's pretty inconsistent with the notion that God cares about his children to think that he would so willingly and so thoughtlessly cast so many of them into hell at once. If there was a God that loved his creations he wouldn't act like that....

[Imperator Romani]

1 post a day? I got stuff to do and can't get to this more than once usually. Like today, golf and swimmin and then goin out to eat, I'm usually tired.

Same thing for us. Put us under alot of stress and we fall on our instincts. Ah, but you don't take into account that cars aren't natural and when they first see them they don't know what they are, and that's when most get hit. Take for instance something unnatural to us, say a force field, that once you touch it drains your energy. By the time you figure it out your dead. Put something natural out there though, we can react like we should.

No, just observation. Sorry, no charts and graphs. But no, it doesn't always take natural disasters, and take into account that natural disasters are...natural in this world. happens.

For above point, God said be ready at any time, because He comes like a thief in the night. You have had all your life to get ready, to get your life right. Tough luck if you didn't take the chances(stress on the s) He has given you. So how is it His fault that you died in the natural disaster and weren't ready? How can you blame that on Him? You had your whole life. This world isn't perfect, but God made it good enough so everyone can get to Heaven if they so please.