Tarski wrote:Nonsense. There is no evidence that a God is needed to preserve goodness. The idea that it would all go down the crapper without a magical supervisor is just based on your fears.
Evidence isn't everything. All the evidence does is show that humanity has in the past been lucky.
For a horrendously long period of time humanity had two great military superpowers that were, in combination, capable of destroying every living thing on the planet several times over. Was it, for some reason, inevitable that the leaders of those nations would disarm before some hothead got enough political or military power to spark the war that ended the human race, or was it, as I asserted, simple luck that saved all living beings on the planet?
And the threat of nuclear annihilation is hardly the only obstacle in the way of perpetuating the human race.
My idea is hardly based on fears. It's based on my observance of a pretty simple principle. If one plays Russian Roulette long enough, the gun will eventually go off. And the corollary to that is that that principle is true, regardless of the number of chambers in the gun. Tarski, do you dispute either of these two assertions?
Tarski wrote:Besides, preserving a species and preserving goodness do not seem to be necessarily connected anyway. An evil and violent breed of humans might be quite good at reproducing. Indeed, we are such.
You've got a point here. Let me emphasize that the important thing is to preserve good things, which may or may not involve preserving the human race. I would hope that if the human race were forced to choose between its own preservation and the preservation, forever, of some things that were good (assuming that its own preservation was determined to not be good), that it would make the right choice.
But my point is that if no sentient being ever discovers how to preserve forever some good things, that the way the universe is set up no good things will be preserved forever. So how can we in clear conscience give up on finding and serving someone who does know how to preserve those good things?
Tarski wrote:By the way, if your God is in the preventing business then it seems clear that your God needs to do a lot more and better preventing (not to mention preserving)!
Atrocities don't prove that nobody is in the process of preserving some good things; they just prove that the preserver is not omnipotent, that that preserver can't bring about all good things at once.
It's been a very long time since I believed in a deity who was omnipotent in the Biblical Christian sense. It makes much more sense to consider the possibility that God, in Her/His attempts to preserve good things, may have to pick and choose what those good things are, which leaves the road open for some atrocities that God can't prevent. That doesn't mean that there aren't some good things that will last that God's sacrifices have paved the way for.