ajax18 wrote:What advantage do you see to choosing to not believe in God or that an ultimate meaning and fairness exist?
So beliefs are things to be chosen according to their advantages? What about accuracy--truth? Beliefs aim at truth, don't they?--and not at mere advantage? If I found it advantageous to believe to believe that God condones my every action, would this be sufficient reason to believe it? How about if I found it advantageous to believe that I am all-powerful?
Finding these things advantageous may create a preference in me, but it does nothing to change external reality. A wish is not a fact. My preferring for God to exist doesn't make his existence one whit more likely; so that preference isn't a reason I should believe in his existence any more strongly. To find truth, one must follow evidence, not preference.
And the evidence provided by the horrible, gratuitous suffering of innocents is that there is no all-good Almighty running the show--regardless of what I prefer or find advantageous. After all, I'm not all-powerful, and can't conjure up a God by my own whim. Nor, for that matter, can you.
Don