March 1, 2012
I mostly approve of Peter’s closing statement, but I would like to clarify a few things. The rest of this post won’t make much sense unless you read his closing statement first. I’d like to commend Peter for confronting the shortcomings of his definition of “needless suffering” head-on, among other things.
Out with the old, in with the new, right? We have Daniel as one confirmed (Christian) judge, and I’ve sent out a few calls to others (though I fully understand if nobody wants to touch DBT02 with a ten-foot-pole). What, dear audience, are you interested in seeing us debate (and by “us” I mean either Peter Hurford and I, or any other willing party)?
I can’t stomach the thought of waking up to this mess another day, so I’m making an executive decision: DBT01 is officially over. I’m no longer interested in continuing. Call it a forfeit, call it a loss, call it whatever you want. The judges awarded Round 1 to Peter (they gave him 3 perfect scores). Neither Matt nor Daniel awarded me a full score, so we don’t need to wait for Andrés to post his score. I lose. DBT01 is in the history books.
February 29, 2012
Well, I’m sick of waiting for consensus so I’m moving forward, with or without everybody or anybody. As far as an explanation of the hold up, here’s my take.
February 22, 2012
This is just a brief announcement. I’ll explain in detail later.
February 20, 2012
I’ve concluded that needless suffering exists. On my view, sin caused death, suffering and so-called “natural evil.” According to Genesis, God made the world good and humans had eternal life. Sin entailed a fall from the highest possible good. It was not necessary, God did not desire it. The suffering sin produced cannot possibly be logically required for the higher good to obtain because the highest possible good had already obtained. Criticisms that God “could have made a world without suffering” are nullified.
Even though suffering is needless, eliminating suffering doesn’t eliminate any higher good. Suffering isn’t necessary to produce goods. Obviously, Jesus didn’t believe that removing suffering eliminated higher good, else no sick would have been healed, nor would commands to heal be issued. In fact, we would have been commanded to ignore suffering. This defangs Peter’s “obstruction of divine justice” argument on the spot.
This might complicate judging, but that’s where the logic lead. I’ll counter as many of Peter’s arguments as I can, and see where the second round takes us.
February 14, 2012
Hello. I am Peter Hurford, I am the author of Greatplay.net and I am an atheist. I am here because I am involved in a debate with Cl, the author of The Warfare is Mental and somewhat of a Christian theist. While I think there are many reasons to not believe in various gods and many additional reasons to not believe in specifically benevolent gods, we are here to talk about only one part of one issue: the existence of needless suffering.
February 12, 2012
This post is a request for Vox Day (or anybody) to explain how one can reliably discern the condition of another Christian’s heart. I can’t, and when I asked Vox how he can, Spacebunny returned to her customary pattern of deleting my comments for no good reason. Here’s the story: Vox wrote a post titled Another Pattern Observed in which he not-so-temperately attacked Christian leader John Piper as “an intemperate attacker of other Christian leaders,” accusing Piper of an “insincere apology” over his use of the phrase “kicks some ass” at a particular evangelical convention. I and other commenters felt Vox may have been too quick to grab the tar and feathers, so I asked Vox how he could possibly know that Piper’s apology was insincere. I mean I get that he’s a “superintelligence” and all, but can Vox Day really know the condition of Piper’s heart?
February 10, 2012
This post is an open discussion for the confirmed judges (Daniel Vecchio, Matt DeStefano and Andrés Ruiz) in next week’s debate between Peter Hurford and I. We also have a tentative fourth judge (Adamoriens), who I will be happy to implement should we be able to locate a willing fifth judge (to preserve an odd number of judges, with Peter’s consent of course). Feel free to volunteer yourself or suggest somebody else, but keep in mind the fifth judge must be a theist (since Adamoriens would effectively qualify as an atheist in this debate). I’ve got a few people in mind, we’ll see what happens. Regardless of whether we end up with three judges or five, this debate is scheduled to kickoff Wednesday February 15th, so we should all talk about scoring. Ultimately, it is up to the judges, but I want the thread open so we can get as much feedback as possible.
We talked a little about scoring debates a few posts back, everybody might want to read that first.