Response To The ExterminatorTwo times lately, Exterminator asked me to define terms I'd used in various statements I'd made around the internet. The first time was at Chaplain's, and when I asked if he was serious, Ex didn't reply. The second time was at SI's, and I decided to give him a formal response here, just for the sake of establishing a record. As for how he and I got to this point, well… SI wrote a post called I Wish I'd Written That in which he re-posted a few questions from Greta Christina's essay, Hey Religious Believers, Where's Your Evidence?
In accordance with my reaction to Greta's original post, in SI's thread, I argued that the reproduced questions were fallacious, which provoked criticism from some of his readers. Here's that conversation summarized:
PE/QS vs. O^3 God: On The Problem Of EvilAlso referred to as the Question of Suffering, the Problem of Evil (PE/QS) is an axiom in philosophical and religious circles which claims the fact of evil existing in our world is incompatible with God as described by most Christians: a God that is at least all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing, also described as omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient (o^3). Also referred to as the Epicurean Dilemma, the argument itself has been around a few millenia, advanced 2400 years ago by Epicurus (341 – 270 bce). Epicurus offers three options:
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?”