Theodicy: why does God allow Covid 19 pandemic (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, March 31, 2020, 11:57 (1700 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTES: "But we should understand that the question “Where is God in this pandemic?” presupposes God’s existence.

If you put the question in such terms, then of course it presupposes God’s existence!

“Without a Creator, there would be no objective moral standard — no standard of good or evil— that we could apply to this suffering. It would not be “wrong” in any objective moral sense for countless thousands of people to suffer and die.”

For heaven’s sake, who says there IS an objective standard? If Fred Bloggs stands up and says murderous viruses are a good thing, you, Egnor and I will disagree, and so will a few million others. That's it. Even if God exists, nobody knows what he’s thinking. Maybe HE thinks murderous viruses are a good thing. Egnor should know as well as the rest of us that it’s humans who decide what is good or bad for them, and the best we can have is a consensus.

“….and I don’t know why God allows pandemics. But I know that my — and Richard Dawkins’s — moral objection to human suffering is an implicit acknowledgement of God’s existence.”

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. The word “moral” changes nothing. Our objection to human suffering is an explicit acknowledgement that - surprise, surprise - we humans (apart from sadists and masochists) don’t like suffering, and so most of us agree it's bad. Again, that’s it.

“I would not know or care about good or evil unless there were a standard of good and evil independent of me.”

Firstly, you would know what is good for you, and that is one “standard”. Secondly, you should be able to gauge what is good for other people. That is another “standard” on which various legal systems are based (what is good for society in general). These definitions of good and bad are created by humans for humans. The fact that Egnor doesn’t know why God allows pandemics shows that even he doesn’t know the “objective” standard, so the only standard we have is still our own.

I’m sorry, but this article is on the same intellectual level as Dawkins’ “natural selection (not only) explains the whole of life…”. The authors should be squirming.