Theos-Talk Archives (January 2003 Message tt00635)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> wrote:
> Please explain what George Bush has done which is so incredibly 
evil as
> to put the existence of a deity in doubt. 

Hi, Bart:

Well, the existence of scumbags does not disprove the existence of a 
deity, but it does raise an important question which we have a right 
to ask of theists, namely, why should we not believe that the 
existence of God should preclude the existence of scumbags, and vice 
versa. It may be that the question has a satisfactory answer and can 
be easily disposed of. Asking it does not imply that it cannot be 
anwered. It is also not direspectful to theism in my judgement to 
point out that such difficulties exist so long as the question is 
posed non confrontationally. Those who wish to bellieve in God can 
put their opinion of a more rational basis by wrestling with problems 
such as this, and in fact ancient mystics did so in days of yore, but 
not with any results that satisfy me. Mythological entities such as 
Satan or Ahriman do not seem to me to resolve the problem. I do not 
think the ancients were wrong to come up with hypotheses like that, 
but they should have discarded them and pessed on to see if they 
could come up with anything better.

Anyway, it is a useful question to pose, to see if anyone can come up 
with anything.