BERTRAND RUSSELL MISSED LOGICAL DISPROOF OF GOD

This is what Bertrand Russell who said that evil was not a strict proof that there could be no proper loving God should have written about.  Credit where credit is due, he pointed out that St Thomas Aquinas was not a valid philosopher for he took his God from the Bible and argued backwards.  So his five proofs for God fail.  He started off with the conclusion that there was a creator God of a particular type.  Assuming the idea of something making the universe from no previous material, effectively making something exist where there was only non-existence, makes sense Aquinas should have made do with an impersonal creator force, a principle that is nothing like a person.  His version of God was a step too much. God implies a being that knows what it is doing and deserves worship. So you can affirm a lot of what God is supposed to be like without affirming that it is loving etc.  I would not call an impersonal creator a God but maybe creator is fine.

Now Russell missed a chance to popularise the minority atheist view that God is indeed against logic.  Mr Russell, here is what I would write to you.

#You can logically prove that God cannot ground morality or make it true.

Religion tells you to affirm that God grounds reason and morality so even if you don't see how you must affirm that he does.  You are accused of turning us into animals if you don't.  If there is no rationality there is no morality either.

CS Lewis centred a lot of his theology on that.  He assumes that nature is irrational so if we are made of atoms and there is no God then we must be irrational. He thinks we need a rational God to be rational and need to believe in him to realise we are rational. This is rubbish. Nature is just nature and if it is not about being rational it is not about being irrational either. So it might get it right. Change the argument to this.  Dogs need a God who gets sick from eating chocolate.  If there is no such God then dogs do not get sick from eating chocolate.  Now you see its folly.

Plus there is enough irrationality in all of us to show that whatever rationality we have really is down to luck.

Lewis links rationality to morality.  He thinks it is reasonable to be loving and fair.  Actually he has severed that link with his incoherent and incorrect nonsense about God and rationality.  

From that we see that trying to make out God and faith help in an evil world is just wishful thinking.  And how much of faith is a response to religious blackmail and fear-mongering?  It is not faith at all if that is the case.

God by definition deserves worship and you can definitely prove he does not.

# You can logically prove that a God who is about wellbeing cannot exist for suffering happens.

In theory, there is evil and there is suffering.  If you believe in a good God, that may make no sense when evil happens in his care and under his watch.  And if you reject the concept of evil but prefer to talk about opposing suffering then you are in the camp where wrongdoing is really down to mistakes or psychological disorders rather than sin or evil.  So now you worry about how suffering can be tolerated by a kindly God. It is obvious that it cannot.  Well-being matters most then free will cannot matter so much that God can let diseases and harm run riot.  He has made the viruses for heaven's sake.

Suffering is the experience of a worthless existence.  It is not like pain where pain warns.  Suffering dehumanises and pain does not.  Yet there are many overlaps between the two and you can never tell where one starts and the other ends.

There are different types of suffering.  Experiencing that your life has no value now as in depression is not the same experience and feeling that you have nothing but physical agony and it is not worth it.  The difference is that the first is somehow like part of you and the other is like something happening to you.  And the first is so internal while the other is the outside doing something to the inside.

If you could reconcile God and suffering that does not mean you can reconcile God and depression.  The latter is too much of an attack on who you are.

And if you could reconcile God and depression you have certain kinds of depression in mind.  So be honest.  There could be depression out there that does not fit. 

And how you can you show that you can reconcile God and the religious type of depression that some report?  Mystics endured a dark night of the soul in which they felt they were literally in Hell already.

You know nothing of people who suffer that way.  And what if you did?  You cannot go and look at with the thought that it could be found to fit God's love.  It is supposed to speak for itself.  So you should avoid any bias.  Even if you never even think about the questions their depression raises you are prepared to be biased.  Unconscious bias is bias.

There are many types of suffering.  They differ in their form and intensity.  But don't read that as saying that suffering is on a spectrum or scale.  How can we talk about a scale when you either think your existence is useless or you do not? 

So to wrap up, experience-wise the suffering is deeper and more ingrained for some.  The style differs but the lack of meaning is there. Even that is very individual.  It is very personal.  Everybody experiences the absence of value and meaning for different reasons.  They may not even be able to see in the fog of agony what exactly the problems are.

No two persons really suffer the same.  So it is possible in theory for somebody's suffering not to disprove God while somebody else's does.  X's suffering may describe a category and we may call it suffering 1.  Y's may describe another and we may call it suffering 2.  We are not saying the volume of agony gives a logical disproof of God.  We are saying that a kind of agony may give a logical disproof of God.  Only that sufferer will know.

So then what?  Some can have an experience that logically disproves God.  It is wrong to argue that there is no disproof for you cannot be sure.

That is suffering but the same would be true of evil.  Some can experience evil and work out that there is no way it can fit the love of a God.  There may be a straight contradiction.  There may be a contradiction between God and evil.  Even if there is not there might still be one between God and suffering.

# You can logically prove that evil does not fit the existence of an all-good God.

Bertrand Russell argued that God might see good in tolerating evil or even letting it roam free so he said that though God was extremely unlikely no logical contradiction could be identified. 

Again, you need experience to define evil and suffering for you.  Not theory.  For that reason, there are individuals who may know what evil and suffering means in a way that disproves God.

If you deny a logical contradiction between God and evil you should still affirm that there are indications such a disproof of God MAY exist. So keep searching and don't let anybody say, "There is certainly no necessary contradiction between a good God and his letting evil happen."  Don't let anybody say, "A God letting evil happen does not mean he is a God who does evil as well so let us trust him."  Letting evil happen can be done out of an evil malignant motive. And just because evil may give rise to a good that does not mean it was allowed by God for good reasons.  Wanting temporary evil is still being evil.

So taking that in we can insist that the claim that God and evil may co-exist is inconclusive.  A person has only the right to suggest trust not require it or encourage it.  And that includes God especially when such terrible things happen.

We have however proven that trusting God is illogical. That may be near enough for many.  Some may still want to prove that God and evil refute each other full stop.

So we have found that some may have a logical disproof.

The rest of us can have one too.  Evil hides and tries to look good or look like necessary evil. The dentist helping you by removing your teeth may need to do so but that does not mean he does it because you need it.  He may be glad that you are enduring this. The best way to protect malice and evil is to slot them into society as "necessary unavoidable evils".   Evil promises good things.  So it is impossible to diagnose.  The argument that evil can result in good risks protecting it. That is evil.

Evil logically contradicts the goodness of God.  As there is supposed to be evil in us, should we be so confident then that a God would ask us to say evil fits his plan?  The arrogant evil of expecting God to trust us and us to trust each other on this is obvious.

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