If you count every murder, disease, rape, robbery, death for any other reasons, intellectual disability, and addition to uncyclopedia as his responsibility, he already is.
If those are the unfortunate downsides of policies that are worthwhile overall, then I don’t think that qualifies for ‘supervillain’ status.
I mean, if you’re postulating the existence of God, then that also brings up the possibility of an afterlife, etc, so there could well be a bigger picture and higher stakes than threescore years and ten. Sometimes it’s rational to say, That is a tragedy, but this course of action is still for the best. Policy debates should not appear one-sided.
If anything, this provides a possible answer to the atheist’s question, “Why would God allow suffering?”
“Policy debates should not appear one-sided” doesn’t in this case give credence to the idea that a world with suffering implies the possibility of the God. Quite the opposite. That is a post-hoc justification for what should be seen as evidence to lower the probability of “belief in just and benevolent God.” This is analogous to EY’s example of the absence of sabotage being used as justification for the concentration camps in “Conservation of Expected Evidence”
I didn’t mean to suggest that the existence of suffering is evidence that there is a God. What I meant was, the known fact of “shared threat → people come together” makes the reality of suffering less powerful evidence against the existence of a God.
Except it really doesn’t, because a truly omni God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, etc) realistically wouldn’t help against the problem of evil. The point of the reality of suffering being evidence against God isn’t about omnibenevolence existing within a vacuum, but about omnibenevolence existing within the context of joint omnipotence and omniscience—Mackie’s inconsistent triad, so to speak. A God possessing both of the latter wouldn’t have to worry about puny human concerns like logic and the like, so logic or rationality-based theodicies (including those around finding a shared enemy) don’t, in my opinion, provide adequate arguments against the problem of evil.
God could be the ultimate supervillian. Except it would make for a very small ‘in’ group.
If you count every murder, disease, rape, robbery, death for any other reasons, intellectual disability, and addition to uncyclopedia as his responsibility, he already is.
If those are the unfortunate downsides of policies that are worthwhile overall, then I don’t think that qualifies for ‘supervillain’ status.
I mean, if you’re postulating the existence of God, then that also brings up the possibility of an afterlife, etc, so there could well be a bigger picture and higher stakes than threescore years and ten. Sometimes it’s rational to say, That is a tragedy, but this course of action is still for the best. Policy debates should not appear one-sided.
If anything, this provides a possible answer to the atheist’s question, “Why would God allow suffering?”
“Policy debates should not appear one-sided” doesn’t in this case give credence to the idea that a world with suffering implies the possibility of the God. Quite the opposite. That is a post-hoc justification for what should be seen as evidence to lower the probability of “belief in just and benevolent God.” This is analogous to EY’s example of the absence of sabotage being used as justification for the concentration camps in “Conservation of Expected Evidence”
I didn’t mean to suggest that the existence of suffering is evidence that there is a God. What I meant was, the known fact of “shared threat → people come together” makes the reality of suffering less powerful evidence against the existence of a God.
Except it really doesn’t, because a truly omni God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, etc) realistically wouldn’t help against the problem of evil. The point of the reality of suffering being evidence against God isn’t about omnibenevolence existing within a vacuum, but about omnibenevolence existing within the context of joint omnipotence and omniscience—Mackie’s inconsistent triad, so to speak. A God possessing both of the latter wouldn’t have to worry about puny human concerns like logic and the like, so logic or rationality-based theodicies (including those around finding a shared enemy) don’t, in my opinion, provide adequate arguments against the problem of evil.