gwern comments on How confident is your atheism? - Less Wrong
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I'm surprised to see this dialogue make so little mention of the material evidence* at hand with regards to the specific claims of Christianity. I mean; a god which was omnipotent and omnibenevolent would surely create a world with less suffering for humanity than what we conjecture an FAI would orchestrate, yes? Color me old-fashioned but I assign the logically** impossible a zero probability (barring of course my being mistaken about logical impossibilities).
* s/s//** s/v/c/See Plantinga's free will defense for human and the variant for natural evils; it defuses the logical argument from evil. (Of course it does this by postulating 'free will', whatever that is, but I don't think free will is nearly as clear cut a p=~0 as the existence of evils...)
I don't buy it. A superhuman intelligence with unlimited power and infinite planning time and resources could create a world without suffering even without violating free will. And yet we have cancer and people raping children.
Oh, it did try. Unfortunately, Adam exercised his free will in the wrong way. Better luck next universe.
Perhaps betting huge amounts of other people's suffering on Adam's ability to resist eating an apple was a really stupid idea.
"If it weren't for my horse, I never would've graduated college." >_<