The good evil doers

The often used reasoning religious people use justify the existence of evil in a world overseen by an omnipotent and all good god is that without evil there can be no good.

if thats the argument then the logical extension would be evil doers are enabler of good and therefor good.

to use a real world example. Hitler was good because without his evil doing, there can never be the good of Alliances fighting back and saving Europe.

weird argument it is.

update 090802: poppies below in the comments section refer to a passage (Romans 3:8) in the bible that says

Or can we say-as some people slander us by claiming that we say-”Let’s do evil that good may result”? They deserve to be condemned!

– bible International Standard Version 2008.

so then why does evil exist in a universe created by an omnipotent and all good god?

Ignorance, Fear and Perceived Authority

Fear, God, and State

A stunning hypothesis from the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

High levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and … increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God and defense of the overarching socio-political system.  A 4th experiment showed … a challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. … A cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control.

It seems we hope a stronger and more benevolent God or State will protect us when feel less able to protect ourselves.  I’d guess similar effects hold for medicine and media – we believe in doc effectiveness more when we fear out of control of our health, and we believe in media accuracy more when we rely more on their info to protect us.  Can we find data on which beliefs tend to be more biased: confidence in authorities when we feel out of control, or less confidence in authorities when we feel more in control?

Let me add ignorance as one cause. It is the lack of understanding on factors that influence one’s life that lead one to feel vulnerable, out of control and thus afraid. While knowledge may not allow one to change one’s environment, it most certainly allow one to better adept to it and thus feel less frightful. It is again, precisely because of ignorance that lead those in undesirable situation to not know how to get out of it, and again, ignorance lead them to the false hope that a perceived authority that they don’t understand can and want to save them.

“Ignorance is a bliss” only works when you are in good times and very very lucky.

more on intelligent and religion
On positive economic condition inducing non-interventionist economic policy.

Atheist on Obama’s March 18th speech

Critical atheist Christopher Hitchens, the author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

It’s been more than a month since I began warning Sen. Barack Obama that he would become answerable for his revolting choice of a family priest. But never mind that; the astonishing thing is that it’s at least 11 months since he himself has known precisely the same thing. “If Barack gets past the primary,” said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the New York Times in April of last year, “he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said yeah, that might have to happen.” Pause just for a moment, if only to admire the sheer calculating self-confidence of this. Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Read the rest.

Tolerating atheist Sam Harris, the author of “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

Obama was surely wise not to mention that Christianity was, without question, the great enabler of slavery in this country. The Confederate soldiers who eagerly laid down their lives at three times the rate of Union men, for the pleasure of keeping blacks in bondage and using them as farm equipment, did so with the conscious understanding that they were doing the Lord’s work. After Reconstruction, religion united Southern whites in their racist hatred and the black community in its squalor–inuring men and women on both sides to injustice far more efficiently than it inspired them to overcome it…

…Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama’s candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope.

But Obama’s candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?

Read the rest.