Touchy Subjects

Questioning Evil, Part One

Bart Ehrman thinks the problem of evil is that there is evil and that this makes it difficult, and for him impossible, to believe there is a loving and powerful God who is looking out for us. In a way, he's like a kid who gets molested by their parent. The kid's told they have loving parents who look out for them, but because of the abuse, they don't believe it.  Ehrman examines our situation, one where innocents suffer, and concludes that claims about our having a loving all-powerful God cannot be true.

What should we make of God's Problem with Evil?

Let's consider the first few lines of Bart Ehrman's new book, God's Problem, where he begins,

If there is an all-powerful and loving God in this world, why is there so much excruciating pain and unspeakable suffering? The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time. It was what made me began to think about religion when I was young, and it was what led me to question my faith when I was older. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith.

Don Levi and I disagree about how we should understand the nature of reason and argumentation

I'd like to again try to set down the main points of what I take to be the central argument. I want to set out those points and then elaborate a bit on some of them.

First of all, in trying to set down these points, it seems I must explain exactly what I mean by "central."  What do I mean by the central argument?

I mean that in philosophy there are arguments that pertain to the most all-pervasive and deepest issues. Those problems are more or less central to the concerns of philosophy.

Isn't Parmenides worried about Argumentation that depends on the form/content Distinction? It's not just about Logic.

I've wondered whether Parmenides was only concerned about reason being a matter of logical argument. I thought his concern was that if reason is thought to be a matter of logical argument, then we would not be able to rely on reason to resolve conflicts because logical argumentation makes us have certain problems with truth. If we cannot appeal to truth, as Parmenides argument suggests, then we cannot resolve conflicts between the Americans under Bush and the Iranian government, for example. However, in considering some of the things that Don Levi has said about both rhetorical and logical arguments, I am wondering whether I have inaccurately limited the scope of what concerned Parmenides. Might he be interested in more than just logic, but in any account of argument that involves the form/content distinction.

The 'Parmenidean Life' is about Connecting Dots

Parmenides wrote about a number of things in his poem, On Nature, but what he did primarily was try to connect as many dots as he could. Connecting the dots is a euphemistic way of talking about the effort to see the big picture, to get an overall view, to have as much of an exhaustive account of reality as one can make. This is the major work done by On Nature and one which is not done or relied on enough in our day and age.

What is the value of connecting the dots? I want to refer here to the story of all the blind men asked to describe an elephant. They all have a chance to feel some small part of the elephant, and on the basis of the evidence they had, they came up with wildly divergent accounts of what they were trying to describe.

Isn't Parmenides right that Bush takes the Subjective Way to Truth?

When we come to Parmenides and try to make sense of his work in On Nature, we should try to figure out what he was trying to do. I have my own idea. Let us first look at a little of what Parmenides says,

First, know that It Is, and it is not possible

For It not to be. This is the way of Persuasion,

Who dwells with Truth,. Next, the other, that It Is Not,

Cannot be. That is a path not to tread upon.

You cannot know what is Not, nor speak about it.

Richard G. Geldard, Parmenides and The Way of Truth, page 23

What could he be doing?

Who is Parmenides and why is he saying so many strange things?

Parmenides was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher sometimes called the father of metaphysics. We can read what's left of his writings here:

"Despite what you say on behalf of talking out our problems, isn't "survival through thuggery" the most compelling philosophy of life?"

A critic might respond to my position, "You know, Steve, you may try to make a case for talking out our problems, but if Socrates does, in fact, promote "survival through thuggery" as his philosophy of life, it is just too compelling for anybody already a Socratic to give up on it."

I have to say that I've so far spent most of my time trying to state the position I want to take. I have not spent as much time  defending it from its likely critics.

Making Progress in Philosophy by Challenging the Rules of the game, so to speak...

I have been making several claims about Socrates, and most of them are difficult to establish. But, as we are facing several catastrophes for humanity, involving climate change, economic collapse, militarism, political corruption, all leading up to a very real apocalypse, we need to understand better what we are doing and thinking. We need to step back from the table, and rethink what's happening.

How to Delegitimize the Socratic Hegemony

Whenever I've heard the word "hegemony" used I've had the feeling, "not again," or "another case of using a big word to overstate something."  I'm sympathetic with the effort to expose the secret truths about the guys who own and run the world, I just think that anyone I can remember who's tried to talk about the powerful, the elites, the puppeteers who run everything behind the scenes,  hasn't spent enough time making them real. It's sort of like unidentified flying saucers. I want to hear about them, but you get the feeling that it's a woo-woo kind of topic. So it is with the guys who run things. The show goes on out where the flames and smoke are, and the