Gotta Love This Review of "God and Horrendous Suffering"!
Here is a highly complimentary review of God and Horrendous Suffering, by John Mark Hannon. See link to Instagram below. JMH adds:
Absolutely outstanding! You crushed it out of the park. Everyone that contributed is to be congratulated, I think that what y'all achieved in concert together should really make the god notion difficult to maintain for people of empathy.
About JMH:
My parents were evangelical missionaries in Austria. My dad was a reformed baptist, so a Calvinist to his core. That was the God I was taught to see in the bible and at the age of 20 I had a crisis of faith where I just couldn't get around the problem of evil as I called it at the time. I started by reading Craig and Plantinga, but I found their answers insufficient for me.
Through Craig's footnotes, I found out about a philosopher by the name of Nelson Pike. His argument kind of cinched it for me that we couldn't be responsible for sin if god was an omni god. From there I jumped to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and then I found my way to you! The text of his review is below. Here is the LINK.
JMH wrote:
This anthology is one of the best books I've read. If anyone wants to know why I left the Christian faith I was raised in all those years ago now, I'd recommend this work and God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman. These works lay out the vast majority of my objections to the existence of an omni-God in wonderfully erudite and yet still accessible fashion. I'm going to draw specific attention to a few essays from this work edited by John Loftus. Everyone would benefit from reading his essay "In Defense of Hitchens's Razor" where he sets the tone for the work brilliantly. Loftus contributed the largest number of essays in this anthology and another excellent one looked at "The Problem of Animal Suffering." My personal favorite of the ones he wrote is "The Awful Controlling Damning Lying Calvinist God" as it dealt with the theology of Calvinism in which I was myself raised. I identified quite strongly with this one and much of it resonated considering my own experience and thoughts.
The essay by Darren Slade "Failed to Death: Misotheism and Childhood Torture" was one of the most difficult things I've read in my life. It turns the stomach to read about these harsh realities, but I would invite the person of faith to truly grapple with the difficult questions they encounter therein. William Patterson's "A Rawlsian Approach to Theodicy" is one of the very best essays I've ever read. I really can't speak highly enough of that one. Again, I would invite religious people to grapple honestly with its ramifications. I highlighted just a few, but all the essays are excellent and taken together they show that the probability that a wholly good, all powerful, all knowing God exists just isn't believable due to the radical disconfirmation of the horrendous suffering present in reality. If this is truly Loftus' last effort, I cannot think of a more worthy magnum opus.
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John W. Loftus is a philosopher and counter-apologist credited with 12 critically acclaimed books, including The Case against Miracles, God and Horrendous Suffering, and Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Please support DC by sharing our posts, or by subscribing, donating, or buying our books at Amazon. Thank you so much!
Absolutely outstanding! You crushed it out of the park. Everyone that contributed is to be congratulated, I think that what y'all achieved in concert together should really make the god notion difficult to maintain for people of empathy.
About JMH:
My parents were evangelical missionaries in Austria. My dad was a reformed baptist, so a Calvinist to his core. That was the God I was taught to see in the bible and at the age of 20 I had a crisis of faith where I just couldn't get around the problem of evil as I called it at the time. I started by reading Craig and Plantinga, but I found their answers insufficient for me.
Through Craig's footnotes, I found out about a philosopher by the name of Nelson Pike. His argument kind of cinched it for me that we couldn't be responsible for sin if god was an omni god. From there I jumped to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and then I found my way to you! The text of his review is below. Here is the LINK.
JMH wrote:
This anthology is one of the best books I've read. If anyone wants to know why I left the Christian faith I was raised in all those years ago now, I'd recommend this work and God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman. These works lay out the vast majority of my objections to the existence of an omni-God in wonderfully erudite and yet still accessible fashion. I'm going to draw specific attention to a few essays from this work edited by John Loftus. Everyone would benefit from reading his essay "In Defense of Hitchens's Razor" where he sets the tone for the work brilliantly. Loftus contributed the largest number of essays in this anthology and another excellent one looked at "The Problem of Animal Suffering." My personal favorite of the ones he wrote is "The Awful Controlling Damning Lying Calvinist God" as it dealt with the theology of Calvinism in which I was myself raised. I identified quite strongly with this one and much of it resonated considering my own experience and thoughts.
The essay by Darren Slade "Failed to Death: Misotheism and Childhood Torture" was one of the most difficult things I've read in my life. It turns the stomach to read about these harsh realities, but I would invite the person of faith to truly grapple with the difficult questions they encounter therein. William Patterson's "A Rawlsian Approach to Theodicy" is one of the very best essays I've ever read. I really can't speak highly enough of that one. Again, I would invite religious people to grapple honestly with its ramifications. I highlighted just a few, but all the essays are excellent and taken together they show that the probability that a wholly good, all powerful, all knowing God exists just isn't believable due to the radical disconfirmation of the horrendous suffering present in reality. If this is truly Loftus' last effort, I cannot think of a more worthy magnum opus.
--------------
John W. Loftus is a philosopher and counter-apologist credited with 12 critically acclaimed books, including The Case against Miracles, God and Horrendous Suffering, and Varieties of Jesus Mythicism. Please support DC by sharing our posts, or by subscribing, donating, or buying our books at Amazon. Thank you so much!
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