Comments on: Two Classes to Consider Taking This June! https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12415 Announcing appearances, publications, and analysis of questions historical, philosophical, and political by author, philosopher, and historian Richard Carrier. Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:08:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 By: John MacDonald https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12415#comment-25287 Sat, 30 Sep 2017 17:23:03 +0000 http://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=12415#comment-25287 In reply to John MacDonald.

I can’t resist one last analogy, lol: Suppose you had a loving father who cared for you, watched over you, and had goals for your life – and who was also a serial killer. If this was the case, would it really matter that your father was loving and caring to you?

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By: John MacDonald https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12415#comment-25281 Wed, 27 Sep 2017 23:50:00 +0000 http://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=12415#comment-25281 In reply to Richard Carrier.

If God was a person, he would be in jail, or in the electric chair.

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By: Richard Carrier https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12415#comment-24528 Tue, 23 May 2017 18:29:54 +0000 http://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=12415#comment-24528 In reply to John MacDonald.

Yep. You are spot on. On all of that.

Which does raise the question of why people construct this monster and then worship it. On the one hand, their cognitive dissonance leads them to try and avoid the realization that they created a monster (hence the whole of Christian apologetics against the Argument from Evil), because once they admitted that, their faith will be done for. On the other hand, this clearly means no one believes in god because of evidence. They need to create god for some other reason; and then have to defend it no matter what, or else they lose that other “thing,” the thing they invented god for.

IMO, that “thing” is the need to avoid the realization that we are all mortal, that perfect justice does not and never will exist, that nothing is certain or simple, and that tradition does not really comfort or help us, it only means instead that we are in thrall to cultural lies, errors, and prejudices, escaping which requires admitting we are wrong about most things and our feelings about those lies, errors, and prejudices, have been beaten into us rather than arise rationally, and therefore really, we are ignorant and irrational, and it takes a lot of time and work to become less so. A fact no one wants to admit. God is a crutch, a fig leaf, that people use to deny these things.

The rest of us grow up.

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By: John MacDonald https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12415#comment-24525 Tue, 23 May 2017 17:21:06 +0000 http://www.richardcarrier.info/?p=12415#comment-24525 I don’t know why people defend God. It’s the whole “God is to thank for everything, but blame for nothing.” I’m agnostic, but my thoughts on God are that if I was a prosecutor of the divine, I would prosecute God for “depraved indifference” to human life.  In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is an action where a defendant acts with a “depraved indifference” to human life and where such act results in a death. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to someone else. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a “depraved indifference” to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. The example that comes to mind for me is God creating a world with earthquakes, which have killed millions over our history. On the average about 10,000 people die each year as a result of earthquakes. God could have easily created our world without earthquakes.

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