Problem of Evil
The problem of evil is the challenge of reconciling undesirable observations with trust in a good God. Many atheists esteem horrendous evils associated with a law of nature, such as severe natural disasters or debilitating diseases, to be evidence against the existence of God. Moral evils, such as when a person freely chooses to harm another, tend to present a less serious challenge to belief in God due to broad acceptance of the free will defense. Responses to the problem of evil generally explore the nature of good and evil, affirm that evil exists, and seek to justify God in permitting evil based on some necessity associated with greater good.
This is a list of articles that Lincoln Cannon has written about the problem of evil. A full archive of all articles that Lincoln has published since 2005 is also available. You may also search for articles and other content that's available on any of Lincoln's websites.
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Why Decentralization Is Essential to Human Thriving
Decentralization of power, whether we characterize that power as technological or otherwise, is essential to increasing the probability of a ...
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Compassion in the New God Argument (Version 3.4)
On Saturday 3 August, I presented the New God Argument at the Sunstone conference in Salt Lake City. As part ...
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The Semi-Orthogonality Hypothesis
In his Orthogonality Thesis, Nick Bostrom proposes that “intelligence and final goals are orthogonal: more or less any level of ...
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Evil Gods will rise and fall they must
Technology is power, which may be used for good or evil. And technological trends increasingly suggest our future will include ...
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Would it be moral to create a world like ours?
I trust our world was created by God, a radically compassionate posthumanity. After expressing this trust recently on the Singularity ...
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Becoming God Can Be Cruel and Irrational
“God is cruel,” says Hank Pellissier, managing director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology. Here are my thoughts ...
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Why Should Theists Learn How to Resurrect the Dead?
On the “Mormon Transhumanist Association Response” website, Vblogger, who is a Mormon, questions why Mormon Transhumanists think we should try ...
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Living in an undecidable halting problem of evil?
For some computer programs, we can know in advance how they will run, when they will stop, and what results ...
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Gods of suffering and oppression
In response to the New God Argument, an anonymous commenter requested my thoughts on the following David Pearce quote. David ...
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Can non-benevolent super-intelligence persist?
Recently, Joshua Fox gave an insightful presentation on why “super-intelligence does not imply benevolence.” Thanks to Michael Anissimov for bringing ...
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If that's God, I'm an atheist too.
Religion is a controversial topic among transhumanists. Although the majority identify as atheists and agnostics, a substantial minority find transhumanism ...
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Messianic Postures toward Artificial Intelligence
Observing trends in information technology, some researchers conclude that artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually surpass the brightest human minds and ...