@NotThatGuy No, being Muslim or Christian is not irrelevant. Both faith have an all-powerful all-loving God as a central tenet of their faith. It is literally the fundamental aspect of both religions. And is strange that you took issue with the answer referring to some atheists, while at the same time you confidently (and might I say arrogantly) assume that almost zero percent of Muslims and Christians have an answer to the problem of evil.

@Ohndei "anyone who disagrees with this particular explanation isn't Christian" And why would that be a problem? Some beliefs are explicitly required for someone to be a Christian. Just like for people to call themselves vegan, they must not eat any meat.

I said probably zero impoverished theists in Sierra Leone "were able to formalise the philosophical arguments for and responses to the problem of evil". You strawmanned that once by acting as if I was talking about Muslims and Christians in general, and then you strawmanned that a second time by equating significant familiarity with the philosophical debate on the problem of evil with merely "having an answer" to the problem of evil.

Telling your 10-year-old that "everything happens for a reason" and "God works in mysterious ways" (which is presented as an "answer" to the problem of evil) is not the same exposing them to formal philosophical debate about the problem of evil (which includes responses to said "answer"). If you had logic on your side, you wouldn't have to employ such dishonest tactics.

@NotThatGuy Even limiting the question to only impoverished people (to avoid the supposed "strawman") I still stand by my point. Just because they are impoverished, it does not mean they are subhuman and incapable of rational or philosophical thinking. Assuming that just because they are poorer than you they are at the mental level of a 10-year old (your example, not mine) is extremely denigrating, to not use even stronger words.

And by questioning "how many of those people believe in an all-powerful, all-loving god?" you basically signaled that you know better what they believe in than they themselves. Islam also centers around the concept of an all-powerful, all-loving God. If they are Muslim then they do indeed believe that.

@vsz Oh, wow, I thought your earlier strawmen were bad. I never tried to imply that they were "subhuman", "incapable of rational or philosophical thinking", nor that they had are "at the mental level of a 10-year old". All of that exists purely in your fantasies. Please stop egregiously misrepresenting what I've said and actually read the words I wrote.

Also, I asked a question about what they believe, and you took that to mean that I "signaled that [I] know better what they believe in than they themselves". Are you serious? I'm really struggling to accept that anyone can sincerely think that "what do you believe" 'basically' means "I know what you believe better than you do". This is some of the worst dishonesty I've seen from anyone I've ever interacted with.

@NotThatGuy I know the strategy you're using. It's called motte and bailey. First you push very strong claims, like poor people being too stupid to comprehend the central tenets of their religions and to comprehend the problem of evil, you also question whether they truly "believe in an all-powerful, all-loving god" (you literally did that, you can't deny it), and when you are confronted about your bigotry, you immediately step back and claim that it's not what you were saying.

@vsz Why are you this hateful? I thought Christianity is all about love and kindness. I pointed out that you're misrepresenting what I say, and rather than accepting that maybe there was a miscommunication, your response is to just misrepresent what I say even more egregiously and to try to degrade me into submission. Why are you like this? There was nothing wrong with what I said originally. It's still up there for anyone to read. All you're doing is trying to put words into my mouth.

Also, why are you focusing so hard on your misrepresentation of what I said about people in Sierra Leone, while ignoring the actual point I was making? My point was that experiencing suffering doesn't make you more of an expert on the problem of evil, since Mike was trying to suggest otherwise. You're completely ignored this, and your strawmen doesn't directly or indirectly address that.

@NotThatGuy I'm not hateful, I'm just pointing out bigotry where I see it. But let's see what I actually misunderstood. Did you, or did you not say that poor people can't understand the problem of evil (or at least not at the level you do)? Did you or did you not use 10-year-olds as a comparison to how deeply they understand this topic? Did you or did you not question whether they truly believe in an all-powerful, all-loving god?

@NotThatGuy About "experiencing suffering doesn't make you more of an expert". Imagine a black person, here on this site, described experiences of racism. Or a trans person described experiences on transphobia. And then a straight white guy starts commending and invalidating their experiences, and saying just because they experienced it does not mean much, and then he would explain them that he knows much better what they experienced because he has read some books.

I guarantee he would be suspended at least for a week for bigotry.

@vsz I'm not going to engage with the things you say, given that it seems likely that you're just continue to strawman and insult me. I have every indication that you're asking questions in bad faith, especially given that you can just look up a few comments to find the answers.

Also, a philosophical problem relating to the consistency of theological claims couldn't be much further from people hating others because of their race or gender. That doesn't seem to be a good-faith analogy, which we can just add to the pile of your bad-faith tactics.

I wonder if you'd ever talk to someone like that in person, or if you'd ever accept someone talking to you like that in person. There are very few people who would, but it's certainly easier to degrade people online. Why are you like this? I can only suggest that you try to remember that people you're talking to online are actual human beings, and (at least in my experience) most people are generally kind and respectful. Don't lose your humanity just to win an argument.

@NotThatGuy Sorry, but you are the one starting with personal insults and assumptions here. "Loosing my humanity"? Wow, just wow. And I'm the one insulting you? I never attacked your person, only your arguments. And in my final question and offer to clear my possible misunderstandings, I repeated the 3 main points I found problematic in your comments, and I used your own words. If you still think I misunderstood them, you can simply answer my yes/no questions.

@NotThatGuy Please don't pretend you don't understand that analogy. I never talked about hating someone based on race or gender. I talked about invalidating someone's experiences.

@NotThatGuy Talking about in-person things. Would you accept it, in-person, if someone went to you and said that because he is richer than you, it means he believes you have almost zero chance to be capable to formalize philosophical arguments about what you believe as good as he can? (your words again, don't tell me I'm strawmanning you).

@NotThatGuy I hardly think the education required to formalize the philosophical arguments for and responses to the problem of evil is necessary in order to think to yourself, "Hey, God is good but evil and misfortune is everywhere ... what's up with that?" and to begin to reconcile those things. I think this is a conflation of education with intelligence.

I've had quite a few conversations which delved into deep philosophical topics without any of the appropriate, formalized arguments. An uneducated poor person is often just as smart as an educated rich one and often reaches a correct conclusion faster because there is less mental clutter.

@MikeBorden I myself and many other skeptics used to believe in various superstitions based on fallacious reasoning, which we can now identify as such. The reason I can do so is due to an exposure to the theory of philosophy and logic, and an increased interest in those topics. There are also various philosophical questions and perspectives on those questions that I didn't think of until someone else mentioned it.

This is not a criticism of my intelligence (at least not in my opinion, maybe others feel differently), it is merely a feature of education and knowledge sharing. Philosophy, like every other field, is something you can learn a lot about through study, and you learn to do it better as you learn more about it.

Also like other fields, you can figure some stuff out yourself, and general basic education may teach us some of that (and what "basic education" looks like also varies a lot, even within the same city), but without education on the topic, you'll need to do a lot of figuring out, and you can still end up missing a lot of things.

We can also talk about cognitive bias, and how strong emotion commonly makes you think less clearly and reach incorrect conclusions (do you agree?), and this directly supports the notion that those experiencing severe suffering would be less likely (not more likely) to reason "correctly" with respect to the problem of evil.

@NotThatGuy Being truly willing to perform an honest critical analysis of one's beliefs in pursuit of truth is certainly also an important component that allows one to identify fallacious reasoning, arguably much more so than knowing the theory of philosophy. But philosophy is the tool with which you perform said analysis, so knowing the theory help a lot. I'll also leave it to others to judge how highly those experiencing severe suffering would likely value truth (especially compared to hope).

This can, however, bring with it the risk of thinking that those who did not come to the same conclusion as you, are not as smart, not as educated, are lacking key knowledge, and if only they've learned as much as you they would think exactly like you. This has a very real risk of leading to bias and a false sense of superiority.

@NotThatGuy Just the same way there are many highly educated theists, who were skeptics first, and believed many fallacious factoids about history (which in their culture is used to entice hatred against religion - the false statement that religions caused the most wars is one very simple and common example), and did not know the counterarguments against commonly cited atheist arguments in their circle, and became theists later when studying the topic deeper. This can also go both ways.

@NotThatGuy So the basic premise is that we're just not as highly educated or as honest with ourselves and, if we were to become so we would agree with you. The Blind Watchmaker is an educated, intellectual, logical conclusion and the uneducated person sees a watch and never thinks, "Nobody made that; it just happened.".