[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
"The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is -- in its origins and aims -- a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power, whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts, will cease to dominate the world."

[/ QUOTE ]

That's some bad logic. Some really egregious reasoning.

Okay. If God is omniscient, and God is omnipotent, and God is omnibenevolent, and God created the world, then the world will not be rife with suffering, cruelty and injustice. But the world is rife with such, therefore God doesn't exist.

Now then. Humans aren't omni-anything. Nor did humans create the world. But humans can influence the world to some extent, in their own sloppy way. And the influences can accrue over time, resulting in a world with less cruelty, suffering, and injustice.

I don't know how the Pope conflates these two wholly separate arguments. Sadly, he favors rhetoric to intelligent discourse. But he does say one thing that's easy to smash. "The claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false." Uh, yeah. Atheists don't believe in any gods. The first argument isn't saying that an omnix3 God lacks the power to do good, it's saying that an omnix3 God doesn't exist. Popie even acknowledges this beforehand. So humanists aren't placing themselves above God, they are merely suggesting that we - human beings - are the most powerful entities in our immediate vicinity. And that therefore we have the best chance of improving things. Far from being presumptuous (much less intrinsically false), this follow logically from the premise that there is no God.