how many boys would I have to leave to die in the woods before you began to question if the earlier reports about my goodness was fully accurate or if I was sometimes good and sometimes not so good like everybody else? bohm
Precisely one would be sufficient if it could be proved that there were no mitigating circumstances.
All analogies are the weaker argument because they can only be roughly equivalent. They often appeal to emotion. Puppies, kittens, parents and children. jgnat
That's a false generalization. Certain analogies very much help to simplify moral questions down to the core principles. For an analogy to work it has to demonstrate the principle and be correctly understood and not misused. Analogies may genuinely be weak, or they may simply appear weak when they are extended to mirror elements of a situation that were never intended.
If we are talking about appeals to emotion on this thread the atheists are pretty far out front. If I compiled a list of emotive and vitriolic quotes from the past 84 pages no theist could compete.
Bringing up 'cost' in the analogy is a red herring and a cop-out. Simon
I didn't bring it up. But in dismissing this variable you implied an assumption that all the cost would be to God.
As I said earlier, God could eliminate all human suffering – natural and otherwise – by painlessly eliminating all humans. How do you like the cost of that solution Simon? You are possibly right that it costs God nothing in the grand scheme.