August Berkshire is the atheist from Minnesota who wrote the really popular list of 34 Unconvincing Arguments for God, a list of arguments made by Christians which don’t hold a lot of water with atheists. His license plate also reads ATHEIST 🙂

He has just come out with an updated and revised list of The Problem of Evil: The Top 15 Excuses Religious People Give for the Horrible Behavior of their God.

Here’s a brief explanation along with a couple of items from the list:

Here are “The Top 15 Excuses” religious people give in an attempt to explain away the horrible behavior of the all-powerful, all-loving god they believe exists. (1) Unknown greater good. God must commit or allow some evil to accomplish an unknown greater good. But doesn’t that limit God’s knowledge and power? Doesn’t that say that God couldn’t think of a better way to accomplish his goals other than by torturing innocent people? Until this “greater good” is revealed to us, we are not obliged to accept this argument. … (5) God is testing our faith. Evil is God’s way of testing our faith, like Job was tested in the Old Testament. If this is true, what sense does it make to impose a “loyalty test” on an infant who dies from disease or natural disaster?

For those who want a pamphlet-y version for easy distribution, August has made a PDF trifold version available as well!



