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Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85
Beetle B. writes "Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!"
I'm going to assume you're a believer. I'm not. I'm also not the AC from up above, but I agree with a fair bit of what he said.
Suppose a god did "eliminate hunger". So, now the six billion people are nice and full and don't have to worry about starving to death. With all this food but without any restraint, there would be an explosion of births as there is suddenly nutrition to support 12 billion, 18 billion, or more.
(snip)
The same reasoning applies to disease. Disease does a generally good job at population control, this was set in place presumably by god to moderate the effects of a species population explosion.
So what you're telling me here, is that your all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving god couldn't come up with any better way to keep the population down than through starvation and disease? Mass suffering and death is not a kind way to prevent overpopulation; it's the cruellest possible way - with omnipotence you could just adjust the fertility rate so that excess children wouldn't be born, not bring thousands of children into the world for the few short years they can eke out before they die in agony from hunger or illness.
Do you have any idea how painful it is to die that way? The slightest conception of what a horrific death people go through when they can't get enough food to live? Even if you don't, the god you believe in would have to know in intimate detail how thousands, millions, of "his children" are suffering and dying, and apparently he decrees that this is good? Your god, if he existed, would be a monster.
According to you, if god made us and we are special, then he is evil. But you don't believe in god. So what's the big deal about disease.
He said very clearly at the beginning that despite not believing in god, his argument was that even if god did exist, he would not be a fit object of worship. That the god described is evil, and hence should be reviled, even if he could be proved to exist. To an atheist, disease poses no problem; it's just something that happens and there's no special reason why it shouldn't. But for a believer... well, you have to wonder why your loving god would inflict ebola on the world.
You are correct though, that the animal kingdom is also full of suffering and death that an omni-max creator could have prevented. You say "kept in check by disease" so airily, as if most diseases aren't a horrible way to die. There is nothing in nature that suggests it was created by a kind or benevolent creator; every day animals (human and non-human) die by the million in terrible pain, debilitated by hunger and disease or torn open by predators. Either god does not exist (and all this suffering is just the way things are for entirely non-supernatural reasons) or your god exists but doesn't care, or created a world full of suffering for his own amusement.
Instead of being pissed of at whatever god, why don't you accept responsibility that we do all this to ourselves?
Once again, the argument was not about whether god exists, but what kind of being he would be if he did exist. An omnipotent being can intercede in any way imaginable with no effort whatsoever, if he existed then he would have ultimate power to bring about or prevent any event, so anything that happens must happen because he so chooses. In short, the god you believe in would have to be a sadist (if he existed).
The horrors of hunger and disease are no challenge to the atheist worldview, because they can come about by natural causes, but if you believe in god then the burden is on you to explain why he allows such horrible things to go on if he loves us all so much.
For all that you blame the christian god for every evil, did you never stop and think that perhaps you are not the most intelligent being in the universe.
Who's blaming anyone? I would "blame" the natural world for the consequences that an a