Two Papers on Theism/Atheism

The Atheist Experience TV Show took some time yesterday(mp3 here and video here) to interview Greg Paul, who has written a paper that makes some interesting points about theodicy and the problem of evil. Theologians traditionally have used arguments that we live in the best of all possible worlds and that the necessity of free will explains the amount of pain and suffering in the world. Many counterarguments have focused on pain and suffering in animals, for which free will is unnecessary. Greg Paul contributes to this discussion by examining how many humans died before reaching maturity. He argues that this undermines the argument of free will, since only about one seventh of all human conceptions and half of all live births resulted in an individual reaching maturity.

A theist caller from Austin brought the hosts attention to the work of Christopher Langan who the caller points out is very intelligent and has come up with what he calls the Cognitive-Theoretical Model of the Universe. The hosts were not very impressed with this argument for the existence of God, because they thought that if Physics actually proved the existence of God, it would gain much more attention in the world of Physics. They suggested that he should put his ideas through the process of peer review.