I've rearranged the order of some of your statements so that I could respond to similar statements in groups.
That's not what I was doing: I was using that as a critique of the POE. My own beliefs or opinions about the existence of God or His nature is something else all together.
OK, just to make things clearer? I'm not an agnostic. I have my own definite beliefs and these land me pretty squarely in the theist camp.
Thing is: I'm leaving my beliefs out of this debate because they have no bearing on the question. If I wanted to answer the OP in accordance with my own theology, all my posts so far would look completely different.
I'm not saying that you're personally an agnostic. I'm saying that the position you're taking to defend against PoE is one of extreme agnosticism.
there's no need to admit that God isn't perfect, unless or until it's been demonstrated conclusively that our perception of imperfection in the world necessitates an imperfect Creator.
Nope: again, the issue is the validity of the POE.
It's easier that way, both sides will either have to agree to disagree or just disagree.
the argument is open to anyone who's willing to accept any of those ideas for the sake of argument too.
None of that is true: like any other topic that puts forth a premise for the sake of argument, or asks something that could be considered even hypothetically "If there is a God, how could He be perfect and create an imperfect world?" the argument is open to anyone.
again; it's a logical problem, not a theological one.
I made my position pretty clear- I'm not saying you
have to admit that god isn't perfect. I'm not arguing that PoE renders god impossible.
I'm saying, however, that PoE is a very striking criticism of the hypothesis of a perfect god, and that in order to have a level of validity that even comes close to matching other hypotheses, adequate answers need to be provided.
There are basically two ways to go about attempting to defend against PoE that I've seen:
A) Utilize an extreme form of agnosticism, where the person basically implies, "As long as I'm not omniscient, even though I cannot answer why grievous suffering exists despite the proposal of a perfect god, the hypothesis of a perfect god still has merit and can stand its ground against other answers". This is inaccurate- the only thing extreme agnosticism leads to is non-falsifiability, rather than an adequate defense. And it's applied inconsistently.
b) Utilize theologies to defend against the problem. Contrary to what you've said, just because something is a logical problem doesn't mean it's a problem that theologies don't apply to. For instance, if I say, "letting an eight year old child suffer grievously and die due to Black Death shows that god is callous or incapable", you could respond with "the proposed existence of a joyful afterlife for this child reduces your argument significantly". Extreme forms of agnosticism rely on this sort of thing indirectly without mentioning them, but implying the existence of numerous options like these. Basically, without these theologies, the argument is dead in the water.
Which hypothesis of God? there are several.
Any of them involving a perfect god. And especially ones involving loving or personal gods. (One would probably find it easier to argue for the existence of something like Nirguna Brahman in the face of PoE than a personal and proposed omnipotent and loving deity).
Only as a response to to what I'm assuming was a tongue in cheek post by someone else.
In the big picture, almost all if not all diseases are the result of lifestyle choices: whether we're talking about an individuals choice to smoke tobacco, or our ancestors choice to adopt a settled agrarian existence.
I find a lot of irony in it, but it isn't a defense, it's an indictment.
What is this based on? I know when I was in college my world history prof brought this up, and after class I asked him why this should be so since the early European explorers consistently remarked on the fact that the indigenous, "primitive" people they encountered tended to live relatively long lives and remained viral and active well into what Europeans of that time would have considered advanced old age.
He mumbled something about dental evidence in unearthed human remains and infant mortality and made it clear that he didn't actually know himself.
So anyway, sincere question; what is the idea that our hunter/gather ancestors life expectency was in the range you gave based on?
From what I understand, it's based on analyzing bones found from them, and also comparing modern hunter-gatherers (with modern ones, they can analyze them with sharp precision, even though they use tribes that are completely or nearly completely untouched by the outside).
In the wild, without medicine, and without the ability to deal with many types of bad injuries, and with less stable food supplies, and more run-ins with wild animals, the rate of survival decreases.
This study provides some numbers on modern hunter-gatherers.
http://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000_LHEvolution.pdf
During the ice ages, maybe. I would call that special circumstances.
Exactly, and since it's a deal we agreed to the idea that most of our present ills are anyone's responsibility but our own is a bit irresponsible.
And that is an assumption.
How do you know they aren't enjoying this? We seem to.
Life is a struggle. Apparently, it's supposed to be. why should we see that as a negative, or assume that any other species does?
I didn't say they aren't cause for suffering. I said that over the course of an individuals lifetime, barring special circumstances (most of which we cause) those periods are going to be few and brief.
As far as \the length of timje it takes to die from any of the examples I gave:
Starvation: 2 months tops. Usually, a lot less time than that since starvation limits an animals ability to defend itself, even from the elements.
Dehydration: 3 days tops.
Injury: depending on what it is, the time will vary, but if it's a disabling injury the animal will die pretty quick just from not being able to cope with it's environment. If it isn't a disabling injury, the animal will either heal from it or adjust to it and it becomes a non-issue.
There have been some studies on baboons, and basically, females get stressed out by the presence of violent males, and males get stressed out if they are not the alpha male. It's a hard life for them if they are not at the top. Both psychologically and by measuring stress hormones.
Challenge and struggle is good in some ways, but nature applies struggles unevenly, applies them too much or too little, and applies rather messed-up ones like parasites that can get into your eyes and brain.
With most animals, most of the young die before reaching adulthood. And in that link I provided about modern hunter-gatherers, it said kids have something like a 60% chance of making it to 15 (which is actually really good compared to other species). I don't see why it would be surprising to see that humans don't live nearly as long without technology as we do without technology- we're already fairly high up on the spectrum of life-expectancies of species.
