Lew wrote (17/06/2010 12:54:33):



You have come very close to asking the question from Epicurus, taken up by the great Scottish philosopher David Hume (who, incidentally, did not use Scottish peasant dialect in his writings), on God and the problem of evil:

cheesr for that. Totally agree. I read of bit of Hume, some Thomas Paine and watched a fair bit of Richard Dawkins lectures and any remnants of faith was history.


"Epicurus's old questions are still unanswered: Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? then whence evil?"

From Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which can be found in full on the web, and for anyone really interested see Simon Blackburn's website for helpful notes and commentary.

It was Hume from philosophy and Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (also available on the web) which rendered biblical Christianity impossible to hold with any intellectual integrity in the 18th Century.

Educated people know this. Caleb, being entirely ignorant of these British men's massive contributions to the history of thought, has no place whatsoever making pronouncements on education. Or museums.