Re: Review of the 36 Arguments for the Existence of God #24. THE ARGUMENT FROM PERFECT JUSTICE

[Pastor Jennifer v2]

24. THE ARGUMENT FROM PERFECT JUSTICE
(by R Goldstein)
1. This world provides numerous instances of imperfect justice—bad
things happening to good people, and good things happening to bad
people.
2. It violates our sense of justice that imperfect justice may
prevail.
3. There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice
prevails (from 1 and 2).
4. A transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails requires
the Perfect Judge.
5. The Perfect Judge is God.
6. God exists.
FLAW:
This is a good example of the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking. Our wishes
for how the universe should be need not be true; just because we want
there to be some realm in which perfect justice applies does not mean
that there is such a realm. In other words, there is no way to pass
from Premise 2 to Premise 3 without the Fallacy of Wishful Thinking.

[Brock]

On Feb 23, 8:56 pm, Pastor Jennifer v2

<jennifer.s.jo...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> 24. THE ARGUMENT FROM PERFECT JUSTICE
> (by R Goldstein)
> 1. This world provides numerous instances of imperfect justice—bad
> things happening to good people, and good things happening to bad
> people.
> 2. It violates our sense of justice that imperfect justice may
> prevail.
> 3. There must be a transcendent realm in which perfect justice
> prevails (from 1 and 2).
> 4.  A transcendent realm in which perfect justice prevails requires
> the Perfect Judge.
> 5. The Perfect Judge is God.
> 6. God exists.

Again, the same limitations apply to this treatment:

* there is no one "THE ARGUMENT ...", rather it refers to a general
category of arguments, thus to defeat one specific example is not
adequate to dismiss the category
* the argument, to the degree it is a paraphrase, doesn't adequately
represent (either intentionally or accidentally) the argument as put
forward by a proponent, and faces the danger of being simply a straw-
man

Regards,

Brock