Evil Defender

[Apolonio Hicks]

Thethird interval is evil, I was going absolutely fine for the first 2, riding slightly above target to keep my HR up, then the instruction on screen gave me the good news that the whole of the third interval was to be ridden at 100rpm. My HR soared and I had to use a lot of mental toughness to keep the power up, especially as on level mode on my dumb trainer I had to ride the 1st 2mins at 105rpm to hit the power target due to gearing. Was very glad the final interval was at a more natural cadence for me.

Loved the storyline and the race footage, thanks for a great workout.

Well then I might need help too. I just did Defender last week without any real problems. The third effort (high cadence) was not as bad as I feared. That week featured: Defender, Power Station, and Who Dares.

During the last quarter century or so an enormous amount of philosophical analysis has been given to this problem by Christian philosophers. As a result, a good deal of genuine progress has been made in the discussion of this problem. I think that we can begin by making a number of distinctions that will help to keep our thinking straight.

By contrast, in the probabilistic version of the problem of evil, the atheist admits that it is logically possible for God and evil to co-exist, but nevertheless he will insist it is highly improbable that both God and the evil in the world exist. Given the evil and suffering in the world it is highly unlikely or improbable that God exists if not impossible.

As I say, the logical version of the problem of evil claims that there is a logical contradiction between saying that (1) an all-powerful (I was going to say omnipotent but we will use a more colloquial way of putting it), all-loving God exists, and (2) evil exists. The atheist says that these two propositions are logically incompatible with each other. This has been the version of the problem of evil that has been propounded by atheists for centuries, all the way back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Indeed, as late as the mid-20th century, the Oxford philosopher J. L. Mackie was still propounding the problem of evil in this logical version. However, it is largely due to the work of the contemporary Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who is a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame and probably the greatest living Christian philosopher today, that the logical version of the problem of evil has been significantly solved.

Since premise (1) says that God is all-powerful and all-loving, it follows that he both can and would prevent evil, and therefore it would follow that evil does not exist, which contradicts (2) that evil does exist. So these seem to be the hidden assumptions that the atheist is making.

In opposition to this version of the problem of evil, Professor Plantinga proposes what he calls the free will defense.[4] He argues that if it is even possible that creatures have freedom of the will then the two assumptions made by the atheist (namely (3) and (4)) are not necessarily true. Therefore, the atheist has not been able to show any incompatibility between the existence of God and the existence of evil.

Therefore, the logical version of the problem of evil is doubly invalid. The atheist has not been able to show that if God is all-powerful he can create a world of free creatures without evil, nor has he been able to show that if God is all-loving that he would prefer such a world. Therefore the argument is simply invalid.

The point is that if the atheist is claiming that it is logically impossible for God and the evil in the world to co-exist then he has to prove that God cannot have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. The atheist has never been able to do that. There is simply no way that the atheist can prove that it is impossible that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the kinds and quantities of evil that exist.

Plantinga argues that we can go even further than this. He claims that not only can we show that the atheist has been unsuccessful in proving (1) and (2) to be incompatible with each other, he says we can actually prove that (1) and (2) are logically consistent with each other. In order to do that, all you have to do is to find some third proposition here that would be compatible with the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God and yet would entail that evil exists. Here is such a possible explanation.

(5) God could not have created a world that had so much good as the actual world both in terms of quantity and quality but had less evil. Moreover, God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evils that exist.

It's official: the rights to Marvel Comics are now owned by the notoriously evil Roxxon Energy Corporation. The rights to the metafictional version of Marvel Comics that actually exists within the Marvel Universe, that is, which, much like the real world Marvel Comics, tells the tales of superheroes such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and of course Thor.

That news actually broke back in 2023's Immortal Thor #4, but Marvel (the real world Marvel) has now announced when and how Roxxon's purchase of the fictional Marvel Comics will first start to make waves, with April's Roxxon Presents: Thor #1 by writer Al Ewing and artist Greg Land, introducing Roxxon's revamped version of Thor, Chad Hammer, a pro-AI spokesman who also moonlights as The Roxxin' Thor, a "defender of big business and the sanctity of shareholder value."

Roxxon Presents: Thor #1 also ties into April's Immortal Thor #9 also written by Ewing with art by Ibraim Roberson, which will delve further into why Roxxon is focusing its efforts on Thor, specifically because the company is run by his old enemy Dario Agger who has teamed up with Thor's perennial nemesis the Enchantress.

It's all leading into what Marvel is billing as the "Roxxon Age of Marvel Comics," an apparent event starting in May, as announced with a piece of promo art by Nick Bradshaw, seen here along with the cover of Immortal Thor #9 by Alex Ross and the cover of Roxxon Presents: Thor #1 by Greg Land:

"Roxxon's hostile takeover of Marvel Comics is the worst thing to happen to the industry in decades just what comic books needed! I was horrified jazzed beyond words when I saw how the so-called Roxxon Entertainment Standards Committee had gutted improved my work, methodically stripping away every iota of poetry, symbolism and metaphor junk no one cares about," Ewing was "forced" to say in a tongue-in-cheek statement. "The result is a comic that can best be described as an act of unforgivable violence against the medium I love a rollicking good time for the whole family! May God forgive Roxxon, for I never shall! Make Mine Roxxon!"

One of the more intriguing character developments to come out of Season 2, was regarding the monster Yvgeny Bulgolyubov, aka Buff Frog. Upon being given some tadpoles by Ludo, Buff Frog gave up (most of) his evil ways, and strove to become a caring and devoted father to his children.

This was an overall entertaining story, and getting to see Star, Moon, Buff Frog and his children interacting together, proved to be a highlight! There was a decent balance of comedy and storytelling, that has made this one of my favorite segments so far this season!

Most of the entertainment value of the story, stems from Marco meeting up with three members of the royal court: the songstrel Ruberiot (whom we know from last season), court jester Foolduke, and a Mime.

Of all the main characters, it is King River who is mostly sidelined in this story. He has a few more serious moments here than in the Marco and the King storyline, though I felt they could have pulled back on some of his incompetency, in the face of what is going on.

Next episode, the Battle for Mewni comes to an end, with the eerily named, Toffee. Star has headed off to her Kingdom to confront Ludo and Toffee, and circumstances are pushing Marco to step up his game. How did I feel about where this epic 4-parter went? Come back soon to find out!

Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense is a logical argument developed by the American analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga and published in its final version in his 1977 book God, Freedom, and Evil.[1] Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955.[2][3] Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil argued that three attributes ascribed to God (omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence) are logically incompatible with the existence of evil.

The logical argument from evil argued by J. L. Mackie, and to which the free-will defense responds, is an argument against the existence of God based on the idea that a logical contradiction exists between four theological tenets often attributes to God. Specifically, the argument from evil asserts that the following set of propositions are, by themselves, logically inconsistent or contradictory:

First, Plantinga pointed out that omnipotence is the power to do all things logically possible, and thus God could not be expected to do things that are logically impossible according to modal logic.[7] God could not, for example, create square circles, act contrary to his nature, or, more relevantly, create beings with free will that would never choose evil.[8] Taking this latter point further, Plantinga argued that the moral value of human free will is a credible offsetting justification that God could have as a morally justified reason for permitting the existence of evil.[9] Plantinga did not claim to have shown that the conclusion of the logical problem is wrong, nor did he assert that God's reason for allowing evil is, in fact, to preserve free will. Instead, his argument sought only to show that the logical problem of evil was invalid.[10]

In addition to Plantinga's free-will defense, there are other arguments purporting to undermine or disprove the logical argument from evil.[13] Plantinga's free-will defense is the best known of these responses at least in part because of his thoroughness in describing and addressing the relevant questions and issues in God, Freedom, and Evil.[citation needed]

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