Refutations to criticisms of religion

For a God who respected human free will, though He certainly would offer a perfect revelation to man, would not be able to ensure that His revelation would remain unmarred and unsullied through its human reception, lest he deliberately override human free will. 

Then you concede that the Bible is a flawed document - how could it be otherwise if flawed individuals were responsible for transcribing and translating it? 

But if God was both all knowing and good - a view I presume you hold - then he HAD to have known in advance that evil and suffering would take root in his creation.  Given the needless suffering of innocents in this world, whether at the hand of other humans or natural disasters, we must therefore conclude that your god is either incompetent or malicious. 

When it is said, 'God knows, or knew, this coming event,' an intervening medium is supposed between the divine knowledge and the thing known, to wit, the time to which the utterance points, in respect to which that which is said to be known by God is in the future. But really it is not in the future in respect of the divine knowledge, which existing in the instant of eternity is present to all things. In respect of such knowledge, if we set aside the time of speaking, it is impossible to say that so-and-so is known as non-existent; and the question never arises as to whether the thing possibly may never occur. As thus known, it should be said to be seen by God as already present in its existence. Under this aspect, the question of the possibility of the thing never coming to be can no longer be raised: what already is, in respect of that present instant cannot but be.

[T]he best plan is not always that which seeks to avoid evil, since it may happen that the evil is accompanied by a greater good. For example, a general of an army will prefer a great victory with a slight wound to a condition without wound and without victory. We have proved this more fully in the large work by making it clear, by instances taken from mathematics and elsewhere, that an imperfection in the part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole. In this I have followed the opinion of St. Augustine, who has said a hundred times, that God has permitted evil in order to bring about good, that is, a greater good; and that of Thomas Aquinas (in libr. II. sent. dist. 32, qu. I, art. 1), that the permitting of evil tends to the good of the universe. I have shown that the ancients called Adam's fall felix culpa, a happy sin, because it had been retrieved with immense advantage by the incarnation of the Son of God, who has given to the universe something nobler than anything that ever would have been among creatures except for it. For the sake of a clearer understanding, I have added, following many good authors, that it was in accordance with order and the general good that God allowed to certain creatures the opportunity of exercising their liberty, even when he foresaw that they would turn to evil, but which he could so well rectify; because it was not fitting that, in order to hinder sin, God should always act in an extraordinary manner. To overthrow this objection, therefore, it is sufficient to show that a world with evil might be better than a world without evil...

How do you know your interpretation is "proper"?

Denying premise 3 says that God cannot see things in advance.  In which case, how does one explain the book of Revelations?  How can God know that Jesus will come again?  The Bible is full of predictions and prophecies about the future.  Denying premise 3 means these portions of the Bible are hogwash - do you agree?

On to your next point...

To overthrow this objection, therefore, it is sufficient to show that a world with evil might be better than a world without evil...

WHAT?!?!? You need to really take a step back and ponder the absurdity of that proposition.  Is the world a better place because of the Holocaust?  Is the world a better place because of serial killers?

How do you know your interpretation is "proper"?

First, I don't know it's proper, but rather accept it as proper.  Second, it isn't my interpretation, but rather that of the Catholic Church, which has been given by God the task of safeguarding and properly interpreting the divine dispensation with which it has been entrusted. 

As a mathematical footnote Herr Leibniz, could you go through the major differences between your version of calculus and that of Mr. Newton?

 

What you describe here is not acceptance on faith, but acceptance on the basis of reasonable evidence.

The future will resemble the past, ceteris paribus, because existence is identity. The same things must act the same way under the same conditions, because the way something acts is a function of what it is.

It could only act differently if it were different. 

You accept your parents as loving you, because their actions reflect it. This is not faith; it is hard evidence.

Rather than "represent" the external world, your sensory perceptions are OF the external world

...as there is nothing else to perceive

A consciousness conscious of nothing is a contradiction in terms; a consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms; before it could identify itself as conscious; it would have to be conscious of something.

How do you know that your brain is not in a vat? Well, if it were, the concept of "brain in a vat" would have no meaning. "Brain in a vat" in contrast to what?

If what you are aware of is an hallucination, then what is an hallucination? An hallucination is understood only by reference to that which is NOT an hallucination, which is the real world -- the world of which you are presently aware.

As for the existence of other minds, one can infer their existence from their observed effects. Again, this is not faith; it is a rational inference, based on the law of causality, which is a corollary of the law of identity.

It is not faith that tells me that if I leap from a tall building, I will plummet to my death; it is my knowledge of the law of gravity.

What you are "accepting" is that it is very UNLIKELY that you will be hit by a car and killed while walking to university, because this kind of fatal accident happens so seldom. You are not claiming to KNOW for certain that it won't happen. But you ARE claiming to know for certain that it is very unlikely to happen.

Life is full of uncertainties which we determine to be more or less acceptable and with which we act in accordance, as if they were true. Ask any philosopher: they will tell you that, at most, the only real certainties are a priori mathematical or conceptual truths-- like 1+1 is 2.

Well, Rand is a philosopher, and she wouldn't tell you that. 

I say, mathematical theorems can be built on such narrow foundations, but life cannot.

And I say, life cannot be built on a belief in the supernatural, but death certainly can! Ask any Islamofascist.

What a thing IS is not determined “by the way we see it acting”; how we IDENTIFY it is determined by the way we see it acting. A thing’s identity is independent of our identification of it. Whatever it is, it must have the characteristics it possesses and no others. Included in those characteristics is its mode of action under a given set of conditions. It could only have different characteristics if it were different.

Again, I am not talking about their descriptions, but about the things themselves. You are confusing identity with identification.

You accept your parents as loving you, because their actions reflect it. This is not faith; it is hard evidence.

Same difference.

If we say, your perceptions “represent” the external world, the implication is that what you’re aware of is a representation of the external world, not the external world itself.

According to Objectivism, concepts (including mathematical concepts) are not a priori, but are acquired experientially. Man is born tabula rasa (as a blank tablet), for he can have no knowledge of reality prior to any contact with it. 

To give a simple example, the concept 5 refers to a quantitative aspect of reality, namely |||||, and is acquired by observing different instances of such a quantity, like five oranges, five pencils, five lines, etc.

I was simply stressing that what you perceive must be something other than an aspect of your awareness (i.e., a mental representation of the external world); it must be the external world itself, because in order to be conscious, a consciousness must be conscious of something other than itself.

I don’t think you’re getting the point of my argument. “Hallucinatory” means at variance with reality, but you can’t know what “at variance with reality” means if you don’t know what reality is to begin with. If you don’t know what reality is, then you can’t know what it means to deviate from it. I can know what an hallucination is only because I recognize it as departing from what I know to be the real world.