Moral Manipulation & the Problem of Evil

[Immanuel Can]

No, I'm not talking about Theism (though I often do, of course). I'm just asking what Rand's got to deal with David Hume's challenge.

As you can see, the answer at present seems to be that she's got nothing. And if that's true, then what ArisingUK suggested, namely that Rand...

[In] "The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism" ... pretty much addresses your points

...is not at all true.

And his follow-up,

...she thought Hume wrong as she thought morality a necessity arising from rationality.

...isn't actually true either. We could maybe say that she *imagined* she was being "rational" when she wasn't; but clearly she has no rational explanation for how she expects to beat Hume's Guillotine. She's bluffing, plain and simple.

And if so, Rand has no ethical groundwork: so one has a logical or grounded reason, or any kind of obligation to believe in Objectivist Ethics.

But I await proof to the contrary. I'm not hearing it so far. The unrelated chatter I am hearing could be construed as people dodging the question. But it's a really simple one.

What's Rand's disproof of Hume?

[Ginkgo]

But I await proof to the contrary. I'm not hearing it so far. The unrelated chatter I am hearing could be construed as people dodging the question. But it's a really simple one.

What's Rand's disproof of Hume?

Immanuel you might be wasting your time with this. Sounds to me like you are preaching to a largely converted crowd.

[Immanuel Can]

You mean I'm to assume the old legal principle "Silence betokens consent"?

And yet there were, at one time, those ready to leap to the defense of poor old Lady Rand...

How sad that she must now find herself a widow.

[HexHammer]

Most times it's because of ignorence, that people will just site idle by and watch how others commmit evil, else it's compulsions that causes the most evil.

[Immanuel Can]

Ummm....

I'm sorry, Hex...was this a free floating observation, or are we to understand it as connected to Rand's problem in some way?

[HexHammer]

Ummm....

I'm sorry, Hex...was this a free floating observation, or are we to understand it as connected to Rand's problem in some way?

It is in perfect correlation to OP.

If some fish keeper loves his aquarium, and he can basicly do anything he wants with the fishes, he is the "god" of life and death, yet he won't bother hanging around 24/7 the aquarium, so even though he loves his fishes to death, he can't prevent everything bad happening, nor won't he since it would be a fool's errand. The life goes on, fishes will replenish.

Human civilization will endure and survive, that's sufficient.

It's just naive fools that believe that they are soooo valuable, which they are not.

[Immanuel Can]

Sorry, Hex...

You're way off topic.

Do you have an explanation of Rand with regard to Hume?

[Ginkgo]

I think Rand was a better novelist than a philosopher. I haven't really been following this thread. Is there any particular reason you want someone to defend Rand's objective ethics?

[Immanuel Can]

Sure.

I was reassured by an earlier poster (see upstream, if you care who) that Rand's Objectivism was grounded, rationally legitimated ethics.

In a subsequent message, it was supposed if I didn't think so I must not have read Rand.

I called the poster's bluff.

[Arising_uk]

Sure.

I was reassured by an earlier poster (see upstream, if you care who) that Rand's Objectivism was grounded, rationally legitimated ethics.

In a subsequent message, it was supposed if I didn't think so I must not have read Rand.

I called the poster's bluff.

No bluff, I truly thought you hadn't read Rand. Still negotiating with amazon about my expired Kindle.

Found the intro online so I'll quote these,

...

To challenge the basic premise of any discipline, one must begin at the beginning. In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?

“Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.

I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.”

To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.

Only a living entity can have goals or can originate them. And it is only a living organism that has the capacity for self-generated, goal-directed action. On the physical level, the functions of all living organisms, from the simplest to the most complex—from the nutritive function in the single cell of an amoeba to the blood circulation in the body of a man—are actions generated by the organism itself and directed to a single goal: the maintenance of the organism’s life.

An organism’s life depends on two factors: the material or fuel which it needs from the outside, from its physical background, and the action of its own body, the action of using that fuel properly. What standard determines what is proper in this context? The standard is the organism’s life, or: that which is required for the organism’s survival.

No choice is open to an organism in this issue: that which is required for its survival is determined by its nature, by the kind of entity it is. Many variations, many forms of adaptation to its background are possible to an organism, including the possibility of existing for a while in a crippled, disabled or diseased condition, but the fundamental alternative of its existence remains the same: if an organism fails in the basic functions required by its nature—if an amoeba’s protoplasm stops assimilating food, or if a man’s heart stops beating—the organism dies. In a fundamental sense, stillness is the antithesis of life. Life can be kept in existence only by a constant process of self-sustaining action. The goal of that action, the ultimate value which, to be kept, must be gained through its every moment, is the organism’s life.

An ultimate value is that final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means—and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism’s life is its standard of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that which threatens it is the evil.

Without an ultimate goal or end, there can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and epistemological impossibility. It is only an ultimate goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of action. Epistemologically, the concept of “value” is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of “life.” To speak of “value” as apart from “life” is worse than a contradiction in terms. “It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.”

In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”

...


Man has no automatic code of survival. He has no automatic course of action, no automatic set of values. His senses do not tell him automatically what is good for him or evil, what will benefit his life or endanger it, what goals he should pursue and what means will achieve them, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. His own consciousness has to discover the answers to all these questions—but his consciousness will not function automatically. Man, the highest living species on this earth—the being whose consciousness has a limitless capacity for gaining knowledge—man is the only living entity born without any guarantee of remaining conscious at all. Man’s particular distinction from all other living species is the fact that his consciousness is volitional.

Just as the automatic values directing the functions of a plant’s body are sufficient for its survival, but are not sufficient for an animal’s—so the automatic values provided by the sensory-perceptual mechanism of its consciousness are sufficient to guide an animal, but are not sufficient for man. Man’s actions and survival require the guidance of conceptual values derived from conceptual knowledge. But conceptual knowledge cannot be acquired automatically.

A “concept” is a mental integration of two or more perceptual concretes, which are isolated by a process of abstraction and united by means of a specific definition. Every word of man’s language, with the exception of proper names, denotes a concept, an abstraction that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a specific kind. It is by organizing his perceptual material into concepts, and his concepts into wider and still wider concepts that man is able to grasp and retain, to identify and integrate an unlimited amount of knowledge, a knowledge extending beyond the immediate perceptions of any given, immediate moment. Man’s sense organs function automatically; man’s brain integrates his sense data into percepts automatically; but the process of integrating percepts into concepts—the process of abstraction and of concept-formation—is not automatic.

The process of concept-formation does not consist merely of grasping a few simple abstractions, such as “chair,” “table,” “hot,” “cold,” and of learning to speak. It consists of a method of using one’s consciousness, best designated by the term “conceptualizing.” It is not a passive state of registering random impressions. It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, of grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, of making deductions, of reaching conclusions, of asking new questions and discovering new answers and expanding one’s knowledge into an ever-growing sum. The faculty that directs this process, the faculty that works by means of concepts, is: reason. The process is thinking.

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses. It is a faculty that man has to exercise by choice. Thinking is not an automatic function. In any hour and issue of his life, man is free to think or to evade that effort. Thinking requires a state of full, focused awareness. The act of focusing one’s consciousness is volitional. Man can focus his mind to a full, active, purposefully directed awareness of reality—or he can unfocus it and let himself drift in a semiconscious daze, merely reacting to any chance stimulus of the immediate moment, at the mercy of his undirected sensory-perceptual mechanism and of any random, associational connections it might happen to make.

When man unfocuses his mind, he may be said to be conscious in a subhuman sense of the word, since he experiences sensations and perceptions. But in the sense of the word applicable to man—in the sense of a consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious.

Psychologically, the choice “to think or not” is the choice “to focus or not.” Existentially, the choice “to focus or not” is the choice “to be conscious or not.” Metaphysically, the choice “to be conscious or not” is the choice of life or death.

Consciousness—for those living organisms which possess it—is the basic means of survival. For man, the basic means of survival is reason. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere percepts. A sensation of hunger will tell him that he needs food (if he has learned to identify it as “hunger”), but it will not tell him how to obtain his food and it will not tell him what food is good for him or poisonous. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food or how to make weapons for hunting. His percepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available—but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No percepts and no “instincts” will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube or a cyclotron or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge—and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it.

But man’s responsibility goes still further: a process of thought is not automatic nor “instinctive” nor involuntary—nor infallible. Man has to initiate it, to sustain it and to bear responsibility for its results. He has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors; he has to discover how to validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge; he has to discover the rules of thought, the laws of logic, to direct his thinking. Nature gives him no automatic guarantee of the efficacy of his mental effort.

Nothing is given to man on earth except a potential and the material on which to actualize it. The potential is a superlative machine: his consciousness; but it is a machine without a spark plug, a machine of which his own will has to be the spark plug, the self-starter and the driver; he has to discover how to use it and he has to keep it in constant action. The material is the whole of the universe, with no limits set to the knowledge he can acquire and to the enjoyment of life he can achieve. But everything he needs or desires has to be learned, discovered and produced by him—by his own choice, by his own effort, by his own mind.

A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs that knowledge in order to live. He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim. That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.” Man is free to choose not to be conscious, but not free to escape the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

What, then, are the right goals for man to pursue? What are the values his survival requires? That is the question to be answered by the science of ethics. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why man needs a code of ethics. ...

Seems legitimately rational to me.

[HexHammer]

Sorry, Hex...

You're way off topic.

Do you have an explanation of Rand with regard to Hume?

Nope!

the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God who is perfectly benevolent. The problem can be simply stated as follows: if God can do anything, and has perfect love for us, then why would He allow such suffering? Imagine someone who claims to love their children, but they constantly neglect them – they are never home, and their children are often hungry and unprotected

Our understanding of moral and ethical good has changed much over the millenia, it is written "if you spare the child the rod, you spoil it", that was precieved as "morally and ethically good", now it's abominable to hit a child, therefore our modern view are too modern and too hippie like.

Therefore I'm right in all aspects.

[Immanuel Can]

In answer to those philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. So much for the issue of the relation between “is” and “ought.”

In all the stuff above, this is the key statement that is supposed to solve the problem. But it does not do any such thing, as counterexamples can show.

A virus is a cell-destructive entity that needs to take over healthy cells to do promote its survival and perpetuate itself. According to the hack logic above, it would follow that the virus "values" the destruction of the healthy cells, and thus has legitimate "ought" claim to doing so. And if this "ought" is a *moral prescription*, as the above statement clearly requires, then are we to think we are under *moral obligation* of some kind to permit the virus to continue? But such a thing would clearly be absurd, and even contrary to our own well-being...not to say potential immoral as well.

The fact that the virus itself is incapable of moral reflection does not enter in as a consideration, as contrary to the author's claim,

A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs that knowledge in order to live.

...has a complete falsehood as its final statement. Viruses do very well without such knowledge. So do many creatures of other kinds. Only humans fret about "true and false," and it's not clear that there's any kind of a survival advantage in their doing so. Hamlet had a heck of a time with it, and in the end he did rather poorly in regard to survival. Many have thought if he'd been oblivious to the issue, he might have done rather well by comparison.

The author assumes that if he can show that since the concept "valuing" is only possible to "life," and in particular to humans, that therefore its *possibility* counts toward its *legitimacy.* But Hume would simply point out that the FACT that people happen to value things, for whatever reason they do (even for survival, say) does not lead one step in the direction of proving those "valuings" are legitimate and obligatory in any moral sense (i.e. that they are OUGHTS). It's to mistake a sociological description for a moral prescription, and that's simply the old is/ought error in a wordier form.

He is not exempt from the laws of reality, he is a specific organism of a specific nature that requires specific actions to sustain his life. He cannot achieve his survival by arbitrary means nor by random motions nor by blind urges nor by chance nor by whim. That which his survival requires is set by his nature and is not open to his choice. What is open to his choice is only whether he will discover it or not, whether he will choose the right goals and values or not. He is free to make the wrong choice, but not free to succeed with it. He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see. Knowledge, for any conscious organism, is the means of survival; to a living consciousness, every “is” implies an “ought.”

The author here tries to make "survival" (or "is-ing") a moral value. Of course, it is equally imperative for me and for the virus: but there is nothing that shows "survival" is a moral value (even if, in practical terms, we agree that it beats the alternative ); and if it were, it would not show what subsequent actions were morally obligatory as a result. If we have heard of "survival of the fittest," the right value to perpetuate my life may be "Nature red in tooth and claw," or better still, Devil take the hindmost." Does that make either of these "moral" values? Of course not. They may be amoral, or, if an objective moral standard happens to exist, even be actively immoral. There is again no bridge from the factual observation that organisms aim at "survival" to the conclusion that they have a moral obligation to survive, rather than, say, merely a practical inclination or propensity for it.

And nothing about the will I have to survive shows I (morally) owe anybody else that option. To get that, I would need a position outside of, and transcending the relationship between me and the person in question, a metasystem for adjudicating my interest in perpetuating my own survival advantage against his purported "right" to the same option. Rand herself held that the "selfishness" of the talented individual, the Galts, if you will was a universal good. If so, is not my depriving those less "fit" than me of their survival options in order to inflate my own suddenly a "good" too? So then, in what sense is "survival" a moral compass-point?

So again, there's nothing here from this author that goes a step in the direction of defeating Hume, or even of giving him a reasonable answer. It all simply misses Hume's question entirely.

And yet, I will wait to hear Dame Rand hold forth before we slam the door.

[uwot]

While we're waiting for Rand, perhaps, Immanuel Can, you can tell us if and how your theism avoids Hume's guillotine.

[Ginkgo]

While we're waiting for Rand, perhaps, Immanuel Can, you can tell us if and how your theism avoids Hume's guillotine.

Clemency?

[Conde Lucanor]

theists also have only available "is" statements. Other inputs not mediated by society (revelation), because of their mystical, personal, unsocialized nature, become instantly relativistic when they are intended to apply to others. In order to convert my personal god-related convictions into everyone's convictions, I must necessarily communicate with others and express the universality of my claims("these rules come from god"), but the widespread coexistence of conflicting "revelations", all of which can be explained by cultural conditions, eliminates any pretension of universality from theism. You have acknowledged yourself, perhaps unintentionally, moral relativism in the ranks of theism.

Not at all. Just read my previous response carefully, and you'll see. Theists can have "oughts" because they have an Authoritative basis for doing so. Atheists acknowledge no authority beyond the human, and humans only have authority if they happen to have power.

About the "is-ought" problem, even if I assumed the argument being true (which I don't), it would work also against your own case, as your "ought" will be traced back to an "is". You claim there IS god. Using your own words, it is posited as a factual description. If you can explain the emergence of an "ought" from the mere existence of god, you would have derived an "ought" from an "is". I bet you will.

Your use of the word "authority" is deceiving. You just replaced with an euphemism the word "god", but the problem is still the same: a claim about information coming from an external first agent is, at the empirical level, information coming from the second agent, interpreted by third agents. So, actually, if any authorithy is recognized, is that of the second agent. But I have no reason to recognize preachers and prophets as having any moral authority, different or better than that of any single person.

That's why Nietzsche's analysis of power, to the effect that all moralizing hides "the will to power." When mankind has no authority higher than themselves, power rules -- end of story.

If that were true, and if we mean by authority, a moral authority, and by power, mundane coercive power, then the next sentence would be true:

"When mankind has moral authority higher than themselves, mundane coercive power does not rule".

But that can easily shown to be false. You just have to look at the history of the Catholic and Protestant churches to acknowledge their use of mundane power, for the sake of mundane interests, but still recurring to a divine moral authority. Actually that's what all power elites have done throughout history: legitimize their power in the laundromat of divine intervention.

Nietzsche, of course, deprecated Christianity, but his "will to power" is still related to an underlying, non-material principle of reality, sort of a cosmic force. It was not meant to be a principle to be found in culture or human psychology. In that sense, even though accounted as an atheist, just like Schopenhauer, he's still and idealist that locates this principle in a metaphysical, a-historical domain. By bringing up Nietzsche, you are then debunking your own assertion that atheists cannot have something that trascends society as the source of their moral concepts. Your only chance is to assert that this argument works only for atheists that advocate materialism and monism.

Not a whit. You still haven't explained why you oppose mutilating little girls, except to say that you are either personally disinclined or fearful of your society's majority opinion in that regard. But if you *were* so inclined, what reason would you have for not doing it?

All that is needed to explain is that I have a personal inclination, and that this inner force is the result of my interaction, as a free agent, with the world where I live. In that interaction take part innate characteristics of the human species, as well as cultural contexts, which allow the construction of my own personal values. I can sense pain, for example, and realize that is not good for me. But because there's empathy, I can relate my own feelings of pain with other people's feeling of pain and conclude that if it's not good for me, probably it's not good for them, either. Other people's opinions, as well as other cultural influences, of which I might be aware of or not, certainly put different weights in the balance of my personal drives and values, but in the end I hold myself responsible of my own actions. That's all is meant by social and historical context, not a deterministic, external force imposed according to cause-effect laws in one's own actions, but a dialectical exchange with society, in which many possibilities are open at every point of decision.

Your third mistake is to assert that an atheist has only available Naturalism and a deterministic view of society. If that were the case, history would be closed to the subject and actually, no one would be able to explain change, evolution in society, as a result of human agency.

Non sequitur. Your argument does not follow from your premise. "Evolution" is not a moral construct; it's posited only as a factual description. It's an "Is", not any kind of "Ought."

This I just explained above. As the facts of the world change, so society changes, but more importantly, we humans are active agents in transforming that world, and thus, ourselves. There you find an "ought" from an "is". Religious conservatives don't want to change anything, they want to preserve the old structures of domination and legitimize doctrines that some of us in the 21st century find inmoral.

But Existentialism and Humanism show that an atheist has also available other views in
which humans control their own destiny. I'm not claiming they are right (that's not the purpose of this debate), but
that there are reasonable explanations to the concepts of good and wrong without the need for a god.

Neither of those can show they are a) true, and if they were, that they are b) morally compulsory. They are mere
human constructs, by their own confession, and thus cannot be made to oblige anyone at all. If "value" starts and
stops with humanity or with human choice, then the human "choice" to ignore them cannot be indicted at all. They've
got no moral teeth.

Exactly the same can be said about sourcing the notions of good and evil in religion. They can't show they are a) true, and if they were, that they are b) morally compulsory. The only empirical evidence available shows that they are
still human constructs, and thus any obligation derived from them is as human as any other. Of course, you could prove me wrong if you showed me with perfect precision, without interfering interpretations, the universal concepts of good and wrong, the "oughts" given by the divine entity. Any sources that your point your fingers at, will be human sources, and none of them seem to reach an agreement on what are the "oughts" commanded by god. Do you know what's your god's stance, for example, on killing people? Then we'll see where there's moral teeth.

if a "religion" as you call them, should be included which actually reflected substantially the true will of the Supreme Being, then you'd simply have a situation of many false answers and one right one.

Pointless argument. A conditional statement that does not dissolve pluralism. You are only saying that one of many views can be true, but that can include views coming from atheists, too.

You're assuming that God would rather take away free will than allow anyone to choose freely what they will believe or do. This is incorrect. But the fault is not in God, but in your assumption.

But one of the choices created by the divinity for his/her creatures is evil. Why did an all-benevolent, all-powerful, all-knowing god, create evil in the first place? Didn't he/she have the choice of not creating it? That human have choices and pick from them is irrelevant to the problem of the evil choice being contingent and existent. And what would be the point of making humans pick? If god is all-powerful and all-knowing, he/she already controls the outcome of what humans think it's they're own decision, so in order to allow human free will you necessarily have to drop down a couple of the essential attributes of god, in other words, human free will denies such a god.

The existence of multiple views does not go one step in the direction of proving that all these
views are legitimate and equal. Some could be partially right but partially wrong, and some could be badly wrong...and still one could be right.

That's the point, how can they be wrong and at the same time be true your statement that god "created understanding" and could always make him/herself clear about the message. And you haven't explained why this god deprived a major portion of humanity of his/her message.

You've also got a bizarre view of, as you call it "evilness," as if that were some kind of
created entity instead of what it really is -- a rejection of negation of right relationship to the Supreme Being, and so not a "thing" but an "anti-thing." God creates good; evil is not a separate-but-equal created entity, as in Taoism, say, but rather is a natural byproduct of the rejection of the good as God has created it.

OK, you certainly felt comfortable saying that "understanding" was created, as if that were some kind of entity, but now you found trouble with some other abstract concept that shows not to be convenient. And that in a debate about god an advocate of the Christian faith has to invoke Taoism is certainly perplexing. That's bizzare. But anyway, that evil is implied in good does not solve the paradox. Your god could have chosen to create an absolute good, in fact, that's what you would expect, considering his/her attribute of being all-benevolent. In any case, didn't he/she have access to a miracle that would make good available without the evil counterpart?

This time what you have is a fallacy called "false analogy." It's not just that you would have to prove Reagan, Bush and Blair to be genuine Christians, but that you would have to show they were acting "Christianly" at the moment they made their particular decisions.

You just have debunked your own "no true scotsman" fallacy. You would have to show also that they were acting "atheistically" at the moment they made their particular decisions.

An Atheist, however, has no objective moral restraints placed on him

That's, of course, absolute nonsense. The fact that atheists object many moral religious doctrines is just one proof that a god is not needed to have moral restraints. And if by "objective" we mean "independent of the subject's mind", society and nature are pretty well established as objective realities.

so when Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao undertook to murder millions, loudly professing their Atheism as they did so, they were not acting as "bad" Atheists.

There you are again with the same fallacy you had revoked yourself two sentences before. The murderers belonging to the Christian and other religious faiths were more than loudly professing their theism as they did so, they were not acting as "bad" theists. They said their actions were good and commanded by god. They showed the "sacred scriptures" in which they based their decisions, the same scripture that you use today as a moral code. They burned people alive while holding that scripture in their hands. Of course, if you want to say that "no true scotsman" does something, why wouldn't you accept that "no true atheist" does the other? What makes an atheist is that they deny the existence of god, not the existence of morality. Your belief in morality coming from god does not change that.

Thus you are comparing a group of people who may have acted *contrary* to what they should have done (a la Theism, which prohibits murder, selfishness, dishonesty, etc.), according to their moral system, with those who were acting in perfect consistency with what their moral system (Atheism) permits.

Actually, your "word of god" can easily be interpreted, or even more, has in fact been interpreted, as allowing all those things that you say it prohibits. No need to go now, one by one, through all the accounts of biblical mandates to kill other people, and to deceive, and do all kinds of cruel, inmoral things.