Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainMost of you reading this are probably familiar with the problem of evil as it applies to Judeo-Christian theology. For those who aren't however, a quick rehash:
The problem of evil holds that the mere presence of suffering and evil in this world are inconsistent with the notion of an all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing God. This is so, as because if a God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful then it would seem to follow logically that such a being would not allow us humans (who are referred to on occasion as “his children”) to be subjected mercilessly to horrors that defy description here.
That being the case, it would seem that the following scenarios are likely:
1. You have a God that is all-powerful, all-loving, but not all knowing. God simply does not know about the horrors in the world, otherwise he would surely put an end to them.
This strikes me as absurd on the face. If there were an all-powerful, all-loving being then surely he could get cable news wherever he resides. You don't have to look too hard to see the suffering in this world.
2. You have a God that is all-loving, and all-knowing, but not all-powerful. God knows of the horror in this world, and wishes to cease it, but is simply unable to.
This seems to me to be somewhat more plausible. In some branches of apologetics, there is this notion that God is “chaining himself” with the end consequence that he is unable to prevent any of the suffering that he is aware of and wishes to stop. Unfortunately, though, the notion of self-chaining opens the door to even more problems, such as the paradox of an all-powerful being that is unable to perform certain activities that do not involve a contradiction (as God, being all-knowing) would have been able to forsee what would happen if he essentially tied his own hands. The notion of “self-chaining” creates more problems than it sets out to solve.
Also, the notion of a God that ostensibly created the universe and everything in it not being all-powerful kind of sits odd with me. I suppose that the deistic notion of a God that created the universe and then went off on smoke-break for, say, several billion years certainly gets us out of the problem – but the question remains; why?
3. You have a God that is all-knowing, all-powerful, but is not all-loving. God knows of the suffering in this world, has the means to stop it, but does not wish to do so.
This is the God that Victor Stenger in God: The Failed Hypothesis as “The Horrible, Hidden God”. This is a God is, at least, more plausible than the previous two. Though, honestly, if this is the “true” God then I personally want nothing to do with him. I would rather worship people who possess moral characer whose caliber is several times greater than that of this God.
4. There is no God.
This certainly gets us out of the problem of evil, though we have to sacrifice traditional notions of the creator in order to do so. With no God, evil requires no fancy-pants explanations. We're essentially advanced apes with frontal lobes and AK-47s. Eventually, someone is bound to do something terrible.
All of the above is just a very general overview of the problem of evil, and various different ways out of the problem (though none, for obvious reasons, are acceptable to many theists).
In debates on this topic over the years, I have come across various attempts to refute the problem of evil without accepting one of the possibilities above. One of the more popular tactics is just to deny the premise that evil exists at all, or to at least take the teeth out of it by claiming that some evil is necessary in order for us to appreciate the good in life (or, similiarly, that the presence of some evil is necessary as a test of faith or as a tool for building moral character).
I won't address the retort that evil simply doesn't exist here (as, in my mind, claiming that only betrays the small world-view of the person making the claim), but rather the claim that some evil is necessary to whatever end.
For our purposes, let us accept the idea that some evil is indeed necessary for us to appreciate joy or as some sort of test of faith. Furthermore, if that is accepted then we also can infer that the amount of evil in the world has been, is, and will be perfect when balanced out with the benefits that it provides.
Think, for a moment, of all the people that have lived, are living now, and are yet to live who have been or will be mercilessly slaughtered at the hands of their fellow human beings. Think of the Inquisition, where thousands of so-called heretics were tortured and burned to death – they even managed to perfect their method so that people burned at the stake did not pass out from smoke inhalation, lest their suffering cease too quickly. Think of all the Jews in the concentration camps, clawing at the walls when they realized that it was not water that was coming out of those faucets. Think of Rwanda, and the children that were forced to rape their parents before they were all hacked to death with very large and dull knives. Think of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who stalked the halls at Columbine with semi-automatic assault weapons, gunning down their peers. Think of the office workers getting coffee, filing papers, and those just getting into the office in the World Trade Center on September 11th. Think of what their last moments must have been like.
Think, for a moment, of all the people that have lived, are living now, and are yet to live who have been or will contact deadly diseases. Think of childhood lukemia. Think of Tay-Sachs. Think of Huntington's. Think of Breast Cancer. Think of Tuberculosis. Think of Mad Cow Disease. You can even think of the young boy who died recently in Chicago of tooth decay, as he did not have access to proper medical care. Think of what their last moments must have been like.
Think, for a moment, of all the people that have lived, are living now, and are yet to live who have been or will perish in natural disasters. Think of the several thousand people who were swept out to sea from the tsunami in 2005. Think of the people that drowned in their own attics in New Orleans, and those who died while waiting almost a week for any outside assistance. Think of what their last moments must have been like.
Some may accuse me of redundancy, here. Unfortunately I can assure you that these lists are severely truncated. I could go on much, much, much, much longer (and depress you further, I am sure).
Now, according to the theists, all of these people have died and will die so that you can I can experience joy. According to the theists, all of these people have died and will die so that you and I can enjoy a stronger faith in God. As a point of interest, the people most vulnerable to these horrors are typically the uneducated, the indigent, and people of color. White folks in the suburbs do not bear the same chances of being gunned down in the street as, say, a Tutsi. Perhaps God is an American, and that is why they must pay the price for our benefit.
I humbly submit that an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God would have been able to figure out how to allow us to have joy and faith without forcing us to pay such a collective cost for them. If he cannot figure out a way to do it without bathing children in blood, without sending storms to destroy our homes, and without infecting us then he is not all-powerful. If he does not know of these things, then he is not all-knowing. If he knows of them, and can stop them but chooses not to, then he is the worst kind of despot and does not deserve even the slightest adulation or adoration.
Alternatively, it could simply be that God does not exist.
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The first is simple - suffering is not necessarily evil. An olympic athlete may suffer greatly for their goal, but such suffering is not inherently evil. A teenager with a crush may suffer great emotional distress, but this is not inherently evil. A person with the flu may suffer, but this is not evil in and of itself. Indeed, a great deal of suffering is the effect of a beneficial action (the prick of the vaccination needle, for example). In a similar vein, there is a concept that is best summed up as 'things happen'. God does not strike down a city with the plague - rats carry disease. Neither the rats, nor the fleas, nor the bacillus are moral agents. Except in the rarest of cases, illness and disease are not metaphysical events anymore than wealth and health. [Please see the Book of Job].
Granting you all of that for the purposes of this discussion, you still have quite a long way to go (e.g. Darfur, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, September 11th, etc).
For the second part, evil has a relatively simple explanation - free will. In order to be, ourselves, moral agents humans must be able to choose. While w labor under the limitations of limited knowledge and power, within the framework of mortality we can make choices. By the very nature of our mortality some shoose to do evil. Hitler was no scourge of God, nor was the Golden Horde - they were people making choices. But this ability to choose it what makes us moral agents. If God prevented us from choosing evil, or erased all the negative effects of our choices we would be little more than automatons, or instinct-driven insects. We would certainly not be guilty of evil nor truly capable of being good (in the metaphysical sense) any more than penicillin is good because it can destroy infection.
But there are certainly instances where God could of intervened that would not compromise free-will. To use Hitler as an example, perhaps his train was a little late to the first rally that got him started on the path to the Third Reich and he never met the people that he did resulting in an entirely different set of scenarios. It isn't that God is affecting his choice whether or not to do evil, but rather that he is given an entirely different set of choices. Moreover, there are examples of evil that are independent of free will (such as natural disasters or terminal childhood illnesses) - though, pehaps, you would just deny that those are evil at all.
No, I don't. These are all addressed as moral choices by conscious actors.
You're shifting the goal-posts, I think. You first wrote that one should not conflate suffering with evil, and now you seem to be implying that while certain events are consistent with the notion of evil they can be explained as moral choices by conscious actors. If that is the case, then you still have to contend the fact that an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing god could intervene in ways that would no limit our ability to make choices (and thereby averting evil).
...one should not conflate suffering with evil, and you wrote that in an apparent attempt to rebut an argument of mine. Thereafter, you seemed to of dropped that premise - which to me appears to be shifting the goal posts. Perhaps I simply misunderstood.
What I am saying is that it is entirely possible to have future choices limited without a negation of free will. For example, I cannot choose to neglect the sum total of my psychological continuity and biological limitations in order to do whatever I may feel like at a given moment. It isn't that I do not have free will, but simply that those choices are not available to me.
As an additional argument, perhaps it is the case that we do not actually have free will. The citation escapes me at the moment, but there was a very interesting neuropsychological study done several years ago where they used PET scans (that measured the amount of oxygen used by various brain regions) in a study on decision making. It appeared, from the data, that people's brains "made the decision" a split second before people (psychologically) were aware that they have made any such decision. Such ad hoc rationalizations are not limited to decision making, either. In the study of emotions, there is a body of data suggesting that our subjective emotions are actually in response to physiological cues such as an increase in heart rate and respiration, perspiration.
If being a moral actor requires that we simply have the choice to do wrong, then it seems to me that God could have created a creature that always has that choice, but simply chooses to do the right thing. While, externally, there might be little difference from a sort of automoton the key is with the availability of such choices and the ability to make them - but simply choosing not to.
