You might find this hard to believe, but I spend a fair amount of time listening to Christian radio. Sometimes I find it enlightening, if only in the sense that it helps me understand what they think. Most of the time, though, I find it infuriating. If ever you should wonder why certain atheists speak so vocally against religion, a few hours listening to American Family Radio can be insightful.
As I tuned in one day, the apologist Ravi Zacharias was recounting a tale concerning his defeat of the Problem of Evil. As he tells it, a naive student stood up during one of his speaking engagements and question Zacharias about the PoE. Ravi responded by questioning the student about his presuppositions until the young man tacitly admitted he believed in god and sat back down, thoroughly confused.
Though his audience found the anecdote amusing, I was incensed. Zacharias hadn't answer the question at all, he had simply tricked the student into submission. To trumpet this as a victory was dishonesty of the worst kind.
Did Zacharias have a point? Does belief in evil presuppose the existence of God? This is a common response to the problem of evil, so I must ask if it sufficient. Obviously, I do not think that is the case.
The assertion that believing in evil implies the existence of god hinges on the acceptance of the Argument from Morality. As I have said before, I do not believe there is any merit to this argument. The existence of objective morality is questionable at best, buttressed only by our subjective desire for our moral views to be universally right.
Qualifying certain acts or states of being as good/evil does not rely on the existence of some transcendent moral pronouncer. Much more natural explanations for the development of morals abound. They may not be as satisfying for someone who longs to be unquestionably right, but that does not make them any less legitimate.
None of this, however, is particularly relevant to the Problem of Evil. The assertion that belief in evil presupposes God does nothing to answer why the two contradict. Claiming that by saying evil exist I am acknowledging God, besides being untrue, is irrelevant. The PoE is such a problem because it flows from what certain theists, particularly Christians, believe. There is an inconsistency there that needs to be addressed; changing the subject doesn't fix that.
Showing posts with label problem of evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label problem of evil. Show all posts
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Evil pt 2: Is there method in the madness?
Everything happens for a reason. I hear that phrase quite often, though it rarely gets directed at me anymore. The curious thing is that I never seem to hear it after some fortuitous occurrence. No one ever win the lottery and proclaims "Well, everything happens for a reason. Maybe tomorrow I'll lose my health insurance and be diagnosed with cancer." No, everything happening for a reason always seems to proceed from life taking a turn for the worse.
Last post, I discussed the free will defense to the Problem of Evil. Like free will, the assertion that things happen for a reason is an attempt to justify the existence of some evil, and it crops up frequently in various defenses against the PoE. This time, I'm going to examine a few of the reasons put forth and see how they hold up.
The creation of some good.
The most often cited reason for the existence of evil is that it is required for the production of some type of good. Compassion, bravery, and self-sacrifice are typical examples of goods that require evil in order to be effected.
While this seems like a decent answer on the surface, it turns out to be much like free will in its failure. Really, we must ask ourselves why we think these goods that the evil produced are valuable. Compassion, for example, relates to caring for a person in a time of suffering. Caring for another can certainly occur when there is no suffering. In this case then, it seems that evil introduces no new good, it simply modifies our evaluation of a pre-existing good.
Self-sacrifice can be viewed in much the same light. In all but the extreme cases, in fact, self-sacrifice is just the material expression of compassion. In the more dramatic instances, one might argue that self-sacrifice is something more than compassion.
I do not believe that this is correct. There is, at least in the opinion of most, nothing particularly good about destroying oneself. Many religions in fact label such an act as penultimately bad. It must be then some motive behind the act that frames it as a good one; it must be the compassion that is expressed by such an act. Self-sacrifice, then is an expression of care for another required by evil. It is not a new good introduced by evil, it is an unnecessary extreme forced upon us by evil.
Most, if not all of the example goods can be resolved in a similar manner. It is not so much that evil allows new good but that it affects how we value that good.
I'd like to address an obvious contention that is sure to come up over that last statement. Could evil be here to increase the value of certain goods? This idea, I think, is an admission of defeat. It implies that initially we undervalued those good. If that is the case, then isn't that a deficiency in the original design? How does an omniscient, omnipotent creator let that sort of thing slip past him? Furthermore, having discovered the cosmic error, why does he employ such a Rube Goldberg scheme to fix it rather than correcting the value directly?
Before we leave the creation of good defense, I'd like to point out that certain of these alleged new goods rely not just on evil, but also on some deficiency of character. Bravery requires fear, perseverance requires the possibility of failure, and so on. But how can an omnipotent god be afraid or possibly fail? Because certain goods rely on those things for their creation, it would seem then, that God lacks them. If this is the case, God is apparently not all-good. As with free will, this defense has hindered God more than it has helped him.
The greater good
Often, the creation of good defense is taken a step further. When there is no manifest good that is being created by evil or when the amount of evil is so overwhelming in light of the meager good it creates, things are simply pushed back a step. Evil does create good, it is said, at some higher level that we cannot currently grasp. An analogy once presented to me captures the idea quite nicely
"As a parent, there are times when you must do things for your children that may seem evil to them but are for their own good. Though they do not understand now why you do these 'bad' things, some day they will realize you did it because you love them."
While this is an appealing idea, it is also terribly flawed. There are times when I must do things that my children don't like, but I always endeavor to explain why I am doing them. Sometimes I am unsuccessful, but then again, I'm not omnipotent. I do not have the resources and powers that God could marshal to make his children understand. With omnipotence at his disposal, there is little reason why God could not make his children understand precisely why the perceived evil was an eventual good. Failing to do that is an evil in itself.
Who are you to question God?
This is the really the endgame of all for a reason defenses. God has a reason for evil and he doesn't need to explain it. Who am I, one of his lowly creations, to question his motives?
Why anyone thinks this is a good defense is beyond me. I suppose it does get many people to stop talking, but it does not resolve the issue. If we are to believe the tales, God is the source of our moral inclinations. The reason that we declare something evil is, if you believe the theology, because God also finds it evil. When we question the existence of evil, we are merely echoing God on the point.
(It could be the case, as I have been told, that our moral judgment has been corrupted, but these merely shifts the issue to the evil of our corruption and why it exists)
One final thought before I sign off: If we cannot question why evil exists in the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god, by what rights do we call him good?
Last post, I discussed the free will defense to the Problem of Evil. Like free will, the assertion that things happen for a reason is an attempt to justify the existence of some evil, and it crops up frequently in various defenses against the PoE. This time, I'm going to examine a few of the reasons put forth and see how they hold up.
The creation of some good.
The most often cited reason for the existence of evil is that it is required for the production of some type of good. Compassion, bravery, and self-sacrifice are typical examples of goods that require evil in order to be effected.
While this seems like a decent answer on the surface, it turns out to be much like free will in its failure. Really, we must ask ourselves why we think these goods that the evil produced are valuable. Compassion, for example, relates to caring for a person in a time of suffering. Caring for another can certainly occur when there is no suffering. In this case then, it seems that evil introduces no new good, it simply modifies our evaluation of a pre-existing good.
Self-sacrifice can be viewed in much the same light. In all but the extreme cases, in fact, self-sacrifice is just the material expression of compassion. In the more dramatic instances, one might argue that self-sacrifice is something more than compassion.
I do not believe that this is correct. There is, at least in the opinion of most, nothing particularly good about destroying oneself. Many religions in fact label such an act as penultimately bad. It must be then some motive behind the act that frames it as a good one; it must be the compassion that is expressed by such an act. Self-sacrifice, then is an expression of care for another required by evil. It is not a new good introduced by evil, it is an unnecessary extreme forced upon us by evil.
Most, if not all of the example goods can be resolved in a similar manner. It is not so much that evil allows new good but that it affects how we value that good.
I'd like to address an obvious contention that is sure to come up over that last statement. Could evil be here to increase the value of certain goods? This idea, I think, is an admission of defeat. It implies that initially we undervalued those good. If that is the case, then isn't that a deficiency in the original design? How does an omniscient, omnipotent creator let that sort of thing slip past him? Furthermore, having discovered the cosmic error, why does he employ such a Rube Goldberg scheme to fix it rather than correcting the value directly?
Before we leave the creation of good defense, I'd like to point out that certain of these alleged new goods rely not just on evil, but also on some deficiency of character. Bravery requires fear, perseverance requires the possibility of failure, and so on. But how can an omnipotent god be afraid or possibly fail? Because certain goods rely on those things for their creation, it would seem then, that God lacks them. If this is the case, God is apparently not all-good. As with free will, this defense has hindered God more than it has helped him.
The greater good
Often, the creation of good defense is taken a step further. When there is no manifest good that is being created by evil or when the amount of evil is so overwhelming in light of the meager good it creates, things are simply pushed back a step. Evil does create good, it is said, at some higher level that we cannot currently grasp. An analogy once presented to me captures the idea quite nicely
"As a parent, there are times when you must do things for your children that may seem evil to them but are for their own good. Though they do not understand now why you do these 'bad' things, some day they will realize you did it because you love them."
While this is an appealing idea, it is also terribly flawed. There are times when I must do things that my children don't like, but I always endeavor to explain why I am doing them. Sometimes I am unsuccessful, but then again, I'm not omnipotent. I do not have the resources and powers that God could marshal to make his children understand. With omnipotence at his disposal, there is little reason why God could not make his children understand precisely why the perceived evil was an eventual good. Failing to do that is an evil in itself.
Who are you to question God?
This is the really the endgame of all for a reason defenses. God has a reason for evil and he doesn't need to explain it. Who am I, one of his lowly creations, to question his motives?
Why anyone thinks this is a good defense is beyond me. I suppose it does get many people to stop talking, but it does not resolve the issue. If we are to believe the tales, God is the source of our moral inclinations. The reason that we declare something evil is, if you believe the theology, because God also finds it evil. When we question the existence of evil, we are merely echoing God on the point.
(It could be the case, as I have been told, that our moral judgment has been corrupted, but these merely shifts the issue to the evil of our corruption and why it exists)
One final thought before I sign off: If we cannot question why evil exists in the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god, by what rights do we call him good?
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Problem of Evil
I'm a big fan of the Problem of Evil. I suspect that may sound like a funny statement to the uninitiated, but anyone having found this blog should understand my meaning.
Basically stated, the problem of evil says that if a god possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence (the Christian God) exists, evil should not exist. Evil exists, therefore such a god does not. The reason I'm such a fan is that the argument is simple and obvious. Some other disproofs of god take a certain amount of investigation and understanding, but the problem of evil readily presents itself. Suffering is too prevalent, and it is all too common to hear a Christian ask why god would allow this or that to happen.
Because I enjoy the PoE so much, I am also very interested in theodicy, the defense against it. I'll review several defenses here in my next few posts, along with some common analogies and explanations as to why I don't think they work.
Quite a few of the defenses against the PoE, when dissected boil down to the notion of free will. God wanted us to have free will, it is said, and this could not be accomplished without evil. Before I explain why this doesn't work, it is important to understand what is meant by free will. When I ask people about this, I rarely get the same answer. From what I've gathered, though, it seems that Christians take it to mean the possibility of making any of the available choices in a given situation. They do not mean that the choice has not been limited, coerced, or otherwise influenced.
Now, immediately a problem presents itself. Omniscience appears to preclude free will. If a being is all-knowing, then certainly it knows the outcome of all choices, does it not? Christians assert that it means just that. How then, is there any real choice if the outcome is already known?
Perhaps the worst response to this question I have ever heard took the form of an analogy:
"Suppose my child is reaching for a hot stove. I know that she will get burned, but she still has a choice to touch the stove or not. " ( I'm paraphrasing here; the original analogy was filled with much emotional pleading and unnecessary exposition.)
Firstly, I am not a bad parent. I'm not going to sit idly by and let my child, or any child I have the ability to stop, injure themselves. Secondly, I am not omniscient, and that is where the analogy falls apart. The uncaring parent in the analogy does not know their child will get burned, they know that if the child touches the stove, she will likely get a burn. Omniscience doesn't allow for if or likely; the little girl will touch the stove and will get a burn. The poor child has no choice once omniscience gets involved.
Let's imagine for a minute that free will and omniscience are somehow compatible. Does it then solve the PoE? To know that, we need to ask more questions.
The concept of free will as a cause for the existence of evil implies that there are good choices and bad (evil) choices. Without delving into what is meant by 'good' or 'bad' we can say that a good choice is one that produces a good result and likewise for a bad choice. Generally, we can say that the character of a choice is determined by its result. Bearing that in mind, the question we need to ask our Christian friend is this:
Can there be a good result of free will that does not also accord with God's will?
Omnibenevolence seems to indicate that there cannot. If God is to be all-good, then his actions and choices are also all good. For any choice, the good result is the one that God would choose. (It does not matter that God might have choices unavailable to the person actually making the decision because we are hypothetically limiting God's choices to those available to the person. In other words, no matter the size of the group of choices, God will always choose the one that is most good)
This answer presents something of a conundrum. Free will becomes a net evil; no new good is introduced by it, but new evil (evil itself according to the defense) is. Really, then, free will is nothing more than another name for evil and is of no use in resolving the PoE.
Though the whole muddle of free will and Christian theology brings up dozens of questions, I'm going to stop there and finish this post by presenting a version of the Free will Argument for the Nonexistence of God (FANG). To my knowledge, it is an original formulation.
1)God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-good)
2)God has free will
3)God always chooses the most good choice available(from omnibenevolence)
4)From 1-3 God is a free-willed always good being (FWAGB)
5) A FWAGB is not logically impossible (from 4)
6)God can do anything that is not logically impossible (from omnipotence)
7)God did not create humans as FWAGB, but as FWnAGB
8)By 3,5-7 FWnAGB is more good than FWAGB
9)By 4 & 8, God is less good than he could be.
10) By 9, God is not omnibenevolent
11)1&10 are contradictory.
12)Therefore, God does not exist
There are, I think, two basic objections to this. The first would to be to challenge my usage of omnibenevolence. One could either deny that God is maximally good or that his choices are always the most good, but either of these options wreak havoc on Christian theology.
The other objection might be that there is some restriction on humans that disallows them being FWAGB. This is, however, a weak objection. The objection implicitly claims that humans, which must be FWnAGB, were the best choice for a creation, better than any FWAGB. This is simply a restatement of premise 8 and as such does not affect the argument.
I believe this is a sound argument based on premises that Christians themselves recommend. Free will, it seems, doesn't help God out of the PoE. To the contrary, it shoots him in the metaphorical foot.
Basically stated, the problem of evil says that if a god possessing omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence (the Christian God) exists, evil should not exist. Evil exists, therefore such a god does not. The reason I'm such a fan is that the argument is simple and obvious. Some other disproofs of god take a certain amount of investigation and understanding, but the problem of evil readily presents itself. Suffering is too prevalent, and it is all too common to hear a Christian ask why god would allow this or that to happen.
Because I enjoy the PoE so much, I am also very interested in theodicy, the defense against it. I'll review several defenses here in my next few posts, along with some common analogies and explanations as to why I don't think they work.
Quite a few of the defenses against the PoE, when dissected boil down to the notion of free will. God wanted us to have free will, it is said, and this could not be accomplished without evil. Before I explain why this doesn't work, it is important to understand what is meant by free will. When I ask people about this, I rarely get the same answer. From what I've gathered, though, it seems that Christians take it to mean the possibility of making any of the available choices in a given situation. They do not mean that the choice has not been limited, coerced, or otherwise influenced.
Now, immediately a problem presents itself. Omniscience appears to preclude free will. If a being is all-knowing, then certainly it knows the outcome of all choices, does it not? Christians assert that it means just that. How then, is there any real choice if the outcome is already known?
Perhaps the worst response to this question I have ever heard took the form of an analogy:
"Suppose my child is reaching for a hot stove. I know that she will get burned, but she still has a choice to touch the stove or not. " ( I'm paraphrasing here; the original analogy was filled with much emotional pleading and unnecessary exposition.)
Firstly, I am not a bad parent. I'm not going to sit idly by and let my child, or any child I have the ability to stop, injure themselves. Secondly, I am not omniscient, and that is where the analogy falls apart. The uncaring parent in the analogy does not know their child will get burned, they know that if the child touches the stove, she will likely get a burn. Omniscience doesn't allow for if or likely; the little girl will touch the stove and will get a burn. The poor child has no choice once omniscience gets involved.
Let's imagine for a minute that free will and omniscience are somehow compatible. Does it then solve the PoE? To know that, we need to ask more questions.
The concept of free will as a cause for the existence of evil implies that there are good choices and bad (evil) choices. Without delving into what is meant by 'good' or 'bad' we can say that a good choice is one that produces a good result and likewise for a bad choice. Generally, we can say that the character of a choice is determined by its result. Bearing that in mind, the question we need to ask our Christian friend is this:
Can there be a good result of free will that does not also accord with God's will?
Omnibenevolence seems to indicate that there cannot. If God is to be all-good, then his actions and choices are also all good. For any choice, the good result is the one that God would choose. (It does not matter that God might have choices unavailable to the person actually making the decision because we are hypothetically limiting God's choices to those available to the person. In other words, no matter the size of the group of choices, God will always choose the one that is most good)
This answer presents something of a conundrum. Free will becomes a net evil; no new good is introduced by it, but new evil (evil itself according to the defense) is. Really, then, free will is nothing more than another name for evil and is of no use in resolving the PoE.
Though the whole muddle of free will and Christian theology brings up dozens of questions, I'm going to stop there and finish this post by presenting a version of the Free will Argument for the Nonexistence of God (FANG). To my knowledge, it is an original formulation.
1)God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-good)
2)God has free will
3)God always chooses the most good choice available(from omnibenevolence)
4)From 1-3 God is a free-willed always good being (FWAGB)
5) A FWAGB is not logically impossible (from 4)
6)God can do anything that is not logically impossible (from omnipotence)
7)God did not create humans as FWAGB, but as FWnAGB
8)By 3,5-7 FWnAGB is more good than FWAGB
9)By 4 & 8, God is less good than he could be.
10) By 9, God is not omnibenevolent
11)1&10 are contradictory.
12)Therefore, God does not exist
There are, I think, two basic objections to this. The first would to be to challenge my usage of omnibenevolence. One could either deny that God is maximally good or that his choices are always the most good, but either of these options wreak havoc on Christian theology.
The other objection might be that there is some restriction on humans that disallows them being FWAGB. This is, however, a weak objection. The objection implicitly claims that humans, which must be FWnAGB, were the best choice for a creation, better than any FWAGB. This is simply a restatement of premise 8 and as such does not affect the argument.
I believe this is a sound argument based on premises that Christians themselves recommend. Free will, it seems, doesn't help God out of the PoE. To the contrary, it shoots him in the metaphorical foot.
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