Friday, September 29, 2006

Gareth McCaughan and the Problem of Evil

read Gareth's account of his own deconversion. Of courses, he and I
locked horns a couple of years ago on my book. Since that time I
started my blog, www.dangerousidea.blogspot.com, and haven't been here.
On my site I issued this challenge, and got devoted several posts to
it, mostly last summer. Here's the challenge I gave:


A Challenge to Advocates of the Argument from Evil
I'd like to make an methodological point in discussions of the problem
of evil, a part of the Plantingian legacy. If the theist begins by
offering explanations of the existence of evil, and the discussion
focuses on the adequacy of these explanations, the theist puts himself
at an unfair disadvantage. If I as a defender of the argument from
reason were to say that since we don't now have a detailed explanation
of the evolution of the brain, the argument from reason succeeds, I
would be rightly criticized. I would be accused of the God the the Gaps
fallacy. The same principle applies here to the argument from evil. The
correct procedure, it seems to me, is to ask the atheist to present
his/her argument against theism. Is it a logical argument, a
probabilistic argument, or some other kind of argument. Show me the
argument, let me see what the premises are and what the conclusion is.
Then an explanation, or a possible explanation, for evil might be
required. Or not, depending on the structure of the argument. So I'm
going to issue a challenge to atheists. Give me your version of the
argument from evil. Numbered premises please.
And, of course, I want to be given some good reasons why I should
accept all the premises.

Here's what I am getting at. The argument from evil is supposed to have
a special pride of place amongst arguments concerning theism, both pro
and con. Every version of the argument from evil that I saw put on my
blog seemed to me to have questionable premises which
indicated to me that the argument was inadequate, even absent any throughgoing
across-the-board explanation for some particular evils, such as the
Asian tsunami in 2004. To make matters worse for the atheological
argument, the atheist has to appeal to some moral premise (A perfectly
good being eliminates evil as far as possible) which he must either
contend is objectively true (which in my view compromises naturalism)
or appeals to a value that all theists, or maybe all Christians accept.
Some people think that this sort of thing is true by definition, but I
am unpersauded of those claims.


Now I am not at all sure that a good version of the argument from evil
can't be developed that doesn't have some disconfirmatory impact on
theism. It's just a whole heck of a lot harder than it looks. I think
if you greet the problem of evil with the type of skepticism that I
have every right to expect that my own favorite argument will receive
from its critics, it proves to be overrated.

A good volume of essays on the evidential argument from evil came out
in the 90s, edited by Daniel Howard-Snyder.

But I think the idea that the AFE is really powerful, unlike your
average theistic argument, or even just your average philosophical
argument (like Wittgenstein's private language argument), is generated
by the idea that somehow, if the theist can't explain all of human
suffering and give God's reason for permitting it, theism is thought to
be deficient.

A link to Gareth's deconversion story is here.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

It mostly depends on the kind of God the theist believes in. Isn't it obvious that there is no problem of evil for a God that is less than perfect or even evil? I know there is one strand of the Jewish faith that accomodates the view that evil also comes from God. I would think similar views could be found in other theistic systems.
Problem of evil is so difficult for the Christian theist because of the kind of God he claims to believe in. This God supposedly loves humans so much that He was willing to suffer death and the torments of God's punishment in order to obtain atonement for them. Yet He won't lift a finger to prevent all the millions of cruel things that happen on a daily basis to those same humans. Not to mention all the suffering in the rest of the animal kingdom.

Anonymous said...

Just to add. When discussing this with Christian theists I often have the sense that there is a lack of imagination regarding the degree or amount of suffering that is taking place on earth every moment. I find the thought so staggering that traditional arguments like free will that are used to justify such suffering seem laughable.

Victor Reppert said...

OK, could you formulate these claims in a numbered-premise argument?

Are people looking for a father in heaven, or a nanny in heaven?

Anonymous said...

"OK, could you formulate these claims in a numbered-premise argument? "

Um, no. I'm not really interested in formulating a logical problem of evil argument. It is always possible to justify any amount of evil using a logical format. Pretty much speaking from the gut here.

"Are people looking for a father in heaven, or a nanny in heaven?"

I can't speak as to what other people may be looking for. Neither of the two choices you've given above are particularly appealing. Do you really think those are the only two possibilities we have to choose from when imagining what God may be like?

Mike Darus said...

Is it fair to say that the person who asks why God won't "lift a finger" to prevent "evil" is imposing a reqirement that God be the all-powerful Nanny?

Victor Reppert said...

No, but where do you draw the line? First we have to know what is meant by lifting a finger. On what grounds do we deny that God isn't doing plenty to keep things from being a whole lot worse than they are now? How many potential Hitlers had heart attacks at an early age who, had they lived, would have made the world a worse place than it now is? C. S. Lewis prayed for his wife and apparently she had a few years added on to it, and the doctors thought it was (apparently) miraculous. If God were to make things better, would he have to make himself obvious in so doing? If it becomes obvious that God is relieving suffering in the world on a massive scale, doesn't human nature suggest that we will just let God get on with the business of relieving suffering and attend to other things?

If evil is a problem for theism, is good a problem for atheism? Why not?

Anonymous said...

"First we have to know what is meant by lifting a finger. On what grounds do we deny that God isn't doing plenty to keep things from being a whole lot worse than they are now?"

Sigh.:-) It all depends on what kind of God we are talking about here. If God is all-powerful and all-good, it is hard to understand why things are not much, much better than they are now. I.E., this world does not seem to me to be the type that an omnipowerful, omniscient, and omnibenevolent one would create.
If God is limited in His powers or if He is also the source of evil, then there is no real problem in understanding the evil around us.

Mike Darus said...

Anonymous,
Victor asked, "Where do you draw the line?" How much better should the world be to support omnibenevolence? Maybe it is good enough. If we lived in a world where the worst evil was a stubbed toe, would we still be complaining about the problem of evil? Why didn't God stop me from stubbing my toe?

Steven Carr said...

It is nice to know that there nio guarentees of a suffering-free existence in Heaven.

Or at the least, such guarantees should be treated by Victor with the same scepticism that he would treat a guarantee by God that he will not create any further pathogens along the lines of HIV.

Steven Carr said...

What would Jesus do if he saw cruelty and suffering and starvation and drought?

And then equate Jesus with God.

Steven Carr said...

It appears JD Walters is only satisfied by a worldview where the being he worships commands men , women and children to be killed (See 1 Sam 15:3)

Such a being appeals to his sense of what is true about the world.

No wonder he thinks that he is a sinner, when he is not outraged even by the horror parts of the Bible.

Anonymous said...

"As usual Steve Carr shows the intellectual and moral maturity of a 6-year old (though I have a brother around that age who could probably run circles around your moral reasoning)."

Actually, I find you to be the one acting rather immature here. You seem incapable of recognizing that someone disagrees with you without making some kind of snide remark.

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous,
Victor asked, "Where do you draw the line?" How much better should the world be to support omnibenevolence? Maybe it is good enough. If we lived in a world where the worst evil was a stubbed toe, would we still be complaining about the problem of evil? Why didn't God stop me from stubbing my toe?"

Wow, this is like the prisoner complaining to the warden about beatings and rapes occuring in the prison and the warden responding by saying, why should I try to prevent them, you'd just complain about stubbing your toe if I did.
You are just reinforcing my basic impression that many Christians seem incapable or maybe it is just unwilling to acknowledge the amount of evil in this world.

Anonymous said...

"If it becomes obvious that God is relieving suffering in the world on a massive scale, doesn't human nature suggest that we will just let God get on with the business of relieving suffering and attend to other things? "

And this would be a bad thing, how?

Steven Carr said...

JD Walters
'The Being I worship may have ordered the death of men, women and children at a certain point in history and under unusual circumstances, but that is his right as Creator of the world.'

CARR
It is very, very scary that there are people in the 21st century who claim that it is God's will that certain people be killed, and that they see nothing wrong with that.

JD just plain scares me. I have to speak up about such people.

There are people in the world who react to evil by saying that it is God's will.

As we have seen , so many times in the beginning of the 21st century, a minority of people can draw the conclusion that it is God's will for such evil to be carried out.

Steven Carr said...

JD Walters
'Say my father was a general and during wartime ordered the deaths of innocent people in order to achieve some military objective.'

CARR
Again Christians reveal that they think that innocent people should be killed if it furthers an objective dear to them.

Of course, in religion's eyes, there is no such thing as an innocent person. Jesus supposedly said 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone', thereby rendering everybody in the world worthy of death in the eyes of a person like JD Walters.

Edwardtbabinski said...

WHAT DID C. S. LEWIS DREAD MOST? (READ ON AND FIND OUT)

Vic,
Your defenses are purely hypothetical like your suggestion that maybe God has been stopping "potential Hitlers" via supernaturally inducing heart attacks in select people. (Is that a new I.D. hypothesis?) It also simply begs the question of why the heart of Hitler himself was allowed to continue to beat, though I suppose you can hypothesize a reason for that out of thin air as well.

And what about the way you reduced the question of God's glaring absence in the realm of human and animal suffering for hundreds of millions of years, boiling it down to..."Do you want a father in heaven or a cosmic nanny?" Sounds almost like you're calling suffering people, "sissies" when you claim they want a "nanny."

Yet aside from atheists, have you considered that perhaps many of the folks who would like a bit of "nannying" include devout religious believers praying earnestly for any and all possible supernatural "nannying." Heck, I'd just like a God who acted a bit more like a concerned (more visibly active) parent rather than say, a deadbeat Dad.

God creates an entire universe, spends the Old Testament behaving in a way that should have earned Him a restraining order, then spends the last couple of millennia incommunicado. Thanks, Dad.

God threw his first two children out of the house (in this case a garden) after their first mistake, and barred their way back with a flaming sword? How many fathers would treat their children that way after their first mistake? And what a way to treat “newborns” who were also “newlyweds.”

Why did God fill the world with his own children, knowing that he would have to destroy them? And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. But God did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, “You may go free this time, I will give you another chance.” On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.

I believe in Someone Out There--call Him God, since other names, like Festus or Darrin, do not seem to fit--but I am not entirely certain that He is all that mindful of what goes on down here. Example: Recently a tornado destroyed a town in Texas and dropped a church roof on a batch of worshipers. One of the few things left standing were two plaster statues, one of Jesus, the other of Joseph. The townspeople, according to the news, “looked at the statues’ survival as a sign of God’s love.” Hold the phone. This sounds like the he-beats-me-because-he-loves-me line of thought. If the Lord in his infinite wisdom drops a concrete roof on the true believers but spares two hunks of modeling compound, it is time to question the big Fella’s priorities. If I have to be made up of plaster to command attention in this universe, something is amiss.

Vic, where is the philosopher inside you who acknowledges a bit more of the myriad burning questions concerning things that none are certain about, that none have seen?

I challenge you to ponder something C. S. Lewis wrote the year of his death: "The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. [God]. The conclusion I dread is not 'so there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God is really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'"

Lewis was confronting the pain of his wife's death by cancer and his own coming demise from a long painful bout with cancer as well. So for Lewis the problem of pain had grow accute, such that based on his experiences He even "dreaded" what "God" might really be like. Which reminds me of the story Mother T. used to repeat about a man she met who was suffering from cancer and in great pain, and Mother T. (who didn't believe in using pain-killers) told the man, "Jesus is kissing you," and the man replied, "Then I wish he'd stop." That story appears to echo the story of Lewis's greatest "dread."

Pain is a burning perpetual question and remains so even for religious believers praying earnestly for its removal. Neither did even the so-called bodily sacrifice of God stop the pain of this world which keeps going and going for two thousand years now.

By the way, Charles Williams, Lewis's friend, didn't think much of attempts by theists (or the urge to make such attempts) to justify the pains of this world, as Lewis himself recalled in his introduction to a book on Williams.