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Edited on Mon Jan-17-05 04:57 PM by Stunster
Ok, you're getting to what philosophers call
the 'evidential argument from evil' against
theism. Let me review a little bit of how this
goes, and then try to give a more extended response
to this argument, though I don't think philosophy
by itself can give a fully satisfactory answer.
The theist says that the notion of a rational
being, all of whose states and actions are controlled
by a cause external to itself, is a contradiction in
terms. So if it's a good thing at all to create
rational beings, then it's logically required that
at least some of their actions and states not be
controlled by a cause external to themselves.
Rational beings by definition have to have some
moral autonomy. This logically implies the
possibility of moral evil being done by rational
agents.
Mainly because of Plantinga's presentation of
this argument, most atheists accept that the
existence of *some* moral evil *is* logically
compatible with theism. (Plantinga treats
natural evil a bit differently from the way
I do, and I'm not going into the details, but
take my word for it that if his argument is
valid for moral evil, which most philosophers
of religion now think it is, then it's valid
for natural evil too). But notice that Plantinga's
argument is minimalist. He's saying only that
evil in the world is logically compatible with
theism. (Philosophers put this by saying,
"There is a logically possible world in which
God exists and evil also exists").
At this point, the atheist philosophers said,
ok, some evil is logically compatible with theism,
I'll grant you that. But maybe the *actual amount*
of evil in the actual world is *too much*. Now, the
'maybe' part of that last sentence is important,
because what the atheist is saying at this point
is not that the amount of evil couldn't possibly
be compatible with theism, but that the amount
is such that it's *unlikely* to be compatible with
theism. In other words, their conclusion is
no longer a strict logical deduction, but instead
a *probabilistic judgement*.
Ok, what the theist says in reply is basically
what I've been saying all along. To show that
the actual amount of evil (including pain, suffering,
harm) is too high for it to be likely that theism
is true, you would have to show one of two things:
1) a world with significantly less evil is a logical
possibility which God could have instantiated and
which would still contain physical beings who
possess rational and moral consciousness. Or,
2) If no such world is logically possible, then
it would have been morally preferable not to
create rational moral beings at all.
I've given my reason why I don't think 2 is
plausible. Even human beings on the whole
think their existence is preferable to their
non-existence. There is no reason to think
that God ought to know that this preference is
mistaken (nor is it clear how a preference
like this could logically even count as a
candidate for being mistaken). So let's focus
on 1.
If it's better that humans exist than that they
don't exist, then God ought to make humans exist.
To make humans, God must instantiate a physics
(humans are physical beings). Now if God is
good, then God will select the physics that
minimizes the potential for harm and suffering
for sentient beings. But of course, some harm
will still result. And humans can use
their rational autonomy to harm other human beings.
Ok, now you're saying that the total amount of
harm that results is probably too much to be
compatible with theism. But how do you know this,
or what is your warrant for saying this? Well,
you suspect that a world with less harm is possible.
But, for reasons I've already canvassed, and which
you've somewhat acknowledged, you have no basis
for thinking this unless you can show one of two
things:
a) the computations demonstrating the significantly
less harm that would result from an alternative
possible physics
Or
b) that a good God would intervene to prevent
the natural consequences of physics, and/or
the natural consequences of immoral human acts,
at least to some significant extent.
Now, I've been saying that a) is a non-starter. The
computational task is just too large and difficult
for any human to perform. Furthermore, insofar
as physicists have constructed models of alternative
universes, they are almost all either very short-lived
(Big Bang, nanoseconds later the universe collapses),
or not complex enough to support life (because they're
not complex enough to generate stars). And this
is logically dictated by the mathematical rationality
underlying the physics (which rationality is simply
an aspect of divine rationality).
What about b), then? Well, first let's try to
be a bit clearer about what we mean by 'divine
intervention'. On the classical theistic view,
God is not a temporal agent. All of spacetime is
'compresent' to divine consciousness, but God himself
is not a spatiotemporal object. What this implies
is that it does not even make sense to think of
a timeless being doing one thing (such as instantiating
physical laws), and then *later* doing another thing
(such as temporarily suspending the operation of
of one or more of those laws). What the classical
theist (I'm one) says is that God's 'response' to
and 'interventions' in creation are *built into*
creation. God is smart, and so the design
God implements already includes his 'interventions'
to prevent and minimize harm. But divine rationality
must also be at work in this regard. Let's try to
think about that a little more...
God might see that the physics needed for humans
will cause planets to form which will be subject
to earthquakes. Ok. So now he wants to include
some earthquake-harm 'intervention' in his design.
How does he go about that? Well, one way is to
use quantum-mechanical probabilities to locate
the majority of earthquakes away from major
population centers or at times in the planet's
evolution when its rational inhabitants
have not yet evolved. And in fact, most of the
earthquakes that occur have done so at times and
places considerably removed from human beings.
The percentage of human beings who die in earthquakes
*is* rather small. Maybe if God had not 'intervened'
by including those quantum-mechanical tweakings in
his universe design, the percentage would be much
larger. So when we pray, "Lord, save us from
earthquakes", it could well be the case that the
Lord has already done so. The other measure
God can take is to give humans enough intelligence
so that they can build more earthquake-resistant
buildings, etc. Same with tsunami-warning
technologies. Same with medicines. Etc.
How many people's lives have been saved by
good medical treatments? Lots. Where did the
intelligence come from for developing those
treatments? It was included in the design
package God implemented, says the theist.
But can God not just eliminate earthquakes and
diseases altogether? I don't think doing that
is logically possible---one would have to change
the physics so drastically that no human life would
develop at all, in which case the elimination of
earthquakes and diseases would have no point.
Also, I'm no geologist, but I've got a vague
idea that earthquakes are like a safety valve
for the planet. If there weren't any earthquakes,
the pressures would grow so great that the whole
flippin planet would blow apart after a while.
Though I might be wrong about that.
Let's continue. God still sees the possibility of
great pain and suffering in his design plan.
He should intervene to stop it. Being timeless,
he includes more 'interventions' in the design.
Spontaneous remission of cancers gets plugged in.
Superior military minds for the Allies
fighting the Nazis gets plugged in. Some
miraculous healings at 20th century Lourdes and
in 1st century Palestine get plugged in.
How much plugging in of harm-remission and prevention
can God do without violating mathematical rationality
and human moral autonomy? Well, there has to be
*some* logical limit to how much plugging in God
can do. Nature must appear *sufficiently* law-like
in its operations in order for rational beings to
form rational expectations of the future, and hence
be able to interact rationally with nature, and
eventually produce science and technology. If
some people fell off cliffs and were killed, and
other people fell off cliffs and bounced right
back up, we'd be confused. We'd never be able
to do science, or make sense of our world. But
'falling off a cliff' can stand as a catch-all
term for any kind of harmful event. Terrorist
flies into the World Trade Center. US planes
bomb a wedding party. If you grant moral autonomy
to people, then it's logically possible that they
will *want* to do things like that, or even worse.
A morally autonomous being might want to engage
in torture, genocide, and so forth. Now, what
is that desire, in its moral essence? It is
the *rejection* of moral goodness, and especially
the rejection of love. If realized, it produces
'hell on earth'. It is the satanic impulse to
hate what is good, to destroy life and beauty
and replace it with death and horrific ugliness.
It is *sin*, in all its hideous malice.
So now the atheist objection is that that there's
too much sin in the world, and that a good God
should and would intervene to prevent sin
from happening on any large scale.
Now *this* is the crux of the debate, I think.
The ethical monotheist says that it's logically
impossible for God to prevent rational creatures
from fundamentally rejecting God if the point of
creating rational creatures is to give them the
opportunity to *love* God. That's the key to
this whole thing, imo. Why?
Because if a rational
creature is systematically prevented from rejecting
God, then the relationship of that rational creature
to God could not be one of *love*. God, heaven,
goodness, love, truth, beauty, etc---the nature
of these things is such that they have to be
freely pursued and freely chosen by rational
creatures. A being with an *autonomous spiritual
nature* (a free will and intellect) *by definition*
can only love God (and thus choose things like
goodness, love, truth, beauty, heaven, etc) if it is
*free to fundamentally reject God* (and hence, goodness,
love, truth, beauty, heaven, etc). Hell must
be a spiritual possibility, because if it's not,
then no creature is truly an autonomous rational
moral and spiritual being, by *definition*. And so
'hell on earth' must be a possibility too.
What is God? I've suggested that we should think of
God as transcendent Reason and Goodness, whose
presence is detectable by creatures like ourselves
who are designed to be able to detect reason and
goodness. We often detect it by contemplating
situations where reason and goodness have been
grossly *violated*---Auschwitz, Fallujah, Rwanda, etc.
We see what unreason and evil looks like, and
we instinctively know that this is not the way
things were meant to be. God shows us how horrible
rejecting reason and goodness is---that is, he shows
how horrible rejecting God is---that is, he shows
us how horrible sin is. He has given us a knowledge
of good and evil, because the capacity to have
knowledge of good and evil is what defines us as
rational beings. This knowledge is something that
non-rational beings cannot have, by defintion.
But having that knowledge, and being autonomous,
means that we can create hell for ourselves and
others. To be autonomous, we must be able not
only to have hellish desires, but to act on them
and bring them about to some significant degree.
Hell has to be possible in order for knowledge and love
of God to be possible. For knowledge and love of
God are only possible for beings who can choose
to alienate themselves from that knowledge and
decide not to love God. In earthly terms, that
expresses itself as the moral horrors we're sadly
all too familiar with. But hell's possibility, in
one form or another, is implied in the creation of
autonomous rational beings--a rational being can
lie and hate and attempt to destroy everything good.
But God puts a limit on how much of that can go on.
This limit is called death, and it's often seen
as the divine 'punishment'. But it is actually
just a loving response to sin. God says, ok, you
want to sin? You want to inflict pain? I want you
to be capable of love, so I have to make you
autonomous. But not infinitely so. You've got
about 70 years or so to do your worst, if that's
what you choose to do. But that's it. No more
evil-doing to others for you after you die, though
you'll still be free to reject Me.
Christianity goes a bit further than Judaism and
Islam, imo. As I read those religions, God presents
humanity with the fundamental moral choice, and
it's pretty much then left up to us to choose.
We can follow the right path, obey the commandments,
or we can sin till we're blue in the face. But
Christianity says that God loves us so much, and
is so freaked out by sin that he takes the initiative
in trying to save us from our sinfulness. *God
himself*, in the Christian account, atones
for our sin by making an *infinite* sacrifice, involving
the 'kenosis' or self-emptying of his *divinity*, and
taking on a human nature, living a human life, and
undergoing violence and hate and abuse and death
---and responding not with retaliatory violence,
or hate for humanity, or the annihilation of humanity
---but rather, with mercy, and grace, and forgiving
love and Resurrection and Eternal Life.
God in his wisdom shows us that evil is not conquered
by destroying the evildoer, or even by *preventing
the evildoer from doing the evil*---because that
would not get at the essence of evil. That essence
is the radically disordered will, desire, intellect,
etc of the evildoer. *That's* what needs to be healed
and converted and saved, even if the person is
sitting in a jail and not harming a fly.
Evil is conquered by God's everlasting insistence on
unconditional, saving love. The torment of hell
is knowing that this love is there, that it can't
be destroyed, that it is eternal, and then refusing
to embrace it. If you embrace it fully, it's heaven.
But hopefully, we'll all embrace it, one way or
another.
There is a very deep mystery in all of this.
We think that God should destroy the sinner,
so that the sin won't happen. God thinks that
he should love the sinner, and should show that
love by himself atoning for the sinner's sin!
The satanic impulse is to accuse and condemn and
destroy humanity ("why doesn't God stop these
bastards--they're scum"). The divine impulse is
to forgive and embrace and save the sinner.
The figure of Satan is an interesting one.
Some of the Eastern Fathers speculated that
Satan's sin was to be sooooo contemptuous of
humanity that he refused to accept the incarnation
of the Son of God---that is, he refused to accept
that humans should be loved by God that much.
Satan wanted to punish and destroy humanity--they're
a bunch of bastards, they deserve to be annihilated.
God, instead, wanted to *become human and reveal
his merciful love for us. God doesn't love us
because *we're* good and holy. God loves us because
God is good and holy. The devil couldn't get his
head around that. ('Satanas' means 'accuser'.
For present purposes, I'm intending this as a
parabolic insight into the mystery of sin, not as
a necessarily literal description of historic
supernatural goings-on).
Since the atheist doesn't believe in Christianity,
then of course I wouldn't expect him to accept
this understanding of evil, etc. One of the
reasons I am a Christian is because I believe
Christianity has better insights into this particular
existential problem than any other religion or
philosophy. By that I mean that I don't think
the problem of evil can be adequately accounted
for just using the resources of science or rational
philosophy. I think there is a mystery to evil,
whose full dimensions only become clear in the light
of Christian revelation and theological reflection
upon that revelation. In particular the question of
why God would allow sin rather than prevent it has
some important light shed on it by the Christian
doctrines of Incarnation, Cross & Resurrection,
and eternal Redemption. I've also found some of
the writings of Christian mystics, such as Julian
of Norwich's "Revelations of Divine Love" quite
helpful.
Maybe none of this helps you to gain any deeper
insight. I feel that it has helped me to gain
some, not just as a matter of theological
speculation, but in terms of my encounters with
people struggling with the whole shebang of sin
and redemption from sin---myself included, of course.
> It would seem that we agree that god cannot and does not act on the
> world in miraculous ways. With a miracle being defined as something
> that defies the laws of physics/science.
This is complex stuff, and I don't pretend
that it's easy to understand. But nor is
the General Theory of Relativity easy to
understand. Doesn't mean it's not true.
Consider what I wrote previously:
"Nothing can 'violate' a natural law, because 'natural law' is just a
description of what happens, and if something happens, then it has to
be consistent with a description of what happens. If something
'violated' a natural law, that would just be a way of saying it
actually wasn't a *law*. What perhaps you mean is that God should
make the regularities of nature less law-like, so as to minimize
harm. But maybe God does. Maybe God jiggles the quantum effects about
so that loads of people escape harm, while preserving enough
law-likeness in nature to ground rational expectations and thus things
like rational agency and science."
Now read what string physicist Brian Greene
wrote in his best-seller THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE:
"But for microscopic particles facing a concrete slab, they can and
sometimes do borrow enough energy to do what is impossible from the
standpoint of classical physics--momentarily penetrate and tunnel
through a region that they do not initially have enough energy to
enter. As the objects we study become increasingly complicated,
consisting of more and more particle constituents, such quantum
tunnelling can still occur, but it becomes very unlikely since *all*
the individual particles must be lucky enough to tunnel together. But
the shocking episodes of George's disappearing cigar, of an ice cube
passing right through the wall of a glass, and of George and Gracie's
passing right through a wall of the bar, *can* happen." (_ibid_., p. 116).
Got all that?
Ok, here's what I'm saying. The term 'miracle'
cannot possibly MEAN a *violation of a law of
nature* because that notion doesn't even make
sense. If an event E happens, then by definition
what it is supposedly violating CANNOT be a LAW (in
a strict sense of 'law'). In other words,
if there is a putative law that says "An event of
type E cannot possibly happen", and then E happens,
then the putative law is not in fact a law, and the
very statement of it must be false--if E actually
happens. Assume E is a 'miraculous' event. Well,
by definition, it cannot have violated a law of
nature.
But what quantum physics reveals is that all supposed
laws of nature are not absolute regularities, but in
fact are STATISTICAL GENERALIZATIONS. What such
generalizations do is assign probabilities to various
types of event. What Greene is saying is that it is
not strictly impossible for someone to walk through
a wall. It's just extremely unlikely. It is also
extremely unlikely, though less so, for an individual
particle to do something similar. But if the particle
does 'tunnel' through, it hasn't VIOLATED any law of
of nature. It's consistent with the statistical
generalization. It just has a low probability.
What I take from this is that we should define
'miracle' to mean an event of low probability, but one
that is nevertheless consistent with the true
statistical generalizations describing our world, and
such that it has extraordinary positive value for the
body and/or mind of one or more human beings, with
the result that the person or persons are inspired
to have a stronger relationship with God.
Can God perform miracles in *this* sense? Yes.
But notice that *by definition*, miracles so defined
MUST OCCUR RARELY. They are low probability events,
by which I mean very or extremely low probability
events. But if even physicists are telling us that
it's not strictly impossible for someone to walk
through a wall, then miracles in the sense I've
defined are possible for God to perform. But
they cannot be common, frequent, or everyday occurrences.
If they were, they would be high probability events,
not low probability events, and we would not even
regard them as miracles. It seems 'miraculous' that
we can make babies, etc. By that, we simply mean
the procreation of human life is marvellous to behold.
But it's not a low probability event, so we don't call
it a miracle in any strict religious sense. But other
events might be (in the sense I've defined).
So, God picks the best set of physical laws compatible
with human life etc. But by structuring them
as quantum mechanical probabilistic 'laws', God leaves
open the possibility of miracles in a religious sense,
though it's a mistake to think of them as *suspensions*
of the operations of physics.
God also builds into the physics lots of harm-prevention
features. We would hardly have evolved and survived
as a species otherwise. So God arranges the quantum
probabilities accordingly. But there is a limit to
how far this can go without compromising the *basic*
ORDER of nature. Nature has to be *sufficiently*
law-LIKE to ground rational expectations about the
future, and so enable us to have rational interactions
with nature, and hence be able to develop scientifically
and technologically.
Maybe God has 'saved' 16 million people from drowning
in tsunamis over the past 25 years by the quantum
probability tweakings God has built into the physics
governing our world. His timeless building in of those
and other favorable probabilities is God's answer to
prayers for protection from natural harm. And very
occasionally, a person is healed or saved 'miraculously'
---meaning the probability in that instance was
extraordinarily low. But over a long period of time,
and a large population, there accumulates a significant
number of 'miracles'.
All this is logically possible for God to do. And
so God does it. What is not logically possible for
God to do is violate the basic structure of nature,
without making life itself impossible, since that
basic structure has to be 'fine-tuned' to be suitable
for life. The physics involved has an underlying
mathematical rationality which itself is but an
aspect of divine Reason. Nor is it logically
possible for miracles to be frequent or high probability
events.
But it is simply *not a problem* for classical theism
that God cannot do the logically impossible! For classical
theism does not define omnipotence in that way. It
defines omnipotence as being able to do whatever is
logically possible. And the limits of logical possibility
are aspects of reason, and God IS self-subsistent
reason. Logic and mathematics are aspects of God's
eternal THOUGHT, or REASON, or LOGOS, to use the Greek
word made famous by the Prologue of the Gospel of John.
Does any of this mean that God is not involved in
human life? No. God is involved, because the
whole of God's Logos has humanity eternally in view.
We are created in and through the Logos, we are
redeemed from sin in and through Logos Incarnate.
("The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us")
God designs the physics to create humans, and
chooses it in such a way as to minimize natural
harm consistent with a rational order appearing
in nature. God performs 'miracles' by making the
laws of nature probabilistic and quantum mechanical.
God enters into his own creation to communicate and
reveal himself to humans. God creates not just
a physical world, but one from which consciousness,
rationality, and morality can emerge. God communicates
further via our consciousness, reason, and moral
experience. God, being timeless, is able to
build into his design of the physics his response to
human prayer (since all prayers are timelessly
'compresent' to the divine consciousness, which
timelessly 'thinks', begets, or generates the Logos
which designs and implements the physics governing
the world.)
These are the outlines. When we enter eternity
for ourselves, it will all become clear.
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