Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

I didn’t intend to write a Part III for this topic, but it seems I have started a bit of a trend. Five days after I published Part I, the New Yorker publishes this article about the Problem of Evil (PoE)! I had no idea that their writers read my blog!

Okay, the article is a review of a book (Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem) on the subject and it’s more likely that the PoE was on their minds for the same reasons it was on mine - the recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China that killed about 200,000 people. Regardless, James Wood wrote a great article on the topic. For those of you who prefer more of a narrative style to my philosophically-centered writing, I recommend giving it a read. Here’s an excerpt:

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We humans are so self-important. We once thought that we lived in the physical center of creation: everything revolved around us. Then, in the mid-16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus discovered that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Copernicus removed us from our priviledge place in physical creation. We are not the point of the universe.

The importance of this discovery may seem obvious; he founded modern astronomy. Yet what is sometimes missed is a subtler point. There is nothing special about our point of view. Our perspective is not special. Copernicus objectified observation which paved the way for the subsequent scientific revolution, which is built upon objective observation.

Eventually, mankind adapted (as we are so apt to do). After all, we were still the center of biological creation. We were the only ones with cognition. We were the ones with free will. We were given dominion over the plants and animals by God Himself. We were the point of all life; superior and self-aware.

Then Charles Darwin came along. His objective observation of the evidence he collected from 1831 to 1836 led him to a startling conclusion… We are not the center of biological creation. The other creatures were not created for us to have dominion over and in many cases they were here first. Furthermore, there is nothing special about our particular ‘position’ in the evolutionary tree. Mutations occur randomly (though they are selected non-randomly), we are but one of many possible outcome of a natural process.

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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

This is Part II of my post on The Problem of Evil (PoE). The first post garnered quite a response! The responses generated three separate rebuttals to the PoE (theodicies). I’m sure there are more. If you have your own reason for why the PoE is wrong, let me know! I’m always up for a challenge. Thanks to Snurp, Scott, and sawaz for contributing!

This second part explains why the PoE has significant personal interest to me. It’s what caused me to lose my religion. Before even being exposed to this argument against the existence of God, I thought up a simplified version of it in my teens. At the time, I was a Republican-loving, Christian fundamentalists. What’s odd is that the idea came to me as a result of this tasty little piece of Christian fundamentalist propaganda showed to me by the youth pastor at the Baptist Church that I was attending at the time. It’s a film aimed at scaring the shit out of Christian teens via that tried-and-true religious motivator: guilt.

I probably forget many of the details, but the following is how I remember my experience of the film. The basic idea was that four teens die in a car accident only to find themselves in a dramatized Christian afterlife. The four eventually find themselves in a line in front of a receptionist at a computer terminal. One of the four is ’saved’. During the wait, the other three have plenty of time to poor the guilt on the fourth for not sharing the “Good News” (as if they haven’t heard it before). They watch as each person walks up to the receptionist. The receptionist then takes their name, types it into a computer, which then brings up their personal info as well as their ‘reservation’ status. Those with reservations step off to the right (how politically symbolic) into the light. Those without reservations are directed to a scary elevator on the left that only goes ‘down’. The ’saved’ teen watches with mounting guilt as his three friends enter the elevator before his reservation is confirmed.

The film ends with a shot of the computer screen listing name after name color coded according to their reservation status, which, if it isn’t obvious by now, indicates whether or not that person is ’saved’ or not. The name is in red is the person is unsaved, and green if saved. If you pay close attention, approximately one-in-four names is green, the same ratio as the group of teens had, hmm. This coincidence is confirmed as the names blur and a statistic is placed on the screen claiming that only one-in-four humans on the entire planet are saved. This was one of the biggest shocks of my life.

I know the film’s purpose was to motivate us teens into evangelizing. “Don’t end up guilt ridden, like the main character”, was the message, “You never know how much time you have”. It had a very different impact on me. I thought most people were saved. I immediately asked my self how God, who is all-powerful and loving, could do this to his creations? Three in four suffer eternal torture? Where’s the justice? Where is God’s love? Where is His mercy? Where is His justice? Why doesn’t God have a higher ‘win’ ratio?

I didn’t lose my faith immediately. It took time. Those question and related ones slowly undermined my world view. Eventually, those questions, combined with some deep, personal suffering experienced in my late teens and early twenties, and exposure to the multitude of other word views did my belief in Christianity in.

I now imagine my name switching from green to red on that fictional, 1980s style computer monitor and laugh.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
-Epicurus

Epicurus asked this question some time in the third or fourth century B.C.E. It’s one of the oldest expressions of The Problem of Evil (PoE). The PoE is probably the most compelling argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity and has been a thorn in the side of religious thinkers for millennia. The attempt to refute the PoE is called a theodicy.

Here’s one formal version of the argument, according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

What I’m interested in is the following question:

What is your theodicy, if you have one? How do you refute the argument or do you accept the conclusion?

I’m interested in debate here, so expect to be challenged.

In Part II, I will write about why this argument has significant personal interest to me.

—————-

UPDATE:I received multiple counter-arguments to my post about the Problem of Evil (PoE). Instead of very long comments addressing each counter-argument, I’ve decided to dedicate a separate post for each. That way, we can keep the various debates more organized. As I complete these posts, I will link them here.

The Denial of Evil Theodicy
The Spiritual/Personal Growth Theodicy
The Freewill Theodicy

That’s right! You too can join the International Society of Solipsists. That is, if my mind creates a scenario in which you join the society… Still! All you have to do is “send a brief Vita and three letters of recommendation from yourself.” Then you can look forward to enjoying activities like next fall’s ethics symposium “The Me Generation”, which will be followed by a reception in the Hall of Mirrors.

What will my subconscious dream up next?

Over the course of my time contributing to ReligiousFreaks.com, I got to know a fellow blogger, Scott. You can learn more about him on his own blog, Spiritual Tramp. We decided that it would be interesting to enter into a debate on the abortion issue. He was kind enough to host the debate and to allow me to repost it on my blog as well. After quite a while, I finally took the time to do so.

We chose to begin my limiting the scope of the debate to the morality of abortion, and not the legality. We each began by independently writing an opening piece describing our position on the issue. From there, we took turns responding to each other’s arguments. You can find our debate here. This post is where readers can comment on this debate. Considering the emotions attached to this issue, please keep the conversation civil. Blatant attempts at flaming will be removed.

After I got less then half way through C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity, I was fairly certain that the rest of the book would have little to offer me. Parts II and III where predicated on accepting both the existence of God and of Christians doctrine in particular. Since Lewis’s argument for the existence of God is poor and his argument for the divinity of Jesus is even worse, it made sense that the rest of the book wouldn’t be applicable.

I was partially wrong. The rest of the book was an interesting mixture of deeply interesting moral insights and disparate attempts at justifying Christianities less savory ‘moral’ rules. Part III of Mere Christianity, “Christian Behavior”, is basically Lewis’s interpretation of Christian Ethics. Trying to summarize all his thoughts on this subject is futile. I will only hit the hight and low points in this post. Suffice it to say that Part III is a great read for Christians and non-Christians alike and a would recommend it to anyone.

One very refreshing thing about Lewis is that he acknowledges that many virtues are not unique to nor invented by Christianity. There are four virtues he identifies as ‘Cardinal’ virtues. These are virtues “which all civilized people recognize”. These ‘Cardinal’ virtues are Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude. He also recognized that the Golden Rule is intuitive in origin, “…Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule… is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right.” Indeed, this is a necessary conclusion for Lewis based on Part I, which states that humans have always been aware of moral truths, even before Christianity. Still, it’s nice to read a Christian who recognizes that non-Christians can be very moral people.

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I’m back from my trip and finally found the time to create my second post about C.S. Lewis’s classic apologetics book, Mere Christianity. In the first post, I talked about enjoying the book quite a bit. I then deconstructed Lewis’s argument for the existence of God, which boils down to the normative moral argument.

I found Lewis’s proof of God’s existence unconvincing. This isn’t that much of a problem for me since I find another argument for God’s existence compelling (though that argument gives little to no insight into God’s nature). But let’s assume that Lewis had succeeded. Let’s suppose that there is a God who created moral laws and gave us the ability to know these laws (conscience). Great, that means we can trust our consciences to guide us to do what is right. But this still falls short of proving that God cares about us, has provided us with an afterlife, sent a son (who was also himself in some mysterious way) to earth to die for our moral failures, ‘inspired’ a book, has a favored people, felled the walls of Jericho, created the world in seven days, told Abraham to kill his son, made Job’s life a living hell, etc. It doesn’t even tell us if God is all powerful, only that It is powerful enough to create moral laws. In short, the normative moral argument fails to prove that the Moral Provider is the God of the Bible.

Thankfully, Lewis addresses this issue. Sadly, I recognized the argument from another book that I partially read, The Case for Christ. At the heart of that book, Lee Strobel argued that Jesus must be who he claimed to be, God, because for anyone making that claim, there are only three possibilities: ether Jesus was telling the truth, crazy, or a liar. Since there is no evidence that he was crazy or a liar, Strobel argued (or, more accurately, Strobel set up ‘experts’ to argue for him), he must have been telling the truth. Imagine my surprise when I read the following from Mere Christianity:

We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. [Jesus] was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.

As I discovered about the ‘new’ atheist movement while discussing Bertrand Russel with Scott, there is very little new in Christian apologetics either.

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A few months ago, I read my first Christian Apologetics book, Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and hated it. When I discussed it with my friend Scott, he lent me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I must admit, this Christian Apologetics book was much better, even insightful. It was logically written, with clear definitions and little appeal to emotion. Lewis’s approach to defending his religion is the polar opposite of Chesterton’s. It was a joy to read. Well at least the first half for reasons I will discuss later.

This short book is so dense with interesting thoughts and claims that I plan on limiting my discussion to what I consider the three most interesting topics. In the interest of brevity, I will also spread those topics over three separate posts. The three topics are the existence of God, The Case for Christ, and ethical insights. Here is the first:

Lewis starts the book by using a simplified version of the normative moral argument for the existence of god. That is, moral laws are ‘outside of’ ourselves. In other words, moral obligations are independent of one’s goals and universal.

1. It appears to human beings that moral normativity exists.
2. The best explanation of moral normativity is that it is grounded in God.
3. Therefore God exists.

The key word is in premise 1: “appears”. Morality only has the appearance of normativity but is in fact, not normative at all. Furthermore, this appearance has an explanation best grounded in nature. Consider the possibility that morality is an evolved, social instinct. This would then create instinctual moral obligations in almost all (not all, due to genetic variation and/or mental deficiencies) members of the species. i.e. our moral instincts would have the appearance of being universal. Secondly, such an instinct is social and acts on the group level. Thus the moral instinct would sometimes conflict with our one’s own goals. Thus the instinct would have all the appearance of normativity.

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Last night, I finished reading Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects by Bertrand Russel. Russel was one of those philosophers who I had often heard read about but never read his actual works. Indeed, I have read very little philosophy of that era.

I choose to read this book as part of a challenge. I had an ongoing debate on ReligiousFreaks with MAPK LOTGRE (MAPK L). Eventually, he challenged me to read a Christian apologetics book, Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. I agreed, if he would reread it with me and we then read Why I Am Not a Christian.

Orthodoxy was a painful read and a very slow process for me. Chesterton’s style involved a lot of metaphor and symbolism that I had trouble fully grasping. Also, he seemed to revel in contradictions. Chapter titles like The Paradoxes of Christianity and statements like “The trouble with the candid friend is that he is not candid” set my teeth on edge. If I am anything, I am rational thus any defense of Christianity which relies on the denial of reason will fail with me, as Orthodoxy did. Ultimately, the book ended up being a long-winded version of the “Christianity feels right” argument, which holds no weight with me.

In contrast, Why I Am Not a Christian was written by a philosopher and mathematician. It’s arguments were well laid out, its terms were clearly defined, and its conclusions were rationally supported. This is much more inline with my style. But since this book is a collection of essays, it lacks the cohesiveness of Orthodoxy. Some essays were directly about religion, others related to the topic only tangentially.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the book is that the ‘New Atheism’ movement, championed my Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens is not all that new. The exact same criticisms of religion appears in Russel’s book and the New Atheists’ books. The only thing new in the recent books is the inclusion of Evolutionary Theory as an argument against the existence of God. Also, the New Atheism movement seems to be much larger and louder than any in the past.