philosophy

The Argument from Evil This is by far the most prominent argument for atheism. Epicurus, an Ancient Greek philosopher, might have been the first to discuss it. In the philosophical/theological tradition, God is defined as a being that has 3 main properties:  (1) Omnipotence: God can do anything. (2) Omniscience: God knows everything. (3) Omnibenevolence: God is all good.   The argument from evil tries to show that no such being exists, because if we assume that it does, we get a contradiction. The argument is a “reductio ad absurdum” proof:  In such a proof, you assume that some claim C is true, and then show that a contradiction results.  Since contradictions are impossible, we can then infer that C is not true.  Such proofs are used throughout logic and mathematics.     The argument: (1) Assume that God exists. (2) God is all powerful, all knowing and all good (this is true by definition). (3) Given (2), God knows that evil exists, God should want to prevent it, and God can prevent it. (4) Given (3), evil should not exist. (5) But evil does exist. (6) This a contradiction, so our assumption, i.e. (1), is false. (7) That is, God does not exist.  

Step (1) cannot be denied. Step (5) is probably safe (a religious person cannot deny that evil exists, can they?). Steps (6) and (7) follow from other steps.   Steps (2), (3) and (4) are the potential weak spots. 

The problem is basically this: if an all good, all powerful being created the universe, then why do bad things happen all the time?  Why were there Nazis?  Why do children die of cancer?  Why are there earthquakes etc?  It is a bit of a puzzle.   What do you think about this argument?

How might a religious person respond?

Responses:

There are many responses.

1. You could deny one of the divine attributes.  Perhaps God is not all good, or not all powerful etc.?   The atheist response to this is that if you deny that God is all powerful, for example, then why should we worship God? (2) The Free Will defense: The reason that a lot of evil exists is us.  God gave us free will to make our own choices.  Without free will, we would just be machines and life would be meaningless etc.  But sometimes people abuse that freedom and do terrible things.  Nazis existed because sometimes people choose to be evil.  It’s not God’s fault.   This is a promising response.  But there are two types of evil: moral evil, which is the evil we create, and natural evil, which are things like earthquakes and so on.  It seems that we are responsible for moral evil, but natural evil is not our fault.  So, while the free will defense can explain away a lot of evil, it cannot explain away all evil. (3) Things that look evil to us might be good in the long run.  They might lead to a greater good.  Maybe we don’t understand God’s plan? This is called “skeptical theism.”  The ways of God are beyond human comprehension.  Fair enough.  But the atheist will say that it’s tough to see how some kid dying of cancer leads to enough good to outweigh the evil.     (4) Suffering developes our souls.  It makes us better people.  It prepares us for heaven etc.  This life isn’t supposed to be prefect.  That’s what heaven is for etc.   This is called “Soul Making Theodicy.”  Perhaps it can help with the problem of evil? (5) You need bad to understand/appreciate/have the good? Here’s an example: forgiveness is thought to be a good thing.  But to have forgiveness, someone has to do something bad; otherwise there would be nothing to forgive etc.  So to have the good of forgiveness we must have some

THE PROBLEM OF HELL A pretty interesting puzzle. In many versions of Christianity, hell is thought to be a place of eternal torment; whatever the nature of this torment is (burning in fire, or simply being separated from God etc.). Hell lasts forever, whatever it might be like.     But some have argued that such a punishment would be unjust.   Here’s the basic idea: (1) Hell is a place of infinite punishment.   (2) Human beings only live a finite amount of time, and so can only produce a finite amount of evil.  No matter how much evil someone creates, even if it is a lot, it will be a finite amount.   (3) It would be unjust (or unfair) to punish someone an infinite amount for producing only a finite amount of evil. (4) So, either God is unjust (but that cannot be right because God is perfectly just) or Hell is not eternal.  

Universalism: the idea that hell is only temporary.   Eventually, everyone is saved. What do you make of this problem of hell?  Would an all loving God send someone to Hell forever?  Would an all loving God send someone to Hell for even a little while?  Is there anything to this “universalism” idea?

PROBLEMS WITH HEAVEN  There are various puzzles with heaven too. One concerns free will and the question about whether or not we can have it in heaven. (1) Heaven is perfect.  For example, in heaven, no one murders anyone else or punches someone in the face or does other evil things.   (2) But if no one can do evil things, it doesn’t appear that we have free will in heaven. (3) But an existence without free will is meaningless.   (4) So, heaven is not perfect, or doesn’t exist etc? Another problem some have raised: Would heaven be extremely boring?  Just a bunch of do-gooders sitting around singing happy songs forever etc?

W.K. Clifford Wrote a very famous and controversial paper called “The Ethics of Belief.”  (1877) The main thesis: it is immoral to believe anything without sufficient evidence.   The argument: A shipowner thinks that his ship might need an overhaul.  It might be unsafe. But he convinces himself that it is safe.   He trusts fate, or the ship builders, for example. But he has no good evidence that it is safe. The ship sinks and people die.   Clifford: the shipowner is immoral and is morally responsible for the deaths.     Even if the shipowner would have gotten lucky, and the ship didn’t sink, the shipowner is still immoral.  

Clifford thinks that what the shipowner did wrong was believe something without having evidence for it. And doing that is immoral.

Clifford’s main target is religious belief though. He thinks that religious people are morally bad because they lack evidence for their religious belief, but believe it anyway. (note that often Clifford is taken as an argument for agnosticism.)

What do we think of this claim?

William James “The Will to Believe” A Response to Clifford. The main thesis: when we have evidence, we should base our beliefs on it.  

But if we lack evidence one way or the other, we can be justified and rational in simply choosing what to believe based on what we want to believe.

The argument: There are three possible positions one can adopt with respect to God: 1.  Theism.  The theist risks making a mistake (i.e., falsely believing in God) to have a chance at knowing the truth and obtaining an important good.  2.  Agnosticism: The agnostic risks losing out on a truth (that God exists) and an important good for the certainty of avoiding error. 3. Atheist: The atheist risks error (falsely believing there is no God) and the loss of an important good for a chance at truth. But all three views are undecidable. There is no reason to prefer one over the other based on the evidence we have.   They are all equally good from an evidence standpoint. Plus this is an important (“momentus”) decision, so we should pick one. Plus these are all “live” options; none are obviously false.   So, we are justified in simply choosing to believe whichever one we want.  We must choose a view, but the evidence cannot help us choose, so we might as well pick the one that makes us happy.  And it is rational to do so.   Clifford’s mistake was to think that the agnostic’s policy is the only rational option but we’ve just seen that each option is on a par with the others. So, although there is no duty to choose to believe, one is in one’s rights in doing so, if one so chooses.  

What do we think about James’ argument?