What’s your opinion on the Problem of Evil?

This is the type of thing that it might seem alternately arrogant or redundant for some random blogger like me to comment on, because it’s already been handled so much more thoroughly (on both sides) by people much more learned then me. So, I want to make it clear that by commenting on this issue, I’m not actually pretentious enough to think that I’m seriously breaking any new ground here. I expect that pretty much all of what I’ll say has probably been said before; at best I might say it in a slightly different way.

Still, I think this is the type of religious topic that is worthy of everyone expressing their own opinion about it. Like other religious or philosophical subjects where there’s a lot of room for individuals to have mild variations or subtle nuances in their opinion of it, I think it’s worth it to just kinda get it “on the books” where a person stands on this issue.

Personally, I don’t consider the Problem of Evil to be airtight, definitive proof that God does not exist, but I do consider it to be evidence which points in that direction. As I’ve said before, what I’m trying to do (in a persistent, ongoing fashion) is assess the likelihood that a god exists, and I believe that the existence of evil and suffering in the world make it less likely for that to be the case.

Now, I try to keep these posts fairly concise, so I’m not gonna bother restating the argument; I think it should be easy enough to find it elsewhere on the web. What I want to talk about instead are the apparent weaknesses of the argument; the Problem of Evil does have a couple key weak points that shouldn’t be glossed over, but I don’t think they ultimately discredit or defeat the argument.

The first weakness is that it only works against a specific category of god, that which is “omnimax” (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving or all-good). As long as an individual conception of God doesn’t have one of those three characteristics, then the Problem of Evil is not a problem for it. The reason why I don’t think this is a significant weakness is that it just so happens that the god believed in by most adherents of the three major monotheistic religions (and described in their scriptures) is omnimax, so the Problem of Evil still does apply to the most common conception of God.

The second weakness is that there appears to be some degree of presumption inherent in the argument; the person making it is kinda claiming to know (or even dictate) how God should behave. Personally, though, I don’t think it’s really as presumptuous as it might appear to be at first glance. When you look a little closer, it’s really just a matter of conclusions naturally following from definitions.

For instance, if we define “evil” as “the opposite of good,” then there’s no presumption required to say that an all-good god would be fundamentally opposed to evil. If he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t actually be all-good. Similarly, it’s not presumptuous to say that an all-powerful god should be able to prevent evil, because it wouldn’t meet the definition of “all-powerful” if he couldn’t.

Of course, in any philosophical debate, it’s always best to iron out the definitions with the individual who you’re debating, and then engage with the specific conception of God that their definitions indicate. But in general, I don’t think there is much presumption on God’s character required for the Problem of Evil to be a legitimate problem.

A third weakness might be that evil can’t really exist without objective moral values, but I’ve already responded to that objection here. In some ways, I almost think it would make more sense for the theist to argue the opposite of that (and in fact, I think that’s what they already are trying to do, but using different terms). Instead of saying that the existence of evil really proves God (which basically just boils down to equivocation), I think the theist really has to argue that there isn’t actually any evil in the world at all. Granted, when I say that, I’m excluding “necessary evil” from the definition of evil.

It seems to me, that phrase is just idiomatic anyway. If something which seems evil is truly necessary to achieve some greater good, then it isn’t really evil. If it’s “necessary” to the person who’s doing it to achieve some selfish ends, rather than some greater good, then it’s simply evil, not “necessary evil.”

So if we were to exclude “necessary evil” from the definition of “evil” (which I think is a quite reasonable exclusion), then it seems to me like the theist’s only way to defeat the Problem of Evil is to argue that evil does not actually exist in the world. After all, isn’t their usual line of criticism that the Problem of Evil doesn’t disprove God, because the evil and suffering in the world serves some higher purpose (such as allowing people to have free will)? They’re arguing that it is “necessary evil.” So if necessary evil doesn’t count as evil, then what they’re really saying when you get right down to it is that there isn’t any evil in the world at all.

But, you know, I find that really hard to believe. I won’t pretend that I can prove it definitively, or that my incredulity counts as evidence, but I would say that someone claiming that evil didn’t exist in the world at all would bear a pretty heavy burden of proof. And I contend that when theists dispute the problem of evil, that is effectively what they’re saying, whether they put it in precisely those terms or not.

If God did exist, would you want to know, and would you follow him?

If the truth be known

Do you really wanna know?

--“Truth Be Known – Everybody Gets a Shot,” Newsboys

These are really two separate questions, but I put them together because the first one has a very short answer. If God actually did exist in reality, then yes, I would want to know about it. I want my beliefs to be consistent with reality. While it’s unlikely that will ever be the case for all of my beliefs at any given time (as is true for all people, since we’re all drawing our conclusions from limited data sets), I still want it to be true as much as humanly possible. So the answer to the first question is an unequivocal, unhesitating yes.

That was the easy part. The second part of the question is harder, because it’s actually incomplete. To answer the question of whether I would follow (or submit to, obey, worship, etc.) God once I became convinced that such an entity really exists, it would be necessary to have a much better understanding of what his (or her, or its) characteristics were, before being able to make any decision whether they were worthy of my praise, respect, or submission.

Of course, if there were a theist in the room right now actually asking the question, they would probably say, “well, obviously, the God that I believe in would be the one who turns out to be real.” But then, you ask ten theists (even just among the three major monotheistic religions) to describe the characteristics of God, and you’ll get ten at least subtly-different answers.

But those subtle differences can have a significant effect on how I answer this question. If the god who is actually real loves everybody, then of course I’d worship him, why wouldn’t I? But if the god who is actually real “loves” everybody, in the narcissistic sense that they get a free ticket to paradise only if they happen to believe in him (regardless of anything else they’ve done), and everyone else gets tortured for all eternity simply because they belong to the wrong religion, then no, I don’t think I could worship such a monster.

Granted, if I was truly convinced that a god like that was real, then I might still knuckle under and submit to him out of the sheer visceral fear of unending torture for all eternity (how’s that for free will?), but I wouldn’t really love or respect him. And since God is supposed to be all-knowing, he should be able to see through that, so I doubt it would make any difference anyway (unless that God really does only want people to pay him lip service).

So ultimately, as with many theistic questions, it does very much depend on “which God?” But, since there are some readers who will probably want more of a straightforward answer, I’ll fall back on my upbringing and culture making Christianity the default setting for me. At present, I don’t feel that the god described in the Bible is one I would feel morally justified in worshipping or giving my allegiance to. A God who commits genocide (over and over again) in the Old Testament, and then condemns non-believers to infinite torture for finite crimes in the New Testament, I simply cannot see that as a just and loving god.

On the other hand, if we were talking more about a C.S. Lewis type of god, a wild and fierce, but ultimately loving and truly good Aslan-type god, who only keeps hell as a place of separation for people who don’t want to be with God in a perfect paradise for all eternity, then yeah, I could see myself being able to love and respect that type of god.

But unfortunately, I don’t see that as being what the Bible describes. 

Weren't the worst dictators in modern history atheists?

This is just a quick reply I made to a reddit post; if I were still actively updating this blog, I would try make a much more thorough reply to this common argument...

It's true that two of the dictators with the highest death counts in modern history (Stalin and Mao) were atheists, but you know what else they had in common? The biggest populations they were ruling over. If a dictator is ruling a country with only half a million people, there's really no way they can kill 20 million like Stalin did. So I'd love to see someone calculate percentages of the population that various dictators killed, instead of just raw numbers. Because, let's be serious here, ISIS (the worst theocracy in Islam) would be more than happy to kill 20 million people if they had that many people to kill and still have anyone left to rule over.

What do you consider the biggest contradiction in the Bible?

Because of just how many apparent Biblical contradictions have been documented on various websites, atheists almost face “an embarrassment of riches” when asked to name a single significant contradiction they’ve found in the Bible. We’re so used to seeing them in large groups all bundled together that it’s hard to pick out just one. So in this post, I wanted to step back from linking to various pages that have long lists of contradictions, and just kinda surgically pick a couple that I consider to be some of the most dramatic.

Don't the predictable laws of nature point to a god creating them?

From where I'm standing, I see no reason why an all-powerful deity, who created the whole universe, would need to be limited by everything working the same way every time. If a being was truly all-powerful, then "micro-managing the universe" (exerting his will directly over the movement of every single atom and particle) wouldn't be any sort of strain at all. So if such a god wanted to make a billiard ball move when it was struck one time, and not move another time, and absorb the other ball into itself a third time, that would be absolutely no problem for a god. But it would be a huge problem for naturalistic physical laws. From where I'm standing, physical laws that don't have a god behind them would have to be consistent and predictable, because there's no magical entity jumping in and changing them. Without a god, atoms are just doing what atoms do, so of course they would do the same thing every time. How could it not be regular and limited to a certain range of effects? 

Now, I'll even grant you that it wouldn't make sense for a loving god to be enacting an unpredictable universe, because it would make us be essentially living in a worldwide carnival funhouse. But if you're just talking about a generic "ordering intelligence," then I see no reason why that intelligence (if it cared more about itself than humans) wouldn't just have fun being disordering instead. In other words, I feel like the percentage of possible worlds without a god, where the laws of nature are unpredictable, would be 0. Whereas, the percentage of gods who might make the laws of nature unpredictable would be much greater than 0. Therefore, I think the existence of unpredictable laws of nature would actually make it more likely that a god exists, and the existence of predictable laws of nature do not.

Are you an anti-theist?

I wouldn’t say I’m precisely an anti-theist, but I do feel some solidarity with them on a lot of issues. I believe that most people would be better off without religion, provided they had the intelligence and intellectual commitment to see that religion really isn’t necessary for things like providing a moral foundation or giving your life meaning. But there are a lot of people who simply wouldn’t get to that point if they weren’t religious. So in some ways, I guess I feel like religion almost functions as a kind of “easy mode” for providing answers to those difficult, haunting questions of existence. And, to that extent, I can’t really begrudge people that.

But in society as a whole, it doesn’t just stop there. I recently read through the 2016 Republican Party platform, and it’s loaded with appeals to the value of faith, advocating “faith-based programs,” and pushing for policies that seem to only have religious reasoning behind them. In other parts of the world, fundamentalist Muslims are committing persistent acts of terror and mass murder, because they believe their religion gives them the right to rule the world.

What would it take to convince you that Jesus rose from the dead?

This was written for the “What Would It Take” challenge (see an explanation of what that is here). Since this challenged was posed by a Christian, my references to “you” in this post should be taken as referring to someone in that demographic.

1) The first, absolutely essential, thing required to convince me that Jesus rose from the dead, is that I would have to be convinced that it is possible for people to rise (or be risen) from the dead.

I think we can both agree that is simply impossible in naturalistic terms, so it would follow that I’d have to accept the existence of the supernatural (and probably the existence of God), for a resurrection to even be possible. I do not think that I could ever be convinced in the other direction (be convinced that God exists only because I was already convinced that Jesus rose from the dead), because even William Lane Craig has admitted that resurrection is only the most plausible theory for the “minimal facts” if you already accept that some type of God does exist. (I've delved further into the problems with using miracles as evidence that God exists here.)

Of course, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition. If I became convinced that some supernatural force existed which could raise people from the dead, it still doesn’t mean that Jesus was such a person.

2) If you have first convinced me that God or the supernatural exists, then I think the additional step required would be to convince me that a historical account which includes the claim that Jesus rose from the dead was a historically accurate document. There are a few different ways I can think of that you could achieve that result:

2a) I think probably the most effective way would be to convince me that the gospels were inspired by God.

2b) Even if I didn’t believe that the gospels were inspired, I would still have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead if I was convinced that the gospels were purely-human documents that were nonetheless accurate. There’s no reason that couldn’t be possible without inspiration; they don’t necessarily have to be God-breathed for them to be conveying true events of history. Convincing me of their inspiration just seems like the most direct approach, since the belief that they are inspired seems like the most common reason that people believe they are historically accurate. But it’s not essential, so if I could be convinced that they were accurate histories without believing that they were inspired (which wouldn’t be out of the question, if I had already come to accept that some type of supernatural does exist), then I would be convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.

But bear in mind, it’s not enough to point out some historical facts that the gospels got right, and then expect me to accept the miracle claims as well. I would have to be convinced that at least one of the gospels was thoroughly accurate for this to convince me.

2c) If there were authentic non-Christian sources which reported that Jesus rose from the dead, then I would think that would be pretty compelling evidence (if I already believed that resurrection was possible). I’m including this for the sake of completeness, even though I appreciate that it’s quite a long-shot. Naturally, it only makes sense that if  someone believed that Jesus was raised from the dead, then they probably would become Christian, so then that wouldn’t be a non-Christian source anymore. 

That may seem like setting too high a standard, but I don’t think I should be expected to accept a miracle claim just based on the testimony of that religion’s adherents. There are plenty of mutually-exclusive religions which have plenty of adherents who devoutly believe in that religion’s miracle claims. I contend the reason why that’s the case (even though they can’t all be true) is that these believers first accept belief in the religion for other reasons, and then they accept belief in the miracle claim because they already believe in the religion.

Of course, I understand that in the case of the resurrection, the claim being made is that the earliest Christians (particularly the apostles) only came to believe because they directly experienced the risen Christ. But that is just a claim. Since there have been so many other religions that have sprung up over the course of human history, I cannot accept the argument that the rise of early Christianity could not be explained without postulating that they really saw Jesus risen from the dead. So, ultimately, it’s just hearsay.

That’s why I specify non-Christian sources here. Of course, I understand this is incredibly unlikely, and I’m only including it for the sake of thoroughness, but if it happened to be the case that somebody back then wrote something like, “sure, Jesus appeared to me after I saw him crucified, but heck, Caesar rose from the dead too, so I’m just gonna keep following the Roman gods, because they’re more cool,” then that would go a long way toward convincing me. Of course, you would have to further convince me that any such document was authentic, since there is an established history of the early church screwing with secular documents.

I want to say that I understand and appreciate how this answer might be frustrating to a believer. Because it make sense that anyone who did believe the resurrection was real would become a Christian, it’s bordering on the toupee fallacy to say that I’ll only consider evidence from non-Christian sources. I want to point out, though, that I did previously state that convincing me the gospels were true would be a valid way to change my mind on this issue, so I’m not completely ruling out Christian sources. I’m just saying that some random guy who happens to be Christian writing about how the resurrection was absolutely a real historical event is not gonna sway me, because of course a Christian is gonna believe that. A Mormon will just as dependably believe that Joseph Smith received the golden plates from the angel Moroni; it doesn’t mean they have actual evidence that such an event really occurred, it’s just an article of faith for that religion.