Mindshift, for those readers who don’t know him, is a skeptic and former Christian named Brandon, who posts regularly on Youtube on various subjects relating to Christianity, and whose motto is: “Following Truth Wherever It Leads!” His channel can be found here. In the video below, he critiques another video by apologist IMBeggar on the problem of evil.
Quick remarks:
IMBeggar’s argument that a perfect world would be boring would work equally well against Heaven, which Christians believe in – or against the Garden of Eden. Also, it overlooks the fact that God didn’t need to create any world at all. Finally, God could have created a world in which some forms of evil were permitted, but not others.
Brandon (Mindshift) points out in his video that many of the evils tolerated by God in the name of freedom (e.g. slavery) are actually condoned by Him in Scripture. This is a good argument against Biblical inspiration but not against theism.
The apologetic argument that we need the bad things in life to appreciate the good is unconvincing. Do we really need billions of instances of child abuse in order to appreciate the goodness of parental kindness? Do we need billions of children’s deaths to appreciate the goodness of life?
The proposal that disease and death are an automatic consequence of sin contradicts the testimony of Scripture, which declares them to be a punishment inflicted by God. Billions of women have died in childbirth during the course of history, supposedly because God declared to Eve in the Garden of Eden, “I will multiply your pains in childbirth.”
The apologetic claim that God’s intervening to control His creatures’ thoughts would cause such utter chaos in the cosmos as to render the system unworkable contradicts the express testimony of Scripture that He frequently does so. But what’s truly unforgivable is a God Who intervenes to save some individuals from the psychological distress that they are in, but leaves others in the lurch.
The claim that there would be no greatness, victory or strength in a world where God intervened to prevent bad consequences is easily refuted. For example, God could eliminate natural disasters: there is nothing “great-making” about these. Alternatively, God could prevent Satan from confusing us.
The video by IMBeggar also falls into an “all or nothing” fallacy: we have to tolerate all evils or none. This is a non sequitur.
But even these rationales for the existence of evil are not good enough, so IMBeggar introduces immortality as a way of remedying the injustices of this world. This is tantamount to an admission that his earlier theodicies fail. Furthermore, it invites the objection that Heaven would be boring, since there is no suffering there. And it leaves unanswered the objection that a Hell from which there can be no escape is morally outrageous, as there is no possibility of rehabilitation.
Finally, the plan for the Creator to come down and live among His own creatures to show them the right way to live is a clumsy one. Even today, there are some who have not heard the Christian message. Moreover, it leaves unanswered the question: how am I supposed to know which of the world’s multiple religions is the right one? Can people who don’t know the Christian faith is true be held responsible for their choices? Do these people deserve Hell?
Wrapping up, Brandon observes that the ultimate purpose of IMBeggar’s world system is to create a testing ground to see which of God’s creatures would make willing and grateful slaves, and to reward these and fry the rest. But a world in which a large proportion of God’s creatures are failures is itself a failure.
My thoughts:
I think Brandon has convincingly exposed the inadequacies of a standard Christian theodicy. None of the proposals put forward by IMBeggar really work.
What Brandon has not done is refute theism. It is certainly possible to believe in God and immortality without believing in an eternal Hell, and many Christians do. Also left unexplored is the notion of reincarnation – although one still wants to ask why there was so much suffering in nature from the get-go. Finally, as regards horrendous suffering, the video overlooks the possibility that some individuals may freely choose to be reincarnated in a world where this hellish kind of suffering might befall them, as a form of character-building. Of course, all too often, horrendous suffering turns out to be not soul-making but soul-breaking, but a theist could argue that there is at least a possibility that it could build virtue in some people.
I’ll leave it there for now. What does everyone think?
Hi VJ
This is a very difficult argument for both sides. What I noticed is that in the comments of both videos that most commenters agreed with the video they watched.
I do agree that “this world would be boring” objection to deterministic thinking needs to be changed. There are better arguments against determinism. Determinism takes away purpose for the beings that are bound by determinism.
Hi, Vincent! It’s been a while.
I watched IMBeggar’s video (14 minutes) but not Brandon’s commentary (54 minutes), so I can’t address Brandon’s points beyond those you mention in your OP.
My first impression after watching the video was that IMBeggar definitely doesn’t understand programming. As a former programmer yourself, I’m sure you’ve noticed some of the flaws.
Some observations:
1. He thinks the simulated world would be boring if the bots were deterministic, lacking free will, but as any experienced programmer knows, even simple deterministic programs can surprise you with their behavior, so a deterministic simulation as complicated as the world itself would be guaranteed to surprise the engineers. They wouldn’t be bored at all, and indeed, most deterministic simulations surprise their creators — otherwise, there would be little point in running them.
2. Simulations that attempt to incorporate randomness typically end up being deterministic anyway since they mostly use pseudorandom number generators, which are themselves deterministic. If you seed the generators the same way each time, you’ll get the same simulation results. That doesn’t mean that the engineers won’t be surprised at the way that the simulation unfolds. Far from it.
3. An omniscient Programmer, on the other hand, would be bored with a deterministic world. He’d be able to foresee the results without even running it. But wouldn’t he be bored with any world, deterministic or not? If he were truly omniscient, he’d be able to foresee even the random events and the free choices of the bots, so nothing would surprise him. Even if you adopt a theology in which the Programmer lacks foreknowledge of random events and the bots’ free choices, he’d still be bored. He might not be able to anticipate the bots’ choices at any given time, but he would be able to anticipate the range of choices available to them at every moment, which means that as an omniscient being, he’d be aware of every possible history that might unfold from the beginning of time onward. The only thing that would change when re-running the simulation is which of the possible histories would unfold, but it would always be a history that the Programmer had anticipated was possible. Ho hum.
4. Let’s suppose contra the above that Beggar is right and that if free choice were possible and existed, the Programmer would find the world interesting. Would that morally justify a world in which horrendous suffering existed? Merely because the Programmer wanted to be entertained?
5. The kind of freedom Beggar envisions is libertarian free will, but there is no way for the programmers (or the Programmer) to endow the bots with free will of that sort. The reason is simple: that type of free will is incoherent and cannot exist. If determinism precludes free will, then so does randomness, because neither of those is under the control of the agent. The agent is never the ultimate source of its supposedly free choices.
6. Beggar confuses the simulation itself with the world being simulated when he suggests that bugs in the simulation would cause disease in the simulated world. Those are two different levels of abstraction, so it’s far more complicated than that.
7. He suggests that granting free will to the bots somehow causes the proliferation of bugs in the system, but he never explains why. Again, it’s a confusion of levels: the simulation is not the same as the world being simulated. There is nothing about free will in the simulated world that requires the existence of bugs in the simulator.
8. He claims that the introduction of free will into the world is the cause of all evil and suffering, apparently not realizing that there’s plenty of suffering that has purely natural causes. Earthquakes aren’t caused by human free will.
9. He argues that if the bots are constrained to only do good things, they don’t possess free will. But what if they’re allowed a range of choices, while only being prevented from making evil ones? How is that not freedom? Freedom doesn’t mean that we can literally do anything we want. I can’t flap my arms and fly, no matter how much I’d like to. Kim Jong Un can’t press his fingers on his temples and vaporize the US with his thoughts alone, though I’m sure he’d like to. Does that mean, in Beggar’s opinion, that Kim and I don’t have free will? If those constraints are acceptable and don’t deprive us of our free will, then what’s wrong with preventing the bots from doing evil?
10. He thinks that an eternity in heaven somehow compensates for the horrendous suffering of innocent people in this world, since the suffering is only finite while the reward is infinite. That reasoning is bogus.
Consider a world in which you, an innocent person, have two choices. 1) you can go to heaven immediately and experience an eternity of bliss, or 2) you can suffer unspeakably for eons. Trillions of years of agony without a single moment of respite. But then you get to go to heaven for an eternity of bliss, and an eternity is infinitely longer than even trillions of years.
Which would you choose? If it were true that eternal bliss in heaven could compensate for the horrendous but finite suffering that some experience in our actual world, then it would be able to compensate for the trillions of years of agony in my scenario above. Any finite period, no matter how long, is infinitesimal compared to eternity. If so, then option #2 should be as good as option #1, and there’s no reason to prefer one over the other. But it isn’t as good, and so any rational non-masochistic person would vastly prefer option #1. Trillions of years of pain can’t be erased even by an eternity of happiness.
If libertarian free will assumes that every little critter should have the powers of God, then of course that free will does not exist and cannot. But how about human will — a range of individual free will roughly ending at your fingertips and toes? This free will, when exercised, has its consequences that may impinge on the same individual, and may have dire consequences on more individuals when abused.
I don’t see any problem of evil that would somehow become a problem for theism. Humans like their free will. Everybody who thinks that paradise or heaven is boring, should stop whining about evil in the current world, because this evil is pretty much man-made. If climate scientists are to be believed, then even a good bunch of natural catastrophes are man-made. Evil in the world is in proportion with human free will, so there is no problem about it.
Hi, Erik. You wrote:
That form of free will is incoherent too.
While it’s not a problem for all forms of theism, it definitely is for theologies that regard God as morally perfect, omnipotent, and omniscient. If he’s morally perfect, he’ll want to alleviate suffering and eliminate evil. If he’s omnipotent, he’s capable of doing so. If he’s omniscient, he’ll be aware of every instance of evil or suffering in the world.
According to Beggar, the inability to do evil would mean that free will didn’t exist and the world would be boring. By that logic, heaven is boring because the people there can’t choose to do evil, at least in the common Christian understanding of what heaven is like.
Earthquakes are a natural evil — they cause tremendous suffering — but they aren’t man-made (except for the ones caused by fracking). Why does God allow them?
No such thing as “natural evil”. Evilness requires intent. If course, if God creates intentionally, there you go. God is evil, presuming the “one drop” rule applies.
Alan:
Wikipedia:
Well, that settles it, I guess. 😏
Alan:
That and the zillion other places where philosophers, theologians, apologists and skeptics use the term.
keiths,
Fairies have also been much discussed.
Alan,
Like it or not, “natural evil” is the standard term used by the people who work in this area and understand this stuff.
But feel free to write angry letters to the know-nothing hacks at Britannica, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy decrying their use of the term and explaining that there is no such thing as natural evil. Let us know how they respond.
We’re back.
Windmills for everyone.
petrushka:
Lol. To tilt at, or to kill birds and cause cancer?
Well, out of courtesy to you, I googled “Stanford Philosphy Natural Evil*.and had a look at this page on kinds of evil
Outside of religious contexts, however, many philosophers (and people generally) will be reluctant to characterize hurricanes, diseases, and meteor strikes as a source of “evil”. The very idea of natural evil seems most at home in theological debates: can the Author of Nature be supremely good, wise, and powerful and yet still create a world that contains so much pain and suffering, not to mention Category Five hurricanes, animal predation, and Alzheimer’s Disease?
I don’t see anything to get angry about or disagree with here. “Natural” evil is a non-issue that evaporates outside a religious context.
But let me offer some examples: the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD,, the earthquake that destroyed Lisbon on All Saints Day, 1755, the Indonesian tsunami in 2004. Where does the evilness reside in those events?
Windmills? Are they natural? Trump? Is he evil? Is he an evil? Does he personify evilness? Or is he just weird?
colewd:
Far more difficult for the theist than for the skeptic. Specifically, it’s difficult for those theists (including most Christians) who believe in an God who is omnibenevolent (perfectly loving), omniscient, and omnipotent. The problem of evil is the single most devastating argument against (omni)theism, in my opinion.
It isn’t just “my side” that believes this. William Lane Craig, a prominent apologist for Christianity, writes
Theologian John Stott says
Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft states
This is borne out by the poor quality of theistic counterarguments to the probem of evil, including those presented in the IMBeggar video.
Once you have decided what an evil is.
vjtorley:
Here’s Christian philospher J.P. Moreland’s attempt at addressing that problem:
It’s a pure rationalization. J.P. Moreland’s conscience tells him that it would be wrong for God to send someone to hell simply for the “sin” of never having heard the gospel, so he projects his own morality onto God.
In another thread, I wrote:
vjtorley:
A theist could resort to that argument, but it depends on the reality of reincarnation, which is a problematic and heterodox concept for many if not most Christians. In any case, it strikes me as as much of a rationalization as the Moreland quote above.
Alan:
This entire thread resides inside a religious context. The two videos, Vincent’s OP, and the comments all address the problem of evil, which is a theological problem, not a secular one. Your own quote from the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy includes the following:
Even you understood that earlier in the thread, when you wrote:
You are an atheist, yet you mention God in that quote. In referring to God, you are assuming a theistic perspective. In referring to natural evil, I am doing the same. What’s the problem?
No, and neither am I conceding the existence of “natural evil” by using words in a sentence, such as “the concept of natural evil is an oxymoron”.
keiths:
Alan:
So when you wrote
…and mentioned God twice, that was not a theistic statement?
This isn’t difficult. To assume someone else’s perspective for the sake of argument — which we commonly do — does not mean that we agree with their beliefs. You and I don’t believe that God exists, but the sentence “God created the universe” is intelligible to us. We know what a theist means by it. The word “God” has a specific referent. We (or at least I) are capable of adopting a theistic perspective arguendo.
That’s important, because the problem of evil is a problem for theists, but not for atheists. To show that it’s a problem, you therefore have to adopt the theistic perspective and reason within that framework. You don’t have to believe in God, but you have to consider the perspective of someone who does. If you can’t do that, you miss out on some of the very best arguments against theism.
My difficulty is I have yet to have an interaction with a self-professed religious person who persuades me that there’s such a thing. I’ll admit I haven’t gone out of my way to seek such.
Ah. I’m more concerned with actions rather than beliefs. Seems to me beliefs are mostly harmless until acted on and exploited by populists. Who’s riding the tiger: Donald Trump or his evangelical supporters?
This is also the difficulty with Trump. Nobody has persuaded him that he lost the 2020 election. Therefore he won, right?
The analogy breaks down in that I’m not bothered if others gain solace or comfort from religious belief.
Alan:
Erik:
Alan:
You’re missing Erik’s point. He’s analogizing you to Trump, and your belief that God doesn’t exist to Trump’s belief that he won the election. He’s arguing that just as “nobody has persuaded me otherwise” is not a good reason for Trump to persist in his belief that he won the election, it’s also not a good reason for you to persist in your belief that God doesn’t exist.
Alan:
There are zillions of counterexamples:
— the belief that this bottle contains water, when in fact it is hydrochloric acid
— the belief that the ice on a lake is thick enough to support your weight, when it isn’t
— a suicide bomber’s belief that his sacrifice will earn him a heavenly reward, including 72 virgins
— the belief that mental illnesses are caused by demons
…and so on.
Alan:
That shouldn’t be a difficulty. No one has persuaded me, either. I don’t believe in God. Nevertheless, I’m capable of taking the perspective of a theist for the sake of argument. Likewise, I’m capable of taking the perspective of a flat-earther without myself believing the earth is flat.
The ability to take someone else’s perspective opens up arguments of this form:
(In the lingo of propositional logic, this is just an application of modus tollens. (P -> Q) -> (~Q -> ~P).)
If you express a stripped down version of the problem of evil in that form, you get something like this:
Using that same form, a counterargument to the flat earth theory might look like this:
In both cases you take the perspective of your interlocutor, draw out the implications, and show that reality doesn’t conform to those implications. The perspective-taking isn’t optional if you want to employ this sort of argument.
I got that. My point is that Trump is willing to act on that belief in inciting the subverting of election results. I am not interested in subverting or acting against other people’s religious beliefs. Thus I am not Trump.
So the analogy is precisely on point. You have no argument other than that you are clueless of and you do not care about the topic, same as Trump who does not care about the facts of the election.
Anyway, nice of you to chime in with your perspective of ignorance, showing your solid passion to learn nothing ever.
This is why I mentioned the 1755 All Saints Day earthquake that wrecked Lisbon. The reported soul-searching by Catholic church leaders and the remaining population was intense for a while (the red light district was comparatively lightly damaged, while packed churches collapsed completely with fires wreaking further mayhem) but the city was gradually restored and its remaining population eventually recovered.
There was no burgeoning of atheism subsequently.
You’re not offering to explain the benefits of religious belief then, Erik.
Alan,
This thread reminds me of a similar debate we had years ago over whether evil exists (evil generally, not natural evil). You claimed that “evil” can rightly be used as an adjective but not as a noun. If I remember correctly, you even went so far as to claim that using “evil” as a noun was actually meaningless. Do you still believe those things?
Alan:
Erik’s analogy doesn’t concern the beliefs of others. It’s about Trump’s belief that he didn’t lose the election and your belief that God doesn’t exist. He’s arguing that just as “nobody has persuaded me otherwise” is not a good reason for Trump to persist in his belief that he won the election, it’s also not a good reason for you to persist in your belief that God doesn’t exist.
The beliefs of others don’t feature in his analogy.
keiths,
Yes, indeed. I proposed using “evilness” to make the distinction clear. Discussions at Uncommon Descent suffered from this temptation by other commenters to shift seamlessly between evilness as a concept and whether certain acts (eating babies rings a bell) could be reasonably described as evil.
My rejection of all gods is based on the obvious fact that humans invented them. Human stories: some poetic, some farcical, some unpleasant, but all human invention.
Also mores, morality, civilisation, etc. All human invention. No reason to believe any such things, right? Your contribution is persistent wilful ignorance. Let’s dumb things down to very dumb level and then conclude things are very dumb.
This is moral bias towards compassion, forgetting justice. Justice would require evil to be paid back, not only alleviated.
Interestingly, there is another extreme occasionally proposed: an instant karma kind of world. Nothing between action and consequence, no room for compassion.
Neither of these worlds is the case. People like to make up gods in their own image, but the world does not work this way (and God neither).
Alan:
Whether religious beliefs are beneficial is a separate question from whether they are true.
keiths:
Alan:
“Evilness” is an abstract noun just as “evil” is. I don’t see why the latter is problematic if the former is not. Plus “evilness” is clunky.
Regarding your claim that “evil” is meaningless as a noun, I have no trouble understanding the meaning of sentences like “Sodom and Gomorrah were hotbeds of evil”, “Goodness is the opposite of evil”, or “Genocide is the epitome of evil”. Do you?
keiths:
Erik:
Which highlights another problem with the concept of an omniGod. God can’t be both perfectly loving and perfectly just. Perfect love and perfect justice are incompatible.
To forgive is a loving act, but to demand punishment isn’t. And for Christians, there’s the additional problem of Christ being punished for our sins. How is that just? Imagine the outcry if an innocent person could volunteer to be executed or go to prison for life so that a serial killer could go free. It violates our sense of justice. If so, how is it just when Christ suffers so that we are not punished?
You are misled, Alan. You seem to assign random events that spring from the laws of nature whose control is yet to be determined to God. Why would you do that?
keiths,
Welcome back, keiths!
How are you doing?
The best way to counter my suggestion is provide a definition.
Hmm.I understand this is a facile level of story telling at work.
Binarism. Good is as meaningless as evil without qualification. Good for whom?
Communication is a skill that improves woth practice.
No, there are no gods. I don’t know the ultimate cause of this universe, or if there is one
The destruction of the Aztec civilization? A great evil or a great good? If we could ask them, I wonder what the subjugated peoples that joined the Spanish in destroying the Aztecs and their great pyramid would say. Frying pans and fires?
J-Mac:
Hi, J-Mac. I’m doing well. I have some free time these days and decided to swing by and see what’s going on here at TSZ.
Looking around, I see you’re still on your anti-vax jag, lol.
Alan,
You’ve missed the point again. Reread what I wrote:
You jumped to the conclusion that those sentences reflect my opinions, when in fact I was just giving examples of sentences containing the word “evil” which I have no trouble understanding. As my comment makes clear.
Your claim that the noun “evil” is meaningless is therefore incorrect.
So is reading comprehension. And spelling.
Alan:
The Lisbon earthquake is a perfect example of natural evil. Theists (of the ‘omni’ sort) believe in an omnipotent God. An omnipotent God would have the power to thwart earthquakes or to refrain from creating an earthquake-prone world in the first place. Instead, he both created a world that was earthquake-prone and stood by without intervening when the earthquake happened. He didn’t even bother to warn the citizens ahead of time. As a result, there were tens of thousands of deaths.
It’s extremely difficult for theists to explain why a perfectly loving God would act that way, which is why the problem of evil is taken so seriously by philosophers, theologians, apologists, and skeptics.
keiths,
I notice you didn’t offer a definition of evil(ness). Though I agree that the 1755 Lisbon earthquake was widely interpreted as an act of god against the evil(ness) of the inhabitants, as well as that act of god being evil itself. Of course it was neither.
And communication is what matters. Comprehension (listening and understanding) is a key element of communication. Spelling, not so much.
Alan:
That’s because I didn’t need to, having already made my point. I gave you three perfectly intelligible sentences, all of which use “evil” as a noun. The fact that those sentences are intelligible shows that the noun “evil” is not meaningless, contrary to your claim.
I don’t agree that those examples demonstrated a consistent or useful word and meaning.