Tamagotchi, J. K. Rowling and God: A Short Essay on the Problem of Evil

Catholic philosopher (and former atheist) Edward Feser might be many things, but he certainly isn’t dull. Nor is he afraid of grappling with the big questions. In the latest issue of First Things, he discusses the problem of evil in a wide-ranging interview with Connor Grubaugh, where he talks about his three favorite books in the field of contemporary analytic philosophy. Feser (who is Associate Professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College) is a Thomist, for whom the claim that the existence of evil and suffering constitutes evidence against God’s existence reflects a faulty conception of the relationship between creature and Creator. God is not just a Being who interacts with us on a personal level; rather, He is the very Author of our existence. And just as an author (such as J. K. Rowling) has no obligations to the characters in her stories, so too, God has no obligations towards us. Consequently there can be no question of Him ever doing us an injustice.

In today’s essay, I’d like to explain why I think Professor Feser’s solution is unsatisfactory, and why I think the problem of evil is much more serious than Feser supposes. I won’t be proposing my own solution, however. All I can do is briefly outline how I believe the problem can be defused, and why I don’t think it’s fatal for theism.

Back to Feser’s interview. Feser begins by nominating Brian Davies’s The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil as one of his favorite books on analytical philosophy, from a Thomistic perspective. He explains why:

This is the best book in print on the problem of evil. It develops two key Thomistic insights: First, you cannot properly understand the problem of evil without understanding the nature of God’s causal relationship to the world. Second, you cannot properly understand the problem of evil if you conceive of God in anthropomorphic terms—as something like a human agent, only bigger and stronger. If the world is like a story, God is not a character in the story alongside other characters; he is like the author of the story. And just as it makes no sense to think of an author as being unjust to his characters, neither does it make sense to think of God as being unjust to his creatures. While God is perfectly good, it is a deep mistake to think that this entails that he is a kind of cosmic Boy Scout, and that the problem of evil is a question about whether he deserves all his merit badges. Davies also shows how, from a Thomistic point of view, the approach to the problem of evil taken by contemporary philosophers of religion like Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne is misguided and presupposes too anthropomorphic a conception of God…

…[T]oo many people think of God’s goodness as if it were a kind of super-virtuousness. As Davies likes to put it, they think of it as if it were a matter of God’s being unusually “well-behaved.” It’s as if they look at God as a heroic character in the novel, whereas the atheist who is troubled by the suffering in the world looks at God as a villainous character who behaves badly. But God is not a character in the novel in the first place.

There are several problems with this statement. First of all, for a Christian, Professor Feser’s assertion that God is not a character in the novel is contradicted by the fact of the Incarnation, when God became man and lived among us. Feser would surely acknowledge this, and I imagine his response would be that in mounting the above defense of God’s goodness in a world marred by evil, he is merely defending classical theism (belief in a simple, transcendent, timeless, infinite Creator), rather than the more specific claims of Christianity. Feser might add that evil – both natural and moral – predates the Incarnation, and that even after the Fall, God did not have to choose to live among us. Classical theists maintain that even in a world without Christ, belief in God would still be rational. We therefore need to look for a more general solution to the problem of evil than the Incarnation.

The second problem with Feser’s “author-character” analogy is that he himself has exposed its fatal flaw. Several years ago, he wrote a post in response to a tentative suggestion of mine that maybe we are all characters in a story written by God – not an ordinary story, but an interactive one, which allows us to interact with our Author, rather like the Tamagotchi electronic pets of the 1990s, which asked their owner to feed them and “died” if their owner neglected them. Thus although we exist within God’s storybook, we possess genuine (God-given) libertarian agency: we actually write some of the story ourselves.

In response, Feser argued that while God’s causality is basically like that of the author of the story who decides that the characters will interact in such-and-such a way (rather than that of a mere character in the story), nevertheless “the world is not literally a mere story and we are not literally fictional characters.” For one thing, argued Feser, “there is an obvious difference between us and fictional characters: we exist and they don’t.” What’s more, “the characters in a story do not literally ‘interact’ with the author … for the simple reason that they do not exist and thus cannot interact with anything.” Finally, “because the characters do not exist but are purely fictional, they are not true causes the way real things are. Everything they seem to do is really done by their author.” What this means is that if the storybook analogy were literally true, none of us really act at all: rather, it is God Who really performs our actions. The storybook analogy is bad theology, too: “If we and everything else in the universe are, in effect, mere ideas in the mind of a divine Author, then the distinction between God and the world collapses.”

For Feser, as a Thomist, the reason why fictional characters cannot be said to exist is that God has not bestowed their essences with the fire of existence, which would endow them with objective reality, making them participants in God’s Unlimited Being. Phoenixes have fully-fledged essences; what they lack is existence, since God has not bothered to create them. (For my own part, I find the Scholastic essence-existence distinction philosophically muddled, and I explain the non-existence of phoenixes by virtue of the fact that no matter in our universe currently happens to realize the form of a living phoenix – a form which, incidentally, is inadequately defined, as the bird’s anatomy and biological processes are nowhere specified in its definition. But I digress.)

The key point, however, is that despite Feser’s insistence that “we are not literally fictional characters,” Feser’s storybook analogy is fundamental to his account of why God is not culpable for allowing evil to exist: as he puts it in his interview with First Things, “just as it makes no sense to think of an author as being unjust to his characters, neither does it make sense to think of God as being unjust to his creatures.” Unfortunately, Feser never tells us why it doesn’t make sense to speak of an author as being unjust to his characters. One obvious answer to this question is: “because the characters are fictional, not real.” But if that’s the answer, then an atheist could retort that since human beings, unlike Voldemort and Draco Malfoy, are real, it is possible after all for God to act unjustly towards His human creatures. Only human authors have no obligations towards their characters, because they are not real.

Another possible answer to the question of why an author can never act unjustly towards his characters is simply that they depend entirely on the author for their being (with a small “b.”) But the premise, “B depends entirely on A” in no way implies the conclusion, “A has no obligations towards B.” All that follows is that A has no enforceable obligations towards B – at least, none that B can enforce. But an unenforceable obligation is still an obligation. Additionally, there seems to be nothing preventing A from voluntarily assuming obligations towards B, in the very act of creating B. (For instance, A might promise to protect B from other characters that might harm him.) In that case, if A fails to meet those responsibilities then he could be said to have failed in His duty towards B, and to have committed an injustice towards B, by breaking his promise to B.

I can think of no other reason why Feser would maintain that an author can never act unjustly towards his characters. That being the case, it is by no means evident that God’s being the Creator of the universe geets Him off the hook, morally speaking, as far as culpability for natural and moral evil is concerned.

I might also add that if it makes no sense to speak of an author being unjust to his characters, as Professor Feser contends, then by the same token, it makes no sense to speak of his being just in His dealings with them. Yet Feser, as a devout Catholic, believes that God is perfectly just, that He rewards the virtuous in the hereafter and that He punishes evildoers in Hell. This doesn’t fit the storybook analogy: J. K. Rowling, for instance, may have written her book with a happy ending for Harry Potter and a not-so-happy ending for the characters who attempted to harm him, but it would be absurd to speak of her as “punishing” Voldemort, or for that matter, Draco Malfoy. Authors don’t punish their characters; nor do they reward them.

Another obvious flaw in the storybook analogy for God’s relationship to us is that when an author writes a book, the interaction is all one-way: from author to book. The characters have no say as to how they will end up in the story. Humans, on the other hand, can interact with their Creator, in prayer. (That was why I preferred the Tamagotchi analogy to the storybook analogy, as the characters can ask their owner to feed them.) What’s more, the choices humans make in this life will (according to many theists) affect their fate in the hereafter. Unlike the characters in a novel, we do have a say in our future destiny.

However, the biggest flaw in Professor Feser’s storybook analogy is that it fails to account for the fact that humans can defy the will of their Maker, by sinning. Now, Aquinas writes that God “in no way wills the evil of sin, which is the privation of right order towards the divine good” (Summa Theologica I, q. 19, a. 9) – a statement to which Feser would surely assent. However, this vitiates the analogy between God and the author of a storybook, as an individual named Thomas points out in a comment on Feser’s latest article in First Things:

The author metaphor is a poor one for the relation between God, and particularly ill-suited for the problem of evil…

God can cause the free choices of a human being without determining that choice to this or that; authors cannot. Authors are equally the cause of a character’s good deeds and misdeeds, and a novel’s characters cannot be said to defy the will of the novelist. Human beings, on the other hand, can defy the will of God…

If the author metaphor is useful at all in the context of the context of the problem of evil, it is only by contrasting God with a novelist.

Feser apparently overlooks the significance of this point. He writes that God’s being the ultimate source of all causality “is no more incompatible with human freedom than the fact that an author decides that, as part of a mystery story, a character will freely choose to commit a murder, is incompatible with the claim that the character in question really committed the murder freely.” But all that this line of argument (if it is successful) demonstrates is that the doctrine of predestination is compatible with a kind of freedom. It does not address the question of how the characters in a story can legitimately be said to defy the will of their author – and in particular, how humans can be said to defy the Will of their Maker.

I conclude that only if the human story is not pre-determined by God, but genuinely open, can humans be said to defy the will of their Maker.

So far, I have been concerned merely to argue that Professor Feser’s contention that God, as the Author of the cosmos, is not morally culpable for allowing evil, rests on a faulty analogy. However, the fact that the analogy is defective does not imply that God is morally culpable for not preventing evil. The onus is still on the atheist to explain exactly why a Transcendent Being would have such an obligation towards His sentient and/or sapient creatures.

Atheists commonly argue that if God were anything like a human parent, He would protect us from irreparable harm, regardless of whether it resulted from death, permanent injury or trauma. God would also protect us from evils (including horrific experiences) which are in no way good for us. And since God is supposed to be all-loving, all-wise and all-powerful, there is no reason why He could not accomplish all of these things right now.

In reply, a theist could point out that while God is indeed said to be more loving than any human parent, His obligations towards us are not those of a human parent. “Why not?” you may ask. The answer is that parental obligations are purely natural, arising from the fact that parents are human animals who have procreated a child, and that procreation is a basic human good which fulfills our human potential, and which may be legitimately pursued as an end in itself. While God may indeed have obligations towards His creatures, they are not natural obligations, because God’s voluntary decision to create does not spring from His nature; nor is it necessary, in order to complete or fulfill His nature. God would still be God, even if He had never chosen to make this world. He requires nothing outside Him, in order to realize His full potential.

It follows from the above reasoning that the atheistic argument that God must (if He is all-wise and all-powerful) be less loving than a human parent, because He fails to protect His creatures in ways that a human parent would normally be obliged to do, is invalid. God does not have natural parental obligations.

I argued above that God could still assume voluntary obligations towards us, in His decision to create us. Nevertheless, the precise content of those obligations, and the circumstances under which they would come into effect, remain unclear, as God has not publicly revealed them to us, so far. We are therefore not entitled to conclude from God’s silence that He is indifferent to our suffering. All we can say is that apparently, He doesn’t want to end it now.

However, there is nothing to prevent God, if He so wishes, from assuming voluntary parental obligations towards His creatures at some future date (via some Grand Restoration of the cosmos), or on an individual basis, preserving each sentient and/or sapient creature from annihilation, in some hereafter of which we have as yet no conception. If God chose either (or both) of these options, then He could fittingly be called all-loving. However, if God chose neither of these options, then such an ascription would seem pointless, as it would have no factual basis. The most we could say then would be that God is self-loving, like Aristotle’s God.

Loving or not, it cannot be denied that God is providential, in His dealings with the human race as a whole. Even in subsistence societies, life is precarious but generally not hellish: for instance, the Piraha people of the Amazon live very simply, but manage to stay extraordinarily happy: they live in the present, and do not dwell on the past or future. And the fact that we now live in a world in which the average human being will live to the age of 70, get a decent education, earn a living, fall in love, marry, procreate, and enjoy decades of good health before dying, should make us reflect. Science and free-market economics have improved our lot, but the amazing thing is that we live in a world in which so many scientific discoveries are possible, and in which knowledge can be shared rapidly. We have Providence to thank for that. Even our ability to make and use fire rests on a dazzling array of features built into the human body and the planet. Bad as things are at times, they could be much, much worse. The mere fact that any of us are able to enjoy anything at all should be a cause of wonder.

I’d like to conclude with two short quotes – one from Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, and the other from the Discourses of Epictetus:

I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the Power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter, than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence, to a humble and grateful mind. Not to instance great things, the mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from milk, and wool from skins – who formed and planned this? No one, say you. O surprising irreverence and dullness! (Book I, 16)

I’d like to wish my American readers a happy Independence Day.

190 thoughts on “Tamagotchi, J. K. Rowling and God: A Short Essay on the Problem of Evil

  1. Hi Vincent,

    As you know, the problem of evil is one of my favorite theological subjects. I’m heartened to see that you’re still actively grappling with it. It will be important, I suspect, on your road to deconversion.

    Having been down that road already, I have to warn you: the rationales you are seeking — ones that will allow you, with full intellectual justification, to regard God as both powerful and loving toward us — don’t exist.

    Your argument from “natural parental obligations” doesn’t fit the bill.

    Remember the downed Jordanian pilot who was burned alive, in a cage, by ISIS? Suppose you’d had the power to intervene, at no danger to yourself or others, to save the pilot from his agonizing death. Would you have refused, saying “He’s not my son. I have no natural parental obligations toward him. Let him burn”?

    Your God let him burn.

  2. phoodoo,

    You must be pretty desperate to argue that being burned alive is like having dandruff.

    Phail.

  3. Hi keiths,

    I have a natural human obligation to save a drowning man – or a burning one.

  4. keiths: As you know, the problem of evil is one of my favorite theological subjects.

    Yet you’ve shown no familiarity with it beyond the “but why” of a 5 yr old.

    Your question makes it appear as if you’ve never read about the good Samaritan.

  5. There is no problem of evil in enagelical christianity. the true and smartest faith if i may say so.
    The bible is cleart. Satyan and man created evil. Attacking god and his love system.
    All evil on earth is done by Satan with man. God does no evil .
    he only stops it out of love.
    However its not just for him to stop evil. Jesus came to make it just in the endtimes.
    In fact jesus(God) had to die to defeat evil. gods hands were that tied.
    God stopping evil, most of the time, is entirely a unjust but loving act. jUst like jesus death on the cross.
    There is no evil problem. just religions that get christianity wrong always.

  6. keiths: You must be pretty desperate to argue that being burned alive is like having dandruff.

    Which is why you just don’t get it. You think there’s a scale of better or worse. But you can’t say why. You can’t justify your claims. Phoodoo is on to you.

  7. vjtorley:

    I have a natural human obligation to save a drowning man – or a burning one.

    What if it were a dog, not a human, in danger of being burned alive? If you had the power to intervene — at no danger to yourself or others — to save the dog from his agonizing death, would you refuse? Would you say “He’s not of my species. I have no natural human obligations toward him. Let him burn”? And then go on to describe yourself as a loving person?

    Whether it’s a dog or a Jordanian pilot, “let him burn” is not the loving response.

    Your God lets him burn.

  8. Mung,

    We’ve been over this again and again. I don’t think you’ll ever get it — or allow yourself to.

    The problem of evil exists for anyone who believes

    a) in a good and loving God who
    b) is powerful enough to prevent evil, by the theist’s standard of evil, but
    c) fails to do so.

    Would you let a person or a dog burn to death in a cage, despite being able to prevent it at no danger to yourself or others?

    If yes, then what is wrong with you?

    If no, then why do you excuse your supposedly loving God when he does the same thing?

  9. Byers:

    In fact jesus(God) had to die to defeat evil. gods hands were that tied.

    And even that didn’t do the trick, because evil is still with us.

    You worship a weak God, Robert.

  10. vjtorley:
    Hi keiths,

    I have a natural human obligation to save a drowning man – or a burning one.

    What is the basis for this natural obligation? Could you expand?

  11. I’m mildly curious if anyone can explain the problem of “evil” as a noun. The example of the rape of Nanking as an icon of evil fails, in my view. “Evil” is no more of a human construct than “God” or “error”. That errors happen is no justification that “error” exists.

  12. keiths,

    The problem of evil DOES NOT exist, if you believe

    A) Somethings must be better than other things, in a world of choice.
    B) If you believe in a finite world.
    C) If someone is mildly curious enough to contemplate the nature of good.

  13. Alan,

    I’m mildly curious if anyone can explain the problem of “evil” as a noun. The example of the rape of Nanking as an icon of evil fails, in my view. “Evil” is no more [sic] of a human construct than “God” or “error”. That errors happen is no justification that “error” exists.

    I explained this to you in the earlier thread:

    Alan,

    What argument?

    This one, which I am now presenting for the fifth time:

    I picked the bayonetting of babies at Nanking as an example that we could presumably all agree was evil. If it’s evil, then we have an instance of evil; and if we have an instance of evil, then evil exists (although this appears to baffle Alan).

    And:

    The amazing thing about this discussion is that both Alan and petrushka think that to deploy abstract nouns like “evil”, “debt”, and “nepotism” is somehow inevitably fallacious, when in fact they are supremely useful and practically indispensable.

    To use an abstract noun is not invariably to commit the fallacy of reification. The fallacy only occurs when the abstractum is treated as if it were concrete. That does not happen when accountants talk about the debt on a balance sheet, when commentators discuss nepotism in politics, or when philosophers talk about the existence of evil as evidence against a loving God.

    Even more amusing is that Alan and petrushka both commit the supposed fallacy they are warning against, freely and with abandon. Consider Alan’s use of the word ‘rancour’, for instance. I guess rancor exists, but evil doesn’t.

    Too funny.

  14. phoodoo,

    The problem of evil DOES NOT exist, if you believe

    A) Somethings must be better than other things, in a world of choice.
    B) If you believe in a finite world.
    C) If someone is mildly curious enough to contemplate the nature of good.

    See if you can flesh that out into an actual argument.

    In the meantime, would you have intervened to save the Jordanian pilot from a horrifying death, or would you have said “Let him burn,” as your God did?

  15. phoodoo,

    I see that you’re running away from my questions.

    I think I know why, and I’ll bet others have figured it out too.

  16. Every now and then we get the Hollywood version of guardian angles.

    That is, the concept becomes fashionable in pop lit.

    I’ve always been offended by the concept. In its most offensive form, someone whose troubles are relatively trivial is rescued.

  17. phoodoo:
    keiths,

    Keiths hates dandruff.And dogs that bite.

    Maybe you can convince VJ.

    “Dogs that bite”.

    It ate the face of a new-born baby, and an omnipotent God could have prevented that.

  18. Seems to me the problem of evil forces theists to renounce the personal God that made us in His image. I never understood how that can be reconciled with perfect transcendence anyway.

    It’s like whenever convenient, God is personal, interacts with us, you can even have a personal relationship with Him, answers prayers, sends His son to get us back on track..etc..

    But when arguments like the problem of evil are put forth, or someone asks for empirical evidence of God’s existence, all of a sudden God is transcendent, imperceptible, inscrutable: he works in mysterious ways.

  19. phoodoo: It also could have prevented dandruff. By never giving life.

    Everyone has their complaints.

    Everyone can make that excuse.

    Yes, I could have helped that man not die of thirst, but everyone has their complaints. So what if I have lots of excess wealth, why should I give anyone else anything?

    Your view of God is in direct conflict with the christian view on charity.

  20. Yeah, phoodoo is too coward to answer the challenges to his petty conception of good and evil and how it applies to this purported God.

    If someone kills phoodoo’s entire family and God doesn’t do anything to prevent it, it must be part of His plan. Phoodoo will still complain, and the killer might answer:

    Everyone has their complaints!

  21. keiths:
    phoodoo,

    I see that you’re running away from my questions.

    I think I know why, and I’ll bet others have figured it out too.

    I don’t see him running away. He’s suggesting a reductio. I think it’s perfectly sensible response, myself–whether you agree with him or not. You say having dandruff is not like getting burned alive–he wants to know why? If a loved one’s grief is the sort of thing that ought to be avoided, what if it could only be avoided by not having loved ones? I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I take it he believes your position is facile.

  22. Vince, your OP brought to mind the novel (and movie) Oscar and Lucinda, in which two likeable characters are given awful lives–basically tortured throughout–and then forced to suffer miserable, pointless deaths. Sort of disgusting. Trollope would never do that to his characters. While he doesn’t tie everything up with ribbons at the end of EVERY novel: there’s no gratuitous torture that I can think of. Even in Eye for an Eye and He Knew He was Right, where protagonists go crazy at the end, there are explanations (I mean, other than Nya ha ha!! Gotcha!)

    I don’t think there’s much good theology to be found in such ruminations, myself, BWTHDIK?

  23. vjtorley: I have a natural human obligation to save a drowning man – or a burning one.

    VJ, is this a natural human obligation or a societal obligation? I would argue that our morality arises from the fact that we are gregarious and capable of abstract reasoning. If there is anything objective about it is that we have a sense of morality, not the individual moral obligations.

  24. keiths: I explained this to you in the earlier thread:

    Not true. I posted some comments; you posted some comments. You explained nothing.

    Unless you meant to say that evil exists in the same way God, Father Christmas or invisible pink unicorns exist. If that was your explanation, then, fine.

  25. Acartia: VJ, is this a natural human obligation or a societal obligation? I would argue that our morality arises from the fact that we are gregarious and capable of abstract reasoning. If there is anything objective about it is that we have a sense of morality, not the individual moral obligations.

    Other social species also show behaviours that might be construed as caring. A mother elephant defending her calf or helping it to escape a muddy wallow, and so on. Not sure we can attribute apparently altruistic behaviour like saving a stranger from drowning entirely to peer pressure.

  26. walto,

    I don’t see him running away.

    It’s right under your nose. I asked him:

    In the meantime, would you have intervened to save the Jordanian pilot from a horrifying death, or would you have said “Let him burn,” as your God did?

    He knows, as do you and I, that the decent and loving answer is “yes, I would have intervened”. That puts him on the hook for explaining why his supposedly loving God refuses to do so. He can’t do that, so he runs away from the question.

    I’ve also asked him to present an argument:

    phoodoo,

    The problem of evil DOES NOT exist, if you believe

    A) Somethings must be better than other things, in a world of choice.
    B) If you believe in a finite world.
    C) If someone is mildly curious enough to contemplate the nature of good.

    See if you can flesh that out into an actual argument.

    No response.

    As for his attempted reductio, I’m surprised that you can’t see the flaws. Since he can’t — or won’t — make his own case, perhaps you can step in and make the argument for him.

  27. walto: I don’t see him running away.He’s suggesting a reductio.

    Indeed. The ultimate is “cut out the middle man and move directly to heaven”.

    I think it’s perfectly sensible response, myself–whether you agree with him or not.You say having dandruff is not like getting burned alive–he wants to know why? If a loved one’s grief is the sort of thing that ought to be avoided, what if it could only be avoided by not having loved ones? I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I take it he believes your position is facile.

    There’s also the inconsistency of making claims about one human construct – that there’s “evil” (as a noun) while dismissing another human construct – “God” – as just that.

  28. keiths:
    walto,

    It’s right under your nose. I asked him:

    He knows, as do you and I, that the decent and loving answer is “yes”.That puts him on the hook for explaining why his supposedly loving God answers “no”.He can’t do that, so he runs away from the question.

    I’ve also asked him to present an argument:

    See if you can flesh that out into an actual argument.

    No response.

    As for his attempted reductio, I’m surprised that you can’t see the flaws.Since he can’t — or won’t — make his own case, perhaps you can step in and make the argument for him.

    Hahaha. Spend another month on this.

    Everybody knows the arguments. As a consequentialist, I think the difference between dandruff and cancer is just a place on a continuum. I think the argument from evil against the existence of God is valid, but, like phoodoo, it seems utterly obvious to me that nobody can prove that it’s sound. Your attempts to “politicize” your position by taking examples that seem more and more hideous or something don’t do a thing for you. (a) You can’t show that there’s not some higher purpose; (b) as you don’t believe in evil anyhow, you’re the wrong person to be making these arguments.

    Again, in sum, it’s my view that:

    1. The argument from evil is valid;
    2. Nobody can prove the argument from evil is sound; and
    3. phoodoo is thrashing you here.

    That’s all I have to say on this. And I don’t think either Feser or Vince have added anything of value either.

  29. Alan Fox: Other social species also show behaviours that might be construed as caring. A mother elephant defending her calf or helping it to escape a muddy wallow, and so on. Not sure we can attribute apparently altruistic behaviour like saving a stranger from drowning entirely to peer pressure.

    Alan, I was not specifically referring to peer pressure, although that will play a part. Peer pressure can result in us doing things that are counter to societal benefits, or even personal benefits.

  30. Acartia: Peer pressure can result in us doing things that are counter to societal benefits, or even personal benefits.

    I have scars to prove that!

  31. walto,

    Everybody knows the arguments.

    Good. Then you’ll be able to offer a defense of phoodoo’s position.

    As a consequentialist, I think the difference between dandruff and cancer is just a place on a continuum.

    So do I, with stage 4 pancreatic cancer being a lot worse than dandruff. How does that help your case?

    I think the argument from evil against the existence of God is valid, but, like phoodoo, it seems utterly obvious to me that nobody can prove that it’s sound.

    It isn’t a matter of proof. We’re talking about the evidential argument from evil, not the logical argument.

    No one can prove that Hitler wasn’t working toward some mysterious higher purpose, either — but the evidence is strongly against it.

    (a) You can’t show that there’s not some higher purpose;

    I don’t need to. I only need to show that it’s unreasonable, given the available evidence, to believe in a powerful and loving God.

    (b) as you don’t believe in evil anyhow, you’re the wrong person to be making these arguments.

    I do believe that evil exists, but in any case the argument depends on the theist’s standard of evil, not on mine. I’m not sure why you and Mung have such trouble with this.

  32. keiths: No one can prove that Hitler wasn’t working toward some mysterious higher purpose, either — but the evidence is strongly against it.

    Is it? You don’t think Hitler thought that?

  33. Alan,

    Is it? You don’t think Hitler thought that?

    It isn’t about what Hitler thought. The relevant standard of morality is the observer’s standard, in both cases.

    God might think it’s A-OK to let people burn to death, but the problem of evil still exists for anyone who thinks it isn’t and believes in a loving and moral God.

  34. keiths: It isn’t about what Hitler thought. The relevant standard of morality is the observer’s standard, in both cases.

    Which observer? Or is there an agreed objective view? And if we are not discussing thoughts, what are we judging? Acts? Is motive irrelevant?

    God might think it’s A-OK to let people burn to death, but the problem of evil still exists for anyone who thinks it isn’t.

    God being a human construct, we merely fill in the God-thoughts with our own. And evil doesn’t exist either except as a human construct.

  35. Regarding the OP, and looking at Vincent’s quote of Thomas Paine:

    I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the Power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter, than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.

    Well, whatever philosophy works for an individual, I’m happy that they found it. Let them have their personal philosophy and let me have mine.

  36. Alan,

    Which observer?

    The one making the claim, of course.

    To recycle an old example, suppose a believer claims that seahorses are evil and that Frank — a morally perfect, omnipotent, and loving deity — presides over the universe.

    The preponderance of seahorses then presents a problem for that particular believer. As I put it in an earlier thread:

    The world contains a lot of seahorses, and Frank, being omnipotent, has the power to wipe them off the face of the earth. Why doesn’t he? Why does he countenance a world full of seahorses?

    Is the existence of seahorses a means to a higher end? Is it just that Frank’s ways are mysterious? Or should I conclude that Frank probably doesn’t exist?

    Alan:

    God being a human construct, we merely fill in the God-thoughts with our own.

    The fact that you and I don’t believe in God is irrelevant here. The problem of evil is a problem for the theist, not for the atheist.

  37. Alan,

    Not true. I posted some comments; you posted some comments. You explained nothing.

    My comments explained the error that you and petrushka were making.

    Unless you meant to say that evil exists in the same way God, Father Christmas or invisible pink unicorns exist. If that was your explanation, then, fine.

    No, that isn’t my argument at all. I’ve encountered instances of evil, but not of invisible pink unicorns.

    Again:

    I picked the bayonetting of babies at Nanking as an example that we could presumably all agree was evil. If it’s evil, then we have an instance of evil; and if we have an instance of evil, then evil exists (although this appears to baffle Alan).

  38. it’s not just that God allows evil to happen. Let’s not forget that phoodoo, Mung and the whole ID ilk (not Fesser) believe that God keeps intervening to produce viruses that kill people by the millions

    What I’d like to know is, if your answer is that we can’t judge God’s actions or motives, how can you be so sure that he’s all loving and perfectly good? Isn’t that also a judgment that’s out of our reach?

  39. keiths: The fact that you and I don’t believe in God is irrelevant here. The problem of evil is a problem for the theist, not for the atheist.

    Maybe. I think the problem is you being an ex-smoker and me never having inhaled.

  40. dazz:
    it’s not just that God allows evil to happen. Let’s not forget that phoodoo, Mung and the whole ID ilk (not Fesser) believe that God keeps intervening to produce viruses that kill people by the millions

    Only accidentally! Viruses aren’t malevolent.

  41. Alan,

    Maybe. I think the problem is you being an ex-smoker and me never having inhaled.

    I think the problem is that you are unable to take the theist’s position, even for the sake of argument. You have trouble keeping it separate from your own.

    The point of the argument from evil is that even if we grant the existence of God — arguendo, of course — the typical theist’s position is untenable, because the preponderance of evil and suffering clash with his or her conception of God as all-powerful, moral, and loving.

  42. dazz:

    it’s not just that God allows evil to happen. Let’s not forget that phoodoo, Mung and the whole ID ilk (not Fesser) believe that God keeps intervening to produce viruses that kill people by the millions

    Alan:

    Viruses aren’t malevolent.

    dazz isn’t claiming that the viruses are malevolent, but rather that a God who deliberately creates them is.

  43. dazz: if your answer is that we can’t judge God’s actions or motives, how can you be so sure that he’s all loving and perfectly good?

    That’s part of what they mean by “God”–without those packed in there, there obviously couldn’t be an argument from evil against the existence of God.

  44. keiths: dazz isn’t claiming that the viruses are malevolent, but rather that a God who deliberately creates them is.

    If God can be malevolent, there can’t be an “argument from evil” against God’s existence. There is, and it seems to me a valid argument too.

  45. keiths: dazz isn’t claiming that the viruses are malevolent, but rather that a God who deliberately creates them is.

    Yes, I know. It’s a refutation for theism that I can’t take seriously. And, were I a theist but accepted that science nonetheless made sense, I might say that once God set out this particular universe, whilst she is not limited, the universe is limited by its properties, one of which is that DNA will turn parasitic in the right niche.

  46. keiths: The point of the argument from evil is that even if we grant the existence of God — arguendo, of course — the typical theist’s position is untenable, because the preponderance of evil and suffering clash with his or her conception of God as all-powerful, moral, and loving.

    Not seeing that. It’s a question of perception, not fact.

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