You see, these are the kind of things I doubt you can get at other people’s blogs. A mere five posts after I claim I’m going to try and dial back the length and ambition of my blogging, I decide to tackle probably the thorniest problem in the history of theology. Some might call it foolhardy, others might call it hubris; I call it Entry 37.
Theodicy is a branch of theology that tries to explain the Problem of Evil. The best exposition of the problem is probably the oldest known discussion of it, from Epicurus by way of David Hume (by further ways of Wikipedia and me):
Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.
Is god able to prevent evil, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is god both able and willing? Whence then evil?
This issue cannot be explained any more concisely than that. Many people claim that their god is all powerful, all knowing, and all good. However, how could evil exist in a universe managed by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and benevolent deity?
There is no easy answer to this question. Scratch that … there are no good easy answers to that question. There are plenty of two word answers that suffice for most people: Original Sin, free will, the Devil. But, these explanations seem porous upon close scrutiny, and moreover they also seem mutually exclusive. As I’ve said before, a pile of crummy arguments does not equal a good argument. That kind of bookkeeping didn’t work for AIG, and it doesn’t work for theists, either.
Where I’m Coming From
As with Entry 32, the impetus for this entry is the science-faith integration meetings I’ve been attending. Theodicy was the topic of one of the meetings, and I just wasn’t impressed by the background reading or the discussion. You always hear about how sophisticated and intricate modern theology is, particularly when you’re an atheist talking to a religious person about something like theodicy. Often, the person you’re talking to will agree that you have a point with regards to other people’s faith, but their faith is backed up by subtle and profound theology. Reviewers dismissed Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion via this argument so often that PZ Myers coined an internet meme for it: the Courtier’s Reply. “Of course their emperor has no clothes, but we have entire universities dedicated to studying our emperor’s magnificent garments!”
The background reading was a chapter in Denis Alexander’s Creation vs. Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? The book doesn’t seem terribly popular, and as such I haven’t been able to find much information about it or its author. Alexander is a Professor at a college in England, and he heads an institute there devoted to researching, publishing, and teaching about “science and religion.” (The institute is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Nuff said.) A few reviewers of his book referred to him as an Evangelical Christian, but often angrily or indignantly because they didn’t like his positive treatment of evolution. All told, I’m not sure how well-regarded this book’s theology is, nor am I sure what denominational angle Alexander is coming from.
As for the folks at the meeting, I’m again hurting for denominational perspective. To use a loaded term, I suppose I would call them all “liberal Christians,” in that they aren’t biblical literalists or creationists or even cdesign proponentsists (except for our friend from Entry 32). Many of them seem to have strong science backgrounds, and they’re obviously interested in science enough to come to meetings about its intersection with their faith. I have no idea how much theology they’ve read or studied, but they certainly all had much more background knowledge than I do.
Down the Rabbit Hole
I don’t know if there’s a good way to approach a discussion of the myriad ways Alexander and the folks in the meeting tried to answer the problem of evil, especially since each could probably be its own entry. (PZ’s Courtiers are at least correct that plenty of ink has been spilled about those clothes, irrespective of their existence.) There are a lot of supposed explanations, but, from my perspective, they always wind up back at one of the Epicurean paradoxes. In addition, they’re mutually exclusive for the most part, so they don’t stack. Without further ado, let’s jump in with both feet.
Some people tried to argue that evil just doesn’t exist in a meaningful sense. Some actions or experiences might seem horrible to mere mortals, but they are ultimately good because god is omnipresent and (of course) good. This argument not only fails the smell test, but it’s obviously internally inconsistent for Christians. If not evil, then: (i) what tribulations will the afterlife be free from, and (ii) on what basis will a person be judged? Also, you have to wonder why people bother with all the following argumentation, if evil doesn’t really exist.
Once the existence of evil is established, the first thing people do is blame it on free will. God wants our love and worship, but it must be freely given to him. However, this collides with both ends of the Epicurean paradox. Even if evil arose solely from man’s free will, an omniscient god would still have known it was coming. Furthermore, an omnipotent god would still be able to stop it, if he so chose. Thus, god is the ultimate source of evil and continually allows it to happen. The only way out of this is to declare that free will is absolutely paramount; free will is so great a good that it balances all the evil in the world. That is okay* for now, but we’ll come back to it soon.
*Note also that by “okay,” I mean “consistent theologically but completely different than what the average person in the pew thinks about god.” I distinctly recall being told as a child that Jesus loves me. It would seem that Jesus loves my free will more than me, since his bookkeeping would imply that the freedom someone else could exploit to torture and kill me would be more important than my well-being.
Free will as the source of evil is a biggie, but it has a gaping hole: so-called natural evil. You’d have to burn a lot of calories to explain how a tsunami is not evil, but you’d have to burn even more to blame a tsunami on humanity’s free will. Hence natural evil. The only thing resembling a coherent explanation of natural evil anyone offered was that natural evil is a necessary consequence of the laws god imposed when he created the universe. Of course, this again makes god indifferent to the evil and pain and suffering his laws have resulted in. We’re back my criticisms of Professor Francisco Ayala in Entry 23: explaining away all the evils of the world by saying “god chose to make us via evolution” actually explains nothing whatsoever. It is a complete non-response to the charge.
However, the folks at the meeting assured me that this was no mere patina of abstraction. God works in mysterious ways, and his actions are utterly inscrutable. This is something I heard so often that I’m tempted to try and coin a meme for it, a la the Courtier’s Reply**. Of course, this is another non-answer. At best, I suppose it is an appeal to ignorance: we don’t know why evil happens, but god surely knows best. (And hopefully he’ll be so kind as to clue everybody in when we all get to heaven.) It is also inconsistent with the rest of Christian theology, because Christians are gravely certain about whole lot of other things concerning god and the universe. Am I to believe that god is so mysterious that we cannot comprehend evil, yet we’re positive that homosexual marriage makes baby Jesus cry? How can Christians be so confident of so much, if something as fundamental as good vs. evil is wholly incomprehensible?
**I’ll tell you what I want to do when I hear it: I want to bonk them on the head with something and say “Homey don’t play dat” like Homey D. Clown from In Living Color. There might be a pithy phrase somewhere in there, but I’m not seeing it.
My apologies for the snark, but Homey really don’t play the god-works-in-mysterious-ways game. Let’s bring the discussion back to free will. Another bookkeeping-type explanation for evil is that the suffering and pain it causes ultimately brings people closer to god. For instance, CS Lewis famously called pain god’s megaphone. So, evil is a net positive because it results in so great a good: leading people to god. However, god desires our freely given love. If he created (or permitted) evil so that we might be driven towards loving him, then he loaded the cosmic dice. So much for free will being all-important. I doubt many theologians would accept the notion that their god is a cheater, so they shouldn’t accept this line of argument.
The last major explanation that came up was a simple blaming of the devil, often in relation to original sin or the fall of man. This merely adds a storytelling element to the situations we’ve already discussed: an omniscient god would know this was coming, an omnipotent god could have stopped it, and it all happened because man had free will. However, I find it pretty interesting that many people try and make Satan much more than a narrative element. If Satan operates outside of god’s province, then you’re no longer talking monotheism***. Yet, if god knows/controls Satan, then we’re back to the problems outlined above (particularly the cheating issue). I’m also getting the distinct impression that this is all some twisted game for god. Our freely-given love is so important to him that horrible evils are permitted so that free will might exist, yet he created natural evils to push us towards him while permitting Satan to run rampant tempting us away from him.
***If you’re keeping count and maintaining monotheism, that would make it quadritarianism. While we’re tallying things up, I heard someone talking about The Word recently. What exactly is The Word, anyways? I’m certainly no expert, but it seems like it might belong in there. So, maybe we’re up to quintarianism. We should try to come up with another one, because sexitarianism is a pretty cool-sounding word. The Virgin Mary springs immediately to mind, for obvious and inappropriate reason.
Those are all the explanations/resolutions I can remember coming up at the meeting. I won’t claim that I was stunning the room with amazing counters and comebacks, but I do recall most discussions ending with either an Epicurean paradox or the god-works-in-mysterious-ways bit. And, every once in awhile, I was reminded that the great theologian George Michael had it all figured out years ago: I gotta have faith-a, faith-a, faith-ah! Frankly, I was expecting a whole lot more out of my first foray into theology. I’d call the lack of strong arguments stark, and I don’t think that’s putting too fine a point on it.
Replying to the Courtiers
The charge that many atheists aren’t versed in theology is probably fair. In our defense, I don’t know that anyone should expect us to study it. From the perspective of a nonbeliever, studying theology would be rather like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. However, I don’t think this invalidates our opinions from the get-go. I’m sure most Christians have no knowledge of Hindu theology (or even the theology of the other Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam), yet they feel perfectly justified in rejecting the truth claims of Hinduism, and indeed all other religions.
In addition, it seems like a lot of this is a smokescreen. I paid a little attention to the theologian behind the curtain, and I was not at all impressed with him. Moreover, even if I’m missing or mischaracterizing something, there is little doubt that free will is the linchpin of all theodicy. As my first aside noted, this is technically fine but puzzling in practice. I don’t know that most Christians recognize or appreciate the importance of free will in their faith’s theology. Maybe they do; I simply don’t know. However, I do know that I’d be floored if I asked my grandmother what god’s greatest gift is and she replied “the autonomy to love him freely.”
Well, that’s all I have on theodicy. My parting thought is a quick call back to Entry 32. If you want to know why science requires methodological naturalism, you don’t have to look any further than the italicized lines at the beginning of this post. Ask yourself, what is the most parsimonious explanation of those apparent paradoxes?
