Some Thoughts

Here is an e-mail written to a good friend of mine, thought y'all might find it interesting. Love to hear some feedback and counter-arguments, if you have any.

1. The Problem of Moral Evil: As I remember the argument, it goes something like this.
A. There is Evil in the world.
B. If God is able to prevent it, but not willing, then he is malicious.
C. If God is unable to prevent it, but willing, then he is weak.
D. If God is neither able nor willing, then why call Him God?
E. If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
Conclusion: In none of those four possible cases exists a benevolent God, ergo, one does not exist.

I've never really thought much of this argument, mainly because I think (B) is false, and pretty obviously false at that. Maliciousness is not the only possible motive, one need only look at the relation of parents to children to discover that. Parents certainly permit evil to befall their children or even to be committed by their children out of respect for their autonomy. The classical Christian explanation to this dilemma is Free Will. I remember talking about the conflict between God's omniscience and our Free Choice with you, and you made the fantastic point that for Free Will to be anything more than an illusion, one HAS to be able to choose differently.

Similarly, Evil almost HAS to be a possible alternative if Free Will exists. The ability to make choices necessarily implies the ability to make BAD choices as well as good ones.

The existence of free will is almost prima facie and thus I won't dwell on it except to note that determinism is both infalsifiable and in a practical sense completely useless.

As I was writing this, I thought of a counter-question for the Atheist. Granted that Free Will exists, but the Problem of Evil is perhaps MORE of a problem to atheists than theists. For theists at least admit eternal standards of good/evil, while if an atheist did, I think he would have no ground to stand on. Therefore, (A) is quite a problem to an atheist. Why is there Evil?

In fact, (and I"ll maybe get to this in another e-mail), I think that any kind of absolute moral standard (and I think there is one, and if I remember correctly you think so too) is a huge problem for an atheist.

2. The Problem of Physical Evil
The argument is extremely similar to the first, but I don't feel comfortable grouping them together since moral evil is quite obviously very separate from physical evil, and they have different causes.

I admit, I haven't studied this much, so my thoughts on the matter may appear disorderly and illogical. Don't worry, they probably are. The problem is that physical evil is really a misnomer. Earthquakes, etc, are simply natural products of nature. You have a hurricane due to air pressure and several other things, earthquakes due to shifting fault-lines, etc. Purely physical phenomenon cannot, really, be good or evil in a christian sense, since there is no will behind them.

So the acts themselves aren't problematic, but the human suffering caused by them is. The problem for the theist is huge, for the atheist not at all. Why would God permit such arbitrary physical suffering? It seems almost inevitable that God is malicious.

Again, I don't think that is the only possible explanation. I'm not perfectly satisfied with what I think is the Christian one, but here it is: God permits physical suffering because our physical existence is only temporary, and the spiritual benefits possible from suffering far outweigh any physical detriments. Among these spiritual benefits include the real possibility to develop virtues, many of which almost cannot exist except in danger and torment. Hope, for instance, can only exist when the situation really is hopeless. Charity, for instance, can only really exist when the situation is dire. Prudence too, cannot exist except in the real possibility of danger. And so on.

The other explanation I've heard involves original sin: With the fall of man came (in some sense) the fall of creation, and just as moral evil came into the world as a result of our choice so did physical evil. I don't know much about this argument so I can't flesh it out very well, but it comes from the idea that creation is a whole, and the fall of mankind would similarly adversely affect creation.

Like I said, I'm not really satisfied with that, but there it is.

3. Multiplicity of Religions
This argument (to simplify it) goes something like this:
A. There have been (probably) millions of ideas about God.
B. The probability of any one idea being correct is vanishingly small.
C. The probability of Catholicism (or substitute any specific religion) being correct is vanishingly small.

There are a lot of problems with this argument. (A) is undeniable, but it doesn't pose a problem for the theist. Obviously if there is a God people will have many different ideas about Him, some closer to the truth than others. People will debate and disagree and pose various theologies, and that's perfectly natural in an attempt to explain and discover something real. But (A) is a real problem for atheists, because if there is no God, why have the vast majority of people throughout history (for good reasons or bad) been convinced that there is one? Richard Dawkins once proposed that it was an evolutionary advantage, but I don't think that holds water at all. Obviously a belief in a complete falsehood is a bad thing, particularly one that encourages people to be somewhat cavalier about physical existence.

However, to get back to the argument, (B) is false, and therefore (C) is as well. It's silly to talk about probabilities, as if somehow all these theories are equally probable. They aren't. You don't speak of a multiplicity of scientific theories that way, and it's silly to talk of philosophical theories that way too. The thing to do is to look at the evidence. I find that Christian philosophy explains a great deal very well, while belief in Thor explains only the existence of lightning.

Because of this, it's foolish to criticize a religion for being one of many. Criticize it for being illogical, or philosophically stupid, but not simply for existing alongside many others.

4. Size of the Universe

A. The universe is huge, mankind's dominion taking a very small part of it.

B. Therefore it is extremely improbable that it is specifically created for mankind.

C. Since it is probably not specifically created for mankind, any idea of God creating it for mankind is similarly improbable.

Again, (A) is undeniable, but (B) and (C) are false. The size of the universe (or really the size of anything) has no relation to the importance or purpose of it. B does not really follow from A. Additionally, I can immediately think of theistic explanations of its size. Perhaps the universe is so big because the end of the world (or whatever) isn't coming for quite some time, and mankind needs quite a lot of room to expand. Or so on. Perhaps the laws of nature that make Earth inhabitable also make the universe a huge place.

But that is all just counter explanations, the point is that there is no logical connection between premise A and premise B and thus this is a bad argument.