Tuesday, 17 March 2009

• Currently The Brothers Karamazov By Fyodor Dostoevsky see related

  Theodicy - God's Defense

  Theodicy - the problem of reconciling the existence of evil or suffering in the world with the existence of a god.
  
  

  “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
  Then he is not omnipotent.
  Is he able, but not willing?
  Then he is malevolent.
  Is he both able and willing?
  Then whence cometh evil?
  Is he neither able nor willing?
  Then why call him God?”
  

  Epicurus
  

  
  Revelife inspired me for once (combined with some reading I've been doing as well), so I thought I'd tackle the conundrum they posed: Is God's Will Behind the Tragedies Around the World? This is a tricky problem for theists.
  

  So here we go, I am going to try and tackle every reason ever given to me to justify belief in some sort of omnipotent, omnipresent and, most imperatively, omnibenevolent greater being. These are normally given in response to the question "why does god let bad things happen to good people?" I'm sure this is one of those posts which will piss people off. Oh well. We'll go reason by reason. And cut me a little slack, I'm not much of one for philosophy, so this is stepping out of my safety bubble:
  

  Hidden Harmony Defense: While few, if any, of my readers have heard it called this, all know what it is. It's the "everything happens for a reason" creedo. A good example Christians use is forest fires. At first it seems destructive, but ecologists tell us that fires are part of nature's rhythms. The clear away the dead trees, and allow sunlight to filter down and promote new growth. This argument is easy enough to pick apart. Let's look at a common example of what happens within these fires: a small fawn is caught in the middle of the fire. It gets horribly burned, and dies a painful death over the next three days. What sort of greater good could come from this? Well, let's say it's carrying a pathogen within itself, that if left unchecked, would cause a plague worse than the black death. This wouldn't explain why it has to be burned alive, now would it? Maybe only intense heat could kill the bacteria. Does this seem likely to anyone else? Me neither.
  

  Let's turn and look at the Nazi concentration camps in WWII, what is most likely one of the greatest evils of the last century. Why would God allow these to exist? Here's a theory: all the people who died in these camps - Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Poles; every man, woman and child - every one of them was plotting to manufacture and disperse a lethal chemical capable of wiping out life on Earth. By permitting the Holocaust, God prevented the extinction of millions of species, including our own. Seem likely to you? 'Cause it sure as hell doesn't to me. But here's the clincher: think of where you are right now. Think of the nearest body of water. Now, imagine that starts flooding. Houses and lives will be lost. What do you do? You run over and help people start throwing sandbags on to prevent the flooding, not sit and think about whether or not there is some sort of "greater good" involved. So my question to people who wish to argue this is: If this is a hidden harmony universe, then why do we try so hard to change it?

  Disciplinary Defense and Eschatology: As you come up against life's hardships, people often discover reserves of compassion and patience. This is used often by scholars (St. Augustine, Martin Luther, etc.) This confronts the idea of God as a sort of "cosmic surgeon", who reluctantly inflicts pain while repairing our souls. But look at the Vietnam war. Why did some people come back with missing limbs, and others come home intact? Most religious scholar supplement this with the eschatological argument, which states that our spiritual growth continues after death. Christian eschatology holds that anyone who shuffles off this mortal coil unscathed will undergo various disciplinary trials upon entering the next life. This argument was first presented by Bishop Origen in the 3rd century (Origen, incidentally, castrated himself out of faith. Just an interesting piece of history).
  

  We'll look at the Bible for these arguments. Does everyone know the story of Lot? When leaving the city of Sodom, Lot and his family were told not to look back. Lot's wife did, and was turned to a pillar of salt. She needed to be taught a lesson, it seems, regarding moral fiber and obeying God's will. Now, it seems to me that the punishment there didn't quite fit the crime. In doing this, God acted much less like a cosmic surgeon and much more like a vivisectionist. Now, what about the AIDS epidemic? Many Christians would say that this is retribution against homosexuals. This could be so, since the Bible does state in Lev. 18:22 "Homosexuality is an abomination". And if Lot's wife could be turned to salt for looking back, this type of punishment would fit the bill. But then, what happens when, say, a six year old hemophiliac gets a blood transfusion and through that, AIDS? What is the reasoning for that? Friendly fire? So that turns us towards the eschatological defense (spiritual growth after death). All's well that ends well. Life is hell, but then you go to Heaven. Spare the rod, spoil the species. I don't buy it. A father does not have the right to sexually molest his children throughout the winter simple because he intends to take his children to Disneyland in the spring. (I told you I'd offend people.) I believe in the old maxim, that delayed justice is denied justice.

  Liberum Arbitrium: Free will. A simple argument, stating that all the evil in the world can be chalked up to the fact that God gave us free will with which to run our lives. This doesn't explain diseases, and what insurance companies in their infinite wisdom claimed were "acts of god" (tornados, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, etc.). But it does explain why God didn't step in every time someone is about to murder, rape, maim, etc. But we'll ignore all that. Simply stated, God created us. So why not create us with a bit more compassion? More mercy? More truth, good will, friendliness, love? That would allow us free will, but still would create a better world. Seems simple enough to me. But we'll let this one go for a second, and tie it in with our next defense.

  Ontological Defense: The defense that without bad there is no good. If everything were red, then red would be a meaningless concept. Get it? Without all the terrible things in the world, we would have no appreciation for the good. But why the amount of evil? This is explained by Leibniz's famous quote: that this is "the best of all possible worlds." It can also be explained by what I've dubbed the "bagel theory" (stick with me here). When you go to buy a bagel, you know you're buying the dough, not the hole, so you're happy to pay for it. But when looking at the universe, people like myself focus on the negative; the cosmic hole in the bagel. The ontological defense also explains much of natural disasters. God had to set down a lay of ground rules: combustion, gravity, motion, and so on. A good example is the bone; if the bone was strong enough to never break, it would be far too heavy for us to move around well. Also, if the ground was hard enough to avoid earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, then farming, mining and road building would be impossible.
  

  This now brings us back to moral evil, and liberum arbitrium. Liberum arbitrium permits us to make many inventions: trains, ships, opera houses. All these inventions involve a potential for disaster: trains derail, ships sink, opera houses collapse. But it's better to build an airplane, even though it may succumb to gravity, than to remain forever on the ground, confined by our Creator's loving desire to protect us, reads the basic argument. There is one major flaw. Now, assuming anyone using this argument is a Christian, then they most likely believe in heaven. It's an amazing neck of the woods, I hear. An ideal world. The exact ideal world that the ontological defense says we cannot have. Why not just make earth heaven?

  How do you reconcile evil and misfortune with your worldview?
  
  

  P.S. I'll return to Noah's Ark in my next post.
  

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