Notes on the Problem of Evil

Okay, first we need a definition of evil that we can all agree upon, so how about:

 

Intentionally acting in such a way as to increase harm and suffering without remorse

I’m pretty sure most people can agree upon that. Next we need to define the kinds of entities that are capable of committing evil. Moral awareness is an important prerequisite. We cannot classify a lion as evil for killing other animals at any given opportunity because they have no sense of right and wrong. So in order to be able to do evil you need the capacity to be aware of your actions, their consequences and how they affect others. As far as we know humans are the only beings possessing of these traits.

So in order for something to be evil it needs to be carried out by a morally aware being. An event which causes suffering and harm repeatedly, but is not down to the actions and intentions of a morally aware being cannot be classified as evil. This means that natural disasters and diseases etc. are not evil. So far so good.

However, when you throw and all-powerful deity into the mix this is when things get difficult (for the theist at least). God fulfils the requirement of being a morally aware entity, most theists will state that God is the source of moral truth, so clearly such an entity is very aware of their actions and the consequences of them.

The attribute of omnipotence creates a problem which is famously termed ‘the problem of evil’. Let me explain it using malaria as an example; malaria kills thousands of children every single day so there is no doubt that such a thing increases suffering and causes harm to others, however without God malaria is not evil because it is not caused by the actions and decisions of a morally aware entity. On theism this is different.

The theist has two choices when it comes to malaria; either God created it himself, or allowed it to happen. Either way this removes malaria from the context of having not been caused by the actions and intentions of a morally aware entity to one in which it is very much in the hands of a morally aware entity.

If God created malaria then he is evil because he intentionally created something that causes large amounts of pain and suffering, apparently with no remorse. If God allows malaria then this creates problems also; because if God cares about our suffering and wants to relieve it then he should want to use his power to prevent malaria, this gives rise to a contradiction because it’s very apparent that God has done nothing to prevent malaria, so either God does not care about our suffering, or God does care about it, but can do nothing (thus meaning God is not omnipotent).

The problem of evil arises because positing the existence of an omnipotent God removes disasters, diseases and famines etc. from the context of being events with no moral agent behind them, to being ones that do. So the theist must then explain the contradiction between omnipotence and omnibenevolence that arises in this situation. This is, in my opinion, the heart of the problem of evil.

William Lane Craig Argues Himself Into A Corner

In solution to the problem of evil Christian apologists such as William Lane Craig often retort that God may well have good reasons for permitting evil and suffering in the world. On his website William Lane Craig states:

God may well have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. We all know cases in which we permit suffering because we have morally sufficient reasons for doing so. What Law would have to prove is that it’s improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. But how could he possibly prove that? God’s justifying reasons might never appear in our lifetime or locale or even in this life. Suppose, for example, that God’s purpose for human life is not happiness in this life but the knowledge of God, which is an incommensurable good. It may be the case, for all we know, that only in a world suffused with natural and moral evil would the maximum number of people freely come to know God and find eternal life.

(http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9162)

So in essence suffering and evil may well be permitted for the ‘greater good’ and we simply are not in any position to know why it is permitted. Craig goes further in his debate with Arif Ahmed and states:

“The premise that pointless suffering exists, or gratuitous evil exists is extremely controversial. We are simply not in the position to make these kinds of inductive probability judgements”

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-NF-LlVFHM)

So here Craig is saying that pointless suffering and gratuitous evil might not exist. If this is true then no act of evil would be ‘ without apparent reason, cause, or justification’ and we can thus conclude that all evil is acted out for a reason, has a cause and a justification. One can assume that Craig’s doubts over the existence of gratuitous evil and pointless suffering tie in with his notion that God permits suffering for the greater good. So the reason and justification for evil is because it is part of God’s plan for the greater good.

Here’s Craig’s argument taken to it’s logical conclusion:

1. Gratuitous evil and pointless suffering might not exist because if God has a plan for the ‘greater good’ then no evil is gratuitous and no suffering is pointless.

2. If this is true no act of evil is truly evil because it is ultimately for the greater good.

Therefore

3. Because of 1 & 2 we have absolutely no way of knowing if an evil act was truly evil or whether it was actually contributing to the greater good.

It follows logically from this that despite Craig’s frequent assertion that ‘we just know some actions are objectively wrong’ – here he asserts that we have absolutely no way of making such a judgement because for all we know there is no gratuitous evil – and therefore the reason for it is ultimately good (according to Craig’s views). Craig has argued himself into the corner that Christian apologists often try to back atheists into.

Craig cannot say whether the murder of 6 million Jews in Nazi Germany was evil because if gratuitous evil does not exist, then this must have happened for a reason, and that reason according to Craig is to fulfil God’s ultimately good plan. Therefore we cannot classify this act as evil, because it may have actually been for the greater good (I apologise for breaking Godwin’s law here, however I’m sure you can forgive me).

In his attempt to escape the problem of evil, Craig has put himself in a position where he can make no moral judgements whatsoever (which runs contrary to his “argument” for objective moral values in which he states that we all ‘just know’ the difference between good and evil). Well done Bill!

Problems with Theism

First and foremost, to clear any potential misunderstanding; I do not count any of the following points as disproof of the existence of God, they do however outline the major problems that I have with accepting theism. Cumulatively they may provide an argument for atheism, but they do not necessarily disprove God, merely outline the major problems that I have with the concept.

 

1. The Problem of Insignificance

The diameter of the observable universe is 93 billion light years, there are 350 billion large galaxies in the visible universe – each containing around 100 billion stars. Theism requires one to believe that our tiny planet is the reason that all of this exists. In the face of those aforementioned figures Earth is so insignificant that it is is extremely difficult to accept that the remaining 99.999999 (etc.) % of the cosmos is just unnecessary fluff.

 

Furthermore, the universe consists of 75% dark energy, 25% dark matter, and the remaining less than 5% goes into making visible matter (stars, planets etc.), so in light of this the entire observable universe is just the thin layer of icing on the top, decreasing our significance even further.

 

How does one consolidate these facts with the theistic notion that our planet, and our species is the sole purpose of existence?

 

2. The Problem of Pointless Suffering

Malaria kills more than 3000 African children every day. This is but one example of the kind of pointless suffering that is rampant all over the world. Theism posits the existence of an all loving being, who is concerned for the welfare of living things. How do you console the notion of an all-loving God with thousands of needlessly suffering people all over the globe?

 

Some theists would argue that we cannot know the mind of God, so who are we to judge what he does and does not allow. Some even have the audacity to claim that this suffering occurs to pave the way for some future glory, or to prevent even worse things from happening in future. However this still doesn’t fit with the notion of an all-loving being. A loving parent does not subject their child to a painful injection without explaining the purpose of going through the pain, and reassuring them that their suffering is not ultimately pointless, what reassurance is given from God? And anyway, who is God to cause suffering in one person to ultimately relieve the suffering of another in future? This doesn’t seem like the behaviour of an omnibenevolent deity.

 

Let’s not forget that God can supposedly do anything, so why would he need to let others suffer to achieve some future goal? Surely that goal could be achieved without suffering?

 

I’ve heard it said that in certain places in Africa, by the age of 5 you’re either immune to malaria or you’re dead. How can one consolidate such horrendous and pointless suffering with the existence of an all-loving God? There is no reassurance, no comfort, what kind of loving being allows suffering without offering any explanation to the bereaved?

 

3. The Problem of a Hidden God

Theism posits the existence of a loving, all powerful God who wants our worship. This notion is contradicted by the fact that God does not let his existence be known to all in an inconspicuous manner. A booming voice from the sky, a simultaneous appearance to everyone in the world is within the bounds of what God can possibly do, why, if he desires our adoration, does he not do so and confirm his presence to all beings?

 

Why would he allow a state of affairs in which there is some considerable doubt as to whether or not he exists? Surely, as a loving being he does not want to punish disbelievers, so why does he not allow his presence to be known universally? The current state of affairs is not what you’d expect if an all-powerful, all-loving God exists, however it is precisely what you’d expect if God was not there.

 

4. The Problem of Disagreement

This problem is expounded well enough in my post ‘How Am I Supposed To Believe?’. In short; seeing as there are many different religions, with different sects all disagreeing with each other, what reason is there to suppose that one particular interpretation is correct whilst all others are false?

 

These are a few of the major reasons that I find it difficult to accept the central tenants of theism. We live in an insignificant planet, racked with pointless suffering, with no apparent sign of a God, and countless religions all disagreeing with one another whilst all claiming to be absolutely true. In light of these problems, theism makes no sense.

Prayer and Free Will

The Bible declares that human beings are given free will so that we can choose to either accept or reject God (“whosoever will, may come”).

 

Christian doctrine decrees that God can at least sometimes answer prayers.

 

If a Christian were to pray that a person were to accept God, and that prayer is answered then that person’s free will is violated.

 

Conclusion: Prayers answered with regards to the actions/decisions of others would mean that this person’s free will is violated. This creates logical problems, and shows that free will and a God that answers prayers are not entirely compatible.

Proving Man’s Place in Nature

Fig 1: Great ape skeletons (http://geopolicraticus.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/skeleton-of-the-gibbon-orang-chimpanzee-gorilla-and-man.jpg)

There are those who seek to deny that Homo sapiens are descended from African apes. This post will demonstrate once and for all that the man did indeed evolve from apes, and that we are still apes. Going by comparative morphology, our anatomy is most similar to the great apes (see Fig 1). Genetically we are most similar to Pan troglodytes (chimpanzees), with only 1.6% difference in our genes (Diamond, 1991).

 

There are some differences of course between humans and chimps. One of which is brain size (measured in cubic centimetres). Chimpanzees have a cranial capacity of 300-400 cc (Macdonald, 2009) while humans have a much larger cranial capacity of 1100–1900 cc (Wikipedia, accessed 2012). From this we can draw a simple hypothesis: If humans evolved from apes, we should find evidence of an increase in cranial capacity over time in the fossil record.

 

We can make cranial endocasts of fossil hominins which can be used to give a good estimate of cranial capacity (Johanson, 2006). If we plot the age of the fossils against cranial capacity on a graph, we see very clearly that there was a trend over time towards larger brains (see Fig 2):

Fig 2: A graph showing the increase in hominin cranial capacity over time (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/brainsize.gif)

 

This indisputably shows that there is a trend towards increased cranial capacity over time in the fossil record.

 

We also have genetic evidence to corroborate this. There is a gene called ASPM, which can mutate to cause microcelphaly (a disorder which causes humans to have a greatly reduced cerebral cortex) – from this we can hypothesize that ASPM has something to do with the development of our uniquely large cerebral cortex. When scientists compared the ASPM gene with other species there was clear evidence that it had undergone natural selection in our lineage (because of the number of changes in the coding sequence) (Zimmer, 2005).

 

Fig 3: Fossilized A. afarensis footprints

Another thing that we’d expect to find in the fossil record is species that show a mosaic of features between humans and apes. The most obvious example of this is Australopithecus afarensis. Who had a cranial capacity of between 375 and 550 cc (Talk Origins, accessed 2012) – which is about that of a chimpanzee. Yet we know that A. afarensis could walk on two feet, like a human.  This can be seen from the anatomy of their pelvic structure and their feet (Wikipedia, accessed 2012). We even have fossilized footprints of A. afarensis which show beyond doubt that they walked on two legs (see Fig 3). What we have is a chimp-like creature that walked on two legs like a human. What could this be if not a perfect example of mosaic features in an evolutionary transition?

 

The truth is abundantly clear; Homo sapiens did indeed evolve from African apes. Its also worth bearing in mind that I provided the merest examples of the kinds of evidence we have for this, if you wish to see just how well supported human evolution is, I would recommend reading some of the books listed in the references.

 

For any creationists who might be reading this, I shall leave you with a challenge. Take a look at Fig 4 and tell me which of these specimens are human and which are apes. Let me know in the comments below.

Fig 4: Hominin skulls (http://www.theistic-evolution.com/hominids2_big.jpg)

References:

DIAMOND, JARED (1991), Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, Great Britain: Radius

JOHANSON, DONALD & EDGAR, BLAKE (2006), From Lucy To Language, New York: Simon & Schuster

MACDONALD, DAVID W. (2009), The Encyclopedia of Mammals, Oxford: Oxford University Press

ZIMMER, CARL (2005), The Smithsonian Intimate Guide To Human Origins, New York: Harper

 

Talk Origins. Hominid Species. Online. Available from: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html#afarensis [Accessed 21 January 2012]

Wikipedia. Australopithecus afarensis. Online. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_afarensis#Skeletal_morphology_and_locomotion [Accessed 21 January 2012]

Wikipedia. Cranial capacity. Online. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_capacity [Accessed 21 January 2012]

Killing the Kalam Cosmological Argument

1.  In order for the Kalam Cosmological argument to be valid, it must deny that the universe has an eternal cause. If it does not deny this then the argument can be refuted by positing that the universe was caused by an event in a prior eternal, or timeless state. There is no evidential reason to make this assumption therefore it must be assumed as a logical impossibility.

 

2. In order for the Kalam Cosmological argument to be valid, it must assume that something springing into existence from nothing without cause is logically impossible. If this assumption is not made then the argument fails because it could simply be refuted by positing a universe which sprang into existence from nothing without cause.

 

3. In order for these assumptions to be consistent then God can neither be eternal, nor have sprung into existence from nothing without cause. If these assumptions can be invalidated in the special case of God then there is no reason why the opponent cannot claim that the assumptions are invalid for the universe.

 

4. The Kalam Cosmological argument is invalid if it doesn’t assume point’s 1 & 2, but it is invalid if it does assume them. Therefore it fails on it’s own terms.

 

Try harder next time…

Context and Objective Morality

One of the most sickeningly annoying arguments that theists like to make is that atheists have no objective standards by which we can judge right and wrong. Of course the standard response to this is to point out the many examples of hideously immoral acts condoned in the Old Testament, examples such as this:

 

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

- 1 Samuel 15:3 (KJV)

 

Here we have genocide and the killing of small children and babies condoned in a single verse. What is the standard response to this? Whether you’re a theist or an atheist you probably can guess what it is; ‘you have to understand the context of that verse’…

 

Here’s the thing; if killing babies and children is objectively wrong this means that by definition there is no context in which it can be permissible. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that the Bible gives you objective moral standards, and then when faced with the inconvenient fact that the Bible (or at least the Old Testament) depicts a psychotic genocidal God who commands suckling infants to be slaughtered, claim that one has to understand the context. If killing is objectively wrong, then there needs to be no discussion about context, killing is wrong in every context – that’s what objectively wrong means. If there is a context which needs to be understood, and which makes the event permissible then you are arguing from a subjective standard.

 

The contortions that theists go to when defending their bigoted genocidal maniac of a God is quite amusing to observe. All you have to do is ask a few straight forward questions and they tie themselves in knots. Is something right because God says it is right? Does that mean that eating your own children would be right if God makes you do it (Jeremiah 19:7-9)? If not then doesn’t that mean God has nothing to do with objective morality?

 

There is actually quite interesting philosophical discussion to be had about whether or not objective morality exists (I don’t know if it does or not), but there is one thing that is clear to all free-thinkers; the God of the Bible is a sickeningly evil demon of a God who deserves no apologies from anyone, and it only makes a mockery of any kind of moral discussion to try and advocate such a being as the source of all that is right and true.

R.I.P Hitch

Christopher Hitchens 1949 – 2011

Christopher Hitchens died today at the age of 62. After reading his rather harrowing piece in Vanity Fair last week (found here) I realised that he may not be with us for much longer, I didn’t think it would be this soon though. Long may he live on through his prolific writings. I hope that he was not in too much pain.

 

“Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.”

A Response to Peter Mullen on Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins says that David Cameron is “not really a Christian”. The fact is that it is only God to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid. So Dawkins has no means of telling whether Cameron is a genuine Christian or not.

We can, however, know that Dawkins is not a proper atheist – that is an intelligent atheist – from his own puerile writing and pathetic attempts at philosophical theology. For example, he writes: “Either God exists or he doesn’t. It is a scientific question. The existence of God is a scientific question, like any other.”

This is idiotic. Science investigates material phenomena, observable entities in the universe. No competent theologians or philosophers – not even the atheist ones – have ever declared that God (if he exists) is an object in his own universe. Perhaps there is no God, and intelligent Christians readily admit that there may be some legitimate doubt. But if the Judaeo-Christian God exists, then he is the maker of the universe and not an entity within it

The only idiotic person here is you Mr. Mullen, you’re making the argument that I addressed in my post ‘The Cop Out’, that God is outside of the universe and therefore immeasurable to science. However you are a Christian and you believe that this God parted the waters of the red sea to allow Moses to pass, you believe in a God that impregnated a woman and walked around on the Earth in human form – these are examples of your God acting within his own universe, and therefore it is perfectly logical to conclude that his actions would be measurable in some form. If you disagree, then I pose this question to you Mr. Mullen; how can a woman become impregnated magically by God, with absolutely no trace of this event being left? If your God exists and performs miracles within the universe then he would be resolutely measurable to science.

It may be that Christians are tragically misled and that there is no God. But before you rush into atheism, you have to know something about philosophical reasoning and how theology works. In other words you have to know what it is about and what it is not about. When he discusses religious belief, Dawkins does not know what he is talking about. And to fire off ignorant opinions is only the first mark of a fool.

It is as if I should presume to lecture the zoologist Dawkins on his own subject: as if I should idiotically declare that all the subtleties of modern biological science could be summed up in a book entitled Janet and John Look at Frogs.

You don’t have to be a philosopher or a theologian to know that religious claims are bogus. All you need to know is that there is no evidence of God’s existence or the extraordinary claims attributed to him. The difference between theology and zoology is thus; zoology looks at things that we know tangibly exist, therefore it is quite easy to make incorrect statements, misunderstand evidence and so on – the real evidence exists to be able to correct mistaken claims, therefore prior knowledge is useful in order to ensure that mistakes are not made. On the other hand theology is essentially pseudo-philosophical masturbation around an imaginary entity, and you don’t need to delve far into it before you realise that there is absolutely no evidence for this nonsense whatsoever. You don’t need to be an expert to know how and why Astrology is a load of nonsense, you do however need some prior knowledge to make statements about Astronomy. Notice the difference? One is talking about something that we have no good reason to believe, the other is talking about something with a wealth of material evidence that speaks for itself.

By contrast, there have been, and no doubt are still, competent atheists. If I were asked to name my favourite atheist, I would say David Hume. Hume was a thorough-going atheist, a man who on his deathbed declined the consolations of religion, saying: “I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.”

Moreover, the atheist David Hume did not possess an irrational, inhumane, roaring opposition to men of faith. He was a close friend of that great English Christian, Samuel Johnson. Unlike Dawkins, Hume did not wish to obliterate Christianity from the public realm. Hume was guided by a conscience which was generous enough to understand that other men’s consciences may guide them differently.

This is called a decent tolerance and liberality – instincts which are alien to the secular bigot Dawkins.

I don’t think Dawkins wants to obliterate Christianity from the public realm, he just wants to ensure that it does not affect government policy, education and scientific advancement. Your argument from emotion seems to portray him as a person who wants to knock down all the Churches in Britain and lock up all the clergy – however, Dawkins is actually quite tolerant of religious people in general (although he has no qualms about telling you that he disagrees), he just takes a stand against the rising tide of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Your inane rant didn’t actually address anything that Dawkins said in his article, you just entered into a blithering tirade against his character, with no attempt at even finding any examples to justify your attacks. I think the Telegraph should be ashamed to have such a reactionary and facile moron contributing to their blogs.

What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs, a Response to Ken Ham (Part 1)

“Say the teacher says; ‘millions of years ago’, I get the students to ask; ‘excuse me sir, were you there?’”

I absolutely love the fact that Ken Ham is incapable of seeing the flaws in his logic here, and how the very same logic can be used to refute Christianity. “Excuse me Mr. Ham, were you there when Jesus rose from the dead?… No?…. Well how do you know it happened then?”. The fact that he cannot spot this obvious flaw in his reasoning demonstrates a degree of stupidity that is unfathomable and certainly not something I could express with words.

By your logic Mr. Ham, no one would ever be able to be convicted of any crime ever, because they could simply say ‘Excuse me, were you there when the crime occurred?’ and the Jury would be completely convinced by their flawless defence. Thankfully we don’t live in such a ridiculous world. Ken does a pretty good job of setting the tone for the rest of the talk with this little logical gem though.

His attempt to refute our common ancestry with chimpanzee’s is so moronic that I thought I’d respond in a similar fashion. Look at these two pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you really say these guys aren’t related?

 

But rather than dealing with Ham’s objection on his intellectual level, I thought I’d better address it properly. Humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor around 7 million years ago. 7 million years is a long time, longer than our brains can even comprehend. This is plenty of time for morphological differences to arise in each respective lineage. Chimpanzees as you may or may not have noticed, spend a lot of time in trees, therefore their feet are adapted for being able to grasp branches. Human feet on the other hand (or foot I should say) are adapted for optimum bipedal locomotion. Hence the differences. If you think that refutes evolution Mr. Ham then you really do have another thing coming.

 

His next attempt at refuting evolution is truly brilliant. His argument is that a wombat must have been designed because it’s pouch faces away from it’s head – which prevents dirt from getting inside it and harming it’s offspring. One thing that he neglects to mention is that Koala’s pouches are the same, they face downwards, as described by Richard Dawkins in The Greatest Show On Earth:

 

Williams next mentions the pouch of that iconic Australian animal the koala, which – not a great idea in an animal that spends it’s time clinging to tree trunks – opens downwards, instead of upwards as in a kangaroo. Once again, the reason is a legacy of history. Koalas are descended from a wombat-like ancestor. Wombats are champion diggers

(page 369)

 

It would have been damaging to his argument to mention this of course, so he focuses on the wombat to make his point that all life is designed for a purpose. Well my response is this; what kind of designer would give koalas an upside down pouch?

 

Ah the platypus… For some reason he thinks this is confusing for evolutionists. The platypus actually represents quite a nice transition from egg-laying mammals to placental mammals – it is a living transitional form as it were. It lays eggs like the primitive ancestors of all placental mammals, yet it suckles it’s young, not with specialist teats, but by ‘sweating’ milk, showing how early mammals may have fed their young prior to developing teats. Contrary to your assertions the platypus does not present a serious challenge to evolution, it is simply an interesting creature that harks back to a stage in evolution long since surpassed by most lineages.

 

That’s it for part one of my refutation of Ken Ham’s ‘What Really Happened to The Dinosaurs’ – or as I’d prefer to call it; ‘Lying to Little Children, Who are too Young to Know any Better’. Stay tuned for part two.