The Problem of Evil

 

 

An ever-changing dynamic

The relationship between intellectuals and religious faith is a complicated one. Some intellectuals, as will be shown below, had nothing but animosity towards the Christian faith. Others have been tremendously empowered by it and have used it as their motivation for their intellectual breakthroughs. Taking the perspective of the atheist, then, requires some subtle maneuvering. Many atheists consider themselves to be on the side of reason—in an imagined competition between faith and reason. But this will be easier said than done.

Let's begin in the early days of the Christian faith. We'll start in the year 163 CE. The intellectual climate in Antiquity, the label given to the time period which comprises the era of Classical Greece and Rome, is impressive to say the least. The most famous physician of the time period, Galen (129-210 CE), was performing live vivisections of animals (for scientific purposes) which were well-attended and popular. And although the views held by Galen were not strictly-speaking compatible with modern science—for example, he never used control groups—it was nonetheless more empirical than any other previous approaches to medicine. In short, it was progress.

It is also the case that the philosophy of atomism was in full swing. This rich tradition, which began in the 5^th century BCE, held that the universe is composed of tiny, indivisible atoms, each having only a few intrinsic properties—like size and shape. Atomist philosophers were seen as competitors to the Aristotelian system, who built their own comprehensive view of the origins of the universe without teleological natural philosophy.

It was even the case that the emperor of the day was a philosopher. This was none other than Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), who was deeply committed to Stoicism. Although most Stoic writings are lost to history, from the few surviving texts and commentaries that have survived, we can discern the general view of the Stoics. The basic goal of Stoicism is to live wisely and virtuously. The Greek word used to label this state is arete, a term that is actually best translated not as “virtue” (as it is commonly done) but as “excellence of character.”

Something excels, according to this tradition, when it performs its function well. Humans excel when they think clearly and reason well about their lives. To achieve this end, the Stoic develops the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. The culmination of these virtues is arete, and this is the only intrinsic good, i.e., the only thing that is good for its own sake. External factors, like wealth and social status, are only advantages, not goods in themselves. They have no moral status. They, of course, can be used for bad aims, but the wise mind uses them to achieve arete. For a review of Marcus Aurelius' practice, see Robertson (2019).

It appears that early Christians rejected many of the intellectual movements of their time. For example, the atomists, whose belief system contradicted the notion of life after death, were targeted by early Christians. Apparently the atomist doctrine that human lives were just a “haphazard union of elements” conflicted starkly with the Christian notion of a soul (Nixey 2018: 38). Much later, Augustine was concerned that atomism weakened mankind’s terror of divine punishment and hell (ibid., 39). As such, texts that espoused atomist views, like those of Democritus, were actively denounced or neglected and were eventually lost to the West.

The Stoic movement was also negatively impacted by Christianity. As previously noted, Stoic writings, along with most of the literature of the classical world, are lost, and this process was initiated when Christians took control of the Roman empire in the 4th century CE (Nixey 2018). In fact, only about 10% of classical writings are still in existence. If one narrows the scope only to writings in Latin, it is only about 1% that remains (ibid., 176-177; see also Edward Gibbon's History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, chapters 15 and 16). And so, the Stoic logic that is studied today (in courses like PHIL 106) was actually reconstructed (or "rediscovered") in the 20th century, as modern logicians were formalizing their field (O'Toole and Jennings 2004).¹

As the anti-intellectualism of Christianity was becoming evident, thinkers in Antiquity were becoming increasingly suspicious and critical. The Christians shirked military service and instead preached meekness (which must've sounded ludicrous to Roman ears). Later on, the public spending on monks and nuns was believed to have weakened the Roman Empire substantially. Some intellectuals felt the need to cry out.

Celsus was one of these thinkers. He openly mocked the virgin birth and the Christian creation myth. He wondered why Jesus’ teachings contradicted earlier Jewish teachings (Had God changed his mind?) and why God waited so long between creation and salvation (Did he not care prior to sending Jesus?). He also wondered why he sent Jesus to a “backwater” (i.e., Bethlehem) and why he needed to send Jesus at all (Nixey 2018: 36-7). Celsus was most concerned with how willful ignorance, of which he accused the Christians, made you vulnerable to believing in things that are easily dismissed had the person in question been more well-rounded in their reading. He pointed out what many of us today know all too well: people that only get their information from one source are at risk of biased information, disinformation, and believing in things that a little critical thinking could dispel.

After Celsus, Porphyry waged an even more thorough attack on Christianity. His attack was so ferocious that his works were completely eradicated, the task being begun by Constantine. Celsus’ works would be lost if it weren’t for the long passages that the Christian Origen quoted during his counterattack.

But then again, almost every major thinker from the early modern period that we've covered so far was a believer; Hume is the sole exception (so far). It's not the case that believing in Christianity necessarily negatively affects your information-processing capacities.

The atheist response

We are now going to take a look at the perspective of the atheist. You will soon discover that there are atheist responses to every kind of argument for God's existence. To understand this, however, we must first clarify what the different types of arguments are.³

Once again it is Immanuel Kant who categorizes for us. In the domain of religion, Kant argues that there are only three kinds of argument for God’s existence:

• the ‘cosmological’ category, as in Aquinas’ Argument from Efficient Causes,
• the ‘ontological’ category, as in Anselm’s and Descartes’ ontological arguments,
• and the ‘physico-theological’, also known as arguments from design.

The third category is of interest to us. We've not yet covered an argument of this type. Moreover, Kant, himself a believer, makes the case that this is the type of argument that is best understood by the human intellect. We'll look at one next.

 

Argument from
intelligent design

As we mentioned last time, Aquinas provided his Five Ways, five proofs of God's existence. The fifth of these five ways is an argument of the physico-theological type, an argument from intelligent design. Rather than using Aquinas' arguments again, though, I will use a more modern argument. We will look at William Paley's watch analogy.

In the early 19th century, there was a revival of natural theology. Natural theologians, recall, assumed God's existence and sought to discover the grandeur of God's handiwork by studying the natural world. This revival is primarily due to William Paley. Paley advocated natural theology as a method of discovering (and praising) God’s work. It was perceived as an act of devotion. In fact, this is why Charles Darwin’s father, realizing his son’s waning interest in medicine (his first career choice), recommended that Charles take up natural theology instead. (Ironic, isn't it?) See chapter 1 of Wright's (2010) The Moral Animal for a short biography of Darwin which includes this anecdote.

The argument

1. The world displays order, function, and design.
2. Other things (e.g., watches) display order, function, and design.
3. Other things (e.g., watches) that display order, function, and design, do so because they were created by an intelligent designer.
4. Therefore, the world displays order, function, and design because it was created by an intelligent creator (and this is God).

Objections

The Regress Problem

If complexity implies that there is a designer, then consider how complex God must be. It seems like God, since He is so complex, also had a designer. In fact, how do we know that God wasn't made by some even more powerful meta-god?

Compatibility with Polytheism

Even if this argument is sound, it does not necessarily prove the existence of a singular God. It’s possible that many gods collaborated to create the universe. In fact, this sort of makes more sense, since most complex enterprises are done by teams and not individuals.

Hume’s Objection

In his Dialogues on Natural Religion, Scottish philosopher David Hume made a comment relevant to this argument (although he had died before the publication of Paley's work). Hume made the point that in order for an analogical argument to work, you have to know the two things you are comparing. That is to say if you are comparing, let's just say, life to a box of chocolates, in order for the comparison to work, you'd have to know both things fairly well. We are, of course, alive. And most of us have had experience with those boxes of assorted chocolates, where some items are very tasty but some are filled with some kind of gross red goo. The box of chocolates takes you by surprise sometimes, just like life. The analogy works because you know both things.

So here's the problem that this poses for the teleological argument: maybe you've seen a watch get made, but you've never seen a universe get created. You're comparing a thing you know (a watch) to a thing you don't understand fully (the universe). So, Hume would say, the analogy doesn't work.

Argument from Ockham’s Razor (Atheist Edition)

The following is an argument made by G.H. Smith in his book The Case Against God. It makes use of Ockham's razor to disarm the argument from intelligent design. Smith argues that the only difference between the view of the natural theologian, who uses empirical observation to try to prove God's existence, and the atheistic natural philosopher, who uses empirical observation to learn about the world, is that the former (the natural theologian) has an extra belief in his/her worldview. The extra belief is, of course, belief in God. But belief in God offers no explanatory power. This is because to posit the supernatural as an explanation for some natural phenomenon explains nothing. Supernatural things are, by definition, beyond natural explanations. Thus, the design argument has zero explanatory power. By Ockham’s Razor, the belief in God is superfluous.

Denying premise #3

Another, more general strategy is to deny that premise #3 is true. If successful, this objection would undermine the soundness of the whole argument. The argument might go like this. First off, we can say that the universe does not display purpose. Even though there are some regularities in the universe (like stable galactic formations and solar systems), none of these have any obvious purpose. What is the purpose of the universe? What is it for? These appear to be questions without answers, at least not definitive ones.

Some atheists (e.g., Firestone 2020) go further and attempt to dispel any notion that the universe might be well-ordered in any way. Firestone argues that the so-called regularities we do observe in the universe only appear to be regularities from our perspective. For example, we know that the early universe, soon after the Big Bang, was very chaotic (Stenger 2008: 121). Further, some parts of the universe are still chaotic (there are galaxies that are crashing into each other, black holes swallowing entire solar systems, etc.). We couldn't see much of that during Paley's time, but to continue to argue that the universe is well-ordered and displays function seems to be anachronistic (or out of sync with the times).

Some theists might respond to the objections above by arguing that some of the universe does have a function. Perhaps the function of our part of the universe is to harbor human life. If this is the argument, then there is a glaring problem with it. We must remind ourselves that human life on this planet is only temporary. This is because life on this planet will be impossible somewhere between 0.9 and 1.5 billion years from now (see Bostrom and Cirkovic 2011: 34). At this point, the sun will begin to enter its red giant phase and expand. It might consume the planet. Or it might simply heat up our planet until complex life is impossible. In either case, harboring human life would not be one of the functions of Earth.

Lastly, even if we agree that there is some kind of order to the universe, this is not the same kind of order that is seen in a watch. Rather, it is merely the sort of patterns you would find in any complex system. That is to say any sufficiently complex systen gives rise to perceived regularities. This is usually referred to as Ramseyian Order (see Graham & Spencer 1990). In other words, this means that Paley is guilty of an informal fallacy; he used the word "order" with two different meanings (see Firestone 2020).

 

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Equivocation is a fallacy in which an arguer uses a word with a particular meaning in one premise, and then uses the same word with a different meaning in another premise. For example, in the argument below, the word "man" is used in two different senses. In premise 1, "man" is (in sexist language) being used to refer to the human species. In premise 2, "man" is being used to refer to the male gender. Not cool, fam. Not cool.