The British writer, actor, and comedian Stephen Fry is featured in a YouTube video which has gone viral: over 5 million views as of this moment.
 

 
As you may know, Fry is, like his British counterparts Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, a fairly ferocious atheist, who has made a name for himself in recent years as a very public debunker of all things religious. In the video in question, he articulates precisely what he would say to God if, upon arriving at the pearly gates, he discovered that he was mistaken in his atheism. Fry says that he would ask God why he made a universe in which children get bone cancer, a universe in which human beings suffer horrifically and without justification. If such a monstrous, self-absorbed, and stupid God exists, Fry insists, he would decidedly not want to spend eternity with him. Now there is much more to Fry’s rant—it goes on for several minutes—but you get the drift.

To those who feel that Stephen Fry has delivered a devastating blow to religious belief, let me say simply this: this objection is nothing new to Christians. St. Paul, Origen, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and many, many other Christian theologians up and down the centuries have dealt with it. In fact, one of the pithiest expressions of the problem was formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. The great Catholic philosopher argued that if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. Yet God is called infinitely good. Therefore, if God exists, there should be no evil. But there is evil. Thus it certainly seems to follow that God does not exist. Thomas thereby conveys all of the power of Fry’s observations without the histrionics. And of course, all of this subtle theological wrestling with the problem of suffering is grounded, finally, in the most devastating rant ever uttered against God, a rant found not in an essay of some disgruntled atheist philosopher but rather in the pages of the Bible. I’m talking about the book of Job.

According to the familiar story, Job is an innocent man, but he is nevertheless compelled to endure every type of suffering. In one fell swoop, he loses his wealth, his livelihood, his family, and his health. A group of friends console him and then attempt to offer theological explanations for his pain. But Job dismisses them all and, with all the fury of Stephen Fry, calls out God, summoning him, as it were, into the dock to explain himself. Out of the desert whirlwind God then speaks—and it is the longest speech by God in the Scriptures: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know….Who shut within doors the sea…when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands? Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place” (Job 38: 4, 8-10)? God goes on, taking Job on a lengthy tour of the mysteries, conundrums, and wonders of the universe, introducing him to ever wider contexts, situating his suffering within frameworks of meaning that he had never before considered. In light of God’s speech, I would first suggest to Stephen Fry that the true God is the providential Lord of all of space and all of time.

Secondly, I would observe that none of us can see more than a tiny swatch of that immense canvas on which God works. And therefore I would urge him to reconsider his confident assertion that the suffering of the world—even the most horrific and seemingly unjustified—is necessarily without meaning. Imagine that one page of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was torn away and allowed to drift on the wind. Imagine further that that page became, in the course of several months, further ripped and tattered so that only one paragraph of it remained legible. And finally imagine that someone who had never heard of Tolkien’s rich and multi-layered story came, by chance, upon that single paragraph. Would it not be the height of arrogance and presumption for that person to declare that those words made not a lick of sense? Would it not be akin to someone, utterly ignorant of higher mathematics, declaring that a complex algebraic formula, coherent in itself but opaque to him, is nothing but gibberish? Given our impossibly narrow point of view, how could any of us ever presume to pronounce on the “meaninglessness” of what happens in the world?

A third basic observation I would make to Mr. Fry is this: once we grant that God exists, we hold to the very real possibility of a life beyond this one. But this implies that no evil in this world, even death itself, is of final significance. Is it terrible that innocent children die of wasting diseases? Well of course. But is it finally and irreversibly terrible? Is it nothing but terrible? By no means! It might in fact be construed as an avenue to something unsurpassably good.

In the last analysis, the best rejoinder to Fry’s objection is a distinctively Christian one, for Christians refer to the day on which Jesus was unjustly condemned, abandoned by his friends, brutally scourged, paraded like an animal through the streets, nailed to an instrument of torture and left to die as “Good Friday.” To understand that is to have the ultimate answer to Job—and to Stephen Fry.
 
 
(Image credit: Sneaky Mag)

NOTE: Today's post is in response to Steven Dillon's post, "Why I Don't Think God Exists."

 
I’d like to begin responding to Steven Dillon’s guest post on God’s existence by complimenting his thoughtful and candid writing. I especially appreciated his opening paragraph where, with great vulnerability, Steven acknowledged that he wished God existed.

Some atheists desire just the opposite. The philosopher Thomas Nagel admitted in his book, The Last Word:

“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

By admitting his preference for an all-loving, all-powerful Father who brings life and order to the universe, Steven implicitly confirms his openness to God’s existence, a sign that he hasn't a priori rejected the possibility of God.

But as we all know, wishing something to be true doesn’t make it true. Steven offers what he considers a strong argument against God, one that presumably prevents him from believing. He outlines it this way:

Premise 1: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.
 
Premise 2: God would not do at least one of these things.
 
Conclusion: God does not exist.

After offering this syllogism, Steven moves on to defend its two premises. Regarding the first, he states:

“God is traditionally conceived of as being perfectly good and the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause of everything that can have an ultimate source, ground, or originating cause. . .
 
Moreover, nothing that has happened will have happened without his permission. Each of us would be under his care as he chose to sustain us in existence from moment to moment.”

I commend Steven for accurately defining God as “perfectly good” (though classical theists would likely prefer “the Perfect Good”) as well as “the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause of everything that can have an ultimate source, ground, or originating cause.” No problems there. Moreover, Steven rightly notes that “nothing that has happened will have happened without [God’s] permission.” This aligns with Christian's affirmation of God’s ultimate sovereignty.

However, it’s difficult to see how the above points support or are even relevant to Steven’s first premise. Claiming there are things God “will have had to have done” is to assume some binding duty outside of and above God—some requiring authority which assigns duties to God (like a mother mandating her child to perform certain tasks). Yet this contradicts Steven’s own description of God as “the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause.” God can’t be the ultimate ground of morality and responsible to a higher moral authority. That’s a self-contradiction.

On the other hand, if Steven simply means that God has to perform or refrain from certain moral acts because of his nature (e.g., that God has to love his creation because he is all-loving), then that’s an obvious and unhelpful tautology. It’s difficult to determine which of these two scenarios Steven meant, but it doesn’t seem either supports his first premise.

The real crux of Steven’s argument, however, begins in his defense of his second premise. There he claims:

“If God exists, then due to his role as the ultimate cause, he will have had to have given his permission for every single thing that has ever occurred, including . . . the Holocaust . . . [and] every heinous count of abuse that children have been subjected to. But, this seems beneath God and more like the track record of a morally impoverished deity.”

This is, of course, all true. If God is all-powerful, and if nothing occurs without God’s permission, he will have had to permit these heinous and seemingly indefensible tragedies. It also might seem, from our limited perspective, that permitting such acts would be “beneath God.”

But from there it does not follow that God has no good justification for permitting them.

Christians have consistently pointed out that because of God’s unique, metaphysical position, beyond space and time, he can have morally justifiable reasons to allow certain acts of pain and suffering—reasons that we're just not privy to. Just as we allow our children to experience darkness and hurt sometimes when we know it will bring about a greater good, God could have good reasons to permit apparently heinous acts. (Note: I’m not arguing here that God necessarily does have good reasons in any specific case, only that there’s no logical reason why he couldn’t have good reasons to permit evils in general, reasons we're just not aware of.)

Steven goes on to say:

“Typically, you should not allow children under your care to get beaten and molested. Perhaps there could be an exception to this rule, probably in what I’m guessing is a farfetched scenario. But, it is still a rule, and it thus expresses what is normally the case. To argue against this is to adopt the disturbing position that it is usually not wrong to allow children under your care to get beaten and molested.”

The first two sentences are true and agreeable, but the third does not logically follow. To claim that in some cases it might be possible for someone to have a morally justifiable reason for permitting an evil like child abuse does not necessitate believing that “it is usually not wrong to allow children under your care to get beaten and molested.” That’s simply a non sequitur.

It should be pointed out here that, once again, Steven has failed to provide any support for his second premise. It’s not clear how he supports the claim, “God would not do at least one of these things [that he has to do].” Steven never explains why it’s logically impossible for God to have morally justifiable reasons to allow suffering in one, many, or all cases.

Moving on to his conclusion, Steven acknowledges that his argument isn’t airtight, and thus not logically stable. He candidly admits:

“For all its beauty, our world just seems too ugly to include God in it. I certainly won’t pretend like this is a rationally undefeatable argument, but I also don’t think it’s anything like a pushover.”

I agree with Steven that his argument is not “anything like a pushover.” I agree with Thomas Aquinas who famously concluded that the “problem of evil” constitutes one of only two serious arguments against the existence of God.

I also agree with Steven that his argument is rationally defeatable. For example, Steven claims “our world just seems to ugly to include God in it.” Besides the fact that ugliness in the world is not incompatible with God—Christians have a perfectly logical explanation for moral ugliness: Original Sin—there’s a large difference between what seems to be true and what really is. For example, it may seem to be a remarkable stroke of luck that I was dealt two royal flushes in a row. But as my perspective widens and I’m given more background information, I learn the deck was stacked beforehand—a fact I wasn’t in position to previously know. Thus my perception changes: an apparent truth becomes, in fact, an illusion.

The same holds in the case of evil. Neither Steven, nor I, nor anyone in this world are in the privileged epistemic position to determine whether God has good reasons to allow evil. We simply can’t see the entirety of space and time (past, present, and future) the way God can. We can’t perceive the “butterfly effect” of events that may emerge out of a tragic event. Therefore we must acknowledge, in humility, that we can’t necessarily suppose “what seems to be the case” regarding the moral permissibility of allowing evil may, in fact, not be the case. We must acknowledge that God could have good reasons for allowing evil that we're just unable to glimpse.

Before wrapping up his article, Steven asks:

“How shall a theist respond to this argument? Is it not normally wrong to allow children under your care to be abused? Are we not under God's care? Or perhaps she will simply say the arguments for God’s existence are just too strong.”

To answer Steven’s three questions in turn: it is normally wrong to allow children under your care to be abused (note: God normally does not allow the children under his care to be abused); we are under God’s care; and it’s true that other arguments for God’s existence (like the arguments from contingency, fine tuning, first cause, etc.) are very strong.

Yet none of those three questions reveal how most Christians would answer Steven’s primary argument. The simplest and strongest response, as I’ve noted above, is this:

There is no logical contradiction between an all-loving, all-powerful God who permits evil in the world. To deny this, an atheist would have to show definitively that God could not have morally justifiable reasons for permitting evil in any circumstance. And since we’re in no position to judge whether God has such reasons, the existence of evil (i.e., pain, suffering, abuse, etc.) simply does not pose a strong argument against God’s existence.

In Steven's final paragraph, he writes:

“However we might respond to [the problem of evil], keep in mind that it won’t do to argue that God might allow things like the Holocaust, or human trafficking, or that God could have good reason for doing so. No has said that he couldn’t, that’s not the issue at hand. What needs to be shown is that God would allow these things, theists will need to take the risk of identifying the reason why God would allow the Holocaust, or human trafficking, and seeing whether that identification can stand to reason.”

I'm happy that Steven concedes that God could have good reasons to permit certain evils. But then he makes a subtle, yet significant move in his final sentences. He attempts to shift the burden of proof onto theists, challenging them to disprove his argument against God, instead of assuming the burden himself—instead of marshaling his own evidence in support of his own claims.

But the theist is under no such responsibility. If Steven claims that the existence of evil is logically or evidentially incompatible with God’s existence, he needs to show why. It won’t suffice simply to demand that theists show how God and evil co-exist. To say it another way, it’s fallacious to make a positive claim and then demand others disprove your claim—you have to provide evidence yourself! This is precisely why atheists won’t allow Christians to say, “God exists! And if you don’t agree, you have to show why he doesn’t exist!”

In the end, the honest theist can respond, “Look, we don’t know why God chose to allow the Holocaust. We also don’t know why he chooses to allow human trafficking. We can point to some obvious goods that result—like the gift of free will, a good that would be undermined if God stepped in, usurped human action, and disallowed the Holocaust. But in the end, we’re just not in a position to judge whether God has morally justifiable reasons to allow these things."

That admitted ignorance, a result of our limited knowledge and perspective, does not imply God’s non-existence. It’s simply a fact that we’re in no place to judge the moral permissibility of God’s actions.

For all of the reasons above, Steven’s argument fails. He does not provide substantial support for either of his two premises, and he does not show why evil logically contradicts God’s existence.

(For a longer response to Steven’s claim, I suggest reading Alvin Plantinga’s groundbreaking book, God, Freedom, and Evil. That book has caused many well-known atheists like J.K. Mackie to say, “We [atheists] can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically contradictory with one another.” I also highly recommend chapters six and seven in Trent Horn’s new book, Answering Atheism.)
 
 

(Image credit: Earthy Mysticism)

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular atheist commenters. Be sure to read Brandon Vogt's response, "Why Evil and Suffering Don't Disprove God".

I wish that God existed, I genuinely do. His presence would be an invaluable source of hope and strength as well as peace and happiness.¹ But, I don’t think he does and that realization is perhaps the greatest of disappointments. Be that as it may, reality is still beautiful and I think we should honor the truth.

So, in hopes of some provocative discussion, I’m going to share what strikes me as a fairly compelling reason to think that God does not exist.

Now, as Richard Swinburne notes, “One unfortunate feature of recent philosophy of religion has been a tendency to treat arguments for the existence of God in isolation from each other. There can, of course, be no objection to considering each argument initially, for the sake of simplicity of exposition, in isolation from others. But clearly the arguments may back each other up or alternatively weaken each other, and we need to consider whether or not they do.”²

I propose this argument then as another piece to the puzzle, one which needs to be weighed in conjunction with the arguments for God’s existence.

My core thesis is this:

P: If God exists, then he will have had to have done things that he would not do.

If (P) is true, it affords what seems to be a powerful argument against God’s existence, because it’s absurd that God has done what he would not do. (P) is essentially composed of two claims:

P₁: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

P₂: God would not do at least one of these things.

Since (P) is true if and only if both P₁ and P₂ are true, I’ll focus on them. Let’s take each in turn.

P₁: If God exists, there are things that he will have had to have done.

God is traditionally conceived of as being perfectly good and the ultimate source, ground, or originating cause of everything that can have an ultimate source, ground or originating cause.

As such, if God exists, he will have had to have brought the natural world into existence along with most if not all of its significant features. Moreover, nothing that has happened will have happened without his permission. Each of us would be under his care as he chose to sustain us in existence from moment to moment.

P₂: God would not do at least one of these things.

If God exists, then due to his role as the ultimate cause, he will have had to have given his permission for every single thing that has ever occurred, including the most awful and horrific of events.

Take for example the Holocaust. God will have had to have deliberately allowed the systematic execution of millions, despite their unnervingly helpless pleas for him to spare their children as they were marched at gunpoint into gas chambers.

He will have had to have given his permission for every heinous count of abuse that children have been subjected to.³

But, this seems beneath God and more like the track record of a morally impoverished deity.

Typically, you should not allow children under your care to get beaten and molested. Perhaps there could be an exception to this rule, probably in what I’m guessing is a farfetched scenario. But, it is still a rule, and it thus expresses what is normally the case. To argue against this is to adopt the disturbing position that it is usually not wrong to allow children under your care to get beaten and molested.

Now, because it’s rational to assume that things are as they normally tend to be until given good reason to think otherwise, we’re putatively entitled to assume that someone who has allowed children under their care to get beaten and molested has done something wrong. We very well might go on to learn of extenuating circumstances that mitigate culpability or some such. But, the default position is that this sort of behavior is morally unacceptable, and just as well, right?

Well, in so far as we have prima facie reason to think that allowing kids under your care to get beaten and molested is wrong, we have prima facie reason to think that God would not do this. Because God will have had to have done this if he existed, we have prima facie reason to think that God does not exist.

There are many other moral rules that seem to yield this same conclusion, but they’d needlessly complicate a simple deduction

Conclusion

So, I believe there are some significant reasons for thinking that if God exists, he will have had to have done things that he would not do. For all its beauty, our world just seems too ugly to include God in it. I certainly won’t pretend like this is a rationally undefeatable argument, but I also don’t think it’s anything like a pushover.

How shall a theist respond to this argument? Is it not normally wrong to allow children under your care to be abused? Are we not under God's care? Or perhaps she will simply say the arguments for God’s existence are just too strong.

However we might respond to it, keep in mind that it won’t do to argue that God might allow things like the Holocaust, or human trafficking, or that God could have good reason for doing so. No has said that he couldn’t, that’s not the issue at hand. What needs to be shown is that God would allow these things. Theists will need to take the risk of identifying the reason why God would allow the Holocaust, or human trafficking, and seeing whether that identification can stand to reason.

What do you guys think?

(Image credit: Blog CDN)

Pablo Picasso’s Tragedy (1903) depicts three figures huddled on a beach—presumably a family. We see nothing of the ‘tragedy’ itself, however; no trace of specific disaster remains, and we are left to speculate about what series of events may have led to their misfortune. The focus of the painting centers us on the figures themselves.

The man and woman are turned inwards in an inherently familial pose, but the distance between them and their downcast eyes reveal their inability to comfort each other. The child, too young to understand the meaning of his own experience, places a hand on the man and looks pleadingly in the direction of the woman. Neither have anything to offer him, and this feeling of impotence must only increase their own suffering. Here ‘tragedy’ functions as a subject in the painting not in reference to any single event, but simply as the human experience.

Picasso is not alone in choosing to depict forms of human suffering and loss, and there is something fitting about this. Even after the fall, it seems that art is still inclined towards a kind of imitation of nature. Good art resonates with our experience of the natural world and with our own human nature as well. It does not flinch in the presence of failure, personal weakness, or moral evil. In point of fact, what is often so disedifying about pseudo-art or kitsch is not so much its technical mediocrity as its lack of honesty. Of course, an undifferentiated portrayal of negative experience can also lead to an insufficient humanism or naturalism. Worse still would be a deliberate focus on ugliness. The seeming danger for Picasso is not the first of these pitfalls, but the latter two.

The subject of Picasso’s work is something that should be inherently undesirable. There is nothing beautiful about tragedy. Although we may be slow to say so, the sight of others’ suffering has the power to repulse and to send us searching for a distraction. Nonetheless, there is something intuitively beautiful about Picasso’s Tragedy that strikes us as paradoxical only on second thought. The painting seems to exert an immediate draw that transports us directly onto Picasso’s gray-blue beach, bringing us close to the figures and to their nameless tragedy as well; it is only on further reflection that we realize how strange it is to be attracted by something so plainly awful.

Picasso draws our attention directly and simply to their pain itself, with no outside referent to distract or to offer impartial resolutions. When considered critically, there seems to be nothing attractive about this. And yet Picasso has presented tragedy simpliciter, and we are drawn by it not as we might be by a depiction of pleasant scenery, but as a father might be drawn by the suffering of his son. Picasso has portrayed the human experience of tragedy in such a way that we feel no revulsion—no burning need to distract ourselves from the human suffering before us. Tragedy is here framed in such primary and universal terms that it necessarily resonates with us all, evoking not pious sympathy, but real empathy.

The presence of beauty in a painting like this will always remain somewhat elusive, but perhaps a trace of an explanation can be found in Picasso’s authentic humanism. Picasso manages to elicit that which is most human in each of us by drawing us into another’s experience of something with which we ourselves are only too familiar.

Picasso was not a religious man, and there is no hint of theological horizon present here. His secularism extended even to his parents, who did not raise him as a practicing Catholic. And yet in spite of this, his work seems to be open to something greater. Perhaps it was the cultural Catholicism of his native Spain which imbued him with a certain anthropological honesty that was receptive to the motions of grace, if only subliminally.

Tragedy in the natural sense is survivable; no misfortune, however great, can completely discourage a person from seeking the good. But, in the eyes of Catholics, God alone can undo the knot of tragedy itself, reestablishing us in the newness of grace. Perhaps Picasso would not have anticipated it, but when his Tragedy is viewed through the lens of faith, our natural empathy can take on a supernatural character.
 
 
This article first appeared on DominicanaBlog.com, an online publication of the Dominican Students of the Province of St. Joseph who live and study at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. It was written by Br. Reginald M. Lynch, O.P., who entered the Order in 2007. He attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he studied philosophy and religious studies.

According to James 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.” Skeptics, aiming to disprove the Bible, may reply that God certainly does tempt people to do evil, and his actions during the Israelite's exodus from Egypt is proof of that.

Let My People Go!

 
In Exodus 3-4 God calls Moses from his life as a fugitive in Midian and tells him to return to Egypt in order to lead the Israelites to freedom. God assures Moses that he will give him help, including the support of his brother Aaron and a wooden staff capable of performing miraculous feats. This will show the Egyptians that the God of Israel means business. God then says in Exodus 4:21, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.”

Wait a minute! God says he wants to free the people of Israel and now he is saying he will cause Pharaoh to not release them. What’s going on here? First, God does not merely want to relocate the Israelites. He wants to demonstrate to the Egyptians the power and reality of the God of Israel by delivering them with “his mighty hand.”

This will compel the Egyptians to let the Israelites go of their own will and maybe even cause them to repent in the process. In fact, in Exodus 12:38 we read of a “mixed multitude” who left with the Israelites during the Exodus. This group could have included Egyptians who were convinced that the God of Israel was the real God. But why did God cause Pharaoh to “harden his heart” and not let the people go?

Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart?

 
Exodus 4:21 is the first time we read of how God will harden Pharaoh’s heart. In the next chapter Moses and Aaron make their demand to Pharaoh that he let the Israelites go worship in the desert. The Pharaoh not only curtly dismisses them, he demands the Israelites make bricks without straw as a punishment for their insolent request. All of this takes place without any hint of God prompting Pharaoh’s overreaction.

God then reminds Moses again in Exodus 7:3 that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. In Exodus 7:14 and 7:22 we read that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, although the text does not say by whom. Then, in Exodus 8:15, 8:32, and 9:34 it is revealed that Pharaoh hardened his own heart by “sinning yet again” and refusing to release the Israelites. Only as the plagues grew worse and Pharaoh became more stubborn does the text begin to say God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

When we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it is an easy mistake to assume that God did something to Pharaoh in order to cause Pharaoh’s heart to become stubborn and “hard.” But you can cause something to become hard just by leaving it alone, such as when bread is left out on the counter. It seems that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart by removing what little presence of his grace that was in Pharaoh’s heart in the first place. Pharaoh had his chance to peacefully release the Israelites, but he ignored God’s warnings and hardened his heart. This description of events, as some commenters have noted, preserves God's sovereignty. God is not thwarted by Pharaoh's obstinacy but has providentially foreseen it and uses it for the good of his people.

Stubborn Hearts

 
As a consequence of Pharaoh’s own actions, God allowed Pharaoh’s heart to reach its maximum level of stubbornness, and Israel’s freedom was purchased at a heavy price for the Egyptians. This mirrors other times when God punishes sinners not through external punishment but by letting the awful consequences of their own bad lifestyles show them the error of their ways. God even did this with Israel after the Exodus. In Psalm 81:11-14 the author describes God saying, “How my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would have none of me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! I would soon subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.”

In conclusion, skeptics should know that God will punish us by letting us engage in our foolish sins, but as soon as we desire to repent he will deliver us from our sins. God did the same thing for Pharaoh and allowed him to wallow in his foolish disobedience. God was not the primary cause of that disobedience and would have allowed Pharaoh to repent if Pharaoh had chosen to do that. Pharaoh’s failure to do that and not release the Israelite’s says more about his character than God’s.
 
 
Originally published at Catholic Answers. Used with permission.
(Image credit: Athena Academy)

The day after my son Joshua died, after the necessary funeral and burial arrangements had been made, I got into my car, drove aimlessly some distance, and finally parked in a relatively desolate place away from traffic, noise, and people. I turned the car off and began to talk out loud to God, but at a volume more accurately described with the term 'yell.' "Why? Why him? He had done absolutely nothing wrong. He most certainly didn't deserve this. He suffered so much over these last two years. How could you let this happen? How could you just watch this happen, right in front of your omniscient view? How could you have just watched all this happen this whole time, silently, as from a distance, and done absolutely nothing? Nobody I know with even a shred of moral decency would do such a thing! Why didn't you do something to help him, to heal him? Why even bring him into the world, only to allow him to suffer so much, and then give him no chance to grow up, not even a chance to enjoy childhood? Why? How could you possibly be good and just, and allow an innocent child to suffer and die in this way?" In my anger and grief, as I hurled these questions at God I was repeatedly pounding my fist on the center of the steering wheel.

Then at some point while still pounding on the wheel and repeatedly interrogating God with no reply forthcoming, a kind of trilemma began to form in my mind, and I gradually realized that under each of its three horns what I was doing was silly and pointless. Either God did not exist, or God was evil, or God was good. In what I had witnessed in Joshua's suffering, any God who was morally indifferent or 'neutral' or apathetic was just evil. If God did not exist, my complaining was silly and pointless, because in that case nobody was listening. And if God were evil, then my complaints were also silly and pointless, because there would be no point complaining to an evil deity about ill treatment, since if he were evil he wouldn't care about failing to be good. I realized by this process of reasoning that my act of complaining to God about an injustice could only make sense if God is good. But then, of course, if God, being God, is good not by participation in goodness or by derived goodness, but as Goodness itself (ipsum bonum), then my act of complaining to Him also did not make sense because in that case He certainly has a good reason for allowing my son's suffering and death to happen, a reason I cannot presently see. I would be complaining to Goodness itself about its behavior, as though I know Goodness better than Goodness knows Goodness, and as though I know better than Goodness how Goodness ought to run things. And that too would be silly and pointless (and arrogant), because one can't show up Goodness by appealing to Goodness. Any attempt to do so only shows up one's own insufficient understanding of Goodness, and is thus self-refuting. The proper response, if God is Goodness, would not be to rail against Him but instead to trust Him, even if I never found out the good, justifying reason for Joshua's death, even if for the rest of eternity I never could find out that reason because it was so far above my finite comprehension.

I realized further that if God did not exist, or if God were evil, not only was my complaining pointless, I would never see Joshua again. My only hope to see him again lay under that third option, namely, that God is good. If in my anguish I were to turn against God, or deny His existence, I would cut myself off spiritually, mentally, emotionally, ontologically, and eschatologically, from the only possible way I could see Joshua again, and the only possible condition under which his life and suffering had been meaningful, worthwhile, and ultimately redeemable as truly good and not ultimately pointless or his suffering gratuitous. Of course that logical truth did not entail that God exists and is good. But I knew that I was not the ultimate source of the goodness and justice to which I was appealing in my complaint to whichever higher being was in charge. The only intelligible option of the three was that the goodness I longed for, and which inasmuch as I was aware of it was the fire behind the anger driving me to pummel the center of my steering wheel, was the very goodness at the heart of all things, the goodness by which I lived and breathed at that moment, and by which Joshua had lived and breathed, and breathed his last breath by my side the day before. And then the great inversion grew clearer to me. I had been yelling and railing at Goodness for His alleged lack of goodness, and all along Goodness had been giving me life, breath by which to yell, and even a little glimpse of itself such that I could make my complaint by appeal to what I knew of it by that glimpse. He who is Goodness itself all along had been looking me in the eyes, reaching into the center of my grieving soul, and embracing me with the gift of infinite love.

Then I rested my head on the steering wheel, and the tears began to pour down. I decided to trust God regarding Joshua's death, to trust that He had a justifying reason, such that Joshua's life and suffering were entirely worthwhile, even though I may never be able fully to understand that reason, either in this life or the next. This act of trust was based entirely on the thesis that the underlying source of all things is not evil, not indifferent, but is rather bonitas pura (i.e. pure goodness), the very source of the goodness I knew, and the ultimate object of the goodness for which I hoped. This thesis alone, of the three, made intellectual room for my tears, and made sense of my grief and anger, even while calling me to trust. The other two theses of the trilemma held me aloft above all reality, like Descartes's mind aloft above his body, forcing me to 'discover' what didn't exist before and under me, and thus destroying that very law by which I made my case against God on behalf of Joshua's suffering and death. Here, however, in the embrace of bonitas pura, my case against God could fail delightfully, not by knocking out its fundamental principle, but by the principle's perfection overflowing beyond the present limits of my perception and beyond the limits of what I could conceive in my present condition. If bonitas pura is the source behind and beneath all things, then Joshua's life, his suffering, and his death, all have genuine justifying and redeeming worth; they were worth it. His life was not in vain. His life was still ultimately a great gift to him, to my wife and me, and to the world. I could not out-wish or out-hope or out-plan bonitas pura. If my wishes, hopes, and plans for Joshua were good, a fortiori those of bonitas pura for my son were far better.

This conclusion sank deeply into my soul, like a ship scuttled, sinking slowly and silently onto the ocean floor, never again to be moved. After the debris had settled some time later, I raised my head, wiped my eyes, started my car, drove home, and prepared to receive visitors and family from out-of-town for the funeral. But this conclusion resting on the sea floor of my soul did not shelter me from grief in the days to come. At the cemetery, as his small casket was being lowered into the ground, the pain of grief, loss, and separation, so overwhelmed me that I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the driver's seat of my car, the seat reclined. My grandfather was standing beside the open car door. He looked at me and said, "Don't feel bad about passing out. Your great-grandfather passed out at the cemetery when my brother was being buried." Even though it did not keep grief from me, the truth that God is pure goodness allowed me to recover slowly through the grief over the weeks and months that followed. Grief did not crush me, because in every shadow of bereavement I found comfort in the truth that death is not the last word, that in my flesh I shall see the God who is bonitas pura.

Awareness that bonitas pura underlies all things changes one's stance toward reality. Faith then is not a blind leap, but a trust in One who is utterly and infinitely trustworthy. It stands in contrast to the stance of fear and despair that follow from a metaphysic in which indifference or evil is thought to be the source of all. Ultimately, is bonitas pura behind and under and surrounding all things, such that I can rest everything on it and let go in peaceful trust when death comes to me, or is reality indifferent or out to get me, such that I must fight against nature's blood-thirsty hunger game as long as I can, even though ultimately my fight is a losing and meaningless battle? On that day after my son's death, as I sat in the car struggling to make sense of what had just happened, I found within myself a kind of language of goodness, justice, and hope, a language not merely of words, but intelligible only as an ontological resonance with the bonitas pura at the center of all things, and unintelligible apart from it. As this bonitas pura so exceeds our comprehension, so by resting in its embrace through faith we can possess what the Apostle Paul referred to as a peace that surpasses all our understanding (Philippians 4:7), and what the Apostle Peter called an "unspeakable joy" (1 Peter 1:8).
 

"Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air, amply spread around everywhere, question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays, question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land, that fly in the air; ... question all these things. All respond, "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not unchangeable Beauty?" (St. Augustine, Sermon 241)

 

 
Happy twenty-first birthday, son.
 
 
(Image credit: Big Think)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's post comes from our friends at New Apologetics, a movement sharing a similar mission to Strange Notions. They use new media to dialogue about life's biggest questions, and have generated some great conversations on their Facebook page, which currently has over 65,000 followers. The authors of this article have offered to defend it and engage any questions or criticisms in the comment boxes below. So comment away!

As Catholic apologists, we want to do something that our name would suggest we do far more often:

We’d like to apologize.

By that we mean exactly what you would think; we want to say that we’re sorry. We understand that you might be suspicious right now, that you may be thinking that this is another “tactic” for drawing you in. It isn’t. In fact, having tactics is one of the things we’re sorry for.

You see, historically, we haven’t really known what to do with atheists. We felt helpless, and we wanted to do something. So we did something. You pointed out the ugliness in the way we held our beliefs, but we couldn’t see it because we were afraid.

We were afraid of losing ground to you, afraid (even within ourselves) that if we heard you, we would lose our own hope. It wasn’t all bad; there was something within us (under all of the unsound arguments) that we knew and recognized as true, good and beautiful, but we weren’t able to communicate it, and we thought your objections threatened it.

So, now we are going to come clean. And we are now going to come to your defense as human beings without asking anything of you in return.

To Tell You the Truth

 
We’ll just come right out and say it: Modern atheist rhetoric definitively smashes typical theist justifications about there being some divine purpose behind human tragedy. It doesn’t matter if the theist gets the technical win because of a slick argument. Debates on this topic invariably position the atheist in the manifestly righteous defense of the dignity of human persons and the right of innocence to go unmolested, while the well-intentioned, but humanistically impaired (and reaching) theist is left trying to sell a deity with inexplicable innocent blood on his “all-good” and all-powerful hands.

God can take care of himself; he doesn’t need our defense like that. Neither do we need to defend ourselves from looking foolish or from seeing what you see as clearly as you see it.

In response to your questions, a simple “I don’t know, but I believe that he’s good” would have been enough. It’s okay to look stupid if we believe he is defending us.

Time to tell the truth and shame the devil: We don’t really believe in God as much as we say. If we did, we would have had confidence enough to admit we were stumped. We would have remained silent out of respect for God, you, and ourselves: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9: 24).

We pray to have faith enough to see things from your perspective and still know we are safe.

Christian Apologists vs. Home Depot

 
We once saw a window screen with a sticker reading as follows:

“Warning: Screen will not prevent child from falling out of window.”

If one changes the word “screen” to “God”, then all thinking people who believe in God have a really keen problem. It seems that a pane of glass counts in protecting a child from tragedy, but omnipotence and infinite love do not. All the writings of Christian philosophers piled in a great heap before us do little to take the edge off the meditation introduced by this little sticker. There is no applicable knowledge on the part of the child, no informed consent, the horrendous fact that it’s a real child, an apparent infinity of opportunities for God (all-powerful and all-knowing) to intervene, and yet there is no intervention. Any attempt at explanation which says tragedy of this sort is for a ‘greater good’ is absolutely out of touch with reality.

As Catholics, we do believe that there is a reason for God to not prevent evil, and are assured that he never fails to bring a greater good out of every evil. However, this recognition has nothing to do with God “permitting” evil in the sense of “approving of innocent suffering for some higher purpose”.

We have often used those P-words (permits and purpose) to mean God does not oppose evil perfectly, and we were wrong.

All talk of God permitting the tragic suffering of children as a means to an end or as the intentional ‘shadow’ component in a masterful cosmic painting is such that it cries to heaven for vengeance, but it was the best we knew how to say.

The view of the Catholic Church is not the view of the apologists in this regard, and we were wrong to let you think it was.

“God is infinitely good and all his works are good… We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 385)

Wisdom. Arise. Let us be attentive: The conqueror of evil is not also its architect. And infinite goodness admits of no degree of compromise with evil.

These are not sophisticated, subtle, or hard to grasp theological nuances; they are the basic recollection of that easy and obvious standard of justice which we human beings (made in God’s image) intuitively upheld and radiated as children – before we got intimidated and started making excuses for God we had no right to make.

We believers, in ascribing a divine purpose to things like cancer and freak accidents (thus making God the “architect of evil”) did not intend harm (or blasphemy), but we are deathly afraid of what happens when we let the “other guy” be right.

This is a problem, and you atheists have been right to be offended and worried about us.

A Revival of Purity of Heart

“Purity of heart is what enables us to see.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth)

To have a pure heart is to love what is good and hate what is evil. On the atheist view, people of goodwill can easily hate what is hateful (i.e. childhood cancer), and love what is good (i.e. children). To do so is to attain purity of heart to a large degree. It easy to do, and (let’s be honest) it also happens to be a huge relief. Nowadays, there are a lot of people who care more about suffering people than they care about being cast into hell by a cosmic tyrant, and that’s a heroically good stance.

A revival of “purity of heart” is coming upon our culture without much trying, and this is the biggest reason why people are leaving churches in droves.

And we need not be afraid to see with such purity of heart because God guarantees the outcome: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8).

What we need to learn from you is to see is that good is good and bad is bad, lest our hearts remain impure.

A Moratorium on Inhumanity and Blasphemy

“And aren’t we—the lovers of the Word, the people who sing of the Good, we believers—aren’t we the ones who are most sensitive and most upset by our observation and experience of evil?” (Pope Paul VI, General Audience November 15, 1972)

Not really. Did we forget something important?

“The Lord says to his disciples: ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch’ …while it refers specifically to Gethsemane, it also points ahead to the later history of Christianity.  Across the centuries, it is the drowsiness of the disciples that opens up possibilities for the power of the Evil One. Such drowsiness deadens the soul, so that it remains undisturbed by…  all the injustice and suffering ravaging the earth. In its state of numbness, the soul prefers not to see all this; it is easily persuaded that things cannot be so bad..." (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth)

But it really is that bad, and you were trying to tell us all along.

Our offering has been unacceptable to you for one reason: Because it truly has been unacceptable.

We asked you to believe in a God who took away your hope of simply loving what is good and hating what is bad. And we condemned you for not selling out like we did.

We wanted our offering to be enough. It wasn’t.  And we wouldn’t listen because we thought it was only our right to have the offering.

It is why Cain killed Abel. And Cain’s punishment is the same as that of the apologists:

“If you till the ground, it shall no longer give you its produce. You shall become a constant wanderer on the earth.” (Genesis 4:12)

And this is the cure:

“Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit.” (John 15:5)

While we fell asleep, you atheists who are most sensitive and most upset by your observation and experience of evil have remained with the Lord in his agony. And we’re not asking you to believe us about that. Instead, we confess that we need to learn from you.

“Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God.” (1 Cor 4:5)

 
 
(Image credit: Health Coalition)

The appearance of an art house film on the philosopher Hannah Arendt has sparked renewed interest in an old controversy.

In 1961, Arendt went to Jerusalem as a correspondent for the New Yorker magazine to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi colonel accused of masterminding the transportation of millions of Jews to the death camps. Arendt was herself a Jew who had managed to escape from Nazi Germany and who had been, years before, something of an ardent Zionist. But she had since grown suspicious of the Israeli state, seeing it as un-self-critical and indifferent to the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians. I think it is fair to say, therefore, that she came to the trial with a complicated set of assumptions and a good deal of conflicting feelings.

As the trial unfolded, Arendt was massively put off by what she saw as the grandstanding of the prosecutors. Their irresponsible, even clownish, antics were, she concluded, the public face of the Israeli state, which had determined to make of the Eichmann proceedings a show trial. But what struck her most of all was Eichmann himself. Sequestered in a glass box for his own protection, squinting behind owlish spectacles, screwing up his mouth in an odd, nervous tic, trading in homespun expressions, pleading that he was just a middle-level bureaucrat following orders, Eichmann was neither impressive nor frightening nor sinister. Arendt never doubted that Eichmann was guilty of great wickedness, but she saw the Nazi functionary as the very incarnation of what she famously called "the banality of evil."

One of the distinctive marks of this banality Arendt characterized as Gedankenlosigkeit, which could be superficially rendered in English as "thoughtlessness," but which carries more accurately the sense of "the inability to think." Eichmann couldn't rise above his own petty concerns about his career and he couldn't begin to "think" along with another, to see what he was doing from the standpoint of his victims. This very Gedankenlosigkeit is what enabled him to say, probably with honesty, that he didn't feel as though he had committed any crimes.

The film to which I referred at the outset very effectively portrays the firestorm of protest that followed Arendt's account of the Eichmann trial. Many Jews, both in Israel and America, thought by characterizing Eichmann the way she did, she had exonerated him and effectively blamed his victims. I won't descend into the complexity of that argument, which rages to some degree to the present day. But I will say that I believe Arendt's critics missed the rather profound metaphysical significance of what the philosopher was saying about the Nazi bureaucrat.

In a text written during the heat of bitter controversy surrounding her book, Arendt tried to explain in greater detail what she meant by calling evil banal: "Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension, yet —and this is its horror!—it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world."

The young Hannah Arendt had written her doctoral dissertation under the great German philosopher Karl Jaspers, and the topic of her work was the concept of love in the writings of Saint Augustine. One of the most significant intellectual breakthroughs of Augustine's life was the insight that evil is not something substantial, but rather a type of non-being, a lack of some perfection that ought to be present. Thus, a cancer is evil in the measure that it compromises the proper functioning of a bodily organ, and a sin is evil in the measure that it represents a distortion or twisting of a rightly functioning will. Accordingly, evil does not stand over and against the good as a kind of co-equal metaphysical force, as the Manichees would have it. Rather, it is invariably parasitic upon the good, existing only as a sort of shadow.

J.R.R. Tolkien gave visual expression to this Augustinian notion in his portrayal of the Nazgul in The Lord of the Rings. Those terrible and terrifying threats, flying through the air on fearsome beasts, are revealed, once their capes and hoods are pulled away, to be precisely nothing, emptiness. And this is exactly why, to return to Arendt's description, evil can never be radical. It can never sink down into the roots of being; it can never stand on its own; it has no integrity, no real depth or substance. To be sure, it can be extreme and it can, as Arendt's image suggests, spread far and wide, doing enormous damage. But it can never truly be. And this is why, when it shows up in raw form, it looks, not like Goethe's Mephistopheles or Milton's Satan, but rather like a little twerp in a glass box.

Occasionally, in the course of the liturgical year, Catholics are asked to renew their baptismal promises. One of the questions, to which the answer "I do" is expected, is this: "Do you reject the glamor of evil and refuse to be mastered by sin?" Evil can never truly be beautiful, for beauty is a property of being; it can only be "glamorous" or superficially attractive. The great moral lesson—articulated by both Augustine and Hannah Arendt—is that we must refuse to be beguiled by the glittering banality of wickedness and we must consistently choose the substance over the shadow.
 
 
Originally posted at Word on Fire. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: Forever Young News)

In the recent aftermath of the horrific Kiss nightclub fire in Brazil that claimed 235 young lives, people continue to ask what they always ask after a disaster: “Where was God?”

On Sunday, January 27, the nightclub erupted into an inferno after the club’s band set off fireworks that ignited flammable material. The club’s poor design and the even'ts overcrowding were the main factors in the high death toll. Video footage of a similar nightclub fire in Rhode Island (be warned, it’s extremely disturbing) puts us as close as we can be to the horror of these events without singeing our eyebrows.

In videos such as these, the terrifying screams of the victims have the potential to overwhelm our rational thought process. They can send us running to God for comfort and security or running away from him in anger and despair.

I know I can’t satisfactorily answer in a simple blog post why God allows these kinds of evils to occur. But I think it might be helpful to review two ways not to answer the question, as well as how to cope when evil challenges belief in God.

Punting to Mystery

 
After the devastating 2011 Japanese tsunami, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir asked Evangelical pastor Rob Bell, “Which of these is true? Either God is all powerful but he doesn’t care about the people of Japan, or he does care about the people of Japan but he’s not all powerful.”

Bell rambled about God shedding tears and God’s desire to renew the earth, which prompted Bashir to forcefully ask his question again. Bell responded, “I think that this is a paradox at the heart of the divine, and some paradoxes are best left exactly as they are.”

“Punting to mystery” involves the Christian throwing up his hands and simply saying, “God works in mysterious ways” before ending the conversation. Even if suffering is a mystery, or a “paradox” as Bell put it, the pain that people endure and their honest questions about God’s goodness deserve a more rigorous explanation.

Panglossian Optimism

 
The other extreme is to act as if we know exactly why God causes evil and pretend that there really is no mystery. God’s zealous defender might say:

“The Lord gave us free will, and with the opportunity to do good comes the opportunity to do evil. The nightclub fire in Brazil happened because of the owner’s choice to operate a club that lacked emergency exits, had no sprinklers, had no working fire extinguishers, contained flammable stage material, had security that prevented guests from leaving, and had more guests than the fire code allowed. The band freely chose to use cheap pyrotechnics designed for outdoor use instead more expensive ones designed for indoor use. There—not so hard to explain.”

And yet it is hard to explain. God could have caused the fireworks the band used in their performance to malfunction so the fire would never start, but he allowed them to burn. Free will explains some aspects of this tragedy, but we still feel empty inside when this overconfident approach is employed.

This way of answering the problem of evil was lampooned in Voltaire’s novella Candide, which was written in response to another disaster that shook people’s faith. In 1755 the city of Lisbon, Portugal was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people on All Saints’ Day.

Candide references disasters like this and critiques heartless, overly philosophical answers to the problem of evil via the character Dr. Pangloss. In one scene, Pangloss tries to reassure the title character, Candide, after their friend dies in a storm that the harbor where he died was made by God so that the friend would drown there.

Echoing the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, Pangloss says God must have intended the disaster because this is “the best of all possible worlds.” Pangloss tells Candide, “All this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could be in no other spot; and it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best.”

Enduring Evil

 
A better approach is one offered by my friend and fellow Strange Notions contributor Jimmy Akin. He once told me, “It is a mystery why God allows us to suffer, but there are truths that can help us endure it.” What might those truths be?

First, the problem of evil for Christians also brings with it the problem of good for atheists. If God exists, we might expect less evil, but if there were no God, we wouldn’t expect so many good things in the world. For example, we wouldn’t expect humans rising above their animal nature and doing noble things like dying for complete strangers. We wouldn’t expect there to be beauty and love that can be seen even in the tears of those who mourn. Evil may make it hard to believe in God, but we can’t forget the evidence that makes it hard to believe in atheism.

Second, we are simply not in a good position to know how God can bring about good from these seemingly senseless acts. When I say this, I am not punting to mystery. I can think of certain reasons that God allows evil (free will, builds our moral character, natural by-product of a universe where free creatures live), but I am not saying I know God’s exact reasons for allowing certain evils.

God is by definition the perfection of being, the summum bonum, the highest good, the infinite, all-knowing sovereign Lord of the entire universe. Because he is so far “above” me, I can no more understand his exact reasons for allowing evil than an infant can understand why her parents allow her to be stabbed with an immunization needle.

Finally, in the wake of the tragic deaths at this nightclub, we should take hope in Christ, who has destroyed death and gives us confidence to trust in God’s mercy for those who perished. Jesus says, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I was once was dead, but I now I live forever and ever. I hold the keys to death” (Rev. 1:18).

Evil may make it hard to believe in God, but without God evil and its gruesome sibling, “a universe without purpose or meaning,” would make life simply unbearable. We may not be able to explain evil, but God provides grace and strength to help endure it. As St. Paul writes:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (2 Cor. 1:3-4)

 
 
Originally posted at TrentHorn.com. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: Addicting Info)

Many atheists are fond of using the argument from evil to debunk the notion of God. It goes something like this:

1. If God is all-powerful (omnipotent), He could stop evil.
2. If God is all-loving (omnibenevolent), He would stop evil if He could.
3. Therefore, if an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God existed, evil would not.
4. Evil exists; therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God does not.

Another variation of the argument was put forward by the Greek philosopher Epicurus, centuries before the time of Christ:

Against Catholics, this argument is stronger rhetorically than logically. But against atheists, it's ironically quite devastating. Let me explain what I mean.

I. The Problem of Evil for Catholics

 
Logically, this argument misunderstands what's meant by God's omnipotence. Omnipotence means that God cannot possibly be more powerful than He currently is. His power is perfect. But within these traditional confines, we still acknowledge that God cannot do the logically impossible. He cannot, for example, will what is contrary to His Will. Why? Because that's a meaningless self-contradiction.

Herein lies the easiest answer to the problem of evil:

1. God gives us free will, because free will is inherently good.
2. Free will entails the possibility of doing what is contrary to God's will (this is what we know as evil).
3. Thus, evil exists, because of man's actions, rather than because of God.

Thus, the notion of an all-loving God is consistent with abundant free will, and abundant free will is consistent with the presence of evil (I discuss that more on my own blog.) You may disagree with that solution—you may not see why free will is better than God forcing us to perform on command, for example—but it at least shows that there's no logical problem with the simultaneous existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God and evil.

II. The Problem of Evil for Atheists

 
But today, I wanted to show why this is a particularly bad proof for atheism. It relies (in the fourth point of the argument outlined above) on the proposition “evil exists.” Now there are two things that might be meant by this claim:

• Subjective evil exists: That is, things exist that I don't happen to like. But if that were the case, the whole argument of evil falls apart. Obviously, an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God might well do or permit things that I happen to dislike. The existence of broccoli and the New York Yankees doesn't discredit God, unless I'm such a narcissist as to think that a loving God would create the universe as best suits my own whims.
• Objective evil exists: This is what is obviously meant by the problem of evil. Things exist that aren't just contrary to my personal tastes (like broccoli) but which are contrary to what all moral people know to be good (like genocide or the torture of little children).

But here's the problem with that: Objective morality, including objective evil, cannot exist without God. This doesn't mean that atheists can't be moral people, of course. Catholicism teaches that much of objective morality is knowable by natural law. Atheists can and generally do implicitly recognize the moral law, and obey it. The problem is that this behavior appears completely irrational.

More specifically, the problem is that is that there's no way to get from statements about how the world is to how the world ought to be without imposing a value system. And to say something is objective evil—that it objectively ought not to be—you have to believe in objective values, binding everyone (including, in the case of the problem of evil, God Himself). It has to be something infinitely more than whatever your personal values might be.

This, as you can hopefully tell, is a serious problem for atheism, since atheistic naturalism denies any such universally-binding moral laws (since they require Divine Authorship). Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, in his debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens, laid out the problem like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore God exists.

Hitchens misunderstood the argument, and flubbed it pretty badly, so I sought out an atheist response. The atheist responding argues that both of Craig's premises are false:

Firstly, objective morals could well exist without God. They could be hardwired into our genes as an evolutionary survival mechanism. So clearly, Craig’s first premise is incorrect.

Others have used this argument before, but it's quite a bad one. A man might simultaneously be sexually attracted to a non-consenting woman, and conscious that rape is immoral. Why, from a strictly biological standpoint, should the man listen to his genetic hard-wiring when it tells him rape is wrong, and not when it gives him an urge to rape? The answer to that question is a moral one, and one that (by definition) can't come from mere evolutionary urges. The urges are the problem, not the solution.

You can see this with virtually any sin: man both desires sin, and knows it's wrong. If both the desire and the moral aversion are nothing more than evolutionary conditioning, why listen to the unpleasant one? Why not act like simply another member of the animal kingdom, a world full of rape and theft and killing.

But for that matter, is it morally evil to go against our genetic hard-wiring? If the hard-wiring is nothing more than the result of random chance over millions of years, it's not at all clear to me why it would be morally evil to disregard it. Your body may also decide to start producing cancer cells at a remarkable rate, but you feel no moral allegiance to quietly let it have its way. We constantly subdue our bodies to make them perform better, last longer, and the like.

And indeed, atheists constantly go against their genetic hard-wiring. For example, I'd venture that most atheists use birth control and don't seem to find this immoral, even though it's transparently contrary to both our genetic hard-wiring, and evolutionary survival mechanisms. They're literally stopping evolution from working: a more direct violation of evolutionary hard-wiring is almost unthinkable (except, perhaps, celibacy).

So at most, evolution can explain urges we have for or against certain behaviors. Some of these urges are worth acting upon, some aren't. But to know which to obey and which to ignore is a moral question, not a biological one.

Significantly, when Hitchens eventually understood Craig's argument, he conceded this first premise—because it's undeniably true. That brings us to the second premise, that objective morality exists. The atheist reply continues:

However, objective moral values de facto do not exist. Not everyone has the same moral standards. Our perception of what is right and wrong have changed over the centuries with Richard Dawkins has termed “the shifting moral Zeitgeist”. Indeed, practices in other parts of the World today which are considered the height of piety seem barbaric to Westerners. You only have to look inside the books of our religions and see what these pronouncements mandate to see that this is the case.

If this is true, we cannot criticize the Nazis for killing millions of Jews, any more than we can criticize the Yankees for beating the Tigers. We don't happen to care for Nazi genocide, but their cultural practices are just different from our American values.

More directly, if objective morality does not exist, the problem of evil breaks down. As I said above, if by “evil” you mean nothing more than what you happen to like or dislike, the term is meaningless. So when atheists raise the problem of evil, they're already conceding the existence of objective evil, and thus, of objective morality.

So atheists can either believe that morality is nothing more than a “shifting moral Zeitgeist,” of no more importance than the latest fashion, or they can criticize what's “inside the books of our religions.” But they can't coherently do both.

III. Objective Evil Exists

 
Just in case some people reading this would be inclined to give up the problem of evil, in exchange that they don't have to admit the existence of universally binding morals, let me be clear. We can see that objective morals do, in fact, exist. We don't need to be told that raping, torturing, and killing innocent people are more than just unpleasant or counter-cultural. They're wrong—universally and completely wrong. Even if we were never taught these things growing up, we know these things by nature.

Incredibly, even the most evil societies—even those societies that have most cruelly warped the natural law for their own ends—still profess these universal morals. Nazi Germany, for example, still had laws against murder, and theft, and rape. They didn't have some delusion that those things were somehow morally good: it's sheer fiction to suggest otherwise. Everyone, with the possible exceptions of the severely retarded or severely mentally ill, recognizes these things to be evil, whether or not they've been formally taught these truths.

Conclusion

 
So is the problem of evil a problem for Christians? Sure. There are intellectually satisfying answers, but it's not for nothing that St. Thomas Aquinas lists it as one of two logical arguments for atheism in the Summa Theologiae. But we shouldn't let this fact blind us to the paradoxical truth: the problem of evil is a dramatically larger problem for atheists:

1. To complain of the problem of evil, you must acknowledge evil.
2. To acknowledge evil, you must acknowledge an objective system of moral laws.
3. Objective universal moral laws require a Lawgiver capable of dictating behavior for everyone.
4. This Lawgiver is Who we call God.

Ironically, this evidence lays the groundwork for establishing that God not only exists, but cares about good and evil.
 
 
Originally posted at Shameless Popery. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: VK)