I have enjoyed browsing this site and I have asked a few questions and received some excellent, thought-provoking responses.
One question I asked (Why do some atheists see the existence of suffering as proof that there is no god?) received a response that had a link to and article on Theodicy. I found a great quote from John Polkinghome:
bq. a world allowed to make itself is better than the puppet theatre of a Cosmic Tyrant.
I happen to agree. I have faith in God, but I see no reason why He would choose to make everything perfect or prevent tragedy or accidental death (“acts of god”).
To get all Biblical and strange, Romans 8:20 says:
bq. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will but through him that subjected it, on the basis of hope.
From this, it doesn’t appear that Christianity (which I choose to practice) teaches a God that continually intervenes to keep everyone that He loves safe. In fact it seems to suggest that this Deity actually intends for there to be pain and death on Earth, for us to learn and benefit from this time on Earth, as well as be tested. Of course, this state of being, if it exists, does not justify negative actions that people perform towards others, like the rape of Francis Collins’s daughter. Human beings have free will, and this action was not, as Mr. Collins believed, “God’s will”. In this particular instance it was allowed to happen by God, specifically because the rapist had free will. This is not a way to justify his actions, nor a way to write them off as fine, but a way to explain why, if we assume the universe is run by a benevolent god, it could happen.
I apologize for pulling out the theology, and it perhaps has no place here, I just wanted to make my reason for asking the question in the first place clear. I am not trying to convert anyone or offend people. And I pray that this idea did NOT sound at all like Mr. Collins’s line of reasoning. I am not trying to write off terrible actions as “God’s Will”, but rather present a scenario in which tragic events could coincide with a benevolent, loving god. I’m simply throwing this out for you to co
Posted: January 3rd 2010
Akusai www
The “free will” argument is nonsense on its face. Adam and Eve were “puppet theatre” before the Fall, and the Fall is painted as an enormous tragedy that, in a sense, wasn’t even supposed to happen.
More to the point, however, it is entirely conceivable that an omnipotent, omniscient being could create a world without evil that was not, in fact, “puppet theatre.” Creating, for example, humans who were simply psychologically incapable of performing evil acts (however this God defines “evil”) would not violate those humans’ free will any more than the fact that He supposedly created us without wings violates our free will to fly. Moreover, he could give those humans innate knowledge of the things we supposedly have to “learn” through suffering and still not be violating their free will at all.
Likewise, a universe physically incapable of producing disasters that could lead to suffering would ameliorate the issue entirely, again without creating Cosmic Tyrant’s Olde Tyme Puppet Theatre.
Essentially, if something cannot physically happen in a possible universe, then it cannot be said that just because it could happen in another possible universe that the inhabitants of Universe 1 lack free will. Their free will must simply act within the constraints of their physical existence, as must ours (if, in fact, we even possess such a thing).
And, to open another can of worms, “free will” is a rather dodgy concept that means different things to different people at different times, often in the same sentence. I don’t think it’s a good defense of anything because it’s simply so ill-conceived.
I recommend you read David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” if you haven’t already. It’s a short and very well-reasoned (in my opinion, anyway) take on various theological claims but mostly the PoE.
Posted: January 11th 2010
logicel
Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion, p108:
'Theodicy’ (the vindication of divine providence in the face of the existence of evil) keeps theologians awake at night.
He goes on to say that theodicy does not rule out an evil god. Since theodicy itself does not eliminate divine entities, what is keeping up those theologians?
It is their own horror that the god that they worship sounds/or is bad. And they must worship one because that is what they want to do. And if they worship a baddie they will be immoral (and they are perceived that way by many atheists). So they do all kinds of intellectually dishonest mental gymnastics to justify their belief in a just god. Polkinghorn’s response is just one of the many inane approaches to this challenge.
Hence, theodicy is way more a concern for the believers themselves than for atheists because the atheists have the lack of evidence in their favor in addition to the infinite regression problem (as pointed out by Dawkins on p 109): Who made god?
It was my realizing at age seven that there was no answer to that question that made any sense, that enabled me to embrace atheism (except at that young age, I had no idea what atheism was!) But I did reject the whole god hypothesis as downright silly and not very appealing (not to mention mind numbingly boring).
Experiencing horrifying pain in order not to violate your free will in order to prove your goodness to god is nonsense. If a parent pulled that stunt in a court of law she would get her arse hauled off to jail. Can you imagine the horror of the jury as the defendant blathers, “But, but, but, I did not want my child to think I was just a puppeteer pulling her strings, so when she fell right into that blazing fire in the hearth, I did nothing.”
And the horror felt by the jury would continue as the husband bleats, “I felt bad that my child was burning to death in front of my very own eyes, but I know that pain is part of the free will gig to prove my child’s goodness to my wife, so I took my wife’s side (and that is what Christians do when they try to rationalize away the glaring and never going away problem of theodicy).
All the theodicy arguments show me is the tremendous cognitive dissonance which exists in the minds of Christians.
It is great that you enjoy browsing this site.
Posted: January 5th 2010
Eric_PK
I understand the argument, but I don’t get it. In fact, I find it more than a bit distasteful.
What you’re asserting is that god could prevent women from being raped but choses not to. To put it bluntly, somebody else’s free will is more important than my security.
Yes, I am sorry about that whole holocaust thingy, but, you see, it’s vitally important that the germans were allowed to exercise their free will and kill 11 million people
Surely a god can come up with a way to allow some degree of free will and prevent the holocaust.
As for acts of god, sure, god can allow a tsunami to kill 230,000 people, and that sounds exactly like the kind of thing the OT god would do. I just don’t see how you can apply the term “benevolent” or “loving” to such a being, especially because there was no free will involved.
Perhaps you have a different definition of “benevolent” than I do.
Posted: January 5th 2010
bitbutter www
Mainstream Christianity maintains that the biblical character God is good.
Looking at the world we see horrendous things happening. Things that look very much like senseless suffering. “William Rowe’s hypothetical example is a fawn, badly burned in a forest fire, who takes five days to die”:http://books.google.com/books?id=M4GdWhLtZzAC&lpg=PA207&ots=nOgFeFYQRz&dq=william%20rowe%20fawn%20fire&pg=PA207#v=onepage&q=william%20rowe%20fawn%20fire&f=false. We hear of human babies tortured to death.
It seems to us that allowing these things to happen, if we had the power to prevent them, would be evil. And if it wasn’t, then we’d have to concede that we are incapable of correctly identifying good or evil.
So the Christian god is either evil for allowing gratuitous suffering, or we don’t know what good and evil are, and so we have no business claiming that this god is good.
In this particular instance [rape] was allowed to happen by God, specifically because the rapist had free will. This is not a way to justify his actions, nor a way to write them off as fine, but a way to explain why, if we assume the universe is run by a benevolent god, it could happen.
I hope the following example will help explain why I consider the free will defense against the problem of evil to be inadequate.
We agree that a good father will find a way prevent his oldest son from beating up his younger brother.
However we choose to define free will, either the father is able to prevent suffering without limiting the free will of the older child, or if the father has limited the older child’s free will, then it turns out that we really valued preventing suffering more than we valued preserving free will after all.
We expect a good fathe to intervene to prevent his son from suffering. If a mortal can pull this off in a way that doesn’t undesirably affect free will, then surely the creator of the universe can do the same to protect his creations on earth. Why doesn’t he?
Posted: January 5th 2010