As a christian I do find what you said to be very important and must be taken seriously. I am personally a christian universalist and found Origen's and DBH perspectives on it as helpful along with several other early church fathers and theologians. I also believe that animals will be in heaven as Origen talks about. I do often wonder sometimes a lot about this issue and its heartbreaking. I even question if god is real why doesn't he do something about it. I myself have had terrible experiences in my life for example, I lost my father when I was 14. I was not a christian at the time but, afterwards I had several tremendous events where I had felt a sense of overwhelming love. I also had thankfully many friends of mine who happened to be christians be their for me and understand me in a way that they had never had before. I believe strongly and hope strongly that their is an afterlife from both what I and others I know have experienced and from reading Dale Allisons book encountering mystery. I became a christian about 3 years ago for both personal and intellectual reasons. I wonder every day why if god exists why he allowed my father to pass away so early in my life and I don't believe I will ever have an answer. I do try my hardest to make the world a better place such as helping the homeless and rescuing injured birds in my neighborhood because I believe that it at least some difference. I also hope that I and everyone that has lost a parent will be reunited with them in heaven or something like it. I know this comment is long I just wanted to let you know emerson I take what you say seriously and even though we disagree I believe your position is very understandable and many christians have much to learn from you.
And this is more or less why I stick to Deism. As much as I would rather be a polytheist because it'd make for more interesting stories woven into the fabric of life.
Christians often critique atheism for its implied nihilism, but the problem of evil (as you have so aptly explained) demonstrates that traditional theism does not escape nihilism either. Affirming the goodness of God’s will in these absurd scenarios diminishes our understanding of good, evil, and all of our values in general.
Atheism or agnosticism without its moral demand allows us to discover values with more fidelity, but theism demands that we eventually betray our values with absurdities.
However, theism defined by a non-omnipotent God does hold some potential imo.
I don't think you need to take the moral stance described here to be a theist. Most traditional forms of theism didn't regard God as a moral agent, so endorsing (for many of them cosmological) arguments for God's existence didn't mean approving of everything in creation. This paper summarizes some of the arguments contemporary philosophers of religion (most notably Marilyn McCord Adams and Mark Murphy) have given for that conclusion.
Exchanging the moral stance required by the cataphatic theist for the one required by the apophatic theist isn’t obviously morally preferable and may make things worse.
God’s perfect love is either challenged by her moral responsibility for the permission of evil or the inability of our language to appropriately describe her as such.
According to Hinduism, this awareness that the suffering in this world is wrong is the cause of liberation (moksha). The suffering in this world isn’t something the animals or barbarians are worried about. If we don’t think there’s a problem, we won’t search for a solution.
I don’t see that every theist is committed to condoning the suffering in this world or think that any instance of suffering is justified or ok. You say “theism”, but you seem to mean “Christianity”.
My point wasn’t there is no problem of evil, it’s that theism doesn’t demand we endorse or affirm that the evil and suffering in the world is morally acceptable.
I think this argument accidentally makes a case for Theism while placing the responsibility on each individual. If the question is about a belief in God being immoral because a theist would have to, at least implicitly, endorse the suffering of another, while the sufferer themselves would not agree, I would question why the question about whether the theist believes that they would agree to the same, or any type of suffering for that matter, is not being raised. If their belief in God meant that they felt that any suffering they endured in view of a greater good would be justified, you would basically be saying that their belief in God is immoral even though it would be consistent and not hypocritical in terms of permissible suffering. Either their belief is not immoral because it is consistent, or they can only account for the permissible suffering justification for their own life. In which case the responsibility would be placed on each individual.
Argued perfectly. In terms of both reason and emotion. However why is theism identified with Christianity? To really universalise this argument you will have to use it against the solutions to the problem of evil in eastern philosophical systems. They start with reincarnation and karma but the structure of their proposed solutions become apparent only in relation to their psychology, ontology and metaphysics. In the first place in none of the Indian philosophical systems is God a creator. Creation ex nihilo, being arising from nothingness is considered righly incoherent. God is considered both the material and efficient cause of the universe. All sentient beings have a soul and the soul is considered uncreated and to have no beginning or end within time. The soul shares its Being with God, in varying ways according to different schools. For Advaita, the school of non-duality, the cosmic personal God is limited, and the ultimate reality is an infinite unconditioned undifferentiated reality with which the true Self of all creatures are identical. In other words the real nature of the sentient Self is a reality that transcends even the visible cosmic God. I am not saying your argument has no purchase against these philosophies, but it will have to be deployed in relationship to the complexity of such metaphysics to really see what its implications are for these theistic systems.
I have my own hypothesis on the matter on my substack, but I can think of a few other ways this can be tackled, although they raise their own issues:
1. Simply say there is more to ethics than preventing suffering. This is rather straightforward and intercepts the initial assumptions of suffering as paramount, and can accommodate many religions and philosophies. However, classical theism tends to use suffering as a tool to enforce divine law. Think of punishments meted out in the Jewish scriptures to transgressors, and the ultimate suffering of Hell for those who don't believe in the New Testament. So obviously, suffering is considered a bad thing in these systems, and if we posit the suffering is great enough, it still demands attention even if you think it's not the bees knees of moral norms. Does it have to be THIS bad?
2. Posit a Big Bad Guy who makes or represents evil. This can be Satan or Ahriman or Apophis, etc. and its not hard to find one in various theologies. But the theist is then presented with another dilemma: either he allows Big Bad, and we're back to square one, or he accepts that his deity is not quite powerful enough to do away with Big Bad completely. Classical theism cannot countenance this, although I have to ask: is a "God who is really powerful but just a little short of infinite power so that Bad Guy From The Game still causes trouble" really so awful? It can still be that ones deity is far more powerful than humanity, yet still not powerful enough to prevent evil. After all, if evil is as large in scope as you imply, that's a tall order for anyone. Would theism be more palpable if God was "A little less than omnipotent?"
3. If nothing is as great as the creator deity, then it stands to reason that this world is less perfect than he is. Perhaps the complexity of life, and this imperfection, means that suffering will always occur through probability, the equivalent of bugs in the system, and the fact that a complex world cannot satisfy everyone with their nuanced, complex values and needs. This may or may not require #2 to work.
3. Accept that evil is indeed under the control of one's god and deal with it. I've actually had a Jew tell me that Hitler was an instrument of his God's wrath! But again the amount of suffering makes one ask "Did it have to be this much?" and the arbitrariness of it also demands how productive it is. Could not more nazis have suffered than Jews under Hitler and still make it count? This just handwaves away omnibenevolence, or redefines it so as to be unrecognizable as we use it.
4. On the acceptance of suffering as good, I have seen some Orthodox and traditionalist Catholics say that yes, the more you suffer, the better. This seems masochistic, and requires acceptance of point #1, but still ends up appearing to make suffering the point, against the promises of happiness and blessings in this life. Even the most stoic philosopher would not want people to actively enjoy suffering. I should also note other religions and philosophies that have a warrior ethos (Norse, Bushido, etc.) can also fall under the umbrella, approaching suffering in the world as part of the battle. Of course the Norse religion also has point #2 in its belief, and Bushido incorporates Buddhism which rejects classical theism.
I think there might be another demand of theism that you don't consider above. You're right that theism has normative implications, but not just for what we already believe about the moral state of the world. If theism is true, there are more values than you would otherwise think, and more final values than you would otherwise think. For example, union with God is a final value that's not possibly realized on atheism. So a particular state of affairs that has weighty final disvalue on atheism might have an instrumental value or irrelevant disvalue on theism.
Think of Cain and Abel, following Eleonore Stump. Cain's brutal, needless, unjustified murder of Abel is surely horrific and disvaluable in its own right. Theists can say this. But given Abel's right-standing with God, his union with God is protected. He is in a morally significant sense (according to theism) safe. Cain, on the other hand, is in poor standing with God given his sin. Cain is in danger, despite the security of his earthly well-being.
I don't raise this example as any kind of theodicy, or even that you would find the example persuasive, but only to illustrate some normative aspects of theism that I think are commonly neglected, especially by those with consequentialist tendencies. If you are really to entertain the moral state of the world on theism, you have to also thereby consider what theism predicts is valuable, and most importantly what it says is of final value. This might require going beyond bare theism.
Regarding some of the other points, I truly lament that you have found some Christians or otherwise theists dismissive of suffering. That surely is not warranted. With respect to animal suffering, I find Swinburne's line persuasive, or at least plausible, that animals are not cognitively sophisticated enough to appreciate the badness of pain. This way, they don't suffer as much as we think they do.
>>Ultimately, the suffering on earth must come with a kind of endorsement and imprimatur of believers.
I think this is a bit hasty. A police officer who witnesses a crime may have a specific duty to intervene, while an equally capable civilian who could interrupt the crime might not have the same responsibility in the same situation (especially if their intervention could lead to a worse state of affairs).
By that notion, if God's regular intervention would lead to more suffering, then it seems His general disposition toward nonintervention would be morally permissible. This is not an endorsement of or indifference toward suffering but an active means of harm reduction. If God were to constantly intervene to prevent evil, people might come to expect divine intervention for any problem. They might refrain from building the social frameworks and norms necessary to curb our worst behaviors. By my lights, history supports the idea that the most grievous sources of suffering are not the intentional harm caused by private individuals but the banal neglect, indifference, and systemic failures of institutions. Additionally, they could develop the mindset that God wanted them to commit some evil simply because He didn't prevent it.
To the fawn in the forest, I would explain that God's regular intervention into the animal kingdom would likewise lead to more suffering. If God intervenes for animals but not for humans in equally painful situations, it might raise questions about why humans must endure suffering or lead people to think that God approved of animal abuse whenever He didn't intervene. Furthermore, if the natural laws acted inconsistently or changed on a whim, it would lead to moral confusion for people. Understanding the consequences of actions is critical for people making morally significant decisions.
This is a very difficult subject, and I agree theodicies often fall short of providing a satisfactory explanation for suffering. I'm also not intending to address every question about suffering, such as why God couldn't allow our bodies to endure physical trauma without the conscious experience of pain or why a tangible, material world was necessary to existence.
im not sure i understand the betrayal part. if god's permission of certain evils is the morally right thing to do, how does this idea of betrayal fit in? the acceptance that the permission of this evil is morally right (theism) need not focus on the agent per se, but the action itself. even if some perceived higher morality is accessed on part of the sacrifice of some agent, this higher morality is beyond and prior to the agent which has had some part of it sacrificed.
do the earlier parts of this post imply only moral realists can raise the problem of evil? or at least only cognitivists?
As a christian I do find what you said to be very important and must be taken seriously. I am personally a christian universalist and found Origen's and DBH perspectives on it as helpful along with several other early church fathers and theologians. I also believe that animals will be in heaven as Origen talks about. I do often wonder sometimes a lot about this issue and its heartbreaking. I even question if god is real why doesn't he do something about it. I myself have had terrible experiences in my life for example, I lost my father when I was 14. I was not a christian at the time but, afterwards I had several tremendous events where I had felt a sense of overwhelming love. I also had thankfully many friends of mine who happened to be christians be their for me and understand me in a way that they had never had before. I believe strongly and hope strongly that their is an afterlife from both what I and others I know have experienced and from reading Dale Allisons book encountering mystery. I became a christian about 3 years ago for both personal and intellectual reasons. I wonder every day why if god exists why he allowed my father to pass away so early in my life and I don't believe I will ever have an answer. I do try my hardest to make the world a better place such as helping the homeless and rescuing injured birds in my neighborhood because I believe that it at least some difference. I also hope that I and everyone that has lost a parent will be reunited with them in heaven or something like it. I know this comment is long I just wanted to let you know emerson I take what you say seriously and even though we disagree I believe your position is very understandable and many christians have much to learn from you.
I hope this argument gets more exploration. Excellent stuff.
And this is more or less why I stick to Deism. As much as I would rather be a polytheist because it'd make for more interesting stories woven into the fabric of life.
Christians often critique atheism for its implied nihilism, but the problem of evil (as you have so aptly explained) demonstrates that traditional theism does not escape nihilism either. Affirming the goodness of God’s will in these absurd scenarios diminishes our understanding of good, evil, and all of our values in general.
Atheism or agnosticism without its moral demand allows us to discover values with more fidelity, but theism demands that we eventually betray our values with absurdities.
However, theism defined by a non-omnipotent God does hold some potential imo.
I don't think you need to take the moral stance described here to be a theist. Most traditional forms of theism didn't regard God as a moral agent, so endorsing (for many of them cosmological) arguments for God's existence didn't mean approving of everything in creation. This paper summarizes some of the arguments contemporary philosophers of religion (most notably Marilyn McCord Adams and Mark Murphy) have given for that conclusion.
https://philpapers.org/rec/RUBATN
Daniel,
Exchanging the moral stance required by the cataphatic theist for the one required by the apophatic theist isn’t obviously morally preferable and may make things worse.
God’s perfect love is either challenged by her moral responsibility for the permission of evil or the inability of our language to appropriately describe her as such.
None of the arguments cited above rely on aphophaticism.
According to Hinduism, this awareness that the suffering in this world is wrong is the cause of liberation (moksha). The suffering in this world isn’t something the animals or barbarians are worried about. If we don’t think there’s a problem, we won’t search for a solution.
I don’t see that every theist is committed to condoning the suffering in this world or think that any instance of suffering is justified or ok. You say “theism”, but you seem to mean “Christianity”.
It is a problem for theist so long as they are committed to the goodness of “God’s will” combined with God’s omnipotence to do otherwise.
Given that Hinduism is a massive continent of different beliefs, I’m sure this is a problem some but perhaps not others.
My point wasn’t there is no problem of evil, it’s that theism doesn’t demand we endorse or affirm that the evil and suffering in the world is morally acceptable.
I think this argument accidentally makes a case for Theism while placing the responsibility on each individual. If the question is about a belief in God being immoral because a theist would have to, at least implicitly, endorse the suffering of another, while the sufferer themselves would not agree, I would question why the question about whether the theist believes that they would agree to the same, or any type of suffering for that matter, is not being raised. If their belief in God meant that they felt that any suffering they endured in view of a greater good would be justified, you would basically be saying that their belief in God is immoral even though it would be consistent and not hypocritical in terms of permissible suffering. Either their belief is not immoral because it is consistent, or they can only account for the permissible suffering justification for their own life. In which case the responsibility would be placed on each individual.
Argued perfectly. In terms of both reason and emotion. However why is theism identified with Christianity? To really universalise this argument you will have to use it against the solutions to the problem of evil in eastern philosophical systems. They start with reincarnation and karma but the structure of their proposed solutions become apparent only in relation to their psychology, ontology and metaphysics. In the first place in none of the Indian philosophical systems is God a creator. Creation ex nihilo, being arising from nothingness is considered righly incoherent. God is considered both the material and efficient cause of the universe. All sentient beings have a soul and the soul is considered uncreated and to have no beginning or end within time. The soul shares its Being with God, in varying ways according to different schools. For Advaita, the school of non-duality, the cosmic personal God is limited, and the ultimate reality is an infinite unconditioned undifferentiated reality with which the true Self of all creatures are identical. In other words the real nature of the sentient Self is a reality that transcends even the visible cosmic God. I am not saying your argument has no purchase against these philosophies, but it will have to be deployed in relationship to the complexity of such metaphysics to really see what its implications are for these theistic systems.
I have my own hypothesis on the matter on my substack, but I can think of a few other ways this can be tackled, although they raise their own issues:
1. Simply say there is more to ethics than preventing suffering. This is rather straightforward and intercepts the initial assumptions of suffering as paramount, and can accommodate many religions and philosophies. However, classical theism tends to use suffering as a tool to enforce divine law. Think of punishments meted out in the Jewish scriptures to transgressors, and the ultimate suffering of Hell for those who don't believe in the New Testament. So obviously, suffering is considered a bad thing in these systems, and if we posit the suffering is great enough, it still demands attention even if you think it's not the bees knees of moral norms. Does it have to be THIS bad?
2. Posit a Big Bad Guy who makes or represents evil. This can be Satan or Ahriman or Apophis, etc. and its not hard to find one in various theologies. But the theist is then presented with another dilemma: either he allows Big Bad, and we're back to square one, or he accepts that his deity is not quite powerful enough to do away with Big Bad completely. Classical theism cannot countenance this, although I have to ask: is a "God who is really powerful but just a little short of infinite power so that Bad Guy From The Game still causes trouble" really so awful? It can still be that ones deity is far more powerful than humanity, yet still not powerful enough to prevent evil. After all, if evil is as large in scope as you imply, that's a tall order for anyone. Would theism be more palpable if God was "A little less than omnipotent?"
3. If nothing is as great as the creator deity, then it stands to reason that this world is less perfect than he is. Perhaps the complexity of life, and this imperfection, means that suffering will always occur through probability, the equivalent of bugs in the system, and the fact that a complex world cannot satisfy everyone with their nuanced, complex values and needs. This may or may not require #2 to work.
3. Accept that evil is indeed under the control of one's god and deal with it. I've actually had a Jew tell me that Hitler was an instrument of his God's wrath! But again the amount of suffering makes one ask "Did it have to be this much?" and the arbitrariness of it also demands how productive it is. Could not more nazis have suffered than Jews under Hitler and still make it count? This just handwaves away omnibenevolence, or redefines it so as to be unrecognizable as we use it.
4. On the acceptance of suffering as good, I have seen some Orthodox and traditionalist Catholics say that yes, the more you suffer, the better. This seems masochistic, and requires acceptance of point #1, but still ends up appearing to make suffering the point, against the promises of happiness and blessings in this life. Even the most stoic philosopher would not want people to actively enjoy suffering. I should also note other religions and philosophies that have a warrior ethos (Norse, Bushido, etc.) can also fall under the umbrella, approaching suffering in the world as part of the battle. Of course the Norse religion also has point #2 in its belief, and Bushido incorporates Buddhism which rejects classical theism.
I think there might be another demand of theism that you don't consider above. You're right that theism has normative implications, but not just for what we already believe about the moral state of the world. If theism is true, there are more values than you would otherwise think, and more final values than you would otherwise think. For example, union with God is a final value that's not possibly realized on atheism. So a particular state of affairs that has weighty final disvalue on atheism might have an instrumental value or irrelevant disvalue on theism.
Think of Cain and Abel, following Eleonore Stump. Cain's brutal, needless, unjustified murder of Abel is surely horrific and disvaluable in its own right. Theists can say this. But given Abel's right-standing with God, his union with God is protected. He is in a morally significant sense (according to theism) safe. Cain, on the other hand, is in poor standing with God given his sin. Cain is in danger, despite the security of his earthly well-being.
I don't raise this example as any kind of theodicy, or even that you would find the example persuasive, but only to illustrate some normative aspects of theism that I think are commonly neglected, especially by those with consequentialist tendencies. If you are really to entertain the moral state of the world on theism, you have to also thereby consider what theism predicts is valuable, and most importantly what it says is of final value. This might require going beyond bare theism.
Regarding some of the other points, I truly lament that you have found some Christians or otherwise theists dismissive of suffering. That surely is not warranted. With respect to animal suffering, I find Swinburne's line persuasive, or at least plausible, that animals are not cognitively sophisticated enough to appreciate the badness of pain. This way, they don't suffer as much as we think they do.
>>Ultimately, the suffering on earth must come with a kind of endorsement and imprimatur of believers.
I think this is a bit hasty. A police officer who witnesses a crime may have a specific duty to intervene, while an equally capable civilian who could interrupt the crime might not have the same responsibility in the same situation (especially if their intervention could lead to a worse state of affairs).
By that notion, if God's regular intervention would lead to more suffering, then it seems His general disposition toward nonintervention would be morally permissible. This is not an endorsement of or indifference toward suffering but an active means of harm reduction. If God were to constantly intervene to prevent evil, people might come to expect divine intervention for any problem. They might refrain from building the social frameworks and norms necessary to curb our worst behaviors. By my lights, history supports the idea that the most grievous sources of suffering are not the intentional harm caused by private individuals but the banal neglect, indifference, and systemic failures of institutions. Additionally, they could develop the mindset that God wanted them to commit some evil simply because He didn't prevent it.
To the fawn in the forest, I would explain that God's regular intervention into the animal kingdom would likewise lead to more suffering. If God intervenes for animals but not for humans in equally painful situations, it might raise questions about why humans must endure suffering or lead people to think that God approved of animal abuse whenever He didn't intervene. Furthermore, if the natural laws acted inconsistently or changed on a whim, it would lead to moral confusion for people. Understanding the consequences of actions is critical for people making morally significant decisions.
This is a very difficult subject, and I agree theodicies often fall short of providing a satisfactory explanation for suffering. I'm also not intending to address every question about suffering, such as why God couldn't allow our bodies to endure physical trauma without the conscious experience of pain or why a tangible, material world was necessary to existence.
im not sure i understand the betrayal part. if god's permission of certain evils is the morally right thing to do, how does this idea of betrayal fit in? the acceptance that the permission of this evil is morally right (theism) need not focus on the agent per se, but the action itself. even if some perceived higher morality is accessed on part of the sacrifice of some agent, this higher morality is beyond and prior to the agent which has had some part of it sacrificed.
do the earlier parts of this post imply only moral realists can raise the problem of evil? or at least only cognitivists?