The Problem of Evil vs The Problem of Good

In response to Pre-Creation (How Good Can God Be), a reader drew my attention to the work of Brian Davies, specifically “The Reality of God and The Problem of Evil”.  A survey of the reviews of this work gives me the impression that Davies’ argument is that the Problem of Evil misses the point and that we should instead be pondering about just how much good there is in the world.  If so, then the reader appears to have rather missed the point of what I wrote in Pre-Creation.

It’s entirely possible that Davies has a different argument to the one that I’ve surmised.  If so, the publisher Bloomsbury has got it wrong too:

Finally, though many theologians argue that evil is a mystery, Davies argues that this too is wrong and a cop out. We should rather be concerned with the problem (or mystery) of good. The real issue is `Why is there not more good than there is`. From the discussion Aquinas emerges as a hero (as filtered through analytical philosophy) but many modern thinkers do not emerge so well. Davies effectively picks holes in the arguments of Peter Geach, Paul Helm, Richard Swinburne and even Mary Baker Eddy

Admittedly, my first interpretation was that Davies was arguing that good itself is a mystery as in “why is there any good at all?”  This is sometimes argued as the obverse of the anti-apologetic argument “why is there evil in a universe supposedly created by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibeneficient god?”  At the very least it seems to be a basic assumption for many theists – if there were no god, then there would be no good.  It’s terrifying how often you hear theists argue that, without god, they would be rapists and murderers.  Our old friend WLC provides us with an example:

Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God.

This is the same person who argues that without his god, and “objective” morality, the torture of babies for fun would not be wrong.  Personally, I like to comfort myself with the notion that the theists making these sorts of comments are doing so for rhetorical purposes and that, if they were convinced that their god does not actually exist, they would not immediately commence a campaign of rape, torture and murder.

There’s a major difference between the anti-apologetic argument from evil for the non-existence of a god and the apologetic argument from good for the existence of one’s god.  The argument from evil is a type of reductio ad absurdum in which one starts from the assumption of the existence of a specific type of god and end up with an impossibility – the god of that type would not permit the sorts of evils that we find in the universe, therefore it does not exist.

The argument from good, on the other hand, does not truly start from the assumption of the non-existence of any god whatsoever.  Instead, there is an inherent assumption that the universe could only have good in it if there were a god, as per WLC’s argument above.

There’s a reluctance on the part of the theist to honestly consider whether the “good” observed in the universe could arise without their god.  Note that by “good” here, I refer to the actual act, intent or situation that is considered to be good, not the attribution “good” that is assigned to that act, intent or situation.  Perhaps I should explain …

An act can be good in itself – say it reduces or prevents harm, involves some real self-sacrifice (even if minor) or adds to the well-being of others.  Alternatively, an act can be labelled as “good” – going to church, abstaining from pre-marital sex or obeying some rule (don’t mix linen and wool in one garment).  Labels can be assigned pretty much arbitrarily, but once you have a method of deciding what is and isn’t good (increased harm bad, improved well-being good), then you have an objective measure by which you can judge whether an act is good.  But even aside from that, we do have measures for judging whether acts are good or not, we can basically list which acts are thought of as good and we can consider those acts.

Could the acts that we consider to be good arise in a universe without a god?

The theist, at least the christian theist, tends to think not but the reason for this is tied up in theology, in the theist’s assumptions about the basic (and base) nature of humanity.  Man is born of and in sin, humanity is depraved, atheists (according to many a theist) are atheists because they don’t want to believe there is a god so they can continue to sin.  If you take this view of the universe and only do one thing, remove god, then of course, it’s going to be dark.

To be more fair, the theist needs to place his argument in a universe which has no god and never had a god, in which the nature of humanity is not presumed to be sinful and depraved.

So, the Problem of Good … could the godless universe produce the acts that we call “good”?  I certainly think this is possible.  There’s no Problem of Evil for an atheist, but equally there’s no real Problem of Good either.  In the Morality as Playing Games series, I explain how the (western, judeo-christian) morality that we currently espouse can arise from pretty solid self-interest.  To the best of my knowledge here’s no “good” act which cannot be explained in terms of the ethical structure that I arrive at.

Some might complain that this is a “just so” story, but that’s not the point.  Perhaps our morality, our sense of what is good and what is wrong did not arise the way that I have laid it out, but even so, I do demonstrate that it could arise without a god.

This is all that is required to refute the argument that, for there to be any good, there must be a god.  There’s a way without god, therefore god is not necessary in moral terms.

Pre-Creation (How Good Can God Be?)

I want to consider whatever there was, in the theist conception, prior to creation.  Note: I use the term "prior to" deliberately rather than the term "before", because creation probably implies a beginning of time, in which case there would be no "before" (such as we could understand it).

The idea, as I understand it, is that it is impossible for there to be an infinitely long causal chain back into the past and that, within this universe, all effects (without exception) are preceded by a cause.  Note: I am not interested in Aristotelian "causes" here, which are presented as answers to a "why" question such that considering them would be equivocation.  I very much mean a cause as in the combination of pre-existing conditions and some sort of force acting on something.

The notion of pre-existing conditions and a force acting on something is taken to show that while there must have been some "first cause", that "first cause" could not have come from within this universe.  Note: I am not implying a "first cause" from "outside" the universe, since at this point, notionally, the universe does not (yet, see first note) exist.

This "first cause", it is then claimed, must be a creator god.  Note: I am not implying that this is a specific god, one that maybe has the name "God" or one that Adam and Moses chatted with, so I have no intention to capitalise the term when I use it.

It is further claimed, by most theists, that this creator god is extremely, maximally or all-: powerful, knowing and good.  Some go further, saying that this god is perfect.  I know that, when challenged, some theists suggest a less extreme version of a god, in order to avoid certain problems, but I strongly suspect that in private such theists relax back into believing the full deal.  Let's just say that this hypothetical creator god is, at a minimum, powerful and knowledgeable enough to create this universe and then consider how good such a creator god could be, given that it started with the most rasus of all possible tabulæ rasæ.  Note: This is a questionable metaphor because "rasus" indicates that the "tabula" [slate] has been "scraped" clean, implying that the slate had been in a different state earlier, but I'm just trying to say in an oblique way that this creator has the blankest of all blank canvases before it, that there is nothing before it but potential, and perhaps not even potential, since any potential that exists supposedly exists, as yet unmanifested, within the creator god and that creator god has not yet created anything yet that could be "before" it.

One final, or rather first, thing.  In our understanding of physics, time could have started just prior to the big bang, but it doesn't necessarily have to have started just then.  In the hypothetical that I am considering right now, however, to all extents and purposes time does start with “creation” - because otherwise the causal chain would extend further back, and we're specifically looking at when the chain starts.  I'm willing to accept that the creator god could create time first, with nothing else (so no matter or energy and no space in which to put it), and use the fruit of that initial creative act to "spend time" considering what move to make next.  I'm not saying that a creator god needs to do that, but we're going to consider decision making on the part of the creator god and, as far as we understand it, decision making takes time.

So, we have the creator god.  Nothing is created.  The creator god is sufficiently perfect as to make a universe of some kind.  Is this creator god good?

It seems that we can only tell by employing an awkward, circular definition of good, saying that this creator god is good because it does creator god stuff and creator god stuff (namely creation) is, by definition, good, or good by consideration of what actions this creator god takes - judging it by its fruits, you could say.

But then we come to suffering.  Suffering is, in itself, a bad thing.  I doubt that anyone would argue that suffering, in itself, is a good thing.  It is certainly possible that, if on balance there is more good than bad that accrues from a certain act, then that act can be considered "good" even if it resulted in suffering (in some sort of "the ends justify the means" sort of way).  However, at this point in our hypothetical history, there is nothing and there is, therefore, no suffering at all.

What justification would this creator god have for changing from that primordial, zero-suffering state to a state in which, inevitably, sentient creatures would emerge and suffer, some horribly?  Note: I am not saying here that it's necessarily the case that the creator god should not have created at all, but rather emphasising the (hypothetical) fact that the creator god had an entirely blank canvas (albeit an entirely metaphorical one).  Nothing had yet been created, not even the physical laws of this universe, and the creator god had almost entirely unlimited options (remember that this is a sufficiently powerful and knowledgeable creator god, not an omnipotent or omniscient one).  The creator god could have created, for example, a single intelligent being with which to interact.  It might be argued that loneliness of that being might be an issue, but that is a post hoc quibble.  A deliberately created being, created by a sufficiently powerful and knowledgeable creator god with the sole purpose of interacting perfectly with its creator, would not suffer loneliness - it'd be in (sufficiently) perfect communion with the (sufficiently) perfect creator god.

Some apologists might miss the point (intentionally or not) and suggest that the creator god does not need to justify itself to lowly mortals like myself.  That may well be true, but such a tyrant god is not an inherently good god.  And in any event, I'm not arguing here that this hypothetical creator god does not exist, I am merely pondering on how good it could possibly be.

So, how good can it be?

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There's the common argument that this god wants to enter into a loving relationship with us all, and that this is a great gift, offered freely.  Nevertheless, this is satisfying a want on the part of the creator god, and any good that is associated with this offer comes only after our creation.  Therefore, we suffer (and I reckon we all suffer to a greater or lesser extent) to satisfy the wants of a creator god, even if we might subsequently get a boon that seems somewhat secondary (our happiness is subordinate to that of a vastly superior being, after all).  However, I am not considering the post-creation situation – I'm considering the pre-creation situation in which a creator god has the opportunity to decide between A) creation of sentient beings which would then be placed in a quandary, risking future eternal bliss or future eternal suffering (or permanent oblivion), while experiencing a poor, nasty, brutish, and short lives on the material plane; B); creation of sentient beings who would not then be placed in such a quandary and would not then experience poor, nasty, brutish, and short lives (on any plane) or, C) abstention from the creation of sentient beings altogether.

My thinking is that the creator god could be good.  But it would not be good if it chose option A.

Statistical Argument for the Non-Existence of a God

Here’s a simple statistical argument as to why any given theist’s god probably doesn't exist.  The argument is possibly a variation on the problem of evil, but it's combined with the divine hiddenness issue and the inefficacy of prayer.

Let's suppose that theism was true and that scriptural instructions were true, but only applicable to those who are saved.  Let's further suppose that there is some necessary evil in the world, for whatever reasons a theist might posit and that suffering includes a certain number of children not being born (due to infertility, illness that kills a youth before being able to breed, death of children during childbirth and possibly even some number of abortions).  Say also that a theist takes the instruction from her god literally and "goes forth and multiplies", but not so literally as to become a mathematician.  Say also that non-theists don't have such an imposition and they therefore have fewer children than theists (this seems to be statistically accurate, given than christians have 2.2 children on average, while atheists have 1.6).

What efficacy of prayer would we need for there to be a significant effect on populations?

I did a little spreadsheet on this, with the following assumptions:

Theists have 4.4 children per family (matching the average of 2.2 children per christian)

Atheists have 3.2 children per family (matching the average of 1.6 children per atheist)

Start with a population of 100,000 evenly divided between theists and atheists

A generation is 25 years

Average lifespan is 75 years

The base probability of making it to maturity (and producing children) is 30%

A millennium is a good period to check out

Note that I assume a rather low base probability of making it to maturity to take into account wars, plagues and so on, and I picked that figure because if I go too far above that, the population after a mere 1000 years is ridiculous.  Note also that I am assuming no transfer from the atheist ranks to the theist ranks and vice versa.  I’m simplifying things by assuming even numbers of males and females make it to breeding age and assuming that all those who can couple up do so thus ignoring the possibility of non-breeding couples.

I'm aware that the 2.2 and 1.6 figures could possibly be per family, but I am thinking of pre-modern societies, like the ones that we have lived in for the vast majority of human history.  In the past, and even today in the third world, parents have more children as a sort of insurance policy against all the vectors of death pointing at them.  We need also to remember that the theist's god has told them to go forth and multiply, not to go forth and maintain something that is slightly above a steady population.

So, what was the outcome?  After 1000 years, there are a little over 5000 atheists and 1.5 billion theists if prayer is totally ineffective.  The atheists are, in fact, on their way to extinction – they do linger for a quite a while though, only disappearing entirely around Year 3600).  Note that this is assuming that prayer is totally ineffective, that theists are only benefitting from a tendency to produce more children.  If we introduce a very minor efficacy of prayer, making it so that 31% of children grow up to be parents, then after 1000 years, there’ll be 5.7 billion theists.  If we say that prayer is 25% effective, saving a quarter of the children who would otherwise have died, then there’d be 142 million billion theists compared to the 5000 atheists.

We can fiddle with the numbers in other ways.  We could assume, for example that all families, theist or atheist, had the same average number of children.  Let’s take the median, at 3.8.  If prayer is totally ineffective, then the numbers of atheists and theists will remain about equal – after 1000 years, there’ll be almost 5 million of each.  So, what happens if we make prayer effective in a minor way (30%->31%)?  After 1000 years, there will be 3.7 times more theists than atheists.  And if prayer is 25% effective (30%->48%), then there’ll be 647 thousand billion theists compared to the 5 million atheists, or 13.8 million times more theists than atheists.

There is, therefore, a very low-key way for a good god to not get too involved, still maintain plausible deniability (so as to remain hidden), not make prayer appear too effective (again perhaps to remain hidden) and still effectively wipe out the atheists over an extended period.  All the god needs to do is demotivate the atheists from breeding, decrease the base rate of survival to breeding age and bump up the effectiveness of prayer (from the current rate of 0%).  Note that I am not suggesting that theists want atheists to be effectively wiped out, but if atheists are going to suffer for eternity, then a good god would have some motivation for minimising the number of atheists.  For example, in the original scenario with prayer being very slightly effective, over the 1000 years, there will be about 15 billion theists and only 370 thousand atheists, quite a good ratio of eternally saved to eternally damned at 41,500:1.

Of course, this is just a simple model.  A good god could also touch some of the atheists to shift the balance.  Say that in each generation, there was a one-way defection rate of 10%.  That results not only in almost total eradication of atheists, who are now down to only 54 after 1000 years, but a quintupling of the number of theists (from the original 1.5 billion after a 1000 years with completely ineffective prayer), to 7.25 billion, and a saved to damned ratio of more than 125,000:1 over the period!  Make prayer 25% effective on top of that and that ratio goes to 2,190,000,000,000:1.

So, why does the theist’s god not do something like this?  Such a small effort could make a huge difference.  The theist could fiddle with the figures to make it less impressive, if they liked, but remember that their god is apparently in control, so it can choose to make the results even better than I have suggested.  But it doesn't, which is a very real problem for a world view that contains a god that is supposed to be even slightly good, slightly powerful and has the vaguest clue about what is going on in this universe.

The How Many Problem

The How Many Problem can be expressed like this:

How many individuals does god need (or want) to save?  How many sentient beings are justifiably cast into hell in order to achieve this goal?

I'll just clarify a few things:

It is standard christian theology that the god wants to save individuals, without this the sacrifice of Jesus would be meaningless.  Even in judaism  and islam you have the concept of prophets who are instructed by their god to pass on a message of salvation to the faithful.

The actual method of salvation is immaterial.  It could be via simple belief, rebirth baptism, grace or "coming to know and love god".  Whatever the mechanism, which could be far more subtle and complex than the examples given, this doesn't change the requirement to save individuals.

The nature of salvation is immaterial.  It could be floating around on clouds with a harp, it could be bodily resurrection, it could be something more ethereal, just not being in hell or, again, something more subtle and complex than these.  What matters is that this salvation is apparently important - to the god.

We know that one individual saved does not appear to be sufficient - Adam and Eve could have sufficed, Jesus could have sufficed, Jesus' acolytes could have sufficed, thousands of early christians could have sufficed.  Even today, with billions of christians, there is still an apparent need to seek more converts (and presumably more saved).

The god in question is apparently omniscient and omnipotent and, in some readings, unchanging in its nature.  Therefore, the idea that anything is served by having billions upon billions of imperfect humans interacting with it is problematic.  Nevertheless, this is an aspect of the christian creed.  The question remains - how many is enough, what figure does the thinking theist settle on and why is this large number (at least in the billions) better than the number that immediately follows it?

The nature of hell is immaterial (as in it doesn’t matter what the nature is, I am not claiming here that hell has a particular nature).  Perhaps it is all fire and brimstone, perhaps it is a long cold dark time spent away from god, perhaps it's just like this earth with all the joy and happiness sucked out of it - forever - or perhaps it is something more subtle and complex than that.  The point I am alluding to here is that those sentient beings who are not saved are apparently destined for some sort of hell (and not simple oblivion) and they will suffer there, at least for some longish period of time if not literally for a future eternity.  This is an ultimate problem of evil that is not solved by appealing to the greater good of saving some maximal number of souls, because the souls in hell are already damned.

The theist, to respond to this problem must identify a number, or a possible mechanism for setting a number, of individuals to be saved.

If this cannot be done, then the conclusion is that the god would need (or want) an infinite number of saved individuals.  It would further follow that, with any percentage failure rate higher than zero as the god churns through the souls in attempt to save them, there would be an infinite number of damned individuals.

To avoid that, we arrive at theological zombies.  But theological zombies bring their own problems (deception on the part of god, an emptiness on the part of the soul in the process of being saved in a universe otherwise inhabited by theological zombies, the level of imperfection of the soul in the process of being saved if this world is the best possible world in which it would be saved).

So, again, I ask the question: how many?

A World Without Suffering

Here is an exchange from Craig-Land on the question “why didn't the creator god create a world without suffering?”  In this discussion, which was initiated by someone else, I was granting the existence of a creator god, for the sake of the argument, so the simple answer “because there is no creator god” was not a response available to me.

The theist side of the discussion is pretty much as presented (modified only by formatting and some minor grammatical and spelling corrections, which I am hoping haven’t changed the argument at all).  I’ve added some links and recrafted some statements in an attempt to bridge the gap with respect to context.  I’ve not tried to polish my argument after the fact.

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Theist: What is suffering? If suffering is defined as an experience, then a world without suffering is a world without the experience of suffering. In so far as we can tell, any living creature with a nervous system and a brain with memory capability has the potential to experience suffering. So, any world without suffering is basically a world without living creatures who possess nervous systems and brains with memory.

I think that you are opening the door to equivocation here.  I agree that pain is experiential, as widely defined: Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described interms of such damage.  If one experiences pain, one suffers.  The somatosensory system is co-opted for associating a type of pain (discomfort) with situations that are negative but which do not actually involve tissue damage - such as pain of loss, social rejection and so on.

Can we agree that, as you describe it, you are equating "pain" and "suffering"?  (I don't want to get all new-age and suggest that pain is inevitable while suffering is optional, if we think of laboratory monkeys, for example, it doesn't do us any good ethically speaking to say “sure, we're callously ensuring that they feel pain, but it's up to them whether or not they suffer”.)

So, if we are talking about pain, we have to then consider the purpose of pain.  It's originally there to minimise tissue damage, doing something that risks doing or does do tissue damage elicits a pain response (so long as the nerve fibres are functional).  For the most part, the brain/nervous system doesn't care whether the host is salvageable or not, so suffering (the experience of pain) can continue until death but in some instances, pain signals will be shut down as part of a fight or flight strategy, and it's possible to not feel pain merely because (relatively minor) damage has not yet been noticed (if it's major damage and you're not full of adrenaline, you'll almost certainly feel it).  But sometimes, the system gives up on pain messaging and instead floods the brain with opioids.

The question then becomes could the organism be motivated to avoid (further) tissue damage without causing suffering?  It seems to me that, taking a designer’s perspective, it's possible.  For example, an organism such as a human could get a message that it really, really wants to move its hand away from the heater element, rather than getting a pain message.  This could be actualised using the same "pain" receptors, but with different processing in the brain - if the brain were designed, of course, rather than just being the result of a mindless evolutionary process.  This could even be pleasurable in that satisfying the requirement to move away from a damaging situation could be rewarded by brief activation of the brain's pleasure centres.

It'd be an interesting study, seeing if an organism could be persuaded to not damage itself via a mix of positive and neutral input, rather than positive and negative input.  It could be simulated in software, and might even be a mechanism by which intelligent machines could be (ethically) trained to not damage themselves.

I do understand that pain provides some urgency to act, but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that we could be motivated to avoid damage without the suffering associated with pain.  And this means that it could be possible to have a world with sentient creatures with brains and nervous systems that do not experience suffering, so long as we don't define suffering as "the uncomfortable experience we get when tissue damage is happening or about to happen, which makes us prefer to act in some preventative manner".

(Note: as mentioned above, non-tissue damage related suffering involves co-opting of the somatosensory system.  If pain was experienced as just another message in the brain, then events that manifest to us as emotional or psychological pain would also be experienced differently.  For example, the pain of loneliness would be interpreted as "my situation isn't optimal for a social creature, I would prefer to do something about it".)

Theist: God could have made a world without living creatures, which would entail no suffering; but could God have made a world with living creatures who could not experience suffering? Some people might answer this question with an unequivocal yes, saying something to the effect of if God is all-knowing and all-powerful, then certainly he would know of a way and would have the means to create such a world. This is a poorly justified reason though, because it's making the mistake that God can do anything that's conceivable - which isn't true. Can God make squared-circles? Can God make an object which both occupies a space and yet does not occupy it? No and no. More reasonable, it would be better to think that God can do anything that's logically possible. By this, God can't break the Law of Non-Contradiction. But wait, does this mean God is no longer all-powerful? Hardly. Especially if we define all-powerful as possessing all power to do anything logical.

Again, this seems to be equivocation, although you did sort of define your way out of it.  You seem to be saying that because we can put words together to describe an impossible thing, then that thing is conceivable.  This isn't really true.  We can say "squared-circle" and even put effort into squaring the circle (which doesn't seem to be what you are talking about), or finding a "married bachelor" or "boiling ice", or any number of impossible things, but that does not make the referents conceivable.  The things you listed are not really conceivable, they are merely describable.

And there's no real "Law" associated with the Law of Non-Contradiction (or the Law of Identity or the Law of Excluded Middle) that your creator god could be guilty of breaking (ed – see also The Problem with Theodicies).  This sort of Law is merely a description of a state of affairs.  You seem to be guilty of reification again, but it could be that you were talking metaphorically.  We both agree that (metaphorically) your god cannot break the LNC (etc) in this universe “as created”, we merely disagree on what impact that has on the omnipotence of your god and whether the inability to break the LNC (etc) necessitates suffering.

Theist: The more important question is: would God be violating the Law of Non-Contradiction if he made a world that contained human beings who could not experience suffering? If the very definition of what it means to be human is to possess a nervous system and a brain with memory, then no, God could not make a world with humans and without suffering. Some other being would be required. Perhaps, a being with a slightly tweaked nervous system that does not register any pain at all, or is extremely numb to it. Would these beings be "human" in so far as we know what it is to be "human"? It's hard to say, but there is some merit to this line of thought because it yields what could be called the “Human Evolution Defence”.

Okay, here is where you are walking through that door to equivocation that I mentioned above.  You wrote earlier about "a living creature".  Here you are talking about "human beings".  Now your argument is presuppositional, implying that your god was obliged to make "human beings" and thus, given that "human beings" are the sort of creatures that suffer, then suffering was unavoidable.  So, the title of this discussion should perhaps be "A World With Human Beings As They Are But Without Suffering", which I agree is impossible.  But you cannot simply define your way into argumentative success.

Theist: Where the Free-Will Defence presupposes that God cannot create beings with free will that would never choose evil, the Human Evolution Defence presupposes that God cannot create human beings as we know them to be (which is to say "like us") that could not experience suffering. We have reason to suspect that nervous systems and memories like ours conferred an evolutionary advantage, and so we might also suspect that God could have let the human species develop as is such that we could procure said evolutionary advantages. Certainly, nervous systems with a high threshold for pain or ones that could (be) completely numb () would have been () evolutionary disadvantageous as pain reinforces basic cause and effect (fire = hot, hot = painful, therefore, don't touch the fire). Furthermore, a world in which the experience of pain and suffering does exist but is supernaturally pacified by God after-the-fact might also entail unintended evolutionary consequences or provide negative evolutionary reinforcement (I doubt one could say otherwise for certain).

If your god made the universe and set it up in such a way that "human beings" or something very similar to them developed by purely natural means (which sounds like a god of deism or pantheism), then I guess that's fine.  It's really no different to the atheistic position in any meaningful way.  But, for your argument to stand, we would have to be limited to the only life that we both know that we have, this one.

If you are going to shuffle over to another part of theism, in which a more perfect existence after this one is available, in which there is no suffering (Rev 21:4), then you have a problem because your god could have bypassed this world with suffering and established that world without suffering - and there is no logical objection against doing so (while there may theological or dogmatic objections).

The objection that is most frequently raised is that of filtering, identifying those persons or souls which are qualified for the life after this one.  The problem here though is that the biblical god is generally described as omniscient (Heb 4:13, 1 John 3:20, Psa 147:5, 1 Sam 2:3, Job 28:24 (although this last one could just be instantaneous, "now" omniscience)), in which case it knows the inevitable (Rom 2:28-30) result of the filtering process anyway, so it doesn't seem to need to actually carry it out.

And that's before we get into the doctrine of grace, which implies that the saved are selected anyway, such that one cannot act to be saved (and I'm aware that the doctrine of grace, "The Doctrine of Grace teaches that we are totally unable to save ourselves, to help in our salvation, to do anything to merit all or any part of our salvation, or to keep our salvation", is controversial since it opens the possibility that a total heathen like myself could potentially be saved, despite a life of spurning your god, while a devoted, sainted believer like, say, Mother Theresa could end up consigned to the flames, because our acts count for nothing).

The claim that a creator god could not create a world without suffering appears to be tantamount to abandonment of the afterlife.  Would a theist really want to abandon the afterlife?

A Problem with Theodicies

 A problem with theodicies, as I see it, is that (some) theists will initially accept – for the sake of the argument – the notion that their god does some bad things.  Then they'll spend a lot of time justifying why their god does those bad things (better goods via evil, inability to do the logically impossible, necessity of evil for good by comparison, etc).  They'll reach a conclusion that their god could in fact be justified in doing some bad things, and they will confidently declare that their god hypothesis is not invalidated by the problem of evil (so long as a long list of caveats are satisfied).  Then, finally, they'll forget all about the mental gymnastics that they just went through and will go back to believing in a god without all the caveats that those mental gymnastics resulted in, a god that they had previously accepted as invalidated by the problem of evil.

There's also the problem of using logic in a theodicy.  Certain logical truths – for example the Law of Non-Contradiction – are features of this universe ("as created", in the world view of a theist).  We use these logical truths to arrive at the conclusion that, for example, action X is not "logically possible".  This makes the impossibility of action X a secondary feature of this universe ("as created"), because that logical impossibility is a consequence of the logical truths which are primary features of this universe.

There's nothing that implies that logic transcends this universe such that a sufficiently powerful, knowledgeable and good god could not create a universe without logic – at least nothing beyond our inability to imagine such a universe, but we live in a universe in which logical truths pertain, so we are naturally limited in our imagination.

Perhaps the theist might wish to argue that logic does transcend this universe and that "prior to the creation of the universe" (whatever that means) the creator god was limited by logic and was obliged to create a universe in which logic necessitated suffering and evil.  The problem here is that the theist is therefore suggesting that the creator god is transcended by logic, is less powerful than logic.  And we know that logic is ultimately imperfect (per Wittgenstein and Russell).  Thus, the creator god is diminished and becomes a mere vassal of imperfect logic.

Is this not a problem for the theist?

Knowing God

In a relatively recent William Lane Craig debate, this time with Alexander Rosenberg, Craig repeated his claim that the “Problem of Evil” is resolved, in part, because God could not make a better world.  (Note that in Hidden Premises, I addressed another aspect of Craig’s defence against the Problem of Evil, a defence that is revolves around Craig’s denial of omnipotence on the part of his god.)

This second argument is based on the claim that the levels of evil that are manifest in this world, presumably both man-made and natural evil, are necessary to produce the maximum number of people who may come to know him.

This argument, while relatively simple to put into words, is so convoluted on closer inspection that it is difficult to know where to start dismantling it.  Given that this is a theist argument, it might be most appropriate to work backwards.

I’m not going to assume a sub-optimal god since there are already arguments to dismiss such a notion, including one from Craig.  So, we start with an optimal god, who has the features that we are all familiar with: being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.

Craig argues that while we humans might struggle with such questions, his god is able to identify the optimal mix of good and evil required to maximise the number of people who would come to know him (Craig’s allocation of gender appears to be based on tradition rather than evidence).  In other words, Craig’s god has crunched the numbers and determined that the Holocaust was a necessary event which resulted in more knowers of god than could have been achieved by allowing a relatively small number of men to be eliminated (for example those who planned the Final Solution).  He would presumably have performed similar calculations for:

·         The Black Death

·         Spanish Flu

·         Malaria

·         Tuberculosis

·         World War 2 in general

·         The American Civil War

·         The English Civil War

·         Stalin (or Marx)

·         Mao (or Marx)

·         Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge

·         The Rape of Nanking

·         The Boxing Day Tsunami

·      The Catholic Church (covering a multitude of sins)

Any horrible event that you can think of, according to Craig, has happened because god has determined that by allowing those evil things to happen optimises the number of people who will come to know him.  (Note that I use the word “evil” in this article to represent suffering as well as the more vaguely defined theological evil.  If the reader is an atheist, just read the word as “suffering”.)

This brings me to my first question, why does god want the optimal number of people to come to know him?  I don’t know whether Craig has ever made his explanation of this explicit.  One could assume that it’s because god is loving, as Craig indicated in his closing statements in the second debate with Quentin Smith:

A loving God would not leave it up to us to figure out by our own ingenuity and cleverness whether or not he exists. Rather a loving God would seek to reveal himself to us and draw us to himself. And this is exactly what Christian theism teaches. Jesus of Nazareth said, "If any man's will is to do God's will, then he will know whether my teaching is from God, or whether I am speaking on my own accord" (John 7.17). And Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit of God would be given by him to convict and draw persons into loving relationships with himself.

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So what we have so far is that god is this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, loving being that is seeking to obtain relationships with an optimal number of humans.

Cynically, we could say that the “optimal” number of humans who will enter into relationships with god is an arbitrary number, perhaps 144,000 (to be honest though, that number is not arbitrary, it’s a number from the Bible).  It might not be optimal for god to have a higher number, so the evil could arguably be there to prevent too many humans from qualifying for the relationship with god.  This wouldn’t work as an argument, of course, because of the collateral damage involved.  God surely does not need more than 7 billion people to suffer evil so that he can select 144,000 from them.  In his debate with A.C. Grayling, Craig indicated that this is not his argument anyway.  By “optimal” he apparently means “maximal”:

… God might have good reasons for permitting a lot of this natural evil in a world with free creatures. And I think, as a Christian, that it’s related to the Kingdom of God, if God wants to bring the maximum number of people freely into his Kingdom. And I don’t find it at all implausible to think that natural evil and, and moral evil could be a part of the circumstances in which he uses to do this.

Here, Craig introduces another element, namely that god wants an optimum, i.e. maximum, number of humans to enter freely into a loving relationship with him.  This links back to another of his arguments, namely that the evil that exists in the world is a direct consequence of giving humans free will.  This is a moderately good argument but only for the evil in the world that is directly related to the action of humans.  It says absolutely nothing about natural evil.

I can understand, given that god wants a maximal number of us to enter into a loving relationship with him, that he would want the decision to enter into such a relationship to be made freely.  Anything else would be some form of divine rape.  So, we can take the “freely” as a given.

However, when we think about the idea that god wants the maximum number of us to enter into this relationship with him, it becomes a little less clear as to why he is so hell-bent on killing us.  If he’d prevented the Black Death, and Spanish Flu and the wars (excepting of course the wars that he specifically commissioned), then there would be a lot more of us today.  If he’d prevented the Dark Ages, or just made them significantly shorter, then by now we could have been exploring the galaxy, colonising other planets and humans could number in the trillions, rather than just the billions.  It begins to look like “optimum” is a more reasonable claim with regard to god’s intentions than is “maximum”.

By far the greatest problem that I have with Craig’s argument is that it tries to wriggle out of answering what his kind tell us is the biggest question of all – why are we here?

An atheist, if asked that question, is likely to either say that there is no inherent meaning in our being here or answer the question in terms of how the universe and more specifically humans developed.  If in a somewhat less serious mood, the atheist might answer with “because I was born here”, “because I have not died yet”, “because it’s better than the alternative” or something similarly droll.

A theist like Craig, on the other hand, seems to answer with “so that we might enter into a loving relationship with god”.  But hold on a second, that’s begging some rather large questions.  Firstly, a question raised earlier, why would god want to enter into a loving relationship with us? And secondly, why did god make us in the first place?  And thirdly, why did god make us the way he did rather than making us another way?

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The second question is an enormous problem for theists, even if they don’t recognise it themselves:

·         Did god make us specifically in order to allow a maximum number of us to freely enter into a loving relationship with him?

·         Or did he make us for some other, poorly defined reason and only subsequently decided to enter into this relationship with us?

·         Or is there another option?

Neither of the first two options is particularly satisfying.

If god made all of us with the intention of forming this relationship with as many of us as possible, but not all, then the rest of us – the ones who are not destined to enter into this relationship – are chaff and due to his omniscience, god would have known, and would still know that this is the case.  Does Craig actually think that some proportion of humanity, the extent of which is currently unclear, is deliberately and knowingly made dispensable in his god’s great plan - and that the rest of us are just here to make up the numbers?

As an alternative, it could be argued that we were just the bi-product of another plan and the divine relationship that we have all been offered was tacked on as an afterthought.  This, to be frank, seems rather more feasible.  The numerous imperfections of creation would make a lot more sense if god initially only thought of humanity as a disposable element of a grander plan, and that we either demonstrated sufficient worth to justify a qualified opportunity for salvation or god introduced some sort of recycling measure.

The problem here, of course, is that such an idea diverges widely from standard theology in which the human is very much a central component in god’s plan.

Is there a third option?  Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, came up with what might sound like another option – a graduated relationship.  It’s conceivable that, if there is a god, that god would have different levels of relationship with humans much as we have different levels of relationship with other humans.  At one extreme there would be the atheists and false believers who have a one way relationship with god knowing them and at the other extreme, the true believers who are in line for a deep and intimate relationship with god.

In this option, none of us are chaff, we are just destined for a different sort of relationship.  It’s even possible that, for some reason, god wanted this variation across relationships.  It would at least explain why some people are inordinately blessed with success and happiness while others are trapped in an endless cycle of failure and disappointment.

However, even in this option, there is still no satisfying explanation as to how it came about that god created humanity in the first place.  (And again, it’s not standard Christian theology.)

I suspect that, if pushed and prodded enough, Craig will fall back on a variation of the anthropic principle – there must have been a good reason for god to have made us, since we are here.

For Craig, however, this argument fails because he repeatedly rejects the anthropic principle in order to make space for his god.  It’s intellectually dishonest to later resurrect the anthropic principle as an explanation for bizarre behaviour on the part of that god.  For atheists, it also fails because it is the standard anthropic principle with the unnecessary addition of a god, and a universe created by a god requires a lot more explanation than a universe that arises without one.

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Finally, why did god make us the way he did and not another way?

This question is predicated on god’s supposed omnipotence and omniscience, it is not sufficient to say “I don’t know how god could achieve his ends without causing as much evil as he does”, with the option of saying “God could not achieve his ends without causing as much evil as he does”.  It might be the case that in a universe like ours, the evils that plague us might drive us closer to god, but an omnipotent and omniscient god is not obliged to make a universe like ours.

Surely for an omnipotent god, the maximum number of beings that can enter into a relationship with that god is every single being he creates.

In Craig’s conception of god, the maximally great being sits outside of space and time, so there’s no clear reason why he could not have created a mini-universe for each human that he wanted to enter into a relationship with and run that mini-universe for as long as it took to get that relationship to manifest.  If I, as a puny human, can imagine such a regime, then there’s no excuse for god not thinking of it.

A slightly less wasteful version would be to populate a universe with real humans who are destined to enter into a relationship with god and a vast number of simulacrums whose only function is to assist the saved to achieve their destiny.  The real humans would be trapped in a cycle of reincarnation, able only to escape once they achieve an acceptable standard of performance.

This brings us to another option, perhaps Craig’s god has done precisely that – created a universe specifically for the saved, in which they can thrive find their way to a perfect relationship with their god.  (Note that Craig in this scenario would be a Buddha-like character, soon to leave the cycle of reincarnation but calling out to other saved to embrace their “Craig” nature.)

If this is god had created a universe like this, then the unsaved would not be real in the same way as, say, Craig would be real. 

We’d not have souls, we’d not have Free Will and we’d not perceive god.

And this would make us … well, atheists.