I have just finished the book "Belief in God in an Age of Science" by JCP. I was impressed and I concur that scientists and theologians should interact more.
I want to introduce myself and then write some comments on "The Definition of Evil" that I have been working on.
First the introduction. I ...was born in 1927 so I am of similar vintage as JCP. I received my Ph. D. in Physical Chemistry in 1954 from ...While I was writing my Ph. D. thesis, I made the discovery that...My fellow graduate student .. pointed out that... Our major professor... developed an equation that fit the curve and gave the physical interpretation of what it meant. [He] was lavish in the credit he gave his grad students so the paper was published in the Journal of ...in 1955. The authors were [me], [fellow student] and [Prof], so the equation is called the XXX equation.
At the age of 11 or 12, I professed faith in Christ as my savior and joined a southern Baptist church. In high school, I got interested in science and graduated from college with a B.S. in Chemistry. I found that I could not believe in the world being created in six days and I couldn't accept the story of Adam and Eve as literal truth. So I became a Presbyterian. My faith has matured as a Presbyterian. ...
After retiring from research on... I became interested in the problem of evil. I have read the following books" (1)" Evil and the God of Love" by John Hick (2) "God, Power, and Evil" by David Ray Griffin, (3) "Evil after Postmodernism"
edited by Jennifer L. Geddes, (4) "A Philosophy of Evil" by Lars Svendsen and (5) "The Groaning of Creation" by Christopher Southgate.
What I find lacking in them is a precise definition of evil.
To develop that definition, I did a thought experiment ala Einstein.
Suppose I have a problem which requires action on my part to solve it. I can imagine a series of possible actions which might solve the problem.
How do I evaluate them to help me make a choice? I certainly need some yardstick or criterion or criteria so measure them by. If I plot my possible choices on that yardstick, what is the zero point, i.e. which actions are positive and therefore "good" and which actions are negative and therefore "evil"?
I can think of two. One is faithfulness to the commandments of God. Jews have the 600 plus commandments in the Torah and Muslims have the "sharia" established by Mohhammed. I must confess that I have not read or studied either set. However, I doubt if they agree in every particular. Therefore, it is entirely possible that a Jew might follow the law of the Torah and find his action good while a Muslim might consider the same action according to "sharia" and consider it evil. And vice versa. Therefore this definition of a zero point cannot have general applicability.
My second definition of a zero point is this"" An action is evil if it intentionally causes harm to somebody else or to myself"
I am still working on this one but there are some ideas that follow from that definition. First, natural disasters bring harm to lots of people but they aren't evil. Second, accidents bring harm to people but if they aren't intentional then they aren't evil. Third, evil depends upon both the action and the intent.
Now I have a problem. My actions aren't always preceded by thought. Sometimes my emotions rule and I say things without thinking about the effect it has on others. It turns out that effect produces harm. it was not intended deliberately but it caused harm none the less. Do humans do evil consistently? Yes. When my children were smaller, I taught them obedience by spanking them. When my son taught his son obedience, he put him in "Time Out" or otherwise deprived him of something he wanted. That was evil according to my definition but it was done for a good purpose. One could argue that any time anyone is denied something they want, the denial is evil. Yet I certainly don't believe that everybody should get everything they want because we don't have enough to satisfy everybody. So there are some problems with my definition.
Response from John: "I'm glad you find my Belief in God helpful. It is not easy to define evil. I doubt that intention is a necessary part - there are sins of omission as well as sins of commission. There is also physical evil (disease and disaster) as well as moral evil. Christopher Southgate is good on this."
Showing posts with label Evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evil. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Sunday, 27 February 2011
Evidential Problem of Evil
Regarding the Logical Problem of Evil, originally proposed by Epicurus, I really feel that it can be resolved with Plantiga's Free Will Defense. However this defense falls short of the evidential problem of evil, presented by William Rowe:
1: There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2: An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3: (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.
How does one counter such an argument?
Mainly by denying (1).
We can never know that (1) is true. Although (2) is also somewhat questionable, since it assumes that intense suffering is necessarily an unmitigated evil.
I have a paper in Think which expands on the relevant section in QoT
1: There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2: An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3: (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.
How does one counter such an argument?
Mainly by denying (1).
We can never know that (1) is true. Although (2) is also somewhat questionable, since it assumes that intense suffering is necessarily an unmitigated evil.
I have a paper in Think which expands on the relevant section in QoT
The Evil God Challenge
God is usually defined as a perfect being. One of God's perfections is considered to be benevolence, ie. God is perfectly good. Is it not the case, however, that one of God's perfections could just as easily be malevolence, ie. God could be perfectly evil. People do not normally think of evil as a perfection but it can be seen as such. Eg. a cheetah is a perfect killing machine. From the point of view of a gazelle, a cheetah could be seen as perfectly evil.
Every argument for the traditional benevolent God can also be used as an argument for an evil God. The argument from design, eg, can be used to show that the Universe is perfectly designed to produce beings who are capable of evil.
Conversely, the argument normally used against God, ie the problem of evil, could, in its reverse form, be used against an evil God. This argument would be the problem of good. Why would an evil God create a world with goodness in it? Again the defence against the the argument would be the same. In order for the world to have true evil, people must be given free will so that they can choose evil. If they have free will then there is the risk that they will choose good instead.
It seems that the possibilities of an evil God and a benevolent God are completely symmetrical. Neither one is more probable than the other and if God exists it must considered just as likely that He is evil as that He is good.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
This is the “Evil God Challenge” of Stephen Law.
My reply to him was:
It seems to me that the most fundamental [problem of this view] can be seen if we consider the following statement:
A(LUC): Belief in a Loving Ultimate Creator is a worldview that is deeply satisfying for its hundreds of millions of adherents, provides richly articulated explanations of many fundamental aspects of their experience, and helps them lead happier, more satisfying and evolutionary successful lives.
Now first of all, whether or not you think that A(LUC) ought to be true in a rational world, it seems clear to me that it is true in this world and encapsulates many of the reasons why people believe in God. It also offers some explanation of why militant atheism is ultimately futile: any worldview of which A is true is likely to prosper. Of course A does not say anything directly about whether or in what sense this worldview is true. But I think it is plausible to argue that if there were a LUC then it is likely that the universe would be such that A(LUC) were true.
However for the present purposes what is notable about A is that every aspect of it is false if made into A(EUC): “Belief in an Evil Ultimate Creator is...”. Not only does the EUC idea have zero adherents, it isn’t a worldview, is in no sense “richly articulated”, offers only parodies of explanations of some aspects of our existence, and it is pretty clear that if anyone really believed it their lives would be miserable, unsatisfying and highly unlikely to encourage the successful raising of children. (Much the same applies to the silly Flying Spaghetti Monster)
Of course I'm not arguing that all ideas with zero adherents must be false or that something must be true because it has so many adherents or such a lot of literature. But I think this does rather squarely meet your challenge, and certainly shows the falsehood of the “symmetry thesis”
Every argument for the traditional benevolent God can also be used as an argument for an evil God. The argument from design, eg, can be used to show that the Universe is perfectly designed to produce beings who are capable of evil.
Conversely, the argument normally used against God, ie the problem of evil, could, in its reverse form, be used against an evil God. This argument would be the problem of good. Why would an evil God create a world with goodness in it? Again the defence against the the argument would be the same. In order for the world to have true evil, people must be given free will so that they can choose evil. If they have free will then there is the risk that they will choose good instead.
It seems that the possibilities of an evil God and a benevolent God are completely symmetrical. Neither one is more probable than the other and if God exists it must considered just as likely that He is evil as that He is good.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
This is the “Evil God Challenge” of Stephen Law.
My reply to him was:
It seems to me that the most fundamental [problem of this view] can be seen if we consider the following statement:
A(LUC): Belief in a Loving Ultimate Creator is a worldview that is deeply satisfying for its hundreds of millions of adherents, provides richly articulated explanations of many fundamental aspects of their experience, and helps them lead happier, more satisfying and evolutionary successful lives.
Now first of all, whether or not you think that A(LUC) ought to be true in a rational world, it seems clear to me that it is true in this world and encapsulates many of the reasons why people believe in God. It also offers some explanation of why militant atheism is ultimately futile: any worldview of which A is true is likely to prosper. Of course A does not say anything directly about whether or in what sense this worldview is true. But I think it is plausible to argue that if there were a LUC then it is likely that the universe would be such that A(LUC) were true.
However for the present purposes what is notable about A is that every aspect of it is false if made into A(EUC): “Belief in an Evil Ultimate Creator is...”. Not only does the EUC idea have zero adherents, it isn’t a worldview, is in no sense “richly articulated”, offers only parodies of explanations of some aspects of our existence, and it is pretty clear that if anyone really believed it their lives would be miserable, unsatisfying and highly unlikely to encourage the successful raising of children. (Much the same applies to the silly Flying Spaghetti Monster)
Of course I'm not arguing that all ideas with zero adherents must be false or that something must be true because it has so many adherents or such a lot of literature. But I think this does rather squarely meet your challenge, and certainly shows the falsehood of the “symmetry thesis”
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