Monthly Archives: July 2013

An Inept Attempt to Dismiss the Problem of Evil

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In an article titled “Everybody’s Got the Same Problem,” apologist Greg Koukl attempts to turn the Problem of Evil, often admitted by Christians as their biggest challenge, into a selling point for Christianity.
The Problem of Evil is this: how can a good and loving God allow all the bad that happens in the world? The simplistic answers fail to explain the woman who dies leaving young children motherless, the child that dies a lingering death from leukemia, or the Holocaust.
Koukl begins by saying that he’s found a debating technique that turns this problem into a benefit. Instead of being solely a problem for the Christian, he turns the tables on the atheist.

Evidence of egregious evil abounds. How do I account for such depravity?
But, I am quick to add—and here is the strategic move—I am not alone. As a theist, I am not the only one saddled with this challenge. Evil is a problem for everyone. Every person, regardless of religion or worldview, must answer this objection.
Even the atheist.

Of course evil is a problem for everyone, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Koukl made clear that we’re talking about the Problem of Evil. We’re talking about how a good and loving God can allow all the bad that happens in the world.

What if someone is assaulted by personal tragedy, distressed by world events, victimized by religious corruption or abuse, and then responds by rejecting God and becoming an atheist (as many have done)? Notice that he has not solved the problem of evil.

The atheist hasn’t solved the Problem of Evil; he’s eliminated it. A God who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves and who stands idly by as rapists or murderers do their work is no dilemma for the atheist. But, of course, the problem still remains for the apologist. Koukl can’t simply redefine the problem away.

The atheist cannot raise the issue, turn on his heel, and smugly walk away. His objection is that evil actually exists, objectively, as a real feature of the world.

Where did objective morality come from?? That’s certainly not something that I would argue for. Are some moral truths objectively right or wrong? If so, show us.

The atheist still has to answer the question, “How do I explain evil now, as an atheist? How do I answer the problem of evil from a materialistic worldview?”

Why—is this difficult?
Richard Dawkins observed, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” The atheist embraces the obvious explanation for evil, that in a natural world bad stuff happens. It’s just that the Christian doesn’t always like that explanation.

There is only one solution for him. The atheist must play the relativism card. Morality is either the product of a social contract or a trick of evolution. That is the best materialism can do. His own answer to the problem of evil, then, is that there is no problem of evil. Morality is an illusion. Whatever is, is right.

Ah, it’s our old straw man friend, moral relativism (I explore that more here). This is the idea that (1) you decide what’s moral for you and I decide what’s moral for me and (2) I have no right to object to your morals. I’ve never met anyone who accepts point 2, which means that I’ve never met such a moral relativist.
One explanation for morality is that there are absolute or transcendental or supernaturally grounded morals. This kind of grounding is what Koukl claims.
But take away divinely grounded morality, and you still have morals that come from humans’ shared moral instinct and the moral customs of each culture. Koukl imagines that this is an illusion?
Here’s some homework, Greg: look up the word morality in the dictionary and show us where it says that morality must be grounded in something absolute, transcendental, or supernatural.

The great 20th century atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell wondered how anyone could talk of God when kneeling at the bed of a dying child. His challenge has powerful rhetorical force. How can anyone cling to the hope of a benevolent, powerful sovereign in the face of such tragedy?

Okay—this is an example of the injustice that prompts the Problem of Evil.

Then Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offered this response: “What is the atheist Bertrand Russell going to say when kneeling at the bed of a dying child? ‘Too bad’? ‘Tough luck’? ‘That’s the way it goes’?” No happy ending? No silver lining? Nothing but devastating, senseless evil?

Whaaa … ? “No happy ending”?? The child is dying! No, there’s no happy ending, you insensitive idiot!
And you imagine the atheist has nothing to say? Maybe you mean that the atheist has no happy but groundless stories to weave. That’s true. Atheists won’t tell as true the afterlife stories from the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Greek myth of Hades or the Hindu idea of reincarnation. Atheists won’t tell the afterlife story of whatever religion happens to be dominant in their culture.
But anyone in this situation with any rudimentary compassion would offer sympathy and try to make the child feel better. They’d read books or tell jokes or weave stories or sing songs or reminisce about happier times or play games with the child. Isn’t that what you’d do, Greg?

They cannot speak of the patience and mercy of God. They cannot mention the future perfection that awaits all who trust in Christ. They cannot offer the comfort that a redemptive God is working to cause all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. They have no “good news” of hope for a broken world. Their worldview denies them these luxuries.

Yeah, let’s think about that. Christians could say, “You’re going to heaven,” but is that grounded on anything more substantial than that it’s the predominant myth in our culture? Or do you recommend just lying to make people feel better?
They could say, “Your death is part of God’s plan,” but what kind of comfort is this? And what kind of SOB deity would kill a child, especially an omniscient deity who could surely find a workaround? What kind of savage religion must you invent to support this platitude? (And Christians wonder why atheists get annoyed with their religion.)
Atheists don’t speak of “the patience and mercy of God” just like they don’t speak of the patience and mercy of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Atheists usually prefer the truth, and they tend to believe only things well-grounded in evidence. And this approach has benefits. As George Bernard Shaw observed, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” People seeing things for what they really are gave us the medical and technological progress we see in society today.

Which brings me to the most important question to ask of the problem of evil: Which worldview has the best resources to make sense of this challenge?

Do we take the approach that Ricky Gervais’s character did in the film The Invention of Lying? We just tell people stuff that will make them feel better?
Notice that Koukl has made no attempt to argue that the Christian view (including any rationalization to explain the Problem of Evil) should be accepted because it’s true. I don’t want to mischaracterize his conclusion, but it appears like he argues that it’s preferable simply because it’s nicer. Are we children here? How can any thoughtful, rational adult promote this route to truth?
Let’s recap and see how Koukl did with his stated goal, turning the Problem of Evil into a tool against the atheist:

  • Koukl claimed that objective morality exists, but he provided no evidence.
  • He imagines that without objective morality there is no morality, despite what the dictionary says to the contrary.
  • He imagines that explaining the existence of evil is impossible for the atheist (apparently meaning that it’s impossible to explain in a pleasing way). In fact, atheists do just fine at explaining reality, and whether it’s pleasant or not isn’t the issue.
  • He advocates telling the nice story rather than the accurate story.
  • And he tried, unsuccessfully, to slide away from the Problem of Evil by redefining it.

The Problem of Evil stands, untouched by this clumsy attempt to dismiss what may be Christianity’s toughest problem.

If you want to assert a truth,
first make sure it’s not just an opinion
that you desperately want to be true.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 11/9/11.)
Photo credit: Wikimedia

Armageddon Within Our Lifetime? (2 of 2)

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In part 1, we considered the signs that the gospel of Luke gives for the end times. Pestilence, famine, earthquake? Despite what excitable television personalities would like to believe, these are not increasing, and modern technology is doing a lot more than Christianity ever did in addressing them.
There’s one more in Luke’s list that we should consider: war.
Steven Pinker: is war decreasing?
There are always lots of conflicts in the world. Are they increasing?
Steven Pinker looks at history and draws an optimistic conclusion in his TED video “The Surprising Decline in Violence” (2007). He says, “Today, we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.”
He argues that violence has dropped over time and that this can be seen on a fractal scale. That is, violence has consistently dropped whether you look over the long term (millennia), medium term (centuries), or short term (decades).

  • Millennia. Hunter-gatherer societies of thousands of years ago were thought to have lived in primordial harmony. But if we compare modern hunter-gatherers with industrial society, we find that deaths from warfare is far higher in those societies than in Europe and the U.S. for the twentieth century, including both world wars.
  • Centuries. Centuries ago in Europe, crimes that today get you a fine might have been punished with mutilation or branding. Crimes that today get you a prison term might have been punished with torture and death. Slavery was common. Manuel Eisner studied homicide rates in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present and concluded that they have dropped by two orders of magnitude.
  • Decades. Since 1945, we have seen a steep decline in wars, ethnic riots, and coups in Europe and the Americas. Yes, U.S. homicides did double during the seventies and eighties, but they’re now back down to 1950s rates.

I confess that I’m not as optimistic. I can’t argue with these facts, but there are other facts (50 million people dead from World War II) that argue that we humans still need a lot of therapy. The best way that I see to illustrate our progress is to note that the average Joe in America today lives a far more comfortable and secure life than kings from the Middle Ages.
How do we get it so wrong?
Given these facts, most of which are well known, why are we susceptible to the Chicken Littles of the world? Why do we think things are getting worse when they’re clearly getting better? Pinker answers:

  • Modern news-gathering organizations give us a much more complete view of world problems than we’ve ever had. Every hideous death and every local skirmish are made available for our consumption.
  • Bad news is more memorable, is more easily recalled, and more powerfully colors our views of the state of things.
  • Good-works organizations don’t raise money by telling us how great things are.
  • We in the West feel guilty because of the bad stuff we’ve done—the treatment of native peoples, colonization, Dresden and Hiroshima, etc.—so we downplay the good we do.
  • Our standards are outpacing our behavior. It’s easy to identify problems and raise our standards bar so that past actions are no longer acceptable, but actually changing the behavior is tougher. This is a glass half full/half empty problem: we may lament that death-row inmates have been wrongly convicted while capital punishment is still legal, but we ignore the fact that people used to be tortured to death for merely insulting the king.

This touches a bit on the subject of my book, Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change (2006). We focus on the latest technology and its impact on our lives, when this is minor compared to the social upheaval that the Industrial Revolution caused. We have temporal myopia: that which is happening in front of us we see clearly, but we think little of the past.
Rules of the game
Christian pundits know the emotional buttons to push to keep the fire stoked and themselves relevant. Even when they’re plainly and laughably wrong, some are able to stay relevant.
The apocalyptic book 88 Reasons the World Will End in 1988 sold 4.5 million copies. Oops—didn’t happen. Did that spectacularly bad prediction poison the well for future end-times prophets? Not at all. It’s a topic that can always be made fresh for a new generation.
Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson made predictions that didn’t come true, but they’re still in the game. Evidence and accuracy are apparently malleable in this world.
That’s surprising, because the Bible itself cautions against charlatans. “We who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). The Old Testament punishment for a false prophet was severe, with no mention of second chances. God said:

A prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded … is to be put to death. You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. (Deut. 18:20–22)

No, death isn’t the option. And consequences for ridiculous fear mongering apparently aren’t an option either. When close to half of Americans anticipate the second coming, these TV personalities will still be able to push Christians’ buttons.

Folks, the end time prophesies are literally exploding before our eyes.
That tells me the rapture of the church is even closer than we dared believe. …
I’m so convinced that we are in the final days of this age.
— Hal Lindsey (2011)

The decade of the 1980s
could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.
— Hal Lindsay (1980)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

How Do We Know the Moon ISN’T Made of Green Cheese?

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In a fable going back centuries within various cultures, a simpleton sees the reflection of the full moon in water and imagines that it’s a wheel of green (that is, unaged) cheese. It’s a tale that we often pass on to our children and that we discard with time, like belief in the Easter Bunny.
But how do you know that the moon isn’t made of green cheese?
Physicist Sean M. Carroll addressed this question in a lecture. After a few moments exploring physical issues like the moon’s mass, volume, and density and the (dissimilar) density of cheese, he gave this frank broadside:

The answer is that it’s absurd to think the moon is made of green cheese.

He goes on to say that we understand how the planets were formed and how the solar system works. There simply is no reason to suppose that the moon is made of green cheese and plenty of reasons to suppose that it’s not.

This is not a proof, there is no metaphysical proof, like you can prove a statement in logic or math that the moon is not made of green cheese. But science nevertheless passes judgments on claims based on how well they fit in with the rest of our theoretical understanding.

Let’s apply this thinking to the domain of this blog. To take one supernatural example, how do we know that Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead? The answer is the same: it’s absurd to think that Jesus was raised from the dead.

  • We know how death works. We see it in plants and animals, and we know that when they’re gone, they’re just gone. Rats don’t have souls. Zebras don’t go to heaven. There’s no reason to suppose that it works any differently for our favorite animal, Homo sapiens, and plenty of reasons to suppose that it works the same.
  • We know about ancient manuscripts. Lots of cultures wrote their ancient myths, and many of these are older than the books of the Old Testament: Gilgamesh (Sumerian), Enûma Eliš (Babylonian), Ramayana (Hindu), Iliad (Greek), Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon), Popol Vuh (Mayan), and so on. Bible stories appear to have been lifted from earlier stories from neighboring cultures–the Garden of Eden, global Flood, and Jesus resurrection stories, for example. For whatever reason, people write miracle stories, and we have a large and well-populated bin labeled “Legend” in which to put stories like those in the Bible.
  • We know that stories and legends can grow with time. We may have heard of Charles Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Christianity (false). Or that a decent fraction of Americans thought that President Obama is a Muslim. Or that aliens crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico. Or that a new star appeared in the night sky with the birth of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il. In our own time, urban legends so neatly fit a standard pattern, that simple rules help identify them. The Principle of Analogy is helpful here: if it looks like yet another legend (for example), that’s a good assumption to start with.
  • We know that humans invent religions. There are 42,000 denominations of Christianity alone, for example, and uncountably many versions of the myriad religions invented through history. There is little reason to imagine that Christianity is the one exception that is actually true.

Natural explanations are sufficient to explain Christianity.
Might the moon actually be made of cheese? Science doesn’t make unconditional statements, but we can assume the contrary with about as much confidence as we have in any scientific statement.
Might Jesus have been raised from the dead? Sure, it’s possible, but that’s not where the facts point. Aside from satisfying a preconception, why imagine that this is the case?

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself;
and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it
so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power,
‘tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
— Benjamin Franklin

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 11/7/11.)
Photo credit: TV Tropes