My favorite philosophical conundrum has been back in the news lately, thanks to a recent interview with British actor Stephen Fry:
Asked by the interviewer what he would say to God were he to discover, after his death, that He existed, Fry replied:
I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God, who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? That’s what I’d say.
Skipping ahead a bit he adds:
Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but, on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is He? It’s perfectly apparent that He’s monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish Him your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner and more worth living in my opinion.
That’s all very well said, both in tone and substance. There is, of course, a voluminous philosophical literature trying to explain away the problem of evil, and it’s all very scholarly and erudite. But Fry’s simple anger is also a useful reminder that there it is also tawdry and unseemly. The various proposals theists make for absolving God are so unequal to the magnitude of the problem that it reflects poorly on them for putting them forward at all.
Moreover, when treated as an abstract philosophical problem we generally assume that we are discussing a tri-Omni God. That is, God is assumed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. We should keep in mind, though, that something a good deal less than omnibenevolence is needed for the problem to go through. We need only assume that God has some sort of conscience to have a serious problem of evil. Humans are not omnibenevolent, after all, but most of us regard it as obvious that you don’t allow children to suffer from dread diseases if you have the power to stop it.
Predictably, Fry’s answer provoked a great deal of response. Much of it was flatly stupid, such as this essay by Tim Stanley in the British newspaper The Telegraph. He writes:
Not only has theology dedicated itself for thousands of years to unpicking that problem but the answer to it is there in the very Bible itself. Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, we’ve been living in a fallen world full of pain. God granted us free will not only to do bad things but also good things – like finding a cure for cancer or caring for those dying from it.
Terrible things happen because of a) random acts of nature, b) the intervention of the Devil or c) the corruption of man. I’m not saying anyone has to believe what I write, but please don’t act like it’s never been said before or that the answer to Fry’s facile question doesn’t exist. Dear Stephen imagines that he’s the first person in history to wonder why folks suffer. He’s not. He is, however, strangely upset about something that he doesn’t even believe in. Who gets angry about an imaginary conversation?
At what point, exactly, did Fry pretend he’s the first person to wonder why folks suffer?
I suspect all those theologians referred to in the first paragraph are wishing Stanley would stop helping them. In explaining evil by reference to Adam and Eve, Stanley is throwing his hat in with the young-Earth creationists. Once you accept evolution and the antiquity of life, you realize that this explanation simply doesn’t work. Evil and suffering long predate the appearance of human beings, after all. Stanley’s other off-the-cuff suggestions for resolving the problem fare no better, making it clear that it is not Fry who is being facile.
Perhaps fearing that his previous remarks were insufficiently stupid, Stanley dials it up a notch with his closing sentences. He is pretending, for some reason, not to understand the concept of a hypothetical question. Having decided that the evidence is against God’s existence, Stanley now thinks atheists are barred even from imagining how we might react were we shown to be wrong. His logic is murky, to put it kindly.
A more serious response came from Vincent Torley over at Uncommon Descent:
You’re accusing God of wrongful creation – making a world in which suffering can occur, and then populating it with people. But by the same token, you would have to say that two parents who chose to bring a child into the world, knowing that it was liable to inherit a life-threatening form of cancer, would be wronging that child, simply by procreating it. And to that I say: how dare you tell someone that they have no right to create a human being? Whether it be short or long, life, in itself, is a good thing.
“I’ve got another question for you. Suppose instead that the parents in the hypothetical scenario above were told by their doctor that while any child they chose to bring into the world would probably get cancer, the cancer would not be terminal. Suppose that it could be treated over the course of several months, by a very painful course of chemotherapy, but that after that, their child would enjoy a full and happy life. Surely even you would concede that it would be morally justifiable for the parents to bring a child into the world, in this case. Now suppose, hypothetically, that the child’s full and happy life turned out to be an indefinitely long one, because scientists had recently discovered a way to make people live forever. In that case, no-one would say that the prospect of getting bone cancer would constitute a valid reason not to create a child: it would be a treatable illness. All right, then. Heaven is forever. How, then, can you accuse God of being unjust?”
Unlike Stanley, Torley at least attempts a thoughtful response to Fry’s question. His reply does not work, however.
The most serious flaw in Torley’s argument is that is non-responsive to Fry’s question. Speculating about possible moral dilemmas faced by human parents does nothing to explain why God allows suffering and evil. God is omnipotent, after all, but human beings are not. If the question is, “Why would God create a world with horrible suffering, cruelty, and evil?” the answer is not, “It might be ethical for humans to bring children into the world even knowing that those children will suffer.” The questions confronting the parents in Torley’s analogies are just entirely different from the one that is being put to God in the problem of evil.
So, even if Torley’s analysis of his analogies was correct, his response to Fry would still be entirely inadequate. As it happens, though, his analysis is not correct.
With regard to the first analogy, his assertion that, “Whether it be short or long, life, in itself, is a good thing,” is so absurd, and so monstrous in its consequences, that it is hard to believe he is serious. There are afflictions out there far worse even than bone cancer. Let us imagine a child born with maladies so severe that his life, in its entirety, will consist of a few months of suffering, hooked up to machines, before inevitable death. How can you possibly say there is something inherently good about that child’s life? If would-be parents somehow knew ahead of time that their decision to have a child would unavoidably lead to that, how could you not judge them harshly for going through with it anyway?
Torley acts as though the decision to bring a child into the world is always morally praiseworthy. As he tells it, if you think that certain people should not become parents you are, necessarily, being morally obtuse. But this is all just absurd. A person who signed a contract knowing they were unable to fulfill its terms would be commonly thought to have done something unethical. But there is a tacit contract in every decision to bring a child into the world. That contract says, among other things, that you will tend to that child’s emotional and physical needs. In fact, you will place those needs before your own. If you know you are unable to provide for those needs, (and, let’s be honest, many parents are not) then it is absolutely unethical for you to bring a child into the world. An awful lot of social dysfunction is the direct result of irresponsible people bringing children into the world they are unable to raise. I don’t understand why Torley finds those people morally admirable.
His second analogy is scarcely better. If you punch someone in the nose for no reason, and then later give him a lollipop, you have not absolved yourself of the wrong that you did. If someone asks you, “Why did you wrong that person?” you can never plausibly answer, “I was nice to him later.” Using heaven as an answer to the Problem of Evil commits precisely this fallacy. If we ask of God, “Why do you allow children to suffer from bone cancer,” we would not accept as an answer, “Later I allow those children to have eternal life in heaven.”
Parents know that their children will experience hard times in their life. Unlike God, they have no control over that. For them the decision is whether or not the good in their life will outweigh the bad. That is not at all the decision faced by God in creating the world. That is why most philosophers who address the problem of evil take an entirely different approach from the one Torley has chosen. They try to explain why God in fact must allow great suffering as the price for achieving some greater good. I don’t think they are successful in that project, but they, unlike Torley, understand what needs to be done.
Enough of that. There was one further response to Fry that I found especially interesting. Since this post has gotten rather long, we shall save it for another time.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1B8NLGO
My favorite philosophical conundrum has been back in the news lately, thanks to a recent interview with British actor Stephen Fry:
Asked by the interviewer what he would say to God were he to discover, after his death, that He existed, Fry replied:
I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God, who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? That’s what I’d say.
Skipping ahead a bit he adds:
Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but, on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is He? It’s perfectly apparent that He’s monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish Him your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner and more worth living in my opinion.
That’s all very well said, both in tone and substance. There is, of course, a voluminous philosophical literature trying to explain away the problem of evil, and it’s all very scholarly and erudite. But Fry’s simple anger is also a useful reminder that there it is also tawdry and unseemly. The various proposals theists make for absolving God are so unequal to the magnitude of the problem that it reflects poorly on them for putting them forward at all.
Moreover, when treated as an abstract philosophical problem we generally assume that we are discussing a tri-Omni God. That is, God is assumed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. We should keep in mind, though, that something a good deal less than omnibenevolence is needed for the problem to go through. We need only assume that God has some sort of conscience to have a serious problem of evil. Humans are not omnibenevolent, after all, but most of us regard it as obvious that you don’t allow children to suffer from dread diseases if you have the power to stop it.
Predictably, Fry’s answer provoked a great deal of response. Much of it was flatly stupid, such as this essay by Tim Stanley in the British newspaper The Telegraph. He writes:
Not only has theology dedicated itself for thousands of years to unpicking that problem but the answer to it is there in the very Bible itself. Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, we’ve been living in a fallen world full of pain. God granted us free will not only to do bad things but also good things – like finding a cure for cancer or caring for those dying from it.
Terrible things happen because of a) random acts of nature, b) the intervention of the Devil or c) the corruption of man. I’m not saying anyone has to believe what I write, but please don’t act like it’s never been said before or that the answer to Fry’s facile question doesn’t exist. Dear Stephen imagines that he’s the first person in history to wonder why folks suffer. He’s not. He is, however, strangely upset about something that he doesn’t even believe in. Who gets angry about an imaginary conversation?
At what point, exactly, did Fry pretend he’s the first person to wonder why folks suffer?
I suspect all those theologians referred to in the first paragraph are wishing Stanley would stop helping them. In explaining evil by reference to Adam and Eve, Stanley is throwing his hat in with the young-Earth creationists. Once you accept evolution and the antiquity of life, you realize that this explanation simply doesn’t work. Evil and suffering long predate the appearance of human beings, after all. Stanley’s other off-the-cuff suggestions for resolving the problem fare no better, making it clear that it is not Fry who is being facile.
Perhaps fearing that his previous remarks were insufficiently stupid, Stanley dials it up a notch with his closing sentences. He is pretending, for some reason, not to understand the concept of a hypothetical question. Having decided that the evidence is against God’s existence, Stanley now thinks atheists are barred even from imagining how we might react were we shown to be wrong. His logic is murky, to put it kindly.
A more serious response came from Vincent Torley over at Uncommon Descent:
You’re accusing God of wrongful creation – making a world in which suffering can occur, and then populating it with people. But by the same token, you would have to say that two parents who chose to bring a child into the world, knowing that it was liable to inherit a life-threatening form of cancer, would be wronging that child, simply by procreating it. And to that I say: how dare you tell someone that they have no right to create a human being? Whether it be short or long, life, in itself, is a good thing.
“I’ve got another question for you. Suppose instead that the parents in the hypothetical scenario above were told by their doctor that while any child they chose to bring into the world would probably get cancer, the cancer would not be terminal. Suppose that it could be treated over the course of several months, by a very painful course of chemotherapy, but that after that, their child would enjoy a full and happy life. Surely even you would concede that it would be morally justifiable for the parents to bring a child into the world, in this case. Now suppose, hypothetically, that the child’s full and happy life turned out to be an indefinitely long one, because scientists had recently discovered a way to make people live forever. In that case, no-one would say that the prospect of getting bone cancer would constitute a valid reason not to create a child: it would be a treatable illness. All right, then. Heaven is forever. How, then, can you accuse God of being unjust?”
Unlike Stanley, Torley at least attempts a thoughtful response to Fry’s question. His reply does not work, however.
The most serious flaw in Torley’s argument is that is non-responsive to Fry’s question. Speculating about possible moral dilemmas faced by human parents does nothing to explain why God allows suffering and evil. God is omnipotent, after all, but human beings are not. If the question is, “Why would God create a world with horrible suffering, cruelty, and evil?” the answer is not, “It might be ethical for humans to bring children into the world even knowing that those children will suffer.” The questions confronting the parents in Torley’s analogies are just entirely different from the one that is being put to God in the problem of evil.
So, even if Torley’s analysis of his analogies was correct, his response to Fry would still be entirely inadequate. As it happens, though, his analysis is not correct.
With regard to the first analogy, his assertion that, “Whether it be short or long, life, in itself, is a good thing,” is so absurd, and so monstrous in its consequences, that it is hard to believe he is serious. There are afflictions out there far worse even than bone cancer. Let us imagine a child born with maladies so severe that his life, in its entirety, will consist of a few months of suffering, hooked up to machines, before inevitable death. How can you possibly say there is something inherently good about that child’s life? If would-be parents somehow knew ahead of time that their decision to have a child would unavoidably lead to that, how could you not judge them harshly for going through with it anyway?
Torley acts as though the decision to bring a child into the world is always morally praiseworthy. As he tells it, if you think that certain people should not become parents you are, necessarily, being morally obtuse. But this is all just absurd. A person who signed a contract knowing they were unable to fulfill its terms would be commonly thought to have done something unethical. But there is a tacit contract in every decision to bring a child into the world. That contract says, among other things, that you will tend to that child’s emotional and physical needs. In fact, you will place those needs before your own. If you know you are unable to provide for those needs, (and, let’s be honest, many parents are not) then it is absolutely unethical for you to bring a child into the world. An awful lot of social dysfunction is the direct result of irresponsible people bringing children into the world they are unable to raise. I don’t understand why Torley finds those people morally admirable.
His second analogy is scarcely better. If you punch someone in the nose for no reason, and then later give him a lollipop, you have not absolved yourself of the wrong that you did. If someone asks you, “Why did you wrong that person?” you can never plausibly answer, “I was nice to him later.” Using heaven as an answer to the Problem of Evil commits precisely this fallacy. If we ask of God, “Why do you allow children to suffer from bone cancer,” we would not accept as an answer, “Later I allow those children to have eternal life in heaven.”
Parents know that their children will experience hard times in their life. Unlike God, they have no control over that. For them the decision is whether or not the good in their life will outweigh the bad. That is not at all the decision faced by God in creating the world. That is why most philosophers who address the problem of evil take an entirely different approach from the one Torley has chosen. They try to explain why God in fact must allow great suffering as the price for achieving some greater good. I don’t think they are successful in that project, but they, unlike Torley, understand what needs to be done.
Enough of that. There was one further response to Fry that I found especially interesting. Since this post has gotten rather long, we shall save it for another time.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1B8NLGO
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