The Problem of Non-God Objects and the Evil God

Justin Schieber has a post up that formalises one reason I have always found belief in the Christian God untenable. He calls it The Problem of Non-God Objects, and it's really another problem of evil issue.

For me, I have always wondered why a god, if he's sitting in his reality, which is, by the Christian God's definition, maximally perfect, would degrade it by introducing suffering beings. Theodicies suggest we are not in a position to know that our suffering will result in a greater good, but that cannot be why he did it, since his reality is already maximally good so a greater good can only arise once he has introduced a situation which is not optimal. Or they suggest that beings with free will were necessary to allow them to choose him to worship, and beings with free will necessarily introduce suffering, but of course any omniscient god would know this already so, again, why would he do it? At best I could imagine that evil introduced was balanced out by goods greater than the most perfect good, and so the equation balances out to be maximally perfect. But goods greater than the most perfect good is surely a contradiction in terms.

Schieber sets the argument out thus:

P1: If the Christian God exists, then GodWorld is the unique best possible world.
P2: If Godworld is the unique BPW, then the Christian God would maintain GodWorld.
P3: GodWorld is false because the Universe (or any non-God object) exists.
-Therefore, the Christian God, as so defined, does not exist.
(
Note: The term ‘GodWorld’ refers to that possible world where God never actually creates anything.  This argument takes for granted that God’s initial act of creating the universe (or any non-God object) was a free act and not born out of necessity.)

Christian philosopher Randal Rauser responded to the argument with two objections by analogy. He thinks there is something intuitively wrong with the argument, although he does not explicitly deny its validity or attack the premises. First:

...what if you should hear an argument to the end that it is impossible for mental states to affect the physical world? (Perhaps the argument seeks to establish the truth of epiphenomenalism.) Do you think it would be more reasonable to accept the conclusion that mental states cannot affect the physical world? Or would it be more reasonable to conclude that there is likely something wrong with the argument?

I think demonstrating invalidity and attacking the premises would be better, but I understand what he is getting at here. In fact, it is often a feeling I have about ontological, cosmological and fine-tuning arguments for God. I can see valid arguments but they are obviously wrong (to me), so one wonders what is wrong with the premises? I think that is what Rauser is getting at here, and I think it's a pretty normal philosophical gambit; it is reasonable, in the first place, to go with our intuitions, and we need good reasons to go against them. They are often shown to be wrong, of course, but in those cases we have good reasons to go against them.

Second, he says:

....imagine two automobile museums devoted to the muscle car. Each museum has a perfect model of every muscle car ever built from the 1964 GTO straight up to the 2013 Shelby Mustang. However, the second muscle car museum also has an unrestored, rusty 1970 Camaro in the backlot. Which is the greater muscle car museum?
Frankly, my intuitions would suggest neither. Both museums are perfect and the addition of one unrestored, rusty 1970 Camaro on the backlot of one of those museums is not sufficient to change that.

Both museums are perfect? So Rauser appears to see the world around us as perfect (he doesn't recognise that a degradation reduces the perfection in the second museum, so, by extension, he would not in the rest of the world?), which, I have to admit, should be the conclusion of a believer in an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent god, so hats off to him for that, if that is what he thinks. Voltaire had great fun with that notion.

In true Stephen Law stylee, then, I wondered how the argument would look if we switched the Christian God for the God of Eth:

P1: If the Evil God exists, then GodWorld is the unique worst possible world.
P2: If Godworld is the unique WPW, then the Evil God would maintain GodWorld.
P3: GodWorld is false because the Universe (or any non-God object) exists.
-Therefore, the Evil God, as so defined, does not exist.

Does Rauser think it is reasonable to conclude that there is 'likely something wrong' with this argument, and so Evil God exists? (Well, no, obviously! But I suppose he may still conclude that the argument is 'likely something wrong' and there are other reasons for not believing in the evil god). Imagine two automobile museums devoted to the muscle car. Each museum has the worst possible model of every muscle car ever built from the 1964 GTO straight up to the 2013 Shelby Mustang. However, the second muscle car museum also has a restored, shiny 1970 Camaro in the backlot. Which is the worse muscle car museum? Would his intuitions suggest neither? Well, perhaps, to be consistent, they would, but this strikes me as a hopelessly sceptical view of the world. Not only can he not recognise when something is worse than something else, he cannot recognise when something is better than something else.

I think we would all, theists and atheists alike, agree that Rauser's arguments here do not work any better against the good god argument than they do the evil god argument, and we both agree the evil god does not exist, but one set of us believes the good god exists. A believer would presumably conclude that the argument against the evil god does not work, and would have to look for different arguments to dismiss the existence of Evil God. I'm sure such arguments exist, of course.

But I think the exercise shows that we can still run the evil god argument against Rauser's objections and conclude something from that exercise. The atheist would be confirmed in his belief that the objections do not work well; the theist would have some work to do to figure out why they themselves do rule out an evil god, because it is not because of all the good in the world.

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Craig's Odd Views on Animal Suffering

Stephen Law has drawn attention to the above video, by SkyDivePhil (good work), that presents the scientific evidence to debunk William Lane Craig's odd view of the animal kingdom:

God has shielded almost the entire animal kingdom throughout its history from an awareness of being in pain! For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation. Who would have guessed that God had done such a thing? These neurological insights, documented by Murray, greatly reduce the force of the problem of evil posed by animal suffering.

(The quote from Craig shows at least that he accepts that there is a problem of evil, or he wouldn't even bother to make such a silly unscientific suggestion. That is, if there is enormous suffering in the world, then this is evidence against his god.)

As the video points out too, Craig bases this determination of the science solely on the writings of Christian apologist philosopher Michael Murray. The video details what the science really says by asking, er, scientists:

Dr Anita Alvarez, Imperial College/UCL
Prof Stuart Firestein, Columbia University
Prof Joaquinn Fuster, UCLA
Prof Bruce Hood, Bristol University
Dr Lori Marino, Emory University
Dr Diana Reiss, City University NY

They say that Craig is wrong.

So, he gets the science completely wrong, which is odd for someone who wants to present himself as a scientifically-informed philosopher. As Law says, in the comments:

Of course Craig might well be entirely unaware it's misleading thing for him to say. He may have been misled by Murray into thinking this was a scientifically well-attested view.

This appears to be the situation. Craig himself has written this about his investigations into this key plank of his apology against the problem of evil, in a response in his weekly Q&A to a questioner who was not at all keen on his Cartesian dismissal of animal suffering:

So your attacks on Michael Murray’s credibility are quite unwarranted. True, Murray is a philosopher and not a scientist. But he has done a responsible job of studying the scientific literature on animal pain, and his book contains citations of the literature which the interested reader may pursue. 

This suggests that Craig wasn't an interested enough reader himself to examine the citations, else he would not have been so easily misled!

Clearly Craig got a lot of pushback from the Q&A that I quote at the top, since he said in this follow-up post:

I’ve been surprised by the emotional reactions I’ve received to last week’s Question! It almost seems as if some atheists would actually prefer that animals experience terrible suffering than have to give up the objection to theism based on the problem of animal pain! 

This is a daft thing to say. Atheists are responding to the uncomfortable facts that science has revealed about animal suffering, not rejoicing in their implications for theism. The facts show that we humans are part of the animal kingdom and that human exceptionalism cannot be used to justify ill treatment of our fellow travellers. That we share vast amounts of DNA with them, share much of the same ancestry and share many of the same features and functionality. These facts combine to show us we have no more reason to dismiss animal suffering than we do to dismiss the suffering of friends, relatives, or indeed strangers, in need.

In fact, Craig seems mightily confused about the whole issue. He uses Murray's arbitrary three level pain hierarchy:

Level 3: Awareness that one is oneself in pain
Level 2: Mental states of pain
Level 1: Aversive reaction to noxious stimuli

So this leads to the unfounded notion (as the video shows) that "Other animals lack the neural pathways for having the experience of Level 3 pain awareness." and  "So even though animals like zebras and giraffes, for example, experience pain when attacked by a lion, they really aren’t aware of it." What a relief for them, as they writhe on the ground being eaten alive!

The purpose of this nonsense is obvious: to show that animal suffering is not 'real' in some sense, to extinguish the problem of evil:

Viewed theologically, this discovery magnifies the mercy and goodness of God. God has shielded almost the entire animal kingdom throughout its history from an awareness of being in pain! For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation.

The implication is clear that only third level awareness of pain matters. So the questioner the next week asks the obvious follow-up question:

If animals can not experience pain, is there anything wrong with committing acts against animals which if committed against humans would be expected to cause pain? 

After a lot of poorly thought out objections to a naturalistic grounding for morals, the only reason he suggests it is wrong is because his god has told us to be good stewards:

The theist enjoys the advantage that the ethical treatment of animals can be grounded in God’s commands to human beings to be good stewards of the Earth.

...and...:

Inflicting unjustified pain on animals would be morally prohibited to us by God.

There's no other reason not to inflict animal suffering? He can't think of one other than that someone told him not to do it? In what sense are we being 'good stewards' by avoiding acts towards animals as if they would cause pain, when in fact they don't? Carving a rock into the shape of a kitten would not be inconsistent with good stewardship, and neither would carving a kitten into the shape of a rock, if animal suffering does not contribute to the problem of evil. But then he says:

Yes, remember that on the view we’re discussing, sentient animals do experience second-level states of pain, which should not be needlessly inflicted. So stunning animals before killing them for food is, indeed, a good idea. 

But this is a back-pedal. If the second level pains should be avoided as well as the third level ones then we still have a massive problem of evil to resolve. He could argue that they are lesser evils, which he does based on incorrect science, but his previous response left the impression that there was little left to worry about - remember he wrote:

For those of us who are pet owners and lovers of animals, this is a tremendous comfort and a cause of praise to God for His goodness and wondrous, even ingenious, care of creation.

But there is still a massive amount of second level pain which could be avoided if god was benevolent, even granting Craig's nonsensical proposition. This is no solution to the problem of evil, for any pet owner or animal lover.


(Incidentally, another curious point of Craig's apology is the idea that pain requires a pre-frontal cortex. Pain is a quale of the mind, and the pre-frontal cortex is material. So Craig is saying that minds require a material grounding, which rather blows his dualism. Do disembodied minds not have qualia? Is pain a peculiar quale? Now he could say, I guess, that this is just a feature of embodied minds only, but this is falling foul of all the usual problems that even Descartes saw in dualism - there is no way to relate the immaterial meaningfully to the material. Check out QualiaSoup's video for a good summary of its problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00&list=UUc_xdkOBgSYLmXTn-VSQ4uA&index=2&feature=plpp_video)

UPDATE: Jean Kazez has written a good analysis of the video, and how the scientists' responses relate to Craig's claims, here. Or, at least, to what Craig appears to claim because, as I say above, it's not too clear what Craig is arguing for, imo.

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The Evil God Challenge

Stephen Law's Evil God Challenge (EGC) is quite simple, and complex, at the same time (like some god concepts!). There have been many objections raised against it, but I think they mostly miss the very simple crux, which is, I think:

If they did not rule out an evil god for some other reason, do believers think that the evidence supports its existence?

(It's well worth reading the entire paper, linked above, to get the full flavour)

It's clear that some theists do understand the problems this poses for them, since much wriggling can be observed, amid cries of foul play. Now, plainly many do rule out the evil god for some other reason; some, no doubt, for long considered reasons. However, given how superficially many come to their god belief, through childhood indoctrination, for example, there's also a suspicion that some have simply not thought much about the possibility of an evil god, that it's simply not an idea that they would entertain, that it's evident that it does not exist. If you're a believer who thinks the idea of an evil god is obviously ruled out by one's experiences, then you have a serious problem with the EGC. You would need to show a significant asymmetry between the evidence for the good god and the evil one, and, whilst there is some asymmetry, I just don't think it's significant enough.

William Lane Craig, for example, can see that all his arguments for god, but one, are equally valid for an evil god as for a good god, so his entire belief in a good god rests on the very dubious argument from morality. He sees the danger from evidence inherent in the EGC (that the evidence rules out his god), so adopts a radical scepticism to avoid that disturbing truth.

Thomists, on the other hand, and as I understand it, have a notion of 'being' and 'good' that makes an evil god a contradiction in terms, effectively. That's fine, and if they really believe in these notions and definitions, there's nothing, in logic, to stop them. But there are any number of logical possibilities that fit with the world in which we live, and simple logical possibility seems a very low standard by which to judge one's belief. Why wouldn't one want to compare it with the evidential data to see how well it fits, compared to other scenarios, for example? After all, the only reason anyone believes in a god in the first place is because of the situation in which they find themselves, so their belief would not exist without the initial contemplation of evidence.

Law suggests, then, that the EGC can still be run, even though a concept is paradoxical. In other words, we say, OK, the evil god is nonsensical, but run the challenge anyway as if it were not. There can be no doubt that even Thomists would have to agree that the evidence rules out the evil god, and, therefore, so it must rule out the good god (unless they adopt a Craig-style radical scepticism). Thomists protest that the evidence is irrelevant because of their concept of god. Would Thomists accept a non-believer simply dismissing any discussion of the evidence for god because she found the concept incoherent? I don't know. So, is Law's a valid move, to run the EGC against an impossible concept?

I'm not entirely sure. It's right that there is little point in assessing the evidence for married bachelors or invisible pink unicorns, to give two more examples of impossible concepts - we can rule them out a priori. But does this mean that we cannot consider what evidence there might be if, defying logic, they did exist, via a thought experiment? Can we still identify attributes of these paradoxical beings and consider how a world would look with them in? We can look for evidence of bachelordom, and marriage certificates, so we could look for evidence of each attribute - a world with no marriage certificates would rule out anyone being married, for example. So it's tempting to consider this a valid move in the challenge. However, if one considers the evidence for the paradox in toto, I'm less sure. What evidence could there be for (married bachelors)? Well, none, I would think, because they cannot exist.

So, if we consider what a world would look like with a paradoxical evil god in it, and one without, there would be no difference between the two, because the concept cannot exist in either; this suggests the EGC does not apply. However, if we consider what a world would look like with an evil something, and then, separately, what it would look like with an all-powerful being, of unknown goodness, we would expect different worlds. This suggests the EGC does apply.

On balance, I'm inclined to think it can still be applied, if there are identifiable attributes, which there are in the case of the evil god. We are entitled to look at the state of the world and see if it comports with an evil something; and if that something is an extremely powerful being, we can expect certain consequences to flow from that. So, if this can be agreed, the EGC will apply even to incoherent god concepts.

Ultimately, of course, the Thomist god is not a concept worth entertaining because there is no evidence offered to support it among the infinite logically possible beings that might exist in our universe. Only a credulous mind could possibly commit to it, rather than simply note its logical possibility.

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Theidiocy

An hilarious, if it wasn't such a serious subject, Thought for the Day on January 15th from the Reverend Dr Giles Fraser, trying to make sense of theodicy in the light of Haiti. He gives a brief rundown of theodicy's history, noting Voltaire's devastating critique in Candide.

Well, I have no answer to the question of how God can allow so many innocent people to die in natural disasters, like the earthquakes of Lisbon or Haiti. And indeed, I can quite understand that many will regard these events as proof positive that religious people are living a foolish dream like the idiotic Dr Pangloss.

It does rather seem that way. At least he's honest enough to admit he has no answer; so why does he believe? Oh, hold on:

And yet, I still believe. For there exists a place in me - deeper than my rational self - that compels me to respond to tragedies like Haiti not with argument but with prayer. On a very basic level, what people find in religion is not so much the answers, but a means of responding to and living with life's hardest questions. And this is why a tragedy like this doesn't, on the whole, make believers suddenly wake up to the foolishness of their faith. On the contrary, it mostly tends to deepen our sense of a need for God.

Oh yes, he's got a gut feeling. This is one of the problems of faith. Because it is (often) impervious to the evidence in front of it, there is no resolution available, *in principle*, when one is faced with someone with a completely antithetical belief. I'm comforted a little by the fact that some theists do lose their faith because of this problem of evil.

What many believers mean by faith is not that we have a firm foundation in rational justification. Those, like Leibniz, who try to claim this are, I believe, rationalizing something that properly exists on another level. Which is why, at a moment like this, I'd prefer to leave the arguments to others. For me, this is a time quietly to light a candle for the people of Haiti and to offer them up to God in my prayers. May the souls of the departed rest in peace.

I agree that many believers do not have a firm foundation in rational justification. I would go further and say I've not come across *any* who have got such a foundation, although many claim it. It re-iterates the problem above; how are we to get *him* to reconsider his faith in the light of reason and evidence? His is the very definition of a closed mind.

And offering ineffective prayers and lighting candles is a waste of time and effort; one wonders how this is a 'good' thing? He would have used this platform better if he had urged donations and practical help.

To that end, please give what you can.

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Goodness Gracious Me

An interesting discussion (if a little long!) has developed over at Russell Blackford's blog. David Heddle, batting for the Christians, has claimed there is no problem of evil, based on the biblical god being benevolent, rather than omnibenevolent. God has, in fact, promised suffering. Thanks for that.

Omnibenevolent and benevolent does seem to have been used a little interchangeably by commentators down the years, so the distinction sometimes seems to be ignored. I'm not sure that David's position allows one to jettison the need for theodicy; one wants to provide a justification for a god's behaviour in a theodicy, doesn't one? For example, Mill said:

"These additional principles are that good is opposed to evil, in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. From these it follows that a good omnipotent thing eliminates evil completely, and then the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible."

So Mill sees the need for theodicy with a good god, not an omnibenevolent god. Ehrman gave up theism because of the problem of evil, and one would be hard-pushed to describe him as anything other than a biblical expert. This might be seen as appealing to authorities, but it certainly shows that many do consider that there is a problem to be explained with the Christian god.

I would say that theodicy is needed for any god; it's just easier to explain the way things are in a polytheistic or duotheistic philosophy. In a monotheistic philosophy one has a problem if that god is posited as benevolent *or* malevolent. If benevolent, one (still) needs to establish why an omnipotent god created the universe with this much suffering. Just saying he's *only* benevolent, not omnibenevolent, doesn't justify his behaviour, because, firstly, the benevolence assumes an *ultimate* good. A theodicy has to show *how* this much suffering achieves an ultimate good. Greater good arguments follow, which seem (on the evidence) unpersuasive, if not downright impossible. Secondly, even acceptance of Plantinga's logical argument raises the question *why* a god would create such a universe, if so much suffering would ensue. Better to avoid the project altogether, one would think? Skip straight to heaven.

(Conversely, if the god is malevolent one would have to explain the good in the universe! From this, monotheism seems incoherent to me, given the nature of reality.)

As a side note the Catholics do seem to believe in a deity that cannot be bettered (inexpressibly loftier!), which one would imagine would be the 'most good' being. (Argue amongst yourselves whether that could mean omnibenevolent or just benevolent) From the First Vatican Council:

"...He must be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in Himself and from Himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides Himself which either exists or can be imagined"

Sounds a bit smug to me.

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