A Brief Theodicy 26/03/10
Urban Philosophy contributor Nocterro offers a response to an argument from evil.
Authored by: Nocterro.
Some time ago Mitch LeBlanc authored an article showing Tooley’s formulation of the argument from evil in Knowledge of God. This article is intended as a brief response to that argument, and I hope it will inspire further article-based discussion regarding the issues raised in both articles.
Now, one may attempt to answer this argument by objecting to (15) and arguing that there are rightmaking properties that override, or at least balance, the wrongmaking properties. One Swinburnean answer is that instances of natural evil give us an opportunity to exemplify goodness. One may object to this and claim that if this is the case, God would be justified in causing an earthquake that kills all but one person. However, if this opportunity is given to, say, 4 billion people, this would most likely balance the pain and suffering felt by the 200,000 or so; as well as be a better state of affairs than granting such an opportunity to only one individual.
Consider as well that this pain and suffering is not nearly as prolonged as one might be inclined to think at first glance; many people’s pain and suffering would be ended rather quickly by their death, and very few people normally suffer for days or weeks. So, the wrongmaking property of pain and suffering caused by the haiti earthquake is balanced by both the opportunity of 4 billion people to exemplify goodness, and the rather quick cessation via death of many of the victims.
Another issue is that perhaps God does not know with certainty how many people will die in any given natural disaster. Assuming Molinism (or something like it) is true, then the number of deaths may vary one way or the other. Consider that when the earthquake begins, many will panic. They may make rash decisions, such as a decision to run into a building for cover or dive into the water. God, in his omniscience, would know which buildings would collapse, where certain pieces of rubble would fall; however he may not know if someone will be inside a building or under a piece of rubble at time t. We could of course say that God knows the probabilities concerning what any given being X will do during the earthquake; however it seems rather obviously true that if one makes a snap decision during such an event, the probabilities of any possible actions will tend to even out, rather than be high for one possibility and low for another, as they most likely are when one makes a careful, considered decision.
But what of death itself? Surely death has wrongmaking properties as well, in that once one begins to exist, it is better to continue existing than to stop existing. Furthermore, one’s death carries a wrongmaking property in that it causes further pain and suffering for the family and friends of he who died. What rightmaking property could balance this? If we hold to the proposition:
(A) Once one begins to exist, it is a rightmaking property to continue existing rather than to cease existing, provided that existence does not become torturous or otherwise unbearable.
and also reason that God is perfectly good (via other arguments); then we may conclude that it is likely that there is some sort of afterlife.
This, I think, gives us a rather strong case for some sort of afterlife, provided we believe in a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect. We can also safely assume that existing in any sort of afterlife created by God would be quite a pleasant state of affairs. This would then balance out the wrongmaking properties of the death caused by the Haiti earthquake, both because the individual who died would continue to exist, and do so in a pleasant state of affairs, and because the family and friends of the victim would be comforted in knowing he is in a “better place”.
One may object to this as well by saying that perhaps the family and friends do not know that their dearly departed loved one is in a better place; by applying an argument from divine hiddenness. A response to this however is beyond the scope of this article, and must be dealt with separately.
So, why is it morally better for us to exist here from time {t1…tn} than in heaven? I have not developed a solid answer to that question as of yet (and it is certainly an important one); however this argument from evil is inductive, and so I think that the theodicy offered above weakens the argument a bit – certainly enough to swing the probability of theism back towards the positive quite a bit. I will say however that I suspect the answer lies in some sort of personal growth we must undertake, or some lesson we need to learn in order to become better moral agents.
My final thought applies Rawls’ veil of ignorance to the problem of evil. Suppose that we are behind a “moral-societal” veil of ignorance; that is, we live in an ideal society which, due to social and technological advancement, always(or almost always) works together in an effective manner in order to produce a state of living that is the best possible state of living that we could achieve, for every member of society. What might such a society look like?
I strongly suppose that if society were to be in such a state for any extended period of time(perhaps even as little as 50 years), we would have nearly unlimited resources to fuel any sort of thing we might want to do. Fuel for transportation would not be much of a problem; it would be cheap(or even free), and abundant. Furthermore, we would have some sort of ideal global government, which always carries out its action fairly and without bias. If it were the case that we were to develop such a society, it seems that the problem of both moral and natural evil would be almost entirely eliminated. If there were a hurricane, we would know about it quite far in advance, and would be able to quickly remove people to a safe location. If an earthquake were to occur, it would not be very much of a problem for us, as our structures would be incredibly well-built.
Such a society seems, at least, logically, perfectly within our power to actualize; and it also appears to be the case that the only reason it is not is because of moral evils in the world. So, it seems that another way of answering the natural problem of evil is to reduce it to the moral problem of evil. The moral problem, historically, has had far more, and stronger, responses than the natural problem (such as Plantinga’s free will defense). I will, therefore, leave discussion of the moral problem for another time.
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