The “problem of evil” has a lot of problems of its own. It’s a favorite of atheists and other people who argue against the God of Christianity, and it generally runs something like “if God is all good, and all powerful, then why is there suffering (or evil; or, why do bad things happen to good people)?” The implication, of course, is that God is either not all good, or not all powerful — either of which would destroy the Christian God’s exclusive claim to deity.
There are quite a few interesting things about this idea. First, of course, is the obvious assumption on the part of our atheist, that suffering is evil and therefore wrong. Usually it’s a good idea to start by taking this apart. What is wrong with suffering? What is evil as opposed to good? This separates the men from the boys right away, because the atheist has to realize that he is mounting an internal critique of Christianity. An external critique on this basis is hard to justify, because in a naturalistic world of survival of the fittest and the pretensions of meat machines to higher function, “good” and “evil” are either meaningless, or to be defined in terms of what is best for (a) me, or (b) my offspring. And nobody can deny that suffering and “evil” are powerful applications of nature to cull the weak and encourage the ongoing life and multiplication of the strong. Let’s not fight straw men, though; some atheists believe that they have a workable system of ethics without religion. Whether they actually do isn’t part of the scope of this post.
So, our atheist is trying to mount an internal critique of Christianity. Perhaps we should rephrase the problem for him: if God is good by His own (revealed) standards, and all powerful, then why is there evil in the world? If God really loved His creation, then would He allow crack-addicted babies to be born, or six million Jews to be brutally murdered in a space of a few short years, or people to go to eternal conscious torment? The obvious answer to the atheist is usually that He cannot be good and allow those things, and therefore Christianity is either a religion of horrors serving a God Who delights in misery, or an inconsistent system of beliefs.
Bahnsen points out that the syllogism need not end like this. He recommends that we actually try to grasp this internally, like so: God is good. God is all powerful. There is evil in the world. Therefore God has a morally sufficient reason for the existence of evil. This is consistent with the Scriptures, and logical.
However, the atheist has a problem with that, because he does not see how there can be a morally sufficient reason for crack babies, holocausts, or hell. And generally speaking, the Bible does not provide direct answers for such things, beyond the glory of God (doubly repugnant to somebody who is already disinclined to glorify Him). So, the atheist judges God’s standard of goodness, and finds it wanting…
And at this point, the atheist’s attempt at an internal critique fails, because he had to step outside the critique to come to his conclusion (that God is not good).
How can I say this?
Consider: the internal critique begins with the premise that God is good. Everything that God does is good; one might say that good is defined by the character and action of God. Under the circumstances, the God of the Bible is in fact the only One capable of judging the goodness of a thing, but nobody is good except for Him. And anything He does, and anything He chooses, is good. When the atheist decides that something God has ordained or allowed is not good, he is effectively taking God’s place as the judge of what is good, and setting himself above God. The atheist is on the bench, and God is in the dock once again. That is usually where the atheist chooses to be, but we must point out that there can be no internal critique anymore, because internally, the system of Christian theology presupposes that God is good, and the atheist must declare that, no, he will be the judge of what is good, effectively switching places with God, and breaking any hope of consistency. To put it simply, the atheist is not comparing himself to the Christian God if he thinks that he can judge God. The Christian God, and the revelation that He has delivered, exclude any possibility of that fact.
Once the atheist is outside the paradigm of Christian ethics again, he has the same problem we outlined above; he must defend his concept of good and evil without God. Inside the paradigm, the atheist finds himself begging the question of God’s transcendental goodness.
Truly, though, we have a point of contact with the atheist at this stage. He can’t get away from the idea that there is such a thing as good and evil. Now it is only a matter of proclaiming to him the truth of the God Whose ethical system he is borrowing in ignorance.
7 Comments
Of course, if there are other ways to understand morality and ethics, then it’s entirely possible to mount an “external” critique a God’s ethics without “borrowing” an “ethical system”. That’d be an interesting thing to debate.
But, even sticking within the Christian system, what this basically boils down to is the ultimate case of “might makes right”. God is the toughest entity around, and gets to set the rules. The people who collaborated with Nazi occupiers had the right idea, they just picked the wrong bully to submit to. (After all, by this logic, killing babies isn’t wrong if God commands it - 1 Samuel 15:3, Joshua 10:40.)
As I said, that wasn’t the point of this post, but yes, one would have to evaluate the feasibility of non-religious (more specifically, perhaps, non-Christian) ethics to see whether an external critique could be mounted.
“Might” in the sense of “supremacy and ownership” does indeed determine the standard for good and evil within the Christian system. But implying that God is a bully (which I’m guessing is more what you meant by “might”) puts you right back outside the system again, because that’s a judgment of God. God can’t be both Good and not-Good, and within the framework of the revelation of God, He is Good. To say otherwise makes the critique an external one.
Mr. Ingles has written a paper on non-theistic morality, actually.
You ought to post this on Triablogue if you haven’t already done so.
I am not worthy to untie the sandals of actual posters at T-blog. *smiles* Besides, I cribbed all my theology from them.
Hm, can I post it on your behalf then like I do with some of Steve’s posts?
(Just kidding. I know you don’t want to. I’m just playin’.)
You do have a point about an “internal” critique, where it’s assumed as an axiom that whatever God does is good. Of course, the case is usually set up as a reductio ad absurdam where the attempt is made to show that this assumption leads to a contradiction.
One often-advanced argument for God is the shared “moral sense” that people have, the intuition that some things are right or wrong. Usually, the “internal” critique attempts to show that assuming ‘everything God says is right’ leads to a contradiction with our moral intuitions, a la the verses of Samuel and Joshua mentioned before.
This is not a rigorous mathematical proof, necessarily, but it’s not entirely vacuous either. It does, at least, point out something a theodicy needs to address.