Saturday, June 30, 2012
Discussions on The Christian Delusion: 12, Chapter 9
Previous members of this series are here: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11
The Darwinian Problem of Evil by John W. Loftus[i]
This chapter is simply a restatement of the theodicic question, focused on the existence of animals rather than the lives of humans where it usually points. Interestingly enough, he limits his discussion to sentient nonhuman animals, as if there were no moral question towards non-sentient animals. Nowhere does he draw a line between the two or explain why he only deals with sentient animals or define what animals are sentient. It is obvious from the first three pages that he is primarily interested in rhetorical effect rather than logical argument.
The argument from theodicy is the strongest argument in the atheist’s tool kit. It rests upon an internally contradictory definition of the nature of God by Christian theologians. It has been argued since the great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. The question arises from the triad, omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent. If God is all three, then something is wrong with the world. Omni-benevolent rules out the allowing of evil; omnipotence provides the means to prevent evil, and omniscience provides the knowledge of how to execute the means. In a series of essays[ii], I tackled the question by concluding that God was not omnipotent, thereby removing the contradiction. It can be dealt with by removing any one of the “omnis” but I argued that omnipotence was the one that made the most sense to remove. One can also make an equally strong case to remove omni-benevolence.
Theologians do indeed tie themselves into knots trying to deal with an inherently paradoxical situation, and the atheists make great use of it. In this case Loftus makes sure to create as violent an image of the horrors of nature that he can. He also uses the common trope of man as the powerful ruler, destroying all other animals and eating them. He then transitions to “a new awareness in the last few decades that we shouldn’t unnecessarily harm animals”[iii] and insists that God should have been “crystal clear” that we should treat lower animals kindly.
Loftus launches into a section that has as its ostensible purpose the establishment of a standard by which the problem can be explained. He does not look for a resolution of the problem. He demands that it be explained, and then shows that there are attempts that are less than an explanation or a theodicy. Along the way, he takes a swipe at Christians in general as using possibility as vs. probability to explain or to justify their belief, saying that their belief is therefore not probable. Belief is not based on something being more or less probable. Loftus may want to use what he would consider the improbability of God as a justification for his belief in no-God, but he made the choice not to believe before he came up with the justification.
Loftus does not acknowledge that any theologian has produced a theodicy, or explanation of why God allows evil in the world. He counters Alvin Plantinga’s idea of a defense with an atheist philosopher, Keith Parsons. He discusses some attempts that are less than a theodicy but more than a defense of God’s allowing evil in the world, explanations that have plausibility for theists. Loftus’ judgment of this theologian, Michael J. Murray, is quite out of place but is typical of the animus that Loftus seems almost addicted to in his writing. “There are so many other undercutting defeaters to his collection of Christian beliefs that Murray shouldn’t even be dealing with the problem of evil in the first place.”[iv] Loftus’ counter to Peter van Inwagen, idea that the problem of evil will not turn a neutral agnostic into a weighted agnostic (one that tends to believe in no-God) is on the mark. He makes a clear note that the theodicic problem is based on the internal conflict of the three “omnis” and that it is possible to believe in a god that does not have one of the three, and that Inwagen really must argue that a problem of evil would not convince a neutral agnostic that God as defined by Christians does not exist.
The purpose of this section of the chapter escapes me. If he is trying to show that the various types of argument are flawed from the start, then there is no need for him to have the next section of the book, Christian Solutions to the Darwinian Problem of Evil. [ital. in the original] There is also a nagging suspicion that it was simply another cherry-picking session to show how easy it is to defeat theologians.
At the beginning of the section on Christian solutions to the problem, Loftus points out that neither Free will nor moral lessons to be learned can be applied to natural evil as it occurs among animals. What this points up very well, though that may not be part of his intent at all, is that the focus on the theodicic question almost exclusively rests upon its impact on humans, and not upon the world at large. In expanding the scope of the question, Loftus has done us a favor.
The first “solution” according to Loftus is a traditional one, that “animal predation and pain entered our world through the supposed fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.”[v] He then states two mechanisms for this, the first is that the fall subsequently caused human and animal suffering from that time forward, and the second that God retroactively created these painful effects into creation from the very start, because he foreknew that the fall would occur.
Loftus deals with both mechanisms in some detail. For the first, he starts with the most extreme version that carnivorousness did not arise until after the fall. Loftus quotes this view by Henry Morris and Martin Clark.[vi] Loftus rightly dismisses it as completely ignoring the findings of science and quotes other Christian writers such as C. S. Lewis to the effect that carnivorous behavior existed before humans. Of course Loftus asks the obvious question, “What did animals do wrong to deserve such a punishment?”[vii] (In modern psychological terms, to hinge the bringing of evil into the world at large with the fall of humans is to take an extremely narcissistic view of human-kind, despite claims of humility and insignificance.)
Loftus then quotes J. W. Rogerson, the emeritus canon of Sheffield Cathedral and former head of the department of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University in England, as saying that the change came after the flood, and that prior to the flood all creatures were vegetarians. Loftus claims Rogerson takes this view in order to explain the existence of Darwinian evil. I think the ensuing ridicule of Rogerson was uncalled for and unnecessary. That Rogerson had to evoke such an ad hoc idea is sufficient of itself to show the deficiency of his position. Loftus does counter Rogerson with Paul Copan’s Evangelical Christian view that meat-eating did occur before the flood. He does pick up on Copan’s observation that humans did not suffer before the fall, and uses it as a starting place to show that Van Inwagen’s defense of it is flawed.
To dispose of the second mechanism, a creation that anticipates the Fall, Loftus quotes Michael J. Murray, a Christian philosopher. The point is that postulating a second creation proposed by several historical and modern scholars or conditioning creation to have natural evil after the Fall does not make sense, when God could have avoided all of it. The point is well made. Quoting Christian philosopher Robert N. Wennberg, Loftus writes, “it ‘still remains unclear how animals, who do not sin and do not incur guilt, ca legitimately bear the penalty for human sin.’”[viii]
The second option comes from C. S. Lewis and brings in the idea of “Satanic corruption of the beasts” prior to the existence of human beings. Loftus quotes several other Christian philosophers and theologians that support a version of this idea, that evil is due to Satan and fallen angels. Loftus then focuses on Gregory A. Boyd, a professor of theology at Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota. Boyd posits an on-going cosmic war and that the evil that happens in the world is essentially collateral damage. Loftus quite properly zooms in on the critical question, but quotes two other theologians to present it—Why did God allow it? The question could be asked without recourse to the Boyd version of theodicy, but rhetorically Boyd’s version makes for more passion. Loftus then gets carried away with an analogy to drive the point home, making it as gruesome as he can imagine. At this point we no longer are discussing we are using verbal clubs to bash an opponent. Of course Loftus cannot fail to get in his frequent barb about “ancient superstitious and barbaric people.”[ix] In this case he says they are looking for an answer to why there is undeserved suffering.
Loftus third option is that animals do not feel pain. In light of modern knowledge, this is absurd, but Loftus spends some time discussing it, I think mostly to show how unthinkingly cruel people were in the past. But by so doing, he creates the emotional bias against Christianity by implication.
Option four in Loftus’ list is equally easily dismissed as option three. In option four, God doesn’t care about animals. As best as can be seen from the two sources of the idea, and the strong rejection of it, this is not a common view. Loftus again uses it to set things up rhetorically, in this case show-casing his personal goodness towards non-human animals.
Option five comes from John Hick, and when reading the quotation, I am not at all sure that Loftus is interpreting it correctly. Or rather, he may be interpreting it correctly for what it says, but not necessarily for what Hick thought he said. What Loftus gets from the quote is that God is using animals as a means to creating man with his soul, and that beyond that they have no value, and therefore their suffering is incidental and part of their existence. Again, we have an easily disposed of option.
Option six, that sentient animals may be resurrected and go to Heaven, opens up far more opportunities for discussion than Loftus admits. He wants to defeat this option as handily as he did the others, but the difficulties are really much greater than he lets on. First, he simply assumes all animals will be resurrected, e.g. mosquitoes, leeches, as well as the more commonly thought ones, dogs, cats, and asks about habitat, etc. In effect he approaches the problem from the same naïve viewpoint that a child would. He assumes that predators will remain predators, parasites remain parasites, etc. Loftus essentially dismisses this option with pointing out that Heaven is a poor reward for three billion years of suffering and that those who propose it don’t adequately explain how it works. First of all if Heaven was created at the same time as the rest of creation, then any one animal only suffers its lifetime, similarly to humans. Most animals have much shorter lifetimes than humans, so the reward is not to trivial. But secondly, failure to explain is not the same as disproof.
As option seven, Loftus chooses Michael J Murray’s explanations in Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. Loftus says that “Murray suggests that it is intrinsically good for God to create a universe that begins from a state of chaos and leads up to order rather than instantaneously created by fiat, and that such a manner of creating is an outweighing good of the sufferings it produces.”[x] Loftus’ summary of Murray indicates it is an a posteriori justification of things being the way they are.
Loftus rejection of this option is based on Murray’s demand that a defeat of his argument requires the opponent to provide a better world in overall balance, that a change in one place will not be overcome by a compensation in another. Actually, this is a very astute observation on the part of Murray about the nature of the world. Even sitcoms have had to recognize that “miraculous” happenings may force unwanted change (a vaguely remembered line from “I Dream of Jeannie” when there was a discussion of why Jeannie didn’t do some things.) Loftus quite rightly answers this with, “…the question isn’t whether I could provide a detailed natural description of a better world. The real question is whether an omniscient God could do so, and it would seem that he could.”[xi] Loftus then launches into what is an almost playful description of a world that God could have created, had He chosen to do so—given that he is omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent. In fact Loftus has a much better understanding of the implications of the three omni’s than does James Keller.
The almost five pages that cover this particular option are actually the best writing that Loftus does in the book. He seems to have relaxed and simply written a good, reasonable, rebuttal to this option. I think it is because this is the one time when Loftus realizes he is on unassailable ground and can use reason rather than rhetoric to make his points. His concluding line, “The God hypothesis is no solution for what we see in this world” however, goes beyond what he has discussed. He has clearly shown that God being truly omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent is inconsistent with the world as we see it, or rather with the usual understanding of the three omnis, but that does not negate the possibility of God not having one of the three omnis, or of an altogether different type of god than we generally accept.
Loftus considers the eighth option to be one a defense from
ignorance, as he describes it, the claim that we cannot know animals’ natures
or their purpose in the world. Loftus is
claiming that this defense says we do not know if animals suffer or not, and in
fact if what we perceive is cruel.
Overall, Loftus deals with this option fairly well. However, he then tries to create an overly
simple ethical approach from it to animal experimentation. Considering that we see utilitarianism
elsewhere in his writing, it is rather odd that he suddenly should make an
absolute statement on animal experimentation, and at the same time imply that
all of it has suffering. He would have been
much better off not to add this bit of gratuitous preaching on a topic that has
generated volumes and volumes of discussion.
Loftus uses the term “divine cruelty”[xii]
with respect to animal suffering. There
is some sloppy thinking here. To my mind
cruelty is a deliberate attempt to cause pain and suffering. Perhaps some would argue that not alleviating
pain and suffering if capable is being cruel.
I would say that is applicable only if there is joy or pleasure in
seeing the pain and suffering. Suppose
God is simply indifferent to animal pain and suffering. This may make Him less than omni-benevolent
towards all creatures, but may still allow us to hypothesize omni-benevolence
towards humans. That is an entirely
different argument.
Note that all this disappears when one accepts the idea of
evolution. At that point theodicy moves
to a different plane of application altogether.
In reading and discussing this chapter, we must keep in mind
that the goal here is to attack the not God as a general concept, but
specifically God as defined by the Evangelical Christians, the omnipotent,
omniscient, omni-benevolent God that wants nothing but good for his
creation. But having shown the
contradiction, does not mean that one has disproven the existence of God, nor
of any of His desires, but has simply shown the contradiction in our
understanding.
[i]
Loftus, John W., “The Darwinian Problem of Evil” in Loftus, John W, ed., The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails,
Prometheus Books, New York (2010) p. 237
[ii]
Published in my blog, “Bill’s Comments” and archived in my religious
archive. The essays were “Thoughts on
the Nature of God,” http://billscomments.blogspot.com/2010/01/thoughts-on-nature-of-god.html,
“Benevolent, Good, Bad, and Evil,” http://billscomments.blogspot.com/2009/08/benevolent-good-bad-and-evil.html,
and “Theodicy,” http://billsreligiousarchives.blogspot.com/2010/04/theodicy.html.
[iii]
Loftus, “The Darwinian Problem of Evil,” p. 239
[iv]
Ibid., p. 241
[v]
Ibid., p. 243
[vi]
The Bible Has the Answer, Morris, H.
and Clark, M., Master Books, El Cajon, CA, 1987, pp. 116-20
[vii]
Loftus, Op. Cit., p. 244
[viii]
Ibid., p. 249
[ix]
Ibid., p. 252
[x]
Ibid, p.260
[xi]
Ibid, p. 261
[xii]
Ibid, p. 264
Labels: The Christian Delusion
// posted by Bill @ 7:40 AM 
Comments:
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I've been skim reading through your review. Thanks for thinking it through.
Remember, I said this book is "an extension" of "Why I Became an Atheist," so for "background reading" and a further explanation and defense of the issues in this one you should get that other one (p. 15). I'd really be interested in your thoughts about it since it (not this book) is my magnum opus.
As to the problem of suffering chapters in it, Dr. John Beversluis, author of "C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion," wrote this (well I'll quote it all):
"No review can begin to do justice to an ambitious book of this scope or to the sustained theological, philosophical, scientific, textual, and historical critique of Christianity that it contains. Suffice it to say at the outset that I have never read a book that presents such a massive and systematic refutation of the claims of Christianity, and I have seldom read a book that marshals evidence (from such a wide variety of disciplines) and documents its claims in such painstaking detail."
“'The Problem of Evil' contain one of the most penetrating and no-nonsense discussions of the problem that I have ever read."
"I can pay John Loftus no higher compliment than to say that his new book is reminiscent of "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine and "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined" by David Friedrich Strauss. He has done for the 21st Century what they did for the 18th and the 19th. It should be required reading for every Christian."
That's some high praise, isn't it?
To read more reviews of it see here.
Cheers
Remember, I said this book is "an extension" of "Why I Became an Atheist," so for "background reading" and a further explanation and defense of the issues in this one you should get that other one (p. 15). I'd really be interested in your thoughts about it since it (not this book) is my magnum opus.
As to the problem of suffering chapters in it, Dr. John Beversluis, author of "C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion," wrote this (well I'll quote it all):
"No review can begin to do justice to an ambitious book of this scope or to the sustained theological, philosophical, scientific, textual, and historical critique of Christianity that it contains. Suffice it to say at the outset that I have never read a book that presents such a massive and systematic refutation of the claims of Christianity, and I have seldom read a book that marshals evidence (from such a wide variety of disciplines) and documents its claims in such painstaking detail."
“'The Problem of Evil' contain one of the most penetrating and no-nonsense discussions of the problem that I have ever read."
"I can pay John Loftus no higher compliment than to say that his new book is reminiscent of "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine and "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined" by David Friedrich Strauss. He has done for the 21st Century what they did for the 18th and the 19th. It should be required reading for every Christian."
That's some high praise, isn't it?
To read more reviews of it see here.
Cheers
I am very pleased that Dr. Loftus has chosen to read and comment on this essay. My response is much to long to appear in a comment, so will provide post 15 in this series of posts.
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