Joy of Dead Babies?
When I was a new Christian, I used to participate in a Fidonet echo called Holysmoke. If you google Holysmoke and my name, you will find some of my earliest attempts at apologetics, before I knew there was something called apologetics. Just remember, I was a brand new Christian at the time.
One of the participants of that group recently reminded me of one of their favourite Bible verses:
“Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Psalms 137:9 ESV)
Taken by itself, this verse looks like it condones violence and murder against children. But this passage says no such thing. You have to read the entire Psalm to understand.
“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” (Psalms 137:1–9 ESV)
The technical name for this type of Psalm is an Imprecatory Psalm. In the context, the writer is responding to the Babylonian destruction of Judea and exile of its people. The Psalmist is being honest about how he feels over the fate of his nation. At the same time, he is indicating his confidence that judgment will come upon Babylon. Is the Psalmist saying that they are particularly looking forward to the death of the children? Not at all. They are calling upon the worst thing they can imagine. That worst thing is not just the death of a loved child. In that culture, the one thing worse than your own death was the death of your child because that meant that your line was broken. A type of immortality was seen in the continuing of generations. By speaking of the death of the children, the Psalmist is seeking to strike terror into the hearts of the Babylonians.
Does this mean that God rejoices in dead children? No. He is a God of judgment and he did bring judgment on the Babylonians through the Persians. This Psalm is not God’s stamp of approval on infanticide. It is God’s encouragement that we be completely honest with how we feel. We need to bring everything to God, even the feelings of anger and rage we feel toward those who have hurt us. That is the message of this Psalm.
Ok. What about the Flood? God drowned babies himself in that event. There can be no good reason for it if God is all-powerful. God can reach his ends via any means. Drowning innocent kids is unjust. (Original Sin? It would be unjust.) Drowning adults violates their free will. We can say God is sovereign and can do what he wants, but then we can’t say he is just or loving.
Is the Flood a metaphor or allegory? Ok, we don’t need it. A kid dies every 5 seconds from starvation. That’s 17,000/day, only counting deaths by starvation. So we have an ongoing holocaust, a meat grinder for children that God presides over. If he could reduce their suffering and does not, he’s evil. If he can’t, he’s weak.
To save God’s goodness, we would have to show that the suffering we see is already at a minimum; that birth defects, parasites, mental illness and horrific accidents are all necessary, even for God. That’s a tough sell given God’s claimed superpowers.
The post had nothing to do with the question of God allowing the deaths of babies. The point was whether or not the Bible teaches that people should be joyful at the death of babies. The answer is no. As for God allowing deaths, let us consider some things. Regarding starvation, who is it that allows children to starve? Is it God or is it humanity? Did God provide enough food on the planet to feed everyone? Who is that hoards the food or withholds it from those who need it? Is it really God? Here is something else to consider. What about abortion? Many people see abortion as perfectly reasonable. Why? Because in the end it should be the mother’s choice whether or not the life of the fetus continues. One is considered intolerant if they criticize a mother who ends a pregnancy. Yet we can turn around and say that God is bad because he allows a world where people die. I would argue that God does not actively end lives (except in a few biblical cases). We live in a world where these things are allowed and God offers to redeem our pain and suffering.
These kinds of arguments make it sound like God has no choice in the matter. God never has to leave little kids in the care of unreliable humans. In every case, he could intervene to help them, just as we do when we can. Humans aren’t omnipotent, but when we see the strong prey upon the weak, or a vulnerable kid being neglected, we do something about it. Our anguish is that we can’t do it all. God always can, but famously does not.
Free will has nothing to do with it. If I came home to find the babysitter smothering my 3 year old, I wouldn’t stand by out of respect for her free will. Loving humans just don’t respect free will that much. It isn’t just or loving to leave little ones with sadists. Besides, much suffering is entirely natural and has nothing to do with free will. God could reduce the suffering that results from disease, accidents, earthquakes and drownings without infringing on human free will.
If you want to defend God, stop claiming he is omnipotent. Or, stop claiming he is at the scene of the crime. God is weak, evil or absent. Absent is his best best.
What would you have God do? When he sees someone about to do something bad kill them? Or take over their minds? Or should have God not given us freewill and make us puppets? Does that fit with more of a loving God? It is easy to say a loving God would do something, it is harder to specify what that something is. Being omnipotent does not mean that God has to control everything. It is perfectly consistent being omnipotent and loving and yet giving humanity the freewill to make of this world what we will.
What would a loving human parent do?
>When he sees someone about to do something bad kill them?
If someone were attacking your mother, what would you do? I’ll bet you wouldn’t do what God does. God does nothing, and he has more power and options than you do.
>Or should have God not given us freewill and make us puppets?
Loving humans interfere with free will when they can prevent suffering. We arrest suicidal people and lock them up. We shoot terrorists. But notice that we don’t remove their free will: we interfere with it as needed when we can. God always can but does not.
God could reduce suffering without removing free will, by only interfering as needed. That’s how we are loving to a human who is about to be victimized.
(If we say that God doesn’t have to meet our definition of Loving, well, that’s just another way of saying he isn’t loving in the ordinary, human way.)
>It is easy to say a loving God would do something, it is harder to specify what that something is.
Granted. My claim is minimal: That if God could reduce the suffering we see even a little for one kid, and does not, then he is evil.
We don’t have to wonder how God would act if he were truly loving. That gets absurd very quickly: would everyone live for a million years in perfect health with constant delight? Going down that road only further shows that the idea of an all-loving, all-powerful God is ridiculous. There is no way to reconcile it with the facts of human existence.
What we do know is that the world we see makes sense if humans are evolved animals competing for limited resources in a natural environment. The wholesale suffering we see is not compatible with the idea that any sort of loving god is looking after us.
>It is perfectly consistent being omnipotent and loving and yet giving humanity the freewill to make of this world what we will.
Even if we allow this, we still know that innocent kids suffer from natural afflictions like Lesch–Nyhan syndrome. Horrific, wrenching conditions like this one are not caused by human free will; and even if they were, it would be unjust for an infant to pay for the sins of others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesch%E2%80%93Nyhan_syndrome
>What would you have God do?
God didn’t have to set things up so that little kids suffer unnecessarily. The ultimate question is this:
“Was it loving for God to create humanity in the way he did?”
A case can be made that God was selfish in creating us. To place vulnerable, mortal, weak, ignorant creatures in a world full of natural and human evils is a very serious matter. If God was lonely and wanted a race of little creatures to worship him, then two questions arise:
Why would an infinite being like God need anything at all?
Could a loving God create the world we see?
Religious people are often not in the habit of second-guessing God. I think morality requires that we do. We might find that, even if Yahweh exists, he is cruel or indifferent and thus unworthy of our worship. We can’t sensibly commit to a God without asking such questions.
I strongly disagree with you. However, I do not see the point in debating you. You have embraced your view and no arguments on my part will change that. For myself, I see God as all-powerful and all-loving. That is not because I am isolated from suffering. Two of my children are severely autistic, so this is not just theory for me. Our experience has been that God demonstrates his love to us daily and we see little “miracles” on a regular basis. If you feel that God has not done as good a job as you could have, that is something you are going to have to work through.
>Our experience has been that God demonstrates his love to us daily and we see little “miracles” on a regular basis.
Thank you for sharing about your children. My only point is that God, being all-powerful, never needs to allow suffering to demonstrate anything. He could accomplish the same ends by any means. If we are serious about our faith, I think we have to look at this issue. We can’t just say God knows what he’s doing. If we ignore the suffering of ourselves or our fellows, we run the risk of making excuses for an abuser. I think the story of Job is deeply dysfunctional in this way. God turns Job over to a sadist, yet Job never turns on him. This is a picture of an abusive relationship.
>If you feel that God has not done as good a job as you could have,
Any human could do better than God does. Somewhere right now, a child is spending her last hours on earth with her killer. God will do nothing. A human would at least dial 911.
The issue is the meaning of ‘loving’. I sometimes let doctors stick my kid with needles to draw blood. But if I stuck my kid with needles when I didn’t have to, I would go to jail. God never has to allow suffering, yet he does.
We all want to make sense of suffering. I’m a former believer with three kids. One friend just lost her 10 year old to neuroblastoma. Another has a 6 year old who will die of brainstem glioma. They trust God, but I have come to the view that to trust him is to abandon these kids in their suffering. There can be no good reason for their suffering and deaths because God had choices. At minimum, we know that God plays favorites.
As I lost my faith, I feared hell and felt adrift, but I had no choice. I had seen this problem and couldn’t go back. I had to work hard to replace what I had formerly gotten from religion and God. This morning, I’m going to the Farmer’s Market to man our local atheist club’s booth. I want anyone who is recovering from religion to know that there is a community waiting for them.
Best wishes,
Don
I understand that these things are difficult. I do not take them likely. I do think there is something to trusting God when we don’t understand. I remember once taking our autistic daughter for blood work. It took them a half hour to get it as they had trouble finding veins and they had to keep jabbing her. I helped four or five others hold her down. The look on her face was dismay that her dad would contribute to this horrible situation. She could not understand.
Ask questions of why God allows things is reasonable, in fact it is often raised in the Bible (not just in Job). I still return to what we would expect God to do. If we took over his job, what practical changes would we make? Who would we start killing?
Regarding the terrible suffering we see, belief in an afterlife must be taken into account. It does not wipe away terrible suffering but it does put it into perspective.
Do you mind me asking a persona question, since you brought up some of your own experience? Are you an atheist who objectively believes God does not exist or an atheist who just lost respect for God and no longer wants anything to do with him?
I’m a religious person in a bind. I can’t maintain religious beliefs for scientific, logical and philosophical reasons; but my emotions could still believe, if it weren’t for the issue of human suffering. This issue was the deciding factor. It forced me to my current position, that even if Yahweh/Jesus were real, I could not follow them. I would serve water in hell, where all the ‘love your neighbor’ Christians should be, anyway.
I was raised, baptised and confirmed in the Episcopal church. I’ve married 3 Catholics. I held an organ position for 19 years in a liberal Presbyterian church, but never joined. I am active in my Unitarian church and joined a year ago. So, I’ve been in church almost every Sunday for 49 years. I am a religious agnostic. But I’m agnostic about Yahweh the way you are agnostic about Vishnu or Thor. And even if good reasons to believe in him turned up, I would have some questions for him.
>Are you an atheist who objectively believes God does not exist or an atheist who just lost respect for God and no longer wants anything to do with him?
This is key. It is a lot easier to reject Yahweh for moral reasons if you don’t think he’s real! If I still thought he was real, I doubt I’d have the courage to rebel. For example, I know myself well enough that if I lived in North Korea, I would keep my mouth shut in order to protect my family. What good am I to them dead or in a camp?
A few believers are misotheists, they believe in God but hate him. A few are maltheists who believe God is real but evil. I’m an atheist, but my definition is what is usually called ‘weak atheism’. I don’t say no gods exist. I refrain from saying they do. This is an important distinction epistemologically.
Having said that, I think Yahweh as presented in the Bible is an impossible being and could not exist. He can’t be loving and all-powerful given the fact of human suffering. In order for Yahweh to even be possible, some of his qualities portrayed in the Bible would have to be tinkered with. Rabbi Kushner says God is loving but not all-powerful; he’s doing the best he can. This isn’t a god by my definition.
I appreciate your honesty. I will confess that there are times I have questioned why God wouldn’t tinker with my kids brains and remove the autism. However, this does not hamper my faith in God’s existence or my confidence in God’s faith. You say that the world should be much better if God was all powerful and all loving. However, I believe the world would be much better, almost a heaven on earth, if we lived according to God’s commands. I see the best of humanity in the midst of tragedy. If tragedy was removed, that which makes us a nobel species would be removed. It is not something I can debate you into believing. You might find my story interesting. If you wish to read it, you can find it here: https://stephenjbedard.com/My_Journey.html.
Still reading your story. I identify with being a miserable atheist. My experience is that certain insights wouldn’t go back in the bottle and I couldn’t believe again if I wanted to. My joy is that I have mostly replaced what faith used to do for me with humanism.
I just friended you on Facebook. We both know Richard Carrier. My story is here. https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=158346729004
>I believe the world would be much better, almost a heaven on earth, if we lived according to God’s commands.
What about earthquakes, birth defects and mental illness? Much suffering has nothing to do with the behavior of humans. Even if it did (via Original Sin or something), this wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair for kids to suffer for the sins of others.
>If tragedy was removed, that which makes us a nobel species would be removed.
Of course trials sometimes strengthen us. Our muscles are built after they are damaged by exercise. Our emotional stamina is increased by exposure to some stress.These are biological facts given to us by evolution.
But it doesn’t follow that all damage and stress is beneficial. We sometimes hear that “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. Well, some things kill people. What strength is gleaned from that, for that person? I think it is callous to say that a child’s death is a good thing, merely because some of the survivors manage to recover from their loss. When a kid dies, they don’t get to go to prom, go to college, get married, etc. We can say that God provides an infinite blessing after death (but only for certain kids), but this ignores the fact that God could provide that blessing without an early death. Future bliss doesn’t erase present pain and loss.
The dead giveaway that ‘suffering makes us grow’ is suspect is this: we always rationalize the benefit of suffering in hindsight. If suffering were so great, we would induce it, just as we do with physical exercise. No pain, no gain. My friends with the 6 year old with the brainstem tumor stress how their daughter’s illness has been a blessing to them. But that is only because her illness is a brute fact they have to deal with. They would never wish such a situation on anyone and they work to support efforts to find cures for pediatric cancer. If cancer were really a blessing, we would welcome it. Nick Vujicic says his quadriplegia is a blessing: http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/ I’m happy he’s happy. But we don’t see people removing their arms and legs to improve themselves. No, it’s always an after-the-fact way to deal with a tough situation.
What we’re noticing is that an almighty God always has ways for us to grow without pain. The reason we appreciate the growth we achieve after pain is that we had had no choice. We feel better when we can find some good in things we can’t change. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I think it’s wrong to say that suffering is part of any Plan. Imagine taking your kid to the ER with a broken leg. They ask what happened. You say, “We broke it. We wanted to teach him humility, patience and gratitude”. You’d go to jail. Why would such an approach be Good when God does it?
When we can, we avoid pain and look for healthy ways to grow. The fact that pain is sometimes necessary to grow is precisely due to the fact that we live in a natural world without an omnipotent God. And we certainly can’t say that all pain has a silver lining. That would be a dishonor to those who have suffered, often children, in terror and alone. Somewhere, right now, a kid is being tortured. She’ll die of her injuries and her killer will be the last person she sees. No one will come. There is no good in that. There is no Plan that requires that. If there were, it would be the Plan of a sadist.
I loved God. Given the facts, his best alibi is that he was not at the scene of the crime. God is weak, evil or absent. If we are to defend him, it looks to me that absent is his best bet.
I will check out your story. I am not convinced that we can grow without pain. Imagine two families. One is very rich. The parents make sure their child never goes without. He never has to feel want or hunger. Never stress about jobs or bills. As the child grows up and starts his own family, the parents make sure professionals are available to raise his children to keep all stress absent. They use all their resources to make their child as comfortable and happy as possible. In the other family, the child does not get all he wants. Some times he is disappointed. He has to work for some things. Has to study hard in school, has uncertainty about getting into the right university program and had to work hard to get a job. There are times he is out of work and has to search hard to find a new one. When he starts a family, he and his wife have to figure it out on their own. Raising the kids is hard and there is heart break but they turn out good. Now if you met these two people, who do you think would be the better person or at least the most pleasant to be abound. I have not met a spoiled child yet that I have enjoyed being around.
I can not speak of others but I know that tragedies in my life such as a miscarriage and two autistic children have made me a better person. Does that mean that every thing is about me? No. I believe that God has something special for my children. Part of that I see already in this life, the rest may be in the next. Regarding it being unfair that the fall changed things that people have evil and genetics problems and other things, I don’t think you have to be a Christian to see that parents make choices for their children. Our three non-autistic children were born addicted to crack. Is that fair? No. The mother didn’t ask the children if they would like to be affected by crack. But that is reality. The question is: are the children abandoned in that state? We have brought them into our family and are loving them and nurturing them to help them to overcome their challenges. Interestingly, our experience with our autistic children has prepared us for this. Overall it is unfair what has happened to all our kids. But I cannot express the joy of watching the relationships grow between both sets of kids. We see little miracles every day that reminds us that God has not abandoned us. I don’t think the options are only about God being evil or weak. I hold to him having a plan that I don’t fully understand, but am given hints of his power and love.
I agree with what you say about the benefits of hardship. But being beaten to death over a period of 3 days at the age of 4 for wetting your pants by your mom’s boyfriend doesn’t fall in this category.
You are right about some suffering. We can rationalize some, perhaps a lot, of suffering as a gift from God. But not all of it. God and his followers create this problem by claiming he is omnipotent.
You are saying two conflicting things about God:
God is Almighty.
and
“I am not convinced that we can grow without pain.”
Which is it? If God is Almighty, he could arrange things so that we could grow without pain. He just could. We do this for our kids when we can. We give them a good breakfast and send them off to school. We don’t starve them to build their character.
You could say, “Well, we aren’t God. Without omniscience, how can we be sure that the suffering we see doesn’t have a good reason?”
The answer is “God is omnipotent. Since he can accomplish any end via any means, he never has to allow suffering. Any Greater Good you can name could be achieved without any suffering at all.”
We don’t have to know everything about mathematics to know that 2+2=4. When a kid falls into a boiling hot spring and dies an hour later, after screaming in agony at the sight of the skin on his hands coming off like gloves, we have a 2+2 class of problem. If God could have helped this kid and did not, he is evil. It’s not an advanced problem that is beyond human capabilities. Any loving person can see it.
I’ve had this conversation many times. I’ve read Leibniz, William Lane Craig and Augustine. When cornered, they look for ways to dial back God’s power. Leibniz said this world is the best possible world God could have created. God just couldn’t do any better. Craig redefines “Good” as whatever God does. God’s nature is Good, so he can only do Good. Perhaps, but that has nothing to do with what a kid feels when his mom is drowning him.
Later, when apologists are not discussing kids being beaten to death, they return to an Almighty God. As far as I can tell, their positions are inconsistent.
We really have to separate two things here. There is the question of why God allows free will so that some people can do bad things. To me this is easy. Free will is not free will if we are only free to do nice things. The hard part is why are there diseases and genetics problems. That is much harder. I don’t have all all the answers. I will admit that. All I can say is that I have good reason to believe that God exists. I also have good reasons to believe that God loves me (biblically and from experience). I don’t push this aside because I don’t have all the answers. But I can’t see avoiding a relationship because not all of the questions are answered up front. I see ways in which even with genetic problems that God is actively at work. I just can’t ignore that because I could imagine myself snapping my fingers and making problems go away. I don’t have the info to make that kind of judgment on God.
>All I can say is that I have good reason to believe that God exists.
Absolutely. We are discussing whether God is good, not whether he exists. Nothing in our discussion pertains to whether God exists, just his character.
>I also have good reasons to believe that God loves me (biblically and from
experience).
Ok, but the key word here is “me”. Every Christian I have discussed this with says something like this. “All I can say is that God has been real and active in my life”. There it is again: “my”. All this shows is that God is sometimes good to some people. Kim Jong Il and Genghis Khan were good to some people.
We have to decide whether we will follow a God who plays favorites. Even if we could rationalize all suffering except for one event, that event would cast doubt on God’s goodness. If God could reduce the suffering of even one child even a little and does not, he is evil.
Can a Christian really love their neighbor and still follow a God who plays favorites? This is the dilemma of Heaven: if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, how can we go to paradise without even one of them? In Buddhism, there is the bodhisattva, who forgoes nirvana until all souls make it. There is no such path in Christianity. Some will make it, some won’t. We can’t say this is our choice, because the deck is stacked against non-Christians.
Further, no one can go to hell, find out how horrible it is and then repent. We have to repent while still on earth and locked in our various delusions of Hinduism, Islam or whatever. If God followed Jesus and forgave us 70 times 7 times, he would let us go to hell, repent and then join him in heaven.
I, for example, can never go to heaven. I have blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, so I’m toast. Here’, I’ll do it again: “I blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. He’s a jerk.”
Mark 3:28-30, Matthew 12:30-32, Luke 12:8-10
Now, you have to tell my kids that your God of love requires that I burn forever. Changing my mind later won’t save me. My fate is sealed. And for what? Hell is never a proportionate, just consequence for any crime.
As far as I can tell, Yahweh might exist, but he can not be all-good. (This is true of any possible god.) He might be good to you, but he’s not good to everyone. And that’s not Good.
>To me this is easy. Free will is not free will if we are only free to do nice things.
When we see a child being tortured, we intervene if we can. We just don’t respect free will that much. Further, when we intervene, we don’t remove the perpetrator’s free will; we interrupt a specific act.
So, please notice that you’re applying a different standard to God. You can do that, but that’s equivalent to admitting God isn’t loving in the way ordinary human parents are.
God could interrupt specific acts of suffering without removing human free will. We do this in human affairs because it is loving. God stands by and does nothing. To the atheist, this is completely expected because God is absent.
But the believer must let this stark fact hang, hoping that a resolution can exist. But it can’t. When we claim that God is omnipotent, we close the door to any possible reason for allowing suffering. Suffering is never necessary for an omnipotent god.
To address the above, I think there is a conflation and a category error here. First, the conflation: I think the intervening parent does so out of love, but it hardly follows that every parent protects every child from every undesired consequence, or that if they did, it would be loving. What you have to show is why God is unloving by allowing a specific act–and the only way you can do that is if you understand the relevant counterfactuals that would be true were other instances of suffering to take place. As far as eliminating all suffering, this cannot be done without creating a consequence-free environment that inhibits, rather than promotes, moral growth. The category error is made in the illustration, so that even if it were desirable to prevent all instances of pain and suffering, one has limited knowledge and moral obligation, and the other does not. I wrote about the need for moral consequences on my blog.
I understand your anger, but it is misplaced. What your intuition is telling you is that moral evil should not exist, and that’s absolutely right. But merely allowing evil is not in and of itself a sufficient condition for moral blame (consider if a member of congress considered homosexuality a moral evil; most would not then demand a law barring such behavior, and most would not then in turn place moral blame for allowing it on the person). I’m afraid you’ve glossed over major arguments in the face of the problem of evil with little more than argument from analogy and question-begging.
Further, when you claim a resolution “can’t” exist, you are claiming its logical or metaphysical impossibility, without offering a deductive or modal argument. I’d like to see why it’s not possible, rather than merely not the case, that there is a good explanation.
>I think the intervening parent does so out of love, but it hardly follows that every parent protects every child from every undesired consequence, or that if they did, it would be loving.
Human parents have limited choices. They are not omnipotent. If they were, they could remove every undesired consequence and still provide all the loving things that might come from them, without the undesired aspects.
>What you have to show is why God is unloving by allowing a specific act–and the only way you can do that is if you understand the relevant counterfactuals that would be true were other instances of suffering to take place.
It seems you’re saying something like this: “If God prevented the death of even one additional person in the Japanese tsunami, that would have resulted in increased suffering elsewhere.” If this is true, then God isn’t omnipotent. An omnipotent God could save that person AND not cause an increase in suffering elsewhere.
An omnipotent God could set things up so that no counterfactuals would cancel the good of a particular intervention. Leibniz tried to say that God’s nature constrained him to create the world we see, thus this must be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire and others immediately ridiculed this idea. It doesn’t fit with God’s supposed superpowers. It is equivalent to a human father, accused of shaking his baby to death, claiming that he was too weak to do so, or that he had a seizure while holding his son, or that he had to shake his kid to death in order to save 5 other kids. His defense attorney has to try such defenses, but I doubt they will persuade a jury.
With great power comes great responsibility. With infinite power comes infinite responsibility. Omnipotence implicates God in everything.
>As far as eliminating all suffering, this cannot be done without creating a consequence-free environment that inhibits, rather than promotes, moral growth.
Such as Heaven? It seems that God intends to do exactly this in paradise. Why not do it now?
>merely allowing evil is not in and of itself a sufficient condition for moral blame
Yes, it is, if the person could prevent evil and does not.
>you’ve glossed over major arguments in the face of the problem of evil with little more than argument from analogy and question-begging.
For example?
>I’d like to see why it’s not possible, rather than merely not the case
Given the fact of unnecessary, undeserved suffering, any God is weak, evil or absent. This is a necessary conclusion. A loving, omnipotent god is ruled out. If I have missed something, I’d love to be corrected.
Omnipotence does not overcome free will, and so long as it’s true that people freely choose to do more wrong than good in a consequence free environment, that does not follow.
“If this is true, then God isn’t omnipotent. An omnipotent God could save that person AND not cause an increase in suffering elsewhere.”
Why think this? Again, what counterfactuals are true that make this the case? Since as long as free will exist, God cannot bring it about that he forces someone to do something freely. So far we just have repeated assertions and an appeal to emotion. When you say, “with infinite power comes infinite responsibility,” you again just assume that God can do logical contradictions, without any argument for it whatsoever.
As far as Heaven, scholars have suggested either it is a place lacking in free will or else it is a place filled with just those people who would not sin were they to be in that position. But in either case, Heaven is not a separate possible world, but part of this one, so that it won’t do to say “why did God not do it in this world?”–it IS in this world! Assuming that he could have done it with free will without the relevant counterfactuals is just question-begging.
When it is said, “merely allowing evil is not in and of itself a sufficient condition for moral blame
Yes, it is, if the person could prevent evil and does not.” you’ve added a condition to the original sufficient condition, showing that you recognize merely allowing evil is not sufficient for moral blame. So what you must show is why it is God can do a logical contradiction, or tell us which counterfactuals are true that make it the case that there is less suffering that accomplishes the goal. So far, we haven’t seen any non-question-begging reasons. It makes me think that perhaps you have not heard of the more scholarly works done on the issue, or that perhaps you’re not really interested in the truth after all, but in venting emotions.
When I ask you why a loving God is not possible, you just repeat that it’s not possible. I’m not sure we’re getting anywhere. But for starters for literature, I’d recommend any journal articles by Robert Adams, the famous Jove thought experiment by Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, Is God a Moral Monster? by Paul Copan, work done on the divine command theory of ethics by Matt Flannagan, work done by Alexander Pruss, apologist/philosophical material done by William Lane Craig, God, Freedom and Evil by Alvin Plantinga, and a host of others. All of which offer partial or even full arguments and criticisms of the problem of evil which you have not yet even attempted to address. I have only utilized one: that of epistemic position. We have no way of knowing what other world would obtain given free creaturely choices. Since God cannot force an action to be free, it would be question-begging just to claim he could with no argument. If you’d like, I can provide a deductively valid argument showing why it is God cannot force someone to freely do something.
Plantinga comes the closest (to my knowledge) to partly exonerating God via his free will theodicy. I’m not qualified to say anything further on that, but free will is only one aspect of this problem.
Much suffering has nothing to do with human free will. Reducing it further would entail no contradictions. Any Christian practicing ‘love your neighbor’ has to wonder why an all-powerful, all-loving God would create a world that includes these things when he didn’t have to:
Lesch Nyhan syndrome
Birth defects
Mental illness
Cancer
We can’t just dismiss these as appeals to emotion. The subjective state of people afflicted with these conditions is at issue. Being ‘loving’ just means we care about the well-being of humans.
Please notice that defending God in these cases must amount to special pleading. Let’s say you went to a doctor. He discovers you have a dire illness for which he has a cure but he doesn’t tell you. He has enough of the cure to cure any number of people. He just doesn’t cure you, even though he could at no cost to him or anyone else.
We would condemn any human who behaves as God does. We can make an exception for God, but only if our values allow us to follow power whether it is good or not. Many people are of this type. When someone grows up in North Korea, they have a choice: comply or resist. If Yahweh is real, we live in a cosmic North Korea.
As far as I can tell, the Jove scenario is simply another way to dial back God’s omnipotence. The random number generator insulates God from blame. It’s hard to see how an omniscient being could claim ignorance of anything.
>showing that you recognize merely allowing evil is not sufficient for moral blame.
Of course I recognize that. We all allow evil because we are powerless to stop it. If a suspect is in China when a kid is killed in Iowa, they have a good alibi. If God is omnipotent, he never has a good alibi. There is much suffering he could reduce without having to be capable of contradictions.
Believers, including Plantinga and Craig, play wack-a-mole with this problem. They go after parts of the problem but never lay the whole problem to rest.
To follow Yahweh, we, at minimum, have to have the psychology and the values that will allow us to worship and follow a being who might be a sadistic killer.
I have seen nothing that fully exonerates God. If I were on a jury, I would say he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?
In the first case, God is bound by preexisting principles. He is unable to choose evil, thus he is not sovereign. In this case, any evil that we see must not be due to God. He is weak. He can’t stop all the evil. God is off the hook, but he’s not much of a god. He’s Zeus. And we still have to wonder about his priorities. Can he answer prayer? If yes, then why does he help people find jobs or deal with a child’s illness before other things? Even with limited power, it seems God could feed one more Somalian kid before he wiped a tear from a fat American kid’s face.
In the second case, God could command contradictory things and we would have to say they were both good. This is the God of the Bible. He kills kids, then says ‘do not murder’. This is known as Divine Command theory. If God does it, it’s Good, because that is God’s nature. Acts of God include his acts of omission. If God doesn’t interfere with the Holocaust, according to this view, that omission is a good act. And it’s not Good because it was the best thing God could do (Leibniz) or because even greater evil would have occurred if it hadn’t happened. No, the Holocaust is REALLY GOOD, not just the least of all evils. This is what it means to accept Divine Command theory.
In the first scenario, God is weak. In the second, he is evil, because “Good” has simply been redefined. A Sovereign God who lets infants get ground up by the natural world may be called Good by Divine Command theorists, but that has nothing to do with what ordinary humans mean when we say ‘good’.
>No, the Holocaust is REALLY GOOD, not just the least of all evils.
This line should read:
No, not interfering with the Holocaust, even when you could, is REALLY GOOD, not just the least of all evils.
Donald, I respect your opinions. However, I have some problems with what you say. You seem to think that the only God worth worshipping is the one who constantly steps in and fixes our mistakes. How should have God stopped the holocaust? Kill Hitler? Kill the others who would have stepped in to take his place? Wipe out Germany? Give the Jews super powers? It is easy to say “He should have prevented/stopped it” but harder to give details. The question is see: is who is responsible for the holocaust? Humanity and not God. God provided all the moral teaching needed to prevent the holocaust and humanity (on both sides) said forget it, we will do it our way. I believe that God gives us a chance to make of this world what we want (heaven or hell) but at some point things will be put to rights. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is an example of this. What we see in this world is not all there is. I still don’t have all the answers. I do know that there is a God and that he is worth worshipping. He has demonstrated his power and love through Jesus. That is enough for me. I will still ask questions and seek answers, but what I see in the cross gives me reason to be a Christian.
> How should have God stopped the holocaust?
Good question, but we don’t need to answer it for our purposes here today. This is all we need:
Could God have saved one more Jew? Could that Jew have lived to have a number of happy moments, perhaps good meals with friends or lying in the hammock with his son? Could God do this and not cause any further suffering somewhere else? It’s hard to see how God would be incapable of such a modest, loving thing.
My worry is that we can be selfish in our need for God. Sure, we can see all the beauty in the world and be grateful that God has been good to us. But if there is a God, he is everyone’s God. Christianity itself teaches us to be concerned about the weak and outcast, not just ourselves. But then, Jesus tells us that to seek salvation, we should be prepared to part with our friends and families. Which is it?
I could tell a story of redemption and grace, but only about my life. There is no such story to tell that includes everyone. Many people, perhaps most, have lived wretched lives. One estimate says that, of the 100 billion modern humans that have lived in the last 100,000 years, half have died as children. If suffering on such a scale is unnecessary, and there is a God who could have set things up otherwise, he is unworthy of our devotion. Perhaps he is just a special cog in the universe and can’t do any better.
The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
But this doesn’t mean that humans have no meaning or morality. We are free to create any meaning we can. Without God, the world we see makes sense. When we say there is a loving, powerful God presiding over the spectacle of human suffering, that is when our problems begin. And God’s.
How do you know God didn’t save just one more Jew? How do you know how active God was in the holocaust? What about all the people of faith who risked themselves to save Jews because they thought that was what God was leading them to do.
You say the world makes more sense without God than with. I disagree. The other side of the coin is explaining the noble aspects of life. Taken to its logical conclusion, if atheism is true, what Mother Teresa did was no “better” than what a cheating husband does. They are just matters of taste. There is no meaning under atheism. If atheism is true, you can’t even say the purpose is to live the longest. For some it might be to burn out at a young age from drugs and alcohol because that is what they wanted to do. That would be no better than a “respectable” person who lived to an old age and raised an emotionally healthy family. There is no measure of what is good or better. We may say that society has decided that harming others is wrong but any thing else is on a level playing field.
If you saw a child playing on the road while a car was coming toward him, would you run to push the child out of the way? Likely, yes. But why? What value is there in that act? What value is there in that life? Why would I save the child? Because it fits with the moral code God has revealed. Because the child was created in God’s image and is more than a mass of flesh. Because it is right beyond what my personal preferences are.
I was happy to leave atheism. I did not become a Christian out of a desperate need to leave atheism, but I was not sorry to leave atheism behind. Atheism is an empty philosophy. Taken to its logical end, it leads to a view of humanity as just another animal whose only purpose is to try and avoid extinction a bit longer. There is no place for moral absolutes. There is no place for human value. There is no place for meaning in life.
Please note, I am judging atheism and not atheists. Many atheists live good lives, believe in morals and see value in human life. But I would suggest that is because they are atheists who act like Christians but get to sleep in on Sundays. Most atheists do not live out their atheism fully. Kind of like the problem we have in Christianity.
>How do you know God didn’t save just one more Jew?
We know that God didn’t save one more than was saved. What you seem to be saying is that perhaps the suffering we see is already at a minimum. This is Leibniz’s best of all possible worlds. If the Holocaust was the best God could do, he is weak.
Euthyphro’s Dilemma, which I discussed above, means that either God is subject to pre-existing morals, or whatever God does is moral (which is absurd). In either case, ordinary human morals don’t come from God.
Imagine your car in an otherwise empty, godless universe. Would you change the oil? Sure. We don’t need God to know how to make choices. Without God, there are still better and worse choices we can make regarding human well-being.
Of course religion will try to say that we need God to have morality, meaning and purpose. But we don’t. There are many ways to establish moral systems that don’t require supernaturalism. We can’t trust religious people to teach us about them. When I was losing my faith, I got busy replacing it. I have found a joyous life without God.
Religion has done a good job of controlling the conversation. Like you, most people believe that supernatural gods are necessary for them to be good or have meaning and purpose. This is simple ignorance. There is nothing wrong with ignorance. We are all ignorant of countless things. But willful ignorance is another matter. If a person can’t see how an atheist can love their kids and live purposefully, they haven’t looked very hard.
The irony is that believing that an all-powerful, loving God presides over the world we see actually creates huge moral problems (which we have discussed) where otherwise there would be none.
In an atheistic universe, humans are animals with big brains. Among living things, we have a unique opportunity to try to understand the universe. This is an incredible gift for which I am continuously grateful. This view fits the facts and entails no cosmic favoritism. That’s a good thing for all of us. If God existed, good people would have to reject him, presumably at great peril.
The question could be asked: is a world where Hitler could not exist better than a world where Mother Teresa could exist? The reason I mentioned one more Jew is that if God did save one more, you could always return with one more. Let’s face it, you have sat in judgment of God and there is no way he will meet your standards. God seems to value free will (to do good and evil) over the ease of life, waiting to deal with injustice in an eschatological manner. You have determined that is unacceptable. There is not much more we can say about that.
Regarding atheism. I agree that atheists as individuals love their friends and families. But why is that considered good? If atheism is true, why not take advantage of every available person to gain more money or pleasure? Who is to say that is worse than the Christian or atheist who lives a life of love? If atheism is true, there is no way to measure these things. You say the opportunity to understand the universe is a great gift of which you are grateful. A gift from whom? Grateful to whom? I presume you mean the process of evolution. Not sure how a process can provide a gift. Still, let’s think about this. You are grateful for the process of survival of the fittest. You are thankful that our weak ancestors died (or were killed) and that our strong ancestors survived so we can get to this place. I too am grateful for the gift to be able to understand the universe, but I am thankful to God. As I have said, I do not pretend to know all about God. But God has designed us to ask the hard questions and to seek answers. Of this I am thankful.
> do not pretend to know all about God.
Then how can you commit to him?
If we were only ignorant of harmless aspects of God’s character, like whether he preferred burnt offerings or hymns, there would be no problem. But if we don’t know if God is Good, then we don’t know if we should commit to him. This is why I’m a former Christian. I had to choose between being a good human and a good Christian. I chose to leave Christianity. Your values may allow you to stay, but mine won’t.
We can’t just say suffering is a mystery. Here’s why: there are only two options, God can’t or won’t further reduce human suffering. If he can’t, he’s weak. If we won’t, he’s evil. You can say that’s a mystery, but a third option will never appear.
>But why is that considered good?
We covered this. God can not be the source of goodness. Whatever the answer, it is not God.
>is a world where Hitler could not exist better than a world where Mother Teresa could exist?
God could do both. Questions like this are based on the idea that God is not omnipotent. There is nothing contradictory about a world where Hitler didn’t exist and Mother Teresa did exist. With an omnipotent God, we never have to make hard choices. God could do it all.
But you’re on the right track. Dialing back God’s power is one way to resolve the problems we’ve been discussing. Rabbi Harold Kushner took this approach in “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. To keep a loving God, he had to admit God must not be all-powerful. A loving God would never abide the world we see, if he could help it. In his view, God must not be able to do more.
Donald, you have not convinced me. You have asked how I can commit to God without know everything about him. I definitely did not know everything about my wife when I married her and we have done pretty well. Of course questions about goodness are more serious than minor issues of ritual (depending on the religion). I am satisfied with the question of goodness. In terms of moral evil, I accept that God valued free will enough to allow bad people to do bad things. That does not contradict God’s goodness any more that a parent’s goodness is contradicted when they all their child to experience discomfort, want or disappointment. Regarding natural evil, I do not like that there are sicknesses, but I believe that God has an eschatological plan to deal with it. I am comfortable with how God’s goodness fits with his power. I am sorry that you have not come to the same place of peace. I just came across a short book called If I Was God, I’d End all Pain by John Dickson (http://stevebedard.blogspot.com/2011/09/spotlight-on-john-dickson.html). If you would be interested, I would be willing to read it with you and continue our conversation based on John’s points rather than just going back and forth over what we disagree on.
>Regarding natural evil, I do not like that there are sicknesses, but I believe that God has an eschatological plan to deal with it.
In the Caylee Anthony case, can there ever be justice for Caylee? No. No punishment or reward can erase what she went through, especially if it was not necessary.
Future bliss and justice mean nothing to the kid who, right now, has a plastic bag over his head because it is arousing for his abuser. This is not a mere appeal to emotion. Harsh facts like these are exactly what are at issue when we’re discussing whether someone is loving or not.
>I am comfortable with how God’s goodness fits with his power.
Again, the key word here is “I”. Earlier, I granted that God has been good to many people, but that doesn’t mean he is Good. For God to be Good, we need a unanimous vote from the jury. The jury in this case consists of the kids expiring of hunger right now. They get a vote. Even one nay vote condemns God.
Now, of course it is ridiculous to think that God would end all suffering. But this isn’t an argument that God is Good. It is an argument for naturalism. The simplest, most obvious explanation for human suffering is that we are animals living in a competitive environment with limited resources with no Superbeing looking after us. This hypothesis best fits the facts and makes the fewest assumptions. No invisible beings, no supernaturalism, no eschatalogical fixes.
Your values make you lean toward God. Mine won’t let me. My aim was never to convince you, only to show the moral problems with theism. If you can tolerate them, then you can remain a theist.
Every position, including atheism, has costs and benefits. We tend to focus more on benefits, so I think it’s valuable to highlight the costs from time to time. For me, the cost of saying there is a loving, powerful God are too high: I wouldn’t know what to say to a Buddhist or Muslim kid dying of gangrene, alone and in agony under the rubble in Japan or Haiti.