hmmmm

One of the many varieties of the way in which the problem of evil is formulated is to say that there exists cases of pointless or unnecessary evils. This is just another way of saying that they are gratuitous.

These two statements are purported to be in contradiction to eachother.

1. The Christian God exists.
2. Cases of gratuitious evil exist.

The argument that is proffered by the critic is along these lines:

4. If the Christian God exists, then gratuitous evil would not exist.
5. Gratuitous evil, in fact, exists.
6. Therefore, the Christian God does not exist.

The rub comes from the justification the critic uses which have her draw her conclusions about gratuitous evils based on those instances that appear to not have a point. But what is the justification for that inference; namely from appearance to the real world? This seems to be somewhat similar to features involved in the probabalistic argument from evil in that there is an assumption that the discernment of God's alleged morally sufficient reasons must be discovered in order for one to conclude that there is such a reason and/or that the evils in question are not senseless/pointless.

But lack of discernment does not entail that God (with the extra help of middle-knowledge) does not, in fact, have morally sufficient reasons.

Moreover, it seems that the argument begs the question of God's existence. The Christian can reformulate an argument:

7. If God happens to exist, then gratuitous evil don't exist.
8. God happens to exist.
9. Therefore, gratuitious evil does not exist.

So the question is; Which is one more entitled to believe: 5 or 8?

So, the problem of gratuitious evil is only a problem for that theist which has no or bad grounds for believing 8. But what about those theists which do have good grounds to believe 8?

Paul Draper has argued along the lines of probability when weighing the warrant for and against 5 and 8. He says that naturalism is explanatorily superior to theism due to evolution and the way in which evil is distributed. I do not have room to provide a refutation of naturalism and/or evolution, but can only say that such refutations have been put forth. Whether these refutations were successful can be decided on another thread.

The probability that Draper envisages only makes sense with something called background knowledge. He thinks that the probabilities, along with their given backgound knowledge, are equal; (p(n)=p(t)) But I dispute this due to my opinion that successful refutations have given in the literature. Also, he thinks that probability of the truth of the conjuntion of naturalism and evolution is superior to the conjunction of theism and evolution with regard to the way in which evil is distributed; (pr(p/e&n)>pr(p/e&t). I disagree because of various degrees of epistemic limitations which are necessary for sufficient justification. Also, within the context of the assumption that evolution is true, he thinks that the truth of evolution is more probable with respect to naturalism than it is with respect to theism; (p (e/n&b)>p (e/t&b)). But I believe the teleological argument gives credence to the virtual impossibility of biological evolution given naturalism alone. Again, I say this with the full awareness that people disagree, which is why I open up discussion to these specifics on other threads.

There also exists an undercutting defeater for 8. Since it would be the Christian God's obligation to maximize the amount of goodness in the world, what if the existence of gratuitous evil is a necessary condition of this maximization? God's middle knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom come into view here. This is not supported by metaphysical possibility (that is the not the point), but epistemic possibility. It is surely epistemically possible that the utilization of gratuitous evils is enacted so that the various counterfactuals can be true, so that a maximization of persons saved and/or persons which have knowledge of the Christian God.

The atheologian may object that these evils are not gratuituous after all, since they are being used in order to actualize a greater good. But alas! It is even more difficult for the atheologian, or any critic, to prove the existence of gratuitous evils! For who can understand God's inscrutable providential plan to investigate possible cases of evils which are gratuitous? I believe it to be epistemically impossible.

Therefore, the argument from gratuitous evil to the non-existence of God and/or the denial of a great-making attribute seems to be unsound.

Jack

SRB

Maybe it is properly basic. Or maybe it is more likely by virtue of the complexity (and hence implausibility) of the alternative hypothesis. Whatever the justification, if we have no reason at all to doubt that beings beyond our ken exist and have reasons beyond our ken to make the world different to how it seems to us, then all a posteriori human knowledge would be impossible. Is that your view?

The issue of whether the unknown purpose defence (UPD) is any good comes down to whether there is any suffering-related evidence which suggests one of the two competing hypotheses is more likely (i.e. the hypothesis that God exists and has an unknown purpose of the right sort to account for all the unexplained suffering vs. the hypothesis that God does not exist).

One reason for doubting the first hypothesis relates to the idea that God wants humans love him, but yet he keeps his reason for allowing all the apparently gratuitous suffering in the world a secret. Assuming the reason for God allowing the suffering is so complicated that even an omnipotent deity could not get believers to understand it, God still keeps it secret from most believers that he has some sort of *unknown* reason for allowing all the suffering. For example, there is no passage in the Bible that clearly says that God definitely has a justifying but unknown reason for allowing all the apparently gratuitous suffering in the world, a reason that is beyond our ken. God is supposed to desire that humans love him, but he maintains secrecy between himself and believers, which puts an obstacle in the way of many of those believers coming to love him to a maximal extent. So as well as the problem of God allowing tragedies, there is the problem in many cases of God's silence in the face of those tragedies. Theists have no credible explanation for why this is so, given that God has the additional property of desiring that believers love him as much as possible.

Theists could of course appeal to the unknown purpose idea once again. God not only has a good but unknown reason for allowing all the suffering. He also has a good but unknown reason for keeping this matter secret from humans (thereby thwarting his expressed desire for those people to love him maximally). He also has a good but unknown reason for keeping secret the fact that there is some unknown reason for him to be secretive about all such matters. The problem with this line of thinking is that it is very implausible. A much better explanation of the relevant evidence is that God simply does not exist. Furthermore, the "inscrutable God" idea comes at a high price. Relatively little can be said about such a deity. Prima facie reasons to expect him to do one thing do not even make it slightly improbable that he will not do them for some justifying but unknown reason, and that he will then leave us in a state of epistemic confusion for some justifying but unknown reason. Since many believers, and all Evangelical Christians, do not conceive of their deity as being someone who is highly unpredictable like this, UPD is unavailable to such people.

Another reason for doubting such a defence is that, as hinted above, when followed up consistently it apparently leads to a kind of epistemological and moral skepticism. Such a defence has much in common with evil demon hypotheses. For example, how can we know that God has no unknown but justifying reason for making much of the world seem very different to how it really is, and a further unknown but justifying reason for letting us think otherwise? How can we know that, unknown to them, humans who commit terrible crimes are probably not actually overall somehow benefiting others?

I think that UPD is only available to a very skeptical bunch of believers, and even then they have serious problems, since they expect people to believe that it is as likely as not that God has a string of unknown purposes which are just the right ones to cover up a string of anomalies. The other hypothesis, that God doesn't exist, is the much more reasonable one.

SRB

Dr. Retard

The "naturalism as likely as theism" thing is just an assumption to see how evil considered alone affects the hypotheses under discussion. Anyone who wants to deny evolution is welcome to that...'defense'. As for the rest, I'll just post something I've posted before:

'Skeptical theism' is the usual label for theism that rejects evidential arguments from evil due to the limits of human knowledge and cognition. There may well be an unknown-to-us justifying purpose for all the evil we encounter, and since we can't rule out that possibility, we cannot infer atheism from that evil.

Here are some crazy consequences of skeptical theism. It should be said that not all versions of skeptical theism are the same. So not all of these crazy consequences follow from all skeptical theisms. Moreover, perhaps some of them don't really follow (e.g., I think (2) has a problem). But I think every skeptical theism I've seen leads to some of these crazy consequences. In any case, they provide good tests: if your version of skeptical theism leads to these consequences, you should reject your skeptical theism.

1. Let Hell-World be a world like ours, just with much, much, much more evil. Life is pure, non-stop agony. No one can think of a single good reason why God would allow all the evil they encounter. But Hell-World's inhabitants cannot infer atheism from these facts. After all, there might well be a God-justifying reason beyond their ken. In fact, no matter how much evil there is, and no matter how inscrutable it is, there is never any good reason for we limited humans to infer atheism from evil.

2. Sometimes we are faced with a decision, whether to prevent some evil we encounter, or instead allow it to happen. But, every reasonable theist knows that whatever happens, no matter how bad it looks, is objectively justified in the grand scheme of things. So, when a reasonable theist encounters evil, he should conclude that it doesn't matter what he does. For if he prevents the evil, things will be objectively justified. And if he allows the evil to happen, things will still be objectively justified. So everyday moral decisions are irrelevant for reasonable theists.

3. It's now a common-ground position that theodicies are lousy. Tons of brilliant theists and atheists have been considering theodicies for thousands of years, and it looks like they're all no good. But this doesn't matter at all. The fact that we can't think of any good theodicy -- the fact that evils are completely inscrutable -- makes it no more reasonable to infer atheism from evil. Someone who inferred atheism from evil without even considering a single theodicy is just as reasonable as someone who infers atheism from evil after carefully considering many theodicies with help from great thinkers from history and the present. Both inferences are equally unreasonable. Trying to come up with theodicies was a completely riskless game for theists, and its failure means nothing.

4. Natural theology is completely misguided. It attempts to show that theism is the best explanation of some natural phenomenon. But in order to make that judgment, we would have to be able to judge how likely the phenomenon is on theism. And, for any phenomenon, there might well be divine reasons for creating it or for not creating it, all beyond our ken. So we can make no judgment how likely a phenomenon is on theism. So natural theology must fail; it couldn't possibly work.

5. Any divine action, no matter how seemingly vile, cannot be ruled out for God. He might torture us, he might deceive us, he might give us misleading religious experience, whatever. After all, he might have good reasons for doing these things, reasons beyond our ken. So we can never trust God to do anything or to not do anything. No holds are barred for God, as far as we can know.

6. Lunatics are off the hook. They hold ridiculous beliefs about Cartesian demons deceiving us, about the earth's age, about the Church of Scientology, etc. They might be troubled at first by all the evidence that seems to disconfirm their crazy theories. But they shouldn't be, because maybe God (for unknown but good reasons) is fooling us about the evidence, making it look bad for the lunatics, when actually the evidence supports the lunatics. We can't rule this out, so the lunatics can rest content, unworried by the mountains of seeming disproof.

7. Theodicy is completely misguided. It attempts to give a good reason for God to permit evils. But we could never reasonably accept a theodicy, because we can never reasonably rule out the possibility that there are good beyond-our-ken reasons for God to prevent the evils, reasons that would outweigh the known reasons for permitting the evils. It might look like God should respect our free will, but perhaps he should actually cancel our free will. Who knows? No matter how good a theodicy looks, we can never reasonably accept it.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by hmmmm :

Right, this is just UPD all over again. See below.

No, it certainly does not. This is a common mistake among beginning philosophy students. An argument begs the question just when it assumes the truth of its conclusion as support for one of its premises. The argument you offered above does no such thing:

Certainly, 6 must be true for 5 to be true. But this does not mean the argument is question-begging, because 6 is not offered in support of 4. Otherwise, the following argument would be question-begging:

(10) If Socrates is a man, Socrates is mortal.
(11) Socrates is a man.
(12) Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

To be sure, the truth of 10 requires the truth of 12. But the argument is not question-begging.

Consider this argument, chiefly from Drange:

(A) If God existed, there would probably be less intense suffering and premature death than there are now.
(B) But there are not less intense suffering and premature death than there are now. (Analytic truth.)
(C) Therefore, probably, God does not exist.

The argument is deductively valid and is even less question-begging, so to speak, than the other ones.

Indeed. The evidential argument ("EAE", vs. "DAE" for the deductive argument) only provides evidence against God's existence, not deductive proof. Yet the utter lack of evidence for 8 makes your alternative a weak tactic.

The Theory of Evolution is rhetorically unassailable. You would do better to concentrate on metaphysical naturalism.

I sincerely advise you to abandon the classic teleological argument. You may have some ingenious attempt to resurrect it in mind, but I have deep doubts.



Yes, that's a possibility. We can bring up "maybes" all we want. Here's the Epistemological Skepticism Counter-Response:

(ESCR) "Maybe God exists" isn't a defeater for "there seem to be lots of gratuitous evil." If it is, I don't see why it's not a defeater for any other empirical inference.

This is the most potent counter-objection to UPD and it is widely taken to be decisive. Consider these inferences of the schema "apparently, P" --> "actually, P" where the value of P is:

- there is some actually gratuitous evil
- earth is 4.6 billion years old
- it is morally wrong to kill innocent humans
- there is no sound deductive argument for atheism
- there is good evidence for the existence of the god of monotheism

The defeater "maybe God exists" seems to apply equally well to all of them. Consider the possibility (from Russell) that earth is in fact only 10,000 years old, but God has a good reason to hide that fact from us, a good reason to hide his good reason to hide that fact, and so on. Does this mere possibility provide a defeater for the inference from "apparently, earth is 4.6 billion years old" to "actually, earth is 4.6 billion years old"?

Now, here's the Moral Skepticism Counter-Response:

(MSCR) If there is no such thing as gratuitous evil, then it's not clear why we should intervene to try to prevent any evil. We might be getting in the way of a greater good.

So if there's no gratuitous evil, I should stop attempting to help people. If this much widespread intense apparently gratuitous suffering and premature death is necessary for some greater good, which is quite a lot, then I worry that my trying to prevent some will actually prevent a greater good.



It is impossible to have middle knowledge of counterfactuals of freedom because of the lack of grounding for the conditional. Counterfactuals of freedom have no truth-value because there is no fact of the matter what a libertarian free agent would do in these circumstances, and knowledge requires there to be a truth-value.

In my experience, a great many philosophers of religion acknowledge that UPD applied to EAE is a mistake. It only works against DAE. Merely throwing "possiblies" and "maybes" at an evidential argument won't do anything; you have to turn them into "probablies." Otherwise, you get the problem I noted above with ESCR and MSCR.

Indeed.

Huh? Isn't this merely the objection you proferred above? The evils that are used in order to actualize a greater good are, by definition, not gratuitous.

Jamie_L

Some thoughts:

First:

The notion that God needs evil to accomplish some goal appears on the face of it to deny God's omnipotence. It essentially says God wants Condition A. God cannot achieve condition A through force of will alone. Instead, God is forced to will evil into existence and then use evil to create Condition A. Such a God is clearly restricted by some outside conditions that force him to the path of using evil.

Or, as I've said before: An omnipotent being does not require means X to achieve end A. The omnipotent being can go straight to A without using any means other than force of will. Thus, any means X must exist for its own sake - because God wants that means as and end itself.

Second:

If we say that no gratuitous evil exists and is necessary, that means that every single instance of evil in the world today is necessary. Every single one, without exception. This seems to argue for a sort of moral nihilism: All evil should be accepted and tolerated because it is required by God. The murderous rapist serves God just as much as the pious humanitarian. If a human wants to do evil, and feels capable of doing it, that is a good indication that the conceived evil is necessary. If the human tries to commit the evil act and succeeds, then the evil was indeed required by God. Humans, it could be argued, ought not interfere to reduce evil at all because God needs that evil to achive his goals. In fact, perhaps people should seek to commit evil, for anything that you succeed at was clearly necessary.

Under this theory (no unnecessary evil), no one can ever commit an evil act that God doesn't want, because all evil is necessary to acheive God's goals. If even one evil act is not necessary, then gratuitous evil exists.

Jamie

Pyrrho

You are making the matter more complicated that it needs to be (which, of course, is useful for someone taking your position).

In the case of your statements 5 and 8, the evidence for each is not at all equal. Let us first start by examining a statement similar to 5, but importantly different:

5b. Evil, in fact, exists.

5b differs from 5 only in that 5 asserts that at least some of the evil that exists is gratuitous, while 5b makes no such assertion. The way your argument has been formulated, it would appear that you agree that 5b is true. (I know, there have been some theologians who have denied 5b, but their views do not fit well with some of the basic concepts of Christianity, such as the idea of saving souls, for if there is no evil, then there is nothing from which one can be saved.)

We see bad things happen all of the time, so our evidence for 5b is fairly solid. Now, as best we are able to determine, much of the evil that exists is gratuitous, so we have reason to believe that 5 is true.

When we compare this with 8, this differs considerably from our position with respect to 5b and 5. For we do not see god, but we do see evil. So, if we accept 5, we are going with what certainly appears to be the case, but 8 is without foundation. Furthermore, you would also be involved in rejecting 5, which you have no reason to reject (other than a prejudice against the idea because it does not fit in with other unfounded beliefs that you have).

So the most reasonable choice is to accept 5b and 5, and reject 8.


To make this all the more obvious, we can turn all of the Christian apologetics on its head, so to speak, and assert that there is a being that rules the universe that is PERFECTLY EVIL. The fact that there is good in the universe is only because it is necessary for producing the greatest amount of evil. When, for example, people use FREE WILL to choose to do something evil, this is more truly evil than if they were forced to do it. And since they have free will, they will, unfortunately, from time to time do some good things. But, of course, we see that the amount of evil (performed by humans, as well as "natural" evils) in the world is truly great: Think of Hitler, Stalin, earthquakes crushing the innocent, volcanoes burning people alive, all of the diseases, etc. And think about how easy it is for a person to feel pain, but how much more trouble it is to feel pleasure. It is far easier to get someone to suffer excruciating pain for hour after hour, but an orgasm lasts but a few moments (and, of course, such pleasure is needed to get people to reproduce, so that there will be more people who can suffer; it would not do if the human race died out, for then they would not suffer any more [except in hell, which is where EVERYONE will go!]).

The point is, EVERY excuse that can be made for the Christian god in this world, can be used for a perfectly evil god. So, if we reject a natural view of the world, we have absolutely no reason to suppose the Christian god exists instead of a perfectly evil god. The fact that people want to believe in one and not the other is no evidence at all. And, of course, being perfectly evil, the ruler of the universe wants to give people false hope. Imagine the look on Christians' faces when they think they are going up to heaven, only to be cast into hell!

Naturally, the reasonable approach is to reject all gods (except me!).

Bumble Bee Tuna

I really don't understand this "any evil that happens is necessary => moral nihilism argument.

I mean, the only defense we ever hear is the free will defense. Surely one could say God's unknown purpose involves merely allowing the choice for evil? God's will requires evil to be possible, not for X amount of evil to be done?

Also on another slightly related issue I think we shouldn't be talking about the Problem of Evil or Gratuitous Evil but instead the problem of Suffering and gratuitous suffering. Any and all evil seems pretty explainable by saying free will is the ultimate unknown purpose of God, but suffering is less satisfyingly explained. The purpose "God wants everyone to have free will" is a blanket statement that covers any evil acts. Every person has free will. But "God needs everyone to undergo X amount of suffering" doesn't really accomplish that because people undergo different amounts of suffering.

-B

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Bumble Bee Tuna :

That's not exactly the argument. The argument is that we should be careful about trying to prevent evil because so far, evil has been 100% successful at being necessary for a greater good. Therefore, we stand a very good chance of precluding a greater good if we prevent some evil.

Meh. The attempt to shift it is a common theist tactic but not really very useful. Philosophers have known it as the problem of evil for centuries. So I'm not really motivated to change.

I don't agree. God already limits our freedom of action considerably, so it doesn't seem like free will is an ultimate unknown purpose of God.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Uh, you realize I'm an atheist, right?

I don't see how this is any better. The point is that the FWD says the possibility of choosing evil, but not the evil itself, is the plausible unknown purpose for evil. So the idea here is that evil is still undesirable, but no amount of evil can be worse for God than eliminating free will.

Under the FWD, there would be no reason to "be careful about trying to prevent evil". Evil is never necessary under this defense, but only the ability to choose it is necessary.

What your argument is really getting at is an argument wholly unrelated to the PoE. You're saying that all decisions are pointless because no matter what we do, it's God's Will. I'm sure there's a better name for that particular argument than lumping it in with the PoE, but granted I'm no expert. Perhaps you could explain why theists would want to change it? I'm curious, it seems bad for them to me.

As for calling it suffering vs evil, it seems like that would be beneficial to our side, not the theist side, as suffering is caused by God vs evil which is caused by humans.

I think I might see your point on the free will issue- Are you trying to say that because we don't have the choice to, say, shoot laser beams out of our eyes? This doesn't seem to pose a problem to me. So that proves that infinite free will is not what God wants. But clarifying it to finite, moral free will seems to fix that to me.

-B

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Bumble Bee Tuna :

Here's my argument. For any specific instance of evil, it's definitey necessary for a greater good. Now, some of these greater goods are that humans have the chance to choose to prevent some evil, but I don't think it's plausible that all or even most of them are; the chance to choose to prevent some evil doesn't seem that important to me. If the theist has some good arguments to show that it is, I'd like to see them.

So if all evil is necessary for a greater good, we seem to stand a real chance of preventing some greater good when we try to prevent some evil, unless the greater good in every case is simply that humans have the ability to choose to try to prevent some evil.

I just don't see it as probable that the greater good in every case of evil is only that humans have the ability to try to prevent it.

No one's asking for infinite freedom of action. My point is that there's no good reason to think that the current level of freedom of action is the best level.