Sunday, January 7, 2018

The Argument from Evil - What would God do?




A recent dialogue with my friend, Paul, left both of us puzzled. You may recall that we examined the so-called Argument from Evil as presented on the Stanford University website. We concluded that the Argument from Evil does not succeed in demonstrating the non-existence of God. Paul, however, remains convinced that God does not exist.

A key point in our dialogue involved the notion of omnipotence. How far does omnipotence extend? Paul agreed that an all-powerful God would work within the realm of logical possibility. In other words, logically absurd questions such as "can God make a moveable unmovable object" or "can God make a square circle" sit beyond the scope of what we would expect from God.

Paul also agreed, somewhat reluctantly, that because humans have freewill the world must contain the possibility of pain and suffering. He even more reluctantly agreed that a world containing the possibility of compassion is of higher moral value than a world with no compassion, and because pain and suffering prompts compassion, this is the world a morally perfect being would create.

But we were far from settled and earlier today, by heaven, Paul came back to revisit the notion of omnipotence -- truly a sticking point in the argument. He suggested that an all-powerful being could, indeed, create a world that contains no pain and suffering while also maintaining the moral value that compassion brings to this world. I said that pain and suffering might be inevitable because sometimes earthquakes occur, volcanoes erupt, and objects from the heavens (you call them meteors) occasionally fall to the ground. But he said that an all-powerful God could create a universe in which these things don't happen. My response was to ask: how? Perhaps these things are needed if we are to have a stable world.

Paul was unconvinced and asserted that God could do it, even if we don't know how he could do it. I responded that it is very easy to make such assertions and that I could just as easily respond by asserting that God wouldn't create such a world because it would be disastrous, even if we don't understand why. But Paul was relentless -- "surely he could", "surely he must", "surely that's what he would do". Surely, surely, surely. Despite his passion, I am not so sure.

I pointed out that rather than telling me what an omnipotent God would do, instead he was telling me what he, as an omnipotent human, would do. But he only has human knowledge and his decisions are based upon that knowledge. Is it not possible that omniscience might lead to different decisions? He did not answer that question. He returned to his early assertion: surely God could.

So, there it remains -- neither of us convinced by each others' arguments. I am not convinced that the argument from evil succeeds, and Paul is not convinced that my objections refute the argument. So we must start afresh, back at the beginning, another day.

-- Socrates