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Mary Jo Sharp asks: what is the solution to the problem of evil?

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Hard Questions, Real Answers
Hard Questions, Real Answers

I saw that Roger Sharp had tweeted this post from Confident Christianity on Twitter. It’s Mary Jo’s book review of William Lane Craig’s chapter on the problem of evil, taken from his book “Hard Questions, Real Answers“. I highly recommend that book, even for beginners, and the second edition has chapters on abortion, homosexuality and exclusive salvation.

Excerpt:

In Hard Questions, Real Answers, Craig organizes the problem of evil into two categories: the internal and external problem. The internal problem of evil addresses the premises that are consistent within the Christian worldview; analyzing whether the Christian worldview, itself, is based on inconsistent beliefs. The external problem of evil concentrates on whether or not the Christian worldview is adequate to explain evil; focusing on premises Christians would not necessarily commit to as tenet of Christian theism, but would generally recognize as true. Craig explains, “The first approach tries to expose an inner tension within the Christian worldview itself; the second approach attempts to present evidence against the truth of the Christian worldview.”

Craig further breaks down the internal problem into two areas: the logical problem and the probabilistic problem. The logical problem states that it is illogical for both God and evil to coexist. Craig asserts that this argument is seriously flawed, because there is no reason to think that God and evil are logically incompatible.There are no overt contradictions between them. He demonstrates that it can be proven God and evil are actually logically consistent, “So long as it is even possible that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil, it follows that God and evil are logically consistent.”

The probabilistic argument states that it is highly improbable that both God and evil exist. Craig makes three major points regarding the probabilistic argument. First, relative to the full range of evidence available, God’s existence is probable. The probabilistic argument relies on God’s existence being improbable strictly in relation to evil, which could appear as a solid argument. However, in light of all the evidence for God, the probability of his existence far outweighs the probability against. Second, we are not in the best position to discern whether God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil that occurs. We are finite beings who are attempting to understand an infinite God. Obviously, we will experience some deficiency here. Third, the doctrines of Christianity increase the probability that God and evil coexist. One of the most important areas Craig addresses on this point is, according to Christian doctrine, happiness is not the chief purpose of life; rather, it is the knowledge of God. God’s role is not to provide a comfortable world for his “human pets.” The relationship between humanity and God is much deeper than this surface view of mankind’s happiness. Innocent human suffering can provide a “deeper dependency and trust in God,” which the Bible describes as true fulfillment: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Peter 1:3).

And more:

This past year, a friend of mine, David, debated an atheist on the intellectual problem of evil. David answered nearly every single philosophical argument the atheist offered; however, the end result was not what I expected. Instead of conceding any of the philosophical arguments (intellectual problem of evil), the atheist began to singularly argue from the emotional problem of evil. From the review on the Answering Infidelswebsite,

Throughout the debate, David Wood and John Loftus approached the problem of evil from two different aspects. Wood adhered to the formal argument and explained that an argument from animal and human suffering cannot negate the theistic worldview. Loftus, however, kept reverting back to examples of suffering, almost as if he expected Wood to give an explanation for each instance of suffering. However, the argument from evil, to be an argument, must include adherence to the formal argument: otherwise, the experiential side, which is subjective to each person, will just create a convoluted mess of argumentation. On several occasions, Loftus had to avert the original question just to continue to argue against Wood.

The intellectual problem, once answered, did not negate the atheist’s commitment to the emotional problem of evil. David’s debate was a poignant illustration of how the emotional problem can be the root of skepticism; a point we, as Christians, must be sensitive to when dealing with objections from evil. And if we find the skeptic at this point, we “must proceed very cautiously” with the person who is experiencing the emotional problem of evil.

Very good post. A lot of people get disappointed with God because of evil, and sometimes it’s just simple stuff like expecting God to help them to find their cricket bat or something silly like that. Just keep this in mind. Don’t just answer the problem, be aware of the mistaken view of God as Happy-Clappy Santa Claus that is lurking under the surface of the objection.

Rejecting God because he doesn’t make us happy

Often, when people say “God doesn’t prevent suffering”, what they really mean is that God didn’t meet their personal expectations for making them happy. Atheist Lewis Wolpert said in his debate with William Lane Craig that God didn’t help him find his cricket bat so he became an atheist.

Other atheists say , “God doesn’t prevent poverty”, but what they really mean is that God didn’t give them an emergency bailout when they acted irresponsibly. Just read my post on Dan Barker: this is not at all out of the ordinary. Other people dump God when they rush a romantic relationship forward on feelings with a non-Christian and it fails. Bye-bye God.

I just think that this is something we should be aware of when people push the problem of evil. You just have to tell them that God is not their butler or their mommy. Life isn’t like that. And if we knew God, and reflected on the suffering of Jesus in obedience, we wouldn’t expect life to be Heaven on Earth. If it wasn’t for Jesus, then it won’t be for us, either. I am not sure exactly how to respond to this caricature of God, but telling the story of Jesus and how teh Father let Jesus suffer in order to do good things and to learn obedience and endurance is good.

Does anyone have a really good story about a Christian who persisted through suffering and came to know God more fully, and serve him better? That would be a good response to this. Craig has one in the book chapter about the woman who is sick. There is evidential value for apologetics in someone who has suffered but who has nevertheless managed to keep their faith intact. If anyone has a good story I can link to on this, send it to me.

Learn more

I’ve written a comprehensive post on the problem of evil here, in case you guys want to learn more about it. And you can listen to a good debate on the problem of evil here, between William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, who is a VERY good atheist and knows what he is talking about. Their debate was made into a book published by Oxford University Press. I don’t rally recommend BUYING it because it is expensive, for a paperback. But you can read this debate between William Lane Craig and Kai Nielsen FOR FREE instead.

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William Lane Craig: do all roads lead to God?

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Do all roads lead to God? Christian philosopher William Lane Craig explains the Christian view of how imperfect humans are related to a morally-perfect God in this lecture presented to the students at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004. He also defends against the charges of intolerance made by religious pluralists, who believe that all religions are basically the same – and all valid paths to God.

About the speaker:

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

Craig’s CV is here.

Craig’s list of publications is here.

The lecture and discussion

Here’s the lecture and Q&A in 10 parts.

First part:

The lecture is in 6 parts:

Part 1 of 10
Part 2 of 10
Part 3 of 10
Part 4 of 10
Part 5 of 10
Part 6 of 10

And then 4 more parts for Q&A:

Part 7 of 10
Part 8 of 10
Part 9 of 10
Part 10 of 10

There is also a paper that follows the lecture very closely, for those who do not have the bandwidth for the videos.

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Answering some silly objections to the fine-tuning argument

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Review: In case you need a refresher on the cosmological and fine-tuning arguments, as presented by a professor of particle physics at Stanford University, then click this link and watch the lecture.

If you already know about the standard arguments for theism from cosmology, then take a look at this post on Uncommon Descent.

Summary:

In my previous post, I highlighted three common atheistic objections to to the cosmological fine-tuning argument. In that post, I made no attempt to answer these objections. My aim was simply to show that the objections were weak and inconclusive.

Let’s go back to the original three objections:

1. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does it have to be so BIG, and why is it nearly everywhere hostile to life? Why are there so many stars, and why are so few orbited by life-bearing planets? (Let’s call this the size problem.)

2. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does it have to be so OLD, and why was it devoid of life throughout most of its history? For instance, why did life on Earth only appear after 70% of the cosmos’s 13.7-billion-year history had already elapsed? And Why did human beings (genus Homo) only appear after 99.98% of the cosmos’s 13.7-billion-year history had already elapsed? (Let’s call this the age problem.)

3. If the universe was designed to support life, then why does Nature have to be so CRUEL? Why did so many animals have to die – and why did so many species of animals have to go extinct (99% is the commonly quoted figure), in order to generate the world as we see it today? What a waste! And what about predation, parasitism, and animals that engage in practices such as serial murder and infant cannibalism? (Let’s call this the death and suffering problem.)

In today’s post, I’m going to try to provide some positive answers to the first two questions: the size problem and the age problem.

Here’s an excerpt for the size argument:

(a) The main reason why the universe is as big as it currently is that in the first place, the universe had to contain sufficient matter to form galaxies and stars, without which life would not have appeared; and in the second place, the density of matter in the cosmos is incredibly fine-tuned, due to the fine-tuning of gravity. To appreciate this point, let’s go back to the earliest time in the history of the cosmos that we can meaningfully talk about: the Planck time, when the universe was 10^-43 seconds old. If the density of matter at the Planck time had differed from the critical density by as little as one part in 10^60, the universe would have either exploded so rapidly that galaxies wouldn’t have formed, or collapsed so quickly that life would never have appeared. In practical terms: if our universe, which contains 10^80 protons and neutrons, had even one more grain of sand in it – or one grain less – we wouldn’t be here.

If you mess with the size of the universe, you screw up the mass density fine-tuning. We need that to have a universe that expands at the right speed in order to form galaxies, stars and planets. You need planets to have a place to form life – a place with liquid water at the surface.

And an excerpt for the age argument:

(a) One reason why we need an old universe is that billions of years were required for Population I stars (such as our sun) to evolve. These stars are more likely to harbor planets such as our Earth, because they contain lots of “metals” (astronomer-speak for elements heavier than helium), produced by the supernovae of the previous generation of Population II stars. According to currently accepted models of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, this whole process was absolutely vital, because the Big Bang doesn’t make enough “metals”, including those necessary for life: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and so on.

Basically, you need heavy elements to make stars that burn slow and steady, as well as to make PEOPLE! And heavy elements have to be built up slowly through several iterations of the stellar lifecycle, including the right kinds of stellar death: supernovae.

Read the rest! These arguments come up all the time in debates with village atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. It’s a smokescreen they put up, but you’ve got to be able to answer it using the scientific evidence we have today.

By the way, the first post in that series got over 1200 views and over 100 comments. It’s worth reading as well.

UPDATE: Lenny from Come Reason has an article answering similar questions here.