Thread by @Helenreflects

In my next installment of my philosophy of religion course #PORcourse we will be looking at the Problem of Evil. All course materials are here:
drive.google.com/open?id=1SXGPn…

We start, fittingly, with a koala in a burning forest, slowly suffocating and burning alive. 1/

When we see any sentient creature suffer, we feel we want to help them. Hence all the efforts to save Australian wildlife from the destructive wildfires. We feel compassion with those who suffer, and want to alleviate it. If we do this, why would God not do so? 2/

If we conceive of God as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent why would God allow such a thing? The problem of evil attempts to grapple with the problem of bad in a world created by an all good and powerful God. Let's look at a few traditional solutions 3/

The African theologian Augustine (354 -430AD) was a Manichean before he became Christian. For Manicheans, the world is a struggle between a good and evil God. So there, the problem of evil is easily solved. But once he dismissed Manicheism Augustine could not use that solution 4/

Dilemma: how can bad things happen if everything is created and willed by an all-good creator?
Either God caused it (denying divine omnibenevolence), which is problematic.
Or an independent evil force made it happen (denying God’s omnipotence), equally problematic. 5/

His influential solution: evil isn't really an independently existing thing. Evil is the privation of good. Fiction writers know this intuitively, a character that's just motivated by pure evil is not so interesting. Often there's a backstory of how they came this way 6/

A credible fictitious villain is internally conflicted, or deeply wrong or mistaken in their motivations. The Joker, or Voldemort, becomes that more interesting if he has a tragic backstory to explain why he became this way. But how do we explain bad natural events? 7/

According to Augustine, humans made this happen through the Fall. By disobeying God and eating from the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, death entered the world, as did patriarchical subordination, bad relations with snakes.
Why do bad things happen? we did it 8/

Also, the Fall made each subsequent generation of humans prone to sin due to the effects of original sin (a transmitted tendency for sinfulness). Augustine noted that even babies have an evil streak, seeing how one was eyeing his sibling jealously while she was nursing 9/

While it's fashionable to dismiss Augustine's solution (also: evolution makes it unlikely suffering only happened once humans were there), his account as a few good features: it escapes the dilemma, and does not make bad things good or useful in some sense 10/

But Augustine's solution ultimately faces problems: why did Adam and Eve fall? With the first serious test (Whatever you do, don't eat of that Tree...) Seriously?? That's just begging for problems. God could've made us better--less prone to make such mistakes 11/

Back to that koala in the forest. Augustine would say, rightly in this case, that our sinful actions have caused the poor creature to suffer. Because we have free will, we mess up. But not all animal suffering occurs because of us 12/

Also, even if we humans are to blame, God could've let the koala die quickly. What's the point of letting the poor creature agonize for hours? There is no good that comes of it. It is pointless suffering. Seems incompatible with an all-good and all-powerful God. 13/

This has led William Rowe to his famous evidential argument from evil:
1. Intense suffering exists that an all-good God could prevent without thereby losing some greater good
2. An omniscient etc God would prevent this
--
3. There does not exist an omniscient etc. God 14/

Connecting this to koala in forest: it does not seem its prolonged suffering served some greater good (let's say it wasn't captured on camera, so could not be used to e.g., climate appeals). It also did not prevent some other bad thing to happen. It was simply pointless. 15/

Could an omni-good, powerful, etc God have prevented it? Yes, God could have. God could've shortened the suffering as well. Note, Rowe says this does not PROVE (1) is true. Perhaps, for all we know, God really needed to have this suffering for some reason we can't discern 16/

But, says, Rowe, the atheist doesn't need absolute 100% proof. The atheist just needs reasonable grounds for belief. And it seems here, the atheist has reasonable grounds to accept (3). So it's not 100% sure but reasonable to conclude from koala in forest, there is no God 17/

Before I turn to Rowe's super-interesting claims about what this means for the reasonableness of atheism and how you can debate theists, I want to now briefly turn to one potential response to the problem of evil that grasps it head on, namely Hick's "Irenaean" theodicy 18/

John Hick was inspired by the theologian Irenaeus of Lyon (2nd c AD) who argued (contrary to Augustine) that humans were not intellectually superior before the Fall but that they were created innocent and immature. Irenaeus thought they were scammed by the serpent (Satan) 19/

Irenaeus believed in a literal Fall with a snake etc. Hick rather thought we were put into this world as a kind of moral obstacle course. Evil (by nature, others) provides us with opportunities for growth. Acquiring virtues through adversity is better than being born w them 20/

So, Australian wildfires afford us opportunities for moral growth. Think of e.g., Australian writers who stepped up and auctioned their talents for the wildfire appeal, or think of many ordinary brave people stepping up and e.g., saving burnt koalas out of the fire 21/

This is more valuable in Hick's view than if we were just ready-made good people. That may well be, but now there's a disturbing consequence: that God uses horrible things as useful tools to fulfill God's purposes. It seems now those wildfires have an upside after all 22/

And that's... disturbing. Even if you deny premise (1) of Rowe's argument--the suffering of the koala was useful in some sense, then you get the disturbing conclusion that all sorts of horrific evils happen because they're useful for God. 23/

So we land in a different dilemma:
(1) Suffering is not useful - but then why does God not prevent it? or
(2) The suffering is useful after all - but why would God use such horrible tools to achieve God's ends.
Grasping one of the horns will be unavoidable. 24/

Relatedly, there's something distasteful perhaps of saying that suffering, of other humans, of animals, is somehow necessary. Read this blog by a philosopher dying of cancer (now deceased) particularly this fragment:
kenchung.org 25/

Maybe there is a reward after all? I hope there is. Marilyn McCord Adams argued there would be: people who suffer horrifically would get compensation in afterlife.
Christopher Southgate argues the same for animals, also compensated in afterlife 26/
amazon.com/gp/product/066…

Still, compensation does not explain why it had to happen in the first place. So it seems the theist is in a hard position. Rowe provides a particularly interesting solution for how the theist might respond to his argument, which he calls the GE Moore shift 27/

Basically, you start by denying the conclusion (3) An all-good etc God does not exist, as follows:
1. God exists
2. God would prevent pointless suffering
3. Therefore, There's no pointless suffering 28/

You might come to (1) through e.g., convincing natural theological proofs for God's existence, or personal religious experience, or a feeling of certainty God exists, and from then you'd go to deny the koala is in fact suffering pointlessly. God must have a reason 29/

This sort of shift convinces Rowe to what he calls "friendly atheism". The atheist believes that theists are mistaken because she accepts the conclusion of the argument from evil. But she also thinks some theists are reasonable to believe God exists. 30/

Prefiguring lots of later discussion on reasonable disagreement, Rowe gives some examples where you can be rational but mistaken e.g., your friends believe you died in a plane crash, have heard reports, but you are floating in the ocean in your life vest as sole survivor 31/

I like Rowe's paper and position. Still, I think it's important for theists to think honestly about such instances of evil and how to grapple with them. Even if God has a reason, they're still disquieting and one should resist facile theodicies 32/

Maybe we should be happy that no theodicy is entirely satisfactory. Imagine we got a good reason for why any horror occurred--look it was good, because (!!) -- maybe it's best (regardless of your religious belief) to look in horror, and to try to alleviate evil best one can /end

@threadreaderapp unroll please