Philosophical or Moral Issue Faxes Only: Evidence

Philosophical or Moral Issue Faxes Only: Evidence There Is No God and the Problem of Evil and Suffering: A Response Philosophical or Moral Issue Paper Arguments, both for and against the existence and "goodness" of God as outlined in the readings fall short of convincing because they are based in unsupported assumptions. Chief among these assumptions is the definition of evil and good; and a narrow construction of pain, suffering, and death.

In both Evidence There Is No God and The Problem of Evil and Suffering: A Response each author seeks to make his point by employing the strategy of knocking down shallowly developed and diluted arguments of the opposition. Each essay spends more print describing the conclusions of its syllogisms than it does showing the veracity of the assumptions upon which those conclusions are drawn. In other words, there is a lot of jumping to conclusions and little establishing of solid logical foundations.

Both authors hint at their own assumptions regarding the nature of God or at least their interpretation of the Judeo-Christian ethos that forms the backdrop for their comments. The rationality of the conclusions all hinge upon the rationality of the assumptions. These attributes of God, or these doctrines concerning the nature of God, require deeper exploration for the conclusions to hold up.

For example, the anonymous author of Evidence There Is No God, begins his essay with a story about a baby dying in a house fire (a situation he describes as common). He argues that a good God should have and would have saved the child from death and the associated pain. This assumes that both death and pain are bad and antithetical to the purpose of God.

At first glance, this may seem reasonable, but a more thoughtful consideration would reveal that this standard would require God to employ a standard not even acceptable by human reckoning. Why should we assume that death is bad or symptomatic of evil? Death is the certain end and culmination of the life of every human being (setting aside theological arguments about the extraordinary end to the life of Jesus or rare cases like Elijah or Moses as recorded in the Bible).

If God has any intent about our existence, it surely involves death. Moreover, if we consider that death is the doorway, which we must pass through to return to the presence of God, then death takes on an even greater significance from God's perspective. It would be reasonable to assume that just as we long for the return of our loved ones in this life, God would long for the return of his children and that, in death, what we see as sorrowful parting, He sees as a joyous reunion.

Pain and suffering are also assumed to be synonymous with evil. The author clearly feels that no good can come from these discomforts. Yet humanity cannot even agree on this standard. Just the other day, I saw a man leaving a health club wearing a tee shirt that read, "pain is weakness leaving the body." Now this may be nothing more than cocksure arrogance, but if considered prima fascia it would make sense that an athlete voluntarily suffers painful training in order to achieve a desired beneficial result.

An increase in skill, strength, physical power, or some such and could be considered a desirable benefit to the athlete. If this analogy is carried further, it could be argued that God allows us to suffer because, like the athlete, his intent is for us to achieve a benefit. Admittedly, the pain and suffering endured by humankind at its most intense is more than just sore muscles, but perhaps God's aims are also larger than simply running a little faster or lifting a little more.

In this light, the argument that pain and suffering can be equated to evil intent does not hold up. Furthermore, the anonymous author posits that if there is a kind, loving and good God, that he ought to perform miraculous intervention on a little more regular basis, especially when especially terrible disasters occur. In the author's words, "He should.. intervene to prevent especially horrible disasters," and again gives the example of the infant burning to death as a case that should certainly qualify.

It is already demonstrated that the pain and death brought on by disasters may not even be bad things, but what the author also ignores is the possibility that God is indeed intervening on a regular basis and preventing disasters that, in His judgement, are too horrible. We could not say differently, because humankind would have never witnessed or experienced a disaster that crossed the line. Indeed, our entire perspective of what is and is not horrible, may be skewed in the mild direction with us none the wiser.

John Hicks falls into some of the same traps in The Problem of Evil and Suffering: A.