Good out of evil

Continuing my disgustingly civil exchange with Jim Lazarus:

http://consolatione.blogspot.com/

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Let’s proceed with the doctor example that Dr. Reppert provides in his post. Now, let us say that the doctor has a young girl as a patient, and the girl has some rare form of cancer where she must go through chemotherapy treatments and take medication that leads to muscular dystrophy, and in addition she must experience several other painful or discomforting experiences as a result of her medical treatment. Now let us say that her doctor is in fact a very close friend of her’s and her family. The doctor cares very much for the girl, and wants to do everything in his power to help her overcome the cancer. Further, let us say that the girl does not comprehend what is going on. She does not know what she has to go through such painful experiences. She is fearful and is clearly suffering even more in her ignorance of what is going on.

Given this example, we can ask a question. Would the doctor who cares about this young girl explain to her the reason why she has to suffer? The explanation, I’d wager, would help her understand the purpose of her treatments, and it would give her assurance that there was a sensible reason for why she has to experience what she does. It would, in fact, help her to know why her suffering was necessary. I think it is also clear that the doctor would explain to her exactly why she would have to go through this experience, out of compassion for her, out of his concern and his care for her well-being.

Similarly, God is a being who loves his creation, just as the doctor cares for the young girl. I think it is clear that just as in the doctor example, God would not abandon us to our ignorance. Instead, He would reveal to us exactly why we must go through the suffering that we do, why it was necessary for whatever higher good He has in mind. He would do this just like any loving father would, out of his love and compassion.

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A few basic points:

1.We need to be clear on the level at which a theodicy operates. A theodicy may be able to answer the general question, “Why is there cancer?”

But I think it’s quite unrealistic to expect a theodicy to answer the specific question, “Why do I have cancer?” “Why me rather than the next guy?”

2.Once consequence of living in a fallen world is the silence of God. That silence is by no means absolute. But to be fallen creatures in a fallen world does entail a fair measure of disruption in our fellowship with God.

Had Adam and Eve never sinned, we might all enjoy daily theophanies with the Maker of heaven and earth. But one consequence of the Fall is a degree of radio silence between God and sinners.

That silence is broken from time to time. Most notably in the Scriptures. I also don’t deny that God may occasionally reveal himself on a more individual basis. But that’s hardly the norm.

3.This also goes to the Biblical distinction between faith and sight or hope and sight. Fideism takes this to an extreme. Christian faith is not a matter of taking everything on faith. Of walking blind.

But the Bible is intended to cultivate the virtue of faith. Of trusting in God for many things.

Less a matter of knowing “why” than knowing “who.” I don’t know the answer, but I know Him, and that’s answer enough. He knows the answers. And in knowing him, I can leave the answers to him.

4.This, of course, assumes a certain epistemology. I’m simply blocking out my basic response. Pointing to the direction I’d take.

“I should ask Hays, though, exactly how we come to have experiential knowledge of God’s justice and mercy? Is God’s justice and mercy revealed to us by virtue of how he responds to our evil actions? For instance, if I were to steal Alvin Plantinga’s car, would God’s response of punishment and/or redemption be the way in which I can have experiential knowledge of His justice and mercy? Or does Hays envision another way in which we experience God’s justice and mercy?”

If I’m a Christian, then I know, from personal experience, what it’s like to be a sinner; and I also know, from personal experience, what it’s like to be redeemed and forgiven.

In this life, judgment is not quite as clear. I mainly have reference to eschatological judgment.

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1) I think that, given the Christian worldview, all natural events, including natural disasters, are events that are ultimately events that are attributable to a sentient agent – namely, God. This is so because of God’s providence, and his role in Creation. Everything that occurs, occurs as a result of the decisions that God has made. He can either allow these occurrences or prevent them. So, if a natural event occurs that results in suffering, the credit for the suffering is by corollary attributable to God, who is responsible for the occurrence of the natural event.

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Agreed.

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Since this is the case, natural disasters would be properly called natural evils in the event that there is no higher-order good that can account for them.

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A few points:

i) My theodicy does not entail a one-to-one correspondence between a given evil and a compensatory good. Teleology isn’t that discrete or atomistic.

It’s not that a given evil, taken in isolation, is a direct means to a greater good. Rather, it’s a part/whole relation. Each event, including evil events, makes its individual contribution to a common end.

ii) I do regard natural evil as a manifestation of divine judgment. But this ordinarily goes back to the Fall. It isn’t directly punitive with respect to any particular victim. But it is a general manifestation of divine judgment.

iii) I’d add that a natural evil can also be a manifestation of divine mercy where the survivors are concerned. But we don’t know enough to draw specific conclusions. Why did so-and-so live and so-and-so die? We can’t say.

iv) There are some exceptions in Scripture. But that’s because we have the benefit of divine revelation where those instances are concerned.

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Further, as I suggested in my first response, and as I’ll argue again here, it does not seem that Hays has suggested anything that could provide as a sensible account of the occurrence of natural disasters. If this is so, then again the problem of suffering remains a problem.

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I disagree, but maybe this goes to his next point:

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(2) The occurrence of natural disasters for the sake of the restoration of the ecosystem is a contingent fact. In other words, there is nothing metaphysically necessary about ecosystems being restored to balance by natural disasters. God could have chosen some other means of restoring ecosystems.

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Do we know that for a fact?

i) It fails to distinguish between possibility and conceivability. It’s easy to imagine making discrete changes in the natural order while leaving everything else in place.

But the fact that we can mental compartmentalize those changes doesn’t mean that, in reality, that is possible.

In a system of second causes, it may not be possible to change certain natural mechanisms without making a number of other far-reaching adjustments.

Means are finite. The medium has built-in limitations. To change a few things it may be necessary to change a lot of things.

And such a world might be so different from the one we know that we can no longer compare the two and size them up.

For this alternative scenario might well have its own dangers or trade-offs. A different set of natural evils.

ii) It would be possible for God to make temporary, isolated changes—a flurry of opportune miracles.

Such a world is more flexible, but the lack of continuity comes at a cost. A very unpredictable world. Impossible to plan for the future.

So there’s a practical and ethical dialectic between flexibility and inflexibility—miracle and providence.

Wherever you range along the continuum you are going to face certain advantages and disadvantages.

Life in a fallen world is already quite fragmented. Would we wish it to be even more unstable?

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Since these events lead to suffering, and since God loves us, and since there seems to be no higher order good that makes these events necessary, I believe that it follows that God would have chosen some other means of restoring the ecosystem. However, there are natural disasters, not some other means of restoration. Since this is the case, it seems that this could count as some evidence against the existence of God.

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One of the recurring problems I have with the way the objection is being framed is that it hinges on a false expectation. As if we should doubt the existence of God because the world we inhabit falls so far below our ideal.

But our existence is, at this point, supposed to be far from ideal. That’s what you’d expect in a fallen world.

These objections act as if the world should be Edenic. But at this stage in the plan of God, Eden lies behind and the Promised Land lies ahead, while we occupy the wilderness.

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I understand that this is a standard response to arguments from suffering that emphasize natural disasters. However, what confuses me is the causal link between the occurrence of the Fall and the occurrence of natural disasters. How does one lead to the other?

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If human mortality is the result of the fall, then in an unfallen world, you might still have natural disasters, but men would be providentially exempted from their destructive scope.

Being a sinner leaves you morally liable, and therefore, physically liable, to natural evil.

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Secondly, and just as importantly, the occurrence of natural disasters from the occurrence of the Fall would likewise be a contingent fact. In other words, the consequences of the Fall need not necessarily entail the occurrence of natural disasters. For what reason would God have chosen natural disasters to be a consequence of the Fall?

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I regard natural “disasters” as a consequence of creation, not the fall. They are, in fact, natural goods.

They only become evil to us if we are exposed to natural disasters. It’s not that natural disasters are a consequence of the fall. Rather, our vulnerability to natural disasters is a consequence of the Fall.

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I think this is sensible, but I also think there is a more serious problem with regard to children. Hays seems to grant the possibility that children can be treated as innocents. However, what about events where children are the ones that directly suffer from the occurrence of the event? For instance, surely there were schools that were destroyed by the tsunami that occurred in South-East Asia last year. What can we say about all of the children that were killed or drowned to death in those schools?

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Several issues:

i) Death is not the end of life. God will do a lot of postmortem sorting of the sheep from the goats.

ii) The life of an orphan, especially in SE Asia, is pretty grim.

iii) Fallen creatures are not entitled to immunity from harm. There’s a running presumption throughout this thread that death is unjust. No, death is just.

iv) Suppose a bank-robber makes a successful getaway, only to be killed when the overpass collapses on his car.

Now, if he’d been shot by the police, we’d see a direct correspondence between the crime and its consequences—whereas his actual death strikes us as a freak accident.

And yet, there’s a sense in which they’re morally equivalent. He got away with one thing, but it caught up to him through the backdoor.

My point being: we should not assume that judgment involves a linear or transparent connection between a specific sin and a specific consequence.

It’s clear in Scripture that divine retribution is often more roundabout. I’m not talking about children in particular, but more generally.

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Now, I do not mean to make this a petty fight over authorities, but the point is that those professional academics who actually are doubtful about evolution are very, very, few and far between. There simply is a scientific consensus on this matter, and critics of evolution have been consistently unsuccessful both in the scientific arena and in the court room (and for good reason).

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Given the fact that public dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy is a career-killer, I’m surprised that the Discovery Institute has been able to smoke out as many dissenters as it has. I expect that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Look at the kind of scorn that Michael Ruse and Stephen Jay Gould come in for simply because they are not the right kind of Darwinians. Because they offer a different version of naturalistic evolution. Or because they deny that evolution is inherently atheistic.

Suppose there were no professional repercussions for bucking the system?

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We can leave this point aside, however. It is relatively unimportant for the purposes of what I mean to say. Instead of pointing our evolutionary biology, I did in fact literally mean historical research, done by historians. For instance, if a literal interpretation of Genesis is correct, then the Flood took place somewhere during the Xing dynasty in China, at least according to creationist critic Frank Zindler. If Zindler is correct about this, then we have every historical reason to suppose that a literal interpretation of Genesis is incorrect, and that we ought to seek out alternative understandings of the Fall and other events as told in the Book of Genesis.

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I’ve addressed these objections on a number of occasions. Most recently:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/10/dawkins-postmortem.html