Lucifer's Last Stand

At the moment it looks like the secular bloggers have decided to put all their chips on the problem of evil. DC has been running a series of posts on this subject.

In addition, unbelievers have also been piling on Victor Reppert over at his blog on the problem of evil.

Apparently, they regard the problem of evil as their best shot at taking down the Christian faith.

Let’s spend a little time on Babinski’s formulation:

***QUOTE***

Point 1) Theistic philosophers who discuss the problem of pain/evil without acquainting themselves with specific cases in detail from nature are like Kant who apparently avoided the museum of art that he walked past each day on his way to write a book on the "philosophy of art/aesthetics." (A philosophy professor even shared with me that Kant boasted something to the effect that it wasn't even necessary to look at art in order to write his treatise).

Unlike Kant I prefer to begin all investigations, philosophical or otherwise, by pondering specific instances. And since the topic is suffering (including suffering unto madness) please see the collection of instances found HERE. The effect of reading and pondering those examples is a bit different from reading a philosophical treatise on "suffering" that spends the majority of its time juggling-stretching-and-playing with huge generalizations such as "good," "evil," "pain," "suffering," "God," "perfection," "omnipotence," and "freewill," etc.)

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/10/four-points-concerning-problem-of-evil.html

***END-QUOTE***

Several problems here:

1.For some deeply conceited reason, a lot of unbelievers act as if they have a monopoly on mercy, compassion and charity; that they know something we don’t; that Christians must have grown up in a germ-free laboratory wherein we have no personal knowledge of pain and suffering.

Since Babinski and his ilk choose to ignore the obvious, I guess we’ll have to spell it out for them:

We grew up in the very same world you did. At the same time and place. Same culture. Same social class.

We see the same headlines you do. We’ve gone to the same schools you’ve attended. We’ve read history books, too.

Believers have the same share of personal tragedies as unbelievers. We know pain and suffering from first-hand experience. Family tragedies. Disasters befalling our friends and neighbors.

Many converts were involved in destructive, addictive-compulsive behavior. Came from broken homes. Domestic violence. Urban warfare.

So spare us the unctuous tone and the sanctimonious affectation—as if you are unbelievers because you know something we don’t.

2. If anything, the truth is just the opposite. One of the ironies with the problem of evil is that the popularity of this objection has increased at a time when those who are so fond of raising that objection have led fairly charmed lives compared with the generality of mankind.

There has never been a better time and place to be alive than in the United States since the post-WWII era. Unprecedented peace and prosperity. The ever-increasing amenities of modern technology—from medical science and climate control to leisure time, recreational activities, an endless supply and infinite variety of foods, &c.

Just imagine a man from the 18C, whether a peasant or nobleman, walking into the average shopping mall.

And the American lifestyle is reproducible around the world. Indeed, it has been in many parts of the world.

3.So why has the appeal to pain and suffering become so popular among so many pampered unbelievers?

It’s the guilt-stricken conscience of the limousine liberal. We’ve seen this before, now haven’t we?

Filthy rich politicians who justify their lavish lifestyle by bussing working class and middle class kids around while they send their own kids to preppy, private schools.

Filthy rich politicians who hand out food stamps while they sail on their superyachts.

Filthy rich politicians who talk up affirmative action when the only racial diversity they know is the domestic help they hire at dirt-cheap wages to drive their limos and clean their gated estates or Park Avenue suites.

That’s the mentality behind the faddish appeal to the problem of evil. Like Ted Kennedy writing a check to Mother Teresa. Only he doesn’t write his own checks. Or spend his own money.

This is Laguna Beach atheology. Airbrushed atheism. A latte in one hand and a laptop in the other as your atheologian composes his indignant treatise on pain and suffering.

It’s time to drop the Marie Antoinette routine.

Those who’ve suffered the least are the most verbose about pain and suffering, while those who’ve suffered the most are the least likely to whine and snivel about their sorry lot in life.

My parents’ generation came of age during the great depression and fought in WWII. They simply rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

4.Babinski acts as if Christian philosophers write their theodicies in the comfort of their ivory-towered studies while secular philosophers get their hands dirty with real life examples of pain and suffering.

Pardon me for once again stating the obvious, but it’s atheologians who began by writing dry, formalistic versions of the logical problem of evil. Then, when they were answered on their own grounds, they shifted to the inductive problem of evil, using abstract hypotheticals like Bambi dying in a forest fire—a la William Rowe.

A Christian philosopher or apologist is simply answering an atheologian on his own level.

An atheologian raises an intellectual objection to the faith. When a Christian apologist presents a tightly-reasoned counterargument, the atheologian then twivels around and accuses the apologist of being a hard-hearted rationalist!

Moving along:

***QUOTE***

Point 2) Has any philosopher yet explained (except via verbal alchemy) how something can start out perfectly good and yet evil can come out of it? If God is defined as the perfectly good and only source of everything, then whence comes evil? Endless ages of verbal alchemy attached to this question explain nothing, the question remains.

[Here's my question...

A free-willed
All powerful
All knowing
All good
All perfect
All blissful God

creates something SOLELY out of His own will, power, knowledge, goodness, perfection, and bliss...so what room is there for anything less?]

***END-QUOTE***

1.Notice the prejudicial expression “verbal alchemy.” This is an attempt to poison the well. Babinski poses a seemingly sincere question, but he has already planted a disclaimer. If he doesn’t like the answer, then he’ll dismiss it as “verbal alchemy.” So you can already see that this is a disingenuous question. He doesn’t want to hear the answer.

2.In terms of how he chose to frame the question, it’s easy to answer. He’s assuming that the effect must replicate all of the properties of the cause.

Then he asks, “so what room is there for anything less”?

Less than what? The creature is, indeed, less than God. The creature is not omniscient or omnipotent or intrinsically and immutable good.

So it’s quite obvious, from the standpoint of Christian theism, which is Babinski’s target, that a creature would not replicate every attribute of the Creator.

3.In fact, Scripture gives a precise answer to Babinski’s question:

“For God consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all” (Rom 11:32).

“But Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal 3:24).

The goodness of God is superlative, but the goodness of the creation is comparative. God is best. But where the creation is concerned, we’re dealing with finite goods. Degrees of goodness. Lesser and greater goods.

Eden was good. But there was something even better.

However, that greater good was a second-order good. The manifestation of mercy presupposes disobedience. Mercy can only be shown to sinners.

4.Or is Babinski poses a psychological question: how could a sinless agent (e.g. Lucifer, Adam) become sinful?

i) That’s a speculative question. So the only answers are speculative answers. If he doesn’t like speculative answers (“verbal alchemy”?), then he shouldn’t ask speculative questions.

ii) Is this question answerable? It depends on what you mean. It’s often thought to be unanswerable because we have no personal experience of sinless agents. We are sinners. Our desires are sinful because we are already sinful.

So this would be like asking someone who’s never tasted chocolate ice cream what chocolate ice cream tastes like.

But are we asking the wrong question? Or are we asking the wrong person?

Someone who’s never had chocolate ice cream can’t answer the question. But that hardly means the question is unanswerable. The fact that someone who’s never tasted chocolate ice cream can’t tell you what it’s like doesn’t mean that chocolate ice cream is tasteless.

So, assuming, for the sake of argument, that Babinski is posing a psychological question, then even if we couldn’t answer his question, that wouldn’t render the question inherently unanswerable.

It’s unreasonable to ask someone a question if he is in no position to know the answer. The fact that he doesn’t know the answer doesn’t make the answer inherently unknowable. It doesn’t mean there is no answer.

Since, from our experience, a sinless agent is sui generis, then perhaps we can’t answer the question. If so, this only means that a sinful agent cannot get inside the head of a sinless agent. We cannot project ourselves into that state of mind.

iii) But if Babinski is asking a psychological question, there may be one or more unspoken assumptions to his question.

Do all sinful desires presuppose a sinful agent? Must an agent be sinful before he can entertain a sinful desire?

Just as there are second-order goods, there are second-order evils. There are desires which only a sinner would have.

For a man to find a beautiful woman desirable is not intrinsically evil. But for a man to find another man desirable is intrinsically evil.

Only a sinful man can find another man desirable. That’s a second-order evil. You have to be sinful in order to entertain such a desire in the first place.

iv) A natural good can be a potential evil. Take the temptation in the garden. “And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (3:6).

Food. Wisdom. Beauty. These are natural goods. And there’s nothing wrong with finding them desirable. A sinless agent can find them desirable.

v) Another unspoken assumption of his question, assuming it’s a psychological question, is the supposition that it would take some positive factor, some extra dynamic, to tip the scales.

But why would we assume that? Why not assume the opposite? That absent some positive restraint, it’s possible for a sinless agent to succumb to his desire.

Why assume that you must give him an extra little shove? Push him over the edge?

Why not assume that you may need to hold him back?

vi) Remember the nature of the temptation. There was something that Eve didn’t have. What she didn’t have was a natural good. It was something desirable.

Under other circumstances, it might well be better than what she already had. But the timing was wrong. A lack of patience.

Instead of waiting for the Lord to give it, she took it.

I don’t see that there’s anything especially mysterious about the incentive. Seems to me that in that situation, a sinless agent could form a sinful motive, for the initial inducement is innocuous enough.

The proper question is not, “What made her do the wrong thing?” but, “What would prevent her from doing the wrong thing”

Sinlessness is not the same thing as impeccability. It’s a privative condition. Innocence. Inexperience. The absence of sin.

An inclination to the good, all other things being equal, but subject to change.

And even an impeccable agent can imagine sinful choices.

vii) So I don’t find anything especially mind-bending about the first sin.

And if you say that I don’t know what I’m talking about, since I can’t enter into the mindset of a sinless agent, then I’d say that you’re objection cuts both ways.

If I don’t know enough about the psychological makeup of a sinless agent to explain how Eve could ever commit the first sin, then you don’t know enough to explain how she never could have done so.

Continuing:

“Note that if God is perfectly good and has freewill then a freewilled being can exist in a state of perfect goodness. But if God has freewill then wouldn't it be possible for God Himself to commit evil, or become evil? (Or do Christian apologists employ a different definition of "freewill" when it comes to "God?") Conversely, if God does not have freewill then doesn't that imply that freewill is not necessarily of ultimate value and that humanity has something even God lacks?”

1.God is a free agent, but God is not at liberty to do anything possible, for God is also impeccable. God is wise. God is just.

2.Adam was a free agent. So was Lucifer. They were sinless. But they were not impeccable.

3.Traditional Reformed theology, going all the way back to Augustine, talks about the fourfold state of man. There are, indeed, degrees of freedom. Between good and evil. Or alternative evils. Or alternative goods.

Continuing:

“Point 3) Is there something, ANYTHING, that a Christian apologist might consider to be ‘unjustifiable suffering?’"

1.Is this a hypothetical question? Gratuitous evil would be unjustified. But I’d deny the actual existence of gratuitous evil.

2.We also need to distinguish between the viewpoint of the sinner and the viewpoint of God. Sinners often commit wanton evil. Such evil is gratuitous from their standpoint.

But their evil deeds unwittingly serve a higher end. Their sins have unintended consequences for the good. Unintended by them, but not by God.

3.Likewise, sinners often wrong one another. In terms of their social obligations, their actions are unjustified.

But in terms of God’s obligations to them, God does them no wrong. So their misdeeds are not unjustifiable at that higher level.

“And why must people believe that the only way God can "accept" a person is if that person believes God has wrath (or a need to punish), and cannot simply forgive.”

Notice Babinski’s intellectual schizophrenia. After railing about all of the “unjustified” evil in the world, he asks why God can’t simply “forgive” evildoers?

But that would be a monumental miscarriage of justice. Unrequited evil.

“Point 4) I wonder whether Christian apologists have ever come to grips in a truly convincing fashion with the ways their God is portrayed (either in reality or metaphorically) in the book that they claim ‘reveals’ the truth of their beliefs to humanity?”

The shoe is on the other foot. It’s apostates like Babinski who were operating with an ignorant, defective, intellectually immature faith. Who entertained false expectations based on false interpretations. Who, when their false expectations were dashed, defected from the faith rather than learning from their mistakes and correcting their faulty theology.

“Have Christian philosophers really dealt with questions like those above and below, or do they tend to flee them till they reach a nice quiet corner of huge generalizations resembling nothing so much as pious platitudes? But think for just a moment longer about this...”

I’ll ask Babinski the same question in reverse:

Will Babinski really deal with the point-by-point answers I’ve given to his questions? Or will he flee until he reaches a nice quiet corner of huge generalizations resembling nothing so much as impious platitudes? But think for just a moment longer about this...

Finally, Babinski likes to act as if the burden of proof lies entirely on the shoulders of the Christian. But he has his own burden of proof to discharge.

1.Does he believe in moral absolutes? If so, how does his secular philosophy underwrite moral absolutism?

And if, instead, he’s a moral relativist, then what’s the point of his moralistic crusade against the Christian faith?

2.Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that he can justify a distinction between right and wrong, what is his basis for believing in human rights?

How is it possible to wrong a purely biochemical organism? What is the moral standing of a meat machine? What’s the moral difference between a man and a steak?

3.He talks about pain and suffering. Does he believe in consciousness? Or is talk of pain and suffering a relic of folk psychology?

Babinski had thrown down the gauntlet. Now let’s see if he can respond in kind. Or will he kick up a dust cloud and head for the hills?