Distrusting God

I'm going to comment on an essay by the late Richard Gale. He was one of the more competent philosophical atheist. In this essay his primary target is freewill theism: R. Gale, "Evil as Evidence Against God", J. P. Moreland, C. Meister, & K. Sweis eds. Debating Christian Theism (Oxford 2013), chap. 15.   

What, in general, is an evil and what are the different types of evil? An evil is something that, taken by itself in isolation, is an ought-not-to-be, an "Oh, no!" Examples are physical and mental suffering by a sentient being, including lower animals, immoral action, bad character, and a privation in which something fails to measure up to what it ought to be, such as a human being born blind. The qualification "taken by itself" is important, since some evils are justified because they are so-called a blessing in disguise, being necessary for the realization of an outweighing good or prevention of an even greater evil. As members of such a larger whole, they are not an ought-not-to-be. 

In some respects that's a good definition. However:

i) To say congenital blindness is a natural evil is a teleological judgment. But naturalistic evolution rejects final causes. If there's no telos, there's no dysteleology. Congenital blindness is only a natural evil if the eyes were designed to see. But naturalistic evolution is a nondirective process rather than a goal-oriented process. Eyes have no purpose in naturalistic evolution. 

ii) How much mental and physical suffering do lower animals experience? And is that a natural evil? Notice how some animals deliberately seek out what looks like a painful experience. Like lions fighting for control of the tribe. If it's excruciating, why don't they avoid it? 

Some theists refuse to call anything but moral evil or wickedness evil, thereby eliminating natural evils as challenges to theism. This linguistic maneuver, however, accomplishes nothing, for the problem still remains as to how God could be justified in permitting suffering that is not attributable to the misuse of free will by finite creatures. 

While that's ultimately true, it's imprecise when the same word ("evil") is used to cover two very different kinds of phenomena. 

According to Alvin Plantinga, God knows in advance of his creating a free person what actions this person will freewill perform; however, he does not determine that they will so act, for, were he to do so, he would, according to the libertarian theory of freedom, render these actions unfree. The problem for this version of the FWT is that by having God act with foreknowledge of what will result from his action, he determines the result. Thus Plantinga's God determines every creaturely free action. and this is freedom canceling. 

That's a legitimate criticism of freewill theism. 

In his Providence and the Problem of Evil [Swinburne] writes that "fairly clearly to do good out of very serious free will despite strong contrary temptation is the best exercise of choice….The sufferings and deaths in the concentration camps made possible serious heroic choices and they make possible reactions of courage (by the victims), of compassion, sympathy, penitence, reforms…[Slavery] made possible innumerable opportunities for very large numbers of people to contribute or not to contribute to the development of this culture…It would have been our misfortune if there had been no starving…All the ways in which the suffering of A is beneficial for B are also beneficial for A–because A is privileged to be of use". 

Van Inwagen adds yet another seeming moral horror to his fundamentalist theodicy…Horrors happen to people without any relation to desert. They happen as a matter of chance. 

Although freewill theists routinely castigate the harshness of Calvinism, it's striking how ruthlessly hardbitten the theodicies of high-level freewill theists like Craig, Swinburne, Stump, and Inwagen can be. 

Swinburne's theodicies read like a parody of the greater good theodicy, being on par with "if he hadn't burned down his house in a drunken stupor, killing his wife and five children, he never would have given up drinking"…It is good that there is consumption [i.e. TB], for it there weren't, Verdi never would have written La Traviata and Puccini La Boehme. 

That's a witty takedown of Swinburne. But it depends on the example. Consider two brothers, in their upper teens or lower twenties. They don't hate each other but they lack rapport. Don't hang out. Have different interests. Lead parallel lives. 

Suppose the older brother is temporarily disabled in a sporting accident. He requires months of recuperation to recover. He's unable to drive, make his own food, feed himself, bathe himself, dress himself, use the bathroom by himself. His convalescent care falls to the younger brother. Because the younger brother nurses the older brother back to health, that cements a bond that didn't exist prior to the accident. 

Or take an elderly couple where one cares for the other. The sexual passion is gone. Health is gone. Good looks are gone. All that's left is love. And that shines through in the indignities of old age. 

Another misbegotten theodicy is the significant contrast one, according to which we humans would not be able to notice and appreciate good unless we had contrastive experiences for evil…[God] could have satisfied the need for significant contrast by showing us a video of unreal evils. 

But he overlooks the conspicuous fact that abstract knowledge isn't the same thing as experience. For many people, it's not until something becomes personal that it sinks in. 

The whole idea of a deity who is so vain that if his children do not choose to love and obey him will bring down all sorts of horrible evils on them and their innocent descendants…

That does raise questions about freewill theism. 

Because our imaginative and cognitive powers are so radically limited, we are not warranted in inferring that there are not or probably are not God-justifying reasons for evils…The most serious problem for theistic skepticism is that it seems to require that we become complete moral skeptics…should we have tried to prevent it or take steps to prevent similar incidents in the future? Who knows?! For all we can tell it might be a blessing in disguise or serve some "God-justifying reason that is too "deep" for us to access. 

i) But I think that's seriously overstated. Not knowing why God permits a particular evil doesn't mean we're clueless about possible reasons. It's easy to come up with hypothetical examples as well as real life examples in which something turns out to be a blessing in disguise. So it's not totally inscrutable. Although we may be in the dark about the actual reason, many kinds of explanations are available for our consideration. 

ii) In Calvinism, what we do or refrain from doing was predestined for the overall good, so the dilemma does not arise. We don't have to know. God knows best, and we do God's will without seeing the big picture. 

But that may be a genuine moral dilemma in freewill theism, if everything doesn't happen according to a master plan, or if God is stymied by human intransigence so that he can't achieve a good result. 

Another objection concerns whether theistic skepticism allows for there to be a meaningful personal love relation with God. The problem concerns whether we humans can have such a relation with a being whose mind completely transcends ours, who is so inscrutable with respect to his values, reasons, and intentions…We can hardly love someone who intentionally hurts us and keeps his reasons a secret unless for the most part we know his reasons for affecting us as he does and moreover know that they are benevolent…The sort of personal relationship we are supposed to have with God according to theism requires that God does not leave us in the dark with respect to these kinds of evils; for in a personal relationship one person should not bring harm to the other without informing him or her of the reason for doing so. 

Whether God is trustworthy and whether we trust him are two distinct issues. To take a comparison, suppose you're the caregiver for someone who's senile or mentally ill. Suppose you're utterly trustworthy. You always act in their best interests. But paranoia is a symptom of their senility or mental illness. They are suspicious of everything you do for them. They mistrust your motives and actions. They assume the worst. But ultimately it makes no difference. You treat them with love and consideration despite their lack of trust. 

Likewise, a trustworthy God can provide for people who find it hard to trust him. Those two things are independent of each other. He can still look out for them even if they doubt his benevolence. 

It needn't be a two-way relationship. There are bilateral friendships involving mutuality, but in addition, there are unilateral friendships in which a benefactor acts on behalf of another, receiving nothing in return. The whole notion of "relational" theology in freewill theism is overblown. 

Christians sometimes exaggerate the importance of faith. Consider an atheist who converts to Christianity as an adult. From a Calvinistic perspective, God was working all along behind-the-scenes to do him good even though he had no faith in God. God was faithful to the faithless. 

If we do not have good evidence that God exists because he has chosen to remain hidden, this constitutes good evidence against his existence. 

That's a valid inference, but the conclusion is only as good as the premise. 

By not allowing known evils to count against God's existence, not even allowing it to lower the probability that he exists, the skeptical theist might be draining the theistic hypothesis of all meaning. If the known evils are not the least bit probability lowering, then it would appear that for theistic skeptics no amount of evil would be. 

i) Except that we live in a world where evil is often offset by good. It's not all barbed wire. 

ii) Moreover, the notion of evil is a moral or teleological concept. But how can that count against God's existence if the alternative is a world without a morality or teleology? Before evil can count against God's existence, it must count as evil. What's the frame of reference?